The Knowland Retribution

by Richard Greener

  Crawling through the wet rice paddies, ducking down under the water whenever he thought he heard someone, Walter approached

  the tiny village at dusk. He carried his rifle, his bayonet, a 45-caliber sidearm, and eight grenades. His face and hands were covered in charcoal. The nearest he could get to the shacks themselves was about fifty yards beyond a small hut standing between him and the center of the village. As he lay in the wet rice—it sure seemed like weeds to him—he saw four young men, one in uniform, all armed with rifles. They emerged from one shack, stood in the dirt path outside, talking, and then three of them seemed to be getting instructions from the one in uniform, who turned and walked away, leaving them standing there. The three went back into the shack. A few minutes later, Walter saw the uniformed soldier return, accompanied by another soldier also in uniform. They entered the shack together. None of the other three had left. There were at least five men in there now. The American was undoubtedly there too. The sun was almost completely gone, Walter’s vision already compromised. He decided to stay put. No one was looking for him, and with nightfall nobody seemed likely to stumble upon him. He didn’t smoke and had no fear of being discovered. He’d adjusted to the water. He had brought a Milky Way bar with him and pulled it out of the small pack he wore on his back. He was careful to put the empty wrapper in his pocket.

  The scream was so loud Walter thought it was right next to him. It was followed by another, and then a third. The horror increased in each one. The anguish and pain subsided slowly to a moan. He heard choking sobs. Two or three voices, all speaking Vietnamese, were yelling at the same time. More screams, and finally a moan that was endless. He couldn’t lie there any longer. Clearly the man he was looking for was inside being brutalized. God only knows what they were doing to him. Walter scrambled out of the rice paddy. The small hut fifty yards away stood between him and any attempt to rescue the downed pilot. Walter looked, but there was no way around it. He would have to sneak past it. There were people living there. He saw light inside and the smoke from a cooking fire rising from the top of the roof. He crawled quietly, passing only a few feet from the hut. Whoever lived there was still inside. The awful moaning ahead never stopped. And then more bloodcurdling screams. Now they too were unending. He had to hurry. He took a big chance. He ran the last twenty yards. The screams and the moaning so close to him were more than he could stand. Walter looked through the loosely attached walls of thatched reeds and large, heavy leaves. He could not believe what he saw. The American, blonde, in his mid-twenties at most, lay on a wooden table. He was naked. Both legs were mangled at the knees, crushed in the crash of his aircraft. A knife was embedded in the table and stuck through his balls. Half his penis had been cut off. It lay to the side, still bleeding. Two of the men were slicing the fingers off at the first joint. The fingernails had already been torn out. Another was doing the same to the American’s toes. The uniformed soldier, the last one to have joined the group, was actually skinning the man alive. He made long, thin cuts across the abdomen, and peeled the skin away as if he were cleaning fish. The longer the American remained conscious the more horrific his ordeal and the more gruesome his death. Walter could not imagine what sort of sanity could possibly remain in the man’s brain. There was no way he could save the pilot, not even if he killed the five men and carried him away. The captured American would just as certainly bleed to death being carried by Walter as he would at the hands of his captors.

  Walter did what he thought to be the most humane thing possible. He tossed a grenade through the open window. The explosion killed the American and the five Vietnamese. It blew the hut to pieces and started a small fire. Walter hit the ground in anticipation of the blast. Now he jumped to his feet and entered the smoking rubble. He grabbed a severed foot, knowing it was the pilot’s because the toenails had been pulled out. He found the stub of a hand, a piece of skull, half an ear, each one obviously from a white man. He shoved the body parts into his backpack. Walter heard the village come to life. A fire had begun just behind the now demolished shack. People were running toward it. He removed two more grenades from his belt, pulled the pins, and threw each of them as far as he could into the darkness in opposite directions. Two explosions rattled the night. More fire. More screams. More casualties. Now people were racing in all directions, some ducking behind huts, others fleeing toward the rice fields. Voices everywhere, all yelling in Vietnamese. Walter understood nothing. He needed to deflect their attention to make his escape. He spotted the American’s dog tags and reached to pick them up. A piece of skull with blonde hair spared by the flames lay next to them. He put both in his backpack.

