The Death Trust (22 page)

Captain Blood slapped on a pair of gloves and took a scanner from his pocket. He waved it down her arm until the device found the small chip inserted there. “First, we have to ID the body. As you saw, her tags are missing, most probably removed by the shrapnel that took out the back of her neck. An embedded chip helps enormously. Not every soldier has one yet, but it’s only a matter of time.” The captain connected the scanner to his PC and the two devices exchanged data. A spreadsheet suddenly appeared on screen. The fields for name, rank, serial number, next of kin, and various addresses were all filled in, the scanner having interrogated the chip. There was also a photo. The soldier had the rank of specialist. She was pretty in life, but not anymore. Death doesn’t flatter many people.

“Makes things a damn sight easier,” said Blood.

The morgue was filling fast. Six other doctors, each with assistants, were in the room processing the victims of the truck bomb. The bodies looked misshapen, like human bladders, their insides virtually liquefied and then poured back into their skins. The room stank of punctured intestines. “With the identification of the soldier confirmed, an autopsy is conducted to determine the cause of death, and then a death certificate is issued. The information goes into the central database at the DoD, and then various government departments and agencies are informed electronically.”

“Who performs the autopsy?” asked Masters, aware that, so far, Blood hadn’t told us anything we didn’t already know.

“I do, or any one of ten others here certified to do the job,” he answered.

Beyond the morgue, chaplains and rabbis were moving among the dead, invoking various rites, the religious equivalent of straightening the tie and slicking down the hair prior to an important interview.

I smoothed a photocopy of Peyton Scott’s autopsy out on the tabletop. “Was this performed here?”

Captain Blood cast an eye over it. “Looks like one of ours, and says so right here.” He pointed at the box into which had been keyed
U.S. Army 28th Combat Support Hospital.
“That’s also our seal on it.”

“Do you recognize the name of the person who performed the autopsy?” Masters asked.

“Hmm…Captain Homer Veitch. It doesn’t ring a bell, but that doesn’t mean much. The date on this autopsy is around a year ago. I’ve only been here ten months.”

“Can you tell us whether Veitch has performed other autopsies here or anywhere else?” asked Masters.

“Yes, ma’am. It will be in our records.”

Captain Blood’s fingers did a one-two, buckle-my-shoe across the keyboard. The cursor cursed, flashing rhythmically. Nothing. I wasn’t expecting anything different from the last time we searched Veitch’s name, but I was interested in Blood’s reactions. And I was rewarded.

“That’s odd.”

“What is?” I asked.

“Well, this Peyton Scott is the only entry under Veitch’s name. It’s not likely the doctor would have performed just one autopsy…”

I didn’t tell Blood it wasn’t likely he’d done even one, given that he was three months in the grave by the time Scott died.

“How does the system know who performed the autopsy?” asked Masters.

“The doctor’s name comes up automatically when he logs in.”

Masters sat, hitching a cheek on the desk’s corner. “How do you do that—log in?”

“I use a swipe card and key in a PIC, a personal ident code. The computer then knows who’s operating and fills in the necessary blanks.”

“Could you show me your card?” I asked.

Blood shrugged and pulled it from a slot in the side of the keyboard. A screen saver showing the crest of the U.S. Army immediately appeared on the monitor, which was, I guessed, the on-line equivalent of a steel door slamming down. No swipe card, no entry. I took the card, examined it quickly, and passed it to Masters. There was nothing special about it—it reminded me of the card I used to gain entry into the OSI offices back at Ramstein. The color of that one was plain white, but this one was red. Both had magnetic strips on one side.

“Ever lost one of these?” Masters inquired.

“Yeah. Had my wallet stolen once, but not here—back in the States.”

“How difficult was it to get a new one?” Masters waggled the card between thumb and forefinger.

Blood shrugged. “Filled in a form, waited a couple of days…”

“Can this card be used from any terminal?” I asked, glancing at Masters. She gave me an imperceptible nod, obviously on the same wavelength.

“No,” said Blood. “It has to be a Department of Defense terminal.”

