‘I just worry about you sometimes, Brandon.’
‘I’m fine, Skipper. And right now what I’d really love more than anything would be to finish this fucking case.’ Condley stood, shaking the general’s hand. ‘I’m out of here in a day or two. Maybe you can have Dick Tracy drive the sanitised version of these reports over to CILHI?’
‘Easy to do,’ said Duncan, standing also and walking with Condley toward the house.
‘Nice fellow,’ said Condley.
‘He doesn’t think you’re very nice.’
‘Well, he’s right,’ shrugged Condley as Duncan slid open the glass doors and walked into his living room. ‘I mean, he’s nice and I’m not.’
‘Sorry if I pushed too far, Brandon. I care about you.’
‘You can say anything you want. You’re closer than family, you know. We bled together. Not many people can say that.’
‘Deville’s still alive.’ The general said it with such simple conviction that Condley knew it must be true. ‘I don’t know where he is. There’s not a trace of him anywhere. But he’s too smart to be dead.’
‘I’m going to find him.’
‘I know you are,’ said Duncan.
‘And then I’m probably going to kill him. If I get the chance, anyway.’
‘I know you will,’ said the general again. ‘But I have this fucking job, Brandon. Congress can call me to testify at any time. The President can summon me to the White House. The Washington Post can call me in the middle of the night with a series of questions. And 60 Minutes can show up on my doorstep with the cameras rolling. Do you get the point?’
‘Not really,’ said Condley, standing in the front hallway and waiting for Maria to join him from the kitchen.
‘You’re an employee of the United States government. And you’ve been assisted by government officials’ – Duncan cleared his throat, holding Condley’s eyes in his own like a vise –‘including a certain general officer in the United States Marine Corps, although there’s no official record of that at the moment. And it would definitely be the position of the United States government that if this individual were locatable and still alive, he should be turned over to the custody of the appropriate federal agency, where he might be interrogated, tried in a court of law, and provided all the normal protections of the Constitution of the United States of America.’
‘And made a fucking media hero along the way,’ said Condley, not hiding his bitterness.
‘Probably.’
‘With the movie of his life story on HBO.’
Maria and Maureen were in the hallway now, walking toward them with a curious, shared amusement.
‘Highly likely.’
‘So what’s your point, Skipper?’ Condley spat the words out, defiantly holding the general’s gaze.
‘My point?’ asked Duncan, glancing for a moment at the two women who had now joined them. ‘My point is, I’d love to see you, shall we say, succeed. Just don’t tell me about it until after I retire.’
Chapter Twenty
Hanson Muir seemed almost uncontrollably happy as Condley sauntered into his office the next morning. He put a ham-hock fist into the air when he saw his grizzled, craggy partner, a gesture of glorious victory, and nearly jumped out of his chair in his enthusiasm.
‘I’ve been looking for you, Brandon!’
‘What the hell are you doing wearing a tie?’ asked Condley as he stepped inside Muir’s office.
Muir looked down at the huge, flowery tie that hung from his neck and rested awkwardly on his stomach, having forgotten in all his excitement that he’d dressed up that morning. ‘Well, it’s been years since I’ve worn one.’
‘And?’
‘And I thought it would be fun. What’s the matter with that?’
‘A tie in Hawaii? You look very, very dumb.’
Hanson Muir fingered his tie tentatively. ‘I rather liked it. And you’re not the person I’d be going to for advice on how to dress, anyway. Brandon, enough of this. I’ve got incredible news.’
‘So do I,’ said Condley, dumping a pile of old newspapers off one of Muir’s chairs and taking a seat. ‘I may have a breakthrough.’
‘Well, I’m sure I do,’ said Muir. He picked up a stack of photocopied pages from his desk and held them in front of Condley’s face. ‘Would you believe we’re going to Australia?’
‘Try Russia,’ countered Condley. ‘I’ve got a full report coming over to us right now.’
‘What’s in Russia? What are you talking about?’ Muir seemed suddenly unsure of his own information.
Condley leaned back in his chair, nodding toward Muir’s stack of papers. ‘No, you first.’
