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Part IX: 1917- War on All Fronts
"Proof?" Helmut bit his lip, already anticipating his testimony being doubted and Bert's point being proven right. "I do not have solid proof. Only what I saw. Whatever proof there was has probably been blown to fetzten, Herr Halliwell. All I can give you is what I saw."
Or what Bert saw, really, but Helmut continued to keep his friend out of it, as he would have wanted.
Halliwell let out a little deflating noise, pressing his hands together in frustration.
"Well, that's as good as pigeon feed!" he exclaimed, in a rare display of emotion, shaking his head, "Hearsay and allegations..."
It did stand to reason that any physical evidence at the plant would've been incinerated. The Bureau spooks had the idea too, which is why they'd locked so much of their focus on rounding up witnesses in big dragnets. A dramatic show of force, in Halliwell's opinion. These federal men didn't understand the quieter benefits of the softer touch.
But what to do, what to do...
"And motive, Mr. Fitz Gerald?" he asked at length, "You spin this fabulous, fantastic, I might say, tale of young Teague...a member, you must be aware and if you are not aware, I will make you so...of a prominent family...betraying his country and his colleagues in such dramatic fashion...why, I ask you, why?" he practically screamed the second word, his irritation showing through, "Why should he do such a thing?"
Oh, please, please God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob...please let Buford Teague be a fifth columnist!
-Halliwell
Helmut was silent for some time, seriously contemplating his answer, as it was a question he had pondered for some time now since finding out about Freddy's involvement in the disaster. Why go through the trouble of putting so many innocents in danger? At putting yourself in danger? To what end would that destruction be?
Finally, Helmut solemnly gave his answer. "Because he knew what would happen once the smoke cleared."
Halliwell blinked, shifting around in his seat, in so doing causing the leather seat to creak and crinkle with his motions. Fitzgerald was being determinedly cautious in his manner of speech...this was the attitude of someone with a target on his back. No doubt he feared reprisals...but from the police? Accomplices?
In any event, Halliwell understood his meaning.
"Yes...yes, right, of course," he nodded rapidly, "That would be a reasoned assumption, if everything else is true."
Yes...obviously, if Frederick Teague was a fifth columnist, he would've expected Lakewood's part in the war effort to be crippled, perhaps permanently, after the sabotage. The events of the past 24 hours would only have affirmed his theory.
"You may rest assured, Mr. Fitz Gerald, that this office shall personally...I will emphasize personally...investigate these claims. They shall not be taken lightly," he shook his head once, then twice, "Not at all lightly."
He leaned back in his chair, "Thank you for your candor. If you are needed, we shall endeavor to contact you."
But he was already itching to go. Without hard evidence, he'd have to move quickly to see if there was any substance at all to this wild story and, presuming substance, must make sure his was the first name on the police report!
In a manner of speaking.
-Halliwell
"Thank you, Herr Halliwell." Helmut got to his feet gingerly, glad that he had gotten the confession off his chest. He had done his part; he could say that much. "I trust this information is in good hands."
***
Helmut had left the interrogation room to meet the others waiting for him. "Well, Mr. Smith..." He greeted his friend's father, the one who had encouraged him so much to make this confession. "It's done. I suppose I can go home with a clear conscience now?"
Mr. Smith had been engaged in conversation with his young chaperone.
"Two children, then? That is..." he held up one hand, "Dose?"
"Dos," Alejandro corrected with a patient smile, "Yes. Two children. Josue and Millagros. They are still in Ciudad Victoria, with their mother, or they were at the time of their last letter."
"You must miss them terribly. I could not imagine the strain on a father's heart."
This was perhaps too florid for Alejandro, or perhaps more than his English lexicon could currently support. He looked past him, somewhat relieved, at Helmut's approach.
"Ah! Young Helmut, very good," Mr. Smith clapped him on the shoulder, "It is done, then, and behold..." he beamed at Alejandro, "You have not been clapped in cuffs."
"Will anybody?" Al asked evenly.
-DIK Smith and Alejandro
"He said he'd put this information to good use but..." Helmut gave one last glance to Halliwell over his shoulder. "...I admit, my confidence in his ability is not inspiring. But he is closer to doing something than he would be if I kept silent, I know that much. Will justice be served?" He paused, struggling to find an answer to his own question. "I'm not sure. What do you think, Mr. Smith?"