“Does the DoD system know where you’re accessing it from?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Nothing.” Actually, it was something, but not for Blood’s ears. I continued, “What happens after an autopsy is completed?”

“The body is then bagged and refrigerated, ready for transportation back home.”

“Via Ramstein,” I said.

“Yes. Mostly, sir.”

“Is there any reason why a planeload of body bags heading for the U.S. would be unloaded at Ramstein?”

“I don’t know, sir; I’m not a pilot.”

“I mean, are there medical or processing reasons why they’d need to be taken off the flight?”

“Occasionally there are circumstances that prevent us from doing autopsies here, but it’s rare. In those instances, we’ve sent bodies to Ramstein to be processed.”

Lamont, the Chief Medical Officer back at Ramstein had said much the same thing.

Captain Blood’s work was piling up. Literally. The gurneys were needed elsewhere. On a couple of them, several corpses had been stacked one atop the other. “Is there anything else I can help you with, sir, ma’am?” he asked, looking over our shoulders at his growing workload.

“No,” I said and turned to Masters. “Special Agent?”

She shook her head.

“Thanks for your time, Captain,” I said. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

“No problem,” he said, returning to his screen and logging back into the system.

We retreated to the main hallway, making our way around the perimeter, trying to stay out of the way. “So why would those body bags that appeared in
The Washington Post
picture have been unloaded for no reason?” Masters said, getting in before me.

“Because there was a very good reason,” I said.

“Like what?”

“I think General Scott had them unloaded especially to put them on show.”

“For the photographer who took the shot?”

“Yeah. Look at it this way—what if Alan Cobain and
The Washington Post
were just the messengers?”

“You’re suggesting Scott might have been sending a warning to someone with the publication of that photo? Why would he do that? He must have known Washington—the White House—would go ballistic.”

“Yeah, he must’ve.” Jefferson Cutter’s chilly letter to Scott sprang to mind. Something had driven Abraham Scott to do something that went against his training, his loyalty to the air force.

“While we’re poking around these unanswered questions,” said Masters, troubled, “can we talk through the moment when Scott opened his son’s body bag?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Well, put yourself in his shoes. If you were a father—I take it you’re not, by the way—”

“No, I’m not, but I think I know where you’re going. Would I, or wouldn’t I?”

“Yeah, would you want to look in that bag, or would you want to remember what your son looked like—”

“Rather than live with the image of your boy ripped up by high explosives and shrapnel?” Masters’s point was a good one. People who had died as the result of battlefield trauma didn’t usually leave a particularly photogenic corpse, which is why they are usually buried or cremated in closed caskets. Unlike most fathers, Abraham Scott would have had a lot of experience with badly shattered human bodies. All the more reason, perhaps, why he wouldn’t want to look inside the bag…unless…“Oh, shit,” I said, as the dime dropped. “There’s only one possible reason.”

“And that would be…?”

“Someone
told
Scott his son had been murdered. And the proof was the discrepancy between the autopsy and the condition of the boy’s body. General Scott
had
to look in that bag.”

“Wha—”

“What if Peyton Scott had been decapitated as some kind of warning to his father?”

“Hmm…Do you remember the date the ‘Death Row’ article appeared?”

“Not to the day.”

“Me, neither, but it was around six weeks after Peyton Scott’s death. That can’t have been coincidental.”

“What if the message General Scott was sending was intended not so much for the American public, but for his son’s murderers?”

Masters chewed the nail on her thumb.

Was it so unlikely? This case was getting stranger and more complex. Either that or we were letting our imaginations get the better of our judgment.

“What was all that about computer terminals?” asked Masters as we approached the exit.

“If you had a swipe card, a PIC, and access to the appropriate terminal, you could get into the DoD system anywhere—not necessarily here at the hospital. But you could make it
appear
that you were working on KIAs here.”

Masters nodded, her face grim.

Had Peyton Scott been autopsied legitimately by Captain Blood’s department? Or had the report been wiped from a remote location and another autopsy altogether logged in its place? I remembered Lamont saying the DoD database was a closed system and that once the autopsy had been completed and saved it couldn’t be altered. But a computer that couldn’t be penetrated was about as likely as a twenty-year-old virgin in Las Vegas, wasn’t it?

