“Here we are.”
Getting onto the base was easy enough, and Bright knew the way to the pier. Panache looked pretty big from the car, a towering white cliff with a bright-orange stripe and some dark smudgemarks near midships. Murray knew that she was a small ship, but one needed a big ocean to tell. By the time he and Bright got out of the car, someone got on the phone at the head of the gangway, and another man appeared there within seconds. Murray recognized him from the file. It was Wegener.
The man had the muddy remains of what had once been red hair, but was now sprinkled with enough gray to defy an accurate description. He looked fit enough, the FBI agent thought as he came up the aluminum brow, a slight roll at the waist, but little else. A tattoo on his forearm marked him for a sailorman, and the impassive eyes marked the face of a man unaccustomed to questioning of any kind.
“Welcome aboard. I’m Red Wegener,” the man said with enough of a smile to be polite.
“Thank you, Captain. I’m Dan Murray and this is Mark Bright.”
“They told me you were FBI,” the captain observed.
“I’m a deputy assistant director, down from Washington. Mark’s the assistant special-agent-in-charge of the Mobile Office.” Wegener’s face changed a bit, Murray saw.
“Well, I know why you’re here. Let’s go to my cabin to discuss things.”
“What’s with all the scorching?” Dan asked as the captain led off. There was something about the way he’d said that. Something… odd.
“Shrimp boat had an engine fire. Happened five miles away from us last night while we were on the way in. The fuel tanks blew just as we came alongside. Got lucky. Nobody killed, but the mate was burned some.”
“How about the boat?” Bright asked.
“Couldn’t save her. Getting the crew off was pretty tricky.” Wegener held open the door for his visitors. “Sometimes that’s the best you can do. You gentlemen want any coffee?”
Murray declined. His eyes really bored in on the captain now. More than anything else, Dan thought, he looked embarrassed. Wrong emotion. Wegener got his guests seated, then took his chair behind the desk.
“I know why you’re here,” Red announced. “It’s all my fault.”
“Uh, Captain, before you go any further -” Bright tried to say.
“I’ve pulled some dumb ones in my time, but this time I really fucked up,” Wegener went on as he lit his pipe. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”
“No, not at all,” Murray lied. He didn’t know what was coming, but he knew that it wasn’t what Bright thought. He knew several other things that Bright didn’t know, also. “Why don’t you tell us about it?”
Wegener reached into his desk drawer and pulled something out. He tossed it to Murray. It was a pack of cigarettes.
“One of our friends dropped this on the deck and I had one of my people give this back to them. I figured – well, look at it. I mean, it looks like a pack of cigarettes, right? And when we have people in custody, we’re supposed to treat ’em decent, right? So, I let ’em have their smokes. They’re joints, of course. So, when we questioned them – especially the one who talked – well, he was high as a kite. That screws it all up, doesn’t it?”
“That’s not all, Captain, is it?” Murray asked innocently.
“Chief Riley roughed one of ’em up. My responsibility. I talked to the chief about it. The, uh, I forget his name – the obnoxious one – well, he spit on me, and Riley was there, and Riley got a little pissed and roughed him up some. He should not have done it, but this is a military organization, and when you spit on the boss, well, the troops might not like it. So Riley got a little out of hand – but it happened on my ship and it’s my responsibility.”
Murray and Bright exchanged a look. The suspects hadn’t talked about that at all.
“Captain, that’s not why we’re here exactly,” Murray said after a moment.
“Oh?” Wegener said. “Then why?”
“They say that you executed one of them,” Bright replied. The stateroom was quiet for a moment. Murray could hear someone hammering on something, but the loudest noise came from the air-conditioning vent.
“They’re both alive, aren’t they? There were only two of them, and they’re both alive. I sent that tape on the helicopter when we searched the yacht. I mean, if they’re both alive, which one did we shoot?”
“Hanged,” Murray said. “They say you hanged one.”
“Wait a minute.” He lifted the phone and punched a button. “Bridge, captain speaking. Send the XO to my stateroom. Thank you.” The phone went back into place, and Wegener looked up. “If it’s all right with you, I want my executive officer to hear this also.”
Murray managed to keep his face impassive. You should have known, Danny, he told himself. They’ve had plenty of time to work out the little details, and Mr. Wegener is nobody’s fool. He’s got a U.S. senator to hide behind, and he handed us two coldblooded killers. Even without the confession, there’s enough evidence for a capital murder case, and if you trash Wegener, you run the risk of losing that. The prominence of the victim – well, the U.S. Attorney won’t go for it. No chance… There wasn’t a United States Attorney in all of America who lacked political ambition, and putting these two in the electric chair was worth half a million votes. Murray couldn’t run the risk of screwing this case up. FBI Director Jacobs had been a federal prosecutor, and he’d understand. Murray decided that it might make things a lot easier.
The XO appeared a moment later, and after introductions were exchanged, Bright went on with his version of what the subjects had told the local FBI office. It took about five minutes during which Wegener puffed on his pipe and let his eyes go slightly wide.
“Sir,” the XO told Bright when he was finished. “I’ve heard a couple of good sea stories, but that one’s the all-time champ.”
“It’s my fault,” Wegener grumbled with a shake of the head. “Lettin’ ’em have their pot back.”
“How come nobody noticed what they were smoking?” Murray asked, less with curiosity for the answer than for the skill with which it was delivered. He was surprised when the XO replied.
“There’s an A/C return right outside the brig. We don’t keep a constant watch on prisoners – these were our first, by the way – because that’s supposed to be unduly intimidating or something. Anyway, it’s in our procedure book that we don’t. Besides, we don’t have all that many people aboard that we can spare ’em. What with the smoke getting sucked out, nobody noticed the smell until that night. Then it was too late. When we brought them into the wardroom for questioning – one at a time; that’s in the book, too – they were both kinda glassy-eyed. The first one didn’t talk. The second one did. You have the tape, don’t you?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it,” Bright answered.
“Then you saw that we read them their rights, right off the card we carry, just like it says. But – hung ’em? Damn. That’s crazy. I mean, that’s really crazy. We don’t – I mean, we can’t. I don’t even know when it was legal to do it.”
“The last time I know about was 1843,” the captain said. “The reason there’s a Naval Academy at Annapolis is because some people got strung up on USS Somers. One of them was the son of the Secretary of War. Supposedly it, was an attempted mutiny, but there was quite a stink about it. We don’t hang people anymore,” Wegener concluded wryly. “I’ve been in the service a long time, but I don’t go that far back.”
“We can’t even have a general court-martial,” the XO added. “Not by ourselves, I mean. The manual for that weighs about ten pounds. Gawd, you need a judge, and real lawyers, all that stuff. I’ve been in the service for almost nine years, and I’ve never even seen a real one – just the practice things in law classes at the Academy. All we ever do aboard is Captain’s Mast, and not much of that.”
“Not a bad idea, though. I wouldn’t have minded hanging those sons of bitches,” Wegener observed. It struck Murray as a very strange, and very clever, thing to say. He felt a little sorry for Bright, who’d probably never had a case go this way. In that sense Murray was grateful for his time as legal attaché in London. He understood politics better than most agents.
“Oh?”
“When I was a little kid, they used to hang murderers. I grew up in Kansas. And you know, there weren’t many murders back then. Course, we’re too civilized to do that now, and so we got murders every damned day. Civilized,” Wegener snorted. “XO, did they ever hang pirates like this?”