Secret Sanction (42 page)

“Was your camp detected by the Serbs?”

“Not that I know of. We pulled up stakes about two days later. I remember, because that was the morning Sergeant Caldwell cut his foot with an axe. He was chopping firewood and opened up a deep gash. I had to stitch him up.”

“How did the ambush come about?”

“I don’t know, sir. I just remember that on that night, we pulled into a hasty perimeter. It was late and we’d been moving all day. Then the word went around to start checking ammo and cleaning weapons for a fight. Since I’m a medic, I didn’t have to clean my weapon or check my ammo, so I dozed off. Sergeant Caldwell woke me when it was time to move. He wanted me to give him some more aspirin, because his foot still hurt and we had to start walking again.”

I looked at my watch. It was seven o’clock and none of us had eaten since breakfast. I wasn’t particularly hungry, but the golden rule of the Army is that you have to feed your troops. I thanked Sergeant Graves for his insights and asked Imelda to please escort him back to his cell.

Morrow and I then walked out together.We didn’t say much until the van delivered us back to the entrance of the hotel. I guess we were both sort of entombed in our own thoughts. Until this point, we’d been handling a legal case with evidence and elements of proof and all the other cold, rational pieces that lawyers are trained to delve into. Now the fragments of an immensely human tragedy were coming together before our eyes, and that has a tendency to leave one disturbed.

“Dinner?” I asked.

“Who’s buying?” she parried.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“If we treat this like a date, I’ll buy. If it’s more in the line of a business meeting between associates, my hands are tied, and we go Dutch. Some guy left a tablet on a mount somewhere and it’s carved in stone someplace near the bottom: Thou shalt only pay for dates that show some promise of conquest.”

“Dutch it is,” she said, leaving me thoroughly dispirited as she headed up the stairs.

I got changed faster than her and rushed downstairs and got us a table. A good one, too, right in the corner, right beside the big picture window that looked out over the plains below. There were twinkling lights as far as the eye could see.

I didn’t spend any time studying the landscape. I guiltily and swiftly knocked down two long and tall glasses of scotch and decided not to mention that I’d started before her. My ribs hurt, though, and I owed them a nice surprise. I even had the waiter carry off the evidence before she joined me.

He was just escaping with the glasses when she glided through the entrance. If this wasn’t a date, she was a little over-dressed, or underdressed, or both. She had on this short, clingy blue skirt that stopped about five inches above her knees and a perfectly lovely blouse with what is politely termed a plunging neckline. Suddenly, you could see just about everything she’d been hiding under those BDUs these past few weeks. I almost gasped, but I’m too cool for that, too. I limited myself to some heavy panting and a long, filthy, ogling stare.

I wondered what she was up to. Maybe she was trying to show me what I was missing out on. Like, hey, this could’ve been yours, all yours, if only you hadn’t suspected me of being Tretorne’s stooge. Or maybe it was some subliminal impulse inside her, like she was out to prove that Miss Smith back in Tuzla wasn’t the only one with what my grandfather would call a great set of gams. Now, I did know the precise meaning of the word gams, and Morrow had a perfectly sterling set, I assure you. Ever so long, ever so slim, tapering down to this wonderful pair of slender little ankles. A nice set of uptoppers, too. That was another of my grandfather’s favorite words. I knew what uptoppers were, too.

Her walk across the dining room attracted a flock of attention in the form of lots more ogling stares. Two Italian gentlemen even rushed over to pull back her chair. She sat down, said thank you very pertly, then both the men sort of stood there gaping, like nobody knew what to do next. I caught one of them peeking over her shoulder at her uptoppers, and I gave him an evil stare. He smiled at me, then retreated. The other man stood there until the waiter came to take our orders. Then it got a little crowded and he finally ambled back to his table. Some lady, I guess his wife, was there, and she started yammering at him in Italian.

I said,“Nothing like making a low-key, unobtrusive entrance.” She smiled politely and blushed a little. “I had nothing else to wear. If I don’t get to a laundry soon, I’ll be out of clean underwear, too.”

I thought of ten cleverly lascivious retorts to that, but this was a business meeting between associates, no matter what my libido was screaming at that moment.

