All of that, he could manage, yet the incident in the hotel lobby was still with him. All those fine thoughts about Sharon and Ann Farris and fidelity were just that: thoughts.
Bullshit and words.
After just a few weeks, he had accepted Squires’s death. Yet after more than twenty years she was still with him. He was surprised by the disorientation, the urgency, the near-panic he had felt speaking to the doorman.
God, he thought, how he wanted to despise her. But he couldn’t. Now, as over the years, whenever he tried he ended up hating himself. Now as then, he felt that somehow he was the one who had screwed up.
Though you’ll never know for sure, he told himself. And that was nearly as bad as what had happened. Not knowing why it had happened.
He absently ran his hand along the breast pocket of his sports jacket. The pocket with his wallet. The wallet with the tickets. The tickets with the memories.
As he looked out the window at the park, he asked himself, And what would you have done if it had been her?
Asked her, “So. How’ve you been? Are you happy? Oh, and by the way, hon— why didn’t you put a bullet in my heart to finish the job?” “It’s quite a view, is it not?” Hausen asked.
Hood was caught off guard. He came back to reality hard. “It is a magnificent view. Back home, I don’t even have a window.” Hausen smiled. “The work we do is different, Herr Hood,” he said. “I need to see the people I serve. I need to see young couples pushing baby carriages. I need to see elderly couples walking hand in hand. I need to see children playing.” “I envy you that,” Hood said. “I spend my days looking at computer-generated maps and evaluating the merits of cluster bombs versus other weapon systems.” “Your job is to destroy corruption and tyranny. My arena is—” Hausen stopped, reached up as though plucking an apple from a tree, and pulled a word from the sky. “My arena is the antithesis of that. I try to nurture growth and cooperation.” “Together,” Hood said, “we’d’ve made a helluva Biblical patriarch.” Hausen brightened. “You mean a judge.” Hood looked at him. “Sorry?” “A judge,” he repeated. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to correct you. But the Bible is a hobby of mine. A passion, really, since I was in a Catholic boarding school. I’m particularly fond of the Old Testament. Are you familiar with the judges?” Hood had to admit that he was not. He assumed they were like contemporary judges, though le didn’t say so.
When he was running L.A., he had a plaque on his wall which read, When in doubt, shut up. That policy had served him well throughout his career.
“The judges,” Hausen said, “were men who rose from the ranks of the Hebrew tribes to become heroes. They where what you might call spontaneous rulers because they had no ties to previous leaders. But once they took command, they were granted the moral authority to settle any and all disputes.” Hausen looked out the window again. His mood darkened slightly. Hood found himself seriously intrigued by this man who hated neo-Nazis, knew Hebrew history, and appeared, as the old game-show host Garry Moore might’ve put it, “to have a secret.” “There was a time in my youth, Herr Hood, when I believed that the judge was the ultimate and correct form of leader. I even thought, ‘Hitler understood that. He was a judge. Perhaps he had a mandate from God.’ ” Hood looked at him. “You felt that Hitler was doing God’s work, killing people and waging war?” “Judges killed many people and waged many wars. You must understand, Herr Hood, Hitler lifted us from defeat in a World War, helped to end a depression, took back lands to which many people felt we were entitled, and attacked peoples whom many Germans detested. Why do you think the neo-Nazi movement is so strong today? Because many Germans still believe that he was right.” “But you fight these people now,” Hood said. “What made you realize that Hitler was wrong?” Hausen spoke in hard, unhappy halftones. “I don’t wish to appear rude, Herr Hood, but that is something I have never discussed with anyone. Nor would I burden a new friend with it.” “Why not?” Hood asked. “New friends bring new perspectives.” “Not to this,” Hausen said emphatically.
Hausen’s lids lowered slightly and Hood could tell he was no longer seeing the park or the people in it. He was somewhere else, somewhere depressing. Hood knew he was wrong. Together, they didn’t make a patriach or a judge.
Together, they were a pair of guys haunted by things that had happened to them years before.
“But you are a compassionate man,” Hausen said, “and I will share one thought with you.” From behind them, Stoll said, “Hold on, sports fans.
What have we here?” Hood looked back. Hausen put a hand on his shoulder to stop him from going to Stoll.
“It says in James 2:10, ‘For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.’ ” Hausen removed his hand. “I believe in the Bible, but I believe in that above all.” “Gentlemen… meine Herren,” Stoll sail. “Come hither, please.” Hood was more curious than ever about Hausen, but he recognized that familiar something’s-wrong urgency in Stoll’s voice. And he saw Lang with his hand over his mouth, as if he’d just witnessed a car crash.
Hood gave the stoic Hausen a reassuring pat on the back of the shoulder, then turned and hurried to the computer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Thursday, 9:50 A.M., Washington, D.C.
“I thank you, General. I thank you very sincerely. But the answer is no.” Sitting in his office, leaning back in his chair, Mike Rodgers knew very well that the voice on the other end of the secure telephone was sincere. He also knew that once the owner of that strong voice said something, he seldom retracted it. Brett August had been that way since he was six.
But Rodgers was also sincere— sincere in his desire to land the Colonel for Striker. And Rodgers was not a man who gave up on anything, especially when he knew the subject’s weaknesses as well as his strong points.
A ten-year veteran of the Air Force’s Special Operations Command, August was a childhood friend of Rodgers who loved airplanes even more than Rodgers loved action movies. On weekends, the two young boys used to bicycle five miles along Route 22 out to Bradley Field in Hartford, Connecticut. Then they’d just sit in an empty field and watch the planes take off and land. They were old enough to remember when prop planes gave way to the jet planes, and Rodgers vividly remembered getting juiced up whenever one of the new 707s would roar overhead. August used to go berserk.
After school each day, the boys would do their homework together, each taking alternate math problems or science questions so they could get done faster. Then they would build model airplanes, taking care that the paint jobs were accurate and that the decals were put in exactly the right place. In fact, the only fistfight they’d ever had was arguing about just where the white star went on the FH-1 Phantom. The box art had it right under the tail assembly, but Rodgers thought that was wrong. After the fight, they limped to the library to find out who was right. Rodgers was.
It was halfway between the fin and the wing. August had manfully apologized.
August also idolized the astronauts and followed every glitch and triumph of the U.S. space program. Rodgers didn’t think he ever saw August as happy as when Ham, the first U.S. monkey in space, came to Hartford on a public relations visit. As August gazed upon a real space traveler, he was euphoric. Not even when the young man told Rodgers that he’d finally coerced Barb Mathias into bed did he seem so utterly content.
When it came time to serve, Rodgers went into the Army and August went into the Air Force. Both men ended up in Vietnam. While Rodgers did his tours of duty on the ground, August flew reconnaissance missions over the north.
On one such flight northwest of Hue, August’s plane was shot down and he was taken prisoner. He spent over a year in a POW camp, finally escaping with another man in 1970.
He spent three months making his way to the South, before finally being discovered by a Marine patrol.
August was unembittered by his experiences. To the contrary, he was heartened by the courage he had witnessed among American POWs. He returned to the U.S., regained his strength, and went back to Vietnam and organized a spy network searching for other U.S. POWs. He remained undercover for a year after the U.S. withdrawal, then spent three years in the Philippines helping President Ferdinand Marcos battle Moro secessionists. He worked as an Air Force liaison with NASA after that, helping to organize security for spy satellite missions, after which he joined the SOC as a specialist in counterterrorist activities.