The General's Daughter

“If you say so.”

“Okay, by now it’s around 0215 hours, and Colonel Moore has made the recorded call to General Campbell, has tied up Ann Campbell, and is waiting near the latrines for the general to show up. Bill Kent is on his own mission, and he’s following the manual. He knows that he can see the headlights of a car at least a half mile away on the dark, straight road, so a car traveling at, say, forty-five miles an hour could be on him in less than a minute unless he sees its headlights first. So every thirty seconds or so, he looks back over his shoulder. At about 0215, he in fact sees headlights behind him, and he drops into the drainage ditch on the side of the road and waits for the car to pass.”

“He thinks this is her lover.”

“Probably. In some perverse way, he would like to catch her in flagrante delicto. He got a charge out of kicking Major Bowes out of Ann’s house, then raping her. This is a very troubled and irrational man who thinks that Ann Campbell will respond well to his aggressive virility, to his shining armor, and to his slaying dragons for her. Correct?”

She nodded. “There is that type. Half the rapists I interview claim the women enjoyed it. None of the women ever seconded that.”

“Right. But to be a little fair to Bill Kent, Ann Campbell never disabused him of that notion.”

“True. But the letter to his wife should have told him that she was finished with him. But, okay, he’s as crazy as she was. So he sees the car pass him.”

“Right. Coming up the road at about 0215 with its headlights on. These are the headlights that PFC Robbins saw. Moore had traveled the last mile or so without lights, and so had Ann Campbell. The general did not. The general’s car passes, and Kent gets up on one knee. He may or may not recognize Mrs. Campbell’s Buick.”

Cynthia commented, “So here we have two high-profile guys—Colonel Kent and General Campbell—sneaking around at night in their wives’ cars.”

“Right. If everyone on post knew your staff car, and you had the unofficial radio call sign of Randy Six, you might choose alternate transportation as well.”

“I might just stay home. Okay, so at this point, Kent speeds up his pace. Meanwhile, Moore is running back along the log trail, gets into his car at range five, and heads north on Rifle Range Road, back toward post. But he didn’t see Kent walking toward him.”

“No,” I replied. “Kent was either past rifle range five by now, or Kent spotted the headlights as Moore came across the gravel field, and Kent dropped into the ditch again. By this time, Kent figures that his girlfriend is entertaining a procession of lovers, one every fifteen or twenty minutes, or, more likely, he’s confused.”

“Confused or not,” Cynthia replied, “he’s thinking the worst. He’s not thinking that she may just be doing her job, or that maybe she’s in danger, or that perhaps the two vehicles were unrelated to her. He’s sure she’s out there fucking. Is that what you would think?”

“Absolutely. I’m all man. I think too much with the little head, and not enough with the big head.”

Cynthia laughed despite herself. “Okay, enough. Go on.”

I sat back in the chair and thought a moment. “All right… it’s at this point that we can’t know exactly what happened. Kent rounds the bend where rifle range five and six connect, and up ahead in the moonlight he sees two vehicles parked on the road—the humvee and the Buick that passed him from behind. We know that by this time the scene between father and daughter is unfolding, or maybe it’s finished.”

Cynthia said, “In either case, Kent stayed where he was.”

“Yes, we know for sure that Kent did not dash up on this scene and discover that the Buick on the road had brought General Campbell to rifle range six. Kent watched from a distance—say, two or three hundred meters—and he may have heard something, because the wind was blowing from the south. But he decided not to make a complete fool of himself, not to get into a possible armed confrontation with another man.”

“Or,” Cynthia said, “the exchange between father and daughter was finished, and the general was back in his car by now.”

“Quite possible. At this point, the general’s car comes toward him, without headlights, and Kent again drops into the drainage ditch. This is the only way it could have happened—with Kent on foot—because neither Moore nor the general saw any other vehicle.”

“And when the general’s car passes, Bill Kent stands and walks toward Ann Campbell’s humvee.”

“Right. He’s moving very quickly, maybe with his sidearm drawn, ready for anything—rape, romance, reconciliation, or murder.”

We sat a moment, she on the bed, me in the chair, listening to the rain outside. I was wondering, and I’m sure Cynthia was, too, if we’d just fashioned a noose for an innocent man in the privacy of our own room. But even if we didn’t have the details just right, the man himself had as much as told us, or signaled to us, that he’d done it. There was no mistaking his tone, his manner, and his eyes. But what he was also saying is that she deserved it, and we’d never prove he did it. He was wrong on both counts.

