by Bill Mesce
A church bell sounded, merrily it seemed, in incongruous contrast to the fading bagpipes. Harry followed the chiming down a dead end and a blocked street before coming upon a small chapel standing between two ruined walls. Its bell hung from jerry-rigged timbers atop the shaky stump of a steeple. A little crowd was gathered round the cockeyed doors. From beneath a sign reading, “Dangerous: Unstable Structure — Do Not Enter,” a bride and groom appeared, she cloaked in yellowing lace and he in the uniform of a Royal Army private. Both smiled shyly under the cheers and confetti of their well-wishers.
Harry quietly moved the jeep off, down one after another of the strange, desolate, half-inhabited streets until he came upon a lone fireman sitting on a crate before an empty lot.
“I’m lost,” Harry said.
For a moment, the old fireman’s sooty features seemed intent on the scarred hands folded over his knees. Then, the firefighter lifted his head and his exhausted face rolled into a cordial smile. “You look lost, Yank.”
*
Harry had imagined himself an image of brazen defiance, standing before General DiGarre’s massive desk in his rumpled uniform still smudged with the dust and soot of the fires of the South End. But, when the time came to actually stand in front of the general’s polished wooden altar in his rough clothes, Harry felt only pathetic.
Again, Harry had been ushered in without waiting. DiGarre was waiting for him at his desk. The general was not alone. Round the long conference table a collection of senior officers (Harry noted oak leaves, eagles, and five-pointed stars winking at him from the host of collar tabs) huddled under a haze of cigarette smoke. The harsh light of the billiard lamps drained their faces of color and sank their features into bottomless black shadow. They looked up at him only briefly, fixing him for the shortest of moments with the dark chasms that had replaced their eyes before turning back to the paperwork that whispered back and forth among them across the table.
DiGarre was slouched deep in his desk chair, the stub of a cigar in one hand, a whiskey tumbler in the other. The sleeves of his wrinkled shirt were rolled up past his sinewy, hirsute forearms, and his tie hung low and loose. Harry noted the red-rimmed eyes, the stubble on the general’s chin, the before-breakfast drink, and concluded the general’d not been to sleep. Perhaps none of the men in the room had been to sleep; the air in the office was stale and ripe, and despite the morning hour, the blackout curtains remained drawn.
Harry stood at attention, his arm raised in salute, before the general’s desk. The general smiled without humor. “Sit yourself on down, Major.” Not “Harry” this time. The lilting, coddling tones of yesterday’s genial host were gone.
Harry remained standing.
DiGarre nodded. He pulled himself up in his seat, removed his spectacles, and tiredly massaged the bridge of his nose. “You’re here to tell me you’re going to be a pain in my old ass, right?”
The general’s prescience left Harry with nothing to say. He heard the flutter of birds against the windows on the other side of the curtains, hunkering down on the sills for the storm. The first tumbling roll of thunder sounded distantly.
“That’s what I thought,” the general said. He replaced his spectacles, snuffed out the stub of his cigar, and drew a fresh one from his humidor.
“I’m not doing this to be trouble, General, but — ”
DiGarre chuckled. “Your friend Colonel Ryan’s got a lot of faults, Major, but I figured him for a better judge of character. He was sure you’d bite at our offer. Said you’d be worried about your career and taking care of your family and all that.”
Harry wished he’d taken the general’s invitation to sit.
“Well, I’m going to have to take another look at the colonel’s ratings, because I knew the minute we all sat down you were going to be a pain in my old ass. I don’t know how long Joe Ryan’s known you, but the first time you opened your yap I said to myself, ‘This fella’s going to be a real tick about this thing; he’s not going to let go.’ I probably knew it before you did. You’ve got integrity, Major.” The general’s lips twitched. “You stink of it. More integrity than good sense.” The general took several starter puffs on his fresh cigar. “Bet you don’t think much of mine.”
“General, I’ll leave that to you and your conscience.”
