Whitney Terrell - The Good Lieutenant

A large floor fan thrummed in the center of the tent and music tinkled out of Masterson’s earbuds as he curled them up. No other accompaniment to tell her whether this story should be believed. “Why, he give you something?” he asked.

“I showed Faisal this,” she said, producing the same note Masterson had read that morning. “He wouldn’t admit it, but I think he recognized the drawings and the writing. He also had some comments about how he was detained.”

If he heard this last remark, Masterson ignored it. Instead, he perched on the edge of his cot, his bare feet flat on the gravel and his head bent, examining the pen-and-ink sketches, their startling facility. “So Pulowski interviews some hadji at the schoolhouse,” he said. “The guy draws a couple of weird pictures and then leaves. So what?”

It was a decent question, except that it seemed designed to avoid the subject of Faisal’s detention, as if Pulowski’s story, up on the surface, were a distraction for some worse and troubling shadow in the depths. “An unidentified Iraqi gave Lieutenant Pulowski this when we linked up with you at the schoolhouse after the kidnapping,” she said, reviewing the facts. “He said the guy was … friendly. Trying to communicate. So he went to get Faisal, and the minute Faisal walks in, the guy just freaks.”

“Why didn’t he report this to you at the time?”

Now her secrets glided up, black and quiet, beneath the conversation. Pulowski’s confession back in her trailer. Her own responsibility for Beale. “I’m just saying, sir, look at the drawing.” She pointed to the sketch of the dark angel, engaging in some equal-opportunity misdirection. “That’s a person, isn’t it? A white guy, not an Iraqi. I’m not saying that has to be Sergeant Beale, but given what you’ve told me about Faisal—”

Masterson glanced up quickly, wolfishly, with a glint of amusement in his eye. “Wasn’t Pulowski with your missing soldier when he got taken? So, this guy loses a soldier. Then he comes up with a story about how some Iraqi might be responsible, but doesn’t detain the guy? And you trust this information?”

By then she was no longer sure who was misdirecting whom. No one had entered the tent since she’d come in, the empty bunks still looming awkwardly at her back, as if Masterson’s soldiers felt the same way. She folded her hands and put her boots together, scanning the small space where Masterson lived. There were piles of underwear and brown T-shirts at the end of the bed. Stray Styrofoam containers from the cook shack. She recognized the mess, recognized its similarity to her own trailer, as well as what it meant. Flying off the handle wasn’t going to help her here. Not if there weren’t any handles left. “Sir,” she said, “when I was talking to Faisal, he had a couple of things to say about how he was detained. Could I ask you about them, please?”

“Like what?”

“Like what’s going on with your arrest affidavits?”

For a moment Masterson’s old arrogance seemed to rise up, and he glowered at Fowler from between his flattened hands, as if she’d failed to consider how dangerous that comment could be. Then he said:

“You’ve got a lot of balls, Fowler. That’s fucking good. You and Beale. You guys ran well together. You were a good team. It’s the best thing about you, loyalty. That and balls. I can understand how you’d get all broken up about this thing—”

She and Beale had never run well together as a team.

“I’m not arguing your detainee policy, sir,” she lied in return. Everything about Masterson’s detainee policy was arguable, but she wanted to focus on the worst part, the key. As Faisal had indicated, his company had by far the highest kill and detention rates in the battalion — over 350 Iraqis total. They were all supposed to have signed affidavits and approval from a judge advocate general before anybody targeted them. If Masterson was forging his paperwork, however, he could kill or detain innocents. Strangers. Whomever he liked. “But faking arrest affidavits is a totally different thing.”

“Who said anything about that?”

“Faisal. According to him, that’s why he’s on your staff.”

If Masterson had blustered at her, if he’d yelled at her as he had back at Fort Riley, she might have left right then. But instead, he tottered to his desk for a bottle of water, rinsed his mouth, and spat, as if the sickness had risen up inside him again.

“You think that’s the solution here? Better paperwork?” Masterson had dropped into a squat, his bare feet spread, showing her his back. “Or do you think maybe it’s arresting guys who I think are going to kill my men? With or without the paperwork.”

There was some minor shred of truth in that. In the long string of choices that had led to Beale’s disappearance, filing honest paperwork had turned out to be a hindrance, if not a mistake. “Why don’t we talk about your objectives here instead?” Masterson asked. “You’re in the Army. We’re having a war. You lose a soldier, that’s just what happens. That’s the game. So I got to figure there’s something else at stake.”

“I wasn’t there to help him,” Fowler said.

“Why do you have to take responsibility for that? Isn’t it true that you requested backup from the battalion and that backup didn’t arrive?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You don’t think that absolves you?”

“No,” she said.

“So we’re on the same page, Lieutenant. I sent men to that same intersection three months ago. I knew it was poorly defended. I clearly registered my protest but was ordered to do it anyway. I followed orders. The Muthanna intersection was attacked, my men died. I know who did it. To me, that doesn’t feel right.”

I know who did it. That was the shadow beneath their conversation. Any interpreter had access to sensitive intel. They were always the first and most dangerous candidates for a leak. The problem was that Masterson had hired Faisal because he was dishonest, because he could be taught to falsely detain or kill who knew how many hundreds of his countrymen. He’d trained his own traitor. Now he wanted to cover his mistake. “Come on, Fowler. Give yourself a break,” he said. “You’ve done the hard part. You found your target. You’re not responsible for me. Leave the rule-book shit to Seacourt and Hartz. I don’t see either of them out here fixing anything.”

Fowler snorted. The things that they were discussing — murder, torture, her own complicity in the same — were things that she had never imagined considering. Choices she’d always believed she’d know not to make. But the language seemed personable, normal, and when she tipped her head and gazed up at the tent’s ceiling, the sun glowed golden through the fabric, as it always did. It was jail if she went along with Masterson and got found out. She did wrong here or she abandoned her only lead on finding Beale. The variable was Pulowski, who might very well turn her in if he found out. On the other hand, if he wasn’t responsible for what had happened to Beale, he deserved to know he was clean. She trundled over atop the stool and plucked the note from his hand. The two drawings — one of the anonymous Iraqi, the other, she believed, of Beale — were underlined by slanting scratches of Arabic. The one clear thing she’d felt all day had been the guilt of the beaten interpreter, Faisal, when she’d seen him in the shed. It was still there, the feeling of it twining up around her skin, black-rooted, the vines of it — though of course she could not see any such thing in reality — seeming to whisper against her, as if growing out of her own skin. “Whoever wrote this note,” she said, “leads us to Beale.”