Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy Read online

  Harry started to unbutton his jacket, then stopped and listened. He could hear Nagel still poking around in the intercom. “I’m ready for that call to Colonel Ryan now, Corporal, as in now!”

  He had just finished his morning ritual of sleeve — rolling and tie-loosening when he picked up the phone to talk to Joe Ryan.

  “Harry?”

  “Hold on a second, Joe. Nagel! Are you still playing with that thing?”

  Harry heard the screwdriver drop.

  “Go get Maintenance to fix it, Nagel. Don’t use the phone. Go get them! Now!” When Harry heard the outer door close, he turned back to the phone. “Sorry, Joe. G’ahead.”

  “Ricks and Grassi there yet?”

  At Grassi’s name, Harry winced. “Grassi?”

  “Sorry, Harry, but everybody’s already screaming about taking on your caseload. How do I tell them that, on top of that, they get stuck with Grassi? I don’t want to risk somebody getting mad enough to take a squawk over my head. Not on this case.”

  “Grassi, Joe?”

  “Look, I’m no fan of his either. In fact, I think the little pain is a Red. If I could find a way to sideline him that didn’t draw more attention than it threw off, I’d do it. But listen to me, Harry: You make sure Grassi keeps that yap of his shut. You make sure!”

  Ryan was being more than routinely emphatic and they knew each other too well for Harry not to see it as a sign. “Something’s happened.”

  Ryan groaned. “Some newshound’s been snooping around up at Wing.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “No, I’m not sure. I just know some guy flashing a press pass has been fishing around. The CID boys are checking him out now.”

  “Did he know anything?”

  “He obviously knows something. If he does, what I don’t want is him finding out any more than he already knows. And that won’t exactly take too much effort on his part. It’s all over Wing.”

  “I like your idea of keeping a secret.”

  “Don’t you start. I’ve been getting it from Halverson since sunup. What does he want from me? Between Ottinger’s crew, those mopes out at Donophan, the MP’s, Scotland Yard, Halverson’s own staff...” Ryan sighed. “Christmas, I’m surprised the story’s not on the front page of every rag on Fleet Street by now!”

  “It’s still early in the day.”

  “That’s not funny, Harry.”

  “If this gets out and we get caught trying to hold a lid on it, we’re going to look pretty — ”

  “I know, I know I’m supposed to go over to the PRO’s and help draft some kind of statement we can shovel to the press, something for ’em to chew on for a bit. Halverson’s going to contact Whitehall and see if we can’t get them to go to this bozo’s editor and whisper ‘national security’ and ‘official secrets’ in his ear. And, speaking of cross-cultural diplomacy, I want you to go to dinner with me tonight.”

  “That doesn’t sound so diplomatic. It doesn’t even sound romantic.”

  “I’m supposed to ‘entertain’ some Lord and Lady Whosis. That’s at the request of the people up top which makes it more than a request. I’ll be damned if I’m spending the night with a pair of rigor mortises by myself.”

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Harry said. “Busy, busy — ”

  “Harry-boy,” and there was that annoying brogue, “did this colonel give the major the impression he was asking?”

  Now it was Harry’s turn to sigh. “What time?”

  “I’ll pick you up at 1700. Try to look nice. No embarrassing stains. Next topic: You get what you asked for from Bennett?”

  Harry fingered the captain’s note:

  Major Voss —

  H/w 66-1’s on all concerned incl. 2 KIA’s and mission profile.

  — Bennett

  Harry wondered who the additional KIA’s were.

  “I’ve got those files. I’ll go over them, then brief Ricks and Grassi before I go to G-2. I need to talk to somebody over there about their debriefing statements, see what else they can tell me about these three guys and their mission. What about those gun films?”

  “Anderson’s is in my safe. I never got Markham’s.”

  Harry’s fingers moved to the phone message from the mysterious Captain Dell at G-2. “I’ll find out about that.” They rang off and Harry started to thumb through the six files. In addition to the mission profile, there was one for Markham, one for Anderson, another for O’Connell, and then two more presumably for the Killed In Actions: two lieutenants named Jacobs and McLagen.

