Call to Treason

FORTY-THREE

Bob Herbert was delighted to hear from Mike Rodgers. It was the only familiar aspect in a suddenly surreal situation, and for a moment, just a heartbeat, it sounded and felt like old times.

“How am I?” Herbert said in response to Rodgers’s question. “I’m sitting in the parking lot, breathing non- machine-filtered air, which I happen to prefer to that dry, metallic-tasting crud in the Tank, working on a laptop I borrowed from — get this — the head cook in the Andrews commissary cafeteria. I had to create my own files between the Tuesday lunch menu and the recipe for Brigadier General Chrysler’s favorite pie. Which is cherry, if you were wondering. My calls are being routed to a cell phone belonging to Jason Shuffler in accounting. He was parked outside the hit zone, and it was in his car. A bonus to being a peon.”

Herbert was rambling, and he knew it. But it had been a long, rough day with no time to vent. Under the best of circumstances there was no one he felt completely comfortable with other than Mike or Darrell, and Darrell was not available. So Mike got the first big hit. Herbert took a short breath to calm himself, sucked his self-styled debriefing back down, and went to the above-the-fold news.

“Meanwhile, the cops have Darrell and Maria at the precinct,” Herbert told Rodgers. “They were arrested for breaking and entering.”

“I heard.”

“Darrell made his one call to Paul, who shipped Lowell over there to get him out. Paul briefed me. Anything new out there?”

“My sixth sense is tingling,” Rodgers said. “I need to know more about Detective Robert Howell.”

“Funny you should ask.”

“Why?” Rodgers asked.

“I happen to have his dossier on the computer,” Herbert said. “I was looking for something in his background, something we might use to help get Darrell and Maria out of the cooler.”

“What possible tie could he have to Link or the senator?”

“Maybe he’s just a senate groupie,” Herbert suggested.

“That’s what Kat said,” Rodgers told him.

“But you don’t believe her because—?”

“She said it.”

“Great. But do you have a better reason?” Herbert asked.

“No. Like I said, just a feeling.”

“Okay,” Herbert said. He adjusted the screen so it was angled away from the sun. “The detective is not married, he did not come from Texas, he has a record that would make Baden-Powell jealous. He served in the coast guard and—”

“Not married,” Rodgers said. “Is he divorced?”

“No.”

“Girlfriend?”

“There’s nothing in the file,” Herbert said.

“Shit,” Rodgers said.

“What?” Herbert asked.

“I wonder if it could be blackmail.”

Herbert scowled. “That’s a pretty big leap.”

“I’ve been told I make a lot of those,” Rodgers said. “Is there anything in the dossier that is listed as eyes only?”

“No.”

“So it may not be part of his civilian record. Can you get Howell’s military records? If I go through channels, it will take days.”

“I can probably go through Andrews—”

“That will take time,” Rodgers said. “We don’t have that.”

“—or I can ask Matt,” Herbert replied. “He’s working on getting things running downstairs.”

“Please do,” Rodgers said. “This is important.”

“I’m all over it, like ugly on an ape,” the intelligence chief told him. “I’ll call you back.”

“Thanks.”

Like ugly on an ape? Herbert thought as he clicked off and called downstairs to the Tank. Either he was severely overtired or the fresh air was doing funny things to his head.

Herbert asked Bugs Benet to send Matt Stoll up to parking spot 710. Stoll was upstairs in five minutes. He was grateful for the fresh air.

“The smell of fried copper wire is still pretty thick down in the sulfur pit,” the portly scientist complained.

Stoll accessed the United States Coast Guard secure personnel files in ten minutes. Shortly after that, he pulled up an eyes-only file for Lieutenant Robert Howell. It was from 1989, a formal report by a hearing officer regarding an incident on the newly commissioned cutter Orcas stationed in Coos Bay, Oregon.

“Holy Christmas,” Herbert said as he read the file.

“What have we got?” Stoll asked.

“A Get Out of Jail Free card for the McCaskeys, for one thing,” Herbert replied.

The intelligence chief thanked Stoll and sent the reluctant wunderkind back to the sulfur pit. He immediately got on the phone with Mike Rodgers. The “suspicious” Mike Rodgers. The big-leap-taking Mike Rodgers.

The correct Mike Rodgers.