“No sweat,” I assured her, patting her arm like any good senior officer who’s concerned for the welfare of his troops. “It gets to be a problem, I’ll just loan you some of mine.”

She giggled kindly at that.“So, should we get a bottle of Chi-anti?”

“Go ahead,” I said.“I’ve got two broken ribs and a body that’s screaming for some genuine medication.”I looked up and winked at the waiter. “I’d like to start with two scotches, straight up.”

She said, “A glass of Chianti, please.”

Then there was this long, awkward silence. She smelled absolutely stunning. It wasn’t that sweet lily of the fields crap, either, but something much more pungent. Something musky and naughty.

It’s damned hard to think of something intelligently businesslike to say when you’re staring at a beautiful woman whose uptoppers are peeking out her shirt, your nose is getting hard from her smell, and your mind’s off in a boudoir wildly cavorting between some silk sheets.

Finally, she said,“Who do you want to start with tomorrow?” I very reluctantly retreated from the boudoir and thought about that a minute. “Why not Sanchez?”

“You don’t want to wait until we know a little more?” “What’s left to know?”

“Was there a mutiny? The ambush, whose idea was it? Why did they really do it? Why did they shoot the Serbs in the head?”

“And just who’s going to tell us about all that?”

“There are still five others we can pick from.”

“I just have this sense,” I told her, watching the waiter walk across the floor with our drinks. “The fastest way to all that is through Sanchez, and I think we have enough to get him to open up.”

The glasses were deposited on the table and I tried not to appear too desperate as I grabbed the first scotch, which was actually my third scotch, and knocked down a huge slug. Before I knew it, the glass was empty. They were the big, tall kind of glasses, too, and the bartender wasn’t one of those awful cheaters who waters things down. For some reason, my ribs had started to ache like hell. Must’ve been her perfume, I thought.

She was twirling her glass of wine with her slender fingers. “It’s a terrible story, isn’t it? It really touches your soul.”

“Yep,” I said, feeling the effects of that third scotch right quickly. “What did you expect, though? Did you really think we’d discover nine evil men who got together and decided to commit an atrocity?”

“No. I’ve just never handled a case like this. It’s confusing. Not very black and white.”

“But it is. You’re wrong, because they were wrong,” I said, starting on the next glass and hoisting up two fingers at the waiter to rush over with some reinforcements. “One of the reasons the Army insists on iron discipline is situations just like this. Officers are human, too. They screw up, and when they do, their men see it. The structure, the discipline, they have to remain. Persico’s an old soldier. He knew that. Hell, they all knew that.”

“I understand all that,” she said, still twirling her wineglass, “but Sanchez got all those men killed. I know what the rules say, but I can also see why those men didn’t want to follow him anymore. Besides, it sounds like he stopped giving orders. Almost like he went into a walking coma.”

My glass was now empty, and the waiter was there with the two fresh ones. I smiled at him quite happily.

Morrow said, “Are you all right?”

“I’ll be fine,”I assured her.“Just administering a little painkiller. Look, there’s going to be plenty enough blame to go around for everyone. Smothers never should’ve given Sanchez the job,” I said, taking another huge swallow. “Sanchez should’ve gutted it out when things went south. His men should’ve supported him. Even Hollywood knows that. Did you ever see
Mutiny on the Bounty
, or
The Caine Mutiny
? Great movies, both of them. Remember that scene with Captain Queeg, this battleship commander in World War Two, sitting there on the stand rolling those ball bearings around in his hand, ranting about who stole his strawberries? It was Humphrey Bogart at his best, playing this hard-nosed son of a bitch who rode his men mercilessly, and his first officer sympathized with his men and ended up undermining him, until it resulted in mutiny. The lawyer got the first officer off, then in the final scene he told the first officer he disgusted him, because what he did really was wrong. The system has rules and everybody has to obey them.”

“Strange words coming out of you,” she said as I got a good firm grip and hoisted down some more scotch.