Mr. Smith lifted his hands in a world-weary expression before deftly catching his abandoned cane before it could hit the floor, "I think you have done your part, which is more than many others would do," his face darkened briefly as he looked out the door to the street.
"I know it was not easy. As I also know that your testimony was not as weighty as Bertolt's might have been," he rarely deployed his son's Christian name, and did so now with a resigned heaviness, "At any rate, we have done our part for now."
"Danilo will not be satisfied until every man they rounded up at the ostel is set free," Al offered, "But nobody's words will do that," he nodded approvingly at Helmut, "Lo hiciste bien."
-DIK Smith and Alejandro
"Danke." Helmut's eyes searched the room. "Where are they? Danilo and Marco?"
Mr. Smith heaved a world weary sigh, "Well, as to that. I fear they have gone in search of a different fire to stamp out," he turned toward the doors, hands worrying the head of his cane, "I can only hope they are not too late."
Or still better...that there is no fire after all.
But, for all Dieter Ivan Klaus didn't know about the workings of the world...he knew his son with certainty. There was a fire, to be sure, and all that mattered now was that it wasn't aloud to spread as disastrously as the one for which they'd all come here in the first place.
-DIK Smith
Bert had begun making his way through the halls of the hospital, unsure of exactly how his plan was going to come to fruition, but knowing he had no other choice.
He searched every door window, knowing a Teague would have a lavish private room and surely on a nicer wing of this dreaded place. Soon enough he found him, peering through and watching before stepping into the room.
"Freddy, you and I have quite the predicament on our hands don't we?"
He asked, cracking his knuckles as he mad a fist.
Freddy was jarred, not from sleep (he didn't think he would sleep ever again, for fear of the faces scratched on the other side of his eyelids) but from a kind of waking trance he'd lapsed into sometime after his father had left the room.
At first, he thought he'd stumbled backward into a sort of delirium...maybe a side effect of whatever drugs he'd been given, or perhaps the conk to the head he'd gotten in the blast. Would serve him right, he supposed, if after all the production, he croaked, nice and comfy in hospital.
Better than the others. No more, he supposed, than he deserved.
Bleary eyes settled on the figure in the doorway. Freddy could feel an electric prickle all along his skin, like a goose walking over his grave.
Or presumptive grave. He wondered if that might be so...if whenever anyone walked the land where the plant had once stood, he'd feel someone trampling over his guts.
He looked Bert Smith up and down, aware of his hand shaking beneath the thin linen of the bedclothes, "...what do you want?" he asked, though his voice didn't have the timbre for anything more than a choked up croak.
-Freddy
Bert walked closer, staring over the bed as he stared intently at the man laid up before him.
"I want the truth, and I want you to tell it all, more than that if you arent willing, I want you to feel the white hot flames my friends did."
Freddy's heart was in his mouth, as good as stifling his words, if any were to form.
Of course this was bound to happen. It would only be a matter of time. Funny...he hadn't thought too much of Smith since he'd come to. He supposed he'd just assumed he'd gone up in smoke as...
Not as he intended, surely? He hadn't specifically meant him to die. To be connected, to be sure, but not to die. He hadn't imagined any individual victim.
He hadn't imagined a lot.
"I..." his throat had gone very dry, "I don't know..."
What's the use? You know what you did and father knows too. It'll all be out soon enough anyway and nothing to be done about it...
"I don't know what you mean," he said finally, fitfully, futilely.
-Freddy
In one swift motion, a hand dragged Bert by the collar and slammed him against the wall, pinning him with all his strength.
"You've got a lot to answer for yourself, you little shit!" Buford snarled at Bert, forcefully shoving him against the wall again, both hands firmly gripping his shirt. "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, COMING IN HERE AND THREATENING MY SON?!" His voice reverberated through the makeshift hospital, booming at a volume usually reserved for the inmates of his prison.
And his patience was just as thin, dissatisfied with Bert's speed to answer his question; he punched the wall beside Bert's head and roared, "ANSWER ME!"
-Buford
Freddy didn't think to move before Bert was on him. A sort of latent petrification had come over him, pinning him in place. All he could do was looking up at his aggressor, nothing to behold but the anger writ-large on his reddened face, the angry vein pulsing in his neck.
He couldn't say anything, little more than he could do anything. Defend himself, of course, if he had anything to defend. His throat was closing, a fire burning beneath his face. He felt his heart threatening to burst from its brittle cage.
