A Mortal Terror (5 page)
Some things are better left unsaid.
Caserta, Italy
W
E’D LANDED AT
Marcinese airport, between Naples and Caserta, where a jeep and driver were waiting. I’d let Einsmann tag along, leaving the drunken congressman and the Reuters reporter on the tarmac looking lonely and confused. We dropped Einsmann off at a cluster of tents pitched on the south lawn of the palace, and he and I agreed to meet up later at the officer’s bar.
The driver parked near the side entrance, had me sign for the jeep, and took off. A light mist began to fall and the palace loomed against the gray sky, large and formidable. I could see the gardens descending on the north side, but the rain obscured the distant fountains. I turned up the collar on my mackinaw and ran inside.
When I’d last been here, the town had just been captured. The palace was a mess, everything of value looted or destroyed. Now it hummed with activity, spruced up as purposeful men and women in the uniforms of half a dozen nations and services scurried along, a few like me pausing to gape at the high gilt ceilings. I worked my way to a desk at the base of the main staircase, where a corporal sat at a desk, directing traffic. I asked him where I could find Major John Kearns, and he pointed to a chart behind him, which contained a layout of the building.
“G-2, third floor, quadrant two,” he said, and then went back to his paperwork. The diagram showed all five floors and four sections of the building, each with its own courtyard. I figured out where I was and spotted the rooms allocated to Fifth Army Intelligence. I took the staircase, got lost a couple of times, tripped over communications wire strung across a hallway, watched a rat scamper out of an empty room, and finally found a door with G-2 painted above it. I knocked and entered. The room was cavernous, with a row of deep-set windows at the far side. Maps were mounted on the walls, desks pushed together in the middle, telephone line strung like a clothesline above my head.
There were three noncoms in the office. One staff sergeant and a master sergeant ignored me, leaving it to a corporal to handle stray officers. The corporal looked at me, one eye squinting against the cigarette smoke that drifted from the butt stuck in his mouth. He went back to the photograph he was studying through a magnifying glass, looked up again a few seconds later, and finally spoke when it was apparent I wasn’t going away. “Help you, lieutenant?”
“I’m looking for Major John Kearns.”
“What’s your business, sir?” The corporal leaned back in his chair as he spoke, while the two sergeants stood and moved to opposite sides of the room, one of them resting his hand on the butt of his automatic.
“That’s between me and the major, who asked me to come here. Ease up, fellas, I’m not carrying a fifty-card deck.”
“You’ll have to excuse us, Lieutenant Boyle,” said a voice from a narrow hallway at the far end of the room. “The boys are a little overprotective these days. Come on in.” I caught a glimpse of a tall, lean figure as he disappeared into the shadows. The noncoms relaxed, but watched me in a way that made me nervous to show them my back.
The hallway was dark, paneled in wood that gave off a musty smell of rot and centuries of dust. It opened into a large room with a fireplace big enough to stand in and windows ten feet high. Marble pillars flanked the windows, and the arched ceiling was painted with scenes of Roman soldiers and pudgy women in white flowing gowns.
“Quite a place, isn’t it?” Kearns said, gesturing for me to sit. He had high cheekbones and close-cropped hair with a hint of gray creeping in. He wore a .45 in a shoulder holster and looked like he was on friendly terms with it. He took his place opposite me at a long table strewn with maps and glossy black-and-white photographs, a confusion of shorelines, mountaintops, and gun emplacements. I didn’t think the question really needed an answer, so I nodded and waited for him to explain things.
“How’s Sam?” he asked.
“Fine, Major. You know him well?”
“Sam Harding and I were in the same class at West Point,” he said, holding up a hand to show me the West Point ring. “We were roommates.” He went silent, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.
“How did you come to ask for me to be sent here, sir?”
“Sam and I got together a few times in Naples, when he was still in Italy. He told me about you. Said you weren’t half bad at snooping around.”
“That’s not something I’ve heard from him very often,” I said. Never was more like it.
“No, you wouldn’t. But like I said, we go way back. Even though he had a few drinks in him, I knew he meant it. Tell me he was right.”
“Snooping is easy. Finding a murderer is another thing, especially when there are thousands of guys within a few miles, all heavily armed and trained to kill.”
“I need you to find this guy, Boyle. Find him and stop him.”
“What about the military police? CID? I’d think the new Criminal Investigation Division would be all over this one. Solving it would make the guy in charge a hero.”
“Make, or break. There’s no guarantee CID can close the case. I want someone on the job who’s got nothing to lose. Find the guy or not, you go back to London when it’s over. Work with CID, but you get this killer before he deals another card.”
“How is G-2 involved? Is this an intelligence matter?”
“Everything is, until I understand what’s behind it. Right now, I don’t know if this is a German agent, a stay-behind Italian Fascist, or someone who wants a promotion the easy way. And I don’t like not knowing. CID is not under my jurisdiction, but you are. Understood?”
“Sure, Major, I understand that. What I don’t get is what’s so damned important that you needed to pull me in. Do you have any reason to believe you’re next?”
“We have more majors here than we know what to do with, Boyle. As a matter of fact, I worry more about some trigger-happy major plugging the next poor slob who taps him on the shoulder to ask for a light. But that’s my worry. I’ve got two things I want you to worry about.” Kearns leaned forward, folding his arms on the table, his head inclined so that he stared at me with his eyeballs nearly rolled up. I waited ten, fifteen seconds, and then knew it was up to me to ask.
“What two things, sir?”
“One, finding the killer. Two, what I’ll do to you if you ever again suggest that I called you here for my personal protection.” He nodded toward the hallway. “Corporal Davis has your billeting information and will tell you where CID is. Ask for Sergeant Jim Cole. Now get out.”
I did, thinking that he and Harding must have gotten along well at West Point.
