Inside Out

62

Concord, North Carolina

Winter didn't like to carry the heavy SIG Sauer in the shoulder rig unless he was on the job. Standing before his gun safe, Winter removed a compact semiautomatic. Eleanor's father had given Winter the World War II vintage 7.65 Walther PP as a gift when he had graduated from Glynco. He had purchased it from a dealer who specialized in collectable weapons. It was lightweight, lethal, and accurate enough at combat distances. He only had one seven-shot magazine for it, but it was comfortable to carry in his pocket. He lifted out the box of ammunition and fed the magazine, reassured by the stiffness in the hidden spring. The flying eagle and swastika on the pristine piece identified it as a German officer's weapon, which had received light use during World War II.

Since he had left Rush, he'd been thinking about Greg and what Hank had told him. He had also found himself thinking about Sean Devlin. He suppressed a cloud of guilt for thinking of another woman while he was in the bedroom he had shared with his late wife, even though he knew Eleanor wouldn't mind. God, he would give anything for Sean to pop up to collect the meal she'd mentioned. Given the danger he feared she was in, he knew the possibility wasn't likely.

The other person who had recently mentioned having a drink with him someday-Fletcher Reed-reminded Winter of something he wanted to ask the lieutenant commander. He dialed information and called the shore patrol office at the Cherry Point base. A woman told Winter that Reed had returned to the Norfolk Naval Base, where he was stationed, and gave Winter the phone number. When he called it, a security officer asked for Winter's number and said he would notify Reed and have him return the call.

It took less than ten minutes for the phone to ring. Before the caller spoke, Winter clearly heard vehicles in the background.

“Got your message,” Reed said flatly.

“You get shipped out, or what?”

“I was on temporary duty at Cherry Point evaluating the patrolmen. Now I'm ass deep in petty crap and paper. It's the Navy. What can I say?”

“I need your help with something.”

“You need my help?” He laughed. “Unless you spotted a drunken sailor spoiling for a fight, I doubt I can offer much assistance.”

“Hear me out?”

“I'm listening.” Winter heard a lighter and imagined a cigar in Reed's mouth.

“What do you know about our flight that went in Thursday night at Ward Field?”

“I just heard it crashed,” Reed said. “Catastrophic failure or something, botched emergency landing. You said Ward Field?”

“Abandoned military base inland. What I am going to tell you is classified.”

Reed chortled. “Of course it is.”

“It needs to stay strictly between us.”

“Cross my heart.”

“You know anything about two bodies found Thursday night at Cherry Point?”

“The FBI was already on it by the time I got back. I haven't heard any more about it.”

Winter told Reed who the dead men were and gave him an overview of the FBI's evidence on Greg Nations. As Winter went over it, he was struck again by what little sense it made. “The only thing a WITSEC inspector like Greg could furnish Manelli with on a continuing basis would be an occasional location of a witness he was baby-sitting, which just doesn't add up,” he told Reed.

“Unless he'd been selling the intel to someone like an information broker who then sold it to people who wanted the witnesses not to testify.”

“Then how come no other protected witnesses have been killed?” Winter countered.

“Maybe it was about people who had left the program. Those people get killed from time to time, don't they?”

“I'd have heard about that through the USMS grapevine.” He told Reed that if Greg had an offshore account, the money had come from legitimate sources.

Reed pointed out how naive that sounded. “Basically you're not open to any evidence to the contrary to what you believe? I got nothing to offer, Massey,” Reed said finally.

“Fingerprints.”

Reed sighed. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I think the FBI screwed with their fingerprints,” Winter said. “Those killers sure as hell weren't Russian soldiers. If they were ours, the FBI knows it and for whatever reason aren't going to admit it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Come on, Reed. I think the FBI's showing Shapiro what they had was a trial balloon. Get the lies past Shapiro and me, and who else would raise a flag?”

“The FBI can't afford another scandal,” Reed agreed.

“For some people, fabricating evidence is no more difficult than you or me backdating a sales slip.”

“You're talking about a conspiracy between the FBI, the Russian government, the Navy, and the CIA. Hell, maybe even the Marshals Service. It sounds like the two hundred people who were in on framing O.J.,” Reed said.

Winter couldn't blame him for being skeptical. “They wouldn't all have to be aware of the entire picture to be directly involved. Just a handful of people at the top would have to know why they were doing what they were doing. They'd just have to control who knows what. You know how some people will follow any order.”

“Those four guys were definitely soldiers,” Reed mused. “Why not Russians?”

“How many Russians speak with a cracker accent? How many Russians have tattoos removed that leave a scar in the shape of a SEAL trident? I couldn't help but notice that the naked corpse was circumcised. What was he, a Russian-Jewish shock trooper?”

There was a long silence. Then Reed asked, “So all you want from me is to run four sets of fingerprints, which I wasn't supposed to keep? If I did accidentally hold on to a dupe set, as soon as I run them, the FBI will know all about it. This conspiracy cabal of yours involves the FBI.”

“Would it be possible to run them against military fingerprints, just within the Pentagon's database?”

“Maybe.”

“I think those four killers were once members of our military. I think the FBI already knows that because they have all the soldiers in the active database. If they were ours, I need to know who they really were. I need anything you can scrape up. If you draw a blank, at least I'll know I've done everything I can.”

“I'll see what I can do,” Reed said.

“You believe me?”

“I only believe that the tale you're spinning is slightly more intriguing than what I spent the morning doing-plaster-casting motorcycle tread marks on the seventeenth green on the officers' golf course.”

“Thanks,” Winter said.

“This is probably a waste of time, but just for the sake of paranoia, take down my private cell number and give me yours.”