Dead of Night

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The three of us went up by the guarded entrance to the parking lot where there were two columns of armed soldiers flanking both sides of the main gate, the lines stretching into the lot itself. They looked to be Polish troops and I said, ‘Please don’t tell me that’s what I think it is, Peter.’

‘It surely is,’ he said. ‘An honor guard, if you can believe it. A guard of honor for a group of men who don’t even know the meaning of the word. Not on your life.’

Miriam slipped an arm through mine. ‘I think I’m going to become ill, right here.’

Peter said, ‘Then I just might get sick right with you, dear.’

I squeezed her arm and she said, ‘Do you want to leave?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I have to see this. I really do. I can’t believe they’re treating them like this.’

‘Who can?’ Peter said.

So we waited some more while other people drifted over to where we stood by the main gate. Some ambulances were moved, to make room for the visitors, I suppose.

I turned to Peter. ‘Any news about Jean-Paul?’

‘What kind of news you looking for?’

‘Oh, an arrest, conviction, a public confession of his crimes. That’d be a start.’

Peter said, ‘He’s in France now, probably getting some tough questioning from some members of the French government.’

‘Over his betrayal?’ Miriam asked.

‘Oh, hell, no,’ Peter said. ‘They’re going after him because of his real crime, which was embarrassing the French. Everything else is secondary.’

‘Peter, you are such a cynic,’ Miriam said.

‘No, dear, I’m a realist.’

The gate was one of those with a sliding fence portion and now it started moving with a rattle of machinery. The Polish troops stood at attention, though I was pleased to see that, judging from the expressions on some of their faces, they would have preferred to point their rifles toward the gate rather than up in the air. Among us were other aid workers, some soldiers not on immediate duty and various nurses and doctors, some of them in their emergency-room garb. One doctor, smoking a cigarette, said to a nurse, ‘I swear, Gretchen, if those soldiers weren’t there I’d take a scalpel and slit the throat of the first one I see.’

If Gretchen said anything by way of a reply I didn’t hear it. What we all did hear was the sound of engines and some of us moved back, away from the gate. An APC came through the gate first, followed by another. Both were flying UN banners from their radio whip antennas. Then came a black SUV of some sort with a blue flag that looked like the flag of New York state flying from its radio antenna, and that was followed by a black Cadillac with tinted windows. Three more APCs brought up the rear of the little convoy, and then, overhead, four helicopters circled in a wide sweep. All had weapons of some sort, either protruding from the open doorways on the side or in pods slung underneath.

Peter leaned toward me and shouted over the engine noise. ‘Not a bad little display, eh?’

‘Trying to prove something?’ I shouted back.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Wanting to let the militias know the firepower that’s out there, in case the armistice talks don’t finish up. But it’s all for show. All for show. By the end of the day, peace will be upon this land once again.’

The helicopters hovered for a while and then flew off, lowering the noise level considerably. Miriam’s arm was still linked through mine and I said, ‘What kind of peace? They’ll still be digging up bodies and bones for the next decade.’

‘Sure they will,’ Peter said. ‘But this expensive intervention by NATO forces will be over, the United States will be welcomed back into the ranks of civilized nations, and the true business of this planet — feeding the hunger of the transnational corporations, led by the biggest economic power in the world—will resume. That is, if they decide to reengage with the world.’

And then Peter looked at me, with a gaze that said much more would go on: that the true story of how this country had been crippled and who was behind it may still stay secret for a long time to come.

Miriam said, ‘If I stay with you any longer, Peter, I’m afraid I’ll become as cynical as you.’

Peter smirked, a look that once would have angered me but now just looked right. ‘Miriam, if you stay with me any longer, perhaps this boy won’t interest you any more.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, I doubt that.’

I loved what she had just said, and I also loved the look on Peter’s face, which was why I missed the first few seconds of the paramilitaries emerging from their two vehicles. The SUV had guards of a sort, but the word must have-come down from somewhere, because their guns were slung over their shoulders rather than held at the ready. All four doors to the Cadillac opened up, and as well as the driver four militia types got out, a woman and three men. They had no weapons, and their uniforms were clean and pressed. One of them came around to look at us, a guy in his late thirties with a closely trimmed beard. I looked at him and he looked at me, and I actually felt my knees sag as though the ligaments and muscles there had just turned into taffy.

He smiled and called out, ‘Hey, Samuel! Good to see you!’

Peter and Miriam looked at me, and Peter was the first to ask: ‘Samuel, do you know that man? Was he one of your captors?’

