by Garbo Norman
Gasping for breath, leg tendons straining, Burke reached the first of the trees. It was totally quiet. They had drilled all their groups in taking cover and keeping still if they ever came under attack, but this was extraordinary. When it came to discipline, there were none better than Ludlow. Crouching, his carbine ready at the hip, Burke pushed farther into the grove.
There was an explosion in the back of his head. Everything turned black. Then there was nothing.
He came out of it slowly. The colors started seconds before his brain. He was into the reds, yellows and blues again. At least he was not dead, something told him. But when he tried to move, he couldn’t, and changed his mind. I’m dead, he thought, and everyone was wrong about what being dead is like. It was not nothingness. It was just very quiet, with only a soft, whirring, clicking sound coming from somewhere. Also, there Were all these colors, and when you tried to move your arms and legs, something held them.
Then Burke opened his eyes and found he was not dead after all. He was not even lying down. He was sitting up. And the reason he was unable to move was that his legs were tied together at the ankles, and his arms were lashed behind him around a small tree. As for the soft whirring, clicking sound — that, he saw, came from Ludlow’s camera. Apparently Ludlow was taking pictures one after the other, (focus, whir, click, focus, whir, click) in the same swift, efficient way he did everything. Then Burke saw what he was taking pictures of, and quickly shut his eyes once more.
Oh, Christ! he thought. Oh, dear, sweet Jesus Christ!
It was a charnel house under the trees, a bucolic butcher shop, a sun-dappled grove of the dead. All of them. None had escaped. Burke did the counting from where he sat. Twenty-three. He counted again. The total was still twenty-three. They lay as they had been hit. The surprise was still on some faces. Others had no faces at all. Still others lay face down, arms extended as though in flight. He saw that a young girl and her grandmother were together, side by side. The old woman’s arms lay across the child’s body in an apparent last minute attempt to shield her.
And the soft whir and click of the camera went on… and went on …
Finally, it stopped and everything was very still, with only the breeze moving through the tall grass. But then there came a low moaning from somewhere off to the right, and Burke watched as Ludlow lifted his Tommy gun from a branch, flicked the action from automatic to semi-automatic, and ended the sound with a single, carefully placed round. The guy was never one to waste ammunition, thought Burke.
Ludlow hung up his machine gun once more, turned, and saw that Burke’s eyes were open. He studied Burke from where he stood, as if trying to make vital judgments merely from the way he looked. Then he came over. “I’m sorry I had to put you out, Richard, but I had no choice. I simply couldn’t take a chance on how you’d react.”
Burke said nothing. I must be very careful, he thought. One wrong word or look and I’m as dead as the others. He hasn’t decided yet, but it’s very close.
“I’m also sorry about the youngsters,” said Ludlow. “As you know/ they weren’t supposed to be in this group.
Burke’s glance drifted past where the girl lay and focused on the two boys. One had taken several rounds in the chest and his shattered ribs stuck out through his bloodied shirt like white splinters. The other, a small, skinny kid with a perpetual buck-toothed grin, had caught one in the forehead. Nothing remained above his eyes.
“I know it’s difficult, if not impossible, for you to take the long view right now,” Ludlow went on, a professional lecturer in a butcher shop. “But in the end, this little episode may well save a hundred, even a thousand lives for each one it cost.”
Burke decided it was time that he spoke, that he at least said something. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything at all”
“Of course you don’t. But believe me, Richard — I conceived and executed this entire operation very carefully. Every feature was weighed with the utmost precision. In spite of what you may think, I’m not a cold-blooded monster. I don’t regard human life lightly. If I took twenty-three lives here today, you can be sure it was only because I felt the results would justify the sacrifice.
“What results?”
“The same ones we’ve been after in this place for more than ten years: a reasonably democratic government and an important source of oil for our future.”
Burke stared at him. The man was incredible. This was no act. He actually believed every word he was saying. He had just slaughtered twenty-three men, women, and children and there was still no sweat on his face, no pain or doubt in his eyes, and not a hair out of place on his head.
“I’ll explain,” said Ludlow, and took three rolls of film from his pocket and showed them to Burke. “I have pictures here of twenty-three innocent people, murdered at the border by the soldiers of a repressive regime, a government bought and paid for by the Russians and already despised by most of the population because of its brutality and corruption. These photographs will be blown up into posters and spread throughout the country. They’ll give us the martyrs we need to create the final ground-swell of riots and strikes that will immobilize the economy, bring down the Russian-backed puppet regime, and allow us to put in a democratic government favorable to the United States.”
“Just like that?”
Ludlow’s smile was almost beatific. “No, Richard. Not just like that. A great deal of time, effort, personnel, and money have gone into this, and still more will have to go into it before we actually see these results. But we are almost there. The big thing we lacked were the martyrs to set off the final spark of emotionalism. And that’s what I’ve provided here today.”
Oh, God! thought Burke. The martyr-maker. Martyrs provided on demand for all occasions. Another wonder of the twentieth century. What an exquisite improvement over the limited goals of the autos-da-fe and inquisitions of the Middle Ages. Oh, God, he thought and shut his eyes. He did not want to have to look at Ludlow’s face. He was afraid he might not be able to keep from spitting in it. And if he did that, if he displayed even the smallest fraction of the horror and loathing he felt, this intellectual animal would have no choice but to kill him.
