The Night People (10 page)

“Can we get around them?” Contrell asked, breathing hard.

“Around them or through them.”

“They’re South Koreans.”

Those still alive and able to run were scrambling off the burning truck, running toward Grove’s vehicle. “Get off!” Grove shouted.

“Keep back!” He reached down and shoved one of the South Koreans over backward, into the roadside dust. When another clambered aboard in his place, Grove carefully took out his .45 pistol and put a bullet through the man’s head.

Contrell watched it all as if he were seeing an old movie unwinding after years of forgotten decay. I’ve been here before, he thought, thinking in the same breath of the medals they’d shared after the North African episode. Men like Grove never changed—at least, not for the better.

“They were South Koreans, Willy,” he said quietly, his mouth close to the major’s ear.

“What the hell do I care? They think I’m running a damned bus service?”

Nothing more was said about it until they’d rumbled south into the midst of the retreating American army. Contrell wondered where it would all stop, the retreat. At the sea, or Tokyo—or California?

They took time for a smoke, and Contrell said, “You didn’t have to kill that Gook, Willy.”

“No? What was I supposed to do, let them all climb aboard and get us all killed? Go on, report it if you want to. I know my military law and I know my moral law. It’s like the overcrowded lifeboat.”

“I think you just like to kill.”

“What soldier doesn’t?”

“Me.”

“Hell! Then what’d you re-up for? Fun and games?”

“I thought I might do something to keep the world at peace.”

“Only way to keep the world at peace is to kill all the troublemakers.”

“That Gook back there was a troublemaker?”

“To me he was. Just then.”

“But you enjoyed it. I could almost see it in your face. It was like North Africa all over again.”

Major Grove turned away, averting his face. “I got a medal for North Africa, buddy. It helped me become a major.”

Contrell nodded sadly. “They do give medals for killing. And I guess sometimes they don’t ask for too many details.”

Someone called an order and Grove stubbed out the cigarette. “Come on, boy. Don’t brood over it. We’re moving on.”

Contrell nodded and followed him. Once, just once, he looked back the way they’d come …

24 August 1961

Major Contrell had been in Berlin only three hours when he heard Willy Grove’s name mentioned in a barside conversation at the Officers’ Club. The speaker was a slightly drunk captain who liked to sound as if he’d been defending Berlin from the Russians single-handed since the war.

“Grove,” he said with a little bit of awe in his voice. “Colonel Willoughby McSwing Grove. That’s his name! They say he’ll make general before the year is out. If you coulda seen the way he stood up to those Russians last week, if you coulda seen it!”

“I’d heard he was in Berlin,” Contrell said noncommittally. “I know him from the old days.”

“Korea?”

Contrell nodded. “And North Africa nearly twenty years ago. When we were all a lot younger.”

“I didn’t know he fought in World War II.”

“That was before we were officers.”

The captain snorted. “It’s hard to imagine old Grove before he was an officer. You shoulda seen him last week—he stood there, watching them put up that damned wall, and pretty soon he walked right up to the line. This Russian officer was there too, and they stood like that, only inches apart, just like they were daring each other to make a move. Pretty soon the Russian turned his back and walked away, and damned if old Grove didn’t take out his .45! We all thought for a minute he was going to blast that Commie down in his track, and I think we’d all have been with him if he did. You know, you go through this business long enough—this building up and relaxing of tensions—and after a while you just wish somebody like Colonel Grove would pull a trigger or push a button and get us down to the business once and for all.”

“The business of killing?”

“What else is there, for a soldier?”

Contrell downed his drink without answering. Instead, he asked, “Where is Grove staying? Is he married now?”

“If he is, there’s no sign of a wife. He lives in the BOQ over at the air base.”

“Thanks.” Contrell laid a wrinkled bill on the bar. “The drinks were on me. I enjoyed our conversation.”

He found Colonel Grove after another hour’s searching, not at his quarters but at the office overlooking the main thoroughfare of West Berlin. His hair was a bit whiter, his manner a bit more brisk, but it was still the same Willy Grove. A man in his forties. A soldier.

