Conspiracy

124

Some guys wore the fact that they had served in the Marines on their bodies — literally with tattoos and more figuratively in the way they spoke and thought and acted. They were lifers, and proud of it, and went out of their way to make sure everyone knew they were Marines.

Capital M.

Charlie Dean wasn’t one of them. He’d been an active Marine for a substantial portion of his life — but being a Marine wasn’t all of his life. If the ser vice had helped define him, the key word was “helped.” Charles Dean was a good Marine, but he’d also been more than that. He’d been a successful — and unsuccessful — small businessman, a private investigator and bodyguard, a clandestine employee of the government, a hunter and outdoorsman. While there was a great deal of truth in the old adage that a Marine never became an “ex-Marine,” from his earliest days in the Corps Charlie Dean had known there was more to the world than his drill sergeant would have had him believe.

And yet if there was one thing that Dean believed in deeply — believed in so firmly that it was rooted to his soul—

it was the values that the Corps preached. Some of them had a way of sounding trite or even shallow when explained to someone else, but then, simple things often did. That didn’t make them any less important.

So the idea that a Marine had stolen from the government and betrayed, maybe even killed, a fellow Marine hit Dean like a blow to the chest. As he thought about Senator McSweeney, Dean recalled the first time he’d been shot, an AK bullet going through the fleshy part of his calf. It had burned like all hell, and sent his body into shock, but the thing he remembered now, the bit of the experience that remained vividly with him, was the disbelief, the sheer wonderment at the wound — the realization that he wasn’t invincible, or charmed, or special, or above the action, or any of the other white lies a man might believe when he went into combat the first time.

A Marine could betray his fellow Marines and his country. It didn’t seem possible.

Dean was not naïve. He’d seen plenty of poor Marines and a few out-and-out cowards, not only in Vietnam but also afterward. He’d seen, and at times had to deal with, terrible officers. But this was magnitudes worse. It seemed a product of evil, rather than weakness.

“You’re not to accuse him of any wrongdoing, or involvement,” Rubens told Dean, instructing him on how to deal with McSweeney. “Simply let him know about Tolong.

Study his reaction, but nothing more.” Senator McSweeney was now the leading candidate for President in his party; it was very possible that he would beat Marcke in the next election.

A traitor as President.

Maybe the assassin felt the same way. Maybe that was why he wanted to kill McSweeney.

“Mr. Dean, are you still with me?” Rubens asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Charlie, can you do this? Can you talk to him?”

“Absolutely.”

It was the same word he’d said when he’d been given the mission to assassinate Phuc Dinh. It was the thing he’d always said, as a Marine.