The corporal gave me billeting papers and directions to CID. Quadrant one, second floor. As I climbed the stairs, I wondered about Kearns and his attitude. Not that I didn’t care about anybody— major, private, or civilian—being murdered. But there were murders everywhere, not to mention deaths in combat, and the mass killings going on in occupied Europe. All over the continent, people were being shot, strangled, gassed, knifed, bludgeoned, and poisoned. Some because of who they were, others because of the uniform they wore, and often because someone they loved—or once had loved— lost his or her temper in a rage of jealousy and possessiveness. Death was everywhere, commonplace. So why was I here? Kearns didn’t impress me as the kind of guy who needed a bodyguard flown in, and I knew Harding wouldn’t have cooperated if that were what he’d wanted. Maybe he wasn’t too worried about dead majors or even dead colonels. Maybe it was the ace of hearts that kept him up at night.
As I navigated the maze of hallways and descended a marble staircase, I counted officers. By the time I found CID, I’d given up counting majors after a dozen. There’d been six lieutenant colonels and four full bird colonels, three brigadier generals, and one major general. All within five minutes. Brigadiers were the lowest-ranked generals, and there were probably plenty within Fifth Army HQ, as well as those with the divisions and brigades. A major general, with two stars, was just below the exalted level of three-star lieutenant general. The only one of those I knew around here was General Mark Clark, Fifth Army commander. And maybe his boss, 15th Army Group commander General Harold Alexander, but I wasn’t certain of his exact British rank.
As I entered the Criminal Investigation Division office, I considered the possibility of an operation aimed at assassinating Clark or Alexander. It would have answered the question of why Kearns and G-2 were involved, but it didn’t make much sense otherwise. If it were a German plot, why would they announce their intention by starting with junior officers? It didn’t add up, and I decided to wait until I learned what Sergeant Cole had dug up before I tried out any theories.
CID had a string of rooms, connected by a passageway running along the outer wall. Each was decorated in a different color, the paint peeling and curling off the walls. The first room housed military police, and one of the snowdrops—so named for their white helmets—sent me two rooms to the right. I shivered as I walked past the tall windows, feeling the damp cold seeping through. Rain splattered against the glass, which rattled as the wind gathered up and blasted the casements.
The next room was long and narrow, with two rows of desks facing each other. On the walls, mirrors in fancy frames were set into panels, reflecting what light there was into each other, except for the gaps where the glass was missing or shattered. With his back to a busted mirror, a sergeant stood over a desk covered in playing cards. He wore his field jacket buttoned up, probably against the breeze that seemed to run through the high-ceilinged room. He scratched absently at his chin, appearing to be lost in thought.
“Sergeant Cole?”
“Jesus!” His eyes widened in surprise as he took a step back, then recovered. “Sorry, Lieutenant, I guess I didn’t notice you walk up.”
“You are Sergeant Cole, CID?”
“Yes sir, I am. You must be Lieutenant Boyle? Major Kearns said to expect you.” Cole sounded worried, as if I were here to fire him. His eyes darted about the room.
“That’s me. What have you got here, Sergeant?” I pointed to the cards on the desk, but kept my eyes on Cole. He was jumpy, and I had to wonder if he was hiding something, or hiding from someone.
“Do you know the details of the case, Lieutenant? How the bodies were found, with playing cards?”
“Ten and jack of hearts,” I said. “I read the files.”
“These are the originals,” he said, opening a drawer and taking out a small manila envelope. “No fingerprints, and they seem brand new.”
I slid the cards out onto my palm and studied them, lifting each by the edge. They were crisp and clean all right. No soft edges from repeated shuffles, no bend in them at all. The backs were red, the usual swirling vines pattern that you never paid much attention to. I put them back and handed the envelope to Cole.
“Trying to match them?”
“Yes sir. As you can see, it’s a common deck. I was able to buy the same kind, with blue or red backs, at the post exchange in Naples, and get them for free at the Red Cross center or at the hospital.”
“The same hospital where Captain Galante was stationed?”
“Yes, the 32nd Station Hospital. Why do you ask?”
“How long have you been in CID, Sergeant?” I asked as I took a seat. He lit a cigarette and sat, taking his time with the answer, fiddling with his lighter.
“I’m fairly new. About a month.”
“Were you an MP before?”
“No.”
“Cop before the war?”
“No.”
“Fair to say then that you’ve got a lot to learn. Let’s start with this: Asking why I want to know something is a waste of time. An investigator needs to know everything about a case, everything that has the slightest connection. You never know when something is going to fit in later on. So explore every angle. Don’t ask why, because I don’t know why. By the time we know that, the investigation will almost be over. Make sense?”
“Yes sir, it does.”
“You have any problem working with me on this, Sergeant Cole?”
“No sir.”
“How about your commanding officer?”
“Captain Bartlett, sir. He’s in Naples, working on a black market case. He said to cooperate with you.” Cole looked at the doorway, as if he expected Bartlett to return and check on him.
“Okay, good.” It sounded like Bartlett was not eager to dive into this one. He was giving me a rookie and leaving it in my hands. If I failed, it was all on me. If not, as soon as I was gone he’d claim the credit. Cole seemed oblivious. “What else do you have?”
“Not much, sir. Landry was well liked by his men. No trouble from that quarter. He took good care of them, if you know what I mean.”
“Unlike some other officers?”
“I don’t mean any offense, sir.”
“Don’t worry, Cole, I’m not all that big on officers above lieutenant myself,” I said with a smile that was meant to put him at ease.
“Some officers, you know, they look out for themselves first.”
“So I’ve heard. What about sergeants?”
“Harder to get away with it,” Cole said. “Everyone sees what a sergeant does. His men, his superior officers. If he screws up, it makes his lieutenant look bad, then his captain, and before too long he’s in big trouble.”