The Clan of the Cats Page 8

  “I know full well that what you said was in no way intended as flattery. Nonetheless, Mr. Henshaw, I took it and take it as just that. And not the least of my reasons is this; anyone who so fervently supports Senator McGovern’s candidacy as you seem to do is patently well beyond mere liberalism and into true leftist thinking and beliefs, and when a leftist of any water calls me such things as right-wing radical, reactionary and fascist, then I am comforted in the knowledge that I have impressed upon him the true facts that I fundamentally oppose him and everything — every rotten, red thing — for which he stands.

  “You questioned Eustace Barstow’s retention of power. Well, I cannot but wonder just how and when a thing like you managed to secure a place in this, the nerve center of our nation’s military establishment . . . and I mean to find out, too, Mr. Henshaw. Perhaps I should seek out Eustace Barstow and ask him about you, oh? You have any idea where he is just now, Mr. Henshaw? No? Then why don’t we ring up Langley? Surely the CIA would be able to put us in touch, don’t you think?”

  Pale still again, Henshaw hissed, “You were well advised to leave well enough alone, Moray. I have influence in more places and levels than you could ever imagine. I’ve been a government employee for almost twelve years now, and my loyalty has never once been questioned, by anyone. The last I heard, this is still a free country, and that means that have a right to my opinions, political and otherwise, whether you or Barstow or any other of your stripe of Neo-Nazi warmongers approve of them or not.

  “I mean to see you out of our army as expeditiously as possible. You’ll never go back to the war zone, understand? And that will be all to the common good — one less bloodthirsty killer there.

  “Now you get up and gel out of my office this instant! The smell of death is on you and I want you out of here. Now, get out!”

  * * *

  The best part of four days were required to get Milo in touch with Eustace Barstow. He had about given up. in fact, and was sipping a drink while watching the late news on the television set in his hotel room when the telephone jangled.

  “Moray here,” he answered.

  “I understand you’ve been looking all over D.C. for me, Milo,” said his caller. “Okay, I’m in the Shoreham lobby, so heave out the boards and I’ll come on up there bearing bottle, good stuff, direct from the Danish Embassy. You have a bucket of ice up there? Good”

  Save for a close-cropped head of snow-white hair and a few more wrinkles, the Eustace Barstow who presently appeared at the door to Milo’s hotel room was not significantly different from the Major Barstow to whom he had reported at Fort Holabird thirty-odd years before, the Colonel Barstow to whom he had reported in Munich or the Brigadier General Barstow for whom he had briefly worked while World War Two wound down and ground to a halt. It had been most of nine years after that before he had again run into Eustace Barstow. Just back from the stalemate in Korea but not at all sure that he wanted to become again the wealthy, privileged, globe-trotting man of leisure he had been prior to that mishandled war, Milo had agreed to serve Barstow’s operation on a strictly one-time-only basis.

  After the backslapping, handshaking and exchange of friendly obscene insults, the white-haired man in the meticulously tailored silk-and-cashmere suit carelessly tossed his fedora onto the bed and handed Milo the padded-suede bottle pouch.

  When he had unzipped the pouch and lifted out the liter-size bottle of clear liquid, he remonstrated, “Great God, General, akvavit? Why don’t you just drink grain alcohol? One’s about as strong and deadly as the other.”

  Barstow chuckled good-naturedly. “Because I’m queer for caraway, Milo. Kümmel is good for the digestion — both the Germans and all the Scandinavians swear to it as fact. Use lots of ice, Milo, it’s best when it’s as cold as you can get it.”

  When they had ritually touched glasses, Barstow threw down the three or four ounces of hundred-plus-proof liquor in a gulp before Milo had hardly sipped his own.

  As he refilled his guest’s extended glass, Milo shook his head and asked, “How often do you have to be sent to Reed or Bethesda to dry out, General? Or is there a classified facility for men of your rank and status?”

