The Winston Affair (11 page)

“I've tried. Not entirely. But I seem to have found one thing that I can put my finger on.”

“And what is that?” Kaufman asked coldly.

“That Winston is sick—and that his sickness is the world's sickness. Is the answer execution, Major Kaufman? Perhaps it is—and perhaps we are executing the world. Is that what you are trying to tell me?”

Kaufman looked at Adams without answering. Then he walked over to his chair and dropped into it. “Give me one of your cigarettes, Captain,” he said.

As Adams lit it for him, Kaufman said, “Let me apologize for what I said about your face, Adams. It was anger, but not altogether pointless. We grow up with the image of that face before us. We learn to love it and to hate it—and to envy it. I suppose I should be mature enough to spill my venom in other directions.”

“It's not venom.” Adams shrugged.

“Let me decide what it is. We confront each other out of different worlds, Captain.”

“I don't think so.”

“No? You're a West Point man, Adams—word of your background gets around. You're General Adams' son—and he was staff assistant to Pershing in 1918. They even say that you're part of
the
Adams family—”

“We're not.”

“You seem to have done all right without it. Did you ever hear of Rivington Street, Adams?”

“No, sir, I can't say that I have.”

“The family seat. The Kaufmans occupied a cold-water flat there. There were six of us—six children. One got killed by a truck. We five fought and clawed and worked our way out of that particular cesspool. I won't bore you with the details of how I got through college and medical school. Sufficient that I did. I became a staff psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital in New York—then assistant to the chief. I set up in practice. I have a wife whom I love and three children. In 1940, my income was forty-three thousand dollars. I walked out of it because I could not sit on my ass and become rich while others died in a cause that was mine as well. Here I am. When I give you that report, Colonel Archer Burton is going to break my back—and there is not one God damned thing that you or I can do to stop him.”

Adams was sitting on the other side of the desk now. He considered what Kaufman said, and then spoke. “I'll leave it up to you, sir. Either give me the report or don't give it to me. If you decide not to give it to me, I will not request it officially.”

“You know how I feel.”

“Yes, sir—to some extent. But I know that when one tries to put his reasons for some very important action into words, one is very often frustrated. You told me why you refused to change your medical report, and perhaps that was one reason why. But not the main reason. Not the real reason.”

Kaufman did not answer immediately, and at this moment an orderly entered with their lunch. Adams did not press his point, and they ate in a curious silence. The hamburgers were small and had been fried in deep fat. They were quite good, but the mashed potatoes and beans that came with them were cold and tasteless. Adams realized that he would hardly have noticed this had not Kaufman made his earlier comment.

Kaufman poured strong tea for each of them and then asked bluntly, apropos of what Adams had said some fifteen minutes before, “What was my real reason, Captain?”

“I'm not sure that I can put it very well either,” Adams replied, smiling. He had a disarming and gracious smile which even Kaufman found hard to dismiss. “But I think it was Winston more than yourself that motivated you. If you had changed that report, all hope for Winston would then be gone. In effect, you would have consigned Winston to death. I don't think you were able to do that, Major Kaufman.”

“Adams,” Kaufman said slowly, “aside from my medical duties, there was no reason for me to lift a finger to help Winston. I'm a Jew.”

“You say that as if it should carry some special and hidden meaning for me, Kaufman. It doesn't. I am a Protestant, but that doesn't make me insensitive or indifferent to what Nazism and Fascism have done to this world. The only Jew I suppose I knew in my childhood was a Colonel Cramer. He was a friend of my father's and a dinner guest on many occasions that I remember. I never knew that he was a Jew, until one evening at dinner he brought up a quotation we had need for. It stayed with me—‘Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?' After dinner my father expressed some surprise that Colonel Cramer had come up with the quotation so readily. ‘Why?' I asked. ‘Because he knows his Testament?' ‘Because he is Jewish and because the lines are from Matthew,' my father told me. He left it at that. You see, Major, I don't believe in these different worlds that we inhabit, and if I had any such beliefs, they were beaten out of me in Africa and in Italy. I've been in this land only three days, as you mentioned, but I don't feel its strangeness any longer.”

“You haven't convinced me that I want to save Winston,” Kaufman said.

“I don't have to convince you, because as you made plain to me, Winston cannot be saved. I think you want to save something else even more important than Winston, and I think you know what I mean, Major Kaufman.”

“I know what you mean,” Kaufman said dully and hopelessly. “I'm no hero. I can't be a hero.”

“Unless,” Adams pointed out with deliberate cruelty, “the world you value is well aware that you are a hero. But if your wife and your friends and all the people whose opinion you value here and at home don't see you as a hero at all, but just consider you a damned fool—well, then yes; why be a hero?”

“That's a lousy thing to say.”

“Yes.”

“What skin off your back is it if I live with myself?”

“Nobody lives with himself alone, Major. Whatever it was back there in Rivington Street that made you the man you are today, it wasn't the dirt and poverty. There were other things that you have to remember and live with.”

“Do you really think you can win this case?” Kaufman demanded. “Don't you know that Winston must die? Don't you realize that nothing you can do will alter the verdict? How can you sit there and talk as if any action of mine would make a difference?”

“Because it would make a difference.”

“Adams—tell me, isn't unity and harmony in this theater of action more important than the life of a pathological murderer?”

“You don't buy unity with a man's life or with injustice or with a fixed verdict.”