We had reached the exit, and things had quieted down somewhat at the hospital. All the guests invited by fate to this particular shindig had arrived and were being seen to by their hosts. There were well over fifty wounded by the IED. Down this end of the stick, the war was a sad, inglorious business paid for in the flesh and blood of the young. And, although the goods were spoiled permanently, none of it could be returned. As the cliché said, it was the first day of the rest of their lives, but for many of the injured it would be a life without limbs, or an existence spent in a wheelchair, or staring at the ceiling enduring an eternity of immobility, turned on a timer to ease the bedsores, wondering why they’d been chosen for this hell.

“Excuse me, are you Special Agent Masters, ma’am?” It was a nurse in surgical scrubs.

“Yes,” Masters answered.

“This just came in for you,” she said. “From Germany.”

Masters took the paper. The nurse’s bloody glove print was smeared across it.

“What’s up?” I asked, resisting the urge to read the note over her shoulder.

“It’s from Bishop. Peyton Scott’s unit is still in-country, but he says there are no original members. About half were KIA—must have been one hell of an unlucky unit—and the rest were rotated home. He says he has located one man, Peyton’s senior NCO, Dante Ambrose, but he’s left the corps.”

“Let me guess, he’s moved to the island of Bali, where he now owns a bar on a beach. And now we’re just going to have to go there to interview him.”

“No. Actually, he’s here in Baghdad.”

“Just our luck. Doing what?”

“Works for a private security company. Bishop’s sent us the address. Oh, yeah. And there’s something else.”

“What?”

“Your accommodating friend, Ms. Varvara? It seems she’s wanted by the police.”

“What for?”

“Arson.”

TWENTY-TWO

I
called the police in K-town and spoke to a detective who confirmed it. Varvara had lit the fire in her apartment. Kerosene had been splashed around on the carpet and a fire started with a candle used as a timed fuse. The supposed culprit, the kerosene heater, was examined and found to have been faulty. It hadn’t been used in weeks. Also, the security camera in the elevator had captured Varvara leaving the apartment with what appeared to be a half-empty bottle of kerosene. Case closed.

I called Bishop next. He said that on the night of the fire she’d called OSI at Ramstein asking for me and had instead spoken to him. He’d let slip that a suicide note penned by the general had been discovered and she’d correctly figured that this would shut down the investigation. In my mind I pictured her setting the whole thing up, putting
Gone with the Wind
in the bookshelf, splashing the kerosene around, pushing over the heater, lighting the candle. Then she’d paid me a visit and made sure I came back with her in time to grab the book before the flames destroyed it. Was I angry about being used? Difficult to say. She’d played me like a stacked deck, and I didn’t appreciate that much. But I also admired her for doing what she thought she had to do. And the fact that
doing
me was part of that—well, fair trade. I’d be deeply scarred, but I’d get over it. The simple truth was, if not for Varvara, OSI would not be pursuing the case.

“Do you know where she is?” asked Masters as I ended the call.

I shook my head. “No idea,” I said honestly. The fact that Varvara’s passport also happened to have been in the same place as the note from the general, and salvaged because of that, should have rung alarm bells, but my bell at the time was suffering from a severe bout of postcoital inoperability.

“How do you feel about all this?” Masters asked.

“I feel used,” I said.

“You’re full of shit, Cooper.”

We stood at the top of the medical center’s steps and looked out across the concrete and razor wire wall. The black cone of smoke that marked the spot of the IED still hung in the sky, although it had diminished in size. Helos hovered around it flying overwatch, looking for an excuse to rocket someone.

It was a short walk around the back of the palace to the area where the convoys marshaled. It was an extraordinary building. “The former residents lived well,” observed Masters.

“Yeah and if they ever come back, they’re going to be mighty pissed off. The sitters are making a hell of a mess in there.”

I sensed Masters flinch.

“Answer me something, will you?” she asked. “Does any of this affect you? ’Cause it doesn’t seem to.”