Honour Among Men

by Barbara Fradkin

  Captain Ulrich from National Defence had emailed the photos of the remaining members of Oliver’s and MacDonald’s section in Yugoslavia, along with the names and photos of Major Kennebec, their company commander, and Colonel Thomas, the battalion’s CO. He had even faxed over a chart describing the name, rank and function of everyone in MacDonald’s chain of command. With one of their ranks implicated in an attempted cop killing, the military had apparently changed its tactics in favour of full cooperation with civilian authorities. Green muttered a silent prayer of thanks to the Police Chief, whose deft handling had undoubtedly been behind the change. He hoped the Chief could use the same silver tongue with the politicians if the time came.

  Green immediately forwarded all the photos to Kate McGrath in Halifax, in the hope that the witnesses and bartender at the Lighthouse would recognize Daniel Oliver’s killer among them. He was about to head out to his much delayed lunch meeting with Staff Sergeant Vaillancourt when Gibbs arrived at his office door, looking wan and defeated. He handed Green two short reports.

  “This is all I could get on Blakeley and Atkinson for Sergeant Sullivan, sir. It-It’s not much, I know.”

  Green scanned the meagre reports. His interest was piqued by the reference to John Blakeley’s peacekeeping missions. Eight tours in six different countries. What were the odds of Yugoslavia being one of them?

  “Have you sent this to Sullivan already?”

  “Yessir. He needed it by two o’clock.”

  “Okay, but I want you to keep digging. Find out exactly where and when Blakeley did his peacekeeping tours, especially if he was ever in Yugoslavia. And I also want some background on Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hamm.”

  Gibbs’s face fell. He propped his lanky frame against the door as if he could no longer support himself. “Well, I—I was wondering if . . . I’d like a few minutes to check on Sue, sir.”

  Green cursed his insensitivity. “Of course. I have a lunch appointment anyway.” For which I am already half an hour late, he thought, glancing at his watch. He shooed Gibbs on his way to the hospital, then grabbed his jacket and headed out of the station up Elgin Street. He had chosen a small deli off the cops’ beaten track, for he didn’t want any curious ears tuning in. He wanted the discussion of a fellow officer to be as frank and confidential as possible.

  To his surprise, Michel Vaillancourt had brought another man with him, whom he introduced as George Nelson. Both men were already halfway through heaping platters of deli sandwiches and fries.

  “George was Weiss’s staff sergeant when he was in uniform,” Vaillancourt explained. “So I figured he’d know more about him than I do.”

  Nelson was a pear of a man, with a pointy bald head, three chins and a paunch that eclipsed his belt. He extended a hearty handshake, then thudded back into his booth with a resounding crash. Green looked from one man to the other thoughtfully. His vague cover story about wanting more details about Weiss’s investigative experience was pretty lame, and he was surprised by both men’s obvious eagerness to talk about him. With his very first comment, Nelson provided the answer.

  “You’re thinking Jeff Weiss might’ve had something to do with the hit on Peters?”

  Green toyed with his menu. “Not thinking, just exploring. Why, do you?”

  Nelson had stuffed his mouth full of fries, and he munched noisily as he shook his head. “Under normal circumstances, I’d say not a chance.”

  Green’s stomach contracted at the sight of the melted cheese oozing from the Reuben sandwich. He signalled to the man behind the counter and yelled for a double smoked meat on rye. “What do you mean, under normal circumstances?”

  “Regular street work. Drugs, bar fights, turf beefs—the day to day stuff. He’s rock solid, got good instincts, never gave me a moment’s doubt. Well—” Nelson paused to suck his fingers noisily. “He has a bit of a temper. Sometimes he’d give his sergeant a little lip, but he usually backtracked the next instant. Only a couple of incidents were written up.”

  “How much is a bit of a temper?”

  “Enough to get him off the promotion track,” Vaillancourt said ominously.

