Heart of War

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “They won’t. It’s brilliant. Perfectly brilliant. How did you come up with it?”

  “You always said I had an instinct for the jugular. I just followed my instincts.”

  “I’m going to start working on the speech immediately.”

  She reached under the newspaper on the sofa next to her and produced a booklet jacketed in infantry blue.

  “I’ve already written it for you. Here.” She handed him the booklet. “Start memorizing. It would be better if you didn’t read it.”

  He opened the booklet to the first page and started reading. His face relaxed into a smile. “I like the first line.” He cleared his throat, and his voice dropped a half octave. “ ‘There are no values more dear to the hearts of those of us in this room than Army Family Values.’ “ He looked across the room at her. “You’ve done it, Robbie.” He held up the booklet and shook it. “This is our ticket to Washington.”

  “Get to work. By the time Friday comes, I want you so familiar with that speech it’s oozing out of your ears. We’re going to take your mediocre talents as a public speaker and give them a shot in the ass. You are going to know that speech word for word, paragraph for paragraph, page by page. It’s going to scroll across the insides of your eyelids as you sleep. And you are not going to screw it up, you hear me? I mean it, Bill. You are not going to touch a drop until you’ve delivered the speech. What you do after that is your business.”

  A look of what passed for love came across his features. “I knew I could count on you coming through for me.”

  “If only, Bill. If only.”

  Detective Fogel had called back late in the afternoon with the disappointing news that the O’Brien family had moved from 403 West Roscoe. The building engineer didn’t know where they went. Detective Fogel said she’d keep looking, and Kara thanked her.

  Driving home, she was deeply disappointed. She was running out of time. She knew Lieutenant Colonel Lambert had ordered the hearing on Parks, and Sheila’s murder was going to get hung around the neck of the dead lieutenant like a necklace, just to curry favor with Beckwith. She had heard Beckwith was going to make a big splash in Washington. People were saying after the AUSA convention, he was a lock for chief of staff. The day they announced his appointment to chief was the day she could forget the whole thing. The Army would rather let a murderer go free than suffer the embarrassment of trying the highest-ranking general officer they had.

  The phone was ringing as she walked in. She rushed over and grabbed it, hoping it was Mace.

  It was Hollaway. “How’d it go? Did you find O’Brien?”

  “It was a roller coaster all day. I thought I had her located in Chicago, and it came up a dry hole.”

  “I’m almost finished with my summary for the hearing. I’ll drop it by your office tomorrow.”

  “Great, Frank. See you.”

  She hung up and flipped through her mail. There was a neatly addressed envelope with no return address on the bottom of the pile. An invitation to Beckwith’s party was inside, along with a note: “Figured you wouldn’t want to miss this one. Randy.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  From the sound and light booth in the balcony above the ballroom, the stage looked like it was draped with enough red, white, and blue bunting to wrap the Reichstag. The backdrop, where Patton’s huge American flag would have hung if General Beckwith was shooting a movie instead of giving a party for himself, was a gigantic, very expensive logo: AUSA in letters twenty feet high.

  In front of the AUSA logo, looking rather small because he did not enjoy on a hotel ballroom stage the size-enhancing qualities of a Panavision lens, stood General William Telford Beckwith. There was no microphone, though of course Randy had miked him with a clip-on under his tie. Softly, into his headset, Randy called for the Super-Trooper spot to open up and get him head to toe. He whispered to the light guy, seated next to him at the control panel.

  “Sweeten the reds and blues. That Super-Trooper is making his face look like a bowl of milk.” The light guy pumped up the reds and blues, and suddenly Beckwith looked healthy, ruddy even.

  The sound checks had been done to an empty room. Now the place was filled with more than a thousand happy lobbyists, politicians, and Army brass. Randy prayed he’d set the levels right. He poised his finger above the main volume slide on the sound panel and watched the meters. He glanced at the stage. The General stood there above the faces in the crowd, and he furrowed his brow and opened his mouth and let loose with it.

  It went just the way Mrs. Beckwith had written. Army. Family. Values. The heart and soul of us all. Randy half expected Beckwith to burp forth with the motto of West Point, and then, unscripted, there it came too: Duty, Honor, Country. He was hitting all of the notes, and they were going over big. Very big.

  Then he asked the “ladies” to stand and saluted “Army wives.” This brought the house down. Randy softened the lights as he lowered his voice and intoned the final words of his speech:

  “We may be, as the saying goes, ‘married to the Army,’ but in no sense does that fact diminish our commitment to our sacred vows. It is in the arms of those we love that we have gotten the strength to take our knowledge and courage to the beaches of Anzio, the mountains of the Central Highlands, the trenches at Verdun, the snowy, barren hills of Korea, the desert sands of Kuwait. Indeed, we owe our lives to Army Family Values. Thank you, and good night.”

  At first, from the sound and light booth, there was a sense that the room had been sucked dry of oxygen. They were utterly silent, and then they burst into frenzied applause. General Beckwith stood there, bathed by the Super-Trooper, and he drank it in. Finally, just as the applause was dying down, Randy whispered into his headset for the Super-Trooper to take it down, slowly, slowly, slowly, and he reached over and tapped the light guy, and he pushed the slides on the light board and the stage went dark. Randy waited a beat, then nodded to the light guy, and he brought the stage lights back up. As they had rehearsed, Beckwith was gone.

