The San Sebastian Chronicles, Part XII
The procession of a most irregular proceeding.
I suppose he thinks he owns the place, Gorats thought as he weedled his way past the sergente in the dark hall of what was to him indeed a bleak and wretched building. Of course, his opinion on the edifice’s wretchedness was no doubt influenced by the dire and unjust circumstances in which he and Luganstz found themselves. They had been summoned here this morning by one Captain Lauzirika to discuss the matter of the Order and of some differences of opinion regarding the question of “sides” among those whose ranks entailed brass birds of prey on epaulets, ostrich-feather hats, and silk sashes.
Gorats and his most disagreeable shackmate, Luganstz, had spent the better part of the afternoon in this structure’s stony bowels, on two dusty fauteuils in a hastily done up antechamber, under most tiresome questioning from the captain and one of his more obsequious adjutants, one Branko.
“Why are we here?” Gorats had demanded to know. “Are we under arrest? What is our crime?”
Continued from…
“You will be informed about those matters when we choose to inform you,” the adjutant Branko would say, or something such like, trying very hard to sound domineering and supercilious, but, owing mostly to the young assistant’s near-literally infantile visage, coming off instead like a play-acting judge’s child.
“Of course you’re not under arrest,” Captain Lauzirika would laugh with his too-studied by half laugh, one that good looking men often have, usually honed in the practice of seduction, lying, and feigned apology, “and there is no crime at all! We’re just trying to understand how the order was translated and whether proper procedures were followed.”
Branko the adjutant would ape his mentor, “Ha, there’s no crime. Of course. Of course not. We are just trying to get to the bottom of things.”
“Well, I would like a solicitor present nonetheless! This is not the ancien régime. This is not some Guelph principality in the Middle Ages. You can’t interrogate us here in this Sternenkammer. The Enlightenment has occurred, you know” Gorats would implore. “Luganstz, tell them!”
Suddenly then Luganstz wasn’t his usual cowshit, argumentative, egotistical self (the one time it might have helped!). Instead he’d lolled around, acting like he was watching butterflies on a picnic. He’d just lazily agreed with what Lauzirika and Branko had said, or he’d add that he and Gorats were “only doing their best and highest duty for San Sebastian” or spit out some similarly unresponsive doggerel.
“Tell them what?” Luganstz had shrugged. “We’re here to help, aren’t we? We should get to the bottom of this. Don’t you think, Gorats?”
“Yes, First Lieutenant-Intendant Gorats,” the adjutant, baby-faced Branko would pounce. “You should want to help. Or don’t you?” Then he would grin, his face contorted in an adolescent pantomime of menace.
“Of course he does! Of course Gorats here wants to help us get to the bottom of this! I know it for certain,” Captain Lauzirika would bellow, all guffaws and smiles. Then he would pound the table with is fist, still smiling, ear to ear, “So what happened?”
Gorats then had explained that nothing had happened, that they’d responsibly done their duties in translation and ensuring consistency and continuity among the orders in question. Luganstz agreed, but was too vague, or seemed to hedge.
They weren’t beaten or slapped or doused with sour milk. Even Branko seemed to ease off his accusatory mien. After some hours, they’d been dismissed, though instructed to remain near. Gorats and Luganstz, knowing no one else around, ate an icy, silent meal together with the other officers in the chilly-but-imperial hall of this repurposed manse. They were both keenly aware of a pistoliered chaperone always within a few longsteps of them, but knew better than to discuss anything besides the weather. It was nearly intolerable company. But it was slighlty better for Gorats, as Luganstz normal disputatiousness was solemnly subdued.
After sitting in the manicured demesne, on benches opposite to one another, and smoking for an hour or so as the sun set, Gorats and Luganstz had been called again, this time “just for a few moments.”
Now they were being led down a different hall by a pair of pistol-possessing privates. Gorats was trying as hard as he could to use his eyes to shoot a knitting pin into the back of Luganstz’s skull and hoping he noticed him doing so. But he never did; Luganstz was silent and carried himself for all the world as if they were sworn-silent monks on an architectural tour.
Gorats noticed through his focused fury that they were now in a brighter, more modern part of the commodious commorancy, one full of windows, flowers, and pastel-paletted plaster. They continued their traipsing in the gathering dusk, down corridors and up steps, past tidy apartments, a salon, a drawing room or two, a conservatory, a library, a study, a luncheon hall, and other suites and chambers of the middle class.
