The Death Trust

by David Rollins

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did General Scott talk to you about any of this?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know so much about it?”

  “People talk. A friend of mine was there when General Scott opened his son’s body bag.”

  I tried to imagine what it might be like, peeling down the zipper and taking a peek inside at the corpse of your own boy—or what was left of him. It would be the kind of experience that could break a man’s spirit completely. Captain Aleveldt stared at the floor, his shoulders hunched as if he too was imagining it. I mentally gave myself a shake. As a witness, Aleveldt wasn’t worth a hell of a lot, hearsay and supposition not given too much credence in a military courtroom. He had, however, provided me with some new questions which required answers. I suddenly felt like I was going somewhere, even if it was in a bunch of divergent directions all at once. “Who’s this friend of yours, Captain?”

  “A doctor. Captain François Philippe.”

  “He French? In the Armée de l’Air?”

  “No, Belgian. Flemish. He worked in the hospital morgue. François told me that the general asked him to conduct an autopsy on the body.”

  “Okay, you said ‘worked.’ Past tense,” I said as I jotted this down.

  “He was transferred eleven months ago.”

  “You got contact details for him?”

  “Back in my cubicle, Special Agent.”

  “So, General Scott. You were saying that he was somehow different after the death of his son?”

  “Yes.”

  “How exactly?”

  “I don’t think he cared whether he lived or died.”

  That stopped me. I wondered whether Roach had considered the possibility that General Scott had sabotaged his own glider—played a kind of Russian roulette with it. But then why would he go to the trouble of installing all the new avionics? That didn’t make much sense. “Are you talking suicide?”

  He thought about that, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so, sir. He didn’t seem like the type, if you know what I mean.”

  I nodded. There wasn’t much more I could ask the captain about General Scott; at least, not for the moment. “Are you around, Captain, if I need to talk to you some more—not heading out on leave or anything?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Well, if you could give me Captain Philippe’s details…”

  “Sure.”

  I followed him back to his cubicle. Aleveldt checked an address book, copied the information to a Post-It note, and handed it to me. I stuck it in my notebook. “I hope you get the bastards, Special Agent,” he said.

  “We’ll do our best, Captain,” I said absently as my phone rang. I knew the number on the screen. “Excuse me,” I said as I answered it.

  “How’re you doing?” Masters asked.

  “Yeah, my grandmother’s suitcase,” I said.

  “Can’t talk?”

  “Stuffed racoons. Can you believe that?”

  “Okay, well, we’re sorting through Scott’s papers.”

  “Find anything interesting?”

  “Not yet, we’ve only just started. Are you coming back here?”

  “On the way,” I said. I rang off and dropped the phone back in my pocket, but it began to ring again. This time I didn’t recognize the number. “Hello…”

  “Special Agent Cooper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sergeant Fischer. You might not remember me, sir, but we met briefly this morning.”

  I remembered her all right: Sergeant Audrey Fischer, the PA in von Koeppen’s office with the unbelievable secretarial skills. “That’s right,” I said after a moment of respectful silence where I pretended to scan my memory banks for recollection. “How can I help you, Sergeant?”

  “It’s about General Scott. I have some information that might help you find his killer.”

  SEVEN

  The sun was doing its best, but there was no heat in it, even though it was mid-afternoon. The clouds had moved back after a period of absence, their edges outlined with a brittle golden wire. I pulled in to the visitor’s space at the foot of the OSI building, grabbed my bits and pieces from the passenger seat, and went inside.

  “Cooper, over here,” said Masters, from down the end of a short, brightly lit hallway.

  She held the door open for me. The room was a chaos of desks, phones, opened boxes, and Whiteboards. NCMP noncoms were getting it all sorted out. “This is us for the duration,” she said. “Your swipe card will get you in. One thing, though—if we’re going to work together, you have to take a shower. If I could, I’d make it an order. I can’t, so I’ll make it a plea. There’s one up on the second floor. We’ve also found you a clean ACU, razor, deodorant. All the things you need—and take it from me, you need them—are all in that bag there on the chair.” She motioned at a Nike gym bag. “Out the door, up the stairs on your right. Keep going till you get to the second landing. It’s the first door on your right.”

  I didn’t know whether to be grateful or offended. “Thanks,” I said, choosing the former.

  “When I can get within ten feet of you and still breathe, we’ll talk. How’d it go with Captain Aleveldt?”

  “Good,” I said.

  “While you’re turning yourself back into a human being, you can consider what this means,” she said as she handed me a sheaf of computer printouts.

  The cover sheet held four columns of figures. There were no labels on the sheet to indicate what the figures meant, just row after row of numbers.

  “There’s tons of stuff like this. Scott was researching something in detail, but I have no idea what.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I flicked through the wad of printouts. Each page was like the last: columns of figures. There was no context for the information.

  “We’ve only just started going through this stuff,” she said with a wave of her hand, indicating the boxes. “But this looks interesting.”

  “What?” I asked.