“Contrell! Welcome to Berlin! I heard you were being assigned here.”

They shook hands like old friends, and Contrell said, “I understand you’ve got the situation pretty well in hand over here.”

“I did have until they started building that damned wall last week. I almost shot a Russian officer.”

“I heard. Why didn’t you?”

Colonel Grove smiled. “You know me better than to expect lies, Major. We’ve been through some things together. You’re the one who always said I had a weakness for killing.”

“Weakness isn’t exactly the word for it.”

“Well, whatever. Anyway, you probably know better than anyone else my feelings at that moment. But I kept them under control. There’s talk of making me a general, boy, and I’m keeping my nose clean these days. No controversy.”

“And I’m still a major. Guess I don’t live right.”

“You don’t have the killer instinct, Contrell. Never did have it.”

Major Contrell lit a cigarette, very carefully. “I don’t think a soldier needs to have a killer instinct these days, Willy. But then, we’ve been debating this same question for nearly twenty years now, off and on.”

“Haven’t we, though.” Willy Grove smiled. “I’m sorry I don’t have somebody I can kill for you this time.”

“What would you have ever done in civilian life, Willy?”

“I don’t know. Never thought about it much.”

“A hundred years ago you’d have been a Western gunman probably. Or forty years ago, a Chicago bootlegger with a tommy gun. Now there’s just the army left to you.”

Grove’s smile hardened, but he didn’t lose it. Instead, he rose from behind the desk and walked over to the window. Looking down at the busy street, he said, “Maybe you’re right, I really don’t know. I do know that I’ve killed fifty-two men so far in my lifetime, which is a pretty good average. Most of them I looked right in the eye before I shot them. A few others got it in the back, like that Russian nearly did last week.”

“You could have started a war.”

“Yes. And some day perhaps I will. If I had the power to …” He let the sentence go unfinished.

“They’re not all like you,” Contrell said. “Thank God.”

“But I have enough of them on my side. Enough of them who know that army means war and war means death. You can’t escape it, no matter how hard you try.”

He looked at the white-haired colonel and remembered the captain he’d spoken with in the bar earlier that afternoon. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps he was the one who was wrong. Had he wasted away his whole life pursuing an impossible dream of an army without war or killing?

“I’ll still do it my way,” he said.

“Good luck, Major.”

A week later Contrell heard that a Russian guard had been killed at the wall in an exchange of gunfire with West Berlin police. One story had it that an American officer had fired the fatal shot personally, but Contrell was unable to verify this rumor.

5 April 1969

It was the day before Easter in Washington, a city expectant under a warm spring sun. The corridors of the Pentagon were more deserted than usual for a Saturday, and only in one office on the west side was there any activity. General Willoughby McSwing Grove, newly appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was moving into his suite of offices.

Colonel Contrell found him bent over a desk drawer, distributing the contents of a bulging brief case to their proper places. He looked up, a bit surprised, at his Saturday visitor. “Well … Contrell, isn’t it? Haven’t seen you in years. Colonel? You’re coming along.”

“Not as fast as you, General.”

Grove smiled a bit, accepting the comment as a sort of congratulation. “I’m at the top now. Good place to be for a man of my age. The hair’s all white, but I feel good. Do I look the same, Colonel?”

“I’d know you anywhere, General.”

“There’s a lot to be done, a damned lot. I’ve waited and worked all my life for this spot, and now I’ve got it. Our new President has promised me free reins in dealing with the international situation.”

“I thought he would,” Contrell said quietly. “Do you have any plans yet?”

“I’ve had plans all my life.” He wheeled around in his swivel chair and stared hard out the window at the distant city. “I’m going to show them what an army is for.”

Colonel Contrell cleared his throat. “You know, Willy, it took the better part of a lifetime, but you finally convinced me that killing can be necessary at times.”

“Well, I’m pleased to know that you’ve come around to …” General Grove started to turn back in his chair and Contrell shot him once in the left temple.

For a time after he’d done it, Contrell stood staring at the body, hardly aware that the weight of the gun had slipped from his fingers. There was only one thought that crowded all the others from his mind. How would he ever explain it all at the court-martial?

