Lasari thought he heard a footstep to his left, but misjudged. The movement was behind him. Two things happened almost at once. A man’s arm circled him from the back, crushing his chest with such force that when the viselike grip was released, Lasari gulped and fought to take in breath. And at that moment a damp, bittersweet wad of gauze was pressed over his mouth and nose.
As he blacked out he heard a man say, “Your orders have just been changed, soldier.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
The queasiness wasn’t only in his stomach, Lasari decided, it was also at the base of his skull. There was a warm, almost fluid response in his spine, and he felt a sudden move might cause his head to disintegrate.
He tried to focus his eyes on the strange room. The ceiling was high beamed with a narrow balcony running around the second floor and a series of small doors that seemed to lead to bedrooms. A gray stone fireplace dominated the downstairs area, with two stuffed wild boars’ heads over the mantel, as well as a pair of old-fashioned wooden skis, carefully waxed and preserved, with red pompoms on the ankle straps. An unlit fire was laid in the grate and the room smelled of dampness and old leather.
The man had opened the windows of the Mercedes, but the night air did little to clear Lasari’s narcotic fog. He remembered sprawling in the back seat, half sick from the chloroform, fading in and out of consciousness. During the climb into the mountains high winds had been lulling, almost hypnotic, but the sharp turns in the road had sickened him and caused bile to rise in his throat. Once he had raised his head to see where they were going and glimpsed only giant pine trees, studded with upright cones, and then his mind slipped back into darkness.
Now he licked his lips in an attempt to speak and was repelled by the taste of the drug. His breathing was shallow and irregular, and when he tried to rub his numb cheeks his hands were chill and clammy.
“It’s cold as hell in here,” he said weakly from the armchair.
“You’re all right. We won’t be here long enough to burn a fire. Drink this tea.”
Lasari focused on the man’s voice and his vision cleared so he could make out General Tarbert Weir, the man from Philo Park, sitting at a table opposite him. A steaming mug sat on the table, along with the contents of Lasari’s pockets, including the vial of pills, the matchbook and American passport. The general was in full uniform and he had placed Lasari’s duffle bag in front of him, holding it firmly in place with a highly polished boot.
“You tried to kill me, didn’t you, you bastard,” Lasari said.
“That wasn’t my intention,” Scotty Weir said. “I gave you forty-five seconds on my pocket chronometer, then a few extra inhalations just to be sure. That was about an hour ago. Another sixty minutes or so of normal breathing, and you’ll have exhaled ninety percent of the anesthesia.”
“I can’t see right,” Lasari said.
The general struck a match and held it close to Lasari’s face. “Your pupils are still dilated, but you’re coming around.”
“Where are we?”
“Schwartzwald, an old ski lodge, a kind of mom-and-pop operation that went out of business when the big resorts were developed in the Zugspitz area. It’s an Army safe house, code name Case Ace Two. I have the key.”
“How far are we from where you picked me up?”
“In a direct line, down the old ski slopes, about six or eight miles, but taking the mountain roads, I’d say about thirty-five. We’re alone here, soldier, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I thought I heard someone. I thought I heard a car.”
“A highway patrol passes on the main road once or twice a night, but you couldn’t hear it from here,” Weir said. He rose, slung the duffel bag on a couch and walked to a shuttered window, opening it a crack. He looked out over the snowy courtyard toward the parked Mercedes, pulled up against a windbreak hedge. There was one set of tire tracks coming in, then two sets of footprints approaching the front door. “It’s stopped snowing,” he said, “but there’s a lot of wind out there.”
“I still think you tried to kill me,” Lasari said, his stiff lips barely forming words. He lifted an arm and winced. “I think you cracked my rib cage.”
General Weir left the window. He took Lenox Riley’s .38 special from his inner tunic and put it on the table. “If I wanted to kill you, soldier, I wouldn’t have to do it the hard way.”
He passed the mug of tea to Lasari and closed the man’s chilled fingers around it. Lasari tried to sip but the cup chattered against his teeth. Weir took it from him, set it back on the table.
“We are not under surveillance here, there are no hidden microphones,” Weir said evenly. “I want answers. Let me repeat what I told you in Philo Park. My son, Lieutenant Mark Weir, was shot and killed in Chicago about two weeks ago. He was shot because he knew something, but probably didn’t know enough. A young woman calls my home and leaves an urgent message on my phone tape. She wants to talk to Mark about ‘George Jackson, that soldier.’ ”
“I told you back in the park,” Lasari said. “I’m a buck-ass private in the U.S. Army on assignment in Germany. I’ve got papers and orders...”
“Spare me that spiel,” Weir said. “Within hours of that phone call my son is ambushed and executed, Miss Caidin is beaten bloody on the way to the hospital and within another forty-eight hours Private George ‘No Middle Initial’ Jackson, a new ID in Army records, gets rush orders to join the Lucky Thirteenth in Colorado and leave almost immediately for Germany.”
Lasari reached for the mug of tea and took several hasty swallows. “... Miss Caidin is beaten bloody.” A rush of anger had surged through his body, leaving his mouth burning, his tongue parched and dry.
“You’re involved in something you shouldn’t be involved in,” the general said. “You know that, I know that. You can save us both a lot of further pain and trouble by telling the truth.”
“I don’t know who killed your son, I don’t know what’s going on in Chicago.”
“Maybe this will clear your thinking,” Weir said. “My son was working on a case involving four American soldiers. His jurisdiction was Chicago, but he suspected the key was in Europe. All four of those men were, as you put it, buck-ass privates in the U.S. Army doing their duty on assignment in Germany. They all had papers, they all had orders. And they all had one more thing in common. They were murdered in Chicago right after getting back from Germany...”
“I can’t help you,” Lasari said, but suddenly other words were sparking like electric shocks through the haze of confusion and sedation. Strasser, in his vindictive drunkenness, had said too much, had almost spelled it out. “ ‘... the next friendly face you, Jackson, will see will be at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. Just one more GI on leave. You’ll be met by friends.’ And Eddie Neal with his farewell message ‘... unfinished business between you and me... Yeah, Jackson, we still got some things to settle.’ ”
The general picked up the passport and flipped it open to Lasari’s new picture. “A new passport, soldier? Where did you think you were going? What name were you going to put in this one, George Jackson or Durham Lasari?” He waited for an answer, then said, “What name were you going to desert under this time? That’s the long and short of it, isn’t it? Even with trumped-up papers, you were going to betray your uniform again. You did plan to desert a second time, didn’t you, Lasari?”
“You live in a tidier world than I do, general. You’re talking about the Articles of War, I’m talking about survival. I’m facing the federal pen, or worse. I hadn’t decided how to save myself.”