There's nothing to say. There's nothing to do.
He couldn't do this. He couldn't live like this forever, with the shadow of what he'd done always just around the corner. People were dead on his account. Dead and hurt and no doubt under scrutiny. He'd thought...
He'd thought...
It was supposed to be different.
"I...I just..."
The words had barely scratched out of his throat when the door was thrown open and the imposing shadow of his father fell over the bed.
Freddy felt the brittle mattress rise up to meet him as Bert dropped him.
"D-Dad!" he cried out, but there was no timbre to his voice. He could almost feel himself vanishing in real time, as Buford pressed Bert up against the wall. There was no noise of commotion from outside, though the hospital must be packed to the gills. Something about his father, Freddy supposed, helplessly. He carried walls of silence 12 inches thick wherever he went.
-Freddy
It was no sooner that Bert had raised his fist, that he felt a sudden and harsh yank of his collar, the very next second he was being slammed against the wall and the putrid stench of onions and tooth decay filled his nostrils. The hot breath of his aggressor on his cheeks. "Don't know what you mean, ol Freddy and I were just having a friendly conversation, horsing around a bit" A smirk clear on his face he didn't give a shit about this man, or being polite enough to act like he did. And he was tired of doing so just for his father's sake. .
"Don't play the innocent with me, boy!" Buford's grip tightened on the German's shirt collar, Freddy's pleas falling on deaf ears. "You've got no business with my son, do you hear me? You will not lay a hand on him or so help me God, I'll make you wish you were back in Germany, praying to all that is merciful you won't get a bullet between the eyes. Am. I. Clear?" His breathing was heavy, his whole body seething with anger. There was still a whiff of whiskey on his breath, his belly warm with the red-hot anger coursing through his veins and the Johnny Walker he downed a few minutes earlier.
Bert's eyes met the man's own as the intensity between the two could silence a polka party two hours and many brews in. Bert stamped his foot down onto the other mans, his grimes, dirty, boot pressing hard against the wealthy man's neatly polished gentleman's shoe. "Bullet between the eyes yeah? Better than burning to death I suppose. Your son's a murderer Mister, and I'm not ever letting that go."
Freddy watched in silence, like a chastened child. His father was a big man, and he towered over Bert, and might even have been a match for him in pure anger. What could he say? What could he do? Announce his guilt, he supposed, at the top of his lungs. Proclaim it through the streets, so everyone would know and nothing could be taken back.
Accept what he'd done, before it crushed him.
But his father. His father, in no danger of being crushed by this or perhaps by anything else he or any of his brothers might do, and still liable enough to crush anyone else. To crush him.
Freddy may have said or done anything...he may well have told the entire world what he'd done.
But he'd told his father, in private, behind closed doors. And, by telling him, he had no more taken a burden off his back than earned a place on his father's. What he had done wasn't about him anymore.
In work and deed, he was the property of Buford Teague.
-Freddy
Buford was silent for some time, with nothing but the sound of his own heavy breathing filling the room. If the venomous glare he was giving Bert could speak volumes, perhaps that would drown it out. Regardless, the prison warden held his tongue, assessing this smarmy whelp of a boy giving him lip. If this was his prison, this feckless rebel would have already been a stain on the concrete.
But no...not here. Buford knew better than that.
"That's a damn shame, son," Buford replied at last in a measured tone, neither accepting or denying Bert's words. "But maybe..." He closed his eyes, a shudder escaping his body as he contemplated his next move. "...but maybe you'll learn."
Suddenly, Buford threw Bert away from the wall and out of the room in plain view of every nurse, doctor, patient and officer. The warden himself was in quick pursuit, crying out to any cop who could hear him, "Next time this scum tries to harass my son, I want him in cuffs and on a one-way trip to a cell in my prison? AM I UNDERSTOOD?!"
There were some murmurings among the police but none sought to disobey a man who had as much power as Teague. Not when he was like this.
Buford knelt down beside Bert and whispered one last warning to the boy, "I'm the law in this town, boy. No matter what that buffoon of a sheriff tells you, I run things. I maintain law and order. I keep the filth off these streets." He looked the German over, sneering with contempt. "So clean up your act or else we meet like this again." He spat in Bert's face before getting him up and dusting himself off, letting the police take things from here.