Cynthia got out of the lotus position and let her legs dangle over the foot of the bed. She said, “And Kent finds Ann Campbell staked out on the range, probably still crying, and he can’t figure out if she’s been raped, or just waiting for the next friend to keep his appointment.”

“Well… who knows at that point? But he definitely walked out to her, slowly, as Cal Seiver said, and he definitely kneeled beside her, and she was not happy to see him.”

“She was frightened out of her mind.”

“Well… she’s not the type. But she’s at a disadvantage. He says something, she says something. She, thinking her father has abandoned her, may have settled in for a long wait, knowing that the guard truck would be by at about 0700 hours, and she’s considered this possibility, and she thinks this would be a good payback for Daddy’s second betrayal. General’s daughter found naked by twenty guards.”

Cynthia nodded. She said, “But she knows that her father will eventually realize the same thing, and will have to come back in order to avoid that disgraceful occurrence. So in either case, she wants Kent gone.”

“Probably. He’s interfering with her script. He sees the bayonet stuck in the ground—assuming the general didn’t take it—and offers to cut her loose. Or he figures that she can’t walk away from a conversation with him under the circumstances, and he asks her what’s going on, or asks her to marry him, or whatever, and the dialogue develops, and Ann, who’s been tied to the bedposts many times in her basement, is not so much frightened or embarrassed as she is annoyed and impatient. We just don’t know what was said, what went on.”

“No, we don’t, but we know how the conversation ended.”

“Right. He may have twisted the rope to get her undivided attention, he may even have sexually stimulated her while he was causing sexual asphyxia, a trick he may have learned from her… but at some point, he twisted the rope and didn’t stop twisting.”

We sat there a full minute, playing it over again in our minds, then Cynthia stood and said, “That’s about what happened. Then he walked back to the road, realized what he’d done, and ran all the way back to his Jeep. He may have reached the Jeep before the Fowlers even started out, and he sped out of there and reached Bethany Hill as the Fowlers were leaving their house. He may even have passed them on one of the streets. He went home, parked his wife’s Jeep in the garage, went inside, probably cleaned up, and waited for the phone call from his MPs.” She added, “I wonder if he slept.”

“I don’t know, but when I saw him a few hours later, he looked composed, though now that I think about it, he was a little distracted.” I added, “He disassociated himself from the crime, as criminals usually do after the first few hours, but it’s coming back to him now.”

“Can we prove any of this?”

“No.”

“So what do we do?”

“Confront him. The time has come.”

“He’ll deny it all, and we’ll be looking for work in the civilian sector.”

“Probably. And you know what? We may be wrong.”

Cynthia was pacing now, having a debate with herself. She stopped and said, “How about finding the place where he pulled the Jeep off the road?”

“Yes, first light is at 0536. Should I call you or nudge you?”

She ignored this and said, “The tire tracks will be washed out. But if he broke brush, we can see where the vehicle left the road.”

“Right. This will remove some of our doubts. But it still leaves reasonable doubt, and we need beyond a reasonable doubt.”

She said, “There might be brush or pine needles stuck on his vehicle that can be matched to the vegetation that was broken.”

“There might be if the guy was an idiot, but he’s not. That Jeep is as clean as a humvee waiting for an IG inspection.”

“Damn it.”

“We have to confront him, and we have to do it at the right psychological moment… tomorrow, after the funeral service. That’s our first, last, and only chance to get a confession.”

Cynthia nodded. “If he’s going to talk, he’ll do it then. If he wants to get it off his chest, he’ll do it with us, not the FBI.”

“Correct.”

“Time for bed.” She picked up the phone and asked the CQ to ring us at 0400 hours, which would give me three hours sleep if I passed out in the next ten seconds. But I had another idea. I said, “Let’s shower now and save time.”

“Well…”

Bad response. As my father once said, “Women control seventy percent of the wealth in this country, and a hundred percent of the pussy.” Cynthia and I were a little shy, I think, the way ex-lovers are when they try it again. And all the rape talk didn’t help set the mood. I mean, there was no music here, no candles, no champagne. The only thing here was the ghost of Ann Campbell, the thought of her murderer sleeping in his bed on Bethany Hill, and two exhausted people far from home. I said, “Maybe it wouldn’t be appropriate.”

“No, it wouldn’t be. Let’s wait until we can make it special. This weekend at your place. We’ll be glad we waited.”

