Word of Honor

by Nelson DeMille

  Brandt looked around, but the long flat road was deserted.

  Tyson said, “Look, Doc, everybody is a little kinky, but those people in the villages that we cordoned were in pain. Do you remember that woman who aborted after the National Police nearly drowned her in the well? And what was really disgusting was that you showed your corruption in front of the Vietnamese. It was one thing for us all to be crazy, but you compromised us and yourself with those people.”

  All Brandt could manage was, “Racist.”

  Tyson smiled. “I guess. And on the subject of morphine, I don’t mind that you gave me more than my share, but I’d like to know what happened to the stuff that was missing.”

  Brand said almost indistinctly, “Let me go.”

  “Yet, you were a good medic. You were no hero, but you were no coward, either. You knew your business. Lousy bedside manner, though. Those men who got hit were just meat to you. Just like the woman in the hammock with the electrode up her vagina. You are one of the least human beings I’ve ever come across. What do you do now? Orthopedic surgeon? Can I make any inferences from that? I guess not. That would be too psychoanalytical for me.”

  Brandt looked directly at Tyson for the first time. He said, “You never liked me from the beginning.”

  “I guess not.”

  “And I’ll tell you why. Because you didn’t like the competition. You liked being the honcho, the big college grad, with all your little adoring peons around you. I was an outsider, another college grad, and I had my own job separate from you and your lunatics. You all made such a thing about being infantrymen—First Cav troopers. What a laugh. If that was an elite unit, I shudder to think about the rest of the divisions.”

  Tyson looked into Brandt’s eyes. “You may be on to something there, Doc.”

  “You see, I thought about that while I was there. I had a functioning brain, unlike the rest of them. You fancied yourself a knight, a tall handsome chivalrous knight with forty armed warriors at your side. I was the wizard, you see, the healer, whose presence you had to suffer and who reminded you—and your men—of death. And I watched for eleven months as men got chewed up and never said a word. But back in the aid stations and the hospitals, where my people were, they could at least cry together over the carnage. While I was with you, I shut my mouth. You hated me because the men looked up to me. But I wouldn’t have competed for the approval of that bunch if they were the last human beings—or whatever they were—on the face of the earth.”

  Tyson nodded. “Doc, I’d be a liar if I said you were all wrong. But that doesn’t change what you did or what you were. Or what I did or what I was, for that matter. But I did my duty up until that day. There’s no stigma attached to me before February 15.”

  “You did your duty after you defined it for yourself. There were not many officers who would have reacted like you did to the . . . the cordon incident. That was your white knight complex. You liked being morally superior to everyone. I saw you once, by the way, coming out of a whorehouse in An Khe.”

  “How did you know it was a whorehouse?”

  “Well,” said Steven Brandt, “the past is the past, and we shouldn’t stand here in the cold and talk about things that happened nearly two decades ago.”

  “No, and we shouldn’t talk about them tomorrow either.”

  Brandt said nothing.

  Tyson said, “We are all flawed, Dr. Brandt.”

  Brandt said, “I’d like to go.”

  “In a minute, Doc. I’m still the warrior, and you’re not in the best of physical shape, as far as I can see. I want to ask you one question while I have this opportunity. Why didn’t you report what happened at Miséricorde Hospital?”

  Brandt said, “Don’t you know?”

  “No. I thought about it. But I never understood why you, who had nothing to do with it, didn’t report it.”

  “Well, then, I’ll tell you. When I first realized you were actually going to cover up that massacre, I felt my fingers closing around your balls. And every morning I woke up with a smile, wondering if I should make that the day I gave them a yank. And every day that passed, without you making a report, I knew you were in deeper trouble. The first few days were a little edgy for me, because I thought you would finally come to your senses and beat me to it. I thought perhaps you’d made a secret report, and that we’d be taken into base camp one day for R and R and find ourselves under arrest. But I gambled and waited, and by the end of February, I was going to yank you by your nuts off your high horse. I was going to see you in jail and me back in Saigon spending the rest of my tour of duty with the JAG people at MAC-V headquarters. But then fate stepped in again at the Strawberry Patch.” Brandt shrugged and smiled. “So here we are.”