"Up ye go, laddy," an Irish cop commanded Bert. "Up and outta here before I do the deed for ye meself."
The man's vile saliva felt like acid on his cheek, and had it not been for the police watching them so closely Bert would have thrown a inch, but he knew dying today wouldn't do anything for his friends, serve no purpose other than just to make himself a martyr. He wiped his face as he stood up next to the officer, looking at the Irish man, "Tell the Teagues, I do hope all turns out right." And with that he walked.
Freddy watched with a sick apprehension as his father took charge and all but had Bert frogmarched from the room. He lowered his head, keeping his eyes on the thin, starchy sheet, as if he could will himself into invisibility. He knew the officers were looking at him, and probably a nurse or two who'd been alerted by all the commotion. They must think him stupid or shocked...dumbstruck.
Maybe he was. Maybe that was the best he could hope for now.
It was some time before the crowd cleared out and he was alone with his father again. When he was, Freddy lifted his eyes, wary of what he might find but knowing that not to meet his father's eyes at a time like this would go very badly for him.
"He knows, Pop," he said faintly, "He knows. I'm..." he swallowed the bile rising in the back of his throat, "I'm sorry."
Sorry, yes, and for what? For the people who'd died, who'd been hurt. For his father's well-guarded reputation, which shouldn't seem as big a thing as it did, and yet felt monumental, like some great marble plinth, designed to withstand the centuries. Something somehow more permanent than any one human life because, after all, what is left of a man after he dies but others' memories of him? If you are remembered well or ill, or even remembered at all.
How many of the men who'd gone up in those flames...that he'd put the match to...would be remembered next year, or ten, 50, 100 years from now? Their wives would remember them, if they had wives, and their children might have some fragmentary recollections, all doomed to fade with the passing of years. None of them would be remembered for heroism surely...possibly for patriotic sacrifice, given the nature of their work. A thin comfort, and very different from dying on a battlefield.
And anyway, all puffery, mocked up legend. Not real memories of real deeds. Those were already fading, creeping away with every passing minute. Today, Freddy was a survivor.
Tonight, he decided, he would be a killer.
"He wanted me to admit it," he continued, "I almost did. I think...maybe I should have. Maybe..."
But he couldn't bring himself to finish the thought.
Maybe I will.
-Freddy
Buford re-entered Freddy's room, still fuming from his altercation with the German and his fists remaining clenched. The liquor had taken its toll on him more than he'd like. He was never one to show emotion so easily as he did now but it was all that could silence the frenzy of his thoughts blaring in his head like some mad siren.
His son broke that raucous noise within his mind, with that timid voice of his, still shaken from all that had transpired.
Freddy's words did nothing to soothe his frantic mind. "Not another word!" He scolded his youngest son immediately, redirecting his anguish and rage to his own flesh and blood. "I will not let that foreigner drag our family name through the mud! We're Teagues, goddammit! We're men of integrity and I intend to keep it that way! You will do the same! Understand?"
Freddy flinched as though struck. He could feel the noose closing around his neck...a different sort of sentence than he might expect, but no less lethal. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth and a stone seemed to be pressing against his chest.
He thought of his brothers...Dougie, so far away, brave by necessity, risking his life everyday. Helping people. So many days lately, he'd wondered if he'd ever see him again. For the first time, Freddy thought how he could possibly face him if he ever did. Nate, with his hothead reputation, and always quick to defend him. He couldn't ask to be defended for this.
Clearly, he couldn't ask for anything.
"I understand," he said haltingly, "Sir."
The words were sandpaper in his throat.
***
"You know, there's always a chance everything's fine."
Danilo gave Marco the withering look this comment probably deserved, snorting derisively without breaking up his stride, "Too much smoke rattling around your head after all?"
"No," he paused, "Possibly, but that's not why I said it."
"Always the optimist, eh?"
"Not always, believe me," Marco sighed, "I'm just saying, what's Bert going to do, realistically?"
"Que se joda todo."
"He's not gonna fuck everything up for us," he hurried a few steps to keep pace with Danilo, "You know how I know that?"
"Your faith in the goodness of the common man?"
"He could've fucked everything up already! He didn't want Helmut to say anything to the cops, but he didn't stop us going either."
"Significa nada," Danilo dismissed, "He'd want us with the police with our thumbs up our culos. Gives him a free line to the junior bomber."
