“Malaria.” He swallowed and looked down. “I see.”
“I don’t suppose it would have made any difference if he’d been killed in action?”
“None whatever. I’d have lost a son either way.” He sighed and raised his head again. “This family has lived here for generations, Colonel. With David gone, Sandra and I are the end of the line. Do you know how that feels?”
“I can’t imagine.”
He looked down at his interlaced fingers, and up again. “How many men did you lose altogether?”
“You know I can’t give you that sort of information.”
His voice hardened. “No, I don’t know that at all. In a couple of days I’ll be standing on an airfield, awaiting the arrival of an army transport from Medellín. Do you want me to count the flag-draped coffins that come out of that transport?”
I took a deep breath. “We lost twelve men.”
His voice lifted. “Twelve? Out of how many?”
“Eighteen.”
“Dear God.” He stirred, placing his elbows on the chair arms and observing me over clasped hands. “Let me ask you something. What do you consider acceptable losses on a mission like that?”
“The SAF is not the regular army, George, and we don’t fight those kind of battles. Each individual is not just trained; he’s honed over many months into a knowledgeable, resourceful, fit, and multi-skilled fighting machine. The one thing he’s not is dispensable.”
“So you don’t countenance losses.”
“No.”
“And a loss of twelve men, on a single mission?”
“It’s an absolute disaster.”
“Now be honest with me. Did my son lead his troops into danger or was it your fault for not anticipating the risks when you sent them in?”
“Your son was blameless. It was my fault.”
“That’s a heavy load for one man to bear.”
“It is. I feel absolutely gutted.”
“You didn’t know there was malaria in that area?”
“Oh, I knew that all right – we all did. The guys took all the usual antimalarials. Unfortunately they didn’t provide any protection against this particular form.”
“Then you mustn’t blame yourself.”
“That’s generous of you. But there are still aspects that need looking into.” I stood up. “I’m sorry, I must go. There’s a lot waiting for me back at base.”
He rose slowly, putting a lot of weight on the armrests of the chair. He suddenly looked old and weary.
“I’ll see you to the door.”
At the top of the steps we shook hands.
“Good luck, Colonel.”
I nodded my acknowledgement. The sadness in his eyes was almost unbearable.
*
Once outside the gates I stopped the car, pulled out a billfold, and withdrew the scrap of paper David had given me. He’d asked me to look up his girlfriend, Chrissie. I glanced at my watch. I’d be using the Long Island Multilevel to get to JFK; there was an exit for Queens so I had time to do it before I flew back. I told the nav system the address. Then I just sat there for a few moments with the paper still in my hand. Every time I looked at that spidery writing I relived the nightmare. Poor David, he knew he was going to die. I tucked the paper back in the billfold.
Traffic was streaming over the Multilevel like it was a conveyor belt. I let the car select autodrive, giving myself some mental space to replay my conversation with George van der Loos. I felt sorry for him and his wife but there was little more I could do or say – in fact, I’d already said more than I’d intended to. Guilt for David’s death weighed heavily on me, but there was something else, only I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
I reached the Queens exit, took the car off autodrive, and followed the satnav directions the rest of the way. I was almost there when I realised what had been bothering me. George said he had his sources. Who or what was he referring to? Was he just bluffing? No doubt he moved in some elevated circles, but could he really get information about our operations that easily? It was a disturbing thought. I started to wonder who exactly I’d been dealing with.
The nav system announced that I’d reached my destination.
*
It was a neat, white-framed house, faced with pale-grey plastoceramic tiles. A low wall separated the sidewalk from the front garden, which was in the fashionable Zen style: raked pebbles with a few carefully placed rocks, set in resin to minimise maintenance. A small heap of snow persisted in one corner where it had escaped the reach of the weak winter sun.
The door was opened by a pliant blonde. She half-closed her eyes, surveying me quizzically.
“Yes?”
“I’ve come about David.”
“And who might you be?” Her voice had a low, teasing quality.
“The names Slater, Jim Slater. We worked together.”
“Well, Mr. Slater,” she said slowly. “You’d better come in.”
I wiped my boots carefully and stepped inside, and she catwalked ahead of me into her front room. It was comfortably furnished in a high-key, minimalist style. The furniture was white leather, the carpet and walls were all white, and the drapes were white with a self-pattern. In fact the only dark objects were the smoked glass coffee table and a large abstract painting in browns and oranges. I daren’t look down but I was hoping to hell I hadn’t tracked mud in on my boots. I'd felt out of place in the van der Loos's huge sitting-room. These surroundings couldn't have been more different, but I felt just as awkward here.
She didn’t offer me a seat but watched me with cool green eyes, narrowed slightly as if she were performing a calculation, which she probably was. She stood with a hand on one hip, pelvis thrust forward, a model’s pose. Her hair, ash-blond, was cut into a pert helmet that framed her face and swayed and shone whenever she moved. Her complexion was smooth, the skin shining over the high cheek bones. A light fragrance wafted my way.