Gorats ruminated. He knew a trap when he was in one, and to get out he would chew off his own leg if need be. If they were referred to a court-martial, he would get an attorney. And probably not a bad one. There weren’t very many lawyers in San Sebastian, and it was an exclusive, largely aristocratic club. Inasmuch as he knew, they weren’t as a rule beholden to the military or any particular political persuasion. And there weren’t any ones in the Richtengesellschafti he knew of who were unskilled practitioners in their craft. Luganstz would know many barristers too, certainly, but Gorats would need to wait until a court-martial was convened to know if he would be in good hands.
And there was the volpe of it. He wasn’t sure if they would get a court-martial. Luganstz — sitting there like a newborn calf caught in a tree branch, waiting for momma, that crafty cowshit — seemed like he’d already cut a deal, or had ratted Gorats out to begin with, or at minimum somehow knew something Gorats didn’t. Yet Gorats couldn’t exactly threaten to cut his throat now. They’d been kept in view of others all day and were no doubt being listened to wherever they went — this house was all eaves ripe for dropping — so Gorats couldn’t very well even try to get Luganstz to admit what he was up to without seeming like he was a caught thief himself. What’s more, he couldn’t think of much leverage he had against Luganstz in any event, other than to try to turn the tables on him and say that it was his fault the Order had been mistranslated, or not sent back for clarification, or whatever it is they thought he and Luganstz should have done. Yet to try to do so would only further incriminate Gorats, first by implicitly admitting that either or both of them had done something wrong in the first instance, and second, by making Gorats guilty of an actual or some inchoate form of witness tampering, suborning perjury, obstructing justice, or whatever other such juridical crimes as you like.
Considering all that, it seemed to Gorats like he needed to wait and bide his time, at least for now. He wasn’t in fear of his life, after all they were officers and they weren’t accused of spying so far as he could tell, so the worst he thought they might face if they were accused of some crime in the vein of dereliction of duty in their travails of transcription and translation would be demotion, loss of pension, a neutrally denominated discharge, or perhaps a forced resignation of commission. None of those fates bothered Gorats in the least. In fact, getting out of the army seemed like the best possible result to his mind now. In fact, if he knew that was all he’d get he might even confess, for then at least he might never see Luganstz again and would be back with his wife and his life. He could even work on evicting Luganstz’s bickery apparition from the gray wrinklies in his skull cave.
Unfortunately, Gorats did not know for now what what crime or negligence was being concocted for them to face. Undoubtedly, someone or many such someones much higher up the brass ladder than he and Luganstz had realized the fraught nature of the Order vis-à-vis “sides,” and was scrambling to find two harmless lieutenants in a farty hut to be blamed for what would rightly and justly be characterized — at most — as a typographical error or an unfortunate result of the current imperfect state of Sebastiano lexicography, but which could, by one more dastardly in aim and character, be cast as something else entirely. At least, if the world were as unjust as Gorats hoped it wasn’t.
In spite of all the foregoing thoughts rattling around in his head, owing to the tempting target of Luganstz’s mushy skull always in his vision, Gorats was more angry and distracted by sinful thoughts of murder than with worry for his own fate when they arrived at an open door.
One of their guards posted himself to on side, while the other blocked the all ahead of them and pointed into the room. Luganstz and then Gorats turned and face into what looked to be in Captain Lauzirika’s personal office, with him rising from a swivel chair behind a desk that looked not much used of late, except to hold, improbably, a top hat and a monocle. By this time night had nearly fallen, and torchlight could be seen glowing from the courtyard below and outside the windows on the room’s far wall.
“Ah, lieutenants. Please, sit down, these chairs are far more comfortable than those you were foisted upon this afternoon,” the captain inveigled them.
They did so, plopping themselves down on two heavily padded bergères facing the walnut desk of Captain Lauzirika’s.
“Michelberg?” he offered.
Gorats only then took in how Lauzirika had traded his olive field uniform for a tuxedo complete with a scarlet-lined silk cape to compliment the rest of his evening habiliments. A crystal studded walking stick leaned against a credenza by the door, completing the ensemble. He must have quite an night planned.
“Oh yes,” Luganstz said, regarding the captain’s drink offer. Gorats nodded.
