Ah, Treachery!

by Ross Thomas

  Instead of offering words of sorrow and commiseration, Winfield gently placed his right hand on her left shoulder. She looked down at the hand with what seemed to be surprise, then up at Winfield. “He thinks I’ve got it now,” she said.

  “Hank?”

  She nodded. “He thinks AIDS is part of God's special curse on the parents of certain boomers. The rest of the curse is that these boomers will dwell in the house of their parents forever. So I get myself tested every month and the results are always negative. But he says the test results look like forgeries to him and makes me use one cup, one glass, one plate and one knife, fork and spoon. He's really kind of nutty now.”

  She gave her head two abrupt shakes, as if to clear her mind. The shakes made her long auburn hair swirl and almost writhe. Winfield patted her shoulder and removed his hand just as she said, “Well, fuck Daddy dear. You wait in the living room and I’ll tell him you won’t leave till he comes down.”

  “He's not in bed, is he?”

  “No, but he spends a lot of time upstairs in the front bedroom, keeping an eye on the street. I don’t know who he's expecting. Maybe a delegation of those Kurds he helped fuck over years ago.”

  She handed back the sack of liquor and started slowly up the stairs. The General watched her for a moment, then turned and headed for the living room, wondering whether it was still stuffed with the relics and leavings of the past four decades.

  CHAPTER 11

  The living room offered five reminders of plain Danish modern from the 1960s. A wealth of chrome, glass and leather represented the ‘70s, and the ‘80s were remarked by three flexible floor lamps that hovered over easy chairs, as if about to pounce. The only artifact from the 1990s was a new 32-inch Sony television set. On the nearby VCR were four gaudily packaged rental videos, all of them pornographic. Winfield was reading their titles when Henry Viar entered the room and said, “You want ice?”

  “Not really,” said Winfield as he turned to examine Viar—all six-foot-four of him—who now appeared to weigh less than 160 pounds. He noticed Viar had lost more than weight. He also had lost much of his hair and the loss made the long, long face look even longer. Yet, it remained a tight, closed-up face, the kind that belongs to someone who no longer goes out much, orders most of his food and drink by phone and speaks only in monosyllables to those who deliver it.

  “You look awful,” Winfield said.

  “I know how I look,” Viar said. “But that doesn’t mean I give ashit.” He pointed his big chin at the sack of Scotch that rested on a chrome and glass coffee table. “You ever gonna uncap that?”

  Winfield removed the bottle from the sack, the cap from the bottle and asked, “Should we use glasses?”

  “You want ice, too?”

  “You already asked that and I said no. But I would like some water.”

  Viar turned, hurried through the dining room and into the kitchen. He was back moments later, carrying a glass pitcher of water in one hand and two mismatched tumblers in the other. After he set everything down, he watched carefully as the General poured generous measures into both glasses and added water to one of them.

  “We going to drink or just sip?” Viar said.

  Winfield added another ounce or so to his host's glass. The tall man bent over, picked it up, drank nearly half of the straight Scotch, came close to smacking his lips, but instead lit an unfiltered Pall Mall with a kitchen match. He then lowered himself into an easy chair (circa 1967, Winfield thought), put his feet up on its ottoman and said, “No lectures.”

  “No lectures,” Winfield agreed, sat down on a cat-clawed couch that needed slipcovers and resumed his inspection of Viar, noting the frayed button-down blue shirt, chino pants and brown loafers. The pants and shirt, neither clean nor soiled, looked as if they might have been slept in. The loafers looked expensive but neglected.

  Winfield's inspection seemed to amuse Viar, who smiled and said, “Some days I don’t get dressed at all—just sit around in my under-drawers. Disgusting, isn’t it?”

  Instead of agreeing or disagreeing, the General said, “Let's talk about nineteen-eighty-nine.”

  “Why not nineteen-sixty-eight? That was another swell year.”

  “I prefer ‘eighty-nine.”

  “What if I say go fuck yourself?”

  “Then I’ll use blackmail.”