“How can you be so damned sure of yourself?”

“Because I'm unsure of myself. It's not what I believe, Major, it's the fact that I am trying to believe.”

“And you really think you can win?”

“I can fight—and if I have weapons—well—yes, damn it, I could win!”

Major Kaufman got up and strode to the door. Opening it, he called out, “Orderly!” When the orderly came, Kaufman barked at him, “Didn't it ever occur to you to pick up the dishes?”

“But, Major, you're still drinking your tea.”

“Don't give me that! Take that tray and get out of here!”

When the orderly had left, Adams lit another cigarette and watched Kaufman pace back and forth. It was very hot in the little office. The perspiration on Adams' face flowed down and wet his cigarette. Across Major Kaufman's shoulders a band of moisture darkened his shirt.

Then he stopped pacing and looked at Adams. “What do you want?” he asked.

“I want the report—and I want you as a witness for the defense.”

“I'm glad you saved that until now.”

“I wasn't certain that I wanted you as a witness until now.”

“And now you are?”

“Yes.”

“Give me a day or two to think it over.”

“I can't give you an hour to think it over, Major,” Barney Adams said stubbornly. “I have two days left to prepare my case. I can do it if I cut down my sleeping to a minimum. But I need your decision now.”

“I suppose you know what it is?”

“I think so.”

“Well, get out now. Get out and leave me alone. I have work to do, too, although you may not think so.” He went to a metal filing case, opened a drawer, and took out a sheaf of paper. “Here's the report,” he said.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Ah, to hell with thanks! I'm not doing this for you, Adams.”

“We convene at nine-thirty, Monday morning. At the Advocate's.”

“All right. And don't bother—I know where it is.”

Kaufman left the room, slamming the door behind him.

Friday 3.10 P.M .

Half a dozen American correspondents and four British correspondents were already seated in General Kempton's big office when Barney Adams arrived. The general, who had a reputation as a stickler for punctuality, was in this instance remarkably genial and understanding. Before any questions were permitted, he spread his arms and told the newspapermen:

“I want you to understand that you are dealing with an infantry officer, not with your home-town mayor in uniform. Major Alek Gunther is here from the PR office, and he knows the rules. You also know the rules. You can address any questions you wish to—to me or to Captain Adams. But if Major Gunther makes a no-comment decision, the decision holds. I don't want any arguments. And I don't want you button-holing Captain Adams in the corridor for inside dope. There is no inside dope. This case is open—wide open.”

And then turning to Gunther, “Do you have anything to add to that before we begin, Major?”

Gunther, slim, dark, impeccably tailored, his briefcase at the ready under his arm, as if prepared to step into a client's office, shook his head.

“You've covered it, General.”

“Fire away,” the general said.

The Associated Press man wanted to know whether Captain Adams had been brought into the theater specifically for this case.

“I wouldn't say that,” the general answered, smiling. “He has been brought in because I wanted him on my staff.”

From the
Times
man, “What do you think are your chances of saving Winston's life, Captain Adams?”

“I have no idea, nor do I have enough time to speculate on my chances. I was assigned to defend Lieutenant Winston. I shall do that to the best of my ability.”

“Do you intend to enter a plea of insanity?” a British correspondent demanded.

“I'm afraid I cannot disclose my strategy before the court convenes,” Adams replied.

The door to the office opened now, and a reporter for the major local paper entered. Dark, abashed, his white cotton clothes wrapped so strangely and gracefully about him, he remained standing next to the door at the back of the room. Gunther looked at him and said nothing.

A question came without Barney Adams' hearing it. He was wondering why he should doubt himself as he pointed to an empty chair and said to the native reporter, “Won't you please sit down, sir.”

General Kempton watched Adams shrewdly. The native correspondent nodded his thanks as he gingerly and uncertainly went to the chair and sat down.

The
Manchester Guardian
correspondent then asked, “What is your opinion about the political issues involved here?”

“No comment on that. None.” Major Gunther appeared pleased to make his firm hand felt “This is a military trial, and there are no political issues involved.”

“Oh, do be a bit flexible,” protested the
Guardian
man. “Our readers are not concerned with how Winston is defended. They want to know the American attitude toward the murder of a British non-com.”

“There is no comment on that,” Gunther repeated. “You know the ground rules here.”

The United Press man said, “General, could you intervene? I think it's a fair question. It cuts to the core of things. Editorials stateside are calling this a hot potato, not because a man murdered someone, but because an American officer murdered a British non-com.”

“It's a hell of a broad question.” Kempton smiled. “You can't just ask one's opinion of political issues involved. That covers too much. I think Barney Adams is a damn good lawyer. But he's not a congressman.”

This fetched a laugh all around. Adams' respect for Kempton was increasing. He used his indolent, apparently good-natured bulk cleverly and well—and gave little indication of what lay beneath it. Yet at the same time there were clues to the man. Angry, he would be dangerous beyond expectation. So Adams thought, telling himself not to underestimate this man, not even to fall into the trap of taking him lightly.

Meanwhile, the native correspondent had come to his feet and was waiting to ask a question. Unlike the others, he did not speak out. He waited to be recognized, to be asked. Gunther ignored him, but Kempton nodded at him and said, “Go ahead, sir.”

“About the political consequences,” the man began, his English stilted, strangely accented, “I think that you are right to say that this is a very broad topic. For not only the murderer, but the hangman too, functions in terms of two peoples. My readers—”