  Barstow chuckled again. “You know, I’d almost forgotten just how goddam insultingly insubordinate you can be at times, Milo. That endearing trait of yours is directly responsible, as you well know, for the fact that with almost thirty-five years — including your four years of reserve time — of service and three wars behind you, you’re still only a lousy light colonel. You were ordered out, to be sent stateside, no less than six times that I know of in the last ten years; hell, man, if you’d come when ordered, you’d most likely have two or three stars by now, Why didn’t you?”

  Milo half smiled. “Would you believe me if I told you there was just no way I could’ve gotten out when the various orders reached me?”

  “Hell, no!” snorted Barstow. “Any man who managed to get out of Dien Bien Phu and clear down to Saigon, through the length of a country swarming with Vietminh, and did it all alone and unaided, without even a fucking guide and showed up without a scratch on him, could get back to Saigon again. So why didn’t you, damn you? The truth, this time, please.”

  “Okay. Genera!” Milo said. “I didn’t come out because not only was I needed where I was, but I knew that what I was doing there was damned important. In D.C. or wherever, I’d’ve been put to shuffling papers, playing politics at O-club parties, expected to suck up to congressmen and perform similar useless, senseless functions. Not to mention being expected to lie to everybody and his brother about how well that war we’ve now lost was going.

  “General, what the hell is the point in committing an army to a war its not going to be allowed to fight properly and win? God in heaven, we didn’t even need to commit ground troops, not away back when. We owned the capability to subject the northern ports and population centers and larger supply points to high-altitude precision bombing just as we had German and Jap targets in World War Two; before they ever got a tenth of their air defenses set up, we could easily have turned Hanoi into a second Dresden, Haiphong into another Hamburg. You know it and I know it: the only thing the Reds of any nationality and race respect is pure, raw force; if we’d hurt them bad enough at the outset and shown a resolve to keep on hurting them, to annihilate them if necessary, they’d’ve cried uncle goddam quick, left the south alone, at least given a public appearance of living up to the Geneva Accords. So why didn’t we do it, huh?”

  With an enraged snarl, Barstow hurled his glass of ice cubes at the side wall. “Oh, damn you, Milo! Don’t you think we tried to get that very order? Not just me, but quite a few others, some whose names would no doubt surprise you, men who you wouldn’t expect to be willing to advise and consent to that kind of totally destructive warfare. God knows, I was shocked to the core to find out they were on our side in the matter. But Johnson seemed to be firmly under the control of the fucking whiz kids, seemed to be abso-fucking-lutely convinced that left alone to do it all their way, they’d shortly present miracles, and of course all they ever produced was worse than zilch — destruction, all right, and on a massive scale, but generally in all the wrong places, and a war that has now dragged on for so long that not a few domestic onetime supporters are beginning to sound more and more like the fucking pro-Communist agitators.

  “And naturally, when Johnson finally came around to our way of thinking, got it through his head at last that the so-called brain boys he’d inherited from Kennedy had either snookered him and the country or had been just blowing wind all along, it was too late in the game, way too late for anything short of a nuclear strike, and even in the extremes to which he’d been driven by events, he knew better than to order that.”

  “It just might’ve been just what the doctor ordered, General,” stated Mito grimly. “That way, we wouldn’t even have needed to risk planes and crews, just delivered the load by missile.”

  Barstow shook his head. “Milo, you’v
e spent a whole hell of a lot of time out of the country, and so I doubt seriously that you’re aware of some facts. One of them is this: a whole lot of people in the U.S. of A. are scared absolutely shitless of doing any frigging thing that conceivably might upset the fucking Russians enough for them to throw their nukes at us, and not all of these people are in any way, shape or form the least bit pink, not that our own native crop of Marxist traitors don’t use that lever and any other they can lay hands on to discombobulate their fellow citizens, retard our war effort — such as it’s been — and speed the Communist conquest of Southeast Asia.

