Chapter 111
IT WAS PAST dark when a black Ford Bronco turned into the driveway of a large Colonial-style house that was flanked by elm trees and ringed by stockade fencing.
General Mark Hutchinson stepped out of his vehicle. The interior lights illuminated his face for a few seconds. He didn’t look one bit worried. Why should he? He had been to war several times, and he’d always survived.
I waited about ten minutes for him to put the houselights on, then get settled in. I knew that Hutchinson was divorced and lived alone. Actually, I knew a lot about the general by now.
I walked up the front steps, much as I’d gone up the steps to the general’s office earlier that afternoon. The same deliberate pace. Relentless, unstoppable, stubborn as hell. I was going to talk to Hutchinson today, one way or the other. I had business to finish. This was my last case, after all.
I banged the front door’s iron knocker a couple of times, a tarnished winged goddess that I found to be more imposing than inviting.
Hutchinson finally came to the door in a blue-checked sport shirt and pressed khaki slacks. He looked like a corporate executive caught at home by a
pesky door-to-door salesman, and none too happy about the interruption at this time of night.
“I’m going to have you arrested for trespassing,” he said when he saw me. As I’d told the soldier in his reception area, the general knew who I was.
“That being the case . . .” I pushed my way through the front door. Hutchinson was a broad-shouldered man, but in his sixties. He didn’t try to stop me, didn’t touch me at all.
“Haven’t you caused enough trouble?” he asked. “I believe you have.”
“Not really. I’m just getting started.”
I walked into a spacious living room and sat down. The room had deep couches, brass floor lamps, curtains in warm blues and reds. His ex-wife’s taste, I assumed.
“This won’t take too long, General. Let me tell you what I know about An Lao.”
Hutchinson tried to cut me off. “I’ll tell you what you don’t know, mister. You don’t know how the army works, and you don’t seem to know much about life in power circles either. You’re out of your depth here. Leave. Now. Take your goddamn stories to the Washington Post.”
“Starkey, Griffin, and Brownley Harris were military assassins assigned to you in Vietnam,” I began.
The general frowned and shook his head, but finally seemed resigned to hearing me out. He sat down. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I’ve never heard of any of those men.”
“You sent ten-person teams into the An Lao Valley specifically to intimidate the Vietnamese. It was a guerilla war, and your teams were instructed to act like guerillas. They committed murders, mutilations. They slaughtered noncombatants. They had a calling card — they painted their victims red, white, or blue. It got out of control, didn’t it, General?”
Hutchinson actually smiled. “Where did you dig up this ridiculous shit? You have some fucking imagination. Now get the hell out of here.”
I continued. “You destroyed the records that these men were even in the An Lao Valley. The same was true of the three assassins — Starkey, Griffin, and Harris — the one’s you sent to clean up the mess. That’s how I first found out about the deception. They told me they were there. But their army records said otherwise.”
The general looked uninterested in what I had to say. It was all an act, of course. I wanted to get up and punch him until he told me the truth.
“The records weren’t destroyed, General,” I went on.
Finally, I had his attention. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Just what I said. The records weren’t destroyed. An ARVN scout named Tran Van Luu brought the atrocities to the attention of his CO. None other than Colonel Owen Handler. No one would listen, of course, so Luu stole copies of records — and took them to the North Vietnamese.
“Those records were held in Hanoi until 1997. Then the CIA happened to obtain copies. I got my copies from the FBI, as well as from the Vietnamese embassy. So maybe I do know a little about life in Washington’s power circles. I even know that you’re being considered for the Joint Chiefs. But not if any of this started to come out.”
“You’re crazy,” Hutchinson huffed. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Am I? Two teams of ten men each committed a hundred or more murders of civilians in villages during ’sixty-eight and ’sixty-nine. You were the commanding officer. You gave the orders. When the teams got out of control, you sent in Starkey and his men to tidy up. Unfortunately, they killed a few civilians themselves. More recently, you gave the order to have Colonel Handler killed. Handler knew about your role in the An Lao Valley. Your career would have been ruined, and you might have even gone to jail.
“You went up country with Starkey, Harris, and Warren Griffin yourself. You were there, Hutchinson, in the An Lao Valley. You’re responsible for everything that went wrong. You were there — you made it four Blind Mice.”
Hutchinson suddenly turned around in his chair. “Walker, Taravela,” he said, “you can come in now. We’ve heard more than enough from this bastard.”
Two men entered through a side door. They both had guns drawn, pointed at me.