Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

  Markham returned to his seat. He described how he and Anderson evaded the German fighters, then cautiously “cloud-skipped” out of the battle area, occasionally dropping into the clear to look for O’Connell. They finally spotted his aircraft trailing thick smoke, as they crossed the French coast, and did not close with him until near landfall England.

  Markham paused again. Several times he made as if to continue his story, but the words didn’t come. The smile, again. “This is harder than I thought it was going to be. Could I impose on somebody for a smoke?”

  Harry rose and walked to the other end of the table. He shook a cigarette out of his pack of Camels, then extended a match and lit the end for Markham.

  “Thank you, Major Voss. I don’t know where mine got to. I can’t believe I went through a whole — ” The smile. “Well, thanks.”

  Harry nodded. He returned to his seat.

  Markham took a deep breath. “Where was I? We were at the Channel. It took a good part of the Channel transit for us to close with O’Connell. His ship was going flat out, which was probably why she was making so much smoke. Hit like she was, she probably couldn’t handle those kind of revs. By the time we caught up with him I figured we were far enough away from the mainland that I could break radio silence. I ordered him — ordered him several times — to ditch once we were close to landfall. I couldn’t tell how bad off his ship was, but it looked bad. I didn’t think he’d make Donophan and, well, frankly, I didn’t think he was a good enough flier that he’d be able to keep his head when the time came. You lose your engine and very quickly — ” Markham snapped his fingers several times in rapid succession “ — you have to find yourself a good spot, if there is one, set her down dead stick — no power — and maybe you even have to go in wheel up and let her down on her belly. That’s hard enough for a pilot who knows what he’s doing, but for O’Connell...I thought maybe it’d just be easier for him to put down in the water.”

  Markham bowed his head, massaging a temple as if he was suffering a pain. “You’ve got to understand I had promised General Halverson that if he gave me this mission, there’d be no losses. And here I was already leaving Ray Jacobs and Andy McLagen behind. If O’Connell didn’t put down in the water I was sure I was going to have to report another loss to the general. But I never got an answer from O’Connell over the radio. I pulled up and tried to hand signal him. Maybe he didn’t see me because of the smoke from his engine. I couldn’t tell. So...”

  A long pause, so long that Harry felt compelled to nudge Markham along with a soft, “And so, Major?”

  Markham nodded. He shook his head as if even he couldn’t quite believe what had transpired and was replaying now before his mind’s eye. “I thought...I thought maybe if I could put a burst across his nose, maybe that would drive him down. Or maybe that’s what I’ve been telling myself I was thinking.”

  He turned to Harry, his face and tone seeming to say, “You explain it! You make me understand it! Because I can’t!”

  “The way I was feeling right then,” Markham went on, “the way I’d been feeling about O’Connell ever since the krauts hit us...”

  “And how was that?” Harry asked. “How did you feel about O’Connell?”

  Markham’s face turned contemplative. “Nobody wants to go up there. Most of the boys forced themselves. O’Connell couldn’t. After the German raid...a lot of those other boys were dead.”

  “But not O’Connell.”

  “I guess I hated him for living through it. That wasn’t right of me. But that’s what it was.” He straightened a little in his seat. “I can’t say that none of that didn’t affect my aim, not and be honest about this. Does that sound crazy? Maybe I’ve just been going crazy trying to figure it out.

  “Then, he was down, in the water. I could see he was still alive. I saw him fighting with the canopy, trying to get it open. There were two people standing on the cliff, civilians. It was going through my head, the minute I saw O’Connell’s ship going down, it hit me I was going to have to tell the general that this loss, this last man down, that was my responsibility. They all were, I know that, but this one, O’Connell...that was blood on my hands.” Markham licked dry lips. He looked to his coffee cup but it was empty He took a last drag on the cigarette then dropped it in his cup.

  “After,” he went on, “I could understand how they must’ve felt. Scared. Scared, hell; terrified. But at the time all I saw was two people standing there instead of helping. I have to make them move, I was thinking. I have to make them move!” Markham closed his eyes. He sat silently.

