There's a Man With a Gun Over There (36 page)

“Well, as I said, it is our policy to read everyone his or her rights.”

“But did you specifically read Sergeant Perkins his rights?”

“I see here that he initialed the part about being read his rights. It's right on the form.” Then, as an afterthought, I add: “Sir.”

The colonel acting as judge clears his throat.

“I think I've heard enough. I am going to dismiss this case. Sergeant Perkins you can go.”

Sergeant Perkins stands up and looks around, as if he's waking up. He seems taller than I remembered. His defender snaps his briefcase closed.

“What kind of bullshit is this?” the colonel asks after they leave. “You're a disgrace to the US Army, Mister Ryan.”

Maybe, though, just maybe I've done something good. Sergeant Perkins is a free man. I got him off.

“Ryan, what kind of a cute, fucking performance was that,” the major prosecuting the case asks as we walk out of the courtroom. “What's this ‘We would usually read them their rights' stuff?”

“Well, I . . .” I begin.

He looks at me as if I were something stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

“You know, Ryan, it doesn't matter. Your stupid little try to wipe your hands clean of us doesn't matter. The fact is, we've got Sergeant Perkins cold. He's already in jail, he just doesn't know it yet.”

“But the trial's over.”

“But not the next trial, Sergeant Ryan, or the one after that. The army doesn't like these married men living with their girlfriends. It's bad for our image. Sergeant Perkins is going to Leavenworth.”

“But . . .”

“The truth is what we say it is, Ryan. Never forget this, even after you leave the army. One more thing.”

“Yessir.”

“Just remember. We always win. Always.”

“Boom, boom, snare,” I mutter. “Boom, boom, snare.”

“Dismissed, Mister Ryan. You're dismissed.”

58.

I
n my dream, I call Walt Rostow again.

“Look, you little crumble ass, don't call me again. You don't have any real problems. You never felt the smack of a bullet. You got to sit on your ass in Germany and drink wine. Look at the faces on those boys wounded in Afghanistan. Look at them. Their eyes look like they've been boiled in blood.”

“But.”

“Don't but me nothing, buddy. Unless you've sucked at the tit of Mother Battle, you don't get to say a thing about war.”

“Look.”

“Look bullshit. You try to talk about war to someone who's been there—why, that's like finding out they have wild cards for all your aces.”

“I worked for the empire, just like Joel Niederman.”

“Oh, Joel Niederman—now that's a sad story.”

“It's all about money and power.”

“Of course it is. What did you think it was about?”

“I know that, but no one will listen to me. The wounded veterans are so caught up in their own pain that they're afraid to talk about it. So it just stays a secret, or sometimes a truth told by people who get demonized as Communists or stuff like that.”

“Now you're getting it, Ryan. Let me tell you a secret: we've been practicing this stuff for years. Decades. Centuries. It's the story Homer never told. War: it's the oldest business in the world.”

And then he begins laughing. And laughing. He throws his head back, and Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon Johnson and General MacArthur and ranks of men whose faces I can't make out have their heads thrown back and laughter cascades and ripples back and forth as certain and powerful as the tides of the sea.

59.

O
n May 24th, the
Baader-Meinhof Gruppe
set off bombs at Campbell Barracks, the US Army facility in Heidelberg, killing three people. It was the front-page story in the
Stars and Stripes
I picked up at the snack bar on my way into work the next morning.

The attack really frightened me. I wondered if Angelika had anything to do with it. I was nervous as I came into the main hall of the Turley Barracks MP Station, but the door to her office was closed and I didn't have to deal with it. I was relieved.

“Ryan, did you see this?”

Lance B. Edwards was standing in the doorway to my office in our MP Customs suite a few minutes after I got to my desk. I thought he was talking about the bomb attack and went on studying the picture of the overturned Ford Capri in the parking lot at Campbell Barracks on the front page of
Stars and Stripes
. The car was blown up in the lot just outside of the main Twenty-Second MP Group Headquarters.

“Man, this is all a little close for me,” I said to Lance B. Edwards and held up the front page of the paper.

“Ryan, I knew you were talented, but I didn't know that you were famous.”

“What do you mean?”

I put down the paper.

“Here.” He handed me a small poster with torn corners.

And there I was—or there's my customs police ID photograph, the one Angelika wanted—on an anarchist wanted poster.

GESUCHT
, the poster said right over the top of my face. WANTED.
Wir suchen diesen Mann wegen krimineller Aktivitäten gegen das deutschen Volk. Verratsgesuch.

We're searching for this man who's guilty of criminal activities against the German people. Traitor Wanted.

“You must have quite the night life, Sergeant Ryan,” Lance B. Edwards said, for the first and only time using my actual army rank.

“Jesus,” I said. “Jesus H. Christ.”

What was it Angelika had said?

I fix you good. I will call my Baader-Meinhof friends.

“Where did you find this?” I asked Edwards.

“They're all over Heidelberg,” Edwards said. “What's your rotation date?”

“June 15th. Jenny's leaving this Saturday. Most of our stuff has already been shipped.”

“Look: I got a call from headquarters about a raid in the morning. You and Goldberg go on that one. Then I vote you pack your stuff and get your ass out of the Federal Republic of Germany next Monday. I'll get you some emergency orders, OK?”