‘All right,’ said Muir. He brightened, grinning conspiratorially. ‘I’m talking about the young gentleman in the other room.’
‘You have a visitor?’
‘On the gurney. In the poncho, with his hand cut off by some poor sick psychotic. Our little friend from Ninh Phuoc.’ Muir stroked his beard, appearing unusually professorial. ‘I decided to try a different theory. Rather than continuing to focus on the files of American servicemen who never came home, which was getting us exactly nowhere, I decided to go back into the news accounts of Viet Nam at the time our boy was murdered. Not only the battles, but everything that came out of the place. They put a researcher on it for us in Washington. She just spent her entire Christmas holiday split between the Pentagon and the Library of Congress, going through the archives of every newspaper we could think of, reading all the little items that never made it to the front page, anytime the word Viet Nam popped up. Suffice it to say, she’s become quite an expert on Viet Nam in the year 1971. Not to mention very bitter toward me for ruining her holiday.’
‘So,’ said Condley, moving his hands in circles to urge Muir forward. ‘After all that, you ended up in Australia?’
‘Yes!’ said Muir, his face animated with discovery. He held up a page, as if presenting evidence. ‘First she found a small item in the old Pacific Stars and Stripes.’ Now he held up another. ‘That led her to The Bangkok Post, which had printed another little story.’ And now he held up perhaps a dozen pages. ‘Which led us to a flurry of small stories in the Australian press that went on for a couple of weeks, before the issue finally died its own death, if you’ll forgive the pun. I think we have our man, Brandon.’
‘Let me see what you’ve got.’
‘It’s a simple story,’ said Muir, enjoying the mystery he had provoked. ‘His name is Mathew Larkin. Or was. He was a photographer based in Sai Gon who worked as a stringer for several smaller Australian papers. Every now and then he sold some photos to the wire services, especially AP and UPI. By all accounts a bit of a wild man. He left Sai Gon in July 1971, after telling a few associates that he’d made secret contact with the VC and was going to do an exclusive photo shoot with some of their units in action up in I Corps. All very hush-hush. The VC apparently arranged to take him out of the city in the middle of the night, on his way to destinations unknown, and he was never heard from again. When he wasn’t back within a month, people started worrying, hence the newspaper stories. When he hadn’t shown up by Christmas, it was assumed he’d died, and everybody went about their usual business. I mean, he was crazy, he took a big risk, and he lost, that’s basically the way they played it in the papers. The VC never acknowledged anything, not even that he’d been with them. That was their policy, anyway. To speak about the matter would have opened them up to questions about a whole array of issues, including who their contacts were inside Sai Gon. And that was that.’
‘A little pimple on the ass of a very long war,’ grunted Condley.
Muir held up a copy of a photograph of the long-departed Mathew Larkin. ‘Look like anyone else you know?’
‘That’s Deville. That’s our boy,’ said Condley with a flat certainty, looking at the photo. ‘It’s him.’
‘No, actually, it’s not. Larkin’s a little blonder, a little shorter,’ said Muir. ‘But g
ood enough for a black and white passport photo, if Deville wanted to use it to flee the country, no? I mean, how close are they going to look at someone’s passport when he’s boarding a plane at Tan Son Nhat airport in the middle of a war?’
‘Bold stroke,’ said Condley grudgingly, his skin tingling with goose bumps as he contemplated the photo and thought of Deville. ‘If nothing else I’ll give him credit for guts. Some photographer who looks like his little brother shows up in the jungle, and he knows if he’s ever going to get out of Viet Nam he needs to move fast, kill this guy and steal his identity. And he does it. The man is an evil genius.’
‘Indeed,’ agreed Muir. ‘As for Larkin, he apparently grew up in western Australia, which explains the somewhat primitive fillings in his teeth. I’ve been trying to find out exactly where, so we can do a positive ID on him.’
‘Can’t you just send for his files?’
Muir shook his head slowly, folding his arms over his chest. ‘This isn’t like calling the Department of Defense and giving them a name so they can trace down a man’s files, Brandon. There aren’t any centralised medical records in Australia. Mathew Larkin was never, to our best knowledge, in the Australian military. We’ve got to find out where he lived, and if we’re lucky we’ll either find his family or a medical facility that for some reason still might have his dental records. At this point, if there aren’t any medical records available, we may have to try a DNA match with family members. If there still are family members.’
