“There’s no secret of the fact I had to testify for him. I hadn’t gotten out yet. I had to go to the presidio where they tried him. I said I’d served with him for two years and that he was a good competent noncom. I said I’d seen him lose his temper a lot of times, but he’d never hurt anybody before. He’d been drinking. A jackass lieutenant with brand-new gold bars, never been out of the States, didn’t like the way Dave saluted him. He made Dave stand on a street corner and practice. After about five minutes of that, Dave just hit him. And then kept picking him up and hitting him again. And then he took off. If only he’d hit him once, or if he hadn’t run… But I guess you know all about it.”

“Why should I? I want to know how much, and how he got it and how he brought it back.”

“I wouldn’t know a thing about that, friend. Not a single stinking thing.”

“Because you made it the same way and brought it back the same way George?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, believe me.”

“Because you can’t be sure there isn’t something official about this. Is that it?”

“McGee, I have had a lot of people asking a lot of questions for a long time, and they all get told the same thing. It was a good try, McGee. Let’s eat.” His morale came back fast.

It was midnight when we left the back-street club. He had a cocky, wary friendliness. As he unlocked the door of the Lincoln and swung it open, I chopped him under the ear with the edge of my hand, caught him and tumbled him in. And felt a gagging self-disgust. He was a semi-ridiculous banty rooster of a man, vain, cocky, running as hard as he could to stay in the same place, but he had a dignity of existence which I had violated.

A bird, a horse, a dog, a man, a girl, or a cat, you knock them about and diminish yourself because all you do is prove yourself equally vulnerable. All his anxieties lay there locked in his sleeping skull, his system adjusting itself to sudden shock, keeping him alive. He had pulled at the breast, done homework, dreamed of knighthood, written poems to a girl. One day they would tumble him in and cash his insurance. In the meanwhile it did all human dignity a disservice for him to be used as a puppet by a stranger.

He stirred once on the orderly trip back, and I found the right place on his neck for the thumb, and settled him back. Assured I was unobserved, I carried him into my chill nest, pulled the draperies, readied him for proof.

I stripped him, bound him, gagged him and settled him into the bottom ofthe shower stall. It was a hair piece. I peeled it away and tossed it onto the lavatory counter. It crouched there like a docile, glossy little animal.

A naked man who cannot move or talk, and does not know whether it is night or day, and is not told where he is or how he got there, will break very quickly.

The cold water brought him awake, and I let it run until I was certain he was thoroughly awake. I sat on a stool just outside the shower stall. I turned the water off. He was shivering. He stared at me with a total malevolence.

“George, do you think any government agency would permit this kind of interrogation? I’ve got several ways of getting rid of you completely. All perfectly safe. You’ve been asleep a long time, George. A lot of people are looking for you. But they’re looking in all the wrong places. Kidnapping is illegal, George. So we have to make a deal or I won’t be able to let you go.”

His eyes mirrored several new concerns, but he was telling himself he would never give in. “I’m after Berry ’s little package, and I need your help. When you’re ready to talk, just nod your head. Your only other choice is to get boiled like a knockwurst.”

I reached up and turned on the hot water. Good motels keep it at about a hundred and eighty degrees, and it doesn’t take long to get there. I gave him a short burst and a cloud of steam. He bucked himself off the floor and screamed into the towel, a small noise. His eyes were maddened and bulging and he forgot to nod. I gave him a second blast, and when the steam cleared I could see him nodding vigorously. I gave him the third blast for insurance and he jumped nicely and nodded so hard he was rapping his head against the wall of the stall.

I reached in and took the gag away.

He groaned. “Jesus God, you’ve scalded me. What are you doing to me? My God, McGee, what are you trying to do?”

I reached my hand up and put it on the hot water lever.

“Don’t!” he bawled.

“Keep your voice down, George. You’re turning nice and pink. Now just talk to me. Tell me all about how you and Dave Berry worked it. And if something doesn’t sound exactly right, I’ll boil you a little, just for luck.”

With a little coaching, he got through it pretty well. He and Berry had worked together from the beginning. At first it was Missionary Bonds purchased in China, shipped back to a friend in the States to cash and send them the money to buy more. Double money on each deal. Then when that was closed out, it was the gold. They worked together, but kept the take separate. They didn’t trust each other completely.

But Berry was always making more than George Brell because he didn’t spend an extra rupee on himself. He kept reinvesting it in gold. Berry found a goldsmith on Chowringhi Road in Calcutta who would cast facsimile structural parts of the aircraft out of pure gold. Berry would sand them a little, paint them with aluminum paint, screw them in place. A man in Kunming would melt them back into standard bars.

This was after spot inspection was tightened up. When they were finally due to be shipped back on rotation, Brell had over sixty thousand American dollars, and he was certain that Dave Berry had at least three times that much. They took an R and R leave and hitched a flight down to Ceylon. It was Berry ’s idea. He had thought it all out, and had learned all he could about gemstones. The cash made Brell nervous. He followed Berry ’s lead.

They spent the full ten days buying the most perfect gem stones they could find. Deep blue sapphires, star sapphires, dark Burmese rubies, star rubies. Some were too big to fit through the mouth of a standard issue canteen. They cut the canteens open, put the gems inside and resoldered them. They poured melted wax over the stones to hold them in place. The wax hardened. They filled the canteens with water, hooked them on their belts and came home rich and nervous.

“I don’t think they ever suspected Dave of a thing. He kept his mouth shut. But I did some hinting when I’d had a few drinks. They got onto me somehow. I went back home and hid them. I didn’t dare touch them. I was on terminal leave, waiting to get out when I got called to the trial. After they sentenced him to life, I had a chance to be alone with him. I tried to make a deal with him. Tell me where his were. I’d take a reasonable cut for services rendered and see that his family got taken care of. Not a chance. He didn’t trust me. He didn’t trust anybody to be shrewd enough and smart enough. No, he was going to handle it himself without any hitches, and then he could make it all up to his wife and girls.

“I didn’t touch mine for three years. Then I had to have cash. There was some land I had to pick up. I could buy it right. I couldn’t run the risk of selling them in this country. Martha and I took a vacation. We went to Mexico. I made contacts there. I took a screwing, but at least I felt safe. I got just a little over forty thousand. I brought it back in U.S. dollars, and I led it into the businesses a little bit at a time. I was careful. But they came down on me, on a net worth basis, trying to make a fraud charge stick, saying there was unreported income. And it has cost me a hundred thousand dollars to keep from being convicted for that lousy forty thousand. I couldn’t talk to you. I couldn’t take the chance. There’s no statute of limitations on tax fraud, and they could still jail me for never declaring the money I made overseas. I’m marked lousy in the files, and they are after me every year. They’re never going to stop. Now for God’s sake, let me out of here.”