  Randy looked for him and whispered to the Super-Trooper. The spot picked him up moving through the crowd, shaking hands and grinning like a Southern sheriff working the room down at the Legion hall. Randy marveled at the ease with which he took their adulation. You would have thought you were watching a political rally instead of a gathering of the military industrial complex. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Excellent, Randy. Well done. Your service tonight will be remembered where it counts, I am sure.” Mrs. Beckwith turned and walked out of the booth.

  “Who the fuck was that?” asked one of the union guys who stood around the booth doing nothing, collecting a paycheck so Randy could have the freedom to run the show with his own workers and without union interference.

  “The General’s wife.”

  “That’s a hard case, I ever seen one,” said another of the union guys.

  “She’s got a lot on her mind,” said Randy.

  “Yeah. Him,” said the union guy, pointing into the crowd where the Super-Trooper still followed General Beckwith.

  The union guys wandered off. Randy picked up his script of the speech and was about to leave when he was met by a woman in an elegant black shift with her hair done up in a twist.

  “Good job, Randy. You had him looking so much like Patton, all he’s got to do is slap a soldier, and he’s got the job.”

  “Kara!” Randy whispered hoarsely under his breath.

  “Didn’t recognize me?” She struck a little pose.

  “You look stunning.”

  “Why, thank you, Randy.”

  “I guess you got your invitation.”

  “Yesterday. Thanks.”

  “Don’t let him see you,” Randy said, nodding toward Beckwith, still followed by the spotlight in the crowd below them. “He doesn’t know I sent you an invitation, and he’d have my ass if he found out.”

  “Don’t worry. I just came for the free food and drinks. I’ll stay out of his way.”

&nb
sp; “The missus too. She’s not a happy camper.”

  “I noticed. You look tired, Randy. Long day?”

  “I’ve been at this since four this morning, and we’ve still got hours to go.”

  “Big parties are a pain. Are you staying here at the Sheraton?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Me too. Give me a call in the morning. Maybe we can meet for a late breakfast. I want to fill you in on what I found out at Fort Polk.”

  “Great. I’ll do it.”

  Kara made her way downstairs from the booth and worked along the edge of the crowded ballroom until she found the bar. She ordered a scotch, and the bartender poured Black Label. She turned around just as Frank Hollaway walked up.

  “This party must be costing General Beckwith a fortune,” she said.

  “It’s like the stock market, Kara. You can’t win if you don’t pony up the bucks and play.” He signaled the bartender. “I’ll have what she’s having.”

  A four-piece combo was playing bad jazz in one corner of the ballroom.

  “You want to dance?”

  “Why, Frank! You old charmer!”

  They put their drinks down and joined a small number of dancers near the band.

  “Where’d you learn to dance?” asked Kara. “You’re good.”

  “My mother.”

  “She must be some character.”

  “Yeah, she is. She used to take me over to a friend’s house, and they’d play old 45’s on a little record player that was, like, from the fifties. My dad didn’t like to dance and neither did her friend’s husband, so they used to crank up that record player after I got home from school, and they’d take turns dancing with me. The excuse was, they were teaching me, but it was really ‘cause they wanted to dance.”

  “That’s kind of sweet.”

  “I thought it was strange at the time, but I’m glad they taught me now.”

  Hollaway spun her around, and she saw Lannie, and Lannie saw her. Lannie was wearing her dress blues, and she marched over, scowling.

  “What are you doing here?”

  They stopped dancing. Frank had a look at the anger on Lannie’s face and stepped away. “I’ll meet you at the bar, Kara.”

  “Okay, Frank.” She turned to Lannie. “I was invited.”

  “I’m surprised you came, Kara,” Lannie said sarcastically. “Aren’t you afraid? He’s such a dangerous man, showing up here like this, uninvited, you might get hurt. Or worse.”

  “I’m not trying to pick a fight with you, Lannie.”

  “I’m going to ask you to leave. If you don’t, I’ll call hotel security and have you removed.”

  “You’re making a mistake—”

  Lannie interrupted: “Are you going to leave, or am I going to have to call security?”

  “The power is going to your head, Lannie. It shows, and take it from me, you don’t wear it well at all.” She turned and walked away.

  General Teese stopped General King and Dahlia on their way out of the ballroom. “Did you ever hear such a load of crap in your life?”

  General King shrugged. “What did you expect?”

  “I talked to Maldray’s PR guy this afternoon. He’s going to warn the Senator. I don’t want him making any more veiled attacks on you, General.”

  “You know what? I think we ought to just leave this thing alone. I’m sick of the whole game.”

  “But, General, I’ve made a plan for this week. You’re going to address the Armed Services Committee. That’s bound to make the papers. And that’s just what we’re starting with.”

  “I’ll go before the committee, but I don’t want you doing anything with that trash about his sex life. If that’s what it takes to get a presidential appointment these days, I don’t want any part of it.”