I looked at the wanted poster of me, a little artifact that has me squarely on the wrong side of something. Is this, I wonder, what history looks like?

60.

I
was even more nervous the next morning.

I had my wanted poster folded and inside the pocket of my green Harris Tweed jacket. I was wondering whether I should show it to the Germans, but Herr Diener had brought along his own copy.

“
Ach, ja
,” he said, holding up the wanted poster. “
Herr Ryan, der Freund von Albert Speer und berühmte Kriminelle
.” He chuckled.

Mr. Ryan, friend of Albert Speer and famous criminal. I tried to laugh, too, but my throat felt dry.

“
Ich hab' gehört, dass diese Leute, die wir heute sehen, etwas mit der Baader-Meinhof Gruppe zu tun haben.
”

The people we're seeing today have something to do with the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

“
Was
?!?” I say. I am getting more and more nervous. “
Was sagst Du
?” You must be crazy.

Herr Hellman furtively pulls the handle of his pistol out of his coat pocket and shows it to me as if that will cure my woes.

The apartment was on the top floor. Herr Diener and Goldberg and I, led by Herr Hellman, shuffled up the stairs after someone buzzed us into the building. When, out of breath, we got to the top floor, the door to the apartment was slightly ajar, and a skinny-faced man in a T-shirt leaned against it, looking at us.

“
Was geht
?” he asked, an American good at German slang. What do you want?

“Customs Police,” I said and held up my credentials. “May we come inside?”

I was following the rule book. If you asked to come in and the people gave you permission, then you could search without a warrant. If you also had a warrant, Lance B. Edwards said we were double covered. No US court could throw out the case.

“Sure. Come on in. I been kinda missing the army. Be a chance to shoot the shit with my buddies.”

“And you are . . . ?” Goldberg asked.

“Wilbur. Russell Wilbur. You know, the famous deserter. The famous accomplice of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Known far and wide by the CID.”

I glanced at Goldberg with a quizzical look. Could this be true?

“You got some kind of identification?” Goldberg asked him.

The door to the apartment opened on a cramped living room combined with both dining room and kitchen. A very pregnant woman was pacing back and forth.

“Russ, why'd you let them in? Fucking Nazis.”

“We won't be here long,” Goldberg said. “Just want to ask you a few questions, ma'am.”

“Nazis,” she said again and crossed her arms over her chest. “Goddamned Nazis.”

Herr Hellman's head jerked every time he heard the word “Nazi.”

“Filthy Nazis!”

Goldberg studied the green army ID card Wilbur handed him.

“I don't want to be rude,” Goldberg said, “but this says you're fifty-one years old. You look like you're about twenty-five to me. This wouldn't be a forgery, would it?”

“Somebody made a mistake,” Wilbur said. “Hey, it's the army—mistakes happen all the time. People die for no good reason at all.”

“I mean it, Russell, why did you let these Nazis in here?” She turned to Herr Diener. “
Haben Sie öffentliche Papiere mitgebracht?
”

Did you bring official papers?

Herr Hellman was bringing jars out of the cupboards and setting them on a table. They were jars of Gerber baby food purchased at the PX. If Wilbur wasn't actually in the military, then these were black-market items.

Diener handed her the warrants. She studied them, but then Herr Hellman caught her attention. He had stacked thirty or forty jars of baby food on the table and was sitting there counting them.

“Hey,
was geht's hier ab
?” she yelled at Hellman. She stood in front of where he sat at the table, her enormous belly in his face. “Nazi, Nazi, Nazi!” she screamed.

“
Ich will Ihnen Nazis zeigen
,” he said, and stood up. “
Es war überhaupt alles besser in der Nazi Zeit.
”

I'll show you a Nazi. It went a lot better in the time of the Nazis.

“You fuckers. She's right.” Wilbur began moving away from Goldberg. “We're just poor people about to have a baby. That's food for a goddamned baby. What kind of creeps are you? You have no right to be here. You're stealing our food, motherfuckers.”

Hellman swept the jars of baby food off the table. They clattered and crashed on the floor. Some exploded when they hit like glass artillery shells. I could smell the scent of peas.

I felt sick. I was finally ashamed of myself. I wanted to get out of there. Escape from the web of lies that had trapped me in that apartment.

The woman put her face up close to Hellman's.

“Nazi, Nazi, Nazi,” she yelled.

Hellman began fumbling in his suit pocket.

“
Ich will Ihnen Nazis zeigen
.”

I'll show you a Nazi.

I could see the outline of the pistol.

“No,” I heard myself yell, as if I were another person.

“And what do we have here?” Goldberg held up a pile of my wanted posters. “Doing a little publicity work for the folks over at Baader-Meinhof?”

“They don't break in to the apartments of poor people. I can tell you that,” Wilbur said and tried to grab the pile of papers. “Give me those. You have no right to my papers.”

“So you do work with the Baader-Meinhof Gang,” Goldberg said.

Then the woman started yelling again.

“
Arschloch
Nazis. Nazi. Nazi. Nazi.”

Asshole Nazis.

Hellman finally jerked the pistol from the folds of the jacket fabric, pointing it first at the ceiling and then at the ground. I grabbed his arm, trying to stop him, but managing, perversely, to steady it as he fired toward the woman, who was only inches from the barrel.