“Every man now knows exactly how many flares went off. Both before and after they were detected. Don’t you see what’s happening here? Even after you ordered that major to keep them separated, those men were somehow allowed to get back together and compare notes. I couldn’t find a single point of disagreement.”
This really was ironic. Here I’d suspected Sanchez and his men because they’d walked all over one another on the details, and now Morrow thought them guilty as hell because their stories were so mysteriously identical.
That’s when it hit me. That Tretorne. That devious, manipulative bastard. Morrow was the mole. He’d put her up into coming in here with this last-minute change of heart just to flush me out and see if I was going to keep our Faustian pact.
Well, I knew how to handle this. I said, “Look, Morrow, you can’t do this. It’s… well, it’s too late.”
She wheeled around and her eyes got kind of pointy and narrow. “It’s not too late until the packet’s signed.”
I tried my damnedest not to smile. She was such a charming schemer, but I now had her number.
“And how are you going to explain it?” I asked derisively. “You gonna vote for court-martial on the basis of your sixth sense? Or are you gonna try to explain that the witnesses were too good to be believed?”
“I’ll vote whatever my conscience tells me. I’ve got two more days to decide what that is, and I will not be pressured.”
“Hey,” I said, “I’m just trying to save you from embarrassing yourself. Delbert and I believe they’re innocent. I’m totally convinced of it. In fact, they’re heroes. They should all get medals for what they did.”
She scrutinized my face, and I guessed she was trying to decide if I was being genuine. I stared back with this look of fiery conviction, the same look I used to give court-martial boards when I was a defense counsel and my client was guilty as hell. Sometimes it actually worked. Sometimes it didn’t.
Finally, she pounced very angrily from the room. Tretorne and Murphy would’ve been very proud of her. A compelling performance right down to the finish line.
I, on the other hand, now had a vital phone call to make. I walked out and told Imelda I’d be back in an hour. I returned to my tent, put on my Harold Hufnagel disguise, then went back to the supply room. The same private was there, lounging in the back and listening to some rap group chanting about shooting and castrating cops. How would you like to be a cop and hear that tune pounding on the radio? Well, at least they weren’t chanting about lawyers. I asked the private, who was bouncing to the rap, if I could use the phone again. His head was bouncing, too, so I took that as a yes. I dialed Janice Warner’s number.
“Hello,” she answered.
“Hi, Mike Jackson here,” I said, employing my clever password.
“Oh, you,” she replied. “Is my delivery ready?” I could tell by her tone that she was having a little trouble playing along.
“Yeah. Can you come pick it up in fifteen minutes? After that, I’m gonna be tied up for a few hours.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”
I then positioned myself about midway between the mess hall and the Visiting Journalists’ Quarters. After about five minutes, I saw her heading my way, and I walked out and intercepted her. I took her arm and we started walking through the streets again.
She wore khaki trousers, a blue button-down shirt, and the same black leather jacket. In daylight, new observations came into play. She had great skin, very white, almost like alabaster. Her eyes, I now noticed, were nearly black, like her hair. And she had these thinly arched eyebrows, like curved scimitars. Very mysterious and very alluring.
“Hi,” I said.
There was no warmth in her recognition. “Hello, Sergeant Stupnagel.”
“Hufnagel,” I reminded her, “Harold Hufnagel. Harry to you, though.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right.”
“So did you get hold of your home office?” I asked.
“I did. They have no idea what you’re talking about. Berkowitz never mentioned anything about a breakthrough in his dispatch. Nor did he mention any inside source.”
“That’s damned curious. I mean, he went off like a whirling dervish the last time we spoke. I can’t believe he wasn’t gonna write about it.”
“I also did some checking on Jack Tretorne. Our reporter who covers the Agency knows him. He’s in charge of the Balkans. He’s even got a nickname. Jack of Serbia.”
“No kidding,” I said.
“Nope, no kidding,” she deadpanned. “Like Lawrence of Arabia. He’s been working Serbian affairs since 1990 when Yugoslavia first exploded. He’s got a great reputation, very smart, very capable. They say he’s the behind- the-scenes mastermind on nearly everything.”
“Makes you wonder why he’s here, huh?” I asked, giving her a sly, confidential wink.
She was still looking at me strangely, and I was starting to feel like Mel Gibson must’ve felt in that conspiracy movie.
She said, “Why wouldn’t he be here? There’s a war raging just across the border. Maybe if he was hanging around in Nicaragua, I might wonder. In fact, if he wasn’t here, I might wonder.”
I got this sense she was losing patience with me. I said, “So you’re telling me nobody heard Berkowitz mention anything interesting about this investigation?”
“No. But then the Kosovo massacre wasn’t really the main attraction that brought him here.”
That surprised me, until I thought about it. Then it made perfect sense. Of course. What Berkowitz was really interested in was the conspiracy between the CIA and the Special Forces. Breaking my massacre story might get him some acclaim, but exposing a modern replay of Operation Phoenix-hell, that would get him a seat in the Pulitzer hall of fame. Maybe he’d write a book about it, and they’d make a movie about him, like what happened with Woodward and Bernstein over Watergate. Who would they get to play Berkowitz, though? Dom DeLuise?
Only there was one very vexing problem with this scenario: His own newspaper didn’t know anything about it.
At that moment Warner said, “Look, Sergeant Stupnagel, I have to admit that I’m having a little trouble taking you seriously.”
I said, “No, you look, Miss Wiener-”
“Warner,” she sharply corrected.
“Right, and like I’ve told you four times, my name’s Hufnagel. Harry Hufnagel.”
She gave me the kind of look usually reserved for used-car salesmen. Black eyes, by the way, can be very penetrating. She said, “Well, that’s part of our problem here. I had the information office run down your name. There’s only one Hufnagel in all of Tuzla. She’s a legal specialist on temporary duty.”
“A rose is a rose by any other name,” I said.
“You’re no rose. Who are you?”
My first impulse was to lie again. Make up some name like Godfrey Gommeners: I mean, I was getting tired of Harold Hufnagel anyway. But why not tell her who I really was? All the jigs were up at this point anyway, and it wasn’t like I could get in any deeper trouble than I was already in.
“Okay, I’m Major Sean Drummond. I’m the chief investigating officer for the Kosovo massacre.”
She looked at me curiously, like I’d suddenly gravitated to a whole new plane. “Can you prove that?”
“If you insist. I actually have this military ID card they issued me, but it’s back in my tent. I could always take you back to my office, but then I’d get in trouble, because I’m not authorized to deal with the press.”
“Then why this masquerade?”
“Because I believe Berkowitz’s murder was somehow connected to my investigation.”
“And you wanted me to fill in some blanks for you?”
“Actually, yes. That’s exactly what I wanted.”
“But you didn’t want me to get a hook into you? Was that it?”
I acted embarrassed, which wasn’t too difficult, because I was. I said, “Look, Berkowitz did a hatchet job on me on the front page of your paper. He also tried to blackmail me. Under the circumstances…”
She seemed very disappointed in me. Those scimitar-like eyebrows sliced downward in a deeply disapproving frown. “And you have no solid information about Berkowitz’s murder? Do you?”