Right, I’m absolutely fucking thrilled to wait. But I wasn’t in the mood to argue, and not clever enough to seduce. So I yawned and threw back the covers of my bed. “Bon soir, as we say in Brussels.”

“Good night…” She moved toward the bathroom door, then, as she did last time, she turned back. She said, “Something to look forward to.”

“Right.” I turned off the lamp, shucked my robe, and crawled, naked, into bed.

I heard the shower running in the bathroom, heard the rain outside, heard a couple giggling in the hallway.

I never heard the phone ring at 0400.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FOUR

Cynthia was dressed, the sun was coming in the window, and I smelled coffee.

She sat on the side of my bed, I sat up, and she handed me a plastic mug. “They have a coffee bar downstairs.”

I asked, “What time is it?”

“A little after seven.”

“Seven?” I started to get out of bed, but remembered I was buck naked. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“How many people does it take to look at broken bush?”

“You were out there? Did you find anything?”

“Yes. A vehicle definitely went off Jordan Field Road, fifty meters from Rifle Range Road. Left ruts, though the tread marks are washed out, but there’s broken bush, including a freshly skinned pine tree.” I sipped on the coffee as I tried to clear my head. Cynthia was dressed in blue jeans and a white tennis shirt, and looked good. I asked, “Skinned a tree?”

“Yes. So I went over to Jordan Field and woke up poor Cal. He and another guy went back with me to the place, and cut off the damaged section of the tree.”

“And?”

“Well, we went back to the hangar, and under magnification we could see flecks of paint. Cal is sending the wood sample to Fort Gillem. I told him we suspected a black Jeep Cherokee, and he says that they can confirm that with the manufacturer, or through their on-file samples of car paint.”

“Right. And we’ll find the scrape on Mrs. Kent’s Jeep.”

“I hope so. Then we’ll have the evidence we need to support your reconstruction of Kent’s movements.”

“Right.” I yawned and cleared my throat. “Unfortunately, if the paint is from a black Jeep Cherokee, it only proves that a black Jeep Cherokee scraped that tree. Still, it settles it in my mind.”

“Me, too.”

I finished the coffee and put the mug on the nightstand. “I wanted to be woken. Did you try to wake me?”

“No. You looked dead.”

“Well… okay. Good job.”

“Thanks. I also took your boots to Cal Seiver, and he matched your prints to unidentified plaster casts and was able to post your prints on his chart.”

“Thank you. Am I a suspect?”

“Not yet. But Cal did need to disqualify your prints.”

“Did you polish my boots?”

She ignored this and said, “Cal’s got a computer program from Fort Gillem, and he’s programming the computer in the hangar to show the footsteps of each identified and unidentified person. I gave Cal a complete briefing on what we think happened that night.” She stood and went to the window. “Rain stopped. Sun’s out. Good for the crops. Good for the funeral.”

I noticed a sheet of paper on the bed and picked it up. It was the computer printout of Ann Campbell’s letter to Mrs. Kent. It began: “My dear Mrs. Kent, I’m writing you regarding a situation that has developed between your husband and me.” The letter ended: While I respect your husband professionally, I have no personal interest in him. I would suggest that he seek counseling, alone or with you, and that perhaps he should seek a transfer, or ask for a leave of absence. My concern is for his career, his reputation, my reputation, and the avoidance of any appearance of impropriety within my father’s command. Yours very truly, Ann Campbell. I said aloud, “Impropriety within my father’s command.” I almost laughed, and Cynthia turned around and commented, “She had balls. I’ll give her that.”

I threw the letter on the nightstand. “I’m sure Kent saw the original of this, and it freaked him out. Anyway, did Cal hear from the footprint guy in Oakland?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay, I’m going to rise and shine, and I’m naked.”

Cynthia threw me my robe and turned back to the window. I got out of bed and into the robe and went into the bathroom. I washed my face and lathered up.

The phone rang in my room, and Cynthia took it. I couldn’t hear much over the running water, but a minute later, Cynthia stuck her head in the door while I was shaving and said, “That was Karl.”

“What did he want?”

“He wanted to know if he’d rung the wrong room.”

“Oh…”

“He’s in Atlanta. He’ll be here by 1000 hours.”

“Call him back and tell him we’re having tornados.”

“He’s on his way.”

“Great.” I finished shaving and began brushing my teeth. Cynthia went back to my room. As I turned on the shower, I heard the phone ringing in her room. I didn’t think she could hear it, so I looked into my room, but she was on my phone. So, thinking it was official and important, I went into her room and picked it up. “Hello?”