  “That same old Panama crap? I don’t think so.”

  “It might not land you in Leavenworth, Hank, but it’ll certainly end your pension.”

  Viar thought for a moment, then smiled sourly and said, “I’ve wondered why you and that wacko outfit of yours hadn’t already used it. The Panama stuff. Then I figured it out. It's because of Shawnee. You don’t wanta do anything that’d hurt Violet's kid.”

  “She's also yours.”

  “You always had a yen for Violet, didn’t you?” Viar said, then leered and asked, “Ever get anywhere?”

  The General rose, feeling both ridiculous and determined. “You want to keep your pension or not?”

  “Sit down, goddamnit.”

  The General resumed his seat on the couch, picked up his drink, tasted it, put it back down, examined Viar for a few seconds and said, “Toward the end of nineteen-eighty-nine, during the month of November, you were in El Salvador.”

  “So?”

  “Doing what?”

  “I was agency liaison with Salvadoran intelligence—with the DNI or, auf Englisch, the National Intelligence Directorate. What I was really doing was loafing my way toward the end of a long and distinguished career, my last role being that of an aging GS-16 bagman.”

  “Was there a large payoff during the first two weeks of November?”

  Viar smiled. “So that's it?”

  “That's it,” Winfield said. “Was there?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who got it?”

  “Like I said, I was merely liaison to Salvadoran intelligence.”

  “Who got the money, Hank?”

  “The fucking Atlacatl battalion eventually got it, who else?” “You handed over the money to U.S. Army advisers, who then gave it to the Atlacatl battalion?”

  Viar only nodded and drank more whisky. “How much?” the general asked.

  “The battalion wanted five million but we gave ‘em less than half, which is about what they expected. Two-point-four million dollars.”

  “For the time, was that a large, medium or small amount?”

  “Well, since Washington had already sunk about four billion into that mess, it wasn’t significant money—except to those who divvied it up.”

  “What were the mechanics of the transfer?”

  “Be more specific,” Viar said and drank the rest of his whisky.

  “What was the money actually carried in?”

  “A great big old gray Deutsche Post mailbag. A real monster. Sealed.”

  “How was it sealed?”

  “With a quarter-inch wire cable and a big glob of solder. The seal itself was a steel engraving of Mickey Mouse pressed into the solder. A generous nation's little joke.”

  Winfield picked up the Scotch bottle, went over to Viar and poured him another ounce or so. Once back on the couch, the General asked, “Why a German mailbag?”

  “Because if it fell off a truck, we could blame it on the Krauts.” He smiled slightly. “Another joke. The bag was just handy. That's all.”

  “You picked up the money where?”

  “The embassy. Where else could Langley pouch it to?”

  “Then?”

  “Then I went to see our Army guys, the advisers who’d make the payoff to the Atlacatl brass.”

  “Who were our Army guys?” “A colonel and a captain.” “You gave them the money?” Viar nodded. “Then what?”

  “Then the three of us counted it.” “And after that?”

  “After that they call in a major—a guy with good Spanish— who’ll make the delivery. They tell him what they want him to do and he says swell. Then he asks h
ow much is in the bag and they say two-point-four million. He says fine, let's count it. The Colonel tells him it's already counted. Not in my presence, the Major says, then respectfully requests, in the interest of what he calls fairness and accuracy, that we count the fucking money again. So we did. The four of us.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we put it back in the German mailbag and seal it back up with wire, solder and Mickey Mouse. After that, we watch the Colonel tuck it away for the night in his big safe—all this in the presence of Major Doubting Thomas.”

  “Go on,” Winfield said.

  “The next morning the Colonel and the Captain open the safe and hand the bag over to the Major, who checks the seal, then delivers the money to his contact, a young captain in the Atlacatl battalion.”

  “You remember the date of the delivery?”

