“It makes me want to .vomit, too, but we’ve got to get the dope.” He went on. Who paid him? What did the PanAsians expect to find out? How did he report back? When was he due to report next? Who else was in the organization? What did the PanAsians think of the temple of Mota? Did his boss know that he was here tonight?
And finally: what had induced him to go against his own people?
The drug was wearing oil’ now. Johnson was almost aware of his surroundings, but his censors were still down and he spoke with a savage disregard of what his hearers might think of him. “A man’s got to look out for himself, doesn’t he? If you’re smart you can get along anywhere.”
“I guess we just aren’t smart, Alec,” Thomas commented. He sat still for several minutes, then said, “I think he’s told us everything he knows.
I’m trying to decide just what to do with him.”
“If I give him another shot he may talk some more.”
Johnson said, “You can’t make me talk!” He seemed unaware that he already had talked.
Thomas struck him across the face with the back of his hand. “Shut up, you. You’ll talk whenever we give you the needle. Right now you’ll keep quiet.” He went on to Alec, “There is a bare chance that they might get more out of him if we shipped him back to base. But I don’t think so and it would be difficult and dangerous. If we got caught with him or if he escaped, the jig would be up. I think we had best dispose of him here and now.”
Johnson looked stunned and tried to sit up, but Alec’s staff kept him pinned to the cot. “Hey! What are you talking about? That’s murder!”
“Give him another shot, Alec. We can’t have him raising Cain while we work.”
Howe said nothing, but quickly made the injection. Johnson tried to squirm away from it, then struggled a little before he gave in to the drug. Howe straightened up. His face was almost as disturbed as Johnson’s had been. “Did you mean that the way it sounded, Jeff? If so,
I didn’t sign up for murder, either.”
“It’s not murder, Alec. We are executing a spy.”
Howe chewed his lip. “It wouldn’t bother me a bit, I guess, to kill a man in a fair fight. But to tie him down and butcher him, like he was a hog, turns my stomach.”
“Executions are always like that, Alec. Ever see a man die in a gas chamber?”
“But it is murder, Jeff. We don’t have the authority to execute him.”
“1 have the authority, Alec. I am a commanding officer, acting independently, in war time.”
“But consarn it, Jeff, you didn’t even give him a drumhead court-martial.”
“A trial is for the purpose of establishing guilt or innocence. Is he guilty?”
“Oh, he’s guilty all right. But a man’s entitled to a trial. ”
Jeff took a long breath. “Alec, I used to be a lawyer. The whole purpose of the complicated structure of western jurisprudence in criminal matters, as built up over the centuries, has been to keep the innocent from being convicted and punished through error. It sometimes lets the guilty go free in the process, but that’s not the purpose. I don’t have the personnel nor the time to form a military court and give this man a formal trial — but his guilt has been established with much more certainty than a court could possibly establish it and I don’t propose to endanger my command and risk the ultimate outcome of the war by extending to him the protections that were devised to protect the innocent.
“If I could cut out his memory and turn him loose to report back that all he found was a screwy church and a lot of hungry people eating, I would do it, not to avoid the chore of killing him, but because it would confuse the enemy. I can’t possibly turn him loose — ”
“I didn’t want you to do that, Jeff!”
“Shut up, soldier, and listen. If I turn him loose with the knowledge he has gained, the PanAsians will get it, the same way we made him talk, even if he tried to hold it back. We haven’t the facilities to keep him here; it is dangerous to ship him back to base. I intend to execute him now.” He paused.