A male voice inquired, “Who’s this?”

I replied, “Who are you?”

“This is Major Sholte. What are you doing in my wife’s room?”

Good question. I could have said the clerk rang the wrong room, I could have said a lot of things, but I said, “Basically, I’m doing what I did in Brussels.”

“What? Who the hell… Brenner? Is this Brenner?”

“At your service, Major.”

“You bastard. You’re dead meat. You know that, Brenner? You’re dead meat.”

“You had your chance in Brussels. You only get one chance.”

“You son-of-a-bitch—”

“Ms. Sunhill is not here. May I take a message?”

“Where is she?”

“In the shower.”

“You bastard.”

Why was this guy getting so bent up if they were getting a divorce and he had a girlfriend? Well, men are funny, and they still feel proprietary toward their wives, even when they’re finalizing a divorce. Right? No, something was not right, and I had the distinct feeling I’d made a big boo-boo.

Major Sholte said to me, “Your ass is grass, Brenner, and I’m the fucking Grim Reaper.”

Interesting metaphor. I asked him, “Are you and Cynthia in the process of a divorce?”

“Divorce? Who the fuck told you that? You put that bitch on the phone.”

“Trial separation?”

“Put her on the goddamned phone. Now!”

“Hold on.” I laid the phone on the bed and thought about things. Life really sucks sometimes, then it gets better and you get optimistic again, and your heart lightens up a little and you get a little spring back in your step, then somebody pulls the rug out and you’re on your ass once more. I picked up the phone and said, “I’ll have her call you back.”

“You fucking well better, you rat-fucking, mother-fucking—”

I hung up and went back into the common bathroom. I slipped off my robe and got into the shower.

Cynthia stood in the doorway and called out over the water, “I phoned the Psy-Ops School and confirmed that Colonel Moore spent the night there. I left a message for him to meet us at the provost office in an hour. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“I laid out your uniform. We should wear our uniforms to the service.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m going to change into uniform.”

“Okay.”

I could see her through the glass, walking across the bathroom into her own room. Her door closed, and I shut off the shower and got out.

By 0800 hours, we were dressed in the A uniform, and we were in my Chevy Blazer, pulling up to the provost building. Cynthia asked, “Is something bothering you?”

“No.”

I had another cup of coffee in our office and went through phone messages and memos. Colonel Moore showed up looking a bit ragged, but dressed in his A uniform for the funeral. He had acquired a pair of dress shoes somewhere. Cynthia offered him a seat. Without preliminaries, I said to him, “Colonel, we have reason to suspect that Colonel Kent murdered Ann Campbell.”

He seemed surprised, almost stunned, and didn’t reply.

I asked him, “Does it fit?”

He thought about that for a long moment, then replied, “He was becoming a problem, but…”

“What did Ann say to you about him?”

“Well… that he was calling her at all hours, that he wrote her letters, dropped in on her unexpectedly at home and in the office.”

And so on. I asked him, “On the night she was murdered, when you called her at Post Headquarters, did she say he’d been around to see her or that he’d called her?”

He thought a moment, then answered, “As a matter of fact, she did tell me that she wouldn’t be using her BMW that night, which was the original plan. She told me to look for a humvee instead. She said that Bill Kent was annoying her again and that she’d be less conspicuous in a humvee, and that she wanted him to see her car in the headquarters lot all night. This presented a problem because her car had a wired-in phone, and I had a portable phone, and we intended to stay in touch as she drove out to the range. But it wasn’t a major problem, and she drove out with the humvee and we rendezvoused on schedule.”

Cynthia asked him, “Did she mention Kent when you met?”

“No…”

“Did she mention that she’d been followed?”

“No… Well, she said she saw one vehicle behind her, but it turned off toward Jordan Field.” He added, “She felt that everything was all right, and I placed the call to her father on my portable phone.”

Cynthia said, “Then you went out on the rifle range?”

“Yes.”

“After you were done, you waited by the latrine shed to be sure it went as planned.”

“Yes.”

“Did it occur to you,” Cynthia asked, “that Colonel Kent might be a likely person to come on the scene?”

He pondered that a moment, then replied, “I suppose it crossed my mind. He seemed to be hounding her.”

“And it never occurred to you that he did follow her and possibly murdered her?”

“Well… now that I think about it—”

I said, “You’re some sharp detective, Colonel.”

