“Not hungry. I’ll have ’em box it up.”
“Men like to be macho. Heroes. But you think I’d be surprised or think less of you if you showed a little anger or fear? I never had anything like this come close to either of my families, but I can put myself in your shoes. I’d be scared to death and wouldn’t care who knew it.”
“Well, now you know, Detective. And if it makes you feel any better, making light of it doesn’t help me either. In fact, it makes me feel guilty.”
“You are guilty, aren’t you, Doc?”
“Sorry?”
“Just sayin’ I’m not the only one you hid your real self from. You been keepin’ stuff from the missus, haven’t you, Ben?”
“Like what?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“Because I have no idea.”
Which wasn’t entirely true. But Ben couldn’t imagine how Ginny would have a clue, let alone Wojciechowski.
CHAPTER 52
Ur
Terah limped in to check on his wife and the baby. Belessunu had laid Abram next to her and they both appeared asleep. He tried to imagine the tiny lad as a toddler, then a youngster, then a grown-up. That last he found nearly impossible. Abram lay so still that Terah leaned close on his crutch to make sure he was breathing. Belessunu had freed his arms from the enveloping cloth, and he had them pressed against his little body, tiny fingers interlaced as if on purpose.
Sure enough, Abram’s tiny chest rose and fell ever so slightly. Terah reached tentatively, careful to keep his balance, and laid his palm lightly on the boy’s torso, his hand seeming to cover half the child. That caused the baby to jerk, both arms shooting straight out. Terah pressed lovingly. “Shh, little one. I’m here.” And the wee hands settled over his own.
Terah could have stood soothing his son that way forever, but his only good leg grew weary and began to shake. He had to reposition himself, but pulling his hand away made the boy start again. So far, Terah had not been much of father. But I will be, Abram. I will save your life this very day. Especially if his plot had indeed come from the gods.
Terah slowly made his way out of the bedroom and found Ikuppi kneeling before the table of broken idols. “You do well to pray, my friend,” Terah said, settling into a chair. “The gods will assure you we are doing the right thing.”
“Don’t say ‘we,’ sir. They offer me no peace about this. I am not part of it.”
“You are whatever I say you are, and you will do what I say you’ll do.”
“But it doesn’t even make sense, Terah! How will you explain—”
“It is not your place to judge the sense of it, man! All you must do is what I ask. Don’t judge my wisdom.”
“With all due respect, sir, it is more than your wisdom I judge. I question your morality.”
“How dare you?”
“How dare I, Terah? How dare you?”
“Come close so we can hear each other without waking mother and child.”
Ikuppi joined him. “You’re going to regret this the rest of your life, Terah.”
“I shall not! Even Belessunu’s God says our son will become an exalted father. That’s why we named him Abram. And to ensure that, I must protect him from the king.”
“But if you do it the way you say you will, I will regret it the rest of my days. In fact, I don’t know if I could live with myself.”
“How can you say that, a father yourself!”
“And my family needs me. They do not need a man so weak he would violate his own conscience.”
“If it is so distasteful to you, remember that you are merely doing what you’re told and don’t be so hard on yourself.”
Ikuppi closed his eyes and shook his head, patting the long bronze sword at his waist. “I have killed many with this blade in the service of the throne. I have even flayed rebels strapped to walls. But never have I murdered an innocent.”
“You will not be murdering anyone,” Terah said. “You will only be doing what your superior tells you to do.”
“But how can I make Mutuum and his wife, or anyone, believe such a preposterous tale?”
“They don’t have to believe it, as long as they accept it.”
“I don’t know how to be convincing.”
“You don’t have to convince them. You serve their master, so you will be speaking for me. They have no recourse regardless what they believe or don’t believe.”
CHAPTER 53
Vietnam, 1971
Ben Berman’s resolve to simply keep his head down and do everything required of him at Parris Island resulted in his completing his field training at nearby Camp Lejeune and excelling at individual combat training. By the time he was deployed to Vietnam, he had learned bivouacking, navigation, camouflage, tactical signaling, sanitation, and navigation, among several other skills that made him an effective rifleman. He was assigned to the security force at a military hospital in a central coastal city, the name and location of which he was forbidden to reveal, at the risk of a court martial.
At first Ben was disappointed. Working security at a hospital? How exciting or dangerous or fulfilling could that be? He found out fast. Jet-lagged and dragging when he arrived in the middle of the night, he was to report at dawn and work till midafternoon. He was assigned a bunk and given a sixty-second history of the US military presence there. About half the size of the better known Naval Support Activity Hospital far to the north in Danang, Ben’s assigned facility covered fewer than twenty acres on the coast of the South China Sea, well within reach of enemy artillery.
Fortunately, Ben was able to sleep—which had not been the case on the interminable flight. And if he feared his role would involve hanging around hospital corridors and checking visitors’ credentials, he was quickly disabused of that notion in the morning.
The place constantly buzzed with corpsmen running stretchered patients from the airfield out front to the receiving ward of one of the largest casualty treatment centers in Vietnam. Ben was told that most of the wounded had been helicopter evacuated right from the battlefield within fewer than two hours of when they had been hit. The injured and the ill consisted of American and allied troops and even Viet Cong.
