Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy Page 4

“Look, Mr. Gresham — can you get up? I mean your back — ”

  “I’m awright.”

  “Why don’t you take your wife outside, OK? Get some air. Captain?” Harry gestured to Ottinger, and he and the corpsman escorted the two old people outside.

  Harry sat back down at the hearth and massaged his knees.

  Ryan propped a haunch on the splintered table, settling his weight tentatively until he was sure it would hold. “Captain?”

  “Yes, sir,” mumbled Bennett.

  “I think we ought to arrange quarters for the Greshams in London, get them away from here as soon as possible. I want them under protective custody. No visitors, no contacts.”

  “I’ll get on that right now.”

  “And have a doctor give them a once-over. You know, shock, check out the old guy’s back, whatever...”

  Bennett nodded and left.

  “You want my opinion?” Harry asked Ryan.

  “More than Betty Grable.”

  “I think any statement either of those two old birds make is just going to be icing on the cake.”

  “How so?”

  “Who does our labwork?”

  Ryan shrugged. “We don’t really have a precedent for this kind of thing. If we want, I imagine we could probably get Scotland Yard.”

  “Good. We get a full team to go over this place. The plane out there, too. They do ballistics comparisons on the slugs they dig out of here with the guns of those two fly-boys, uh...” Harry flipped through his notebook.

  “Markham and Anderson,” Ryan filled in.

  “Yeah, Markham and Anderson. That should cinch it right there. And those planes’ve got those whatchamacallits — ”

  “That’s a technical term I’m not acquainted with, Harry”

  “You know. The, um, those things. Gun cameras.”

  “Ah.”

  “There’s your case. Or is it my case? Is that why I’m here?”

  Harry had assumed it to be a rhetorical question, but when Ryan hesitated, his face squinched in some painful inner conflict, the confidence Harry had felt coming with the clarity of the case began to ebb.

  “Tell you what, Harry. See if Ottinger’s got a radio for you. You get on the horn and get what you need out here.” The unfinished quality to what Ryan had said prompted Harry to prod, “And then what?”

  “And then you come talk to me.”

  *

  It occurs to me that — disliking the man as I did — I haven’t been quite fair to Joe Ryan. One must give even the devil his due.

  I imagine Joe Ryan, at that point, sitting uncomfortably atop the high rail of the fence of the empty sheep pen. Musing, he would look over and see his old friend Harry Voss scribbling his notes, making his wireless calls, tending to all the business that required tending, and feel a sadness. You see, for all the terrible jokes and jibes at old Harry’s expense, and his compulsive goat-getting and not-so-gentle mockery, Harry was, indeed, Ryan’s friend; that was why Ryan had brought Harry to the cottage by the Channel, and that was why Ryan now faced a dilemma.

  I don’t know what the original message to Ryan was alerting him to the situation at the coast, and there’s no record of it to find, but I would imagine that in those excited, incomplete early moments it was as simple as, “One of our pilots has killed another of our pilots.” For all his deficiencies of character, Joe Ryan was bright, certainly cunning; he would have had no problem in imagining the clear path to conviction that Harry had outlined in the Gresham cottage. That was precisely why Ryan had fed the case to Harry. He had, in fact, been feeding Harry such plums for quite some time, including the aforementioned rape case; this was surely to be the juiciest plum of all.

  But his dilemma...Harry was not, by record, a criminal barrister. Mortgages, small contracts, the drafting of wills and loan documents had been more Harry’s line of country. This was less a reflection of some lack in Harry’s capabilities than a tribute to poor luck and circumstance; both of which Joe Ryan, in true friendship, had tried to remedy through his position in the JAG.

  The case of the dead pilot and his assailant(s) should have taken a straightforward path to the bar and conviction and, quite possibly, the gallows, but for one troubling detail. When the attacking Thunderbolt had turned its guns on Charles Gresham, his wife, and their home, the neat scenario Joe Ryan had projected unraveled like bad knitting. He’d put the plum in Harry’s hands, let him feel its pliant ripeness, and now he had to consider pulling it away.