He seemed put off by that and replied, “I thought it was the general who… Well, I didn’t know what to think. My first thought when I heard she’d been murdered was that her father had done it… but it also occurred to me that her father had simply left her there, and some other person… some maniac… happened along… I just never thought in terms of Kent…”

“Why not?” I asked.

“He… he’s the provost… a married man… he loved her… but, yes, now that you mention it, it does fit. I mean, from a psychological point of view, he had become obsessed and irrational. Ann could no longer control him.”

“Ann,” I pointed out, “had created a monster.”

“Yes.”

“Did she understand that?”

“On one level. But she wasn’t used to dealing with men she couldn’t control. Except her father, and perhaps Wes Yardley. In retrospect, she didn’t pay enough attention to Bill Kent. She misjudged.”

“She failed Abnormal Psych 101.”

He didn’t respond.

“Okay, what I want you to do is go back to your office and write it out.”

“Write what?”

“Everything. A full account of your involvement in this matter. Deliver it to me at the chapel after the service. You have almost two hours. Type fast. Don’t mention a word of this to anyone.”

Colonel Moore got up and left, looking, I thought, like a faint shadow of the man I’d met just the other day.

Cynthia commented, “This case looked hard, and we all worked hard, but the answer was literally under our nose the whole time.”

“That’s why it was hard to see it.”

Cynthia made small talk for a few minutes, and I made big silences. She kept looking at me.

To avoid any unpleasantness, I picked up the phone and called Colonel Fowler at Post Headquarters. He took my call immediately, and I said to him, “Colonel, I’d like you to take the shoes that you and Mrs. Fowler wore out to rifle range six and destroy them. Secondly, get your story straight with General Campbell. You never went out to the range. Third, get Mrs. Fowler in a car or on a plane immediately after the funeral.”

He replied, “I appreciate what you’re saying, but I feel I have to reveal my involvement in this.”

“Your commanding officer’s wish is that you don’t do that. A general’s wish is his command.”

“It’s an illegal command.”

“Do everyone a favor—yourself, your wife, your family, the Army, me, the Campbells—forget it. Think about it.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Question—did you take her West Point ring?”

“No.”

“Was there a bayonet stuck in the ground when you got there?”

“Not in the ground. The handle was stuck in her vagina.”

“I see.”

“I removed it and disposed of it.”

“Where?”

“I threw it off the Chickasaw River Bridge.” He added, “I suppose you’d have liked to check it for fingerprints.”

“I would have, yes.” But in fact, Kent would not leave a print behind.

“I apologize. It was a gut reaction.”

“Lot of that going around.”

“This is a mess, Brenner. We’ve all made a mess of things.”

“Shit happens.”

“Not to me it doesn’t. Not until she got here two years ago. But you know what? It was our fault, not hers.”

“I tend to agree.” I added, “I may make an arrest this afternoon.”

“Who?”

“Can’t say. I’ll see you at the service.”

“Fine.”

I hung up. Just when you think you’ve got your ration of shit-happens for the day, someone heaps on another helping. In this case, an MP major named Doyle was the bearer of the shit. He came into the office and glanced at Cynthia, then addressed me. “Mister Brenner, you signed a release order for a Staff Sergeant Dalbert Elkins. Correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We found him quarters at the MP company barracks.”

“Fine.” Who gives a shit?

“Under the terms of his restriction, he was to sign into the company dayroom every three hours.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“He missed his first sign-in at 0800 hours.”

Jesus H. Christ. “What?”

“And no one has seen him since.”

Cynthia looked at me, then looked away.

Major Doyle informed me, “We’ve put out an all-points bulletin for his arrest, and notified the Midland police, the county police, and the Georgia state police.” He added, “The CID commander, Major Bowes, demands a full report from you on this matter.” Major Doyle smiled unpleasantly and said, “You blew it.” He turned and left.

I stared at nothing in particular for a while. Cynthia finally spoke. “That happened to me once.”

I didn’t reply.

“But it happened to me only once. So you can’t get cynical about human nature.”

Wanna bet? Timing being everything, this was the time to mention her husband’s phone call, but Karl Hellmann’s timing was not good, and he picked that moment to show up.

Cynthia and I stood as the big man walked into the little office. He nodded perfunctorily, glanced around, then we all shook hands. Cynthia, being the lowest-ranking person in the room, offered him her desk chair, which he took, while Cynthia took the spare chair, and I sat at my desk.

Karl was wearing his green dress uniform, as we were, and he threw his hat on the desk.