I kept on looking at that comfortable-looking and happy face. ‘No, worse than that,’ I said.

Miriam asked, ‘How could have it been worse?’

I shook my head. ‘He was a cellmate.’

And sure enough, walking over to greet me was Gary Nealon, supposed schoolteacher and fellow prisoner, now wearing the familiar militia uniform — with stars on his collars.

There was a tussle of sorts when some of the Polish soldiers got between us as I went over to see him. But then there was some talking back and forth and I made it to the Cadillac as Gary’s three companions talked to a couple of UN suits. Gary was smiling widely, looking me up and down.

‘Man, you look pretty good,’ he said. ‘How’s it going?’

‘You bastard,’ I said.

‘Nope, my birth certificate’s all in order,’ he said. ‘Can you say the same?’

I think I would have taken another few steps forward and started strangling him had it not been for the sharp-eyed militia guards who were keeping watch on me, and the equally sharp-eyed Polish troops keeping watch on the guards.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I can say the same. You son of a bitch, you were a plant, weren’t you? A plant to get information from me.’

Gary’s eyes were bright and shiny. ‘Very good, Samuel. Boy, you must be a smart one to have figured that out right now, with me standing right in front of you. Tell me, you still make a list each year for Santa Claus? You didn’t have a clue, did you, young fella, all those hours in the school bus. I had to put up with a cold mattress and bad food, all to see if I could plumb that eager young idealistic—and eventually empty—mind. The things I do for my people as head of intelligence.’

My fists were clenched. ‘Like killing their neighbors?’

‘Like protecting them, that’s what, when the feds and the state couldn’t do a damn thing when the hordes started streaming in,’ Gary said, looking around him. ‘Our real neighbors were protected. We took care of the trespassers. Nobody else could do it so we stepped up to the plate and got the job done. Boy, look at all the angry faces out there. You’d think they lived here or something.’

‘What do you mean?’

He smirked, and even with the armed men keeping an eye on us I wanted to punch out his lights so bad I could taste it. Gary said, ‘Look at all of them, parading around. Foreigners. Like they belong here. Get a good look, Samuel, ‘cause by this time tomorrow this group will be heading out.’

‘Some of those people are Americans, working for the UN,’ I said.

‘Then they’re not true Americans, are they?’

‘Jesus, you jerk, what the hell was that all about, back at the school bus?’ I demanded, stepping closer to him, even getting a whiff of cologne from him.

‘What do you think?’ he shot back. ‘Intelligence gathering, that’s what.’

‘From me?’

‘Sure,’ Gary said. ‘What do you think, anybody’s going to believe your story, that you were just a lost, innocent UN worker, wandering around the landscape? Do you?’

‘That was the truth, and you know it.’

Another laugh, another urge from me to punch him out. ‘Sure you were, and I was convinced you were something else. You did pretty good with Colonel Saunders and his boys, but let me tell you, if you’d stayed there one more day, then it would have gotten real rough. Think you would have been able to maintain a cover story if they brought out the knives and broken glass?’

I remembered what Peter had done, looking for me, and I said, ‘I imagine Colonel Saunders and his boys had more important things to worry about. Like a NATO air strike coming down their throats.’

Gary laughed. ‘So your little cover story continues, eh? Not half-bad. Here’s a newsflash for you, supposed ex-reporter Samuel. Colonel Saunders and his crew are fine, just fine.’

Something acidy burned at the back of my throat. Peter. Had he been lying all along? Even now? But Gary went on and said, ‘After you bailed out the whole camp was moved. We knew you were there to gather intelligence. Maybe you even had a GPS device up your ass, for all we knew. So after you broke out, Samuel, the base camp did the same, before your brave pilots came in at ten thousand feet to kill men and women and children armed with rifles. Still, I have to admire you for keeping to your cover story for so long.’

‘And everything about you was a cover story too, right? Schoolteacher with a conscience.’

‘Oh, that part was true,’ Gary said proudly. ‘I was a schoolteacher with a conscience, one of the very few in my school who resisted the brainwashing of the teachers’ unions and all the little special-interest groups who wanted to teach the latest fad. Oh, they were so smug and arrogant, thought they had everything under their thumb. They made jokes about me, you know. About having done better teaching in caves during the Stone Age. Teaching about a woman’s proper place in the home. About America’s proper place in the world. All that old-fashioned stuff. So when Manhattan was bombed and the balloon strikes happened and the power went out and outsiders started stripping our supermarkets and Wal-Marts, guess who stopped laughing? Guess who came to me and others and asked for help? So nice to be a liberal softy when you’ve got three squares a day. But when you and your kids get hungry you want help, even if you do drive a Volvo. You want your neighbors with guns to do something. So we did. Where’s the crime in that?’