Ben’s first look at the receiving area nearly paralyzed him. Patients incapacitated, blown apart, or in the throes of some horrific disease were laid across a vast phalanx of what looked like saw-horses. Here they were quickly evaluated by admitting corpsmen who prioritized them and dispatched them to be treated by nearly four hundred professionals, both enlisted men and women and officers. Another more than three hundred Vietnamese nationals worked as nurse assistants, laundry hands, or general laborers.
So many patients poured in around the clock that during his first hour of duty, Ben was pressed into carrying one end of a stretcher—his M14 strapped over his shoulder—and once he was ordered to pull a sheet over the face of a young soldier who expired right before his eyes.
Ben’s commanding officer told him that in just two years during the previous decade, the hospital had grown from fewer than fifty beds to more than three hundred. And the afflicted were not just military. Some were press, some medics, some Vietnamese civilians. Once admitted, even prisoners of war received equal treatment.
Ben was one of more than forty enlisted marines and army personnel there to support the navy forces. On his first day alone, he saw all five operating rooms, the fourteen-bed intensive care unit, and the steady stream of patients delivered directly from ambulances or from marine helicopters.
Ben could not get over the cacophony. Constant screaming, moaning, gasping from every room, corridor, and hut—doctors and nurses and orderlies shouting instructions. It simply never stopped. He saw more blood and severed body parts than he had in all the war movies he had ever seen, as well as exposed brains and internal organs.
That afternoon, trudging back toward his meager quarters after the shift he thought would never end, Ben stopped outside where a harried middle-aged nurse was
taking a smoke break. “First day, soldier?” she said, introducing herself as Red.
Ben nodded. “How many people does this place take in anyway?”
“A few thousand a month. Not all of ’em need surgery, but a lot need more than one operation. So we average over five thousand operations a month.”
“You’re serious?”
“I got here just before the Tet offensive in ’68, but that was a whole different animal. For nine months I’ll bet we averaged closer to ten thousand admissions a month.”
“Bullet wounds mostly?”
“I wish,” she said. “Those are easy compared to a lot of what we see—victims shredded by booby traps, landmines, grenades, that kinda thing.”
“Thought I wanted to see action over here, but this is rough to look at. And you’ve been here since ’68?”
She shrugged, smiling. “Third tour. What else am I gonna do?”
“I can think of a million things I’d rather do. Don’t know how I’m ever going to get this out of my head.”
“Forgetting is a fantasy here, son.”
“How do you handle it, ma’am?”
“Handle it? You don’t handle it. You just keep at it.”
“You ever get away?”
“Every chance I get if I can stay on my feet,” she said. “Be glad you didn’t get assigned to Danang. Everywhere off base is off-limits up there.”
“Where do you go?”
“Into town, but since I don’t carry a weapon, I gotta take a soldier with me. There’s not much to do, but it’s better than this, even if only for an hour or two. Walk around, have a drink, get a bite. Just don’t trust anyone.”
“I’ve got to get away from the noise,” Ben said. “Never heard anything like it. Does it ever stop?”
She shook her head. “Dissipates a little just before dawn sometimes. But I’ve worked every shift, and mostly it’s constant.”
Ben sighed. “I just feel so bad for them, and helpless.”
“That’s not all bad, Marine. Can’t do this job if you don’t care, and if you don’t, you’re finished. You’ll be able to tune out the racket eventually, but it won’t be easy. It took me months.” Red peeked at her watch. “Gotta go, hon. You gonna be all right?”
“I don’t know,” Ben said. The truth was, he was haunted by more than the noise. End of day one and he’d seen inside more bodies than most civilians would in a lifetime.
CHAPTER 54
Ur
“I am miserable, Terah,” Ikuppi said as they sat waiting at Terah’s home.
“I have utmost confidence in you, friend.”
“I may not be your friend in the days to come.”
“Certainly you will!”
“I cannot guarantee I will regain my respect for y—”
“Are they coming?” Terah said. “Is that what I hear?”
Ikuppi made his way to the door. “It is them. And the midwife does not look happy.”
“Why do I care what Yadidatum—? Just get out there. You know what to do.”
Ikuppi stepped out, leaving the door ajar so Terah could see and hear. “No, please stay in the cart and quiet the baby. The master does not want to awaken Belessunu or Abram. I will bring him to meet you by the animal pen.”
“The animal pen!” the midwife said. “Of all the places …”
“Keep your rig quiet, Wedum, until you’re clear of the house.”
Wedum leaned forward and nudged the donkey, clicking with his tongue until the animal stepped off. Mutuum’s newborn fussed in Yadidatum’s arms, then began to cry as the cart moved away. The infant wailed as the donkey picked up speed. Ikuppi returned to help Terah to the chariot, but before they even reached the door, Belessunu spoke from the bedroom. “Terah?” she whispered.
He urged Ikuppi with a nod to keep moving, but he stopped when she sounded more urgent. “Come here so I don’t wake the baby! Who was that outside?”
Terah steadied himself on his crutch and pointed to the bedchamber. “You know what to say,” he mouthed.