  She handed me a small brown tag made from dense, fibrous card. I took a close look at it. It was some kind of certificate, and it looked familiar. I suddenly realized what it was when I saw the handwritten words “Peyton Scott, Sgt., USMC” followed by his serial number and the stamp of the United States 28th Combat Support Hospital, Baghdad. There were several other details on it, including a bar code and medical officer’s printed name with his signature above it. “It’s a bag tag,” I said.

  “Yeah,” agreed Masters. “What do we know about his son?”

  “Not much, except that he’s dead.” I turned the tag over, but there was nothing on the reverse side. This was the tag affixed to Peyton Scott’s body bag so that it could be readily identified coming off the C-130 that brought it from Iraq. Cause of death was loosely described on the tag as “massive trauma.” Which, given the extent of Sergeant Scott’s injuries, was still an understatement.

  “There’s a bit of bad news too,” said Masters. “The base dental hospital is overloaded, checking through a bunch of U.S. Army and Air Force people rotating out of the Middle East. The earliest you can get an appointment is in three days. You okay with that?”

  The distant throb in my jaw was like a bad storm that, while still visible, had mostly rolled over the horizon. The pills were working. Or maybe the monster chewing through my tooth had devoured so much of what remained that there was nothing left for it to consume. Whatever, the pain was bearable, at least for the moment. “I’ll survive. Thanks.”

  I suddenly realized that I was bone tired. I’d managed to grab a few stressed-out hours of sleep on the red-eye coming over, but that had been more my body’s attempt to marshal its waning recovery powers after yet another serious attempt to poison it with alcohol. I’d been going for some time without good sleep or food. If I was going to keep functioning at a level above zombie, I would need both.

  “Out the door, up the stairs, first door on the right…” she said
behind me as I picked up the Nike bag and shuffled out the door.

  I found the shower room, closed the door, and stripped. I rummaged through the gear Masters had provided. There was a towel, soap, deodorant, toothpaste, a new toothbrush, a razor—the basics of personal grooming. I was a little disappointed to find there was no Calvin Klein to splash on after shaving but, then again, not really. I looked in the mirror. I looked awful. The lines under my eyes were etched deep and I had bags the size of a Samsonite under each lid. I wondered what effect a subcutaneous injection of botulism would do for me—it worked wonders for Harmony Scott.

  The news in the mirror wasn’t all bad. The overhead light accentuated the stomach muscles still loitering from my time with Special Forces. By rights I should have added a few layers of macaroni and cheese and maybe a corn dog or two to this six-pack of mine, but I’d always been blessed with a high metabolic rate. The pink divot of scar tissue about two inches above my right nipple was a constant reminder that I had no right to be here. Touching it brought back the memories and the sensation of falling—the fear—and it made me want to grab hold of my testicles, secure them. I lifted my right arm, exposing the ragged scar from my armpit to elbow where a ricochet from a Kalashnikov had dug a channel as it tumbled through skin and muscle. There was also a chunk of muscle—around three and a half ounces’ worth, according to the attending surgeon—pared from my left quadricep, courtesy of a fragment of 88mm mortar on its way to somewhere else in a hurry. Apparently, the surgeon said, it was my own damn fault for trying to detain it. Looking on the bright side, the wounds had a certain symmetry about them—neither side of my body had been spared. I turned away from the mirror and turned on the faucets. The bathroom became a steam room within a minute. I climbed under the powerful jet of hot water and let it weave its magic. I closed my eyes and thought about the last twenty-four hours. It felt more like a week had passed since Arlen dragged me out of the sack.

  Without a doubt, Special Agent Anna Masters was making a supreme effort to be open and helpful. I decided then and there to reciprocate. Part of me, the damaged, wounded side that could still see his marriage counselor’s balls clacking against his wife’s chin, warned, “Women—they’re not to be trusted,” but the professional side of me, the one that said two brains working together on a tough case are better than one, prevailed. I also silently praised Masters again for having the good sense to get the general’s records out from under his widow’s roof.

  I soaped myself down, washed my hair, shaved in the shower, and went back over the interviews with Roach, Himmler, and Aleveldt; the brief moment in the delightful company of the grieving Harmony Scott; and the interview to come with Sergeant Fischer. I must have been thinking about it all too long because there was a knock on the door. “You okay in there?” It was Masters.

  “Yeah, fine,” I said. “Care to join me?” Silence. That’s the trouble with these on-base facilities—the showers never run out of hot water and go cold on you, so how do you know when to get out? I spat out the cloves, cleaned my teeth very carefully, ate two more codeine tablets, and dressed in the borrowed clothes. The new undershorts were briefs rather than boxers, but I could live with it.

  I stuffed the Nike bag with my dirty laundry and went downstairs. “Good,” said Masters when I made an entrance. “At least now I don’t have to stay upwind of you.”

  I ignored the comment. “Have you got the general’s computer booted up yet?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.” She looked over my shoulder and said, “Flight Lieutenant Bishop? You got a second?”

  A man of around twenty-five got up from behind a bank of electrical equipment and came over. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “RAF Flight Lieutenant Peter Bishop, Special Agent Vincent Cooper. He’s heading up this investigation,” she said.

  Did Masters just say I was running this show?

  “Special Agent,” he said, turning toward me.