The captain deftly grabbed two crystal glasses off a shelf that was part of a complex of built-in drawers, shelves, and a fold-out writing desk on the wall behind his desk. He set them on the lowermost shelf, which doubled as the cap on the rows of drawers below. He opened a corked bottle of Michelberg, San Sebastian’s finest bergamot liqueur, and poured the three of them two fingers each of the amber treacle. He went on to add sugar, bitters, and a spritz of seltzer water, and a splash of whiskey on top as a fortifier.
As Gorats watched, he couldn’t help but admire the captain’s mixological skill. He also noticed that the shelves above the captain’s newly stocked bar were full of various pictures and tchotchkes that Gorats surmised belonged to the erstwhile resident of this room. Of note, most of this bric-à-brac took the form of small statuettes. Most of them appeared to be facsimiles of classical Greek and Roman statues, though some were of lions, griffins, and others from among Antiquity’s menagerie. Many of these faunal varieties among the statuary resembled the massive quasi-animalian statues found recently in Mesopotamia, which were formed by the artisans of all manner of Classical and even Antediluvian civilizations. Some of the effigies, mostly in clay, were obviously done by a child as they were rough, unskilled, out of proportion and warped in various strange ways. Some others, however, were miniature near-facsimiles of the Venus de Milo and other famous Hellenic statues and busts, several done in marble and other hard-to-hew stones into the bargain. The small size of them made the skill of the artisan even more impressive, especially with respect to the busts, the human face being obviously quite difficult to accurately portray in stone and even more difficult to veraciously reproduce on a small scale. Gorats surveyed the splendid little structures, some standing on their own and others posed on small granite or brass pedestals, as he took in his drink.
Also on one shelf were some old Daguerreotypes of this very estate and some old-looking portraits, and a few more recent photographs. Among these, one caught Gorat’s eye and when it did, Gorats could not help but smile from one corner of his mouth: It was the sergente they’d seen in the hall, only a few years younger and in a fine suit, standing next to a dignified dowager on a divan, whom he assumed was the “old woman in the glass cage” he’d heard people in the mess whispering about as if she were the warden at Chateau D’If.
Well then, Gorats thought, I suppose he does own the place.
All this while, the captain sat with his fine opera slippers propped up on the desk and surveyed the two lieutenant before him while he puffed a cigarette and sampled his cocktail. For those few moments, everyone reposed in satisfied silence.
The captain took a breath.
“SPYING!” he barked.
Gorats nearly dropped his goblet.
Lauzirika then stood and wrapped his palm on the desk, a ring on one of his fingers making a sharp snap against the hardwood.
“Spying!” he said again with grangusto.
He smacked a heel of his on the floor for still more emphasis. He grinned as his eyes widened.
“Yes,” he took another puff of his cigarette, “spying.”
“Spying?!” Luganstz exasperated. Finally, his colleague and alleged co-conspirator expressed some appreciation of their dilemma, thought Gorats.
“Spying?!” Gorats cried.
“Spying!” the captain bellowed again.
Gorats pleaded, “Now look here, this is absurd, Captain, sir. We’ve done nothing wrong at all. And if we have or did make any error in transcribing or copying the order, it was nothing more than — ”
“Nothing more than spying?”
“No. Nothing more than an error.”
“Lieutenant Gorats is right, Captain,” Luganstz joined in a plea at last.
“Yes, captain,” Gorats explained, “and if you could only know, sir, how much pain it causes Luganstz here to admit my rectitude!”
“Enough!” The captain sat on the doorside edge of his desk, opera slippers dangling, and took a long slip of his Michelberg cocktail. “I don’t have enough to have you dragged out and shot, of course. So there will have to be a trial. Cigarette?”
“A court-martial?!” Luganstz complained. “My God, sir, we’re honorable men, servants of this Vice-Margravate. We’re not spies. We’ve both sworn loyalty to not only the Captain-Regent, the Generalissimo and the Kaiser-Plenipotentiary, but also the Markgraffen themselves, Lords Franz-Paulo and Ladislaus Henri le Fils. I want an appeal!”
“Yes, well if either of you held so much as a baronetcy, you might be entitled to plead your case in an audience before unsere höchsti signoren, or, barring that, a formal appeal to Lex Regio Maximon. But owing to the fact that as of my last perusal of the volume, there is neither a ‘Gorats’ nor a ‘Luganstz’ to be found in the Almanach de Gothe, as common officers you are subject to the sole jurisdiction of the military courts of Die Gran Königliches Esercito des San Sebastian . Accordingly, you will be bound over to a court-martial, to be convened in the next few days.”
