Trevayne (45 page)

The Captain moved away from Bonner’s desk. He spoke with his back to Paul. “Major, I’m going to ask you a question, but before I do, I want you to know that I won’t use the answer unless I think it’ll do us some good. Even then, you could stop me. Fair enough?”

“Go ahead.”

The Captain turned and looked at Bonner. “Did you have some kind of an agreement with Trevayne and De Spadante? Have you been taken? Squeezed out after delivering something you can’t admit to?”

“You’re way off, Captain.”

“Then what
was
De Spadante doing there?”

“I told you. A job on Trevayne. I’m not wrong about that.”

“Are you sure?… Trevayne was supposed to be in Denver, in conferences. That’s an established fact. No reason for anyone to think otherwise—unless he was
told
. What was he doing back in Connecticut, unless it was to meet De Spadante?”

“Seeing his wife at the hospital.”

“Now you’re way off, Major. We ran confidential interrogations all day long. With every technician at that hospital. There were no tests run on Mrs. Trevayne. It was a setup.”

“What’s your point?”

“I think Trevayne came back to see De Spadante, and you bungled into the biggest mistake of your career.”

Roderick Bruce, watchdog of Washington—once little Roger Brewster of Erie, Pennsylvania—pulled the page out of his typewriter and got out of his specially constructed chair. The messenger from the paper was waiting in the kitchen.

He placed the page at the bottom of several others and leaned back to read.

His quest was about over. Major Paul Bonner wouldn’t survive the week.

And that was justice.

Chalk one up for Alex. Dear, gentle Alex.

Bruce read each page slowly, savoring the knifelike words. It was the sort of story every newspaperman dreamed of: the reporting of terrible events he’d forecast; reporting them before anyone else did—substantiating them with irrefutable proof.

Sweet, lonely Alex. Bewildered Alex, who cared only for his precious remnants of antiquity. And him, of course. He cared about Rod Bruce.

Had cared.

He’d always called him Roger, not Rod, or Roderick. Alex always said it made him feel closer to call him by his right name. “Roger,” he said, was a beautiful name, soft and sensitive.

Bruce reached the last page of his copy:

Bruce smiled as he clipped the pages together. He got up and stretched his five-foot-three-inch body. He went to his desk, took a manila envelope from a drawer, and placed the pages within it. He sealed the envelope and stamped both sides with his usual rubber stamp: “Roderick Bruce Copy—Special: City Desk.”

He had started for the kitchen door when his eyes caught sight of the Chinese box in his walled bookcase. He stopped and crossed to it, putting the envelope down and reaching into his pocket for his key chain. He removed the box, inserted a tiny key into its lock and opened the lid.

Alex’s letters.

All addressed to Roger Brewster and sent to a special
general-delivery number in the large overburdened downtown Washington Post Office.

He had to be careful. They both had to be careful, but he had to be more careful than Alex.

Alex, young enough to be his son—his daughter. Only neither son nor daughter, but lover. Passionate, understanding, teaching Roger Brewster to vent the pent-up physical emotions of a lifetime. His first love.

Alex was an ex-graduate student, a young genius whose expertise in Far East languages and cultures led to scholarship after scholarship, and a doctoral thesis from the University of Chicago. He had been sent to Washington on a grant to evaluate Oriental artifacts willed to the Smithsonian.

But his deferment was ended; Alex was taken into the Army, and Roderick Bruce dared not interfere—although the temptation nearly drove him insane. Instead, Alex was commissioned because Rod Bruce
did
point out to certain military personnel that Alex’s background could be put to good use in the Pentagon-based Asian Affairs Bureau. It seemed as though their life would go on—quietly, lovingly. Then, suddenly, without planning, without prior knowledge, without
warning
, Alex was told he had four hours to gather his belongings—no more than sixty-five pounds—straighten out whatever personal affairs he had, and report to Andrews Air Force Base.

He was being flown across the world to Saigon.

No one would tell him why. And Roderick Bruce, frightened for himself and his lover, overcame his fears and tried to find out what had happened.

It was too classified even for him.

And then Alex’s letters started to arrive. He was part of an intelligence team in training for some sort of trip into the northeastern areas. He had been told that they needed an American interpreter—they couldn’t trust the local agents and feared ARVN leaks—preferably a man with some knowledge of the religious habits and superstitions of the people. The computers had come up with his name; that’s the way the commander of the unit had put it. A major named Bonner, who was nothing short of a maniac. Alex knew this Bonner despised him. “He’s a repressed you-know-what.”
The Major drove Alex incessantly, was unrelenting in his harassment, brutal in his insults.

Then the letters stopped. For weeks Roderick Bruce made the trips downtown to the post office, sometimes two and three times a day. Nothing.

And then he confirmed the horror,
his
horror.

The name was simply a name on the Pentagon casualty list. One of thirty-eight that week. Discreet inquiry, on the pretext of knowing the parents, uncovered the fact that Alex had been taken prisoner in Chung-Kal in northern Cambodia near the border of Thailand. It had been an intelligence operation under the command of Major Paul Bonner—one of the six men to survive the mission. Alex’s body had been found by Cambodian farmers.

He’d been executed.

And several months later the name Paul Bonner came up for another sort of scrutiny, a more public one, and Roderick Bruce knew he’d found the means to avenge his lover. His beautiful, studious, gentle lover who had opened a world of physical ecstasy to him. His lover, led to death by an arrogant major who now was being accused by his own colleagues of being a law unto himself.

The hunt began when Roderick Bruce informed his editors he was going to do a series of columns from Southeast Asia. A general covering, with, perhaps, concentration on the men in the field—a contemporary Ernie Pyle approach; no one had done that very well in Vietnam.