  “November sixth.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, the Atlacatl Captain delivers the bag to his Colonel. Together, they open it up. Guess what? Half the money—one-point-two million's gone south. But to make the bag feel and weigh right, somebody's added a lot of carefully cut-up packets of newspapers, allnicely wrapped with rubber bands. The Colonel goes ape shit, of course, and screams and yells at the Captain, who's a real little guy. Then the Colonel beats up on him for a while, gets tired of that and demands the name of the piece of American shit who gave the Captain the money. The Captain names our American Major.” “What happened then?”

  “What happened then was I get a call from a friend of mine in the DNI—”

  “Their intelligence outfit.”

  “The same. And he's really pissed off. The little Salvadoran Captain's with him, pretty banged up by now, and my friend's demanding the name, rank and serial numbers of all the North Americans involved. So I name names. Then I call the American Colonel and say I want a crash meeting with him, the Major and the Captain. But I won’t say why.”

  “What a duplicitous mind you have,” the General said.

  Viar nodded in happy agreement. “Just covering my ass.” He paused to light another cigarette and drink more whisky before continuing. “Well, when I arrive, they’re all three there—the Colonel, the Major and the Captain. So I deliver what I like to think of as a terse, factual report on how half the money's been stolen. Then I sit back and watch.”

  “Who exploded first?” Winfield said.

  “The Colonel. He blames it all on the Major, accuses him of stealing the money and calls him names that’d make motherfucker sound like an endearment. The Major just sits there and listens till the Colonel runs down. Then he denies it. No yells. No shouts. Just that one cold flat denial. The Colonel starts in on him again. The Major takes it for about two minutes, maybe more, then hits the Colonel three times and damn near kills him.”

  Viar drank a little more of his whisky, almost a reflective sip, andsaid, “I was sitting right there and if I’d blinked I’d’ve missed it. He was that fucking fast.”

  “What happened to him—the Major?”

  “What d’you think happened? They arrested him and tossed him into the guardhouse, or what passed for one. It was more like a real small motel with barred windows and metal doors. The charge was striking a superior officer. That's when I did a little snooping and, after that, went to see him. The Major.”

  “Why?” Winfield said. “Surely not to offer comfort and consolation.”

  Viar stared into his half-empty glass. “Ever notice Mickey Mouse has only three fingers?”

  “I was five when I first noticed it. Maybe six.”

  Viar looked up at Winfield. “Well, the Mickey Mouse seal on the mailbag the four of us tucked into the Colonel's safe had three fingers on each hand. But the Mickey Mouse on the seal of the bag the little Captain delivered to his Colonel had four fingers. On each hand.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My pal in the Salvadoran DNI somehow got hold of the mailbag and the broken seal. I noticed the four fingers. He didn’t, of course, and I saw no reason to mention it.”

  “But you said the American Major checked the seal when he took delivery.”

  “He checked to see if it was broken. He didn’t count fingers. Who would?”

  “You would.”

  “Yeah, but that's my trade. Or was.”

  “Then it was a purposely clumsy forgery, which, if necessary, could be blamed on the Major?”

  “Uh-huh,” Viar said. “Well, I checked with the home office first and let them mull it over. After they got back to me was when I went to see the Major and tell him he’d been shortchanged by his fellow Americans, the Colonel and the Captain.”

  “You were acting under orders at the time?”

  “My orders were to smooth things over.”

  “I see.”

  “I tell the Major he was deliberately provoked into striking his superior officer. I also tell him that's exactly what the Colonel and the Captain were counting on. Then I ask him if he’d noticed the four-fingered mouse seal before he handed the mailbag over to the little Salvadoran Captain.”

  “And his reply?”

  “He closed his eyes for maybe fifteen or twenty seconds, then opened them. That was his reply. So then I tell him the best deal he can cut is to resign his commission and forget about the Army. The last thing I tell him is that Langley's sending the Atlacatl battalion another one-point-two million to replace what's been stolen and that the whole thing’ll be forgotten—even the fact that he beat the shit out of his superior officer.”

  “His comment—if any?” Winfield said.

  “Not one fucking word.”

  “Then what?”

  “They let him resign his commission.” “Was that the end of it?”