David had said she was a kind of representative. In my book a girl like this represented only one thing: trouble.
Her eyes travelled all over me and I withstood the inspection in silence. I found myself wondering if she’d have preferred the way I looked before my brain was transplanted into this body. To a girl like her I probably looked better now: the strong build, the curly blond hair, the deep cleft in the chin…
What are you thinking of? Christ, Jim, have you forgotten why you're here?
Her gaze had come to rest on my uniform. I felt a flash of heat, as if she’d licked me with her tongue.
“You some kind of General?”
“I’m a Colonel.”
She lowered and raised long eyelashes. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Am I allowed to ask how it happened?”
“You can ask. I can’t tell you. I’m sorry to have to bring you sad news. I just thought you ought to know.”
Pause. “’kay.”
I spotted the wristwatch, a dainty little Rolex number, rectangular with a diamond-studded bezel and a gold bracelet. She wore it loose, accentuating the slim wrist. No way did she buy that on a conventional salary. She saw I’d noticed it and smoothed down the sleeves of her pink cardigan. It was a casual gesture but it covered the watch. This kid had friends, and one of them had bought her an expensive present. The fact that she felt it necessary to hide it convinced me it wasn’t David.
It’s none of your goddamned business.
Maybe. Maybe not.
“Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t seem surprised. Or shocked.”
‘Surprised? Shocked?” She repeated the words, as if trying to interpret a coded message. “No, I’m not surprised. He was a soldier, wasn’t he? It’s a dangerous line of work. They get killed. It’s their profession.”
I suppressed the urge to tell her that soldiers were as interested in staying alive as she was.
“Shocked?” She thought about it. “Yeah, I guess so. We had some good tim
es. He was fit, had his life ahead of him. He shouldn’t have died.”
“He asked me to contact you. In fact the last words he said to me were: ‘Tell her how much… ’ I guess you can fill in the rest.”
A shadow moved across her face. Finally something seemed to have touched her. She took a deep breath.
“When’s the funeral?” she asked, then added, as if it needed explanation, “I could pay my respects, at least.”
“I gather he’ll be buried privately in the family cemetery. I don’t suppose you knew the family.”
She shrugged. “I’ve met them. His old man’s nice. Didn’t care for the mother much. Bit of a battle-axe. I don’t think she approved of me, either.” She straightened up from her pose. “Maybe you’d like a coffee?”
“Thanks, but I have to get away.”
At the front door I turned to her. “I’m sorry about David.”
“Yeah. Well, thanks for coming.”
Back at the car I dropped into the driving seat, blew out my breath, stretched my neck and ran my finger around my collar. The girl was something else. She had a way of looking at you…
I placed my hands on the wheel and started to think. Did David tell her about the mission he was leading to Colombia? If she really wanted to know something it would be hard to keep it from her. David knew the rules but he’d always been anxious for approval and he’d be especially keen for hers.
One thing was certain: she knew David was dead before I told her. She didn’t react; she looked at me as if she was wondering how I’d expect her to react, and there’s a difference.
So how the hell did she find out?
13
The following morning I was back at my desk and up to my eyes in arrangements for the reception of the bodies and the funerals. Everything had to go like clockwork. The families had suffered enough; they needed to see a proper demonstration of respect for those dead soldiers.
The phone rang. It was Sergeant Bagley. “I have Mr. Paul Henrickse on the line. He wants to speak to you urgently.”
“Okay, put him through.”
“God-damn it, Slater—”
I reached for the speakerphone and turned down the volume.
“—if I’d wanted to blow that place to kingdom come I’d have called in the Air Force. I came to you because I was told you people do a nice, clinical job. Like hell you do. You’ve screwed up the one decent lead we’ve had on this network. What in hell’s name were you thinking of? I should—”
I gritted my teeth. “Let me stop you right there, Mr. Henrickse. You didn’t level with us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t tell us the target was located in an area where malaria is endemic. Not just any old malaria but a deadly form resistant to every antimalarial drug in current use, for prevention or treatment. Do you know what I’m doing right at this moment? I’m arranging for the reception of twelve men who are coming back from Colombia – in coffins. And three more had their health damaged so badly they may never be fit for service again. I have just three men left out of eighteen who went on that mission. Three. Now it may come as a surprise to you, but no way would I have accepted the assignment if I’d known this was going to happen.”
“What? I don’t know anything about this malaria thing.”
“Well, neither did we. And when my men started to drop like ninepins I pulled them out as fast as I bloody well could. That’s why we had to strafe that airfield.”
My voice was beginning to rise, I couldn’t help it.
“But the network—”
It was the last straw. I more than matched him for volume.
“Mr Henrickse, much as I respect what you and your people do, I’ve lost fifteen of my best men and right now I couldn’t give a flying fuck for your network.”
I cut the call off and sat there, breathing hard.
I’d probably gone too far but if there were repercussions, I’d face them. Henrickse wasn’t entirely responsible for the death of my men but he should damned well take some share of the blame.
