Going After Cacciato

by Tim O'Brien

  When it ended he was led into another chamber where the blindfold was removed.

  The room was yellow in floodlights. There was no furniture. At the center of the room, Stink and Eddie and Doc and Oscar and the lieutenant sat in a tight circle on the floor, their necks shaved, each of them handcuffed to a concrete pillar that rose to the ceiling. Sarkin Aung Wan, dressed in a pink chador and head cloth, was free to move about the cell. She kissed him on the throat, then moved aside as a soldier handcuffed him to the pillar. Two armed guards watched the door.

  “Welcome to the zoo,” Oscar said, and winked. “Chimps an’ teddy bears, we all say welcome.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Evil. It has to do with wickedness.”

  The door swung open, and Captain Fahyi Rhallon hurried in. He was carrying his hat and a large leather briefcase.

  “Gentlemen,” he said quickly, “I must give many apologies. I do not know what to apologize for first.” He sat on the floor, opened the briefcase, and gazed at the contents. Then he sighed. “I learned this morning of your arrest. Immediately I rushed to headquarters. Innocent, I tell them. Yes, I tell them you are innocent touring soldiers. Very difficult. The Savak, it does not give answers easily.”

  “What were the questions?” Doc asked.

  “Unfortunately,” the captain said, “this is not the time for banter. Your situation is grave.”

  “Grave, like in shaved necks?”

  “Sadly.” Again Captain Rhallon stared into his briefcase. “Presently the charges are hard to ascertain. The specifics. Of course I shall continue my inquiries, but the Savak does not look kindly on inquiries. My own neck is at risk. But still, I shall try to resolve this matter.”

  “What matter?” Doc said. “What is the matter?”

  “Espionage.”

  “Spying, you say?”

  The captain nodded. “Also conspiracy to commit sabotage, conspiracy to incite revolution, terrorism, unauthorized national entry, traveling without passports, the carrying of firearms without permit, failure to register said weapons, conspiracy to do harm to His Imperial Majesty the Shahanshah of Iran.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Sadly,” Captain Rhallon said, “that is not all. There is another matter.” The captain blushed and looked away. “Desertion,” he said.

  Oscar Johnson laughed.

  “It is humorous?” asked the captain. “You find desertion humorous?”

  “No,” Oscar said, “but I find it kind of funny.”

  Captain Rhallon shrugged and pulled a portfolio from his briefcase. Opening it, he removed a sheaf of papers stapled together at the top corners.

  He tapped the report.

  “Personally,” he said, “I do not believe a word of this. A gross mistake, I am certain. But still, I am sad to say that until it is settled your situation remains perilous.” He turned to the second page of the report. “As it states here, initial inquiries at the United States embassy, Tehran, failed to produce verification that you travel under official auspices, either military or political. In fact … in fact, I fear that your own attaché’s office had never heard of you. Further inquiries are now in progress, but alas, without passports or other supporting documents—”

  “Screwed,” Oscar said softly.

  Doc Peret tried to smile. “Look, haven’t we been through this before? I explained it—we travel under authority of certain mutual military regulations. Remember? Geneva, 1965.”

  “It is a pity,” said Captain Rhallon.

  “Yes?”

  “A terrible pity, but we cannot locate such regulations.”

  “Well, crap,” Stink snapped. “Don’t you got lawyers? A good lawyer can—”

  The captain nodded soberly. “I assure you, we continue to examine the regulation books. The Savak is engaged at this very moment in an exhaustive search through the archives. Still, there are so many treaties, so much paperwork. It takes time. Indeed, it does take time.”

  The officer cleared his throat and turned to the third page of the report. “Meanwhile, there remain the more serious substantive matters. The carrying of automatic firearms, explosives, fragmentation grenades, bayonets, knives, and flares. The inventory is exhaustive, to say the least. You will understand why there are certain suspicions.”

  “We’re soldiers,” Eddie said. “Combat soldiers, they always carry that stuff.”