  Backing away from the village, the same way he had entered it, Walter had to pass by the outlying hut again. This time he could not move unnoticed. The family living there was standing outside, huddled together in fear, watching the chaos from a distance. There was no way for Walter to crawl past them. He decided the safest passage was the most direct. He moved out of the shadows and began walking slowly, but at a steady gait. He was only a few feet away when he could see them and they could see him. A man, a woman, a much older woman, and two small children looked straight at him. At that moment they realized what and who had approached their home. Walter returned their stare. Then, the man—Walter could not be certain how old he was—dashed into the hut. Instantly, he reappeared, holding a rifle he pointed at Walter. And just as quickly Walter shot him. The old woman rushed at Walter, her high-pitched scream barely audible through her tears. She lunged at him, grabbing his shirt and tearing the top button off. Walter shot her and she fell to the ground. The younger woman, undoubtedly the children’s mother, drew her children to her. They held tightly to her side and she laid a hand on the head of each. All three were weeping. Walter stood there, looking at them, unsure what to do next. The shots he fired gave him away, and he could hear the villagers behind him. He had to go quickly. They would catch up to him in less than a minute. Which direction should he go? This way? That way? Whichever way he chose, this mother and her children would tell the others. He pushed them into the hut. They disappeared in the darkness, but he heard them. He heard the children crying and the mother trying to calm her babies. It may have been a strange language, but Walter knew she was comforting them, telling them, “It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright.” He tossed the grenade into the hut and began running. The explosion was the most violent thing he had ever heard, much louder than its actual sound. It was the sound of a mother and her children being attacked by millions of tiny pieces of sharp metal, a shower of death. He did not stop and he did not turn around. He navigated the rice paddies and made it into the jungle on the other side. The search for him was relentless. He evaded soldiers and villagers day after day, hiding in empty caves, climbing trees, taking cover in leafy swamps. He ate insects when his meager rations were used up. Three times he stole food, again picking on the most remote hut farthest from its village. The first of these huts was empty and he walked off with enough to eat for almost a week. The other two times he killed the occupants and took their food. Once he sneaked up behind a teenage boy who had lost his right leg at the knee. He cut his throat. The last time he beat an old man and his wife to death with the butt of his rifle. He needed to eat to live. On the twentieth day since being lowered into the high grass on a rope, he spotted a patrol of American soldiers. He didn’t have the slightest idea where he was,

  but he knew he had made it back safely. The odor from his backpack sickened the soldiers who rescued him, but he refused to take it off until he could deliver its contents to Headquarters. Walter’s report described everything that happened to him, down to the smallest detail. It made difficult reading for some. There were others who found it thrilling. All those who read it looked at Walter Sherman with a mixture of awe and fear. And there were the rumors. In time, Walter heard them all. He never believed them, but could not totally dismiss them. He’d been gone three weeks. In Vietnam that’s as good as forever.
Had officers at Headquarters really placed bets on whether or not he would return? Had members of his own unit done the same? After the first week, had some demanded payment? When the Colonel smiled and promoted him to sergeant, was he counting his money?

  New York

  Maloney tried to ease things. He was an expert at that. In moments of self-doubt he often feared he was an expert at only that. Once more he saw a need to apply his gifts. Walter was still standing in front of the door to the suite. “Na Trang!” had stopped him in his tracks, but he had not yet turned to face the little man who knew more about him than he dreamed possible in his worst nightmare. Tom Maloney walked over to the bar and poured a Diet Coke. He approached Walter with it. “Take it,” he said, his voice and demeanor very much the opposite of Stein—Stein the jackal, Stein the screecher, Stein the sonofabitch. “Go ahead,” he said, handing the glass to Walter. He put his other hand on Walter’s shoulder and guided him to the couch across the room, nearest the doors leading to the patio. He motioned for Walter to sit.

  “A man’s history,” he said, taking a seat himself, “it’s never a complete mystery. It’s always there waiting to be unearthed, discovered, brought into the light of day by those whose interest is served by disclosure. You should know that as well as anyone. You’ve been a historian of men for many years, haven’t you? Of course you have. And a brilliant one at that. Who else could have identified Leonard Martin and then found him? Leonard Martin, the most hunted man in America—perhaps in the entire world—and who else could have done that? No one, that’s who. You are a historian, but you’re fallible, Walter. You’re just a man. You have your limitations, like all men. We do too. But we have resources to overcome those limitations. Resources you cannot imagine. You think we live in a world where we think we know things others don’t? No. You’re wrong.” Maloney’s eyes motioned Stein out of the room, or at least out of Walter’s sight. “We know we live in that world. That world belongs to us.” Maloney left Walter sitting there and moved to a chair in the middle of the room. Nathan Stein sat off to the side and behind Walter. He said nothing. Maloney was on a roll, and Nathan recognized it as he had so many times before. Finally, Walter sipped his Diet Coke. That single, simple act worked to return the color to his cheeks and bring his respiration back to normal. He looked up into Tom Maloney’s angelic, Catholic face.

  Maloney said, “Your past is safe with us. And your future too. You’re ‘the Locator,’ and you’ve created a life in which you cannot be located. We’ve been over that, haven’t we? We’ve no wish to disturb that delicate balance, unmask you before official agencies that are unaware of your existence, open your secret sores before your wife—ex-wife—your daughter, your grandsons. No one wants that. When this is over you go back to St. John, back to your past, back to your privacy. And you do so a rich man. Do you follow me here?”

  “I do,” said Walter. “Sister, how do I make out the check?” It pounded in his head.

  “Precisely.”