DiGarre’s head lolled as he laughed. The laugh became a cough. The general stood and walked to his liquor stand. He poured himself a glass of water and took a sip to soothe his throat. He went to the windows and pulled one of the curtains aside. The windowpanes rattled as the first drops of rain slapped against the glass.
“Know something, Harry? There’s no second-place over here; no consolation prize. I for one will get no satisfaction from posterity proclaiming, ‘Well, they lost, but by God they fought fair!’ My conscience’ll rest easy, Major.” The general looked back up at the dark clouds, then sighed and let the curtain fall back across the window. “All right, Major, you said your piece.” The general joined the other officers around the conference table. It took Harry a moment to realize he’d been dismissed.
*
There was a message waiting for Harry with the BOQ orderlies that General Halverson had called twice during his absence. Harry called the general’s office from his room.
“He’s gone, sir,” replied the callow voice on the phone.
“Oh. Well, can I reach him at his quarters?”
“The general’s not there, sir. Didn’t you hear?”
“I know he was relieved.”
“Relieved and transferred, sir. Cut his orders late last night. We were up till all hours packing his stuff. They had him on a plane for Iceland about an hour ago.”
“Iceland? Is that where he’s been transferred?”
“That’s just a stopover, sir. General Halverson’s on his way home.”
“I see.” Harry lowered himself into a chair and reached for his cigarettes. “He tried to call me this morning, but — ”
“You said your name was Voss? The Judge Advocate’s, right? Yes, sir, General Halverson left a message for you, Major Voss. Uh, it just says, ‘Good luck,’ sir. That’s all. That’s funny, isn’t it, sir? The general saying ‘good luck’ to you? Seems like that’s the kind of thing you say to the person what’s leaving.”
Chapter Nine – Droit du Seigneur
Summoned at midday, Ricks and Grassi found Harry waiting for them in the conference room. Shaved, showered, and attired in a clean, pressed uniform, Harry was moving deliberately along the conference table slapping down files and sheaves of paper. There on the table went the mechanic’s report on O’Connell’s aeroplane; here went the postmortem; over here, the ballistics report; here, the analysis of Anderson’s gun film...The decisive flavor of his movements indicated there was a carefully conceived plan at work, one he was keeping to himself. Harry made no acknowledgment of the presence of his two juniors.
The fog that had clouded and oppressed him just the day before as he had sat in Hyde Park was gone. Now, his mind was possessed of a remarkable clarity. Like a man jumped, pushed, or fallen off a cliff, for good or ill he realized he was now committed. His only chance to survive was to manage the fall as best he could. He was, at the table, applying the same method for formulating a trial strategy as he’d used a few days earlier when he’d spread index cards on the floor before him, trying to formulate his case. He had his case now. Now he was looking for the picture that would win it for him.
Both young men were startled when Harry said: “In reflecting on our little predicament, it occurs to me that while your respective opinions are always appreciated, whatever we do and however we do it is, ultimately, my decision. I have reached that decision. We’re going ahead with a Helsvagen prosecution.”
Ricks was nonplussed, and wondered if in Harry’s statement there was some subtle rebuke to the captain’s conduct the day before. As for Grassi, the lieutenant harbored no doubts about his own feelings or Harry’s decision.
“Now t
hat calls for a celebration!” the lieutenant said. He breezed to the sideboard and held up half of a bologna sandwich in salute.
“Before you get yourself all a-quiver, Lieutenant,” admonished Harry, “let me repeat what I said yesterday. Win or lose, we go into the Army’s crapper on this. If anybody wants out, just say the word. No hard feelings. I don’t want anybody getting burned that didn’t want to go into the kitchen in the first place.”
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” Grassi said through a mouthful of sandwich. “That’s what makes the world go round. Right, Cap’n?”
Harry ignored Grassi; there’d been no question in his mind about the lieutenant’s inclinations. But toward Ricks there was no remonstrance, no bitterness. You were right, the captain felt Harry was telling him now. It is my call. And if you want out, it’s all right.
“Anybody can pull out,” Harry repeated. “At any time. Understood?”
“Understood,” Ricks replied.