  For the first time the captain smiled. He made a note. “Yes,” he said, “that is certainly a fine argument. And I am sure the Savak will listen carefully.” He smiled again, then clicked his teeth. “On the other hand, in a country like ours, where internal security is paramount, even soldiers must justify the possession of such immense quantities of firepower. You understand this? Why, even our own soldiers cannot—”

  “Screwed,” Oscar said.

  “So perhaps you will now explain to me why you carry all this?”

  “We been unjustly violated.”

  Doc Peret, who had been studying his fingers, sat erect. “Listen up,” he said. He gazed straight at the captain’s eyes. “Ten days ago we were dragged out of bed. Arrested at gunpoint, thrown in the brig, kept incommunicado, left to rot. No lawyers. No warrants. No formal charges. No informal charges. No indictment, no arraignment. No nothing. Now … now, let’s get this straight. What kind of shit is this?”

  Captain Rhallon frowned. “Politics,” he said.

  “Politics? What sort of politics?”

  “Alas,” the captain sighed, “it is impolitic to talk politics.”

  “No kidding?”

  “But, please. It is for your own well-being to explain. I implore you—”

  Doc’s voice was snow. “I told it before.”

  “Once more, then?”

  Pausing, Doc let the silence work for him. “Okay, then. But this time get it right. We’re soldiers. American Infantry. Mission—to capture a runaway named Cacciato. All perfectly legitimate. And those are the facts.”

  “Cacciato,” the officer murmured. He jotted it down. “First name, please?”

  No one knew it.

  Eddie and Stink offered a description, which Captain Rhallon painstakingly transcribed into his notebook.

  “So then,” he said. “It is this Cacciato who is the deserter, yes? Who runs from civil and military obligation?”

  “Hooray.”

  “And you do not run?”

  “No,” Doc said. “Cacciato runs. We chase.”

  “And you do not desert?”

  “You’re getting it,” Doc said coldly. “Now you’re catching on.”

  Nodding, the captain scribbled in his notebook then turned to the fourth page of the report. He examined it for a long time, tracing the sentences with his pencil, a ponderous reader whose thick black eyebrows kept bunching in the manner of a child having difficulty with a complex puzzle. His eyes were weary.

  “I am stupid,” he finally said. “I am just a stupid soldier. But to summarize. No passports. No authorization to pass through the territories of sovereign states. No verification by local U.S. officials. No written orders dispatching you on this … this mission. No permits for carrying a small arsenal of firepower and war matériel. Will you agree with these facts?”

  Doc shrugged. “Facts are one thing,” he said slowly. “Interpretation is something else. Putting facts in the right framework. And we’re counting on you to get us off the hook.”

  “The chopping block,” Oscar said. “No shit, just get us off the big block.”

  The captain rubbed his eyes. He placed the report back in his briefcase and stood up.

  “I am not a lawyer,” he said. “I am a poor man who understands nothing. But we are fellow soldiers and so I shall do what I can.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  “In the meantime,” Captain Rhallon said, “pray for comfort in the certainty of your innocence. In the purity of your own motives.”

  Paul Berlin’s motives, as shapeless as water,
washed through his imagination: a briny, sodden pressure that weighted him like gravity, layers of inclination pressing him deeper and deeper. His brain had the bends.

  Things were out of control. Gone haywire. You could run, but you couldn’t outrun the consequences of running. Not even in imagination.

