20

“I was in Minneapolis a week ago on business,” Baker said. “I heard a news story about The Get List doing a segment on the convenience-store abductions.

“The news piece mentioned that Minnesota Senator Alan Campbell had renewed a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward offer for information leading to the victim’s return or identification of her body. The piece I heard didn’t say much more about the victim or about Campbell’s connection to her, but I got a kind of sick feeling in my stomach. I made it a point to watch The Get List program. When I saw the picture of the girl, heard how young she was—well, all I could think was if I’d done something about Alan Campbell thirty-two years ago, that girl would probably still be alive.”

Mars shook his head. “I can’t imagine being in the situation you were in back in Vietnam. Or that you’d know then that Campbell could possibly get involved in something like this when he got back to the States. For that matter, we’re a long way off from establishing Campbell’s connection to Andrea Bergstad…”

Baker said, “But you weren’t surprised when you found out Al Dente was Alan Campbell. You knew who I was talking about before I said his name. You must think…”

The phone rang. Mars looked at his watch, and was startled to find it was after midnight. Then he remembered that Nettie had gone over to the History Center.

“I’ve got to get this,” he said to Baker.

*   *   *

“Well, partner,” Nettie said, “our pop art forensics just went fizz.”

“Meaning…”

“Meaning I’ve got an article from the Duluth News-Tribune that says on the October 1984 night in question, Alan Campbell was the keynote speaker at the annual St. Louis County Republican Bean Feed.”

“Damn,” Mars said, his warm, prickly feeling drying up fast, “I didn’t even know Republicans ate beans.”

“It was too much to hope for,” Nettie said. “Not that Republicans eat beans—I mean that our pop art soup can was a message from Andrea. It seemed providential at the time, but…”

“Nettie, I can’t talk just now. Something has come up—but given what you’ve just said, I’m not sure anymore what it means. Can you be at the office at seven?”

“Like what has just come up?”

“Not what. Who. A guy from Iowa who drives a blue Buick has come up. To my condo, as a matter of fact. Talk to you in the morning.

“You’re right,” Mars said, returning to the living room and to the point Baker had been making before Mars took Nettie’s call.

“We have been looking at a possible connection between Campbell and Andrea Bergstad’s abduction. But what we had to establish that connection was thin. Very thin. And now”—Mars nodded in the direction of the kitchen—“the call I just got pretty much blows even that connection, thin as it was, out of the water.”

Baker said, “I know what I’ve told you doesn’t help much, but every instinct I have is telling me there is a connection. I’m just sorry I can’t give you anything else…”

“Tell me,” Mars said, “what happened after you got back to base camp.”

Baker drew a deep breath. “What could I say when I got back to base camp? If it had been just Campbell shooting Godfrey, the girl, maybe I could have held my ground. But it would be Campbell and the Green Man against my word. I don’t know about the Green Man, but I can tell you, Campbell was a hell of a good liar. Even I could think of a dozen ways Campbell would tell the story that would get him off the hook. And if I could think of a dozen ways, Campbell could have come up with a hundred ways. That was the thing about Vietnam. There were always a dozen ways things did or didn’t happen, always a dozen ways why you were right and somebody else was wrong. Somebody else?

“I was in base camp for only about twenty-four hours after I got back. My ankle break was bad, especially after I’d walked on it for as long as I had, so I got helicoptered out the next day.”

“And when Campbell got back to camp?”

“He got back a few hours after I made it back. He had the Green Man with him. They were carrying Godfrey’s body. Said Godfrey’d taken fire in the village and they’d had to take action to clean up the village.”

“And Campbell never said anything to you?”

Baker gave Mars a hard look. “Oh, Campbell talked to me all right. He came into the hospital tent. Came up to me real quiet, and said, ‘I want you to know that I’ve decided not to charge you with deserting the scene of action. I know what went on back there was pretty dicey, pretty confusing, so I’m going to look the other way on this one. We lost enough guys on this mission,’ is what he said.”

Baker shook his head. “I read his message loud and clear. ‘You say anything about me ordering you and Godfrey out of the village, anything about Godfrey coming back to the village, and I’ll come after you.’”

“You don’t know if he knew you’d seen what happened with Godfrey, with the girl?”