‘And the cover story about your fiancée? That was true?’

Gary’s face was no longer so merry. ‘No, part of that was true,’ he said. ‘But her name wasn’t Carol Ramirez. Like I’d go out with a spic. Nope, her name was Carol Rockford. A beautiful white Christian woman. She was in a convoy all right, just like I said. She was helping take care of some foster children from some of our county agencies. Not from away. They were our own. Like we’d try to help those refugees, just like those people streaming out after Katrina. Some misguided idiots were trying to save a bunch of thieves and druggies and welfare cheats then. Why? We looked after our own, that’s what we did, and we took care of them.’

‘Took care of them, or escorted them to be dumped at the Canadian border?’

It was like he didn’t hear me. ‘So there she was, traveling at night. Some militia units—not with our county, that’s for sure—were escorting them, to make sure they could go through any state-police roadblocks without problem, when the bombing started. So that part is true.’

‘I’m not sure if I can believe you about anything, Gary,’ I said. ‘I don’t even think you butchers are ready for an armistice.’

The woman militia member called over to him, and he waved a hand back in acknowledgement. ‘Who says anything about us being ready? The Europeans and such, they’re starting to scream about the cost in money, the cost in seeing coffins come home with UN flags draped across them. They’re looking for any excuse to declare victory and go home. Because they know we’d never give up, not ever. Here’s a little secret that you can take back to your masters in Geneva or wherever.’

I moved to step back but Gary was quicker, grabbing my upper arm, leaning forward to whisper harshly in my ear. ‘The secret is, it’s nobody business what we do behind our borders. Understand? Killing niggers or fags or liberals or city people, it’s our business, and always will be. No matter the body count. No matter what you folks think or do. No matter how long and hard you look for your mysterious Site A.’

I broke free of his grasp. ‘Asshole.’

‘Sorry, Samuel,’ he said. ‘Time for us to declare victory. Site A? Here’s another secret, young one. I was there, right from the beginning.’

I said not a word.

Gary’s voice got low, dreamy. ‘It was a wonderful thing -a beautiful thing. All those people, trucked in, scared, angry, not knowing what was going on. So many loud voices, so many opinions, so many voices demanding that we let them go, threatening to sue us, threatening to call whatever cops might still be out there. What a laugh… and the shooting started, and we shot them, and we shot them, we lined them up and we shot them…and after a while if was just so quiet and clean… It was wonderful, Samuel, the most wonderful thing I have ever seen…’

I tried to keep my voice even. ‘You’re so fucking proud of yourself, why don’t you tell me where it is?’

That seemed to snap Gary out of his happy memory, and he smiled. ‘Hah. Maybe if you’d spent a couple more days out in the woods instead of being in camp you would have fallen into it. See ya. Maybe I’ll come look you up in Toronto when this is all over.’

‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘You’ll be arrested.’

He winked at me. ‘In a few short hours, me and everybody else here will be given a worldwide blanket amnesty. Not to mention our POWs over there at The Hague. Just you see.’

Gary turned and walked away and I felt this insane rage just roil through me as I remembered the burned buildings, the dead Australians, Sanjay lying there cold on the ground, the German air-force pilot dangling from a tree, the UN soldiers being shot, one by one, and dumped into a pit…

A hole. A pit.

Gary looked at me again and waved. I think I surprised him, for I waved back just as enthusiastically. Then I walked past the armed Poles, back into the crowd.

I was looking for Miriam, I was looking for Peter, and I couldn’t find either of them. There were more aid workers and off-duty soldiers and hospital folks around me, some talking in small groups, others lifting themselves up on tiptoe to see the dreary action taking place over by the tents, where the militia representatives were being escorted in for the armistice negotiations. I looked around, frantic now. Time was slipping away, and I thought about the militia generals, over there in The Hague, getting prepped to go home. Thought about Peter looking for the body of his Grace, looking for the truth about what had happened here, truth that might still be hidden for years to come. I moved around in a circle, looking for Peter’s tall build, for Miriam’s blonde hair. I bumped into people, moved again, heard the strange mix of languages, from Dutch to Polish to—

A flash of yellow. Over there. Hillside.

I went through the crowd again, using my elbows and whatever else to clear my way, and praise the Lord and pass the good fortune, there was Miriam, talking intently to Peter, standing a little ways up the hill. I ran on the grass and she smiled at me and any other time I would have just stood there for a second and enjoyed the sensation. But not now.