Luganstz was really getting into it now, “But this is an outrage! I demand to speak to a colonel! A general!”
Gorats held my arm out to his fellow, “Luganstz,” he bade. Luganstz sat back in a huff.
“Sir,” Gorats spoke calmly, “I must ask you, what is the charge?”
“Espionage. Perhaps treason if the evidence warrants it,” Lauzirika yawned.
At this Gorats erupted, “That is preposterous! Espionage, on a tit! Upon what basis?”
“Lieutenant, we at command can simply come up with no other explanation for the mistranslation of a simple order to switch sides. A mistranslation that, if not rectified in the next few days if not hours, will have the effect of leaving our tiny country without an ally in the world, alone with armies of millions on all its borders, facing annexation if not outright annihilation at the hands of the Entente, the Occident, and just as well the Huns, Ostrogoths, the Mongols, and the Achcaemenid dynasty while we’re at it.”
“But why would we do that?” Gorats pleaded.
“We shall see what the evidence reveals, but I expect for money,” Lauzirika propounded plainly.
“But we’re both poor clerks!” Luganstz whined.
Gorats extended his hand again to his jointly accused. “Lieutenant Luganstz, please, calm yourself. There are procedures here. We have rights. Just as many as you please of those. We’re Sebastianos. Right, Captain? Until proven otherwise.”
“I suppose that is true.”
“So, my I ask, what is the penalty if we were convicted?”
“If convicted, death. Although, in this case, I would expect a few decades in Castello Mont Gremale to be most likely.”
A most dark and dastardly prison that was to be sure, at least by the standards of their simple mountain country. Gorats tried not to dwell.
“Captain Lauzirika, may we rest assured that we will be provided an attorney, a judicial advocate, as is our right? One for each of us, should that prove necessary?”
“Oh yes, Lieutenant Gorats. You will be allowed to retain counsel, an I expect the army will even pay the fees.”
“Well, there you have it.”
“Yes,” Luganstz brightened, “I know of several skilled counselors!”
“Of course,” Lauzirika said through a a great plume of blue smoke he was at the same time exhaling (he was on his second cigarette) “you will be imprisoned until a bail hearing can be arranged. Further, my experience in these things is that bail is customarily denied to alleged spies. Further, given the heavy dockets at present and the demands on that lawyers’ guilds throughout San Sebastian, not to mention the swollen rolls at the hands of the judges and bailiffs, and the exigencies of wartime, even a bail hearing could be weeks or months off.”
Gorats leaned back. He would have to admit to some worry creeping into his system at that moment. He looked over the captain’s shoulder to the array of clay and stone figurines on the shelves behind him, lit by the warm glow of the electric light on the captain’s desk and the smoldering fire behind the hearth on the hallside wall. The little pieces’ shadows flickered on the lacquered paneling behind them. Their shapes were made more grotesque by the warped and gnarled illuminating licks of flame from the fireplace tangled with the stark yet opaque rays from the leaded shade of Lauzirika’s desk lamp. Gorats imagine the statuettes in prison, frozen as they already were in time and space. Some crying out, others resigned to their fate. He looked then to the picture of the happy sergente. What Gorats wouldn’t give to trade places with him at this moment. Due to inherit such a domain as this, decrepit though much of it was. Blessed with the light responsibilities of an enlisted soldier. Gorats could feel his bowels begin to contract. Stone statues didn’t have bowels. Would that he was made of stone just now.
The captain droned on, “If you’re denied bail there will be more months in jail awaiting trial. All the while the uncertainty. For bail or no, there’s always the risk of conviction. And with that, perhaps, a firing squad. But at least a few long years in a stone and iron cage.”
A pause hung in the air.
Gorats was struck with the courage only deep fright can sometimes instill in a man. He stood, feeling a vibration in his lower arms.
“What is the point of this, captain!?” Gorats exclaimed, trying at the same time to tamp any waver in his voice. “Are you suggesting we kill ourselves for honor? Because we will not. I will not. Because I am not guilty. And no court-martial of San Sebastian officers will convict us, whether our blood be blue or red. We have done nothing wrong. So I am not afraid. We will get out bail because there is no evidence, and at most, we will lose our commission for dereliction of duty. Nothing more. And I welcome that, for I would be home again. Away from spending my days with this man here,” he thumbed to Luganstz. “And even that punishment would only be because someone above us, someone in command, seeks to make someone below him, us, scapegoats for his mistake in drafting a sloppy order in the first instance. And given the fact that we’ve been dragged now into your private office and other examples of the total lack of present protocol for what is supposed to be a formal arraignment before a magistrate, I would surmise that the shepherd of we two scapegoats is you, Captain Lauzirika. And that there then be your crystal-handled, hookless crook. Am I right, sir?”
