Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

turning conservative again.

But not his wife. ‘ ‘No, we don’t. We need to get approval to make use of

the network, not to see if it’s still there.” Her ice-blue eyes twinkled, as they

usually did when she was being clever.

“Honey, that’s calling it a little close,” Ed warned. But that was one of

the reasons he loved her. “But I like it. Okay, as long as we’re just seeing

that the network still exists.”

“I was afraid I was going to have to pull rank on you, dear.” For which

transgressions her husband exacted a wonderful toll.

“Just so you have dinner ready on time, Mary. The orders’ll go out Mon-

day.”

“Have to stop at the Giant on the way home. We’re out of bread.”

Congressman Alan Trent of Massachusetts was in Hartford, Connecticut,

taking a Saturday off to catch a basketball game between U-Mass and

U-Conn, both of whom looked like contenders for the regional champion-

ship this year. That didn’t absolve him from the need to work, however, and

so two staffers were with him, while a third was due in with work. It was

more comfortable in the Sheraton hotel adjacent to the Hartford Civic Arena

than in his office, and lie was lying on the bed with the papers spread around

him-rather like Winston Churchill, he thought, but without the champagne

nearby. The phone next to his bed rang. He didn’t reach for it. He had a

staffer for that, and Trent had taught himself to ignore the sound of a ringing

phone.

“Al, it’s George Wylie, from Deerfield Auto.” Wylie was a major con-

tributor to Trent’s political campaigns, and the owner of a large business in

his district. For both of those reasons, he was able to demand Trent’s atten-

tion whenever he desired it.

“How the hell did he track me down here?” Trent asked the ceiling as he

reached for the phone. “Hey, George, how are you today?”

Trent’s two aides watched their boss set his soda down and reach for a

pad. The congressman always had a pen in his hand, and a nearby pad of

Post-It notes. Seeing him scribble a note to himself wasn’t unusual, though

the angry look on his face was. Their boss pointed to the TV and said,

“CNN!”

The timing turned out to be almost perfect. After the top-of-the-hour com-

mercial and a brief intro, Trent was the next player to see the face of Bob

Wright. This time he was on tape, which had been edited. It now showed

Rebecca Upton in her NTSB windbreaker and the two crumbled Crestas

being hauled aboard the wreckers.

“Shit,” Trent’s senior staffer observed.

‘ ‘The gas tanks, eh?” Trent asked over the phone, then listened for a min-

ute or so. “Those motherfuckers,” the congressman snarled next. “Thanks

for the heads-up, George. I’m on it.” He set the phone receiver back in the

cradle and sat up straighter in the bed. His right hand pointed to his senior

aide.

‘ ‘Get in touch with the NTSB watch team in Washington. I want to talk to

that girl right away. Name, phone, where she is, track her down fast! Next,

get the Sec-Trans on the phone.” His head went back down to his working

correspondence while his staffers got on the phones. Like most members of

Congress, Trent essentially time-shared his brain, and he’d long since

learned to compartmentalize his time and his passion. He was soon grum-

bling about an amendment to the Department of the Interior’s authorization

for the National Forest Service, and making a few marginal notes with a

green pen. That was his second-highest expression of outrage, though his

staff saw his red pen poised near a fresh page on a legal pad. The combina-

tion of foolscap and a red pen meant that Trent was really exercised about

something.

Rebecca Upton was in her Nissan, following the wreckers to Nashville,

where she would first supervise the initial storage of the burned-out Crestas

and then meet with the head of the local office to begin the procedures for a

formal investigation-lots of paperwork, she was sure, and the engineer

found it odd that she was not upset at her wrecked weekend. Along with her

job came a cellular phone, which she assiduously used only for official busi-

ness and only when absolutely necessary-she’d been in federal employ for

just ten months-which meant in her case that she’d never even reached the

basic monthly fee which the company charged the government. The phone

had never rung in her car before, and she was startled by the sound when it

started warbling next to her.

“Hello?” she said, picking it up, wondering if it were a wrong number.

“Rebecca Upton?”

“That’s right. Who is this?”

“Please hold for Congressman Trent,” a male voice told her.

“Huh? Who?”

“Hello?” a new voice said.

“Who’s this?”

“Are you Rebecca Upton?”

“Yes, I am. Who are you?”

‘ ‘I’m Alan Trent, Member of Congress from the Commonwealth of Mas-

sachusetts. ” Massachusetts, as any elected official from that state would an-

nounce at the drop of a hat, was not a mere “state.” “I tracked you down

through the NTSB watch center. Your supervisor is Michael Zimmer, and

his number in Nashville is-”

“Okay, I believe you, sir. What can I do for you?”

“You’re investigating a crash on 1-40, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want you to fill me in on what you know.”

“Sir,” Upton said, slowing her car down so that she could think, “we

haven’t even really started it yet, and I’m not really in a position to-”

“Young lady, I’m not asking you for conclusions, just for the reason why

you are initiating an investigation. I am in a position to help. If you cooper-

ate, I promise you that the Secretary of Transportation will know what a fine

young engineer you are. She’s a friend of mine, you see. We worked to-

gether in Congress for ten or twelve years.”

Oh, Rebecca Upton thought. It was improper, unethical, probably against

the rules, and maybe even fattening to reveal information from an ongoing

NTSB accident investigation. On the other hand, the investigation hadn’t

started yet, had it? And Upton wanted to be noticed and promoted as much

as the next person. She didn’t know that her brief silence was as good as

mind-reading to the other person on the cellular circuit, and couldn’t see the

smile in the Hartford hotel room in any case.

“Sir, it appears to me and to the police who responded to the accident that

both gas tanks on both cars failed, causing a fatal fire. There appears on first

inspection to be no obvious mechanical reason for the tanks to have done so.

Therefore 1 am going to recommend to my supervisor that wo initiate an

investigation to determine the cause of the incident.”

“Both gas tanks leaked?” the voice asked.

“Yes, sir, but it was worse than a leak. Both failed rather badly.”

“Anything else you can tell me?”

“Not really at this time, no.” Upton paused. Would this guy really men-

tion her name to the Secretary? If so … “Something is not right about this,

Mr. Trent. Look, I have a degree in engineering, and I minored in materials

science. The speed of the impact does not justify two catastrophic structural

failures. There are federal safety standards for the structural integrity of au-

tomobiles and their components, and those parameters far exceed the condi-

tions I saw at the accident scene. The police officers I spoke with agree. We

need to do some tests to be sure, but that’s my gut-call for the moment. I’m

sorry, I can’t tell you any more for a while.”

This kid is going far, Trent told himself in his room at the Hartford Sheraton.

‘ ‘Thank you, Miss Upton. I left my number with your office in Nashville.

Please call me when you get in.” Trent hung up the phone and thought for a

minute or so. To his junior staffer: “Call Sec-Trans and tell her that this

Upton kid is very good-no, get her for me, and I’ll tell her. Paul, how good

is the NTSB lab for doing scientific testing?” he asked, looking and feeling

more and more like Churchill, planning the invasion of Europe. Well, Trent

told himself, not quite that.

‘ ‘Not bad at all, but the varsity-”

“Right.” Trent selected a free button on his phone and made another call

from memory.

“Good afternoon, Congressman,” Bill Shaw said to his speakerphone,

looking up at Dan Murray. “By the way, we need to see you next week

and-”

“I need some help, Bill.”

“What kind of help is that, sir?” Elected officials were always “sir” or

“ma’am” on official business, even for the Director of the FBI. That was

especially true if the congressman in question chaired the Intelligence Com-

mittee, along with holding a seat on the Judiciary Committee, and another on