Father (4)
“W-what? You’re saying His Excellency suspects me…?!”
But Bones shook his head at once.
“His Excellency suspects me. Why would he suspect Colonel Yosef?”
“Ah. Of course, of course.”
Yosef forced his gaze away from Haydam—where it kept drifting of its own accord—and fixed it on Bones instead as he continued.
“Still, I never imagined His Excellency would suspect you. You can’t very well put a hit out on yourself, can you?”
Having managed some empty reply and smoothed his expression, Yosef tilted his head as if the whole thing still made no sense no matter how he turned it over.
“But why on earth would he suspect you? You’re the one who nearly died in this mess…”
“The Team 2 leader never confessed that General Max ordered it,” Bones said.
“What?”
Yosef’s voice rose sharply at the unexpected answer.
Never confessed that General Max ordered it?
Then what exactly was this “confession” His Excellency, Haydam, and Platon had supposedly heard?
“So? The confession that’s been circulating is all fabricated?”
“The Team 2 leader’s real confession… no, his real testimony was—”
Haydam, who had been listening quietly until now, cut in abruptly. Yosef looked at him, but Bones only hung his head as if he already knew what was coming.
Haydam glanced at Bones, then went on.
“He said it started when Bones and Lucas got stubborn about racking up merit and accidentally killed one of their own men. To bury the mistake, they murdered the rest of the team to silence them. That’s what we heard from the Team 2 leader while he was trapped in the crevasse. He claimed he’d fallen in himself while trying to run.”
Yosef’s eyes flew open.
He said exactly what I told him to say. Then the confession His Excellency heard… was fabricated?
It was the line he himself had ordered the Team 2 leader to deliver, so of course the version now circulating—that General Max had masterminded the killings—had to be the fake. Even so, Yosef played dumb and asked again.
“No… then what the hell is this confession everyone’s heard about?”
Bones answered in Haydam’s place.
“I only learned it myself when Haydam told me. His Excellency suspected us, so he framed General Max as the culprit and watched our reactions.”
So in other words…
The Team 2 leader had testified to Bones’s mutiny exactly as Yosef ordered, and the commander had then falsified that testimony to test whether it was genuine. That also explained why Max’s disposition had been delayed all this time.
“But I swear it wasn’t me! That bastard from Team 2 told me first that General Max ordered it! Lucas heard it too! My seniors died because of what Max ordered… and now he’s not only trying to kill me, he’s trying to pin the whole thing on me…!”
Bones was ranting, but the words barely registered in Yosef’s ears.
Let’s sort this out… Bones believes Max ordered it, but the dead colonel testified it was Bones’s mutiny. Because their stories don’t match, His Excellency locked Max up first and watched Bones’s reaction. And Haydam, trusting Bones, brought him to me.
Either way, the culprit in this tangled mess was either Max or Bones. Yosef himself was never even mentioned. He allowed himself to relax.
“If Max truly did this, the more I think about it the more outrageous it is. But why didn’t you come forward with your testimony until now?”
“I kept quiet because… even if he tried to kill me, he was the man who showed me kindness, the man I truly respected. But this is too unjust. Please, Colonel Yosef—help me so I can testify.”
Then Bones slid right off the sofa, dropped to his knees, and pressed his forehead to the floor.
“N-now look here—”
“I’m begging you.”
Feigning awkwardness at Bones’s desperate plea, Yosef ran the numbers in his head at lightning speed.
What to do with this…
Even if Bones ended up taking the fall, it made no difference to Yosef. But he had already lost a colonel and eight good soldiers. If Max walked away unscathed, the whole scheme would have been for nothing.
Better, then, that Max be branded the culprit and punished rather than Bones.
And this might be his last chance to score points with Haydam, the zone’s heir apparent.
When else was Haydam going to come asking for his help?
He didn’t even have to prove Bones’s innocence—just believe the new officer’s word. If that small effort bought him Haydam’s trust, it was pure profit.
Calculation finished, Yosef raised Bones up and clasped his hand firmly.
“Second Lieutenant Bones. I believe you. I’ll accompany you when you testify.”
“Thank you, Colonel… truly.”
“Haydam.”
Yosef turned to him with a look of iron resolve.
“Leave this matter to me. This old man will stand guard to the end so that no one can twist Second Lieutenant Bones’s testimony.”
At those words, a faint, unreadable smile touched Haydam’s lips.
He seemed so cold-blooded, yet he takes care of his own people with surprising ferocity. Thanks to that, a way out has opened for me as well.
Completely unaware that the colonel had first accused Bones and Lucas of chasing him, then—under Haydam’s relentless questioning—confessed that Max had ordered the hit, Yosef simply savored the satisfaction of putting Haydam in his debt.
