The Road to Gandolfo Read Free

sake.”
    “An example? For wanting the truth out?”
    “There’s a higher duty, General.”
    “I know,” said the brigadier wearily. “To the—trade agreements. To the gas.”
    “Quite frankly, yes. There are times when symbols have to be traded off for pragmatic objectives. Team players understand.”
    “All right. But Mac won’t lie down and play busted symbol for you. So what’s the—
input
?”
    “The inspector general,” said the lieutenant, as an obnoxious student might, holding up a severed tapeworm in Biology I. “We’re running an in-depth data trace on him. We know he was involved in questionable activities in Indochina. We have reason to believe he violated international codes of conduct.”
    “You bet your ass he did! He was one of the best!”
    “There’s no statute on those codes. The IG specialists have caseloads going back much further than General Hawkins’s
ex-officio
activities.” The lieutenant smiled. It was a genuine smile; he was a happy person.
    “So you’re going to hang him with clandestine operations that half the joint chiefs and most of the CIA know would bring him a truckload of citations—if they could talkabout them. You bastards kill me.” Symington nodded his head, agreeing with himself.
    “Perhaps you could save us time, General. Can you provide us with some specifics?”
    “Oh, no! You want to crucify the son of a bitch, you build your own cross!”
    “You do understand the situation, don’t you, sir?”
    The brigadier moved his chair back and kicked fragments of glass from under his feet. “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “I haven’t understood anything since nineteen forty-five.” He glared at the young officer. “I know you’re with Sixteen-hundred, but are you regular army?”
    “No, sir. Reserve status, temporary assignment. I’m on a leave of absence from Y, J and B. To put out fires before they burn up the flagpoles, as it were.”
    “Y, J and B. I don’t know that division.”
    “Not a division, sir. Youngblood, Jakel, and Blowe, in Los Angeles. We’re the top ad agency on the Coast.”
    General Arnold Symington’s face slowly took on the expression of a distressed basset hound. “The uniform looks real nice, Lieutenant.” The brigadier paused, then shook his head. “Nineteen forty-five,” he said.
    Major Sam Devereaux, field investigator for the Office of the Inspector General, looked across the room at the calendar on his wall. He got up from the chair behind his desk, walked over to it, and Xed the day’s date. One month and three days and he would be a civilian again.
    Not that he was ever a soldier. Not really; certainly not spiritually. He was a military accident. A fracture compounded by a huge mistake that resulted in an extension of his tour of service. It had been a simple choice of alternatives: Reenlistment or Leavenworth.
    Sam was a lawyer, a damn fine attorney specializing in criminal law. Years ago he had held a series of Selective Service deferments through Harvard College and Harvard Law School; then two years of postgraduate specialization and clerking; finally into the fourteenth month of practice with the prestigious Boston law firm of Aaron Pinkus Associates.
    The army had faded into a vaguely disagreeable shadow across his life; he had forgotten about the long series of deferments.
    The United States Army, however, did not forget.
    During one of those logistic crunches that episodically grip the military, the Pentagon discovered it had a sudden dearth of lawyers. The Department of Military Justice was in a bind—hundreds of courts-martial on bases all over the globe were suspended for lack of judge advocates and defense attorneys. The stockades were crowded. So the Pentagon scoured the long-forgotten series of deferments and scores of young unattached, childless lawyers—obtainable meat—were sent unrefusable invitations in which was explained the meaning of the word “deferment” as opposed to the