Gorats was surprised to see himself then standing, leaning into the face of the captain, who had in the middle of Gorats’s accusations stood himself and moved to the front of the desk, seeming to bathe in Gorats’s tirade.
“Are you done, lieutenant?”
“Yes.” His chest was pounding.
At that moment, the captain reared back with his right hand and slapped Gorats across the face with his open palm, losing his cigarette in the motion, it falling onto the oak floorboards below, scattering tiny embers for inches around.
Luganstz’s eyes had gone big and watery, though he could not help but smile.
Gorat’s neck twisted violently to his right on the impact of the captain’s soft-palmed battery. In the darkening night, he could see sentries and other men scurrying around the courtyard under shaded lamplights. It didn’t appear any had noticed this nascent scrap, thought they might have seen it clearly had they been looking at this particular window.
After a moment, with the fury of the unjustly accused welling inside him and combining with months of anger toward Luganstz now directed, wrongly or no, squarely at this captain, Gorats, before he could consider the consequences, reared still farther back and mounted a metacarpal maltreatment of his own, delivered to the captain in full across his virile, well-born visage, which act created a smack loud enough to echo against the walls, and which was also more than sufficient to leave Lauzirika’s shellacked hair mussed enough to make him look ridiculous.
At this, Luganstz joined the inambulatory state of the statuary on the shelves before them, managing only to croak from his seat, “I…”
Gorats became a figurine himself, fixed but for the rapid but shallow panting beneath his clothes from the influence of adrenaline in the veins beneath his skin.
The captain only smiled, straightened up, and fixed his hair.
“Well. Is that all, lieutenant Gorats?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fine,” the captain said as he returned to the back of the desk, sat down, and retrieved and finished his glass of Michelberg.
“Leaving the present assault of a superior officer to the side for now, I will take the good lieutenant’s point and get straight to mine. The reason for the somewhat irregular nature of our meeting tonight is this: The parade of horribles I’ve described for you re your pretrial detention, legal jeopardy, and possible execution or lengthy and unpleasant imprisonment can all be avoided by informal yet sanctioned means, if you will allow it. Lieutenant Gorats, please be seated.”
Gorats sat down without a word, his chest still drubbing. Luganstz looked around in stupefied flabbergasticity.
Lauzirika then performed a one-sentence, one-man stage play entitled, A Plea for Mercy: “‘How can it be avoided, captain, sir?’” he overacted in the part of fearful, framed junior-officer, putting on a fair facsimile of a wavery, shaken voice. The curtain then fell on that production and the captain stepped past the fourth wall to continue, “That is what you might very well be asking yourselves. Though only on the inside, apparently. Pardon me as well if that didn’t sound like either of you two just there, but I don’t do impressions. Forgive the digression if you please, as I will answer your presumed internal query and tell you how it, that is, each of your afore-explicated juridical fates, can be avoided.
“To begin, in case you are too callow to have gathered for yourselves that this complex is the headquarters of the army’s intelligence brigade, I will tell you that it is. And now I just have. To continue to lead you down the trail toward my point with the proverbial carrot on a string on the end of a stick being held by the proverbial me, with you two collectively being the proverbial ass in the present analogical proverb, I will say what should go without saying — especially in this case — , namely, that the intelligence brigade is composed of spies. The army’s spies, to be particular if not pedantic if not redundant. And spies, men, spies need information!”
Having seized his razzly walking stick, Lauzirika tapped it on the floor for emphasis. Tap!
He went on, “And spies, especially the official military variety, are in a position to offer certain things to get information, and the things spies can offer include irregular dispositions of the proceedings of military justice, including, but not limited to, the forced exercise of prosecutorial discretion with respect to cases of military justice. The case against you two, or rather the prospective and as yet inchoate case against you two is one such instance of military justice that this intelligence brigade is in a position to, to put it in simple terms, make go away by irregular disposition, if, if!, you two — and I mean both of you two — are willing to accede to a demand. Hence the irregularity of this incipient arraignment, if that is the correct term.”
Tap.
