The Generals (16 page)

Commander Kampenmann
: Do you mean his motive was quite simply a desire for revenge?

Tadeusz Haller
: Well, perhaps more of a wish to get his own back … on the Security Service, too, for that matter. The Special Department of the Military Police and the Investigation Bureau of the Security Service have different views on various matters.

Colonel Orbal
: I’ve been listening, in fact. And so he saw to it that he got the prisoner to himself again. He’s a smart boy, I must say. He’ll make a good officer. What are you dreaming about, Pigafetta?

Colonel Pigafetta
: Whatever I may do, it certainly isn’t dreaming.

Lieutenant Brown
: Allow me to point out that the session has still not yet been officially adjourned.

Colonel Orbal
: No, nor it has. This extra-ordinary court martial is hereby adjourned until Monday the fifth of April at eleven o’clock.

Lieutenant Brown
: Those present: Colonel Orbal, Colonel Pigafetta, Major von Peters, Commander Kampenmann and Justice Tadeusz Haller. Officer presenting the case, Lieutenant Brown.

Colonel Orbal
: Welcome, gentlemen. Ghastly hot in here, Pigafetta.

Colonel Pigafetta
: In that case, I must blame the fine weather. And Army engineers presumably played no part?

Colonel Orbal
: Isn’t there any ventilation?

Colonel Pigafetta
: Naturally. Switch on the fans, Brown.

Tadeusz Haller
: Well, Major von Peters, was your trip to your satisfaction?

Major von Peters
: Yes, in every respect. Excellent, quite simply. A lot of news over there. Good to be away from home, actually. All those strikes and miseries.

Tadeusz Haller
: They’re all over now.

Colonel Orbal
: The Army cleared the whole business up in twenty-four hours.

Major von Peters
: It’s an old truth. A régime which has the support of the Army has nothing to worry about.

Colonel Orbal
: Those fans are powerful. Hellish draughty.

Colonel Pigafetta
: Shall I get Brown to switch them off again?

Colonel Orbal
: So we’ve either got to suffocate or be blown out of our seats, have we? Aren’t there any half-measures?

Lieutenant Brown
: Unfortunately not.

Colonel Orbal
: This fan business and Carl here, who’s been away from his old woman for more than three weeks, made me think of Swift Slim and Speedy Gonzales. Swift Slim was a tremendously fast worker, both on horseback and at laying other men’s wives. Speedy
Gonzales was also tremendously fast. When Speedy Gonzales heard that Swift Slim was in the neighbourhood, he took safety precautions and got into firing position on his verandah with his ’45 in his right hand and his left thumb in his old woman. He just sat there. Suddenly he saw a cloud of dust on the horizon and at that moment a fly came and settled on his nose. It was, as General Winckelman used to say, a difficult and very technical decision. Speedy Gonzales didn’t want to let the ’45 go, so swatted, yes, just swatted away the mosquito with his left hand. A tenth of a second later, he was sticking his thumb into Swift Slim’s arse.

Colonel Pigafetta
: It pains me to have to admit that that story was among the very first I heard when as a young subaltern I went into the mess for the very first time.

Colonel Orbal
: It’s a bloody good story, anyhow.

Commander Kampenmann
: For me, it is fortunately quite new.

Major von Peters
: I’ve always said that about the Navy. It’s not great but it’s bloody refined.

Colonel Orbal
: Well, we’d better get going then, hadn’t we?

Major von Peters
: Is Bratianu still Prosecuting Officer?

Lieutenant Brown
: No. Captain Schmidt is presenting the case for the armed forces.

Colonel Orbal
: Call in the parties.

Commander Kampenmann
: Is this really absolutely necessary?

Colonel Orbal
: What’s this now? What the hell’s going on? Why is he sitting in that apparatus, Endicott? Can’t he walk by himself?

Captain Endicott
: No, sir, the accused cannot walk.

