Dog Tags

CHAPTER 43

I’VE NEVER MET HER, OR SEEN HER PICTURE, BUT I RECOGNIZE KATHY BRYANT IMMEDIATELY. Her twenty-seven-year-old face is grief-stricken. Not the kind that you feel in the first hours and days and weeks after hearing terrible news, but rather the kind etched by months of unrelenting pain. She has learned to publicly keep her emotions under control, but the effort of it must wear on her, and make it more difficult to summon the energy to suppress hellish private moments.

I had called Kathy to discuss her husband’s death in Iraq, and at first she tried to deflect me by giving me the name of her own lawyer. He is representing her in dealing with Alex’s estate, and in settlement negotiations with the US government regarding a possible negligence lawsuit she might file.

I finally persuaded her that I was more interested in the cause of the explosion than in the financial entanglements that have followed it, and she agreed to meet with me. Her chosen location was here, at the food court of the Garden State Plaza Mall in Paramus, a large area of fast-food restaurants that collectively contain more cholesterol than your average third-world country.

I’m a few minutes late, since I don’t know where in the mall the food court is, and I wind up parking as far away as is possible. Then I have to decipher the mall directory, which helpfully tells me with an arrow where I am, which would be good news if where I am is where we are meeting. It’s not, and by the time I figure out where I’m going, and then trek over there, I’m late.

She’s sitting at a table when I arrive, and after we say our hellos, I get us a couple of coffees from the Coffee Bean. “Thanks for seeing me,” I say when finally settled in.

“I’m not sure what it is you want.”

I smile my charming Carpenter smile, a guaranteed funk remover if ever one was invented. “I’m not, either,” I say. “I’m just asking questions until someone gives me an answer that I can use.”

“Okay.”

“I’m afraid I’ll be asking you about the circumstances surrounding your husband’s death. I hope that’s okay.”

“When you think about something twenty-four seven, talking about it doesn’t really make it any worse.”

I nod my understanding, even though it’s hard for me to relate to what she has been through. When I was twenty-seven, pretty much the most tragic event in my life was when the Giants lost a play-off game.

“Has anyone in the government given you an explanation for how it happened?”

She nods. “Yes, someone from the State Department called the first week, and then again after the investigation was completed.”

“What did they say?”

“That this teenager blew herself up trying to kill the oil minister, and that Alex and Mr. Freeman were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that while every effort was made to prevent it, it’s a dangerous country, and not every lunatic can be stopped.”

“So they didn’t admit negligence?”

“No. My lawyer said they wouldn’t, and they didn’t. They didn’t say much more than I could read in the paper.” She pauses, then, “Not that I read the papers.”

“Why did Alex go on that trip?”

“Because Mr. Freeman asked him to; Alex worshipped Mr. Freeman,” she says.

“Do you know why Mr. Freeman asked him? There were other people in the company higher than Alex.”

She shrugs. “I don’t really know, other than it was a late decision. For some reason the spot opened up. And since Alex’s job included dealing with the oil markets, I guess he was a logical choice. Mr. Freeman seemed to think of him as a protégé. Alex was on the fast track.”

She says this with a hint of scorn, so I ask her about it. “You didn’t approve of Alex’s job?”

“I guess I had mixed feelings about it. It was incredibly stressful, and I could see the effect it had on him. He had trouble sleeping… stomach problems… especially in the last couple of months. It’s tough when his health and the quality of our lives seemed to depend on the price of things like oil or gold.”

“Your feelings don’t sound particularly mixed,” I point out.

“Now they’re not; losing the person you loved more than anything in the world at twenty-seven has a way of clearing things up. But back then, Alex was making a lot of money, and we had this vision of him retiring early, so I bought into it. Mr. Freeman wasn’t even fifty, and Alex said he was going to quit soon and sail around the world. That sounded so appealing…”

“What about Jonathan Chaplin?”

“I don’t really know him. I met him a couple of times at a company Christmas party, and then again at the funeral. He was really very nice… said all the right things.”

“Have you had contact with the company since then?”

“Oh, yes. The HR person called me a number of times, to see if I needed anything, or if there was anything they could do for me. And they needed Alex’s papers dealing with work, so they could transfer it on to someone else.”

“You gave them everything?” I ask.

“Whatever I had. He took some things with him on the trip, so I don’t know where they are, and I didn’t give them his personal papers, of course. That’s something I need to go through when I’m ready.”

“Was Alex nervous about going on the trip?”

She shakes her head. “Very. I told him not to go, but I don’t think he ever considered it. He would never turn down Mr. Freeman.”

We talk a little while longer, but she really has nothing to tell me that can help Billy, and I don’t have the sensitivity or the power to help her. The only consolation she can seem to find on her own is in the fact that Alex and Freeman were killed instantly. She thanks God that they didn’t suffer, but doesn’t seem to ask Him why they died.

I’m sure she’ll eventually move on, but it’s going to take a while, and involve a lot more pain.

When we say our good-byes, she says she hopes she’s been of some help.

“Absolutely,” I lie.

When I get back to the office, I call Colonel William Mickelson, Erskine’s immediate superior back when Erskine was alive enough to have one. General Prentice had told him I was going to call and cleared the way, so he gets on the phone right away. Having a general on your side is like having a military genie.

I tell him why I’m calling and offer to come down to Washington at his convenience, providing I’m not in court. He doesn’t seem thrilled by that, and mutters about how busy he is. But he tells me he’s going to be in New York next week for a speaking engagement, so we make arrangements to meet then.

I doubt that I’ll learn much more than what was in the report, but it can’t hurt to try. If he’s evasive, I’ll just keep mentioning how close I am with the general.