  “Almost—except for the little Salvadoran Captain, who sneaks by to tell me he's thinking of deserting because his superiors are convinced he got a cut of the stolen money but didn’t share it with anybody. What he wants from me are the names of the American Colonel and Captain.”

  “Did you give him the names?” “What d’you think?”

  “You gave him the names,” the General said. Viar smiled. “But I also suggested he might go pay a courtesy call on the by then ex-Major.” “Who was where?”

  “After he resigned his commission, they let him out of the guardhouse-motel and checked him into some fleabag in San Salvador to wait for his flight back to the States. And that's where the ex-American Major and the almost ex-Salvadoran Captain met and talked. And right after that the Major calls me.”

  “Why?”

  “To let me know I have a loose end flapping around in the form of the little Captain who's hell-bent on revenge. The now ex-Major suggests I whisk the little Captain out of the country before he kills somebody.”

  “Did you?”

  “Sure. It was no big deal. I had the Captain and his wife flown to Mexico City, where a couple of our guys met ‘em, gave ‘em a few bucks and waved good-bye. After I make sure they’re really gone, I go see the American Colonel and Captain and tell ‘em what I’ve done.”

  “Their reaction?”

  “Well, they couldn’t exactly tell me they were grateful, could they? So they just said it was a wise decision.”

  “This American Colonel and Captain,” Winfield said, then paused, as if to think about what should come next. “It only took them three years.”

  “For what?”

  “For Walker Laney Hudson to go from bird colonel to major general, and for Ralph Waldo Millwed to go from captain to colonel. Neither served in the Gulf, which makes their rapid promotions rather curious.”

  “Well, you’d know more about that than I would.”

  “I doubt that,” Winfield said. “Still, I do know that in times past certain general officers have promoted those who could either harm or embarrass them. Some think of it as closing ranks. Others regard it as blackmail. As for Hudson and Millwed, I have a theory about their sudden promotions. Care to hear it?”

  “As long as it's
a theory and not a lecture,” Viar said.

  The General nodded and smiled a promise. “Let's assume that there's this turbulent priest we wish to be rid of—”

  “Who's we?” Viar asked.

  “Who knows?”

  “I see.”

  “At any rate, this priest is rector of the University of Central America, which has the reputation of being sympathetic to the cause of the Salvadoran rebels, who, as you know, call themselves the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front or the FMLN.”

  “It's a lecture after all,” Viar said.

  “Bear with me,” the General said. “On November sixteenth, nineteen-eighty-nine, our turbulent priest, Ignacio Ellacuria, is shot dead along with five other priests, their cook and her daughter. Sounds rather like the title of a French film, doesn’t it? ‘Six Priests, Their Cook and Her Daughter.’ “

  “I don’t go to French films because, like your lectures, I don’t think they’ll ever end.”

  “Patience,” the General said. “I have only a few more points to make and a question or two. From several sources I’ve learned that a CIA officer was at the scene of the priestly murders by 0800 the next morning. I need to know if that CIA officer was you.”

  “He was a Latino,” Viar said. “Do I look like a Latino?”

  The General studied him briefly, as if trying to decide, then said, “Back to the sudden promotions of General Hudson and Colonel Millwed. It's fairly common knowledge these days that commandos from the Atlacatl battalion murdered the priests and the two women. But it was only a week or ten days before these murders that you,acting for the CIA, entrusted Hudson, then a colonel, and Millwed, then a captain, with two million four hundred thousand dollars, which they were to turn over to this same battalion. My question is: Was that the price the battalion had put on the head of our turbulent priest?”

  “How should I know? I was just the bagman.”

  “Yet when half the money was stolen, the blame for its theft fell on a luckless U.S. Army major. And almost immediately, more CIA money was dispatched to the battalion. The murders of the priests and the unfortunate women then took place, apparently on schedule. Meanwhile, some person or persons are one million two hundred thousand dollars richer.” The General looked slowly around the living room. “It would seem, Hank, that you’re not one of those persons.”