The Corsican (55 page)

Peter nodded. Francesco's new game was beginning. He could feel it. Now there would be new surrogates. But this time Peter intended to use them as well. “At least tell me what you've got.”

“I'll do better than that.” Morris grinned. “I'll show you.”

He took Peter by the arm and led him toward the observation window. He scanned the tarmac for a moment, then jabbed a finger toward a hangar to his left. “I couldn't figure out why my source dragged me out here so early. But he said they only moved what he wanted to show me in the morning, before the sun got too strong. Over there coming out of that hangar two hundred yards to our left.”

Peter stared at the hangar, watching a small tractor pull out onto the tarmac. Attached to the tractor were a series of flatbed baggage carts, each carrying four aluminum military coffins. Moving along the tarmac, the sun glinting off the aluminum, the tractor and baggage carts resembled a long silver train.

Peter turned back to Morris, his face slack. “In the coffins,” he said, his voice suddenly dry. Very Corsican, he thought.

“And if we follow it back to the source, we find out who,” Morris said. “My man claims there's supposed to be another shipment of heroin due in a few days. You can watch them pull it off, witness it.”

Peter heard his words, the excitement in Morris' voice, but it all came from a distance.

“Those are American dead,” he heard himself say. The sound of his own words snapped him back. He stared into Morris' face, watching the excitement grow.

Morris' eyes became cold. “Yeah. It hit me that same way too, at first. It means that it's not just ARVN. It means that some of our people are involved. And they'd have to be pretty high up to pull it off. In small shipments, the heroin goes into the body cavity. In big ones, the coffins with the heroin are empty. That's what my man claims. The only weight is the weight of the heroin and packing. That means that in big shipments, somebody's making up bodies, making up dead who don't exist and never did. Or some of our dead are being listed as missing in action so their bodies can be used under phony names. Whichever it is, it's got to be somebody who can play with records and never be questioned. And that means brass. Big brass.” He waited, letting his information register. “Does it surprise you?” he asked.

Morris watched Peter's eyes harden. God, this man could grow cold, he thought.

“Nothing surprises me anymore,” Peter said “Not a damned thing. This friend of yours, what nationality is he?”

Morris shrugged. “I guess I can tell you that. He's French.”

Peter smiled. Almost French, he thought.

From the small coffee shop at the opposite side of the terminal, Francesco Canterina watched the two men descend the stairs from the observation platform. He smiled to himself. The wheels were turning. Only one more step was needed and then others would take over and do his work for him.

It was unfortunate, he mused. People would be frightened, just as they had been frightened when they had been forced to act against Constantini, and, for a time, that fear would affect business. It might even mean the loss of the shipment coming in, but that was doubtful. The price of doing business, he told himself.

But there would also be the pleasure of Pierre Sartene's death, and the knowledge of the pain that would cause Buonaparte. And others would now do it for him. Buonaparte would suspect, but he would never have proof. There would be no way he could honorably force an end to the agreement with Hanoi.

He smiled again. Now he must just make sure that those at the top were exposed. Give young Pierre time to discover who they were. Then a quiet trip to his friends, a worried conversation about Captain Bently's involvement with a certain newspaperman. They would have no choice at all.

He sipped his coffee, watching the two men. start across the terminal, heading for the street. His only regret would be that he had not killed the man himself, he thought. He smiled again. And that he had never fucked his mother.

Chapter 38

Michael Pope was short and slightly overweight. He had a round florid face, accented by bad teeth that he constantly displayed with a mildly silly grin, and the natural bonhomie of a midwestern upbringing which made all else about him tolerable. Peter liked him when they met, and immediately hoped he was not directly involved with the heroin shipments.

Pope worked in Admissions and Dispositions, the refrigerated holding area where those killed in action were identified, autopsied if necessary, then packaged in aluminum coffins and carted off to Graves Registration for the one-way trip home. He referred to himself as the head of the KIA Travel Bureau with all the sad cynicism of one forced to deal closely with death at too early an age. He was eighteen.