“Are you all right?” Ludlow asked.
Burke forced open his eyes. “These damn ropes are tearing my arms apart.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ludlow, but made no move to do anything about the ropes. “They were for your own protection as much as mine. I needed time to explain, to let you understand reasons. I didn’t tell you before, because I knew you could never have gone along with it. It’s not in your nature. Which is why, unless you change drastically with age and experience, your potential for this work has to be limited. Ludlow looked at him, closely. “Do you understand, Richard?”
Afraid to trust his voice, Burke nodded. But he saw that Ludlow was not convinced. Do it right, he told himself. He glanced up and met the tall man’s eyes, “You were right. I don’t know what I might have done if you hadn’t knocked me out.” He paused, trying to pace his performance with as much skill as he could muster. A not especially talented actor, auditioning for his life. “Apart from everything else, I feel simple and stupid. You had a tough enough job without having to worry about me complicating it even more.”
Ludlow was still studying Burke’s face. He had never looked more like a predatory animal. A flush of danger, of unmistakable threat, came off him and Burke felt he could spring either way. He could sense the beat of his pulse almost as clearly as he felt his own. In the silence they could have been sitting in smoke. I can be dead in the next ten seconds, thought Burke. Insanely, he felt more curious than afraid at that instant Ludlow drew a knife, bent, and cut him loose. “Come on,” he said quietly. “We have a lot do to.”
It was almost six months before he was able to return to Washington and speak to Tony about it “What about you?” he asked Kreuger. “Did you know what he planned to do?” Burke spoke softly, but there was something very close to murder i
n his eyes.
Kreuger shook his head. “No.”
“You’re a fucking liar.”
“Well, if I’ve got to be a liar, I suppose that’s about the best kind to be.”’
“I’m not joking, Tony.”
“I know you’re, not joking. But if you think I’m going the Hamlet route with you, you’re crazy. When you get that accusatory, soul-searing look of tragedy out of your eyes, and want to talk about this thing rationally, then maybe I can help make some sense out of it for you.”
“I’ve got this crazy hang-up,” Burke said. “I find it tough as hell to talk rationally about murder. And I just hope to Christ I never get sick enough to make sense out of the deliberate slaughter of twenty-three innocent people.”
From behind a cluttered desk, Kreuger stared evenly at Burke. He seemed capable of remaining that way forever.
It was Burke who was unable to hold the silence. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Did you know in advance?”
“I’ve already told you I didn’t, and you called me a liar.”
Burke chewed his lip. “I’m sorry about that. I suppose I’m still upset.”
“I never would have guessed. I mean, you cover your emotions so terrifically.”
Burke permitted himself a grudging smile.
“Listen, schmuck,” said Kreuger. “If I had known what Ludlow planned, do you really think I’d have sent you, of all people, on that job? My God, you’re the last one I’d have chosen. With your kind of conscience and moral strictures, you should have been a goddamned monk. What the hell are you doing in this stinking business, anyway?”
Burke started to answer, but changed his mind.
“As it happens,” Kreuger went on, “all I knew about Ludlow’s mission was its overall purpose, which was to create enough dissension to get the Russians out of there and us in. He never shared the details of how he intended going about it with me or anyone else. I’m not even sure lie knew himself until very close to operation time. The guy is inventive as hell. He did a really amazing job over there. Approve of his methods or not, you’ve got to admire his results.”
“Admire?” Burke stood up. There was a sudden heat in him that could not be contained sitting down. “All I want to do when I think of that sonofabitch is kill him. I want to cut him in half with one really beautiful burst and see his guts in his hat.”
He broke off and dropped back into his chair. “Ah,” he said softly. “Have you ever seen what a .30 caliber burst can do to a twelve-year-old body?”
“Richard .. .”
Burke’s eyes cut him off. “Please. Don’t be reasonable with me. I love you like a brother, but I swear I’ll strangle you if you start being reasonable with me. I couldn’t take it right now.”
Kreuger looked as though he had swallowed something bad. The skin seemed to be stretched too tightly across his cheeks and jaw, and his mouth was a gash.
“Richard, I don’t approve of what he did. I admit his methods were ghastly. But neither can we ignore their ultimate results.”.
“I piss on their ultimate results. That’s exactly the kind of thinking which led to the Holocaust. That’s exactly what decent, intelligent Germans said about Hitler and his Nazis at the beginning. Well, they and the world soon found out differently. In the end results and methods turn out to be the same.”
Kreuger’s expression was neutral. “It’s over, Richard. The best you can do now — the best for all of us — is just to move on and forget it.”
“I’ll move on, but I won’t forget it. I’ll never forget it.““You’re talking like a maniac.”
Burke stared straight through Kreuger. “That sonofabitch is mine, I tell you. I was the one up there with him. I was the sole surviving witness to what he’s capable of doing. And I was the one who let him walk away from it and turn himself into a hero, an American Lawrence of Arabia. So he’s got me to contend with from now on. “Do I make myself clear?”