  Tyson stayed silent a long time, then said, “You could have still reported it and reported me. Men have been served charges in hospital beds before.”

  “Yes, but after that . . . the morphine . . . I was a little jumpy. I waited a week to see if we got a communication about your death. Then we got word that you were being sent to Japan and wouldn’t be back. I thought about it. I decided that you were bright enough to figure out what I’d done to you and bright enough to know you didn’t have a shred of evidence. So I considered us even. Or even enough for the time being.” He stared at Tyson a very long time, then said, “I came from a good family, like you did, and I was always told I was special, like you were. I developed a big ego, like yours. So, to have you throw me in a leech-infested rice paddy and humiliate me in front of all those people, then have to face them and you every day . . . and you wonder why I answered that locator ad? You find it hard to believe anyone can hate so charming a man as Ben Tyson. I assure you, I hate you.” Brandt’s eyes met Tyson’s. “I still have nightmares about those leeches. I wake up sometimes feeling them pulsating against my skin.”

  “Do you? I’d recommend my shrink, but he killed himself.”

  Brandt said, “Can I go now?”

  Tyson nodded. “Sure, Doc. But you have to remember one thing. Payback. Tomorrow won’t end this.”

  “Well, it might for ten to twenty years. Good night.” He took a tentative step, saw Tyson wasn’t going to stop him, and hurried off.

  Tyson continued on his way without looking back.

  CHAPTER

  46

  “Steven Brandt,” said Colonel Pierce, “you swear that the evidence you shall give in the case now in hearing shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.”

  “I do.”

  “Could you state your residence and occupation?”

  “I live in Boston, Massachusetts, and I am a medical doctor.”

  “Could you state your former grade, organization, and duties while you were a member of the armed forces serving in Vietnam?”

  “Yes, I was a specialist four, with the Fifteenth Medical Battalion, and I served as a combat medic with Alpha Company, Fifth Battalion of the Seventh Cavalry, First Air Cavalry Division.”

  Tyson looked at Brandt as the preliminary questions continued. Brandt was dressed in the expensive bad taste that seemed to be common in the medical profession. He wondered if they all bought their clothes from an AMA catalog.

  Tyson looked into the first pew and made eye contact with Marcy, who smiled somewhat enigmatically, he thought. They had been strange to each other for some weeks now, but there had been no open arguments. He had taken Corva’s advice and put the marriage on hold while the trial was on fast forward.

  As he scanned the pews, he observed that everyone who had come for act one had returned for act two. The weather was still nice, too, and that always brought people out, he thought.

  Brandt’s testimony began to move to more specific, though still peripheral, matters. Tyson turned his attention to the board. The combat veterans—Colonel Moore, Lieutenant Colonel McGregor, and Major Bauer—looked more relaxed with Brandt’s testimony than with Farley’s going on about gooks and human minesweepers and soldie
rs who took what they wanted. Of course, Brandt was saying similar things, but his choice of words was better.

  Tyson looked again at Pierce and Brandt and listened. Pierce was proceeding very slowly, very logically, and very cautiously, unlike he’d proceeded with Farley. Brandt was articulate and answered the questions well, as though he were used to this sort of thing, and Tyson suspected he’d probably been involved in some way in civil cases of compensation claims or medical malpractice. Tyson glanced at Corva, who was scribbling notes as he listened to Brandt and Pierce sing their duet. Corva hadn’t objected to anything so far, and there was little to object to, except that Pierce was referring to Brandt as “Doctor” in violation of a pretrial agreement. But Tyson thought Corva was smart not to draw attention to the point.

  Pierce said, “How far were you from the burial mound, Doctor?”

  “About two hundred meters.”