They had met in a bar on Tu Do Street, an accidental encounter for Pope, but one that had been well planned. Peter was posing as a fellow enlisted man, and the friendship would give him an excuse to drop in and visit Pope at work. It was not a place people went to without reason, and now he needed to know the area well.

“It ain't a bad place to work, once you get used to it,” Pope said, searching Peter's eyes for discomfort. “You just gotta force yourself not to think about it.”

They were standing next to a row of stainless-steel carts, each holding a corpse wrapped in a canvas bag. Opposite the carts was a large walk-in refrigeration unit, similar to those found in butcher shops, only bigger and far more ominous. Pope had opened it earlier and an odor of decomposition had flooded the room. It was gone now, but Peter was sure he could still smell it, sure he would for several days.

Pope had apologized. “It's the fuckin' heat,” he explained. “They turn ripe so fast, and the smell don't go away until they're frozen stiff. And if we gotta thaw 'em out it can get pretty bad. But that only happens when the vulture's gotta do an autopsy. And he's pretty decent about it. He sends us outta here when he's gonna do a bad one.”

“The vulture?” Peter said, trying to hide his excitement with laughter.

Pope hushed him, and gestured to an office at the far end of the holding area. “The colonel,” he explained. “The chief pathologist. He's a bird colonel, a real gung-ho motherfucker. Even has green cloth eagles sewn on his medical gowns. We started calling them green vultures, then the name kinda got identified with him. A lotta people use it now, but he sure as hell don't like it.”

Peter crinkled up his nose, playing his part. “Is that all he does, all that autopsy shit?”

“Nah. There ain't too much of that,” Pope said. “The cause of death ain't usually too hard to tell around here. When a guy's got a hole in his chest the size of a fuckin' baseball, there ain't much question how he bought the fuckin' farm. Sometimes though, when the decomposition is bad, he's gotta check 'em out. Mostly, though, he just marks the coffins ain't supposed to be opened by the family or nobody else. They don't want the folks back home seein' some of the meat we ship outta here.”

“But
you
gotta look at it, man.” Peter feigned a shiver to emphasize his sympathy for the young man.

Pope flashed a grin, showing off his rotting front teeth. “Naw, not really. We keep 'em in the bags mostly. When he's gonna open 'em up and do that ‘Do not open' shit, he usually lets us split. Like I said he's pretty decent about it.”

Yeah, pretty damned decent, Peter thought, seated back in his office. No witnesses when the coffins are filled and marked “Do not disturb.” A real sweetheart. Peter drummed his fingers on the desk, his mind filtering ideas. Pope had said they were told when they were about to get time off, when the colonel was going to do this little “Do not disturb” act. Always a day's notice so they could plan to use the time off. It also made sure nobody would walk in accidentally or volunteer for extra duty to pick up points.

Peter had made arrangements for Pope to let him know the next time he got unexpected time off. Told him he knew some ladies who were available for some night work, as long as he gave them a day's notice. He'd call, Peter knew. He was young and
very
horny.

Colonel Max Warren entered the cavernous Admissions and Dispositions section at 1900 hours, paced through the entire area, satisfying himself that no one had mistakenly come to work, then entered his small office. Out of habit, he slipped off his uniform and climbed into a pale-green medical gown. He was of average height and build, about fifty years of age, with a balding head that he vainly tried to conceal by combing long strands of hair up and over the top of his head. It made his baldness even more noticeable. His face was soft and fleshy, almost putty like, and taken together his features would be described as those of a person who would not be noticed in a crowd, no matter how small.

Warren rubbed his chin in thought, then walked to a small window and peered out. There were no stationary sentries to worry about. Admissions and Dispositions had nothing anyone would want to steal, and he had stopped the Military Police jeep that patrolled the area to tell the MPs he would be working late that night. The lights coming from within would not arouse their curiosity.