"Volume," Marco cautioned.
"Al diablo," said Danilo casually, indicating the admittedly mostly desolate street around them, "Look, it's no skin off my back if he roughs the Teague boy up. Long as his voice still works to confess."
"Coerced confession," said Marco, "That's a thing, or it will be. If you make someone confess, it doesn't count."
"Bullshit. Who says?"
"Man, I don't know, but it is a thing," he paused, "Also, it's bad to beat someone up in his hospital bed."
"It's bad that a bunch of innocent men are squeezed like bait worms in cells for something they didn't do."
This was the closest Danilo had come to defending Bert, which Marco figured was good for group morale, so he didn't press it. It wasn't like he was wrong anyway, and Marco wasn't sure he was suited to playing arbiter of law and order without seeming like a eunuch hall monitor. It wasn't like he had much of a record sticking up for his own convictions in the past, and that probably showed.
"Still," he said at length, "It's better if he doesn't get himself arrested."
"Good news for you, then," Danilo nodded, "He hasn't."
Marco followed his gaze through the murky haze to make out the figure of Bert coming, naturally enough, from the direction of the hospital. Biting back the instinctive, "Yet", he lifted a hand to flag him down, "Yo! Bert! Hey!" jogging to close the distance between them.
"You had this one wetting his pants," Danilo commented wryly, close at his heels.
"Where did you go?"
"Knuckles aren't bloodied," Danilo observed.
"What did you do?"
***
Halliwell had shuffled, separated, and reshuffled the same sheaf of papers on his desk about fourscore times by the time his office door opened with a decisive clangor, sharp enough that he dropped his piecework with a cry.
"Oh!" he yelped, his eyes rolling wild in his head as he desperately willed them to stop their wild loop-de-gagging and get to man's business, "Oh, Warden. That is, er, Mr. Teague, sir. My, my. What an, er, that is..." he gulped, his Adam's apple ping-ponging up his gullet, "What a time. To visit. Sir. You being, er, if you would imagine, much on my mind. Indirectly. Sir."
-Freddy, Marco, Danilo, and Halliwell
Buford forced the door to Haliwell's force open, much to the sheriff's shock and fear. He barged into the station with ease, as every man seemed to respect the Teague name more than Haliwell or any of his aides. They knew if they got in his way, Buford would take them down along with whatever foe he was facing now. It's that kind of silent obedience Buford counted on from his inmates and guards alike.
He expected the same from Haliwell, whom he stared down as he closed the door behind him. Buford felt the pathetic excuse of a man shrink as he approached him, his broad-shouldered frame towering over the officer's.
Buford slammed one hand down onto Haliwell's desk, then the other. There was a whiff of whiskey on his breath as he breathed slowly, his barrel chest heaving up and down like a titanic landmass making a tectonic shift.
Finally, he growled four measly words: "We need to talk."
-Buford
Bert kept on walking at a brisk pace, barely acknowledging Marco or Danilo. "Nothing," he replied tersely, biting his lip. "And that's very much the problem." His back was still sore from when that brute shoved him against the wall. He regretted not throwing a punch back but even blinded by his contempt for the Teagues and everything they stood for, Bert saw how much of prison sentence that was. Hell, even a death sentence. Buford was a strong man, even in his middle age. Bert's bruised back was a testament to this.
"Well, that's a relief," said Marco as Danilo said, "What's the problem?"
They sort of fell into step, with Marco walking at Bert's right, Danilo to his left, back the way they'd come.
"Que va?" Danilo prodded, "Don't tell me you got cold feet."
"It's good if you did," said Marco.
"For you," said Danilo.
"And us, by extension."
"But you didn't," Danilo added knowingly.
"Didn't you?" Marco asked, hopefully, "Look, Bert, Helmut is telling the sheriff everything right now. It's gonna be a matter of public record, and at that point it's a done deal."
"...did you see him?" Danilo asked after a short pause, "And did he sing?"
-Marco and Danilo
"He was going to," Bert answered, shaking his head with disdain. "But then his father came in to sing a song of his own. Damn near killed me. Probably would have if there wasn't so big an audience peering in." A false comfort to think that there things even Buford Teague couldn't get away with. "He knows. I'm telling you, he knows and he doesn't give a damn. Blood runs thicker than his conscience. A hypocrite if I've ever seen one."