  According to the mission profile, these five pilots from the 351st Fighter Group had mounted a raid against a fuel depot somewhere in Belgium the previous morning. The attack force had consisted of two sections: Anderson and O’Connell comprised the section code-named Angel Blue, and Markham led the two KIA’s in Angel Red.

  There was a knock at the outside door, followed by the entrance of a crisp-looking Ricks and a battered-but-unbowed Grassi. Setting the files aside, Harry leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands over the bulge of his belly, and glowered at them over the tops of his glasses. “You gentlemen are late.”

  “Yessir, my fault, sir,” Grassi replied. “I overslept, sir, and when Captain Ricks came looking for me, I — ”

  “You get that shiner oversleeping?”

  “Slipped in the shower, sir,” Grassi said blithely.

  “Uh-huh.” Harry nodded. “Do you think you could manage not to slip in the shower while you’re assigned to me?

  “Do my best, sir.”

  They dragged a pair of chairs into the office and made themselves as comfortable as the cramped quarters allowed. Before they could get down to business, however, Nagel clomped back into the outer office.

  “Major? Maintenance won’t be able to get somebody up here till — Oh! These must be your fellas!”

  “Must be, Nagel. Go on down to the canteen and see about some coffee and doughnuts for everybody.” Harry felt that was a complex enough assignment to keep Nagel out of the office for a good half hour.

  Grassi clucked his tongue after Nagel left. “Regular mastermind you got yourself — ” The reprimanding look from Harry silenced him abruptly. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Lieutenant, you haven’t been in this office five minutes and I’m already tired of hearing you say you’re sorry. I’ve got a case, a priority, and I need footmen. Good ones. Grassi, I didn’t pick you, but I’ve got you and I’m not going to have any more problems with you. Am I?”

  Grassi smiled innocently “Why should there be any — ”

  “Because if I do have one, it’ll be the last one I have. Understand?”

  Harry told them as little as they needed to know about the job. Major Markham and Captain Anderson might be involved in the death of Lieutenant O’Connell. He said nothing about the attack on the Greshams. He needed Ricks and Grassi to go out to Donophan, talk to any of the men there who knew the men involved, and work up some sort of character profile. It was swot work and Grassi sighed, anticipating the boredom of it all, but Harry lectured on about how personnel files usually only told half the story and so on and so forth.

  Harry watched them scribble away on their foolscap pads. Ironically, the notepad of the immaculate Ricks was a mess of hasty scribbles, with arrows darting here and there, margins jammed with afterthoughts, while the rumpled Grassi wrote in a clear, bold script. But then, that was the thorough Ricks, a seine scooping up everything, ignoring nothing; Grassi was a killer, interested only in the jugular.

  “Some of these Donophan people may still be in the hospital,” Harry continued. “I understand the field got nailed pretty bad a couple of weeks ago. Also check into any civilian contacts — ”

  “Girlfriends?” Grassi’s eyebrows rose hopefully. “Whoever you can find.” Harry kept his tone businesslike. “And leave whoever is in command out there to me.”

  “Keeping the choice bits for yourself, eh, Boss?” Grassi said.

  Harry rubbed a begi
nning throb in his head. Joe Ryan was going to owe him big for Grassi. “Now here’s the big point. The big point, as in you mess up here and you explain it to Colonel Ryan. While you are conducting this investigation, you will say as little — correction — you will say nothing about this case to anybody. Other than the questions you ask, you explain nothing to the people you interview, you say nothing to other members of the JAG staff, nothing to girlfriends, nothing in letters home, nothing to nobody! This will be a mistake ‘I’m sorry’ won’t cover.”

  Grassi nodded without great concern, either not understanding or not caring about the direct reference.

  “Markham and Anderson — who’s their counsel?” Ricks asked.

  Harry shuffled the papers on his desk. “No formal charges have been filed yet.”

  “Does that mean they have no counsel?”

  “Right now, their status is that they’re confined to quarters pending the results of this investigation. They’ll have plenty of time to establish a defense in conjunction with counsel once charges have been preferred.”

