have raised a lot of eyebrows. Everyone would have switched to
best behaviour. Or smelled a rat and gone deeper underground.
362
It would have made your job harder. It would have defeated my
purpose.
‘Your purpose?’
‘I wanted prevention, of course. That was the main priority.
But I was also curious, major. I wanted to see who would blink
first.’
He handed me the file.
‘You’re a special unit investigator,’ he said. ‘By statute the
l l0th has extraordinary powers. You are authorized to arrest
any soldier anywhere, including me, here in my office, if you so
choose. So read the Argon file. I think you’ll find it clears me. If
you agree, go about your business elsewhere.’
He got up from behind his desk. We shook hands again.
Then he walked out of the room. Left me all alone in his office,
in the heart of the Pentagon, in the middle of the night.
Thirty minutes later I got back in the car with Summer. She had
kept the motor off to save gas and it was cold inside.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘One crucial error,’ I said. ‘The tug of war wasn’t the Vice
Chief and the Chief. It was the Chief himself and the Secretary
of Defence.’
‘Are you sure?’
I nodded. ‘I saw the file. There were memos and orders
going back nine months. Different papers, different typewriters,
different pens, no way to fake all that in four hours. It was the
Chief of Staff’s initiative all along, and he was always kosher.’
‘So how did he take it?’
‘Pretty well,’ I said. ‘Considering. But I don’t think he’ll feel
like helping me.’
‘With what?’
‘With the trouble I’m in.’
‘Which is?’
‘Wait and see.’
She just looked at me.
‘Where now?’ she said.
‘California,’ I said.
363
TWENTY-TWO
T
HE CHEVY WAS RUNNING ON FUMES BY THE TIME WE GOT TO THE National airport. We put it in the long term lot and hiked
back to the terminal. It was about a mile. There were no
shuttle buses running. It was the middle of the night and the
place was practically deserted. Inside the terminal we had to
roust a clerk out of a back office. I gave him the last of our
stolen vouchers and he booked us on the first morning flight to
I-AX. We were looking at a long wait.
‘What’s the mission?’ Summer said.
‘Three arrests,’! said. Tassell, Coomer, and Marshall.’
‘Charge?’
‘Serial homicide,’ I said. ‘Mrs Kramer, Carbone, and
Brubaker.’
She stared at me. ‘Can you prove it?’
I shook my head. ‘I know exactly what happened. I know
when, and how, and where, and why. But I can’t prove a damn
thing. We’re going to have to rely on confessions.’
‘We won’t get them.’
‘I’ve gotten them before,’ I said. “There are ways.’
She flinched.
‘This is the army, Summer,’ I said. ‘It ain’t a quilting bee.’
364
‘Tell me about Carbone and Brubaker.’
‘I need to eat,’ I said. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘We don’t have any money,’ Summer said.
Most places had metal grilles down over their doors anyway.
Maybe they would feed us on the plane. We carried our bags
over to a seating area next to a twenty-foot window that had
nothing but black night outside. The seats were long vinyl
benches with fixed armrests every two feet to stop people fom
lying down and sleeping.
‘Tell me,’ she said.
‘It’s still a series of crazy long shots, one after the other.’
‘Try me.’
‘OK, start over with Mrs Kramer. Why did Marshall go to
Green Valley?’
‘Because it was the obvious first place to try.’
‘But it wasn’t. It was almost the obvious last place to try.
Kramer had hardly been there in five years. His staff must have
known that. They’d travelled with him many times before. Yet
they made a fast decision and Marshall went straight there.
Why?’
‘Because Kramer had told them that’s where he was going?’
‘Correct,’ I said. ‘He told them he was with his wife to conceal
the fact he was actually with Carbone. But then, why would he
have to tell them anything?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Because there’s a category of person you have to tell something.’