‘It seems pretty obvious he’s the guy.’
‘That’s not good enough,’ said Muir. ‘It’s “pretty obvious” Pepper was Pepper, too.’ He raised a finger into the air as if lecturing an elementary classroom. ‘“Pretty obvious” allows us to proceed forward, so that we might become, quote, “absolutely positive.”’
‘Fuck it, he’s dead,’ grunted Condley. ‘Let the Aussies figure it out.’
‘Brandon, you’re hopeless.’ Muir picked up a sealed manila envelope from his desk, holding it out for Condley. ‘By the way, another fellow wearing a tie dropped in this morning, leaving this for you.’ Muir read from a business card. ‘Special Agent Combs?’
‘Dick Tracy,’ laughed Condley.
‘He seemed very agitated that you weren’t here yet. In fact, he said some things about you that weren’t very nice.’
‘Yeah, but they were probably true.’
Muir thought about that and shrugged. ‘You’re right. They were.’
‘He wasn’t supposed to give that to anyone but me.’
‘Yes,’ said Muir, reading now from the labeling on the envelope. ‘In fact it does say, Eyes Only Brandon Condley, on the envelope.’
‘I suppose I could get him fired for that. But he already knows I’m an asshole, so why bother?’
‘Strange that he would give it to me,’ mused Muir. ‘But I guess I look trustworthy.’
‘It must have been the tie.’
‘Anyway, I didn’t open it.’ Muir handed the envelope to Condley, slowly breaking into a smile. ‘Anything good inside?’
‘Dirty pictures,’ said Condley, breaking the seal of the envelope with a pen. ‘They’ve been following you and your wife.’ The envelope was open now. Condley pulled out the pages General Duncan had sent him and quickly examined them. Ever cautious in such matters, the general had printed them out on plain white paper, without a letterhead or other notations that might be easily traceable. The information that had been in the classified documents was now carefully sanitised to remove notations that were either too sensitive regarding methods or too specific regarding the identities of informants inside Russia. But all the essentials remained, including the name and address of the mysterious Anatolie Petrushinsky.
‘Spot on!’ said Condley, in a rare moment of true enthusiasm.
‘The Russia thing?’
‘We’ve got a contact point inside Russia who apparently used to operate as an adviser in the Que Son Mountains. There’s a strong chance he would have known Salt and Pepper both. He may be the only hope we have of actually putting a trail on Deville.’
‘A Russian in the Que Son Mountains?’
‘Looks like.’
‘Well,’ said Muir in his booming voice. ‘We should be able to clear this up pretty quickly.’
‘Except that he apparently won’t talk, and the Russian government isn’t exactly excited about making him. In fact, the more we pressure him or them, the more likely he’s going to disappear. So the only hope is to kind of swoop in on him and catch him off balance.’
‘Brandon,’ sighed Hanson Muir. ‘Let me remind you that our job is to find bones and identify them. Bones. On old battlefields. Not to ambush live Russians in Moscow or live Devilles wherever he may be.’
‘We’re trying to identify remains, Professor. Anatolie Petrushinsky may hold definitive information regarding the activities of what’s-his-name, the guy whose skull I own—’
‘Rent,’ corrected Professor Muir.
‘Own,’ emphasised Condley. ‘Unless the government decides to pay me back, I’m keeping that bad boy hostage.’
‘Oh, whatever,’ said Muir, knowing where Condley was taking this line of reasoning. ‘Alphonse no-middle-name Smith.’
‘Exactly. Petrushinsky might even be able to confirm Smith’s activities, as well as possibly being able to tell us something about these other two. So we go see him.’
‘You don’t need me in Moscow. You go. After you come with me to Australia.’
‘Well, I don’t want you in Moscow, but why do you need me in Australia?’
‘I’m not the man to go thousands of miles away and interview live people by myself. I lack the finesse. You said it yourself. I’m better when they’re dead. Besides,’ Muir said invitingly, ‘if Matt Larkin was from Australia, it makes sense that Deville may have headed into Australia when he escaped from Viet Nam.’
