Child, Lee – The Enemy

entrance. I could see bright neon signs inside at the food

stations. Outside, there were six trash cans all fairly close to the

doors. There were plenty of people around, looking in, looking

out.

‘Too public,’ Summer said. ‘This is going nowhere.’

I nodded again. ‘I’d forget it in a heartbeat if it wasn’t for Mrs

Kramer.’

‘Carbone is more important. We should prioritize.’

‘That feels like we’re giving up.’

We went north out of the rest area and Summer did her off

roading thing across the median again and turned south. I got

as comfortable as it was possible to get in a military vehicle and

166

settled in for the ride back. Darkness unspooled on my left.

There was a vague sunset in the west, to my right. The road

looked damp. Summer didn’t seem very worried about the

possibility of ice.

I did nothing for the first twenty minutes. Then I switched

the dome light on and searched Kramer’s briefcase,

thoroughly. I didn’t expect to find anything, and I wasn’t proved

wrong. His passport was a standard item, seven years old. He

looked a little better in the picture than he had dead in the

motel, but not much. He had plenty of stamps in and out of

Germany and Belgium. The future battlefield and NATO HQ,

respectively. He hadn’t been anywhere else. He was a true

specialist. For at least seven years he had concentrated exclusively

on the world’s last great tank arena and its command

structure.

The plane tickets were exactly what Garber had said they

should be. Frankfurt to Dul]es, and Washington National to

Los Angeles, both round trip. They were all coach class and

government rate, booked three days before the first departure

date.

The itinerary matched the details on the plane tickets exactly.

There were seat assignments. It seemed like Kramer preferred

the aisle. Maybe his age was affecting his bladder. There was a

reservation for a single room in Fort Irwin’s Visiting Officers’

Quarters, which he had never reached.

His wallet contained thirty-seven American dollars and sixty

seven German marks, all in mixed small bills. The Amex card

was the basic green item, due to expire in a year and a half. He

had carried one since 1964, according to the Member Since rubric. I figured that was pretty early for an army officer. Back

then most got by with cash and military scrip. Kramer must

have been a sophisticated guy, financially.

There was a Virginia driver’s licence. He had been using

Green Valley as his permanent address, even though he

avoided spending time there. There was a standard military ID

card. There was a photograph of Mrs Kramer, behind a plastic

window. It showed a much younger version of the woman I had

seen dead on her hallway floor. It was at least twenty years old.

She had been pretty back then. She had long auburn hair that

167

showed up a little orange from the way the photograph had

faded with age.

There was nothing else in the wallet. No receipts, no restaurant

checks, no Amex carbons, no phone numbers, no scraps of

paper. I wasn’t surprised. Generals are often neat, organized

people. They need fighting talent, but they need bureaucratic

talent too. I guessed Kramer’s office and desk and quarters

would be the same as his wallet. They would contain everything

he needed and nothing he didn’t.

The hardcover book was an academic monograph from

a Midwestern university about the Battle of Kursk. Kursk

happened in July of 1943. It was Nazi Germany’s last grand

offensive of World War Two and its first major defeat on an

open battlefield. It turned into the greatest tank battle the world

has ever seen, and ever will see, unless people like Kramer

himself are eventually turned loose. I wasn’t surprised by his

choice of reading material. Some small part of him must have

feared the closest he would ever get to truly cataclysmic action

was reading about the hundreds of Tigers and Panthers and

T-34s whirling and roaring through the choking summer dust

all those years ago.

There was nothing else in the briefcase. Just a few furred

paper shreds trapped in the seams. It looked like Kramer was

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