  Imagination—sometimes it seemed he’d wasted his whole life that way. Long summer afternoons as a kid, spinning out plans for a career in professional baseball. How he would practice hard, go to all the baseball clinics, take lessons, work his way into the minor leagues, up through Class A and Triple A, then finally up to the majors—the Twins or Cubs. Figuring how it could be done. Sometimes even writing down elaborate plans, working up a strategy, using his imagination as a kind of tool to shape the future. Not exactly daydreams, not exactly fantasies. Just a way of working out the possibilities. Controlling things, directing things. And always the endings were happy. Later, in high school, there had been new sorts of things to figure out. Whether to go to college or follow his father into the house-building business. As a stall, a way of keeping options open, he’d enrolled at Centerville Junior College. A long, fruitless two years. Oh, he’d done all right—good grades, some interesting books—and for a time he’d even considered heading down to the University of Iowa for a B.A. in education. He liked history and English, he liked kids, and maybe teaching was the answer. But by the end of his second year at Centerville he was back where he started. A feeling of vague restlessness. He remembered talking to the school counselor. “Drop out?” the man had said, a short little guy without humor. “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” And the truth was that Paul Berlin did not know. Oh, he knew, but not in any personal sense. He’d seen the fighting on TV, he’d read about it in newspapers, but somehow it had never seemed quite real. So in the end he’d dropped out. It wasn’t really a decision; just the opposite: an inability to decide. Drifting, letting himself drift, he spent the summer of 1967 working with his father in Fort Dodge, building two fine houses on the outskirts of town, long hot days, a good tan, a sleepwalking feeling. And when he was drafted, it came as no great shock. Even then the war wasn’t real. He let himself be herded through basic training, then AIT, and all the while there was no sense of reality—another daydream, a weird pretending. He was young. That was a big part of it. He was just too young. And then the following May, home on leave, he’d gone camping with his father along the Des Moines River. “It’ll be all right,” his father said. “You’ll see some terrible stuff, sure, but try to look for the good things. Try to learn.” And that was what he did. Curling inside himself, keeping an eye peeled for the good things. What would happen when the war ended. What he would do. How he would celebrate. Paris.

  But this time something had gone wrong.

  They were taken to a larger, more comfortable cell furnished with sofas and rugs and upholstered chairs. A long, blank time. Hours or days, he couldn’t be sure. Oscar and Doc talked vaguely about escape, tunnels and hacksaws, but it was hopeless. The floor was cement. The walls were stone. Stink Harris began whittling a toy gun—”Like Dillinger, we’ll bluff our way out”—but the toy gun came out looking like a toy gun. So they waited. They slept and wrote letters. Each morning at dawn a barber came to shave their necks.

  “Ominous,” Oscar would say afterward. “It looks evil.”

  Paul Berlin tried hard to figure a way out. A miracle, he kept thinking. Some saving grace. He lay with Sarkin Aung Wan at night, tracing the possibilities. Sometimes he would slip back to his observation post by the sea, looking down, and he would be struck by a vision of doom. Desertion—wasn’t that what it really was? And in the end weren’t there always consequences? A calling to account? No question, it was all crazy from the start. None of the roads led to Paris.

  Then, one morning while they were being shaved, Captain Fahyi Rhallon entered the cell. He glanced at the razors and began backing out, but Doc waved him in.

  The captain managed a weak smile. He smoked a cigarette and watched as the barber draped a towel around Doc’s shoulders and went to work. The razor made sounds like a pencil being drawn over parchment.

  “So,” Doc said. “Do we have a verdict?”

  The captain seemed fascinated by the shaving operations. He watched closely as the barber brought the razor up under Doc’s ear, then sharply down, then up again and down, wiping the blade after each stroke.

  “Sir?”

  Captain Rhallon touched his moustache.

  “I did try,” he said. “I presented your case to my superiors. Pled with them to grant the benefit of doubt. I did try.”

  “And the verdict?”

  “I am sorry.”

  There was great quiet. A very noisy quiet, Paul Berlin thought. He felt Oscar staring at him from across the room—a long, hard stare—as if to accuse. As if to say, Your fuckin dream, man. Now do something.

  After a moment Doc Peret sighed.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess it’s time for some diplomatic pressure. By Uncle Sam, I mean. Time for Sammy to step in on our behalf.”