  “So you fired on them,” Harry finally said.

  Markham, still with his eyes closed. “So, I fired on them.” His eyes opened. “Of course they ran. I would’ve run if I’d been in their place. But at the time all I could see — I fired on the house to drive them out. Stupid. Stupid! I wasn’t even thinking; that’s just what came. Maybe I was so mad at them for not helping...maybe I was just so damned mad! At the way it was all turning out! At me!”

  Markham looked down at his palms, rubbed them together as if cleaning them. “Look, I’m not trying to make this sound like I was out of my head so I can take a walk on this. I was in command. I made the bad choices. I failed General Halverson. I failed my men. Poor J.J. — Captain Anderson — he’s just been trying to be a good friend covering for me. He had no hand in any of this. Whatever failures there were that day are completely mine. My men — none of them — deserve the way I’ve dirtied them like this.”

  When Markham had finished, he sat at his end of the table, slump-shouldered, seemingly drained.

  At the other end of the table, Harry and the others sat, surprised to find that Markham had left them with nothing more to ask.

  “Um,” Ricks began, and Markham tiredly raised his head.

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Can Captain Anderson corroborate any of your statement?”

  Which earned Ricks another of those baleful glares from Ryan. Markham had delivered himself up in toto and beribboned; Ryan saw no reason to tempt complications.

  “Do you really need him to?” Markham asked, looking pained. “I know this isn’t going to make you fellas happy, but I’ve advised him to keep his mouth shut.” Markham took one of his head-bowing pauses before continuing. “J.J.’s a good friend. He’s already got himself in trouble trying to protect me. He’d probably do it again, even if I told him not to. I’ll confess to whatever you need me to confess to. I’ll sign whatever you want me to sign. But I’m not going to let any more of my people put themselves on the line for me. I think they’ve been through enough.” Harry would show me the typed deposition. The document concludes: “Freely given and signed to this date August 17, 1943 by Maj. A. Q. Markham 0152793, 351st Fighter Group, Donophan Airfield,” followed by Markham’s precise signature, and those of the witnesses: Col. J. P. Ryan, Maj. H. J. Voss, Capt. P. L. Ricks, and Lt. A. G. Grassi.

  It was a masterful performance, and Harry had no doubt it was a performance, otherwise all those niggling bits of the case that told him all was not what it seemed to be were meaningless. “He never let the seams show,” Harry told me. “He signed his copy of the deposition as soon as the messenger brought it to him.”

  Peter Ricks, however, viewed Markham’s confessional somewhat differently. “I have to believe part of it was true,” he told me.

  “Which part?”

  “The pain.”

  *

  “OK, OK, OK!” Ryan percolated, striding up and down the room with a happy bounce. “Let’s take some time to clean up, catch a few winks, then we meet back here at 1000. I’ll have some breakfast brought up, we’ll go over the regs, see which articles apply, and see if we can’t get a presentation together for Halverson and DiGarre by this evening. Hell, there’s no reason we can’t have this whole mess wrapped up by the weekend.”

  “Um,” Harry said.

  Ryan’s enthusiastic pacing ceased abruptly. “Um?”

  “N
othing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “It’s just that, well, I have some things I still wanted to follow up on.”

  “Some follow-up things?”

  “I should be done in time to make the presentation to Halverson and DiGarre, but I’d just like to, um — ”

  “Follow up on a few things?”

  “Right”

  Ryan looked to Grassi and Ricks, but Ricks’s puzzlement and Grassi’s exasperation confirmed for Ryan that Harry was a lone madman. “What things, Harry? Haven’t you been listening? It’s over, understand? The man confessed! What is it? You’ve got that puss on again, the same puss you had on when you were fussing about that gun film. You going to start up on that again?”

  “It’s just that, well, I’m sitting here watching this guy. He hasn’t seen the evidence we have, he doesn’t know what we’ve got on him. For a guy who doesn’t even know if we’ve got a case he seems awfully eager to get himself hung.”

