Partridge flicked an ash in the ashtray. “Noted.”
I said, “There are a host of lesser offenses, which are described and dealt with in your packet, but there are only two additional serious offenses left to be considered.”
“And what are those?” Partridge grunted.
“Conspiracy to obstruct justice, and perjury.”
“Okay,” Partridge said. “How do you two lawyers wanta deal with those?”
“On these two charges we confront the most serious complications. The team’s conspiracy passed through many evolutions, beginning with the joint agreement to make false reports to Colonel Smothers, to their calculated failure to report the ambush, to their willful misleading of Colonel Smothers’s debriefing officer. But then the United States Army and the government of the United States became party to the conspiracy. The interests of the government to protect the cover of a secret war corresponded with the team’s need to cover their crimes, and an overt bargain was reached.”
“Noted,” he said.
I drew in a heavy breath. “General, were you party to or knowledgeable of this agreement?”
“I was,” he frankly confessed.
I said, “Then it is your duty to disqualify yourself from this case. You must cede your authority to decide on our recommendations.”
I expected Partridge to leap across the table and rip out my throat when I said that. Morrow and I had discussed this issue for many hours. We guessed that Partridge was a co-conspirator, making him as much a criminal as any man in Sanchez’s team. He could no longer pass judgment on their crimes. Nor could any of the other men seated on the far side of the table. For that matter, it seemed entirely likely that the entire chain of command above Terry Sanchez, possibly up to and including the Commander in Chief himself, was implicated in the crimes we’d uncovered. Quite possibly, no one in the existing chain of military command could decide on this case. A mass recusal was in order. It made for an interesting precedent, Morrow and I had decided during one of our more academic interludes.
Partridge merely smiled. His Camel pack was lying on the table and he picked it up and carefully placed it in his pocket.
He said, “Okay, Counselor, you done? You said all you wanta say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re right, Drummond. In front of these witnesses, I hereby relinquish my responsibility for judging your recommendations. You’ve done a great job, son. You’ve shown real courage and character and intelligence. Your father would be proud of you. Hell, I’m proud of you.”
I said, “Thank you, General. I’ll be sure to tell my father when I see him next.”
This time he smiled when he said, “I told you before, Drummond, don’t blow smoke up my ass.”
“No, sir,” I said.
“Now, it’s time for a little more off-the-record guidance. You ready to listen?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many counts of murder you recommending?”
“Maybe ten counts, sir. But only one man to be indicted.”
“So, only one man. That’s this Sergeant First Class Perrite. Is that right?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Then aside from this Perrite, none of the rest of them men in that team are guilty of any serious offenses. I mean, we could prosecute Sanchez for gross dereliction of duty, but what would that prove, huh? He’s crazy as a loon already. And we could hit some of the others for various misjudgments, but then we’d look like a bunch of niggling, vindictive pricks, wouldn’t we? So all that leaves is all these conspiracy charges, and if you’re gonna make one charge of conspiracy to obstruct or perjure, or whatever the hell, well, then you’re gonna have to make hundreds of charges that go in every which direction, all the way to the moon. I got all that straight, Counselor?”
“Yes, General. I’d say you have the whole picture.”
He leaned back in his chair. “And Tretorne here, and Murphy, they told you that if you wanted to go public with this thing, then we won’t stop you. That right also?”
“That was the deal, General.”
He nodded. “Well, a deal’s a deal, son. So it’s up to you to decide.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He chuckled. It was a humorless chuckle. “Don’t thank me, Drummond. God, don’t thank me, boy. I just put the biggest heap of shit on your plate you ever smelled. You thought about what’s gonna happen if you go public?”
“I believe I have, General. I think it will incite a considerable scandal.”
He sort of chuckled at that, too, only this chuckle was sort of like the way parents do when their three-year-olds say something cute. Not something worldly or intelligent, just cute.
“Hell, Drummond, if that was the worst of it, none of us woulda got in your way in the first place. Scandals come and scandals go. A few souls go to jail or spend a fortune paying for lawyers, but these days even that ain’t all bad. If their scandal’s big enough, they write a book or get some movie rights before they’re even outta jail. Then they buy themselves a nice place in Malibu or Hilton Head and spend the rest of their lives being shuttled around with first-class seats and getting paid twenty thousand a shot on the speaking circuit. People just can’t get enough of hearing these pricks babble on about their sins. Don’t think there’s a one of us on this side of the table who’s afraid of some pissant scandal.”
He chuckled some more as he turned to the White House man. “Hey, Parker, how many scandals you had to handle for our beloved Commander in Chief?”
Parker chuckled with him. “I don’t wish to sound disrespectful, General, but the man attracts scandals like a wool suit attracts lint. Every time he closes a door in the White House, we all wince and wonder what he’s up to next.”
Partridge turned back and faced me. “See, son, don’t think Tretorne or Murphy or I did this ’cause we’re afraid of some scandal. You been through any the camps while you were here?”
“We have.”
He nodded his approval. “Good for you. Right now we got nearly one and a half million Kosovars in our camps. One and a half million of these poor bastards whose only hope is us. You go public, this whole operation to get them back their homeland’s gonna fall apart. This thing’s hanging together on a thin thread anyway. The Russians are accusing us of genocide. Our NATO allies hate us for making ’em do this. We shamed most of ’em into it. They find out we’re running a secret ground war, they’ll pull the plug faster than you can spit. The Italians won’t let us fly off their soil anymore. The Brits might hang in, but there’ll be nothing to hang on to. Think Congress will let us hang in? I don’t. And I’m the one who’s spent a lot a time up there dealing with those guys. Hell, it might even cause NATO to fall apart. Don’t think the French won’t make a run at it.”
I sat and listened to every word.
“It’s up to you, Drummond. Do what you think is right. Milosevic’s probably got tens of thousands of murderers and rapists and every other assortment of criminal on his rolls. Most of ’em will never see the inside of a courtroom. But you go ahead and pit this one soldier, this Sergeant Perrite, you pit his fate against the fate of one and a half million Kosovars. You decide if going public’s worth giving Milosevic a victory in this thing. You decide if you’re willing to destroy the lives of millions of people so we can get a chance to punish one man for killing some bastards who probably deserved to die anyway. Think about how just it would be for those millions of people to lose their country over some joker named the Hammer.”
He got up and walked out of the room without saying another word. Until this moment, Morrow and I had enjoyed our worm’s-eye view of the world, thinking we were on a mighty crusade to right a terrible wrong. Now we were glued to our seats, too stunned to move. The other men stared at us.