“Tell you what. I’ll give this information to an intelligence officer I have confidence in. They have the computers for this. You may remember his father, Lieutenant-Colonel Benton, served with MacArthur all through the Pacific. Got killed later in a polo accident in Boca Raton, I’m sorry to say. But Richard Benton II is a corner, Scotty, a very bright and well-connected young officer. Breeds horses as a hobby, married a girl in a million or with a million, which amounts to the same thing, I guess. Tomorrow morning time enough?”
“I’ll be sure to let Mark know it was you. Now go take care of your guests, and thanks, Buck.”
“Thanks for what? Following orders from an old friend, Scotty? I’ll be back to you.”
Tarbert Weir put the slip of paper with Stigmuller’s phone number in the mapcase. Then he dialed his son’s apartment in Chicago, waiting as six rings went unanswered. Tomorrow was time enough, after he heard from Washington, but he needed the excuse to hear Mark’s voice again, let him know the old man could still give orders. On the seventh ring he hung up.
He replayed Bonnie Caidin’s tape message and wrote her phone number next to Mark’s on his notepad. He glanced at the wall clock. It was nearly midnight, too late to call a young lady, he decided. Probably she’d located Mark by now, chances are he might reach them both by dialing the same number... What had she said again? Her phone number and then the message that she had to talk to Mark about someone, a George Jackson.
The name meant nothing to Weir, but he wrote it out in block capitals next to Bonnie’s phone number and underlined it twice. George Jackson... he’d tell Mark when he talked to him.
Colonel Benton’s phone rang shortly after midnight. It was General Stigmuller. Colonel Benton sat upright, automatically pushing his tousled sandy hair back from his forehead.
“No, sir, it’s not the least bit inconvenient. I was just checking through some files here, a little late homework.”
His wife turned on her side to look at him, shading her eyes with her hand, her expression exasperated.
The colonel shook his head warningly at her and said, “Yes, general, I have a pad and pencil here. I’ll take down the names.” After a pause he added, “I’ll get my section right on it, sir. I’ll have a report for you and General Weir just as soon as we have the material collected.”
Hanging up, Benton got out of bed and said, “Goddamn everything.”
He went into the bathroom and took a swig of Maalox from the bottle. When he returned to the bedroom, his wife was sitting up, her bed jacket around her shoulders.
“Well, who was it?” she said. “I live in this house, too, you know.”
“Go back to sleep,” he said, and without bothering to put on a robe went downstairs to his study and placed calls on his private line to Major Staub and Captain Jetter. When he had them both on a scrambled conference line, he said, “I just got a call from General Stigmuller that was about as welcome as a turd in a punch bowl. Stigmuller says that old war horse, Tarbet Weir, wants information on those four military DOAs in Chicago.”
Froggie Jetter cleared his throat and said, “Just off the wall, sir, but couldn’t we tell General Stigmuller that Intelligence is aware of the situation, but it’s a sensitive area related to national security, and so forth?”
Colonel Benton felt a surge of rage and realized that the stiff drinks earlier in the evening hadn’t worked off as much as he thought they had. “Goddamn it, Froggie, talk sense. You don’t stonewall four star generals on the grounds of national security. They are national security, as they’re goddamn quick to tell you. Major?”
“Yes, sir,” the Major said evenly.
“Get to work on this, okay? Muddy the waters, buy us time. Don’t lie when you don’t have to, but put together a nice, tranquillizing cover-up for Stigmuller and General Weir. In the terminology of Weir’s war, I want a snow job.” He paused. “As an officer in the United States Army, I’m pledged to obey orders. As a member of Military Intelligence, I’m entitled to decide whether or not I damn well should. Our plans of last evening will stand, gentlemen.”
“What do we know about Weir?” Major Staub said. “Would it be useful to run an update check on him?”
“General Weir is probably just a meddler, another piece of retired brass playing bridge or hacking around a three-par golf course somewhere, wishing he still had some ass to kick. But we’ll play it cautious. Froggie, use your classification and pull his file.”
After hanging up Colonel Benton went into a downstairs powder room and took another two teaspoonsful of Maalox from his standby supply. In spite of his disparaging comments to his junior officers, he began to remember things he’d known and heard about Tarbert Weir — General Scotty, the old man had called him — and those memories suddenly stirred and sharpened the unwelcome acid tensions in his stomach.
Chapter Sixteen
Lasari walked once more to the big window, craning his neck as if to look down into the street. Bonnie Caidin said, “Six o’clock is what Mark told me, Duro, and that’s what he meant, give or take a few minutes. Time won’t pass any faster by watching for him.”
“I’m not looking. I’m listening,” Lasari said. “It sounds like a cat with its back broken down there.” A thin, cracked wail, swelling and growing louder, sounded up from the street. In front of the building it seemed to pause in peak crescendo, then move on.
“That’s a police siren, or maybe an ambulance,” she said. “I’m never sure which.”
“Why would a police car be on this street?”
“They’re all over the city all the time,” Bonnie said. “Chicago’s a lively town. Mostly I don’t hear them, we’re ten stories up, you know. It depends on how the air carries the sound. In the summer you probably wouldn’t hear it. But tonight there’s wet pavement and high winds, it’s just the combination that does it.”
“I’m more accustomed to quiet,” Lasari said.
“All those mountains, all that open space. How did you make a living in a little town like Jackson, Duro?”
“It’s not that small,” Lasari said. “Three thousand or more regulars, but in the winter the skiers come in, in summer there’s campers. And then people like me, lots of them. I don’t mean deserters, just drifters. It’s cowboy country. You can mind your own business, stay just as quiet as you want to be.”
“Did you work for someone?”
“I worked a little for everybody. I couldn’t come up with ID and I couldn’t risk getting on a payroll. First few months I helped out an old hippie, he’d been in Jackson since the fifties. We made pole-pine and rawhide chairs to sell to tourists. In spring, I’d get on the local work crews to mend the split log sidewalks in town. The wood gets chewed up and warped from wet and cold, and all those cowboy boots all winter. In clear weather, I could pick up work cutting firewood. All you need is a permit to cut all the windfall you can haul out of the woods. Eventually I bought my own chainsaw and I’d go halves with someone who owned a truck. For the last four seasons I worked at ski lodges repairing snowmobiles. I got to be a specialist on Yamahas.”
“You make it sound so simple, like a big camp.”
Lasari shrugged. “Not really. The first winter in town, I thought I’d starve to death. I wasn’t in top shape when I left Fitzsimons. I hadn’t had enough rehab on my leg. Slogging through snow with damaged muscles, that can make you feel you’re wearing solid lead boots. The first few months in Jackson, my leg felt on fire most of the time. I had to do easy things. For awhile I slopped out the Silver Dollar Bar at night. It’s in an old hotel. I’d do glassware, the tables and floors, and then I’d polish up the two thousand thirty-two real silver dollars they’ve got imbedded in the old bar. These dollars are a big tourist come-on, makes everybody feel rich.”