  “And you saw these people taking off their clothes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you observe any actions on the part of Lieutenant Tyson, Farley, Simcox, or Kelly that you would construe as threatening gestures toward these approximately ten civilians?”

  “Yes, though I couldn’t say with certainty who made the gestures. But there was some pushing of the civilians, rifles were pointed at them. And I saw one of the soldiers kick mud at them.”

  Tyson glanced out over the pews again. The spectators were attentive, but it was not the rapt attention that Farley’s testimony had engendered. Farley had laid the rough groundwork, now Pierce and Brandt were building on it, block by block, mortar and brick, until an unshakable structure would stand for Corva to try to take apart.

  Pierce asked, “Were you often called on to assist in these strip searches of civilians?”

  “Always. It was general policy. This type of search could only be done under the direction of an officer or senior NCO. They were to be conducted with as much tact as the situation allowed. It was my duty to perform the intrusion aspect of the search.”

  “What is the intrusion aspect?”

  “The intrusion into the anus and vagina. Enemy documents were sometimes rolled into an aluminum tube and transported in that manner.”

  “Based on past experience, do you believe that what you observed was a necessary or legitimate search?”

  “I don’t think so. It seemed to me to be nothing more than . . . how shall I put this . . . ? A quasi-sexual event.”

  Corva and Tyson simultaneously looked at each other. Corva said, “This guy has more balls than a bull.”

  Pierce glanced sharply at the defense table, then said, “I’d like to ask you now your opinion of the desecration of the dead bodies of the enemy soldiers who were wrapped for burial.”

  Corva stood. “Your honor, the defense objects.”

  Colonel Sproule turned toward Corva with the look of a man who was rudely interrupted while listening to something interesting. “What is the nature of your objection?”

  “Your honor, the defense fully understands that the prosecution is attempting to show a link between the alleged events at the burial mound and the alleged events later in the day. We have not objected to some of this testimony, but I think it has gone on long enough. It is, in fact, taking on a prurient aspect which might hold some interest to some people, but has little relevance to the case at hand.”

  Sproule thought about this a moment, then said to Pierce, “Colonel, we’ve spent nearly an hour at that burial mound listening to the testimony of a witness who was two hundred meters from the scene. Now, I will allow you to go on, but I expect, as I told you in an earlier session, that what you present has some relevance to the charges you have sworn to. Objection overruled.”

  Pierce nodded as though Colonel Sproule had made an interesting point, then turned around and continued the questioning of Brandt on the desecration of the bodies of the enemy soldiers.

  In excruciating detail, the first platoon of Alpha Company continued its patrol toward the village of An Ninh Ha and Miséricorde Hospital. Tyson’s own recollections of that rainy day coincided with Brandt’s, and he was surprised at how good a memory Brandt had. And when Brandt didn’t remember, he said so.

  Pierce said to Brandt, “Doctor, the events that I am about to question you on concern your platoon’s approach to this hospital. These events are discussed at some length in a book titled Hue: Death of a City, by the author Andrew Picard. Did you, in fact, supply any information for that book?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Have you read the book?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Generally speaking, how much of Mr. Picard’s reporting was based on information that you gave him?”

  “A good portion of his written account was based on my oral account to him, though I saw details and facts that I could not have given him.”

  “Such as?”

  “The names of some of the hospital staff. He told me that he had interviewed a survivor of the incident—a nun named Sister Teresa, whom he later credited in the book.”

  Pierce pursued the provenance of the story for a while, then asked, “As the platoon medic, what was your usual physical location in the platoon formation?”

  “Normally, on patrol, I traveled with what we called the platoon command group. This would consist of the platoon leader, one or two radio operators, and the medic. When the platoon halted for the night, the platoon sergeant would join us in the center of the defensive perimeter and form the command post.”

  “So you were usually close to the platoon leader, Lieutenant Tyson, day and night?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew him well?”

  “As well as you can know a man you spend ten months with, night and day. There was, of course, a barrier to any real intimacy due to the fact that he was an officer and I an enlisted man. But we did at times confide in each other.”