Captain Schmidt
: My replacement requested a postponement a month ago to complete the evidence for charge seventy-seven. Despite intensive interrogation, partly under the personal supervision of Lieutenant Bratianu himself, Velder has, however, not made any admission which to any great extent makes the judgement of the case any easier.

Major von Peters
: Oh, yes, not even Bratianu could get it out of him, then? Does the swine still deny it?

Captain Endicott
: Yes, the accused pleads not guilty.

Captain Schmidt
: As charge number seventy-seven, concerning fornication, obscenity and bigamy has already been dealt with
thoroughly and also is hardly of such significance as my replacement seems to have considered, I request to be allowed to lay this section of the case before the court. All the facts of the matter are clear and Velder’s plea of not guilty is unimportant. I demand a conviction.

Major von Peters
: Yes, that’ll probably be all right. Go on.

Captain Schmidt
: Considerably more than half the charges against Erwin Velder have now been considered. The sections that remain include, however, far more serious offences. The next group of charges, numbers seventy-eight to and including eighty-two, concerns Velder’s high treason and desertion from the Army. The accused admits these offences, just as he admits to all the other remaining charges in the case. The essential point, however, is not these confessions in themselves. What must be set out as the basis for judicial argument and the prejudicial judgements are Velder’s intentions and motives. These can hardly be made clear unless we try to reconstruct the atmosphere within what was called the Council and the situation in the country as a whole at the actual time.

Colonel Orbal
: Damned long-winded, he is, what?

Major von Peters
: Yes, thank the Lord for Bratianu.

Captain Schmidt
: To make the country’s situation clear, I refer to Appendix V IV/14, which consists of a summary of a descriptive outline drawn up by the National Historical Department of the General Staff. Marked Top Secret. I request the officer presenting the case to read the actual appendix.

Major von Peters
: Here we go again.

Lieutenant Brown
: Appendix V IV/14, concerning the social and economic development of the country during the period of domination by the traitors. Compiled from Volume Eleven, drawn up by the National Historical Department of the General Staff. Marked Secret according to paragraphs eight and eleven. The text is as follows:

Major von Peters
: You might at least spare us the preliminaries?

Lieutenant Brown
: The five years of misgovernment which had been maintained because the traitors Janos Edner, Joakim Ludolf and Aranca Peterson were in a majority on the Council, had left the country in a state of moral chaos and total defencelessness. General Oswald’s efforts to put the defence of the nation on its
feet had been systematically sabotaged. In the whole country, there were only a few thousand militiamen, whose training and equipment scarcely made them suitable as the core of a modern army. The militia had about thirty helicopters and slow reconnaissance planes at their disposal. On the other hand, they completely lacked assault planes and fighters. For defensive weapons, they had about ten old-fashioned artillery pieces, though supplies of mines were relatively large and the already mined barriers, intended for electrical release, were fairly well maintained. There was, however, not a single anti-aircraft battery on the whole island, nor any tanks, and the old permanent coastal defences had been either blown up or allowed to decay. The Navy, which was also administered by the militia, consisted of about twenty patrol boats. These were small but fast and comparable to Customs boats. The militia, apart from considerable stores of hand firearms and ammunition, also had a number of machine-guns. There were no infantry guns or anti-tank weapons, nor any other modern weapons of war, i.e. atomic weapons, robots, nerve-gas and napalm. There were not even any mortars or flame-throwers. On the other hand, thanks to the General’s farsighted planning, they were well supplied with transport vehicles in the form of a large number of armoured cars with tracks for use in the terrain and suitable for moving troops. Access to motor-cycles and cars was also quite good. These rudimentary defences, however, left the country wholly exposed to attack, especially from the air, and if a presumptive attacker had established a bridgehead, for instance by parachute landings, the small and scattered militia forces lacked any means of launching a counter-attack. Even more precarious than the military situation—catastrophic in itself—was the moral situation. In treasonable circles in the Council, a spirit of defeat and pacifism, irreligiousness and anarchy had spread. Sexual aberrations were as apparent as religious ones. The free Health Service, for instance, included free abortions, and various forms of criminal perversions occurred freely and openly. Finally, these treasonable circles went so far in their laxity that even bigamy was accepted. On the other hand, deportation, the only kind of jurisdiction exercised, was extended to people who had done nothing more serious than to have been guilty of breaking a simple promise or business transaction, which in any other country would be regarded
as common practice. Industrial development was neglected completely; not a single armament factory existed in the whole country. On the other hand, what was called cultural production flourished enormously. The number of books printed increased fivefold from year to year, as did the number of films produced in the country. By totally neglecting defence and administration—apart from the few militiamen, there was hardly a single government servant in the country—they managed to create an apparently high economic standard of living. The main part of the national income came from the constantly expanding tourist trade; through luxury hotels, gambling dens and brothels, foreign currencies were poured into the country and the food industry included a considerable export of luxury articles. This commercialised depravity, however, had transformed the Marbella district—which at the time had more than a hundred daily air and hovercraft links with larger centres in the neighbouring countries and with most of the cities in the rest of the world—into a nest of vice which a foreign commentator described as ‘without precedent in the history of the world’. The nation’s international reputation sank very rapidly. It was possible, nevertheless, to keep official relations with foreign powers relatively intact through a well-developed system of bribery.

