Code Name: Friar Tuck

Status: Open (Current as of 10/85)

File Contains:

1. Summary of Witness Reports

2. Possible Identities

3. Search Status

Friar Tuck. A legend known to every soldier who'd fought in Nam. During the war, Guy had assumed those tales of a rogue American pilot flying for the enemy were mere fantasy.

Then, a few weeks ago, he'd learned otherwise.

He'd been at his desk at the Army Lab when two men, representatives of an organization called the Ariel Group, had appeared in his office. "We have a proposition," they'd said. "We know you're visiting Nam soon, and we want you to look for a war criminal." The man they were seeking was Friar Tuck.

"You've got to be kidding." Guy had laughed. "I'm not a military cop. And there's no such man. He's a fairy tale."

In answer, they'd handed him a twenty-thousand-dollar check-"for expenses," they'd said. There'd be more to come if he brought the traitor back to justice.

"And if I don't want the job?" he'd asked.

"You can hardly refuse" was their answer. Then they'd told Guy exactly what they knew about him, about his past, the thing he'd done in the war. A brutal secret that could destroy him, a secret he'd kept hidden away behind a wall of fear and self-loathing. They told him exactly what he could expect if it came to light. The hard glare of publicity. The trial. The jail cell.

They had him cornered. He took the check and awaited the next contact.

The day before he left Honolulu, this file had arrived special delivery from Washington. Without looking at it, he'd slipped it into his briefcase.

Now he read it for the first time, pausing at the page listing possible identities. Several names he recognized from his stack of MIA files, and it struck him as unfair, this list. These men were missing in action and probably dead; to brand them as possible traitors was an insult to their memories.