  Ricks was obviously unhappy with the response. Nonetheless, he did not question his superior.

  The look on Ricks’s face provoked a twinge of guilt in Harry, but he comforted himself with the thought that while some of his tactics were, as they said back home, “dirty pool,” he was still within the legal framework of military law What he could not find comfort for was the conspiratorial wink Grassi flashed him with his good eye. The idea that he and Grassi had some common ethic — or lack thereof — chilled him.

  “All right,” Harry concluded. “I’m hoping we’ll have the ballistics and autopsy prelim by tomorrow and then we can start putting it all together. We’ll touch base tomorrow morning first thing. OK, gentlemen, you’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  Ricks left, but Grassi lingered in the doorway. “Hey, Boss, did I mention how much I like your wallpaper?”

  “Good-bye, Lieutenant.”

  Then Grassi was gone, and Nagel was back with a dangerously overloaded tray of doughnuts and coffee.

  “Where’d they go?” Nagel asked. He seemed offended. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  Harry grabbed coffee and a doughnut, then waved Nagel away. He soon heard Nagel in the outer office renewing his operations with the screwdriver. “Will you leave that thing alone! Call the orderly room at my BOQ and have them send someone up to my quarters. I need my Class A’s cleaned, pressed, and returned no later than 1600 hours. And when Maintenance comes up to fix your box, would you kindly point out to them that this office was supposed to have been painted six weeks ago!”

  Harry calmed himself with a bite of his doughnut, brushed the crumbs off the desk, and turned to the stack of files. He sifted through the folders until he found the mission profile. There were several maps in the file: one covering southern England and the northern France/ Belgium area; a detail map of central Belgium; a more detailed map of the area between Ghent and Brussels. The maps were crossed with red lines marking flight paths. At intervals along the lines were four-digit numbers: military times signifying the aircraft being at specific points at specific times. Harry searched his memory for anything about Belgium: All he came up with was that it was where Brussels sprouts had originated. He spread the maps along the head of his desk for easy reference, then turned back to the mission profile.

  Angel Blue, consisting of Anderson and O’Connell, and Angel Red, with Markham leading Jacobs and McLagen, had been scheduled to leave Donophan Airfield, located down in Sussex, at 0700 hours with Blue in the lead. Keeping as close to the ground as possible to avoid German radar detection, the five planes were to have followed a southeasterly course across the Channel, making landfall on the French coast just south of Boulogne-sur-Mer. They were to have continued on about twenty-five kilometers inland before heading northeast on a course taking them straight on to their target. They would have crossed the Belgian border just north of Tourcoing, dropped their auxiliary fuel tanks a few kilometers short of the target, then closed for the attack. Angel Blue would have pressed in first with Red flying top cover, then they would have reversed positions.

  Their target was a fuel depot at the Belgian town of Helsvagen, which sat about thirty kilometers southwest of Ghent; seventy kilometers northwest of Brussels and its renowned sprouts. Helsvagen was a pinpoint so small it appeared only on the two detail maps.

  The withdrawal route was a mirror of the attack path. Both sections would leave the target area on a northwesterly course, turning southwest at another pinpoint — Roselare — and head back across France. They’d hit the French coast just south of Dunkirk and head home. The whole mission was to have taken no more than an hour.

  As Harry studied the plan and maps and course lines, it occurred to him that all this flying about willy-nilly seemed somewhat extraneous considering the target lay a little over 280 kilometers practically due east of Donophan. He pondered the arcane and often pointlessly complex workings of the military mind.

  Something about the course lines tugged at him, and was still nagging at him when the phone rang. It rang quite a few times before he remembered that Nagel was off on his assigned scavenger hunt. Harry scooped the phone out of its cradle. “Voss.”

  “Major Voss?” The voice was young. “This is Captain James Dell. I called earlier — ”

  “Oh, right, right. What can I do for you, Captain?”

  “Captain Bennett from Wing said you’d want to talk to me. I’m the G-2 liaison and briefing officer for the 351st. I debriefed Major Markham and Captain Anderson yesterday.”

  “Ah! I was coming over to your offices in a bit. We can talk then.”