  Grassi slouched still further, and made a peevish noise with his mouth. “Markham’s nailed and he knows it! He’s just tryin’ to make himself look as good as he can. You know — doin’ the honorable thing and all that crap, hoping it’ll be appreciated enough where maybe he’ll only have to do twenty years in Leavenworth instead of ten minutes on the gallows.”

  “A four-oh guy like Markham scratches a foul-up like O’Connell; they won’t hang him and he knows it,” Ryan declared. “This is a smart guy, Harry. He may sit there giving up that I-wanna-come-clean-fellas song, but he knows what he’s doing.”

  It had troubled Harry like a barely heard off-note from the orchestra, but only now had Ryan clarified it for him. “He is a smart guy, isn’t he?” he mused aloud.

  “They’ll bust him, tag him for murder two, then plop him in Leavenworth at least for the duration. That,” Ryan continued, “will just about satisfy all parties concerned: our brass, the limeys, everybody.”

  But Harry retained the “puss” Ryan found so objectionable. The colonel sighed heavily and dropped into a chair. “OK, Harry. Shoot. You got a case to make? Make it.”

  “First-year law school. Professor Dunlap, remember? The three components to establish the basis for a criminal case.”

  Grassi groaned. “Oh, gee, I didn’t know there was gonna be a pop quiz!”

  “Shuddup,” Ryan told him.

  Harry continued. “Number One: means — ”

  “I would call eight fifty-caliber machine guns ample means,” Ryan contributed.

  “ — opportunity — ”

  “His own confession corroborated by two eyeball witnesses — whom he also took a shot at — place him at the scene.”

  “ — and motive.”

  “You’ve got his confession — ”

  “Which does not provide motive.”

  “He says he lost his head and — ”

  “No! Not him! Not this guy!”

  “Why not this guy?” Ryan was barking now.

  “Joe, you’ve seen Markham’s record. He’s got a chest full of ribbons, he’s been a combat leader for seven years — ”

  “Seven years is a long time,” Ricks offered. “Maybe too long.”

  “Yeah!” Grassi chimed in. “C’mon, Major, one night this guy sees all his bestest buddies get blown into itsy-bitsy bits, and then He’s got this washout O’Connell left. He’s already predisposed against this guy. You look at it all and you say, Who wouldn’t’ve taken a shot at O’Connell? Then you throw in those seven years, maybe the guy’s flak-happy on top of everything else.”

  “Believe me, Harry, I can see where a commanding officer might just get fed up.” Ryan said it pointedly enough to make Harry wince. “Look, we’ve got a confession. We’ve got physical evidence. Frankly, I don’t give a damn why he killed the little bastard. He did it and we’ve got him. Closed case.”

  “OK,” Harry said, then took a moment to get it clear in his head before he continued. “Let’s say he can’t stand O’Connell anymore. The sight of him makes him sick. Joe, you said it yourself: This is a smart guy. He’d have to be. You don’t get to be a line commander with Markham’s ratings without having something upstairs. So, put everything else aside — the means, opportunity, and motive thing, the gun film, all of that — and ask yourself why a guy that smart commits murder in front of two witnesses.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know the Greshams were going to be — ”

  “Never mind the Greshams. Why not put O’Connell down across the Channel where nobody’s ever going to know? Unless you want to say Albert Markham, with his experience and ratings, went completely out of his skull for a single morning — that for one brief moment, everything that this guy is went out the window Unless you say that, none of it adds up”

  The others went very quiet and very still.

  But Grassi was desperate to maintain his belief in Santa Claus. “Look, Major, with all due respect and all that, when a guy goes off his nut enough to start shooting people, he’s capable — ”

  Ryan waved listlessly at Grassi to silence him. “OK, Harry.” His tone had altered now, to one of reasoned argument. “We’ve still got his confession and the evidence.”

  “You’ve got his confession until he recants.”