Ikuppi set his jaw but tapped on the wall next to the curtain. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, may I help?”
“Ikuppi, where is Terah and who has arrived?”
“Wedum and Yadidatum have brought Mutuum’s baby, little Terah.”
“So soon? Whatever for?”
“Terah wanted to see him.”
“How nice. Have them bring him in here.”
“He is crying, and Terah did not want to bother you or Abram, so I will take him to meet them at the livestock pen.”
“Oh no!” Belessunu said. “The dung, the flies. Spare the newborn that for now.”
“Ma’am, you know the livestock pens are not removed from the servants’ dwellings the way yours is. That baby is already used to whatever he will encounter here.”
“Still, I hate to see … On the way back, if little Terah is quiet, I’d like to see him again.”
CHAPTER 55
Guggenheim Pavilion
“I’m listening,” Ben Berman said.
Detective George Wojciechowski set his dishes aside and thumbed through his notebook. “Let me tell ya what my matron says she heard your wife say last night in the Recovery room. And in case you’re wondering, she played me this off her phone. Your wife told your daughter that they had to talk right then. Nicole told her no, it could wait. Mrs. Berman said it wouldn’t wait. Your daughter told her to just relax, and your wife insisted she listen. So Nicole said, basically, ‘Okay, what is it?’
“My officer says your wife told your daughter to make you tell her what’s in the box.”
Ben felt the color drain from his cheeks.
“A gray metal box,” Wojciechowski said. “Says there’s a secret in there you don’t know she saw—‘a picture of a lady’ is how she worded it.” He looked up at Ben.
“A lady,” Ben said, more statement than question. He forced himself to hold the detective’s gaze. How could she have found that? And when? Why hadn’t he put it in a safe deposit box?
Wojciechowski peeked back at his notes. “And to calm Virginia so the nurse could give her her meds, your daughter promised.”
“Promised what?” Ben said, his voice weak.
“To make you tell her the secret.”
“Secret?”
Wojciechowski sighed. “Doc, this is Interrogation 101.”
“I don’t follow.”
“More than thirty years ago I was taught that when somebody starts parroting back your questions, they’re stalling, pretending they have no idea what you’re talkin’ about. But you do. You know the box, and you know the picture. And you know the lady, don’t you?”
Ben hesitated. He hadn’t even considered needing a lawyer.
“Listen to me,” Wojciechowski said. “This is where I play your best friend and urge you to do the right thing for your own good. Maybe the box, the picture, the lady have nothin’ to do with what happened to your wife. But if she found the box, you know it didn’t take my CSIs long to find it. And it points to motive, Ben. How do we know you didn’t find out your wife discovered the box and you couldn’t think of another way to keep from havin’ to come clean?”
“Another way than having someone scare Ginny?”
“Or worse. Maybe they didn’t finish the job you gave ’em.”
Ben folded his hands and rested his chin on them, closing his eyes. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. Ever.”
“One a my guys talked to your assistant, Olsen, and says she corroborates your claim of a blissful marriage—but he also said she kinda did it begrudgingly.”
“What’s that mean?”
“That maybe she wasn’t thrilled about admitting that.”
“That’s a weird speculation,” Ben said. “And you need to know this is the first I’ve heard that Ginny knew anything about the box.”
“If that’s true, you got no reason not to tell me what we’re gonna find in it and why it has nothin’ to do with this case.”
CHAPTER 56
Ur
Terah hoped he might sit in the chariot, but he would have had to lodge himself on the floor and press his back against the rear of the carriage—which he could not manage. He had to stand next to Ikuppi, stay clear of the reins, support himself on one leg, grip the lip of the conveyance with one hand, and keep his crutch lodged under his bad arm with little but his weight to keep it in place.
Even the light jostling when the horses walked toward the pen a hundred yards away made the tip of the crutch dance on the floor and forced Terah to press it to his body under his dog-bitten shoulder. He could not imagine also holding a baby on a trip to the palace, and Ikuppi would certainly not allow the horses to pull them all the way at such a slow gait. That could take hours.
When they reached the pen, he found the midwife still in the bed of the cart while Wedum spoke with another servant tending the animals. He had built a small fire. The man ran off, and Wedum told Terah he had assigned him to busy himself gathering kindling until the master and his guests left.
“Good man,” Terah said. “Now let me see this baby.”
Ikuppi suggested Terah sit in a corner of the chariot so he could support himself and hold the child. Yadidatum handed the baby to Wedum before she climbed out of his cart. The child began squawking, so she took him back.
Terah told Wedum to hurry back to the servants’ settlement and tell Mutuum and his wife that they would bring the baby back as soon as Belessunu was awake and had a chance to see him, now that she was no longer in pain as she had been when he was born.
Wedum rode off in his cart, and Yadidatum glared at Terah.
“What is it?” he called down to her.
“If you’ll forgive me for saying so, sir, this is not fair to the child.”
Who had told her? Only he and Ikuppi knew the plan, and the guard had not been out of his sight. “What is not fair, ma’am?”
“Carting him here and there. He should be at his mother’s breast.”
“He’ll be back to her soon enough, and you would be wise to watch your tongue. I would not tolerate such cheek from even your husband.”
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