  “Major Van Damm — my CO — he thought maybe it’d be better if I came over there. I have those debriefing reports. They just finished typing them up this morning. I understand you want those.”

  “I’d appreciate that, Captain, thank you. I want to talk to your Major Van Damm, first. Meet me in my office in forty-five minutes?”

  “If you’re going to talk to Major Van Damm, you better figure on an hour or so, Major. Trust me.”

  Harry smiled. “All right, Captain. See you in an hour.” Harry set the phone in its cradle and turned back to the maps. Where was the Gresham cottage? He drew out his notes from the day before, made some rough calculations, and penciled in a small X on the large map; a rough approximate of the coastal crash site. Even allowing for his not being a navigator of any sort, it was obvious that neither of the planned flight paths — the one out of England from Donophan or the one back — came anywhere near Charlie Gresham’s cottage in East Sussex.

  By the time Harry was trundling out of the Annex, he was facing another problem, although this was one of which he was still unaware. That “newshound” Ryan had referred to had picked up enough of a scent to follow him to his meeting with G-2.

  That other problem for poor old Harry was me.

  Chapter Four – Ex Cathedra

  Within hours of the death of Dennis O’Connell, the “newshounds” — as Joe Ryan disdainfully described them — had sensed something was amiss. The American press officers had informed the members of the press pools that the affair in East Sussex was simply the routine recovery of a downed American pilot. But that news didn’t fit with the glum faces behind the podia, and the “No comment”s that stifled any query for further information. But what intrigued the hounds most was the question of what sort of routine recovery operation required an impenetrable cordon of American and British troops round the crash site, the involvement of the Judge Advocate, Provost Marshal, and forensic teams from Scotland Yard, and the entire staff of the 188th Combat Wing (the unit that incorporated the late Dennis O’Connell’s 351st Fighter Group) scurrying about like Charlie Gresham’s stampeded sheep. And to any query in that regard came yet another “No comment.”

  For a journalist, that kind of evasion was a waving red flag in front of a bull. In short order, the hounds were sniffing about trying to find a trai
l that would lead them to at least some part of the truth of the events inside that cordon in East Sussex. In all that trolling, stalking, and sniffing, the paths of Harry Voss and myself first crossed.

  The day following young O’Connell’s death — 16 August — my colleagues and I were already selecting our perches. Some planted themselves at 188th Combat Wing Headquarters, some in Chillingham where they could eye Donophan Airfield, others at Scotland Yard. I was among a group that posted themselves outside Rosewood Court, home of the Judge Advocate’s office; a likely station considering that whatever had occurred the previous day seemed to have involved possible criminal action by American military personnel.

  Many of us who had even occasionally covered the goings-on of the Yanks in London had at least a passing acquaintance with Joe Ryan. That was enough to know that the dark glower and strident jogs across the cobbles we witnessed were a noteworthy change from his usual grin-and-wave bonhomie. Then there were the two junior officers (Ricks and Grassi, I later learned, the latter sporting a face like a bruised peach) climbing into a jeep and roaring out of the Court with a serious urgency. We on station across from the gate sensed that all that seriousness and urgency had something to do with whatever was brewing, and that was enough to send my colleagues after them on their respective two good legs.

  Which was what held me to the Court; I didn’t have two good legs. I stood there, cursing the awkwardness of the wooden contraption that now served as a limb. I was still cursing it when Harry Voss strode out the Court gate and headed toward the complex in Grosvenor Square, which housed the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force. As a major from the JAG’s offices, Harry seemed of sufficient rank for me to reasonably suspicion him as a part of whatever was stirring all the rumble. But perhaps what made him an even more attractive lead to me was that even I could keep up with that waddling trudge of his: I followed Harry because I could.

  I trailed him as far as the entrance to the collection of buildings serving the SHAEF staff Standing at a discreet distance, so as not to alarm the sentries, I saw him pass through the entrance that would take him down into the shadowy realm of the Intelligence boffins, what the American military nomenclature designated as “G-2” I was now reasonably certain that I was on to something, and poor old Harry had — for the moment — become my unwitting guide.