Harry nodded. He had finished arranging the documents on the table. He touched a single sheet of paper covered with the notes he’d made after his first visit with DiGarre. “What about that sector ATC? The one who picked up O’Connell?”
“Checks out with the generals story.” Grassi said.
Harry touched Charlie Gresham’s deposition. “And Gresham?”
“O’Connell was dead by the time he got him to the beach,” said Ricks. “If he said anything, the old man didn’t hear it.”
“The mechanic’s report?”
Grassi again: “O’Connell’s radio should’ve been working 5x5, right up until Major Markham punched some .50-caliber holes in it.”
Harry propped himself against the edge of the table. “That brings us to the problem of O’Connell’s silence. Something, Captain? A theory?”
“Just a thought. Nothing for the courtroom.”
“We’re not in the courtroom.”
“You said this girlfriend of O’Connell’s offered him a chance to go over the hill. He didn’t go.”
“He was too yellow to fly and too yellow to run,” Grassi said dismissively. He reached for a second half-sandwich.
“Maybe,” mused Ricks. “I just wonder if maybe he still felt some kind of obligation to the men he served with. That’s why he kept going up. Maybe that’s why he didn’t say anything. Maybe he even understood why they did what they did.”
“I wish he was around to explain it to me,” Harry said. “OK, so we’ve still got to come up with something to fill that hole. We’ll come back to it. The way I see it, there’s a way we can pull this thing off and still maybe come out of it with our hides. To do that we’ve got to accomplish two things, the most obvious of which is to make as tight a legal case as we can. To do that with the jury panel DiGarre’s probably going to stick us with means we won’t be able to rely on circumstantial evidence. These guys are going to be looking for holes to let Markham and Anderson squirm through. That also means keeping conclusions to a minimum. Anything we can’t substantiate with at least one half-decent piece of direct evidence we have to drop. If Van Damm can only point with certitude to twenty bodies on his recon photos, then we only go with twenty murder counts. If he says he can only — ”
Grassi tossed his sandwich down with a disgusted flop. “You’ve got a whole damned town on fire — ”
“That’s how it’s going to be!” Harry spoke with a quiet firmness that carried enough of an edge to silence the lieutenant. “And before we even go that far we’re going back to Van Damm and ask, ‘How do you know those’re civilian bodies? Why can’t they be military bodies?’ I want answers from him and every other so-called expert we can grab that won’t flap around in the wind. We only go with what’s sound and sure.
“That’s the legal end. The other side is this: Forget the law, right, wrong, and check the moral issues at the door. The brass are looking at this case from a point of military practicality, and right now they have a compelling military reason not to convict. So, the game is for us to advance a compelling military argument for conviction. So forget about making a big song and dance about Al Markham being the greatest mass murderer since Jack the Ripper. We don’t care. He could’ve butchered puppy dogs and eaten children. That’s not the Army’s concern; it’s not our concern. The main thrust of our prosecution will be that Al Markham exceeded his authority; that he was derelict in his duty; that his willful neglect cost the U.S. Army Air Corps Jacobs and McLagen, two good pilots who represented a substantial investment of government resources, as well as two very expensive aircraft.
“Is there enough to push for manslaughter charges on Jacobs and McLagen? If not, what can we get? Wrongful death? Negligence? Destruction of government property? Any damned thing, I don’t care, but that’s where the heart of our case is now. From now on, there is only one moral question in this case: whether or not Al Markham acted as a competent commander. Anything else, if it isn’t irrelevant, is secondary.”
It was a major adjustment for them to make, and Harry gave them time to absorb it. Ricks considered, but Grassi had made his appraisal even before Harry was finished. It was plainly evident on Grassi’s face that the lieutenant’s verdict was negative.
Harry ignored him. “Our one ace to play is that the jury panel has to convict on O’Connell. Between the evidence and Markham’s confession, that’s a given. That gives us a strong base to build on. We have to establish O’Connell as the climax of a pattern of abrogated responsibility. The Army may not have a conscience, but it does have a soul, and gentlemen, that soul is discipline. Disobedience will always be the military’s mortal sin.”