  Yeah, she just did.

  “The flight lieutenant here is the nearest thing we’ve got to Bill Gates, although I don’t think he’s nearly as rich.”

  I wondered why Masters had capitulated on the SAC thing. Maybe she realized the special agent in charge was wearing a big red bull’s-eye on his or her chest if things turned to crap.

  Flight Lieutenant Peter Bishop was a big coffee-colored man with gelled, spiky black hair, black eyes, and big chubby cheeks that reminded me of hamburger buns, but my hunger was starting to affect my brain and they probably didn’t look like that at all. I could feel perspiration beading on my skin. It was my tooth again. I ran my hand gently beside my jaw. Was it beginning to swell? “How’s it going with the general’s computer?” I asked.

  “Nice machine, sir.” Bishop’s accent reminded me of the characters in the movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. “It’s a superseded Dolch NotePAC. I can start it up but I can’t get past the user screen. The general had a pass code. That’s going to take time to sidestep.”

  “How much time, Lieutenant?” I asked.

  “Couple of hours, sir. More or less.”

  “Take less,” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “C’mon, leave this for now,” I said to Masters, gesturing at the office work around us. I then told her about Sergeant Fischer’s claim that she had something that might help us out, without putting it quite as theatrically as the sergeant herself had. And yes, I should admit up front that I’d considered interviewing Sergeant Fischer solo, and yes, not for entirely professional reasons. But I’d never done that kind of thing before and decided not to start now. Besides, that would have gone against the newfound spirit of cooperation growing between Masters and me. What was NATO’s motto? I remembered seeing it on some banner somewhere. It was something mindlessly gung ho and nineties like “One mission, one team.” Yeah, that was it. I grabbed a spare camouflage jacket and stuffed my cell and beeper in the pocket.

  Masters drove; I made notes. Beneath Captain Reinoud Aleveldt, I jotted Captain François Philippe, the name of the medical officer who’d witnessed Scott’s horror at seeing his son’s remains. Beneath theirs, I wrote Fischer, Harmony, Himmler, U.S. Army Hospital—Baghdad, Morgue. I also doodled a question mark and gave it a drop shadow.

  EIGHT

  We drove to a place called the Melting Pot, as the base’s coffee shop was called, a half-assed attempt at creating a relaxed environment for off-duty servicemen and-women. I say half-assed because putting up photos of planes in this place was akin to hanging lovingly framed posters of skinned beef hindquarters in a butcher’s shop. I’d have thought island beaches would have been a more escapist theme here for people far from home and surrounded three hundred and sixty-five days a year with jet whine. The bleached and faded photos looked like they’d been left outside and acid-rained on, and showed the men and the machinery that had been stationed here over the past four and a half decades, daring the Soviet Union to take its best shot. Many photos were signed by famous airmen. I recognized speed-of-sound man Chuck Yeager and his WWII co-ace, Bud Anderson. I also recognized a young von Koeppen leaning out of a cockpit wearing Ray-Ban Aviators and grinning like Goofy at the camera. I felt bad for Chuck and Bud having to share a wall with a known Nazi war criminal.

  People drinking lattes and reading various foreign-language newspapers occupied most of the tables. I felt watched as we made our way to an empty table in a corner. The place smelled of coffee and doughnuts and JP-4 convecting off the flight line somewhere beyond the row of uninspiring bunker-like buildings lining the street opposite. The smell of food got my saliva glands going and my stomach contracted. I had to eat something, even if it was just deep-fried dough rolled in sugar.

  We were a couple of minutes late but then so was Sergeant Fischer. “Okay,” I said to Masters as von Koeppen’s PA entered the shop. The sergeant and I exchanged quick waves of recognition across the room. She made her way over, threading through the tables, swinging her hips between them with the rhythm
of a samba dancer. The newspapers dipped so that their readers could get a better view, and I couldn’t blame them.

  The sergeant was even more spectacular than I remembered her from the morning. Her tousled fair hair was a halo around a flawless olive complexion. The gathering chill of the late-afternoon air had rouged her full, high cheeks, and her eyes were pale sapphires. She was tall, almost intimidatingly so for any male under six feet. She wore the standard ACU designed to hide any trace of sexuality, only on Fischer it instead revealed a fine figure with breasts that stood out before her like a couple of missile warheads ready for launch. Every guy in the joint, including me, swallowed.

  “Can we get you a coffee, Sergeant?” I asked, making a supreme attempt at nonchalance before she took a seat between Masters and me.

  “Thank you, no,” said Fischer with the soft vowels of the deep South.

  “Special Agent?”

  “Espresso, thanks,” said Masters.

  I noticed the two women sizing each other up, much like von Koeppen and I had done. If I was not mistaken, Sergeant Fischer appeared to be vaguely intimidated by Masters, and not because of her job, either. It suddenly dawned on me when I looked at Special Agent Anna Masters that she, like Fischer, was also a serious piece of work, and the way we—or rather she—was gawked at when we came into this place suddenly made sense.

  A waiter came over and took the order, which included half a dozen doughnuts. My stomach rumbled with anticipation at the promise of food.