“Very clear.”
“And do you believe I mean every word I say?”
“I believe it”
Burke sagged wearily in his chair, as if only now, by having fully exorcised every last demon through confession, would he be able to take his first unconstricted breath of air in six months and relax. “So what do you think?” he asked.
“What I think,” said Kreuger quietly, “is that you’re going to need an even longer-vacation that I expected you to need when you walked in here an hour ago and I had my first good look at your face.”
The vacation turned out to be for almost three months, and came close to being a permanent one, as Kreuger was quick to tell Burke when he finally called him back to Washington.
“I want you to know you’re here against my better judgment,” Tony said. “Twice I had pretty much decided to wash you out. And if it had been anyone else, I’d have done it. But I finally decided to put it up to you. Do you want to stay in?”
The question was not new to Burke. He had been asking it of himself for the past three months. He nodded, “Yes.”
“Why?”
“For the same reasons I first came in. Because I believe the work is important, that it has to be done, and that I can do it well.”
“Without blinding emotionalism?”
“Yes.”
Tony looked at him until something stirred between them. They both felt it — first hot, then cool, then hot again.
“Okay,” Tony said. “You’re in. Though I know I may be making a bad mistake. If I am, we’ll both pay for it later. But I figure you’re young and smart enough to toughen up the soft places. At least I hope you are. If you’re not…” he shrugged.
Burke said nothing. What would be the point? He had already made his decision. He was remaining in the Service. And anything further he might have said on the subject would have made that patently impossible. He knew Tony was not fooled by his apparent acquiescence. His friend was no dummy. He was only too well aware that his feelings about Ludlow and the twenty-three dead had not changed during the past few months and probably never would. But he was evidently willing to accept an unspoken truce on it. Burke was also willing. And that was how it was left Now, more than eighteen years later, Burke sat in a rented car with the motor and heater going, and thought about it. According to the professor, Tony regretted not having dumped him way back then. Okay. Having flunked out on that hill in Lebanon, (another hill in his life) Burke had finally justified such a judgment. But what did Ludlow and an eighteen-year-old incident have to do with the fire under him now?
Could it really have something to do with that murderous sonofabitch again?
Burke gazed up at the prow of the majestic Queen. Murderous sonofabitch. Eighteen years, and in his mind the two words were still synonymous with Tom Ludlow. For him the man still populated his own spectral landscape, etched with trees, a hill and the pale light of a recurrent nightmare. A far cry from the reality of the present, with its shimmering capitals and halls of power. Ludlow had built a sparkling career, Burke often thought, on the bloody remains of twenty-three bodies. Yet who knew the truth about them other than Tony, Ludlow, and himself? As far as Washington and the world of national and international politics was concerned, Ludlow had somehow pulled off the coup of the decade by bringing four million barrels of oil a day into the internal combustion engines, factories, and homes of the American people.
Unfair, thought Burke. Even the devil deserved credit for his talents, and Ludlow’s gifts were considerable. The slaughter of innocents had been only one of the many cards he had played. With or without that long-ago killing ground the man would undoubtedly have gone far. It was just that each time Burke saw his picture in a newspaper or magazine, or heard him speak on television, he felt the same old bitter dread stir in his gut. Look at him. See that handsome face. Watch those sharply penetrating eyes. Listen to that deep, mellifluous voice. Pay close attention. Don’t ever forget.
But time and the human conditio
n being what they were, he did push the memory into the background. Remembering those past deaths was not his principal occupation. He was neither mad nor obsessed. He did not spend his time baying at moons. His life was complicated, busy, worrisome, and dangerous enough in the present, for him not to hugvthe memory of earlier disasters. He usually had enough calamities running along more current tracks. It was just that from time to time over the years, some event or meeting would jar his memory and it would all come flooding back. At times he had actually been in the same room, hall, lobby, or building with Ludlow, and the result was instantly electric, at least for him. So far as Ludlow was concerned, neither his face nor his eyes showed a thing. It was as though they had never met. Which may simply have been his always exceptional control. Since their work together during those months had been about as deeply undercover as you could get, there was no reason for them to recognize one another publicly. It was wiser that they did not. Still, considering the way Burke himself felt at their being close enough to touch, he always half-expected some slight reciprocatory sign — perhaps a change of expression, the flutter of an eyelid, something. Although it may have been a foolish expectation for another reason. Seven, ten, thirteen, fifteen years later, (the four times when they had actually been within sight of one another) Ludlow had probably not even recognized him out of context. Faces did change with time and Burke’s had aged exceptionally.
Another thing. The entire hilltop incident had undoubtedly had a far deeper, more lasting effect on Burke than it had on Ludlow himself. As far as Burke knew, it may actually have been one of many for him, a routine job of unofficial, patriotic murder. If so, Ludlow was not likely to be bowled over by the sight of someone he may just possibly have remembered from some dim time zone out of the past. And in a way, when Burke thought of it at all, he considered this last possibility the most obscene.
Twenty-three insignificant lives. A minor event, not worth remembering. This, if true, would be the worst.