  If Johnson or anyone else in a position of power had seriously proposed even a small-scale, surgical strike against North Vietnam with nukes, oh, Lordy, there would’ve erupted such a shitstorm that it would have had to be seen and heard and endured to be believed. Even if some rabid, leftist member of the defeatist press hadn’t had it leaked to him by a fellow traveler in the DOD or the White House, you can bet your bloody arse that one or more of our pack of Commie-lovers in the legislative branch would’ve had it in the papers and on the air in nothing flat. I tell you, Milo, certain elements of the news media have proven themselves of more value to the Reds in this war than five or ten full divisions of the NVA. To hear or to read the shit put out by those scaremongers, the whole damned country is in a state of constant turmoil and all of our allies are appalled at what we’re doing in and to Vietnam and are turning away from us in droves, as consequence. In the holy name of First Amendment rights, these bastards are cynically betraying their own, native land to the fucking Commies.

  “The newspapers would be bad enough, Milo, but the fucking TV is a goddam monster. You remember the old blood-and-guts training films we used to use? The ones that had fucking trainees fainting and puking their guts out? Well, compared to the footage the fucking networks are broadcasting all over America right at suppertime these days, those training films would be about as shocking as any damned Disney cartoon would be, anymore.”

  Milo’s visitor sighed gustily and shook his head forcefully. “Lordy, Lordy, how I do carry on. Build me another drink, will you. My tirades always leave me dry as the Mojave. But I’m not the only one who blows off on occasion and calls spades fucking shovels, am I, Milo?”

  Milo looked at Barstow quizzically for a moment, then abruptly nodded. “You heard about me telling off that peckerhead over at the Pentagon, huh? Tell me, how in the hell did something like Henshaw get to an apparent position of some power over there, anyway?”

  Barstow’s lips twisted in a moue of disgust. “Oh, hell, Milo, you ought to’ve guessed that already — he and a whole pisspot more just like him came in at the start of the Kennedy administration. But you guessed right on the power — he’s been there more than eleven years, assiduously kissing asses and, more likely than not, sucking carefully selected cocks as well, and not just in the Pentagon, either. He’s managed to acquire a goodly collection of ears, which means that your performance at his office the other day has wedged your scrotum into a crack, my friend.”

  Barstow grinned. “Not that I don’t like whatall you told the bastard. I couldn’t’ve said it better myself.” He chuckled. “I liked it so well, in fact, that I played that tape over three times, Milo.”

  “Henshaw recorded our, ahhh . . . conversation, then, General?” demanded Milo.

  Taking a drink from his new glass, Barstow waved his hand, then lowered the glass from his lips and shook his head. “No, no, no, Milo, Henshaw doesn’t even know a tape was made. Some of my people made it . . . well, people who work ostensibly for someone else, but also for me, actually — wheels within wheels within other wheels, if you get my drift.”

  Milo recalled the almost identical expression spoken by Barstow almost thirty years before, in Munich. “Just like all your earlier operations, General?”

  This time the visitor laughed and nodded, smiling broadly. “Mais oui, mon vieux! Deception has always been my stock in trade, it’s what gives value to my services . . . which don’t, any of them, come at all cheaply. I’m shrewd and as devious as old hell, but I’m an honest man, too, I never yet have failed to give value for value. And that dictum applies to both employers and employees, Milo.”

  Milo sighed. “Am I about to hear yet another recruitment pitch, General?”

  “Not really, no.” Barstow set down his glass of ice and gazed over steepled fingers at his host. “After all, what is there that I could offer you for service to me, eh? Money? Hell, you’re richer than old Croesus ever dreamed of being, right now. Rank? If you’d cared at all about that, you’d’ve played ball with the army these last ten or so years; besides, few of us are or are known to be military personnel, anyway — you recall that surely from the work you were so kind as to do for me in Indochina, back in ’fifty-four. And in that regard, Milo, I still feel that I owe you a bundle for that, so tell me, my old friend, what can we do for you?”

  Seeing the old pain in Barstow’s eyes, sensing the humility of guilt in his voice, Milo put iron into his own words. “Stop it now, General. I’ll tell you now just what I told you eighteen years ago: Martine’s — my wife’s — death was not your fault, not in any way your fault. Understand? Like many another innocent before and since, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and those circumstances conspired to kill her.”