  When Harry finished with his business, he found Ryan still atop that sheep pen fence. Harry stood below him trying to read the ill ease clearly on his friend’s face. Ryan looked up from his musing and forced a pale imitation of his usual good-fellow smile. “Let’s take a walk, Harry.”

  They stood near the cliff’s edge, then turned their backs to the wind like a pair of old cows while they hunched together as Ryan lit them each a cigarette. Ryan took a deep draught and let the smoke seep out his nostrils and slightly parted lips. He nodded over at Bennett.

  “Look at him,” Ryan said. The captain’s face was in a sulking pout as he gave coordinating instructions over one of the jeep wireless sets. “You ever handle a malpractice case, Harry? Ever try to get one doctor to testify against another? To guys like that, this is a second skin. I don’t expect you to understand that, considering you can hardly fit in your jacket,” and here he tapped one of Harry’s straining jacket buttons.

  Harry sucked in his gut. “There’s a problem with how I’m handling this?”

  “Nope.”

  “What goes? We were in the house cooking along just fine, then all of a sudden I get this feeling you don’t think I’m up to this.”

  “You misconstrue, Harry-boy,” Ryan said, delighting in the word. “Mis-con-strue! That was never my worry, Harry. Never.” He looked over at Harry with a sincerity so rare in him as to be unsettling, then stepped to the edge of the cliff, spat, and watched it fall. “You know what I envy about you, Harry?”

  “My good looks?”

  Ryan chuckled. “Besides that. You look around, you see the ocean, that little house, those trees. That’s the extent of Major Voss’s vision. Life is so simple for you.”

  “That’s about the nicest way I ever heard somebody called stupid.”

  Ryan smiled and ignored him. “But Colonel Ryan, because he is a colonel, sits up higher and sees more than that. A lot more; the proverbial big picture. And it’s not always a very pretty picture.”

  “Wake me up when you get to the point. I’d hate to miss it.”

  “OK, Harry. Having failed to reach you with poetry, let’s try plain English. A lot of people on both sides of the Atlantic are not real happy to see us here. Some are locals getting a little sick and tired of seeing this island fill up with young, able-bodied GIs overflowing with candy bars, GI pay, and hormones, while their own — that is, the ones still in one piece — are off in Africa, or Burma, or some other godforsaken mudhole. Some of those unhappy locals are down in Whitehall and they’re looking at us strutting around, at Ike on the SHAEF throne, and getting the idea — an idea they do not like — that yeah, maybe the sun does set on the British Empire.

  “There’s people back home, too, Harry, and they’re not all radio crackpots like Father Coughlin. There’s people all up and down the DC Mall who say this is just the same old war between kings they’ve been fighting over here since King Arthur. Our problem is the Japs, these people say. They’re the ones dropping bombs in our backyard.”

  Nothing Ryan had said was particularly revelatory to anyone who had spent any time at all in England in those days, including Harry. But Ryan’s unusual glumness kept alerting Harry there must be some sort of relevance here. “What’s any of that got to do with this?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Gresham are what that’s got to do with this.”

  “What about them?”

  “Maybe you missed it, but they’re citizens of the realm. Subjects of The Empire. Servants of the King
. They’re English, Harry.”

  Whatever Ryan’s point was, Harry was still missing it. “Joe, how many cases do we get every day where some civilian — ”

  “You get cases where one of our boys knocked up some nice local girl; where he had too much to drink and cleaned some civilian’s plow in a pub brawl; he robbed a liquor store, maybe somebody got knifed, somebody got shot. What you don’t get are cases where our combat personnel, in action, turn their combat machinery against their allies. Civilian allies.

  “There’s people over here who are going to use this to say, Look, see what happens when you let the bloody Yanks run the show? And there’s going to be people back home who are going to look at it and say, See? That wouldn’t’ve happened if we’d stayed home and minded our own business.

  “Now me, for my money, if the limeys want the whole war, they can have it; that’s jake with me. Then I could go home. But you wear the uniform. Your job is to do what the guy who signs the checks says to do. And he wants this partnership to work.”

  “I don’t see how that changes this case.”

  “It doesn’t. It changes the handling of this case.”

  “How so?”