It was a perfectly logical strategy, but Grassi — as Harry anticipated — was not responding to logic. He saw only the largest prize slipping away. “You take that route,” he said glumly, “and you might just get a conviction on everything but Helsvagen. By the time you’re done hammering all this home, they might not give half a damn about what really happened out there!”
“I’ve considered that,” Harry said coolly.
“Then what in Christ’s name is the point?” Grassi demanded.
“As I said, anytime anybody’s not happy with the way things are going...” He concluded by pointing to the door, which was enough to bring Grassi’s hands up in surrender. Harry nodded, then gestured to the documentation spread across the table. “Our case is there, gentlemen. You two start assembling it. I’m going to try to get us another ace to play. No matter what a court-martial panel wants to do, they can’t contravene a confession.”
“Anderson?” Ricks guessed.
“Jesus!” Grassi stormed, flopping his sandwich down again. “You’re not going to offer that flak-happy cowboy a deal, are you?”
Harry was unfazed by the outburst. “It’s a gambit. I have to figure what we could gain against what we lose.”
“He’s an accomplice,” Ricks said. “His testimony — ”
“Isn’t enough to convict, but with the recon photos as corroboration, I think Markham’s nailed. I’m willing to trade Anderson’s conviction for Markham’s, because if we can turn Anderson, Markham has no defense. That’s worth a deal.”
“To you, maybe,” Grassi said sourly.
“That’s right. To me. Remember, Lieutenant, my opinion’s the only one that counts.”
Later, reminiscing about that moment, Ricks told me that in those few minutes in the conference room Harry Voss was no longer the slightly comic picture of a pudgy, middle-aged codger squeezed into a uniform. “For that moment,” Ricks said reverentially, “he was the kind of lawyer I’d always hoped to be.”
*
The Provost Marshal was housed in a former police station unobtrusively situated on a side street just fifteen minutes’ walk from the Annex, a cottage-like structure of red brick wrapped in ivy. Inside the station Harry stopped at the front desk, shaking water from his brolly much to the disapproval of the young MP private at the counter, who scowled at the puddle Harry made on the wooden floor. Beyond t
he counter was a barred door leading to the cellar stairs. From below, Harry heard a faint and thin voice with only the most tentative hold on a melody, singing a few bars from “Someone’s Rocking My Dreamboat.”
Major Posner, the Provost, was on an inspection tour but in his stead the counter MP offered a smooth-faced lieutenant wearing an Officer of the Day brassard.
“Lieutenant Mathias,” the officer introduced himself, trying to drop his reedy adolescent voice an octave or so.
“Major Voss, JAG,” Harry replied and displayed his ID. “You’re holding a Captain Anderson for us. I’d like to talk to him. If you’ll check your records you’ll see he’s part of a case of mine.”
Mathias went to one of the desks behind the counter and flipped through a leather-bound ledger. “So he is,” he said finally. “We were just about to start serving the prisoners lunch.”
“It is important.” Harry tried not to sound dismissive of the lieutenant’s priorities.
“I’ll have to ask him if he wants to see you.” Mathias took note of Harry’s irritation. “Sorry, Major. It’s your case and my jail, but it’s his right.”
The lieutenant headed for the barred cellar stairs. Harry called to him: “Lieutenant! If he says yes...someplace with a little privacy?”
Harry passed the wait shifting from one foot to the other. The rain had soaked through his shoes and his feet were cold and uncomfortable. He glanced about the foyer but there was no place to sit.
The phone rang. The desk private grunted a few acknowledgments into the receiver, rang off, and turned to Harry. “Follow me, Major? Oh, and um, why don’t you leave the umbrella here?”
The private left him in a small interior room Harry guessed was used for interrogations. The four walls were blank, and there was scarcely room for the scuffed wooden table and two equally scuffed chairs. On the table was a C-ration can crammed with a half-dozen extinguished cigarettes. Harry lit himself a cigarette and left the package and matches on the table. He sat in one of the chairs and squeezed the cuff of one of his trouser legs. Water dripped steadily from the cloth.