Colonel Pigafetta
: What does that last sentence mean?

Tadeusz Haller
: Entertainment opportunties exercised a remarkable enticement to many famous people, not least statesmen. Marbella was in certain respects similar to one of the free cities in the Middle Ages. Everything and anything could be done there and discretion was absolute.

Colonel Orbal
: It certainly was.

Lieutenant Brown
: I have only a few lines left. Such was the situation then in the country five years after the liberation; drink in plenty, all kinds of drugs were sold freely and openly, sexual orgies succeeded each other and everything saleable was there to buy. The reputation of the country grew worse and worse and moral dissolution more and more obvious, while at the same time by their mole-like activities, the traitors made the country militarily powerless and undermined the individual’s will to defend it.

Captain Schmidt
: The document marked V IV/23x of the preliminary investigation also illuminates the developments and chain
of events which led to Velder’s desertion and high treason. It concerns a letter from Joakim Ludolf to Janos Edner, sent from a place abroad three months before the outbreak of the disturbances. There are also three comments on the letter, which were undoubtedly written by Janos Edner and Aranca Peterson. Joakim Ludolf was not a writing man and this is one of the extremely few surviving documents in his hand.

Colonel Orbal
: There’s almost a hurricane blowing in here. For God’s sake, switch that fan off, Brown.

Lieutenant Brown
: Done, sir. Appendix V IV/23x, concerning …

Major von Peters
: Cut the preliminaries.

Lieutenant Brown
: The letter runs as follows: Hi. Watch out for Oswald. I think he’s cooking something up. Don’t like his behaviour. Have observed him all this last year. Think this business with the militia has gone to his head. It began as a necessity. Went on as a joke. It was a joke when he got himself a uniform and stainless steel teeth. But now? If he wants to play at generals and have the militia as his private army, then we can let him do it. He can even call himself General or Field-Marshal. But it could get more dangerous than that. Think about it. Talk to Velder. He’s shrewd and knows more about Oswald than we do. This has not come to me suddenly. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Have known Oswald for twenty years. Know there’s always been something deep down inside him. Bigotry? Megalomania? Arrogance? Don’t know. But something. Send Stoloff back home for safety’s sake and let him take this letter with him. Everything’s going well here otherwise. Have been stone cold sober for three days. Hi. J.L.

Below this, in handwriting which has been identified as Janos Edner’s, is the following:

Paul has been a bit strange, it’s true, but I refuse to believe that it’s anything serious. We’ll talk to him.

Another person, identified as Aranca Peterson, has added:

Ludolf is fairly strange himself, may I say, and it’s not just drink.

Colonel Pigafetta
: In the light of what happened later, this Joakim
Ludolf seems to be a highly astonishing personality. What did he look like, really?