  Ryan looked to the cottage. He flicked his cigarette out toward the Channel, but the breeze blew it back and it exploded in a burst of sparks that quickly died in the wet grass. Ryan nodded at Harry to walk with him along the cliffs, away from the cottage.

  “It’s got to be quick and quiet, and the person — or persons — who did this have to get nailed.”

  “You talking about going into the railroad business, Joe?”

  “Look, Harry, the limeys are going to want blood over this and, looking at this mess, I don’t have too many qualms about giving it to them. But it’s got to be a solid case, so solid that nobody on our end’ll have any doubts that the triggerman is getting his just desserts. Now, the person — or persons — who did this, Harry, they’ve got to get their shake. It’s got to be done by the book, so this thing can close completely and close clean. And it’s got to be disposed of ASAP before it can fester. And, it’s got to be done on the q.t. No press, no outsiders, everything on a need-to-know basis.”

  “I understand.”

  “I don’t think so, Harry.” Ryan stopped and the two friends faced each other. “I have to consider whether to let you run with this or not.”

  Harry tried to keep his stolid, professional face on, but he was taking it personally and it showed in his voice. “I guess we’re back to my first question. Is it a matter of whether or not you think I’m up to this?”

  Troubled as Ryan was, he was still Ryan: He smiled at Harry’s discomfort. “Harry-boy, it’s not a question of what I think. We’re talking about me handing you a capital case when half my staff has more military-law experience than you. Hell, Harry, I’ve got shavetails with more criminal law under their belts! Not that you could possibly get anything else under that belt!” He chuckled and poked at the equator of Harry’s midriff. “I give this mess to you, I’m going to take some flak for it. The other thing — and this puts the ball in your court — is not whether or not I think you can handle it, but do you really want to handle it?”

  Harry began to speak but Ryan raised his hand. “Understand this, Harry. Stop getting in a sweat about losing this and just listen. The guy that handles this, he’s not going to get his name in the papers back home. This isn’t the kind of thing anybody wants to see in any papers anywhere. But, the guy who takes care of this, does a good job, makes everybody happy with it...he’s going to have some big-time friends on both sides of the ocean. So, when this is all over and we get to go home and that guy goes back into civilian practice, well, he’s going to have some heavyweight endorsements. And me, without lifting a finger, I get my share of back-pats because I had the wisdom and insight to pick such a capable joe for the job. But —

  “The guy who handles this and screws up, makes people unhappy...I spend the rest of my life as a corporal shoveling snow in Greenland. And that’ll be heaven compared to what they’d do to the poor fart who actually bobbled the ball.”

  Harry let his cigarette fall and smothered it with the toe of his shoe. He could hear sheep bleating off somewhere behind the knolls. “It could go that bad?”

  “And I’m putting it in a good light.”

  “Bleah,” Harry said.

  They returned to the cottage, where Bennett was propped in the front door staring blankly out toward the Channel. “Where are they now?” Harry asked.

  “Sir? Who?”

  “Markham and Anderson.”

  “I thought I told — ”

  “Tell me again.”

  “At their field. Donophan. They’re being held in their quarters.”

  “Then that’s where I want them kept. Separately. And incommunicado.”

  Bennett’s head canted judgmentally. “Don’t they get a lawyer?”

  “They are not under arrest, Captain. They are just being held at the disposal of the Judge Advocate until we get some answers. So, for now, they don’t see anybody, they don’t talk to anybody, including each other. If and when we determine grounds for an arrest and charge, they’ll get their lawyer.”

  Harry checked that item off the list he’d made in his notebook. “Those gun films of theirs — get them over to the JAG’s in London, ASAP, and have them delivered to Colonel Ryan’s office. He’ll keep them under lock and key. Colonel Ryan’ll also find a place for you to deliver the plane. And I want pictures of this place, every inch. Nothing disturbed until the lab crews are finished, and that includes the body in the bedroom. Until then, tell Captain Ottinger to keep this area sealed off. And I’ll need the 66-1’s on Markham and Anderson and something about what their mission was today. Better get me O’Connell’s file, too. Captain, are you going to remember all this?”

