I thought about that. “What do you mean, directly?” I asked.
The Sheriff leaned his chair perilously far forward. “You have a government clearance from your work at the Boeing plant over in Wichita, is that correct?”
We weren’t supposed to talk about that stuff outside the plant, but the war was over, and the Sheriff seemed to have something important on his mind. He wanted to say something that hung on this point. I decided for Dad’s sake to go along with him. “Yes sir, I do have a clearance.”
“Then I am going to tell you something I wouldn’t normally reveal to an outsider. But in return for my confidence, I need your full cooperation.”
I thought about Floyd Bellamy, and the penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth. I was already deeper than I had ever wanted to go into a bad situation, but there seemed to be nothing for it. Dad was on his way to the hospital in Wichita, somehow because of Floyd’s secret. His beating was connected with the papers, with the airplane. I needed to hear whatever the Sheriff had to say to me. “Yes sir. You have my full cooperation.”
The Sheriff exchanged another significant glance with Doc Milliken. “The United States Army Criminal Investigation Division is here in Butler County, pursuing a highly sensitive matter.”
“I know,” I said cautiously.
“How, boy?” Hauptmann leaned forward in the dining chair he was using, Doc inching forward in his own flowered wingback. “Who told you that?”
“Someone calling himself Deputy Morgan called me on the telephone about Dad, said that Dad had beaten up an Army captain.”
Hauptmann frowned. “I don’t have a Deputy Morgan, son.”
“That’s what Ollie told me.”
“Did he tell you what the CID was looking for?” asked Doc Milliken.
“No, but I think they’re after Floyd Bellamy.” I was a rat, betraying my best friend, not to mention myself, to the Sheriff. But after what happened to Dad, I would much rather deal with Sheriff Hauptmann than the mysterious Captain Markowicz. I still felt miserable about the whole business.
“Floyd Bellamy?” Sheriff Hauptmann looked puzzled.
“Alonzo Bellamy’s boy,” said Doc Milliken. “They have that place out there off Haverhill Road, as you head toward Leon.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sheriff Hauptmann. “The Bellamys.” He laughed. “Why would the CID want him?” He looked at me sternly. “Is Floyd Bellamy a Nazi sympathizer?”
I was quite surprised by the question, and it must have showed on my face. “No, no.”
I couldn’t even imagine such a thing. Floyd had been an easy, confident liar most of his life, in the name of popularity, convenience and heavy petting back in high school. At least once he had been thief, because there was no legitimate way he could have gotten that Nazi equipment back home. But Floyd was no Fascist, I was sure of that. He loved his good old American freedom way too much.
“Floyd is a ne’er do well, a liar, and most probably a petty thief at opportunity,” said Doc Milliken, echoing my thoughts. “I also understand he is a good Christian, a Kansas Republican, an Army veteran and, sadly, not much different from half the other men in Butler County. He is most certainly not a Nazi.”
Doc Milliken sure knew a lot of what went on around Augusta. More than I might have thought. I wondered what he knew about Floyd’s freight delivery on last Thursday’s Kansas City train. His brother was the railway clerk, but there hadn’t been anything specific on the manifest. Floyd had fed Odus a good line about agricultural equipment. Were these two looking for a cut of that business?
“That’s my friend,” I said with a sigh of relief. “So why is CID here?”
“The CID is in Butler County because there was a cell from a Nazi spy ring based here in Augusta during the war. The cell was responsible for watching the aircraft industry in Wichita. Your kind of work, Vernon.” Sheriff Hauptmann cleared his throat again. “Army counter-intelligence was able to control what they learned and manage the cell’s activities.”
“Why didn’t they just shut it down?”
To my surprise, Doc Milliken answered. “Because the operation would have just started up somewhere else, and it might have taken too long to track it down all over again.”
“Right,” added Sheriff Hauptmann. “Better to manage it and minimize the damage where they could, than let the spy ring get away and set up somewhere else completely unopposed.”
I wondered which of my friends, which of my neighbors, might have been recording my comings and goings during the war. I worked at Boeing, I was an engineer. I observed good security, as far as I knew, but what could a trained spy have ferreted out of me?
“The war is over. Why is Army CID here now?” I asked. “Cleaning things up?”
Sheriff Hauptmann shook his head. “We don’t even know who all the individuals were. And really, that doesn’t matter now. Justice should be served, but like you said, the war is over. No, the problem is the activity level is higher now in Butler County than it ever was during the war. The Army has become directly involved, because it’s a matter of military secrecy.”
I blurted out my questions. “What do you mean, ‘higher than ever?’ Am I suspected of being a German spy?”
“No, no, son. You’re off the hook. Common sense tells me that, and I’m confident the County Attorney will agree with me. For one thing, if you were a spy, you wouldn’t have beaten your own father, hidden him in the trunk of your car, then tipped off Deputy Truefield to come pick you up for it.”
“So what is going on?”
“Remember that Captain Markowicz you asked about?” asked Doc Milliken. “I did set his broken arm yesterday. He showed me identification that proved to my satisfaction that he was Captain Markowicz of Army CID He asked me to keep his visit confidential.”
“So it’s confidential.” They were talking, but they weren’t telling much. Who had broken Markowicz’s arm? Dad could have, but I couldn’t see why he would have bothered.
Sheriff Hauptmann stepped away from his dining chair and walked across the room to the mantel. Running his fingers along the carvings, Hauptmann turned to face me. “Captain Abraham Markowicz was found beaten to death in Kansas City, Missouri three days ago. I received a telegram from the Missouri State Police this afternoon advising me to be on the lookout for someone using his identification. His papers were presumed stolen at the occasion of his assault.”
“And the Sheriff happened to mention it to me,” said Doc Milliken. “So I told him I had seen a Captain Markowicz yesterday.”
“So this Captain Markowicz, you think he’s a Nazi?” I asked.
“Quite possibly,” answered Sheriff Hauptmann. “He or a confederate doubtless posed as Deputy Morgan on the telephone to you. Interestingly, the tip that Deputy Truefield got about you came from a man identifying himself as Morgan. The question that we can’t readily answer is what interest they would possibly have in you or your dad. You’ve got some value through your work at Boeing, but with all respect, nobody here thinks you’re a big fish there.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I buy parts. Fasteners, rivets, screws.” Big deal, I thought, but someone had to do it.
But I knew perfectly well why the bad guys were interested in me and Dad. It was Dad’s truck that Floyd Bellamy and I had used to haul that special cargo away from the train station this past Thursday. That was the interest right there. The German agents had not yet made the connection to Floyd, maybe because they hadn’t yet managed to look at Odus Milliken’s freight records. Obviously some German agent had seen me driving Dad’s truck with the stolen cargo.