The Death Trust (10 page)

“RAF Flight Lieutenant Peter Bishop, Special Agent Vincent Cooper. He’s heading up this investigation,” she said.

Did Masters just say I was running this show?

“Special Agent,” he said, turning toward me.

Yeah, she just did.

“The flight lieutenant here is the nearest thing we’ve got to Bill Gates, although I don’t think he’s nearly as rich.”

I wondered why Masters had capitulated on the SAC thing. Maybe she realized the special agent in charge was wearing a big red bull’s-eye on his or her chest if things turned to crap.

Flight Lieutenant Peter Bishop was a big coffee-colored man with gelled, spiky black hair, black eyes, and big chubby cheeks that reminded me of hamburger buns, but my hunger was starting to affect my brain and they probably didn’t look like that at all. I could feel perspiration beading on my skin. It was my tooth again. I ran my hand gently beside my jaw. Was it beginning to swell? “How’s it going with the general’s computer?” I asked.

“Nice machine, sir.” Bishop’s accent reminded me of the characters in the movie
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
“It’s a superseded Dolch NotePAC. I can start it up but I can’t get past the user screen. The general had a pass code. That’s going to take time to sidestep.”

“How much time, Lieutenant?” I asked.

“Couple of hours, sir. More or less.”

“Take less,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“C’mon, leave this for now,” I said to Masters, gesturing at the office work around us. I then told her about Sergeant Fischer’s claim that she had something that might help us out, without putting it quite as theatrically as the sergeant herself had. And yes, I should admit up front that I’d considered interviewing Sergeant Fischer solo, and yes, not for entirely professional reasons. But I’d never done that kind of thing before and decided not to start now. Besides, that would have gone against the newfound spirit of cooperation growing between Masters and me. What was NATO’s motto? I remembered seeing it on some banner somewhere. It was something mindlessly gung ho and nineties like “One mission, one team.” Yeah, that was it. I grabbed a spare camouflage jacket and stuffed my cell and beeper in the pocket.

Masters drove; I made notes. Beneath
Captain Reinoud Aleveldt,
I jotted
Captain François Philippe,
the name of the medical officer who’d witnessed Scott’s horror at seeing his son’s remains. Beneath theirs, I wrote
Fischer, Harmony, Himmler, U.S. Army Hospital—Baghdad, Morgue.
I also doodled a question mark and gave it a drop shadow.

EIGHT

W
e drove to a place called the Melting Pot, as the base’s coffee shop was called, a half-assed attempt at creating a relaxed environment for off-duty servicemen and-women. I say half-assed because putting up photos of planes in this place was akin to hanging lovingly framed posters of skinned beef hindquarters in a butcher’s shop. I’d have thought island beaches would have been a more escapist theme here for people far from home and surrounded three hundred and sixty-five days a year with jet whine. The bleached and faded photos looked like they’d been left outside and acid-rained on, and showed the men and the machinery that had been stationed here over the past four and a half decades, daring the Soviet Union to take its best shot. Many photos were signed by famous airmen. I recognized speed-of-sound man Chuck Yeager and his WWII co-ace, Bud Anderson. I also recognized a young von Koeppen leaning out of a cockpit wearing Ray-Ban Aviators and grinning like Goofy at the camera. I felt bad for Chuck and Bud having to share a wall with a known Nazi war criminal.

People drinking lattes and reading various foreign-language newspapers occupied most of the tables. I felt watched as we made our way to an empty table in a corner. The place smelled of coffee and doughnuts and JP-4 convecting off the flight line somewhere beyond the row of uninspiring bunker-like buildings lining the street opposite. The smell of food got my saliva glands going and my stomach contracted. I had to eat
something,
even if it was just deep-fried dough rolled in sugar.

We were a couple of minutes late but then so was Sergeant Fischer. “Okay,” I said to Masters as von Koeppen’s PA entered the shop. The sergeant and I exchanged quick waves of recognition across the room. She made her way over, threading through the tables, swinging her hips between them with the rhythm of a samba dancer. The newspapers dipped so that their readers could get a better view, and I couldn’t blame them.

