The Road to Gandolfo Read Free Page A

word “annulment.”
    That was the accident. Devereaux’s mistake came later. Much later. Seven thousand miles away on the converging borders of Laos, Burma, and Thailand.
    The Golden Triangle.
    Devereaux—for reasons known only to God and military logistics—never saw a court-martial, much less tried one. He was assigned to the Legal Investigations Division of the Office of the Inspector General and sent to Saigon to see what laws were being violated.
    There were so many there was no way to count. And since drugs took precedence over the black market—there were simply too many American entrepreneurs in the latter—his inquiries took him to the Golden Triangle where one-fifth of the world’s narcotics were being funneled out, courtesy of powerful men in Saigon, Washington, Vientiane, and Hong Kong.
    Sam was conscientious. He didn’t like drug peddlers and he threw the investigatory books at them, careful to make sure his briefs to Saigon were transmitted operationally within the confused chain of command.
    No report signatures. Just names and violations. After all, he could get shot or knifed—at the least, ostracized for such behavior. It was an education in covert activities.
    His trophies included seven ARVN generals, thirty-one representatives in Thieu’s congress, twelve U.S. Army colonels—light and full—three brigadiers, and fifty-eightassorted majors, captains, lieutenants, and master sergeants. Added to these were five congressmen, four senators, a member of the President’s cabinet, eleven corporation executives with American companies overseas—six of which already had enough trouble in the area of campaign contributions—and a square-jawed Baptist minister with a large national following.
    To the best of Sam’s knowledge, one second lieutenant and two master sergeants were indicted. The rest were—“pending.”
    So Sam Devereaux committed his mistake. He was so incensed that the wheels of Southeast Asian justice spun off the tracks at the first hint of influence that he decided to trap a very big fish in the corruption net and make an example. He chose a major general in Bangkok. A man named Heseltine Brokemichael. Major General Heseltine Brokemichael, West Point ’43.
    Sam had the evidence, mounds of it. Through a series of elaborate entrapments in which he himself acted as the “connection,” a participant who could swear under oath to the general’s malfeasance, he built his case thoroughly. There could not possibly be two General Brokemichaels, and Sam was an avenging angel of a prosecutor, circling in for his kill.
    But there were. Two. Two major generals named Brokemichael—one Heseltine, one Ethelred! Apparently cousins. And the one in Bangkok—Heseltine—was not the one in Vientiane—Ethelred. The Vientiane Brokemichael was the felon. Not his cousin. Further, the Brokemichael in Bangkok was more an avenger than Sam. He believed
he
was gathering evidence on a corrupt IG investigator. And he was. Devereaux had violated most of the international contraband laws and
all
of the United States government’s.
    Sam was arrested by the MPs, thrown into a maximum security cell, and told he could look forward to the better part of his lifetime in Leavenworth.
    Fortunately, a superior officer in the inspector general’s command, who did not really understand a sense of justice that made Sam commit so many crimes, but did understand Sam’s legal and investigatory contributions to thecause of the inspector general, came to Sam’s aid. Devereaux had actually filed more evidentiary material than any other legal officer in Southeast Asia; his work in the field made up for a great deal of inactivity in Washington.
    So the superior officer allowed a little unofficial plea bargaining in Sam’s case. If Sam would accept disciplinary action at the hands of a furious Major General Heseltine Brokemichael in Bangkok, constituting a six-month loss of pay—no criminal charges would be brought. There