  Ryan grimaced. “You’ll jinx this thing, you talk like that.”

  Ricks was nodding gravely. “If a man confesses for no apparent reason, it’s not an unreasonable concern that he could withdraw the confession for no reason.”

  “He could tell us moon men knocked O’Connell down, for all anybody cares,” Grassi rebutted. “That won’t change the evidence. The only thing the confession gets us is we don’t have to go through all the fuss of a trial.”

  Ricks pursed his lips. “Considering the major’s point that Markham’s confession seems premature, that raises the possibility he’s confessed as a kind of smoke screen. Giving us what he thinks we want, he’d expect us to truncate the investigation. That’d buy him time.”

  “Now I’ve got two of them to deal with,” Ryan said, frowning at Ricks. Ricks flushed and looked down into his lap. “Buy time for what?”

  Ricks shrugged. “A better story.”

  “Or maybe Anderson’s complicity.” Harry’s confidence was building. Hearing Ricks voice qualms made him feel less lonely.

  “You back to that damned film, Harry?”

  Harry walked round the table and pulled up a chair by Ryan. “I don’t know what Markham’s up to, Joe. But I don’t like him pre-empting us by shutting Anderson up. That smells awfully funny for a guy putting on a big show about coming clean. Maybe you’re right; maybe I’m worried about nothing. But if he is up to something, I don’t want to get caught flat-footed. I’d like another day or two — ”

  Ryan closed his eyes painfully. “Two days?”

  “Let me finish my interviews, let the boys here finish their groundwork. That way, if Markham pulls some last-minute moves, we’re ready. If nothing else, maybe him knowing we’re ready to jump on him the minute he tries to pull back from his deposition will keep him from recanting.”

  With a finger, Ryan traced the rings on the table left by the coffee cups. He was going over Harry’s reasoning, evaluating his options, no doubt looking for the avenue that would cover him best.

  “C’mon, Joe,” Harry persisted. “Even if this runs into next week it’s still going to be a land-speed record. If we go too fast we can run right by a hole that Markham can crawl through. Then how’ll we look?”

  The point hit its mark. After a moment, Ryan let out a massive yawn and stretched his arms so far he almost — and possibly deliberately — punched Harry on the cheek. Ryan stood. “I’m setting up a meeting with the generals for tomorrow evening. I’m going to tell them what the disposition on this thing is going to be and give them a schedule. I want to know what you’ve got before then, by 1700 hours today. Seventeen hundred’s your deadline, Harry. I’ve got killers walking around here with smoking guns; you’re lucky I’m giving you that much. Y
ou’ve got a perfect setup here, Harry. Don’t screw it up.”

  The door closed behind Ryan. Ricks and Grassi looked at each other, then to Harry.

  “How do we proceed, Major?” Ricks asked.

  “Keep doing what you’ve been doing. Only do it faster.” Harry looked at his watch and moaned. “Meaning that if either of you were thinking of catching any sack time, forget about it.” And he left.

  *

  Harry barely remembered stumbling across the Annex yard to his office. Even with the blackout curtains open, the small room was dark and shadowy. He called down to the orderly room for a breakfast of toast and coffee, then sat back in his chair, facing the window, watching the sky lighten from predawn gray. He fished in his pocket and found a last cigarette. It was not until the back of his chair thunked against the rim of his desk, jarring him awake, that he knew he’d been asleep. He stood, rubbed his eyes, and lit his cigarette. He welcomed the appearance of the orderly with his pot of coffee and toast, didn’t bother with the toast, but downed two cups of coffee as fast as the hot liquid would permit.

  He brought out all the files and notes on the case. Years ago, in his law school days, Harry had developed a technique to help him in his case studies. He took each relevant fact of the case, boiled it down to a few words he wrote in bold, block letters on an index card. Once done, he set all the cards down on the floor. The cards were pieces of a puzzle, and Harry believed that if he could study them in such a fashion — moving this one here, that one there — he could at least begin to deduce the finished picture.