The sergeant was even more spectacular than I remembered her from the morning. Her tousled fair hair was a halo around a flawless olive complexion. The gathering chill of the late-afternoon air had rouged her full, high cheeks, and her eyes were pale sapphires. She was tall, almost intimidatingly so for any male under six feet. She wore the standard ACU designed to hide any trace of sexuality, only on Fischer it instead revealed a fine figure with breasts that stood out before her like a couple of missile warheads ready for launch. Every guy in the joint, including me, swallowed.

“Can we get you a coffee, Sergeant?” I asked, making a supreme attempt at nonchalance before she took a seat between Masters and me.

“Thank you, no,” said Fischer with the soft vowels of the deep South.

“Special Agent?”

“Espresso, thanks,” said Masters.

I noticed the two women sizing each other up, much like von Koeppen and I had done. If I was not mistaken, Sergeant Fischer appeared to be vaguely intimidated by Masters, and not because of her job, either. It suddenly dawned on me when I looked at Special Agent Anna Masters that she, like Fischer, was also a serious piece of work, and the way we—or rather she—was gawked at when we came into this place suddenly made sense.

A waiter came over and took the order, which included half a dozen doughnuts. My stomach rumbled with anticipation at the promise of food.

“Before we start, do you mind if we record the interview?” asked Masters.

Fischer eyed the device.

“Don’t let it worry you, Sergeant,” Masters said. “It’s just more reliable than our note-taking.”

Fischer relaxed. “Okay.”

“Now, I believe you have some information,” said Masters. Things had settled down between them while the waiter was distracting me. I got the feeling that their silent bout had resulted in a draw.

“Yes. While I’m General von Koeppen’s PA, I also did a little work for General Scott when things got busy. I liked him. He worked hard. At least, he did before his son was KIA in Iraq. He was pretty broken up about it. He went gliding a lot…”

I nodded and was about to say we knew that when the sergeant added, “…and he started seeing another woman.”

“He was having an affair?” I blurted. Fischer had caught me completely off guard. General Scott didn’t seem the type, but I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that there was no “type” where affairs were concerned.

“Yeah.” She was dismissive.

“How do you know that? Did he confide in you?” Masters asked.

She shrugged. “This is Europe; men have mistresses. He had another cell phone, not a NATO one, a secret phone he used for his private calls.”

“How do
you
know about it?” I asked.

“Because I arranged the cell for him—one of those prepaid jobs. No bills, and no list of numbers for the spouse to examine every month. I think he cared about his wife very much.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said. Given the circumstances of my divorce, I was not quite ready to accept Deception as an emotionally caring institution.

Fischer ignored my sarcasm, as did Masters. Sisters, already.

“Do you have the number?” Masters asked.

“Yes,” said Fischer. “General Scott told me I could call him if I ever needed to.”

“Did you?”

Masters rephrased my question. “Were you also having an affair with General Scott?”

“No, ma’am,” she said, shaking her head.

The way she said it, I believed her. I also believed she’d left a few wrecked marriages in her wake, and none of them hers. “Do you know who the other woman was?” I asked.

“No, sir, he never told me.”

Masters again. “Do you know where he kept this other cell?”

“No, ma’am.”

Masters and I both let it all sink in. I was now wondering whether General Scott had been killed for the same reasons we mere mortals are, after all. I thought of his official air force photo: sitting straight, eyes bright, smiling at the camera, his four stars the symbols of control over a sizeable chunk of the world’s military might—a man, as von Koeppen had said, at the top of his game. An adulterer. I also found myself wondering what Harmony Scott would do if she caught her man up to his nuts in some other woman’s guts. “Could you put the number of the general’s private cell into mine?” I asked Fischer, passing it across. She took it out of my hand, leaning forward. I caught a glimpse of cleavage. I wondered whether she’d presented it on purpose. And then I wondered hopefully whether she’d do it again. For the past year or so, wallowing in the bunker oil spillage that was my private life, I’d been celibate, hardly noticing the existence of the opposite sex, preferring to lean on my three buddies Arlen Wayne, Jack Daniel’s, and Glenkeith. But now, sandwiched between these two women with my divorce behind me, parts that had been asleep for some time were waking up, having a stretch, and inquiring about the chances of some exercise. Fischer keyed in the number, then handed back my cell.