  The captain shook his head. “Sadly,” he said, “that will not be possible. Certainly not productive. As I say, your government does not know you. Or chooses not to. In either case, I fear the outcome is the same.”

  “Outcome?” Doc said.

  Here the captain looked away. Ash fell from his cigarette.

  “Outcome?”

  The captain tried to smile. “Tomorrow,” he said. “There are many hours until tomorrow. Anything might happen. Leniency, a pardon—”

  “What outcome?”

  Immediately another officer entered the cell. He might have been Fahyi Rhallon’s twin: dark skin, a moustache, creased trousers. A colonel in the Savak, Internal Security, he wore polished black boots and white gloves.

  The man stood near the door, looking at them with a kind of curious satisfaction. His gaze finally fastened on Oscar Johnson.

  “Take them off,” he said. He pointed to Oscar’s eyes. “The sunglasses. Remove them.”

  “These?”

  The colonel nodded.

  “But, man, I got this real terrible eye problem. I can’t—”

  Something in the officer’s gaze made Oscar stop. He removed the Polaroids.

  “Now place them on the floor.”

  “My shades?”

  “The floor. Place them on the floor.”

  Blinking, Oscar obliged. He glanced at Eddie and grinned.

  “Now,” the colonel said in the flat voice of a mechanic, “please step on them.”

  “Step on ’em?” Oscar was still grinning. “You sayin’ to squash my shades?”

  The Savak officer brought his teeth together. Two steps and he was across the room. Heel only, he pivoted on the Polaroids. In the same motion his elbow hit Oscar’s nose with a sound like snapping twigs. Oscar was grinning as he went down.

  “Clowns,” the colonel said.

  “That wasn’t—”

  “Clowns, all of you.” The man’s voice was like lead. His eyes fell on Paul Berlin. “Another clown, yes?”

  Paul Berlin got up. Incredibly, he was smiling. He couldn’t help it.

  “A jail full of clowns. Deserting clowns. Clowns telling funny stories to the Savak, but the Savak does not laugh.” The man reached out and put his gloved hand on Paul Berlin’s forehead. “You smile. Am I funny to you?”

  “No, sir. I was—” He couldn’t finish. There was heat in his eyes. His nose seemed to slide into his brainpan—wherever the dreams were—and then he was falling, but even so, he couldn’t stop smiling. Then he stopped. The pain came, and he stopped.

  Removing his left glove, the colonel stared indifferently at them, as if deciding whether it was worth his while to stay.

  “So,” he finally said. “You will confess now.”

  “To what?” Stink said. “You lousy Nazi, I wouldn’t—”

  But Stink was already squealing, clutching his nose and falling. Paul Berlin watched from t
he floor. He wondered how the man did it.

  “Now you will confess. You will say to me, ‘Yes, we ran from our duty; stupidly we turned and ran.’ You will say it. Say it now.”

  They said it.

  “Louder,” the colonel purred. “Say it loud. Confess so I can hear well.”

  “We ran,” they said.

  “Mean it. Say it with conviction. All of you together, tell me you ran like pigs. Confess it now. Deserters who ran like pigs.”

  “Like pigs,” they all said.

  “Without honor.”

  “We ran like pigs,” they said, all of them. Paul Berlin said it with his nose covered, breathing blood, but he said it loud.

  “Now tell me that this … this mission, this so-called mission … tell me it is fiction. Tell me it is a made-up story. Tell me it is an alibi to cover cowardice.”

  And they said it loudly. They confessed.

  “Tell me it is impossible to march to Paris. Say it. Confess that it is stupid and impossible.”

  “Stupid,” they said. “Impossible.”

  “But with conviction. Say it loud, with great conviction.”

  “Stupid,” they said louder.

  “Shout it. Shout to me that it is stupid and impossible to walk to Paris.”

  They shouted it. At the top of their lungs, so that it hurt, they screamed that it was stupid and impossible.

  “Clowns,” the colonel said softly. “Tell me you are clowns.”