The editors were delighted. Roderick Bruce, reporting from Danang, or Son Toy, or the Mekong Delta, had a sound to it reminiscent of the best of vintage war reporting. It was bound to sell more papers and enhance the already superior reputation of the columnist.

It took Rod Bruce less than a month to file his first story about the Major being held incommunicado, awaiting a military court’s decision as to whether it had grounds for charges. Several other columns followed, each more damaging than its predecessor. Six weeks after he left Washington Roderick Bruce unearthed the phrase “killer from Saigon.”

He used it unmercifully.

But the military court wasn’t listening. It had orders
from some other place, and Major Paul Bonner was quietly released and sent back to the States for obscure duty in the Pentagon.

The military would listen now. Three years and four months after the death of Alex, his Alex, they’d listen. And they’d comply with his demands.

Trevayne was annoyed that Walter Madison hesitated. He curled the telephone cord around his finger, his eyes on the folded newspaper in front of him. He kept looking at the three-column story in the lower-left corner of the front page. Its caption was simple, understated: “Army Officer Held in Slaying.”

The subheading was less restrained: “Ex-Special Forces Major Accused of Murders in Indochina Three Years Ago Charged with Brutal Killing in Connecticut.”

Madison was now muttering legalistic platitudes about caution.

“Walter, he’s being railroaded! Let’s not argue the merits; you’ll see I’m right. I just want you to say you’ll defend him, be his civilian attorney.”

“That’s a tall order, Andy. There are several preliminaries we might not overcome; have you thought of that?”

“What preliminaries?”

“To begin with, he might not want us to represent him. And, frankly, I’m not sure I’d care to. My partners would object strenuously.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Andrew found himself angry; Madison was going to refuse him. For convenience. “I haven’t noticed any strenuous objecting when I’ve brought you people a few hundred contract situations which were a damn sight more offensive than defending an innocent man. A man, incidentally, who saved my life, thus allowing me to continue to provide you with retainers. Do I make myself clear?”

“In your usual forthright manner.… Calm down,
Andy. You were on the scene; you’re too close to it. I’m thinking of you. If we jump into the defense, we’re tying you to Bonner and—
not
incidentally—to De Spadante. I don’t think that’s wise. You
do
retain me to make such judgments. You may not always like them, but—”

“I don’t care about that,” interrupted Trevayne. “I know what you’re saying, and I appreciate it; but it doesn’t matter. I want him to have the best.”

“Have you read Roderick Bruce’s stuff? It’s very unpleasant. So far he’s left you on the sidelines; that’s not going to be possible much longer. Even so, I’d like to keep him neutral where you’re concerned. We can’t accomplish that if we’re Bonner’s attorney.”

“For Christ’s sake, Walter. What words do I have to use? I don’t give a goddamn on that level. I really don’t; I wish you’d believe that. Bruce is a nasty little bastard with a lot of venom and a nose for blood. Bonner’s a perfect target.
Nobody
likes him.”

“Apparently with reason. He seems to have a capacity for implementing his own rather violent solutions. Andy, it’s not a question of likes and dislikes. It’s justified disapproval. The man’s a psychopath.”

“That’s not true. He’s been ordered into terribly violent situations. He didn’t create them.… Look, Walter, I don’t want to hire a military crusader. I want a solid firm who’s anxious to handle the job because it publicly thinks it can win an acquittal.”

“That could very well disqualify us.”

“I said ‘publicly’; I don’t give a damn what you think personally. You’ll change your mind when you’ve got the facts; I’m sure of that.”

There was a pause. Madison exhaled audibly into the telephone. “What facts, Andy? Are there really any supportable
facts
that disprove the charge that Bonner stabbed the man without so much as determining who he was or what he was doing there? I’ve read the newspaper accounts
and
Bruce’s columns. Bonner admits to the accusations. The only mitigating circumstance is his claim that he was protecting you. But from what?”

“He was shot at! There’s an Army car with bulletholes in the door and through the glass.”

“Then you haven’t read Bruce’s follow-ups. That car had one bullet mark in the windshield and three in the door pane. They very well could have been put there with a revolver owned by Bonner. The man denies he had a gun.”

“That’s a lie!”

“I’m not a fan of Bruce, but I’d be reluctant to call him a liar. His facts are too specific. You know, of course, he ridicules Bonner’s statement that the guards were removed.”

“Also a lie.… Wait a minute.… Walter, is all that stuff—Paul’s statements, the car, the patrols—is that public?”

“How do you mean?”

“Is it public information?”

“It’s easily pieced together from charges and defense statements. Certainly no problem for an experienced reporter. Especially someone like Bruce.”

“But Paul’s Army counsel hasn’t held any press conferences.”

“He wouldn’t have to. Bruce wouldn’t need them.”

Trevayne forgot for a moment his argument with Walter Madison. He was suddenly concerned with Roderick Bruce. With an aspect of the diminutive columnist that he hadn’t thoroughly considered before. Trevayne had thought Bruce was after Paul Bonner for some mythical conspiratorial theory associated with right-wing politics, Paul being the symbol of the military fascist. But Bruce hadn’t pursued that line of attack. Instead, he’d isolated Bonner, concentrated on the specifics related to the Connecticut incident alone. There were allusions to Indochina, to the murders in the field; but that was all, just allusions. No conspiracy, no Pentagon guilt, no philosophical implications. Just Major Paul Bonner, the “killer from Saigon,” let loose in Connecticut.

It wasn’t logical, thought Trevayne as his mind raced, knowing Madison expected him to speak. Bruce had the ammunition to go after the Pentagon hard-liners, the men who ostensibly issued orders to someone like Paul Bonner. But he hadn’t; he hadn’t even speculated on Bonner’s superiors.