  Nelson shrugged impatiently. “Just a flash in the pan. Like if somebody pushed his buttons. But what you’re talking about; that would have been premeditated. I mean, to call her out of the bar and set her up like that—”

  Green was surprised, then realized he shouldn’t be. Details of the assault would have raced through the police grapevine like lightning.

  “That’s not like Jeff,” Nelson continued. “He’s a straight arrow and a more committed officer you’re never going to see. And he wants to get ahead. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “But there is something, or you wouldn’t both be sitting here. You’re saying these are not normal circumstances?”

  Nelson looked uncomfortable. He glanced around the deli as if to make sure no one was eavesdropping. The mid-afternoon crowd was sparse, comprised mainly of courthouse workers enjoying a cappuccino. No one looked remotely like a cop. Or a reporter.

  Vaillancourt wiped his mouth carefully before stepping into the breach. “He did a three-month stint with the UN as a police officer in Yugoslavia.”

  Green stared at him, his heart in his throat. “When?”

  “Fall of 1993.”

  “Where?”

  “Mostly Sarajevo. He was doing regular law enforcement and training, beefing up the Bosnian force. It was finger-in-the-dyke stuff, trying to prevent looting, control riots, catch local thugs who didn’t think the law applied to them.”

  Green’s thoughts raced afield. In an effort to understand which peacekeepers had been where, he’d studied the map of the former Yugoslavia as it had been reconfigured in 1993. Daniel Oliver and Ian MacDonald had been with the Second Canadian Battalion, which had been deployed solely in Croatia. Nearly two hundred miles of rugged, hostile mountain territory separated them from Sarajevo. It seemed unlikely Jeff Weiss would have even met them. Unless . . .

  “You said mostly?”

  Nelson shrugged. “He was assigned to assist in war crimes investigations a couple of times, helping the UN investigators collect physical evidence and interview witnesses. I know that stuff still gets to him.”

  Green’s smoked meat sandwich arrived, and he was glad for the diversion. While he doused his French fries with vinegar, he pondered the possibilities. The coincidence was incredible. What were the chances of an Ottawa Police officer being assigned to investigate war crimes at exactly the same time and place that MacDonald and Oliver were posted? There had been thousands of peacekeepers in the Balkans, and probably thousands of local conflicts where war crimes could occur.

  It was just a shred of a theory, and a farfetched one at that, until he had facts to back it up. He tried to appear casual as he posed his next question. “Where were these war crimes he was investigating, do you know?”

  Nelson and Vaillancourt exchanged questioning looks. Vaillancourt lifted his thin shoulders in a shrug, but Nelson slapped his palm against his forehead in an effort to shake the memory loose.

  “Croatia.” He nodded several times. “Yup, I’m positive, because I remember when all the accusations of ethnic cleansing and mass murder were being levied against the Serbs, Weiss kept saying ‘The fucking UN doesn’t know the half of it. The Croats were just as bad.’ ”

  Croatia, Green thought. Suddenly his smoked meat lost its taste, and he pushed the plate away. The coincidences were converging, but with them came more questions. What had Weiss uncovered in his investigation, and how was the military involved? His mind raced over the links he had formed so far. Something had happened in Croatia that had haunted the lives of the soldiers for years afterwards. MacDonald had killed himself, Oliver had slipped into bitterness and drink, and someone else had committed not just one but two murders to cover it all up.

  These were simple country boys, Inspector Norrich had ranted that night in Halifax, unprepared for the brutality and hatred they encounte
red and equally unprepared for the visceral rage they might have felt in response.

  What if they themselves had committed a war crime?

  In 1993 the Canadian military had been reeling under the revelation of a murder committed by their elite forces in Somalia, and they were struggling to repair the damage to their peacekeeping image. What would be the worst thing that could happen at that moment? News of further atrocities committed by their soldiers in Yugoslavia would be high on that list. The pressure to suppress the knowledge and to prevent any investigation would have been huge. Certainly murders had been committed for far less.