“So, yes, Lieutenant Gorats is right to point out that a captain’s office over a glass of Michelberg, while the selfsame captain is in evening dress, is not the regular venue for such a proceeding de jure. But this proceeding is not de jure, it is de facto, and it is not a formal arraignment, it is at most a prelude to an arraignment, maybe an incipient arraignment as I just said. But, more accurately, what we have here is an informal proposition for the irregular disposition of a de jure proceedings. Thus, irregularity such as this is not only to be expected in these circumstances, but is actually entirely proper, and, in fact, regular, you might say. So, given that irregularity is regular in these circumstances, anything might happen, because, to sum it up succinctly, I am a spy. A spy for San Sebastian. No doubt by now you’re not surprised. I will add that I am a fairly high-ranking spy as well. In fact, I have the power by virtue of my rank to make the potential awful and despairing case against you go away. No doubt you would hope I had such power after all this badinage. But I can only make the potential case against you go away if, if!, you accede to my demand.”
Tap.
“But! Before I make the demand, let me tell you both this. I think you are both in possession of some not small amount of intellect, wit, and wherewithal. Lieutenant Gorats’s intelligence has been made apparent here, in fact, as have certain other qualities in him that I quite admire, I will admit. Luganstz, the jury is still out on you, figuratively, but perhaps soon literally if you don’t accede to my demand. Pardon my short digression. As I was saying, your collective and partially demonstrated intelligence is made clear in this instance by the fact that Lieutenant Gorats has correctly surmised the reason why these charges may be brought against you. There is someone above you, someone in command, who really stepped in it on this whole Order fiasco. In fact, that person veritably fucked the sheep on this one. But that person is not me. Rather, I am the person that that person indirectly and discreetly contacted to fix this matter, and as a sanctioned and ordained spy, that is just the thing I love most in the world to do, and so I am in the process of doing so. To be clear, I personally do not believe you did anything wrong beyond, at most, a typographical, temporal, and or or a lexicographical error or three, but certainly nothing that merits a court martial, or a drumming out, or an imprisonment, and certainly not an execution. So let’s just get that in the clear.”
Tap.
“However, and I can see you are relaxing a bit so I feel the need to emphasize this,” Lauzirika leaned forward, “you could still be very well thrown in the well for this. This person who is trying to save their skin, the scapegoat shepherd, to use Lieutenant Gorats’s apt phrase, is a powerful person and that person can make all sorts of things happen. Or not happen. Or unhappen! For example, he could make a thousand or five thousand krones, or gulden, or forinti, or zlatýs appear in your attic in a trunk you haven’t opened for years. He could make a few thousand San Sebastian koroni appear in a bank account in your name that you didn’t open, but which bears a signature just like yours on the owner’s card in a vault in Lucho or Zurich. He could make an Austrian prisoner appear and testify at your trial to the effect that he delivered gold coins and Scottish liquor to you in exchange for pleasing the goat on this side-changing-order business all at the behest of the Archduke’s Kundschaftsbüro. These are but a few of the things this person and those on his side, if you will pardon the importunate term, could make happen to you. So while I believe you are innocent of the charges that might be brought against you, I know that you may end up found guilty nonetheless, all to save this man’s hide.
“And if that sounds unjust and even preposterous to you, given that you are Sebastianos and officers and have just as many as you please of rights, all I can offer is my assurance that it can happen to you, and what’s worse, that it is happening to you. Right now. Moreover, I must say that if you decline to accede to my demand, the charges will be brought against you as I’ve described and maybe more. And I cannot offer you any prediction as to what evidence, real or concocted, may be brought against you. But I can tell you this, neither of you can tell anyone, even your attorneys or wives, anything of what I have told you. Because this entire conversation from the moment you were brought in here until the moment you leave is a matter of utmost margravial security and confidentiality. To tell anyone of what has happened here would be grounds for an expedited court-martial on grounds of intentional violations of the Regental & Military Secrets Act, the penalty for which is death. And bail for that will be denied. And a trial for that will be expedited. In fact, if someone in a position to know, such as me, were to catch either of you in the act of telling someone any of what has transpired and is about to transpire here, or being about to tell someone the same, that person, again me or another agent under my control, would be legally justified in shooting you then and there, on the spot, to prevent the divulgence of such secrets, the harm resulting from the divulgence of which is presumed under the law.”
Tap.
“Any questions?” the captain had, during this most recent monologue stood and fixed another Michelberg cocktail.