And the day after he requested an emergency officers’ conference for Bones’s testimony, a strange rumor began to spread through the zone.
Yosef was buried in paperwork in his office as usual.
His role was simply to arrange a place for Bones to testify and protect him so the testimony could finish without incident. That was the end of it.
Bones was the one who had to speak; Yosef himself had nothing to prepare.
Haydam didn’t ask for anything more, either.
What did bother him was the adjutant fidgeting like a dog that needed to piss.
Yosef finished the document in front of him and addressed the man.
“If you have something to say, say it.”
“Ah—no, sir.”
“Don’t give me that. Have I known you only a day or two? What’s going on?”
“Well…”
So there was something after all. The adjutant hesitated a moment longer, then opened his mouth.
“To be honest, the story is so far-fetched I’m not sure I should even report it.”
“Too long a preamble. Get to the point.”
“Strange rumors are circulating.”
“Strange rumors?”
“About Colonel Samson. Everyone was told he took his own life, weren’t they?”
That Samson had been “suicided” was something the adjutant already knew. Even alone in the office with only the two of them, he still watched his tongue—typical of the man.
“They were. So what of it?”
“There are people who claim they’ve seen Colonel Samson.”
“What?”
Yosef’s brow furrowed.
Now he understood why the adjutant had hesitated instead of reporting at once.
“You’re saying that bastard’s wandering around as a ghost?”
“No, sir.”
The adjutant shook his head and spoke in a grave tone.
“The rumor is that Colonel Samson is still alive.”
“That the colonel is alive? Since when?”
“A few days ago, soldiers claim they saw Colonel Samson getting into former General Anton’s car.”
“That’s absurd…”
“Which brings me to this.”
The adjutant stepped closer and dropped his voice to a near-whisper.
“You and I both only received the report that he was dead. Neither of us confirmed the body. What if…”
“You’re suggesting those men botched the job?”
“Those men” were the soldiers Yosef had paid to stage Samson’s suicide. Some of the watchers had lured the others away; the rest had faked the suicide, left the scene, and later claimed they returned to find him hanging.
The adjutant was asking whether those soldiers might have been less than thorough.
“They might have taken someone else’s money as well as ours. If former General Anton spirited Colonel Samson away to prove Max’s innocence…”
Not entirely without logic.
Just as Yosef had bribed soldiers to kill the colonel, Anton could have bribed them to extract him.
But the official announcement already declared suicide… If Anton really absconded with Samson, His Excellency would have known. I tried to disguise it as suicide myself, but a living man would have been snagged by the commander’s intelligence net somehow. And the sightings have spread far enough that even my adjutant has heard them.
Why, then, would the commander leave it alone?
There was only one conclusion.
His Excellency thinks Bones is the culprit, not Max.
That explained why Haydam had come to him instead of going straight to the commander.
“If Colonel Samson is truly alive, we’re in trouble. He’ll testify that Bones is the killer, and that puts us in a very awkward position. You’ve already pledged your support to Second Lieutenant Bones.”
True enough—Samson would testify to Bones’s mutiny. Claiming Max had ordered it would still leave Samson himself open to punishment; calling it Bones’s mutiny made Samson nothing more than a victim.
“Perhaps we should withdraw the officers’ conference while we still can…”
“No. First we confirm whether Samson is actually alive.”
Every one of these assumptions rested on Samson still breathing; baseless rumor could not be ruled out.
“Start with the soldiers who claim they saw him enter Anton’s car. If Anton has secured the colonel’s person, then a retired civilian who took it upon himself to spirit away a key witness will have to answer for it.”
“Understood.”
“And bring ‘those men’ to me as well. I want to hear for myself exactly how they handled the job.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
Thunder rolled.
Yosef looked up at a sky once more heavy with storm clouds.
He did not like the feeling of this at all.
—Colonel Yosef has begun to move. Exactly as you predicted, Haydam.
“It’s clear now he was involved with that dead colonel.”
—Wouldn’t it be more certain to grab the adjutant and interrogate him?
“Do that and we just create a second Colonel Samson. Leave him alone until the officers’ conference. My goal isn’t to unmask the real culprit anyway.”
—If you’re not trying to find the real culprit, then what on earth are you planning…? Fine. I’ll keep watching.
“Good. Thanks.”
I hung up the receiver and turned. Bones sat there bouncing one leg in a nervous blur.
Still jiggling his knee, he asked me,
“If you don’t clear the real culprit, how do we prove General Max’s innocence?”
I answered with a short, flat line.
“I’m not going to.”
“What?!”