  Green’s heart beat faster as the theory took shape. Yet even as his excitement grew, sober second thought began to take hold. What kind of war crime? Surely not a systematic, large scale massacre, which would have been impossible to hide. It had to be something more private. A small misstep that could easily have been buried in the chaos of battle. Was that where Weiss fit in? Had the military put pressure on him to cover it up? Who in the chain of command would have the clout to do that? Certainly not someone at the lowly section level.

  Green reached for his coffee and twirled his spoon slowly in it, trying not to betray his excitement as he gathered his thoughts. In the silence, the spoon tinkled and both men watched him intently. He tried to keep his voice neutral. “So what’s your guess about how Weiss could be involved with all this? You’ve obviously got some concerns. That he covered something up in Croatia?”

  Nelson whipped his head back and forth. “Oh, no. Just this temper. Things that remind him of that time seem to set him off. I just think he’s . . .”

  “Unstable?”

  “Not usually. I mean, we all have our buttons, eh? His is Croatia.”

  Vaillancourt had leaned forward on his elbows, his hands folded and his forehead creased in uneasy thought. Now he shook his head slowly. “But he did ask to job shadow the Ross case, right off the bat when he first got involved in the search of the scene.”

  Nelson scowled. “But at that point there was no known connection to the military or to Yugoslavia. Patricia Ross looked like just another luckless hooker.”

  Unless Weiss already knew the connection, Green thought. And the players. He glanced at his watch, pretended to be surprised, and shoved back his chair. “Gotta run. Thanks for this. Can you do one more thing? Find out exactly when and where he was in Croatia, and anything you can about the nature of the assignment. ASAP. Off the record and just between us, of course. I don’t want the rumour mill to ruin a good officer’s career.”

  Or get anyone else killed, he added silently, as he tossed some money on the table.

  EIGHTEEN

  Back at the office, Green pulled out the chart that Captain Ulrich had sent him of the military chain of command. If the military functioned like the police, loyalty was built from the ground up, starting with your partner and your squad. The section was the basic unit in the army. There were eight other members in the section, all of whom lived together more closely than any family did, packed like sardines into armoured personnel carriers and spending long hours together on patrol. If a breach of military law had been committed, this is probably where it would have occurred, and these are the boys who would have seen it. But who else might have known?

  Sections worked closely together as a platoon, under the day to day direction of the platoon commander. Richard Hamm. There were other NCOs attached to the platoon, but all of these appeared to be more closely allied to platoon headquarters under Hamm than to the sections. There were ranking officers higher than Hamm, of course, but these would be even more removed from the frontline actions and daily lives of the individual soldiers. Hamm was the only ranking officer likely to know of their wrongdoing and capable of suppressing that knowledge.

  And Hamm had been surprisingly unsupportive of Ian MacDonald’s recommendation for a medal.

  But if a war crime had been committed or covered up, Green was not going to get at it by going head to head with Hamm. Hamm would never admit a thing unless his back was truly to the wall. To accomplish that, Green needed ammunition. He needed to find a lowly section member who wouldn’t see the harm in revealing the truth ten years after the fact, or who might be relieved at the chance to be rid of the guilt.

  He yanked open his office door and caught sight of Gibbs, who was back from the hospital and deep in conversation on the phone. Green paced as he listened to Gibbs’s end of the conversation.

  “Thanks for trying, Karl. I appreciate your position,” Gibbs said, hanging up with a sigh.

  “Karl? As in Captain Karl Ulrich?”

  A ghost of a smile flitted across Gibbs’s weary face. “We’re old friends by now. He gave me some deep background on Colonel Hamm.” Gibbs glanced down at his notes. “He’s fourth generation military. His father was a decorated Korean war hero, and his grandfather was an infantry platoon commander who died at the Somme and was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his solo stand against the enemy. It saved most of his platoon. Quite an impressive family, sir.”

  Green nodded thoughtfully. No wonder Hamm had not been supportive of MacDonald’s medal; he was used to heroism on a far grander scale. But the information added new clarity to the picture that was beginning to emerge. Hamm would have grown up with these family tales of heroism and sacrifice. How powerful would be his commitment to the military he loved, and how far would he be willing to go to protect it? Far enough for a cover-up? Far enough for murder?