He closed the blinds on the window, then went directly to the large safe that sat in one corner of the office, opened it and withdrew five rectangular packages, each weighing about nine pounds. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the others and the simple job of packing and labeling the coffins could begin, an hour's work at most. He lit a cigarette and seated himself behind his desk, wishing he could do this work during the day and avoid disrupting his evening.

Peter was stretched out on the top shelf of a deep supply rack, only a few feet from the ceiling. He was surrounded by boxes, well hidden from view, but with a clear field of vision of the entire room. He had two cameras, one with a telephoto lens, one equipped with a wide-angle, and two directional microphones hooked into separate tape recorders. Additional recording devices had been placed in Warren's office and the refrigeration unit. Earlier that afternoon he had followed a large carton that had been delivered to the section. It had been marked “Medical Books,” and addressed to Warren. That evening he had found the box opened and discarded. Since he had found no new books in Warren's office, he was sure the shipment had arrived.

Peter stared at the office door, watching the light that shone through the frosted-glass panel. He had seen the safe earlier and had wished he had the skills to open it and confirm his suspicions. No matter, he told himself now. Whether you found anything or not, you'd still be here. The plan would mean nothing without the photographs and the recordings.

Below him the bodies of the dead, those delivered that night, lay in canvas body bags, the interiors lined with heavy rubber. They were laid out on the cement floors like so many wooden logs, waiting to be tossed on carts and wheeled into the refrigeration unit.

The thought of the unit now caused Peter's stomach to tighten. He had placed the recording device there, and when he had opened the door, the odor had nearly forced him to his knees. Even worse was the light. It had gone on automatically when the door opened, a harsh neon that flooded the interior, drenching everything in a blue-white glow.

He had never seen recently autopsied bodies before, splayed open from sternum to pubis, then sewn back together with random, widely spaced stitches. Others, some that had not required examination, were equally grotesque, their gaping wounds seeming to scream out the pain they had known, their flesh pale gray interspersed with deep-purple bruises. And all of them so young. Children, really. Some waiting now to be
used
.

It had angered him then, as it did now, and he forced the thoughts from his mind, maintaining his concentration on what had to be done. He focused the wide-angle lens. On the shelf in front of him the Colt lay ready for use.
Bird hunting. Open season on
vultures
.

The knock on the exterior door brought Warren from his office, his heels clicking in rapid succession on the hard concrete floor. At the door he hesitated, glanced at his watch, then opened it a crack and looked outside. He stepped back and admitted two men in U.S. Army uniforms. Peter felt his throat tense as he watched the major general and the brigadier enter.

“We all set, Max?” the major general asked.

Warren's face registered surprise. “I didn't expect to see you gentlemen here. I thought your subordinates would be coming as usual.”

“Not this time,” the major general snapped. “Word came down from one supplier that the pilferage problem we've been having just might involve that damned little civilian mortician you've got working here. He also said that little dago might be working through some of our subordinates.”

Warren's face tightened. “That's crazy, sir. He's tied in with the people at the funeral homes where the bodies go. He'd be stealing from his own people.”

“Wouldn't that be unusual,” the brigadier snapped.

Warren turned to the brigadier, his face paler than before. “Sir, I hope you don't think I'm involved in this.”

“Not at all, Max,” the major general said. “It's just that this is a big shipment, and this time we're going to see it packaged and sealed. That way if there's anything missing, we'll know it's being done on the other end. And then, by God, it'll be taken care of over there. Now, are we ready? I don't want to be here any longer than I have to be.”

Warren made sure the door was locked. “Ready to roll,” he said. “All I need is the names, ranks and serial numbers, and the names and locations of the funeral homes.”

“I've got everything right here,” the brigadier said, lifting an attaché case he held in one hand. “But there'll only be one funeral home this time, and one coffin. Everything goes to one location this trip.”