I cleared my throat and asked, “What about you and General von Koeppen?”

“I make it a rule never to sleep with the boss, if that’s what you mean,” she said. The way she said it, holding my gaze with the barest hint of a smile, indicated that this little rule of hers didn’t necessarily include a particular special agent. “And General von Koeppen is not my type,” she said.

The question had to be asked, what was her type? But I refrained. Instead, I asked, “What sort of working relationship did Scott and von Koeppen enjoy?”

“‘Enjoy’ is hardly the word I’d use. There was a fair bit of tension between them.”

“Did this tension have a particular cause?”

“Not as far as I know. The working relationship between the two of them was never great.” Fischer gave this some consideration and then added, “Look, I don’t want to give you the impression that General Scott and I were confidants. We weren’t. He was a secretive man. The business with the cell was unusual. Pretty much all of the time our relationship was by the book.”

“Can you tell us anything about how his son died?”

“All I can tell you is what the whole base knew—that the poor bastard opened his own son’s body bag.”

I saw Masters flinch. Yeah, it was a far from pleasant image, one that had stayed with me since the interview with Aleveldt.

Fischer took a deep breath. “The general took some time off after that. Three weeks, according to the records. Managing leave is one of my administration duties.”

“Have you heard any scuttlebutt about the way Scott’s son was killed in Baghdad?”

Fischer shook her head slowly, considering that. “No, sir.”

“Had anything struck you as odd in General Scott’s behavior in the weeks prior to his death?” asked Masters.

“No.”

“Do you know anyone who’d want to kill him?” I asked.

The PA shook her head again. “No, I don’t, but I bet you’ll have a better idea yourselves after you find the person he bought that phone to talk to.”

I changed tack. “Sergeant, you don’t like General von Koeppen. Why?”

“Off the record?” she asked.

“Sure.” I cleared this first with a little eye contact with Masters.

“Do you mind turning that off?” Fischer gestured at the recorder.

Masters hit the button.

“So this is totally off the record?” Fischer asked again.

I nodded.

“Well…I think he’s a vain, supercilious cocksucker.”

“Could you be more specific, Sergeant?” I said with the straightest face I could muster.

“He couldn’t lead a thirsty horse to water, sir. He’s a lazy, inconsistent, narcissistic sleazebag.”

“Is von Koeppen also having an affair?” asked Masters, rapid fire, beating me to the question.

“He’s always sniffing around, ma’am,” said Fischer. “Preferably young women. He seems pretty successful with them, too. I don’t know where he finds them all.”

That nailed my unasked question about von Koeppen’s preferred brand of squeeze. Masters cleared her throat. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said she was blushing. And something about this rising color forged another question in my head, but not one for Fischer. I had nothing more to ask the PA for the moment and Masters also seemed to have suddenly run dry. The interview was over. Masters picked up her recorder, dropped it in her bag, and rose, apparently keen to send the sergeant on her way. Fischer took the hint and stood. “Thank you for your help, Sergeant,” Masters said. “Do you mind if we call you again if we think of anything else?”

“Yes…I mean no, ma’am. Sure,” said Fischer.

“Thanks, Sarge, we’ll be in touch,” I said, forcing my eye line to stay above the PA’s neck. It took every ounce of willpower. I could feel Masters watching me. I’m told the Europeans handle this sort of dilemma totally differently from us Americans. They just go ahead and look.

Newspapers and magazines were lowered again as Fischer made her way out.

I sat and reached for a doughnut. At last, food. “What do you make of that?” I said, mouth full.

“That Scott had another woman? Kind of opens up the territory a bit, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. Doughnut?”

Masters declined the offer as I reached for another.

We rehashed what we knew about Peyton Scott, about the state of his corpse, about the autopsy report, and about how the two didn’t gel. The death of the son kept cropping up, and I couldn’t help feeling it was significant to the killing of General Scott in a way we didn’t yet understand. And there was the other question unrelated to father and son that I wanted to ask Masters, but I wasn’t sure how she’d take it.