‘Peter!’ I yelled. ‘Where’s the general?’

Peter turned in mid-conversation. ‘Oh, there you are. Who in God’s name was—’

‘Shut up, please, just shut up,’ I said, trying to catching my breath, trembling with excitement. ‘The general. Hale. The one we talked to yesterday. Can you get hold of him?’

I think anyone else would have started asking lots of questions, would have tried to dissuade me from doing what I was doing. But for once in our brief relationship Peter managed not to disappoint me.

‘Is it important?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Miriam said, ‘I’m sorry, who’s this general? And how come the two of you know him?’

I held up a hand. ‘Just a sec, Miriam. Please. Just a sec.’

Peter said, ‘Important. Just how important?’

I took a deep breath. A gamble, but what the hell. What could anybody do? Send me back home? Assign me to the UN to investigate war crimes?

‘Site A,’ I said.

Miriam stood stock-still. Peter stared at me, his eyes ablaze.

‘What about it?’ he asked.

‘I think I— Hell, scratch that,’ I said. ‘I know where it is. Peter, I know where Site A is.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I guess that’s important enough.’

Peter worked his intelligence-agency magic while I was put in the very uncomfortable position of trying to explain to Miriam who Peter really was and why I hadn’t told her before. I also had to touch on the question of what kind of relationship we were going to have if I kept secrets, and I was fortunate enough not to have to answer it right away because I was still keeping secret the story of the diskettes. Soon we were escorted into a mildewy-smelling canvas tent housing General Hale and two other UNFORUS officers. Hale looked very irritated, almost like my father on one of his better days, and I started right off.

‘General, please excuse me, but a quick question.’

Hale looked at Peter and God bless Peter but he didn’t look awed or scared or overwhelmed. He just looked confident, like he was here to back up a colleague, someone he had worked with and whom he trusted. That look on his face warmed me almost as much as one of Miriam’s smiles.

‘All right, a quick question,’ he said.

‘In my debrief, I mentioned a German Luftwaffe pilot’s body, on a road by a river. Has that body been recovered?’

Hale looked over at the officers. ‘George?’

The officer called George flipped through a clipboard, looking at a sheaf of yellow message slips. ‘Yes, sir. Two days ago.’

‘How was it recovered?’

The officer looked over at me. ‘Excuse me?’

‘How was it recovered? Who went in there and took it out?’

‘An SAR unit,’ he said. ‘Search and rescue.’

‘They use helicopters, don’t they? Not ground vehicles.’

‘Not with the armistice in tatters,’ Hale said. ‘Look, young man, I should be there with the negotiations, not spending time with you—’

‘Site A—it’s at the end of that road,’ I said.

The general paused in mid-sentence. He swallowed. Looked at me—I was so glad I was not wearing the uniform of the British Army. ‘What makes you so sure?’

Good question. I hoped my answer would be just as good. ‘At the end of that road is a tourist attraction. I spotted a brochure for it, and one of the locals who helped me told me about it. Bronson’s Iron Works. One of the first open mines and forges in this part of the state.’

‘And?’ the general asked, putting about a ton of skepticism into that one word.

‘And it’s been disguised. The signs showing how to get there have been removed. And the road leading into the mine has been disguised and blocked, with an earth berm and some foliage. Not enough to fool a serious search operation but enough to fool most people. And I just had words with one of the militia people you’ve been negotiating with. He let something slip about me being out there and almost having found Site A. Something about falling into it. Sir, it just came together. The disguised road. The missing signs. And an open pit or mine.’

As I had been talking, one of the general’s assistants had been going through a series of file folders, holding them up to his chest like some paper accordion. Hale turned to him and said, ‘Henry?’

‘Sir, records show that the state park called Bronson’s Works was investigated almost two months ago. There was nothing to report. All clear.’

Hale turned to me, his face showing disappointment and anger and maybe just a little concern for me for trying to come up with something at such a late date. ‘Sorry, young man, it looks like you didn’t quite—’

‘Who did the search?’ Peter asked, arms folded.

Hale asked, ‘Excuse me?’

‘You heard me, General. A fair question. Who did the search? Who told you there was nothing there?’

Hale said to the aide, ‘Henry? You heard the man. Who led the search that told us there was nothing at the place called Bronson’s Works?’

Another flip-flip through the papers and folders. Then, looking as pleased as a dog treeing a squirrel, Henry held up a piece of paper.

‘One of the first investigators on the ground,’ he said. ‘A fellow called Jean-Paul Cloutier.’