Child, Lee – The Enemy

and linear. As a whole it was a bold, proud, legible, self

confident signature, developed no doubt by long years of

signing checks and bar bills and leases and car papers. No

signature was impossible to forge, of course, but I figured this

one would have been a real challenge. A challenge that I

guessed would have been impossible to meet, between mid

night and 0845 on a North Carolina army post.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘The complaint is genuine.’

I left it on the desk. Summer reversed it and read it through,

although she must have read it plenty of times already.

‘It’s cold,’ she said. ‘It’s like a knife in the back.’

‘It’s weird,’ I said. ‘That’s what it is. I never met this guy

before. I’m absolutely sure of that. And he was Delta. Not

2O3

too many gentle pacifist souls over there. Why would he be

offended? It wasn’t his leg I broke.’

‘Maybe it was personal. Maybe the fat guy was his friend.’

I shook my head. ‘He’d have stepped in. He’d have stopped

the fight.’

‘It’s the only complaint he ever made in a sixteen-year career.’

‘You been talking to people?’

‘All kinds of people. Right here, and by phone far and wide.’

‘Were you careful?’

‘Very. And it’s the only complaint you ever had made against

you.’

‘You checked that too?’

She nodded. ‘All the way back to when God’s dog was a

puppy.’

‘You wanted to know what kind of a guy you’re dealing with

here?’

‘No, I wanted to be able to show the Delta guys you don’t

have a history. With Carbone or with anyone else.’

‘You’re protecting me now?’

‘Someone’s going to have to. I was just over there, and they’re

plenty mad.’

I nodded. Brubaker.

‘I’m sure they are,’ I said. I pictured their lonely prison

barracks, first designed to keep people in, then used to keep

strangers out, now serving to keep their unity boiling like a

pressure cooker. I pictured Brubaker’s office, wherever it was,

quiet and deserted. I pictured Carbone’s cell, standing empty.

‘So where was Carbone’s new P7?’ I said. ‘I didn’t find it in his

quarters.’

‘In their armoury,’ Summer said. ‘Cleaned, oiled, and loaded.

They check their personal weapons in and out. They’ve got a

cage inside their hangar. You should see that place. It’s like

Santa’s grotto. Special armoured Humvees wall to wall, trucks,

explosives, grenade launchers, claymores, night vision stuff.

They could equip a Central African dictatorship all by themselves.’

‘That’s very reassuring,’ I said.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘Why did he file the complaint?’

204

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

I pictured Carbone in the strip club, New Year’s night. I had

walked in and I had seen a group of four men I took to be

sergeants. The swirl of the crowd had turned three of them

away from me and one of them towards me in a completely

random dynamic. I hadn’t known who was going to be there,

they hadn’t known I was going to show up. I had never met any

of them before. The encounter was as close to pure chance as it

was possible to get. Yet Carbone had tagged me for the kind of

tame mayhem he must have seen a thousand times before. The

kind of tame mayhem he must have joined in with a hundred

times before. Show me an enlisted man who claims never to

have fought a civilian in a bar, and I’ll show you a liar.

‘Are you Catholic?’ I asked.

‘No, why?’ Summer said.

‘I wondered if you knew any Latin.’

‘It’s not just Catholics who know Latin. I went to school.’

‘OK, cui bono?’ I said.

‘Who benefits? What, from the complaint?’

‘It’s always a good guide to motive,’ I said. ‘You can explain

most things with it. History, politics, everything.’

‘Like, follow the money?’

‘Approximately,’ I said. ‘Except I don’t think there’s money

involved here. But there must have been some benefit for

Carbone. Otherwise why would he do it?’

‘Could have been a moral thing. Maybe he was driven to do

it.’

‘Not if it was his first complaint in sixteen years. He must

have seen far worse. I only broke one leg and one nose. It was

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