  General Teese grimaced. “All right, sir. I’ll honor your wishes. But I’ll tell you this much. If Beckwith had any dirt on you, he’d be spreading it around this party like cheese on a cracker.”

  “I guess that’s the difference between me and him, Ed. We’ll see if that counts for anything in the current political climate in this town.”

  General King saw someone down the hall and waved. “Gotta go. Call me about the committee hearing.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  General and Mrs. King made their way down the hall. General Teese turned into the hotel cocktail lounge and found General Ranstead in the corner.

  “Did you talk to him?” asked Ranstead.

  “Yeah. It sounds like he’s given up. He told me to hold off on tipping the press about Beckwith and the girl.”

  “What are we going to do? I don’t know who wrote that speech, but if that doesn’t land him on the front page of the Washington Post in the morning, I don’t know what will.”

  “Yeah, we’re fighting a losing battle. I get the feeling that putting King in front of the Armed Services Committee is just nibbling at the edges of the process. Nothing he has to say is going to change their minds one iota.”

  “Then we’ve got a problem, Ed. Beckwith’s got the momentum. The only thing that’s going to stop him is if the President thinks his appointment will hurt him with the rank and file. You know how he is about currying favor with the troops. I don’t see how we make that case at this point.”

  “Why don’t you let me think about it over the weekend? I’ll come up with something by Monday. We can always call our friend in the White House.”

  “You mean Nichols? He’s on the domestic-policy side. He doesn’t have anything to do with military affairs.”

  “No, but he knows everybody in the White House who does,” said Teese.

  “Look, I don’t want to make that move unless we have to. If Nichols starts running around the White House bad-mouthing Beckwith, everybody wearing pants on those halls is going to know it’s a gay thing, and we’re dead in the water. The President will appoint Beckwith just to prove he’s not in the pocket of the homosexual lobby.”

  “I’ll admit it’s a desperation move, but it might be all we’ve got left.”

  “If it is, we’re dead.” General Ranstead looked at his watch. “Jesus. It’s late. I’ve got to get going.”

  “Are you going to be around tomorrow?”

  “No. General Carson wants me to fly down to Fort Hood and make an appearance at a parade he can’t attend.”

  “I’ll talk to you on Monday, then.”

  “Good deal.”

  Lannie made sure Mrs. Beckwith had left the party before she walked up to the General, and even then she made it official.

  “Sir, I’ve got your schedule for tomorrow. Would you like me to leave it at the desk for you?”

  “One moment, Captain,” Beckwith said to her, just as officiously.

  The General excused himself from the group of colonels he had been talking to and turned to Lannie. “So what did you think?”

  “I thought you were brilliant, sir,” she said. “The way you delivered it, it was five times as good as it was on the page, sir.”

  He lowered his voice. “I wish there was some way we could be alone.”

  “So do I,” she whispered.

  “Why don’t you go upstairs right now, and I’ll see if I can sneak out of here in a few minutes?”

  “Do you really think you should?”

  “I’m not promising anything, but I’ll try.”

  He straightened up, and his voice took on its official tone. “All right then, Captain. Very well. Leave my schedule at the desk. I’ll pick it up later.”

  “Very good, sir. Good evening.”

  The General returned to the clutch of colonels. Lannie stood there for a moment, watching him. He was born to do this, she thought. He’ll make the greatest chief of staff the Army has ever seen.

  Chapter Thirty

  Randy stepped off the elevator and looked in both directions down the empty hall. It was late, and everyone had long since gone to bed. He had his key ready when he reached the door and quickly walked inside. Ed
was in bed with the covers pulled up to his waist. “Tired?”

  “Exhausted. I thought this day would never end.”

  “Everyone was talking about Beckwith’s speech. I must say, I was surprised. Who wrote it?”

  “His wife, believe it or not. He’s been rehearsing it all week.” Randy unbuttoned his dress blues jacket and shrugged it off. He untied his shoes and slipped them off, rubbing his feet. “I’ve been on my feet all day. I need a drink.”

  Ed held a bottle of aged bourbon. “How about some of this?”

  Randy whistled through his teeth as he took the bottle. “Where’d you get this stuff?”

  “Down the street. It’s very rare. See? Each bottle is numbered. Cost me half a month’s pay.”

  Randy laughed. He opened the ice bucket. “Christ. There’s no ice.” As he reached for his shoes, he noticed the red message light on the phone was blinking. “Did someone call?”

  “The light was on when I got here,” said Ed.

  “I’d better see who it was.” He pressed the button for messages. An operator answered. “This is Captain Taylor in Room 910. You have a message for me?” He listened for a moment and hung up. “Lannie left a message at the desk. She wants me to stop by her room.”

  “It’s late. Can’t she wait until morning?”

  “I’d better go. Beckwith will have my hide if he left something for me with her and I don’t pick it up.”

  He tied his shoes and was about to walk out of the room when Ed handed him the ice bucket. “May as well get ice on your way.”

  “Sure. Be back in a minute.”

  He took the stairs down to Lannie’s floor. He looked at the sign for room numbers and turned right. Halfway down the hall he found her door cracked open. He pushed the door and looked in. Lannie was lying on the bed in a black lace teddy.