The wind seemed to be circling the house, rattling shutters, sending a whistling draft down the chimney and stirring the fir branches that touched the roof. For a moment both men stopped to listen. Then Lasari broke the silence. “We had a motto in ’Nam, general, something you wouldn’t understand. It applies only to the men who take orders, never to the men who give them. ‘It don’t mean nothing.’ that was our motto, our fingerhold on sanity. Sure, I’m a deserter, but I wanted to make good on that desertion. I wanted clean paper. I was working with Miss Caidin in Chicago and got double-crossed by the Army itself.”
“Exactly what does that mean, soldier?”
“There’s nothing more I want to say. You think I’m scum, a yellow belly, a man who’d betray his uniform. Okay. What about your desertion, general? Bonnie Caidin told me you retired because you couldn’t explain yourself or your wars to your son. What made you crack, general? Where the hell was your sense of responsibility to the Army? You took the good paper, the privileges, the pension and walked away. I just walked away with nothing in my hands but crutches. You’re talking to me about loyalty and patriotism, I think you’re trying to talk to a dead man. I’m not your son, general.”
The general picked up the gun and walked to the windows. He cracked open the shutters and studied the darkness outside. Then he went to the front door, opened it and stood in silence. There were winds and the sounds of a stormy mountain night but nothing more. He closed the door and came back to stand opposite Lasari.
Scotty Weir pulled the receiver of the automatic back and released it to slam a round into the chamber, then pointed the gun at Lasari. “Whatever it is you’re afraid of,” he said, “I want you to be more afraid of me, soldier. Hear me good. You’re a two-time deserter, and I wear four silver stars. If I decide to pull this trigger, we won’t disturb anything more than a couple of snow owls.”
“I’ve got nothing to tell you,” Lasari said.
The general turned suddenly, pulled the duffel bag off the couch and tossed it at Lasari’s feet. “You can tell me about that duffel, why it’s so important to you.”
“It isn’t,” Lasari said. “There’s nothing in it but some GI gear and a couple of presents I wanted to bring back to the States.”
“Not good enough,” Scotty Weir said and pulled back one cuff of his shirt and tunic. Lasari saw the broad, strong hand, a glint of a silver ID bracelet, then the swollen flesh of the wrist, clawed with long scratches and scarred by tooth marks. “When I put the gauze over your face, you fought like a bull terrier to keep that bag...”
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Lasari said.
“I think you do,” the General said. He took out a pocket knife, flicked open the blade and reached down to slash the canvas side of the bag. “Let’s see what you’re carrying, soldier.”
“No! Don’t do that! It’s my only way out!” Lasari stood, still groggy, and took a wild, looping swing at Weir. Weir backhanded his almost casually along the side of the head with the revolver, sending him slumping back into the chair.
He looked at his watch. “We’ve got time, Lasari, if you start talking pronto. And we’re not going anywhere until you do.”
“Against my will I’m part of a drug loop,” Lasari said at last. “I believe if I could complete the loop, there’s a chance to indict the people involved, do myself and the world a favor. But it’s a tough gamble. I’m convinced I’ll be killed and/or sent to prison along the way. Back there at maneuvers, I was trying to make up my mind how to figure my odds.”
“Let me help you,” Tarbert Weir said.
Lasari started with the first night at the Veterans’ Bureau and told the general what had happened since then, from Sergeant Malleck to the armory, through Sergeant Strasser and Pytor Vayetch, the false illness, and the military papers already cut for transport back to Chicago.
The general’s face was impassive, but the eyes were dark with growing fury as he paced back and forth in front of the fireplace.
“Heroin,” he said, and the word was isolated like a bitter echo in the cold room. “Greed, lies, murder. Betrayal and corruption hiding behind the American flag. It must be stopped. My son wasn’t born for this, he goddamn well shouldn’t have had to die for it.” His voice was rough with emotion. “We ask you men to join us, to raise their hands in oath... There are certain trusts that cannot be betrayed, soldier. This is a matter of honor.”
He moved to stand directly in front of Lasari. “And you believe that if you could get back to Malleck, if you completed the circle, you could tell the military everyone who is involved?”
Lasari shrugged. “I believe so. At least every name, number and order that I personally saw or heard from Chicago to Ludensdorf and back, the whole loop.”
“You’ve kept a written record?”
“No. Nothing on paper, but I’ve got a freak memory. I know your identification number, for instance, 397-07-1991.” Lasari rattled off the nine figures easily. “I saw your ID bracelet in Philo Park.”
“You have a photographic memory, you remember everything?”
“Only what I want to,” Lasari said. “I don’t go through life memorizing billboards.”
For a moment the General was lost in thought. “It’s like a medical technique. Doctors put a chemical dye in the bloodstream and then trace it through the body’s circulating system to find cancers and malfunctions. You’re like that little red blood stain, tracking and marking every step of the way.”
He touched the duffel bag with the toe of his boot, then lifted it and tried the heft in his hand. “We can do it, soldier!” he said then. “You can do it. Do yourself, do your country a favor. Go back to Chicago on schedule, complete that loop...”
“You’re offering me about the same deal as Malleck,” Lasari said hotly, “except that you’ve sweetened it with some patriotic talk.”
“Wrong,” the General said. “I’ll be in Chicago before you, I’ll alert the right people. And I’ll testify for you afterward. The Army will believe Scotty Weir, goddamn it. They’ll hear what we’ve got to say.”
He looked at his watch, then removed the Observer bands from a pocket and slipped them over his sleeves. “Get yourself together, Lasari, and I’ll bring the car around. You’re going back to the base. If there’s been an AWOL report on you. I’ll countermand it. This is one more time I put these stars to work.”
In the far courtyard Lasari heard the Mercedes engine turn over, then the sound of tires crunching on the snow. He put the passport, pills and matchbook in his pocket, checked the zipper on the duffel and looked around the room. There was nothing but a half mug of cold tea on the table to show anyone had been there.
The general was behind the wheel of the car, coming up the circle drive leading to the Schwartzwald, headlights on low, the glow pinpointing Lasari against the lodge. There was a sudden squeal of brakes and the general’s shout, “Look out there, soldier!”
As he threw himself to the snow Lasari heard bullets cracking around him as if he were the focal point of a three-way firelight. A bullet sliced through the empty air where he had been standing only seconds before. There were two more shots and something large and dark and full of pain fell to the ground a few feet from him. The Mercedes was still running in its own pool of light, surrounded by silence.
Lasari ran toward the fallen body near the front door. A moon had broken through the storm clouds with enough light to show the body of a big man in an open topcoat, lying face downward in the snow. Lasari used both hands to turn the body over and saw it was Herr Rauch, his collarbones smashed and his upper chest dark with waxy blood, a Mauser automatic still gripped in his hand.