“I’m sure,” Baker said, “he didn’t know it at the time. If he’d known I’d been there, in the undergrowth, just on the perimeter of the village, I wouldn’t be alive now. They would have got me then. But I’m willing to bet he thought about it plenty afterward. And his message covered that possibility. What I’m really sorry about is that Al Dente read me just right. Chicken shit that I am, I left it where he wanted it left.”

“And the Green Man,” Mars said. “What did you find out about him?”

“The Green Man,” Baker said. “He made quite a stir when he came into camp. Kind of the ‘Bigfoot’ of Vietnam was how it sounded to me. Half myth, half legend, larger than life. And green. Always covered in green body paint.”

Baker looked preoccupied for a moment, then said, “Vietnam was the perfect environment for a guy like the Green Man. A perfect scenario for a guy who wanted to do things his own way and didn’t want to be bothered by bureaucracy. Word had it that the Green Man had been useful to some of the brass. They’d pretty much given him carte blanche to operate on special assignments and, when he wasn’t on assignment, on a freelance basis. He went wherever, did whatever. Most snipers work in pairs—a spotter to assist in sighting the target, and the guy with his finger on the trigger.

“The Green Man worked alone. There was something about him…” Baker rubbed his right hand slowly across his chin as he considered what he was going to say.

“Snipers. A breed apart. Extraordinary discipline, extraordinary skill. Most people think being an ace sniper means you’re a good shot. End of story. But there’s so much more involved. You’ve got to know how wind conditions, humidity, and temperature are going to affect your shot. You’ve got to be able to plan a tracking strategy, camouflaging strategies, you’ve got to maintain a precision weapon under impossible conditions—and you’ve got to be able to integrate all of that information in the instant that you pull the trigger.

“Hard to know exactly what motivates a guy to be a sniper. Most of them just have a real taste for the challenge, the precision of the job. I mean, every guy with a gun in Vietnam was a potential killer, but most of us really didn’t want to think about killing an individual. We did what we had to do to stay alive, to accomplish our mission. But we didn’t take any pleasure from the idea that we were killing some mother’s son, some baby’s father.

“What snipers do is much more specific, more focused. Most of the time it’s hard for them to ignore the fact they’re killing an individual. Part of their mental—their emotional—discipline is to handle that. To keep a guy in your scope long enough to see him think, to see him scared, to see him tired, to see him do brave things—and then, in an instant—to pull the trigger on him.

“Not easy,” Baker said. “For most guys, not easy. And you wouldn’t want it to be easy. Every once in a while, you run across a guy who likes the idea of killing. The thing about the Green Man—what I saw of him that day in the Khe Ranh Valley and what I heard about him after—is that he was as close to being a blank slate emotionally as you’re going to get. He didn’t kill for pleasure, but killing didn’t much bother him, either. You manage that balance, you’re going to be a sniper to remember.”

“And the Green Man,” Mars said, “he never talked to you after you were back at camp? You never found out his name?”

Baker shook his head. “Doubt that was something he’d do under any circumstances. And I never heard the Green Man’s name. I asked a couple guys—nobody I knew had any idea. As it happened, a few hours after I got to camp, another guy from our squad—a guy we’d left for dead—made it back to camp. That was a considerable distraction.

“I tried to talk to my squad mate,” Baker said, tears welling in his eyes, “but he didn’t want to talk to me. Can you blame him? He heard us leave him…”

“And you never talked to Campbell again?”

Baker said, “My last memory of Campbell is seeing him lying in his tent when I got carried out on a stretcher to the copter. Lying on his cot, head propped up, smoking a cigarette. He had his cassette player on, full blast, playing this over-the-top, mid-sixties make-out song. He played that song all the time, especially after he’d come back from leave. But to play it then—after what he’d done the day before? That memory alone…”

Mars figured Baker had suffered enough remembered guilt for one night. He thought the best thing he could do—for the investigation and for Baker’s sake—was to give Baker hope.

“What happened in the past,” Mars said, “is done. Over. What I need to know is if I can count on you to help in the future. If our investigation into Andrea Bergstad’s abduction takes us back to Alan Campbell, are you prepared to come forward then?”

“Why do you think I’m here now?” Baker said, genuinely incredulous. “Anytime, anyplace—”

He stopped to draw a deep breath, his emotion obvious.

“I’m there.”