  “How would you describe your relationship with him?”

  Brandt turned and looked at Tyson. He gave Tyson a smile that Tyson and anyone who saw it would think idiotic.

  Brandt turned back to Pierce and said, “There were differences between us, but we generally respected each other. He often praised my work.”

  “Did you often praise his?”

  Brandt smiled again. “I was sometimes impressed with his ability to lead. He seemed a natural leader. I may have praised him on occasion.”

  Tyson listened to Pierce eliciting Brandt’s opinion of him, and Tyson was surprised at what a high opinion Specialist Four Brandt had of Lieutenant Tyson.

  Pierce went on in this vein for some time, and Tyson thought it was smart of Pierce to sandwich this personal element in between the burial mound incident and what was to come.

  Pierce said, “Doctor, one final question before our expected recess. As the platoon’s medic, did you feel that Lieutenant Tyson was adequately concerned with the mental and physical condition of his men?”

  Corva stood. “Objection, your honor. The witness has no psychiatric training, to the best of my knowledge, and I should point out that, at the time we are discussing, he was a twenty-three-year-old medical corpsman, not a middle-aged doctor.”

  “Objection sustained. Colonel Pierce, do you wish a recess at this time?”

  Pierce had no intention of breaking for lunch on that note. He replied, “I would like to rephrase the question, your honor.”

  “Please do.”

  Pierce turned to Brandt. “Doctor—”

  Again Corva was on his feet. “Objection, your honor.”

  “To what?”

  “Your honor, I didn’t mind when Colonel Pierce addressed the witness as ‘Doctor’ the first thirty or forty times. But now that he’s trying to elicit some sort of retrospective medical opinion, I think he’s trying to give that opinion more worth than it has by referring to the witness as ‘Doctor.’”

  Sproule thought a moment and said, “Objection sustained. Colonel Pierce, perhaps you’d like some time to rephrase y
our question. This court will recess until thirteen-thirty hours.”

  * * *

  In the BOQ, Tyson and Corva sat across from each other in the Swedish Modern armchairs, a light-wood coffee table between them. Corva had the Officers’ Club send over box lunches and explained to Tyson, “It’s on your bill. I gave them your number.”

  “Thanks.” Tyson added, “Short recess.”

  “Yes. Sproule could see that Brandt and Pierce will be at it for some time. I’ve seen testimony at courts-martial go until ten at night. No one has to worry about the jurors getting annoyed. Or overtime for the court reporter or guards.” Corva dug into a plate of cold pasta salad. He said, “Tell me all about the good doctor’s moral corruption. Was that the reason for the incident of the leeches in the rice paddy?”

  Tyson nodded. “Did you ever participate in any of those cordon operations with the Vietnamese National Police?”

  Corva nodded. “Just one. That was one too many.”

  “Right you are. My company did about four or five of them. Well, after we cordoned off the village before dawn, the National Police—the fucking Gestapo—would arrive in American choppers. Then they would go strutting in with their crisp uniforms to conduct search and interrogation operations. Is that the way they did it where you were?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “No Americans were allowed in the village. What went on between the police and the villagers was not for American eyes. But American officers could sometimes enter to discuss coordination with the Gestapo commander. I entered a few times. Brandt, as a medic, could get in, too.”

  Corva nodded. “He enjoyed himself, did he?”

  “Did he? He was in heaven. Talk about tactless strip searches. These police goons did some strip searches and intrusions that weren’t in any field manual I’ve ever seen. And, of course, there was the torture—the whippings, the water treatments. I myself was disgusted by what these sadists were doing in the guise of a counterinsurgency operation. Brandt, on the other hand, was ecstatic. It was strictly forbidden to take pictures, of course, but Brandt had a cozy relationship with these National Police pigs. On the particular operation that led to his leech bath, I saw him snapping away with his camera. He didn’t see me. Kelly was with me, and we followed him into a hootch. I caught him with two National Policemen, raping three young girls.”