*
My meeting with Harken took longer than usual because we had to pick over the remaining fallout from the Colombian mission. I thought I should warn him about my phone conversation with Paul Henrickse.
“You may get a bit of flak from the DEA,” I said. “Henrickse was livid about losing that drug network. I’m afraid I wasn’t in a conciliatory mood.”
His mouth set. “Well, the DEA may not be in a rush to put assignments our way for a while. But you had no choice; you had to pull the men out when you did. And you saved the lives of three men by doing it.”
“I’d never have sent them in if I’d known about the health risk. We should have been told.”
“You’re right, of course. Something’s gone seriously wrong with internal communications. Bob Cressington may be able to help. You could have a word with him about it.”
“Okay, I’ll do that. Wendell, can I ask you something?”
“Go on.”
“In the whole of the time you’ve been CO of this outfit, how many bereaved relatives have you had to visit?”
“Four or five, I suppose. Not a job anyone relishes.”
“Precisely. Well, I’ve made twelve of those visits in the last two weeks alone.”
“I know. I did offer—”
“No, this was something I felt I had to do myself.” In my mind I could picture some of those encounters and I relived my own feelings of helplessness in the face of the tears, the despair, the heart-rending bravery. My blood started to hammer in my arteries. “How can you bring any comfort to these people? Nothing I could say or do would bring their loved ones back. The very least I could tell them was I’d see to it that nothing like this ever happened again.”
He grimaced slightly. “Well, I understand the sentiment, but that may have been unwise. You shouldn’t make a promise you can’t keep.”
“But I have to keep it! Whoever’s been shipping fake drugs into regions like north-west Colombia is peddling death. I want to go after them, Wendell.”
Harken shook his head. “Jim, you’ve got too close to this and you’ve become emotionally involved. Stop taking personal blame for those men’s deaths. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I still feel responsible. And I owe it to those guys – and their families – to do something.”
“Our orders come down the line. That’s the way it works. We have neither the resources nor the authority to generate missions of our own.”
“I don’t need anything in the way of resources, I’ll meet the expenses myself.” I leaned forward. “Wendell, those men are just as dead as if they were shot in a surprise attack. We’d sure as hell mount a counter-offensive if something like that happened. Why can’t we respond to this?”
Harken sat back and contemplated me. Then he gave a short laugh.
“Well, the idea has its attractions. Without you around I could say there wasn’t anyone senior enough to stand in as CO. They’d have to holoconference instead of asking me to charge off to Washington every five minutes.”
“I don’t know why they don’t do that now.”
“They’re in the business of wielding power, Jim. They like to have people at their beck and call. And as long as they hold the purse strings, I have to go along with it.”
“Bob’s not like that.”
“No, but he has to consider how it looks to his colleagues so he has to play the same game. He can’t appear to be subservient to me, and it’s not in our interests to undermine him.”
“Is it okay, then?”
He thought for a moment.
“Six weeks, Jim. That’s all. If you haven’t succeeded by then, you put this episode behind you. Agreed?”
“Okay, agreed. Thanks, Wendell.”
*
I raised Bob Cressington on a secure video link from my office; it saved both of us the bother of going to a holoconference suite. The first thing he did was congratul
ate me again on the Tanzania mission.
“You earned us a lot of brownie points when you were up here, Jim. You may have been hoping for more in the way of a result but that’s politics, I’m afraid. The bottom line is, everyone knows Mark Ridout and his team wouldn’t have come back alive if it weren’t for you.”
“Thanks. I wish the latest mission had gone as well.”
“Oh?”
I told him about the disastrous foray into Colombia.
“We had to abort, and the DEA lost their chance to crack this network. I don’t like to fail, but frankly that’s the least of it. We lost twelve men, fifteen if you count three who may have to be invalided out. The hell of it is, it was preventable.”
“In what way?”
“The Public Health Service knew about it – they’ve had a Commissioned Corps Emergency Response Team down in Medellín for nearly a year, sending back regular reports. The PHS normally puts the information together and if there’s a threat to health they copy to relevant departments. That didn’t happen in this case so we went in blind. The guys took the routine antimalarials but it gave them no protection at all. It was a costly mistake.”
“Sounds like someone’s been sleeping on the job.”
“Precisely. And whoever that someone is, they’re responsible for twelve deaths. We can’t afford to have people like that in the system, Bob.”
“I agree. Okay, this will take a bit of tracking down. It’s probably best to start at the beginning of the chain. I’ll talk to the Assistant Secretary of Health and we’ll call in the Surgeon General. Once we find the broken link, heads will roll – I can assure you of that.”
One of the pleasures of dealing with Bob was that he knew exactly who to contact, and he always went right to the top. The Surgeon General was in overall charge of the PHS Commissioned Corps and his rank was equivalent to Vice Admiral.
“Thanks, Bob, I appreciate it.”
“No problem, I’ll get onto it right away. Is there anything else?”
“Well, when you meet with the Surgeon General, there’s something I’d like you to put to him…”
14
Counterfeit (The Jim Slater series Book 2) Page 9