  “Sir?”

  Green pulled himself from his racing thoughts.

  “I’m running into brick walls on John Blakeley,” Gibbs was saying. “His file is shut tight as a clam, except what they give out to the media.”

  Green nodded grimly, not surprised that the military’s open access had slammed shut when it reached one of its gilded sons. “I guess nobody in the military wants to give the media or the opposition any ammunition to use against him.”

  “Even the details about his wife and his children are confidential, sir. All I could find out is he has three grown children and a wife named Leanne.”

  “Wouldn’t want the truth interfering with a good spin. He probably had a really ugly divorce, and the children hate him.” Green sighed. He wasn’t sure how Blakeley fit into his conspiracy theory anyway. Although he had served on peacekeeping missions, his name wasn’t listed anywhere on the chain of command from MacDonald’s section to the whole battalion.

  “Okay, we’ll keep chipping away,” he said. “But I’ve got something else for you to do right now. I’d like you to track down that corporal from Oliver’s section who’s studying at Queens. I want him brought up here for questioning first thing in the morning.” He turned to go, then belatedly he remembered Gibbs’s visit to the hospital. Judging from his long face, the news wasn’t good.

  “How is Sue?” he asked gently.

  “Alive. They did another brain scan, and there’s some recovery. I suppose that’s good news. I just want . . . I just want her to open her eyes and tell us who did this, so it will all be over.” Green thought of Peters lying so still and helpless in the bed. She would hate this and would be the first person wanting to nail the bastard to the wall. If only she could. But with any luck, by the time she did open her eyes, they would have some justice for her. At the very least, they would know what had happened between the soldiers in Croatia, which would be one small step in unravelling the mystery.

  In the meantime, he had to stop Sullivan from questioning Hamm until they had some concrete facts to back up Green’s theory. If Hamm was the mastermind of a war crimes cover-up and the killer of Oliver and Ross, Green wanted all the ammunition he could muster before going after him. As he punched in Sullivan’s cellphone number, he hoped he wasn’t already too late. Hamm was one of the key witnesses Sullivan had gone to see, and he was probably in the middle of the interview right now, armed with fewer than half the facts he needed to make the colonel sweat.

  Sullivan’s cheerful voice came
through after the third ring. “No problem,” he said when Green told him to forget Hamm for now. “He’s not even here. Got called down to Ottawa this morning for some meeting. He’s slumming it at the Chateau Laurier, so we can catch him tomorrow. Anything else you want us to do before we head back home?”

  “You could drop by the OPP to check on the progress of the Peters investigation.”

  Sullivan chuckled. “Already done that. They haven’t made much headway, but they did uncover a couple of interesting things. You want to hear them?”

  Green rolled his eyes. Sullivan had always been a tease, particularly when he knew Green was hot on the scent. Never had the teasing felt so good. “You want to direct traffic, putz?”

  Sullivan laughed. “First, the OPP turned up an old ex-army sergeant who says he was talking to Peters in the King’s Arms bar when she received the mysterious phone call. He claims he told her Patricia Ross had been asking questions in the same bar the week before.”

  “He seems to be keeping a bar stool warm at the King’s Arms. Questions about what?”

  “About the campaign, the people behind it, that sort of thing. He was a bit fuzzy. He apparently told Patricia Ross he didn’t know much except that Blakeley was some military hotshot who believed in a new approach to peacekeeping. Which the sergeant apparently agreed with.”

  So, thought Green with a surge of satisfaction, we’re on the right track with this military angle. After Patricia Ross returned to Ottawa, she’d embarked on the next step in her quest, a date with a mystery man. Shortly after which, she was dead.

  “What’s the other interesting thing?”

  “Remember the phone call the bartender says he received from someone claiming to be Peters’ partner? Well, turns out he did receive a call at approximately the right time, which came from a local cellphone.”