Gorats and Lauzirika were schoolboys at lecture.
Lauzirika went on, “Moving then to my promised point, I will endeavor to more brevity. If you do what I demand, no charges will be brought in this affair. What I demand is simple. I want you to go somewhere and get something and bring it back to me. I need you to do it soon, and you may have to do so incognito.”
Gorats had not noticed the grandfather clock ticking behind them until now. His mouth was dry.
Luganstz croaked first, “Can you — ”
“I cannot tell you where. I cannot tell you what. Until you accept. You have to tell me now, tonight, right now, before you leave this room, whether you accept. You cannot talk to a lawyer first. I know this would be considered duress in normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances. This is not a commercial contract, it is a secret one. You can turn it down and face trial as discussed ad nauseum. But if you agree to the contract you cannot remedy its breach by the payment of damages. Rather, to break it comes with the consequence of secret criminal penalty up to and including death. You cannot sue on it, but I can, though not in any court you’ve heard of. What’s more, I can ask for and get special performance of it by you. What’s still more, your payment is extrajudicial and would be illegal but for the fact that it is legal. Aaaaaand, oh, yes, this contract is not supported by any consideration whatsoever, but as we are not under the English common law that does not matter. Here, the consideration is legally presumed. You will, of course, be asked to sign a full waiver and indemnity on top of it all in favor of me, the army, and the country. Let’s see, I think that’s everything. Gentlemen? Any questions?”
“I…,” Luganstz squeaked.
Gorats spoke next, “May we confer?”
“Of course. Take your time.”
Gorats waved to Luganstz. They repaired to the darkest corner of the room. They leaned in to one another.
Luganstz spoke first. “Let’s jump out the window.”
“Shut up. I say we say no. He is full of shit. No one can do this. We stand our ground,” Gorats whispered, lightly tapping his fist on the palm of his other hand.
“I disagree!” Luganstz exclaimed in a hoarse whisper that could certainly be heard by the captain. At this point, that did not matter. He continued, “Are you a cowshit? We are in it now. They can do all that! Of course they can. You have a wife! We cannot go through a trial. This is madness. We must do it. Whatever he asks.”
“We are not spies, Luganstz. You are a know-it-all and I am a blabbermouth. We have the combined strength of one man. We know no spycraft. We cannot handle weapons. We cannot hold our liquor. We cannot hike, run, or swim. We have never fought except with insults. Neither of us has taken a punch. We have laughably obvious tells when we are lying, and we are both shit with women including our own wives. We are guileless and gullible and philistinic. I am allergic to mosquitoes. You are afraid of heights and depths. We both sneeze in the sunlight. We are literally and figuratively myopic in the extreme. We were undernourished as children. We are adults with pimples. Our beards are embarrassingly sparse. We cannot dance. We don’t speak French. I have a limp. You have a lazy eye. You’re afraid of cats. I am prone to vertigo. I get an erection when I get nervous and you get nervous when you get an erection.” It was amazing what you learned when you spent twelve hours a day in a belchy hut with another man. “We are not spies, Luganstz.”
“I cannot agree with much of that at all!”
“What if they send us to Vienna or Constantinople or Kiev on some secret mission? We will be laughed at, arrested, and shot in moments. Our only chance is to call his bluff. He could be sending us out to do some impossible quest that a dozen other spies have died in attempting. He could be using us as bait. He could be using us as a black flag, a false flag, or as agents provocateur! We can’t be drawn into this madness. It is sure death.”
“Or he may be sending us to Saint Moritz to pick up whiskey and prostitutes for him and his degenerate spy cronies. We don’t know. As he says, we will be sitting in jail if we don’t agree. Think of the lice.”
“Don’t be a coward. This is a nation of laws. They can’t — ”
Luganstz spun around before Gorats could grab him, “We’ll do it!”
“I will not!”
“Damn it!” Lauzirika slammed his fist on the desk. “It is all or nothing! Listen, Gorats, I could have you in jail for two months or flogged just for that slap. So listen to me well, you righteous ass. This is a goddamn war and you are a soldier in this army and I outrank you. I could simply order you to do this and face trial into the bargain. Yet I am doing you a favor by offering this to you as a deal. So you say yes, or I will have you led to jail from this very room! I have two goons just outside.”