Condley’s eyes lit up immediately. ‘OK, I’ll go.’
‘And I don’t want you to be searching for Deville by yourself. Anywhere you go where Deville might be, I go too, Brandon.’
‘That could seriously cramp my style, Professor. And it could also scare the shit out of you.’
‘You’re not going to kill that man, unless it’s in self-defense.’ Muir said it flatly, but with a powerful conviction that surprised Condley.
‘What difference does it make?’
‘Murder is not in your job description.’
Condley sighed, shaking his head and staring at the pictures on Muir’s wall for several seconds. All the people in the pictures were happy. Muir’s life, in fact, was happy. He had immeasurable respect for the dead but he had never heard the actual, horrible sounds of death, the gurgling of lungs filling up with blood, the crack and whump of combat, the running of a shower in an upstairs bathroom where a woman was lying with her limbs in utter disarray, her throat cut with such ferocity that only a few threads of skin on the back of her neck kept her from having been decapitated. Death came with an odd purity to the gentle Professor Muir, in bleached bones that awaited identification and after that a hero’s burial, replete with a spotlessly clean flag.
‘I’m not going to murder him, Professor.’
‘Do I have your word on that?’
‘I might execute him, if I get a clean shot. But that’s different.’
‘I’m not going to let you do either. Because there’s another reason, Brandon, one that transcends your anger and your thirst for revenge. Wouldn’t you like to interrogate this man? Don’t you want to know how he escaped from the American military, how he made contact with the enemy, and what he did for the other side? Not to mention how he again escaped from them, assuming that he did? Or maybe they even helped him kill Larkin, what do you think of that? And maybe he still works for them. Whatever the truth is, doesn’t history deserve to know?’
‘He killed two of my Marines. He betrayed everything I and a lot of others believed in, at a time when we were being humiliated eve
n in our own country for believing in anything. History is for guys like you, Professor. I want my moment. One on one. Me and him. And I don’t give a rat’s ass about preserving his options to be interviewed in the media and sell his memoirs. I couldn’t care less about that.’
‘Well, a lot of other people will. Sure, a few of the media divas will try to make him a hero. But this is a side of the war we know nothing about. I for one would like to know the entire story.’
‘That’s because you’re a typical American pervert, wanting to feed off the stories that come in on CNN so you think you’re really alive.’
Muir stiffened, a rare moment of rebuke. ‘That was gratuitous, Brandon. I’ve taken my risks with you in some very nasty places.’
‘I’m sorry, Professor, you’re right about that.’ Condley broke from his semi-trance and stared at Muir. ‘This is a great argument we’re having, but aren’t we a little ahead of ourselves, anyway? First, we have to find him. And after that we have to, shall we say, cause him to be apprehended. And this is not a stupid man.’
‘Indeed, he’s not.’ Muir casually fingered some papers on his desk, thinking hard. ‘But why would this fellow in Moscow even consider talking to us?’
‘To me, that is,’ said Condley. ‘He’ll talk because Colonel Pham is going to help us.’
‘Colonel Pham?’ Muir seemed incredulous. ‘Why do you think Colonel Pham would – or even can – help us in Moscow?’
‘He lived in Moscow after the war,’ answered Condley. ‘I caught him talking Russian with one of his Interior Ministry pals one day. He seemed pretty fluent. When I asked him about it he told me he’d spent a few years there as a so-called “student” in the late seventies, and you don’t get sent there by Ha Noi unless you have some kind of pull in the Vietnamese government. He knows Moscow; he speaks Russian.’
‘That was more than twenty years ago. You saw how little power he has, just by watching him try to help us up in the Que Sons.’
Condley stroked his chin judiciously, his eyes faraway. ‘Maybe, maybe not. I thought that too, at the beginning of our trip. But did you see his smile when they stuck me for the five thousand dollars? The colonel knows how to play both sides. We have no idea what he was really doing with us in the Que Sons. It all could have been an act. He’s a very clever man.’
Lost Soldiers Page 23