  “But I don’t do that any—”

  “Walter, Walter, Walter.” Maloney was on his feet, his voice louder than before, his tone harsher. His puffy Irish face reddened. He threw his hands and arms wide apart and said, “Who among us would not change the past if we could? You? Me? Nathan? Wesley, wherever the fuck he is? For damn sure, Hopman, MacNeal, Grath, that fellow Ochs, and now Louise. Leonard Martin? What about him? You think he wouldn’t give everything just to change one single day for his wife and family? But he can’t. They can’t. We can’t. You can’t. Change the past? The past is the future, for all of us. And that means you too.”

  The iron gates had swung open against his will. The stone walls were breached. The enemy was pouring in. Nathan Stein—Na Trang—had changed the rules, changed everything, and Walter felt the heavy metal and broken stone weigh him down. “The future,” he thought, “what future?” Maloney was right. The past is the future.

  “You’ll find Leonard Martin before he finds us, and you’ll kill him. You won’t do it for us. I know that. But you’ll do it for Gloria, for your daughter, for your grandchildren, for yourself. Will you think of the mother and her two children crying in the hut? The one-legged boy whose food you stole and whose throat you sliced open? The American whose life you saved by ending it? I hope so. I hope so because the past will lead you to your future. Change the past? No. Embrace the past and recognize that you cannot change the future.”

  “Wilkes?”

  “He’s gone. I didn’t get a chance to fire him. He bailed out as soon as you made his man. Chickenshit sonsofbitches; they only want the easy work.”

  Walter breathed deeply. He smelled that hotel smell, a combination of food, smoke, and alcohol mixed with the expensive scent of cleanliness. There was no escaping it, even in the penthouse of the Waldorf Astoria. That might have been sign enough for Maloney, but Walter further obliged with a nod of the head.

  “Walter, you have my word that when this is done you’ll never hear from us again, ever. We’re not blackmailers. Quite the opposite. We’re just clients. And, as clients, we want you to go home now. We know you’re most comfortable there. Make your plan, then make your move. But move fast.” Maloney stepped back, an acknowledgment of Walter’s freedom to leave. Walter rose up from the couch as if his whole body ached with despair and regret. Maloney thought he seemed a smaller man than before. “By the way,” he added, “we’ve taken the liberty of depositing some more money into your bank account.” Walter just nodded again and started for the door. “Don’t you want to know how much?”

  The extra hundred grand still fresh in his mind, Walter asked, “How much?”

  “Thirty million dollars.”

  “Thirty million dollars?”

  “You never know when you might need some extra cash,” Maloney said, glancing at Stein, whose attention seemed elsewhere.

  “Thirty million dollars?”

  Maloney just laughed as Walter walked out.

  St. John

  Watching the old man strike a wooden match he’d taken from his shirt pocket, Billy said to Ike, “Remember, it was you who once said ‘some things don’t have no argument.’ Well, this is one of them things.” As Ike lit up, the flame nearly exploded when it made contact with the tobacco. They were talking about the size of a certain boat. It was a boat belonging to a bigtime bushwhacker, an Englishman named Spence. By all accounts it was a large vessel, although how large was the question at hand. The boat was named “Lady Kate” after the Englishman’s wife Catharine, a magnificently beautiful woman, no youngster herself, yet many years his junior. No matter how big the boat really was, instead

  of “Lady Kate” Billy called it “The Stugots” because he was sure Louis Spence—if that was his name—was mobbed up.

  “I’ve seen it bigger,” Ike said. “Sometimes.”

  “What the hell does that mean—you’ve seen it bigger, sometimes?” Billy was leaning over the bar, getting as near to Ike as he could get considering the old man was sitting practically outside. “Sometimes?” he repeated.

  “Well, you know, there’s times I see it sort of coming straight at me and it has a certain size to it. You understand? Then there’s other times I see it going away—from behind—and it looks different.”

  Billy pulled two bottles of wine from a box on the floor behind the bar and shoved them in the ice cooler, the new one he bought when he finally replaced the small icemaker last week. Then he did the same with two more. “Looks different to you depending on which side you’re looking from?” he asked. “That’s no big deal. An old man like you can’t see good no more.” Billy looked toward Walter for confirmation.

  Walter said, “That sounds like an argument to me.”

  “I think Billy’s right,” said Ike. “It’s no argument. Not that I can’t see. I see just fine, thank you. That boat though, it’s all relative.”

  �
�Einstein,” said Walter. “Albert Einstein.”

  “That’s him,” said Ike, releasing a huge cloud of smoke that caught the breeze coming in from off the water, blowing across the square and into Billy’s Bar. The smoke was soon a long, thin, hazy blue line headed directly for the spot where Billy stood. He must have seen it, because, quick as a cat, he moved all the way to where Walter and Isobel sat at the far end near the kitchen. He mumbled something about Ike’s cigarette and then looked up into Walter’s eyes, searching for

  understanding.

  “Einstein,” Walter said. “You know, it’s all relative. He invented it, or discovered it, or whatever.”

  “You know what it means?” Billy asked.