“What? Because I act like a wiseass? Because I don’t seem to have a lot of respect for the system? Don’t kid yourself, Morrow. I was raised an Army brat,” I said, pausing only long enough to inhale a little more painkiller. “I’ve never shoved a bite of food into my mouth that wasn’t paid for by Army dollars. I saw my father go off to war three times. When the Army ships your father away to the other side of the world, and he’s being shot at, you do a lot of thinking about the Army and what it means. I actually got shot at a few times myself. That’s also been known to make one think about it, once or twice. I believe in the Army and all its silly rules. Doesn’t mean I like them, but God knows, we’ve won a lot of wars. We must be doing something right.”

Morrow was wearing a look of surprise, and I realized that I was drinking way too much and was letting my mouth get way too carried away. My ribs still hurt like all hell, though, so I kept wading through the glass in my hand. Besides, it would be a damned shame to let a perfectly good scotch go to waste.

She took a sip from her wine and studied the bruises and swells on my face. “You’ve had a difficult few weeks,” she said.

“I’m not complaining,”I answered, wondering if I should stick up my finger to get the waiter to bring two more. The waiter was actually sweating from running back and forth. People from other tables were staring at me.

“Do your ribs still hurt?”

“I think sho,” I admitted.

She giggled a little.

“What?” I asked. “Wassshh so damned funny?”

This was when I first noticed that my ribs hurt so much that they had made my tongue swell. Until that instant, I never knew my ribs were connected to my tongue.

“We’d better order dinner quickly and get some food in your stomach,” she said, flashing those wonderfully sympathetic eyes.

This was also about the same moment when I realized that eating had just gotten a little beyond my reach. I looked down at my silverware and there were at least ten forks. Which one would a polished gentleman choose, I wondered.

I said, “Mmmnydnodmebok,” or something like that. Morrow stood up and came around the table. She took my arm, and she was really strong, because she hoisted me out of that chair like I was a fluffy pancake. She wrapped my left arm around her shoulder and led me out of the dining room. My left hand was dangling right across her left uptopper,and her naughty perfume tickled my nose. I wanted to give that comfy uptopper a gentle little squeeze, but my body was way past the point of listening to my brain.

She leaned me against the wall in the elevator, and I stood happily humming some song as we sped up to the third floor. Once we got to my room, she actually dug around inside my pants pocket until she found my key. Then she led me over to the bed. This was the moment I was waiting for. She thought I was intoxicated. She thought I was a harmless, incapacitated, drunken eunuch, too scotched out to raise ye olde noodle. Hehheh-heh. I lunged toward the bed, tugging her along.

I said, “Youydod a jummbock,” and it was a real good thing she couldn’t understand a word I said, because what I’d just invited her to do was something nice girls don’t usually do.

The next thing I knew, the alarm on the nightstand next to my bed was howling at me, and I could hear someone pounding on my door. I rolled out of the bed and stumbled over and opened it. That damned Morrow had changed out of that fetching skirt and was back inside her BDUs again. Now how had she done that so fast?

She brushed past me and headed for my bathroom, while I stood there feeling stupid. I looked at the alarm clock. It read 7:40. I had set it to go off at six. I heard the shower go on, and Morrow went over to the phone and called room service. She told them to send up two American-style breakfasts and stylishly offered them a ten-dollar tip if they had it here in ten minutes.

She put the receiver down and said, “You’ve got five minutes to shower and shave. Don’t walk out of the bathroom naked, either. Army rules dictate that higher officers shall not display their Pudleys to lower officers. It wouldn’t bother me, but you’re the one who loves Army rules.”

Damn, so that’s what a Pudley is, I thought, as I lurched toward the bathroom. The shower felt great and my ribs only ached a little. Dr. Drummond and his scotch cure had accomplished another medical miracle. I emerged from the bathroom fully dressed about seven minutes later. Morrow was at the door paying the bellhop for our breakfasts.

I couldn’t help myself.“Where’d you learn about Pudleys?” I demanded.

“What?”

“Pudleys? Where’d you learn that word?”

That made her giggle a lot. “At that private girls’ school I went to. That was the word we used for ...well, you know. Only for little ones, though. Big ones we called Humongos.”

I thought about that a moment. I took a bite of eggs and wetted it down with a little coffee.“I don’t have a Pudley,” I insisted.

“Be that as it may,” she said, smiling,“we’re going to be late, so eat quickly.”