Gorats was without a weapon. But he debated whether he could get the captain’s crystal-handled walking stick and knock him unconscious with it and flee into the night. He could be in Italy by morning. Or he could bash Lauzirika with a stone statue from the shelf. Or stab him with a letter opener. No, he probably had a revolver in his desk. No doubt he would get the drop on them, shit at things as they were… Maybe they could jump from the window.
Just then there was a knock on the door.
“Branko? What is it?!” the captain groaned.
The door opened with a squeal and a mustachioed face just then entered the light. Gorats squinted. It was the sergente from the hall! Should Gorats signal him for help?!
“Is everything alright in here, sirs?” I said.
“Yes, how can I help you Hauptsergente?” The captain spun on his chair, regaining his politeness in a moment, but showing a touch of impatience, “Were there not two brawny, well-armed privates in the hall just now?”
“Eh, no. Perhaps they went for coffee. If you will pardon me, it is just that I am the son of the old lady in the glass cage and this was actually my room before the war. I was just poking my head in to check on it. I am sorry to interrupt your meeting. But those statuettes behind you, I carved them you see, and I just wanted to implore you if you could to not let them walk away or come to harm while you are using my room for your office. If that is not too much trouble.”
“Yes, not at all. Of course. I will look after them myself,” said the captain with a roll of his fingers.
I whispered again, “If that is too much trouble or an imposition, captain, I would be happy to come in the morning and pack them up myself.”
“Eh, yes, perhaps that would be best, Hauptsergente, that way they won’t come to any harm or be lost or be used to bash in anyone’s skull,” Lauzirika added wryly. One of the other two, the one without glasses, flinched.
“Ha, yes, we would hope not,” I said, and then added a joke. “Perhaps an Austrian!”
The captain laughed. The best the two others could manage were a pair of stiff, dry smiles.
“Yes, perhaps, Hauptsergente,” the captain nodded. “Come by any time in the morning to gather your effects. The statues are quite lovely.”
“Thank you, captain,” I demurred.
As I turned past the two other men in the room to leave, I briefly made a most quizzical look at the two of them, for although the darkness and flickering flame before them obscured the details of their guises, I could see that the blood was drained from one’s face and replaced by sweat, and the fireplace’s flames flickered in a full glare across the lenses of the other’s pince-nez, leaving them looking rather like Shadrach and Meshach about to enter Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace. I recalled them from the hall earlier, but saw no need to acknowledge it.
“Lieutenants,” I nodded.
“Hauptsergente,” the two men coughed.
“If you will pardon my informality given the hour, I bid to go.”
Gorats must have had the same Biblical vision occur to him, for he heard the sergente’s sentence to end with, “Abednego.”
The captain stood and walked to the door, “Of course Hauptsergente, please, take your leave at ease.”
And with that, I ducked back into the hall. The captain slowly and quietly shut the door, waited just a moment, then spun back on his heels to face Gorats and Luganstz, his cape spinning behind him in a black, vampiric cascade in the firelight.
“Now, listen to me, you two cowshits. You two will take this offer. Or, as my two soldiers appear to have abandoned their post in the hall, I myself will arrest you and take you to your cell in that rotting ruin across the courtyard. And I should tell you, I have a substantial enough revolver between my waistcoat and jacket to enforce the threat. I hope you will spare us all the unnecessary drama of its brandishment. Now, do you accept, Lieutenant Gorats?”
Gorats glared at the captain, who, he had to admit, did appear most intimidating now that a gun had been mentioned. He looked to the floor in momentary debate, cursed Luganstz, cursed the captain, cursed the army, and cursed the fates and looked back to the captain before saying with what dignity he could muster, “I accept, captain.”
“Good. Sleep well as free men tonight, albeit in a locked, guarded room I will show you to under armed escort. Tomorrow I will present you your orders.”
With that, Gorats and Luganstz straightened a bit, adjusted their jackets, and, at the captain’s invitation, walked ahead of him out of the room.
“Where are those two privates?” the captain growled as he pointed his newly minted spies down the hall. He, Maximilian Gaspard Vallepiana de Lauzirika von Schneeberger, checked his pocket watch, grumbling sotto voce, “What good are gone goons?” Then, aloud, “Come come, lieutenants, a bit faster. Put those boots in front of one another. Right, then left, then down the stairs, then down the stairs again, then down once more.”
Thus their unequal triumverate clopped down the half-lit hall, Luganstz in the lead. Behind him, Gorats bored holes in his skull with his imagined retina rays. This was a deep hole they were in now; he only hoped they could stop digging.
Continued…