  “But, Milo,” said Barstow, “it was me who persuaded you to go on leave from the army and take passage to Saigon as a tourist, as just a seemingly ordinary tourist, dammit.”

  Milo nodded once. “Yes, and you said not a word about Martine going along with me. That was purely her decision. I tried to talk her out of the notion, to dissuade her, several times over. But she retorted that as I’d been away at war for over three years, she deserved and meant to have at least the next three years of my time. What could I say after that? So she went with me, thrilled to be again in a French-speaking city, among Frenchmen and their families, military folks, who knew her family of old.” He paused, then went on, “Even had I had the heart to stop her, I doubt that I could’ve done so other than physically, at that point.”

  Barstow shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not, Milo, but I could have done it, very easily . . . and I’ll always regret that I didn’t, it will always be one of the crosses I must bear to my very grave. No.” He raised his hand once more. “Let me finish, tell it all, you’ve the right to know just how I used the situation, used her, to what I then thought my and your advantage, damn me for the cold, callous, calculating fool that I was.

  “Look, of all people back then, I knew just how unstable, how volatile, how deadly dangerous was the situation in Cochin and Tonkin at that time, especially for anyone who might be considered to be or taken for a Frenchman or Frenchwoman, particularly one in any way connected with their military or governmental establishment.

  “It was risky enough to send you, but some risk had to be taken, just then, to achieve my ends, get the information needed, and I knew you and knew that if anyone could take care of himself in a sticky situation, it was you.

  “When Martine chose to accompany you, I decided that she would provide deeper cover for you. Anyone — man or woman, friend or complete stranger, Caucasian or Oriental — could tell when you two were together just how much of love and caring one for the other was in your relationship, so how could it then be even so much as suspected that you were anything more than what you were supposed to appear — a wealthy American couple spending some time as the guests of certain French people in Saigon? Had I taken the time to think, had I only taken that little bit of extra time to think it out as deeply as I should’ve . . .”

  “Look, General,” said Milo earnestly, “think now, think back on it, huh? Martine was killed, yes, but not by intent. Daphne, Madame Cler, she was the target of that bomb, it was her car that they rigged, and we never knew for certain just who did it, either. Yes, it could’ve been, might’ve been, the Vietminh, but it just as well might’ve been any of half a dozen aggregat
ions of racketeers — Asian or French — for not only the Minh had it in for Daphne’s husband and her brother. It doesn’t take much sophisticated skill to wire a bomb to the ignition of an automobile, only access to wire and primers and explosives, all of which were in abundant supply all over Saigon at that time, hell, still are and will continue to be into the foreseeable future.”

  Barstow grimaced. “Until the Cong come in and take over Saigon of course,” he said bitterly, adding, “Which scenario seems to be nothing less than exactly what McGovern, Church and the rest of that flock of pinkish doves want to see. They’ll gladly let the rest of the world go Communist or go to hell, just so long as they can be free to legislate this country into a fucking Swedish-style socialist welfare state, completing the work of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson.

  “That McGovern!” He spat in disgust. “He swears he’s going to, if elected, give one thousand dollars to every man, woman and child in this whole frigging country, just because they’re here and alive, apparently. What he doesn’t think about or talk about is where the fuck he’s going to lay hands on the two hundred plus billions it’s going to take, not to even make mention of the four or five billions more that the fucking bureaucrats will gobble up in the distribution. I tell you, Milo, the Democratic candidate — or, more likely, whoever is telling him what to say, what to promise — has a cranium stuffed with top-quality fertilizer, fresh from the horse.

  “But since we’re back on the subject of shit, you’re deep in it, my friend, so far as the Pentagon is concerned. They’re no longer at all accustomed to truth-saying and honesty over there, you see, and they’re therefore scared to death of anyone who is capable of speaking out bald facts and, more, of anyone who does so. Your encounter with Henshaw rattled not a few cages, and the intent is to make you pay dearly for such temerity, such unbridled honesty. But I just may be able to pull you out . . . with your cooperation, of course. Will you cooperate, Milo?”