  Bennett gave a sullen nod and positioned himself at one of the jeep wireless sets.

  Harry loosened his tie. The day was getting quite warm. He thought about the cool interior of the cottage, but then remembered the corpse in the back room.

  “I’ve got some chores for you, too, Joe.” he said, turning to Ryan. “I want a complete autopsy on O’Connell, and I want a mechanic to go over that Thunderbird. I don’t want some snot defense counsel trying to make out it just got tired and fell down.”

  “Got it, Harry. Faw down. Go boom. Right. And Harry — it’s a Thunderbolt.”

  Harry took a deep breath. “Now, let me talk to this old guy.”

  Ottinger had taken a chair from the cottage for Mrs. Gresham and settled her in the shade of a tree. The corps-man brought over another blanket from his medical van. Ottinger took the blanket and laid it over her lap. The old woman still shivered.

  “Where’s the husband?” Harry called.

  The corpsman pointed. “Think he’s after his sheep.”

  Harry found the old man over the next rise, pushing the herd back toward the cottage with his crook. Harry took a moment, steeling himself. He’d managed to keep the war at arm’s length. Bodies pulled out of collapsed buildings, rescue workers digging through the rubble, they were only occasional sights and then seen only from a distance. The devastated cottage, the angry old man, and his quaking wife had pushed Harry’s nose right up against it.

  “Mr. Gresham?”

  “’Aven’t seen ’at damn dog o’ mine, ’ave ya?”

  Harry thought back to the bloody thing under the tarpaulin in the garden. “No, Mr. Gresham.”

  “Always off somewheres ’e is, doin’ everythin’ but ’is job.”

  “I thought we could have that talk now.”

  “Which talk is ’at?”

  “About what happened.”

  “What ’appens to us, now? Me ’n’ Molly?”

  “You’ll be taken care of. We’re going to prepare a place for you to stay in London.”

  Gresham waved his staff at the flock. “’N’ them? What’s gonna — ”

  “It’ll all be taken care o
f, Mr. Gresham.”

  “Why can’t we just stay — ”

  “We’ll need you in London. For the investigation. Besides, we’ll be better able to look after you two there.”

  “You mean protect me?” The old man laughed.

  Chapter Three – Deus Vult

  I’m told that when the Donophan Airfield Military Police received their orders to put Markham and Anderson in custody, they found Markham stretched out on the cot in his tent. The major lay there with a cigarette smoldering in his fingers, still wearing his sweat-stained flight coveralls though it’d been nearly five hours since he’d returned from the morning’s mission. He seemed — so I was told — as if he’d been waiting all that time for this moment.

  Anderson was with the MP’s. They’d found him first, in what was left of the Officers Club. Freshly showered and in clean khakis, an uncharacteristically somber Anderson was treating himself to a solitary lunch of a sandwich and a pint as he potted about the scarred club snooker table. A near miss during the German raid a week earlier had left the Officers Club missing two walls, leaving it more a lean-to than a cozy clapboard cubby, and had cost the snooker table a leg, since replaced with a pile of wobbling bricks.

  When the lieutenant heading up the detachment of MP’s broke the news to Anderson, the latter — one of those undersized, volatile sorts oft described as “scrappy” — exploded. Anderson declared the situation “a pile o’ crap from those brass asses in London!” then apologized for taking it out on the lieutenant who he realized was simply carrying out an order. “Let’s go see what the Boss has to say,” he declared, and he led them across the field to Major Markham’s tent.

  The flustered lieutenant stood in the open flap of Markham’s tent, unsure how to begin. Markham swung his feet to the ground, and gave him a smile described to me as “forgiving.”

  “I know, Sandy,” he said.

  Anderson instantly began fulminating once again about the situation, but Markham tiredly raised a hand. “J.J., please; you’re giving me a headache.” That was all it took from Markham to silence the steaming Anderson. Markham stubbed his cigarette out on the frame of his cot as the lieutenant fumbled his way through the announcement that the major was to consider himself in custody and so on and so forth. Markham nodded along, as if agreeing to the particulars of a marketing list. When the lieutenant was finished, Markham was holding out his sidearm.