Warren Murphy: Child's Play

"I want to assure you, sir," said Haupt, "that you will get a fair and impartial investigation." And he hung up.

Haupt's chief of staff, an old campaigner who had done ten uninterrupted years in the middle of official Washington, was the first to realize what had happened. Fort Bragg had the Justice Department itself on the run and should Justice somehow be able to turn this brilliant attack around, it could only hit Fort Dix. It was all systems go and ride to glory. A disaster turned into a victory.

He jumped up and with a shout gave his commanding officer a booming slap on the back.

"You tough old bastard, you did it again," he shouted. The captain, too, suddenly realized they had won.

"Wow," he said with a great gush of air. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it." The staff sergeant, his chest glistening with ribbons won in offices from Weisbaden to Tokyo, just grinned.

"If I may say so, sir, you've got balls." General Haupt accepted the adulation, then suddenly became somber.

"Let's not forget that the Justice Department has human beings too. The poor devils."

"What about the Fort Dix commander?" asked the captain.

"I'll try to get him out if I can," said General Haupt. "But he had no business in this game. It's what happens when you have unprepared green, raw personnel. He was always in over his head."

"But the Fort Dix commander is a general too, sir," said the captain.

"I think the colonel can better explain," said General Haupt.

"Thank you, sir," said the colonel and rose to speak.

"Yes, the general at Fort Dix would appear to be a general. But only by an act of Congress and official promotions. You see, he has spent an entire career outside of the main action. No real Army experience."

"I don't understand," said the captain. "You take a man out of West Point," said the colonel, "and you put him directly in charge of a combat platoon in France during World War II. You keep him on maneuvers until the Korean War and then let him do nothing but command a battalion against the Chinese Reds and the North Koreans and before he gets any real experience, you put him into Vietnam in charge of a combat division. Where the hell is he ever going to get real experience? The man doesn't know how to make a speech or how to talk to a foreign diplomat or a visiting congressman."

"I see," said the captain.

"It's tough, but it's life," said General Haupt. "If you want to go shooting Horlands at someone, join the National Rifle Association or the Mafia. But stay the hell out of this man's Army."

"Howitzers, sir. They're not called Horlands."

"When you've served as many years in this man's Army as I have," said Major General William Tassidy Haupt, "you don't have time to indulge yourself in that kind of thing. If they had had real generals in charge, we never would have gotten into Vietnam. Any shavetail could have seen there were no votes there, no industrial power there, absolutely no political sock. But you take that childish mentality that always wanted to play soldier and they think you can solve all your basic problems by shooting Horlands at them."

"Howitzers at them, sir."

"Whatever," said General Haupt. "Let's get a drink. It's been a long day."

In Folcroft Sanitarium on Long Island Sound, Smith read the multitude of reports. Since the outset, he had carefully managed to jump the lines of official Washington so that what one office of official Washington thought would be seen only by another office, also went to this sanitarium. The increasing use of computers simplified this. You didn't need a person to feed you a secret report. You merely plugged in, and Folcroft had one of the largest computer banks in the world.

Smith pondered the latest reports. Four witnesses dead. No one seen entering the premises. The waves became dark and gloomy over the sound. A storm threatened. A small Hobie Craft, its sail full-gusted from the growing northeaster, skimmed its way into port.

The witness system was a foundation of everything the organization had worked for these many years. If that worked, organized crime would be through. Of course, there was the growing inability of police to cope with street crime and that too could cause a disenchantment so deep as to bring in a police state. But that was something else, a second problem to solve. And when both those problems had been solved, Smith and CURE could close shop.

Right now, all the work done, all the blood spilled, seemed like so much waste matter on the landscape. Where witnesses did not feel safe to testify, there was no such thing as a working judicial system.

He had played his two top cards, and not only had they failed, but they had become suspects.

Smith fingered a report. It was an interdepartmental memo from a William Tassidy Haupt, Maj. Gen., USA. A skilled bureaucrat, Haupt had made Remo and Chiun with their "Justice Department" credentials the major suspects.

Haupt. Haupt? The name was familiar.

Of course. Smith punched a retrieve program from the terminal at his desk. In all Folcroft, this was the only terminal that could retrieve an entire program. Others could get only parts with words, letters, and numbers missing.

Haupt, Lt. Col, USA, killed in action, Bastogne, 1944. Right. Right. Smith had remembered the name for a very special reason. He had just been out of Dartmouth, and beginning what he thought was an interim career for the government, during World War II, when someone had mentioned that this Colonel Haupt could not be relied on for combat. Colonel Haupt was a bureaucrat who had remained a captain from 1922 to 1941. He was unprepared for war, and what always happened to peacetime armies happened. The combat people took command from the peace people. Colonel Haupt was assigned to a supply battalion. He had been with it when everything was overrun in the Ardennes. Instead of surrendering when it appeared hopeless, Haupt destroyed the supplies rather than let them fall into enemy hands, and then turned his unit into a guerilla band working behind German lines.

Smith, with the OSS, had been assigned to find out if the Germans had enough petrol to make this last offensive stick, and parachuted in behind lines to meet Haupt's little band. Not only had Colonel Haupt prepared a correct analysis of the enemy's fuel supply but as if guided by some genius hand, had known it was the fuel that was the key, and had been attacking just that in his small assaults on the Nazis.

That cold Christmas Colonel Haupt fought with his intestines held inside him by tape. He literally fought while he was dying. There was nothing dramatic about it, and Colonel Haupt did not become one of the better-known heroes of the Battle of the Bulge. One afternoon, the day before the skies cleared enough for Smith to be picked up, Lt. Col. William Haupt rested against the base of a tree and didn't get up.

A hell of a soldier.

He had a son. Haupt, William Tassidy, Maj. Gen., USA.

Maybe like father, like son.

Smith picked up one of the blue phones on his desk. It took longer to get Fort Bragg than a normal phone call would have. This was because the blue phone was a rerouter that switched Smith's calls through various trunk lines in the Midwest before completing them. If any of his calls were ever traced, the call would be terminated in Idaho or Ohio or Wisconsin and no one would ever be able to connect the harmless sanitarium on the Long Island Sound with the phone call.

A general's aide answered. Smith said it was the Pentagon calling and Haupt should answer immediately.

"He's busy now, sir, can he call you back? I didn't get your name."

"You will put General Haupt on this line within one minute or your career and his career are over," Smith said.

"Hello, General Haupt here."

"General Haupt, I have read your report on the Kaufmann killing and it does not look good."