T
HE COUNTRY WAS HOT
and fly-swept, and Doris hated it from the first. They’d barely reached the hotel from the airport when she turned from the latticework window and told him, “This is one hell of a place to spend a honeymoon!”

Kane Wingate paused in the act of unpacking his bag. “I’m sorry, dear. I suppose it’s the first of many pitfalls in the life of a professor’s wife. It’ll only be for two days, though. Just long enough for …”

“Just long enough for you to visit the cemetery.”

He went over and put his arms around her. “The way you say it I suppose it isn’t really much of a honeymoon trip. I’m sorry, dear.”

She was a decade younger than his thirty-eight years, but he was still a match for Doris. Perhaps that explained why he expected her to share the interest in his work, which came before anything else. She’d agreed to a side trip to Puerto Vale so he could visit the grave of Ramon Mandown. Now, together in the stuffy drabness of the hotel room, the error of it was all too obvious to them both.

“All right,” she said finally. “I suppose I’m being a bit unreasonable. Go to your old cemetery. I’ll look around in the shops.”

He kissed her, and felt good again. “I shouldn’t be long. Mandown lived in a little village up in the hills, but it’s only an hour away by car. I’ll be back for supper. Meet you here in the room? Around six?”

“Fine.”

Ramon Mandown had been dead nearly two years. He had died in the little mountain community where he had lived most of his life, surrounded by people who little knew or cared what the Nobel Prize for Literature meant to the outside world. The seven volumes of Mandown’s verse were almost unknown in the United States until he won the prize, but after that his fame had grown steadily until his death at the age of fifty-seven.

Now, thought Kane Wingate and any number of other literature professors, there was only a lull before the name of Mandown became a household word in literate American circles.

A month before his marriage to Doris, a balding little man with a cigar in his mouth and a checkbook in his hand had approached Kane to commission a ten thousand-word article on Mandown and his works. “We want to be on top of this thing,” he had said. “We want his picture on our cover for the second anniversary of his death. They tell me you’ve studied his stuff.”

“I’ve lectured on him,” Kane had admitted.

“Then you can do an article for our magazine.”

There had been a $500 advance, and Kane did not intend to spurn such an offer. Besides, the pressure was on at the University to publish something—anything—and ten thousand words might easily flower into fifty thousand for a book on Mandown.

The article was coming along, slowly, but Kane didn’t feel he could pass up a visit to the great man’s grave. He hardly expected a bolt of inspiration, but it might make a good lead for the thing.
A few weeks ago, as I stood staring down at the final resting place of Ramon Mandown
… Something like that. Something dignified, as befits the subject.

Kane parked his rented car in the village square and stopped the first man he saw. “The grave of Ramon Mandown?” he asked in a good approximation of the language.

The man shook his head. “No,” he answered. “I don’t know, sir.”

Kane sighed. “Which way to the cemetery?”

“Up the hill. You will see it.”

“Thanks.” It seemed only a short walk, so he left the car where it was. He had brought the camera, to take a picture of the grave and any tribute that might be there, but as he neared the place he began to realize that all he would find was a score of crumbling tombstones, overgrown with tropic weeds.

“Can I help you?” a man in shirtsleeves asked him. He spoke English with an accent, and seemed to be in charge of things.

“Is this your cemetery?” Kane asked.

The man chuckled. “A cemetery belongs only to the dead. I care for it.”

Kane glanced again at the weeds and wondered what the care consisted of. “I’m looking for the grave of Ramon Mandown.”

“He is not buried here.”

“Well, where is he?”

“I could not tell you that.”

“This was his village?”

“Yes.”

“And he died here two years ago.”

“Almost two years. It was in the autumn, I think.”

“Then where is his body? Back in the town?”

The man shrugged and said nothing.

“I just want some information! Do you have a mayor or anyone up here? A headman?”

“I am the headman.” He pushed a hand through hair beginning to gray. “My name is Juan Vyano.” He held out his hand in a gesture of westernized greeting. It felt oily from the sweat of his hair.