Like me, Karl was once an infantryman, and we both served in Vietnam at about the same time. Our uniforms sported basically the same awards and decorations, including the Bronze Star for valor and the coveted Combat Infantryman’s Badge. Being products of the same crucible, and both being middle-aged, we usually dispense with some of the formalities. But I wasn’t in a Karl mood that morning, so I intended to stick to courtesies and protocols. I said, “Coffee, sir?”

“No, thank you.”

Karl is a good-looking man with a full head of grayish-black hair, firm jaw, and blue eyes. Women, however, don’t find him sexy. It may be his manner, which is stiff and formal. In fact, he’s rather tight-assed, and if you put a lump of coal up his butt, he’d produce a diamond within a week. That aside, he’s a pro.

We exchanged pleasantries for three seconds, then Karl said to me in his slight accent, “I understand our star witness in the arms sale case has become a fugitive.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you recall your line of reasoning in releasing him?”

“Not at the moment, no, sir.”

“One wonders why a man who has been offered immunity would decide to commit yet another felony and flee.”

“One does wonder.”

“Did you explain to him that he had immunity?”

“Yes, sir, but apparently not very well.”

“It’s a problem, you know, Paul, dealing with stupid people. You project your own intelligence and rationality onto a person who is a complete idiot, and he lets you down. He’s ignorant and frightened, and he is a slave to his instincts. The jail door opens, and he runs. Quite understandable.”

I cleared my throat. “I thought I had reassured him and won his trust and confidence.”

“Of course you did. That’s what he wanted you to think when he was on the other side of the bars. They’re cunning.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Perhaps you’ll consult me the next time, before you release a prisoner in a major felony case.”

“He was actually a witness, sir.”

Karl leaned toward me and said, “He had not one fucking iota of understanding regarding the difference. You put him in jail, you let him out, he ran.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Article 96 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice deals with the improper releasing of a prisoner through neglect or design. You’re in trouble.”

“Yes, sir.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Now, tell me, what are the most recent developments here?”

Well, to begin with, I never got the chance to sleep with Cynthia, she lied to me about her husband, I’m crushed and pissed, I still can’t get Ann Campbell out of my mind, the provost marshal down the hall is probably a murderer, dopey Dalbert beat feet, and I’m not having a good day.

Hellmann turned to Cynthia. “Perhaps you’ll speak to me.”

“Yes, sir.” Cynthia began by discussing forensic evidence, Grace Dixon’s computer discoveries, the Yardley boys, and the unfortunate involvements of Major Bowes, Colonel Weems, and other staff officers.

Karl listened.

Cynthia then reported an edited version of our conversations with General Campbell, Mrs. Campbell, Colonel Fowler, Mrs. Fowler, and Colonel Moore. I was barely listening, but I did note that she did not mention Colonel and Mrs. Fowler’s precise role in the case, or Ann Campbell’s basement room, and neither did she mention Bill Kent at all. This is exactly the way I would have handled it, and I was impressed with how much she’d learned in the last two days. Cynthia said to Karl, “So you see, it all had to do with revenge, retribution, a perverted experiment in psychological operations, and what happened at West Point a decade ago.”

Karl nodded.

As an afterthought, Cynthia did mention Friedrich Nietzsche, in the context of Ann Campbell’s personal philosophy. Karl seemed interested in that, and I realized that Cynthia was playing to her audience.

Karl sat back and pondered, his fingers pressed together like some great sage about to provide the answer to Life. Cynthia concluded, “Paul has done an outstanding job, and it’s been an education working with him.”

Barf.

Karl sat motionless for a full minute, and it occurred to me that the great sage didn’t have a fucking clue. Cynthia was trying to catch my eye, but I refused to look at her.

Finally, Colonel Hellmann spoke. “Nietzsche. Yes. In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man.”

I asked, “Is that Nietzsche, sir, or your personal opinion?”

He looked at me in a way that suggested the ice under me was getting thinner. He said to Cynthia, “Very good. You’ve exposed motives, massive corruption, and great secrets here.”

“Thank you.”

He looked at me, then at his watch. “Should we be going to the chapel?”

“Yes, sir.”

He stood and we stood. We took our hats and headed out.

We all got into my Blazer, with Karl in the honorary position in the rear. As I drove toward the post chapel, Karl finally asked, “Do you know who did it?”

I replied, “I think so.”

“Would you care to share that with me?”

What’s it worth to you? I replied, “We have some circumstantial evidence, some testimony, and some forensic evidence that points to Colonel Kent.” I looked into my rearview mirror and got my first thrill of the day when I saw Karl’s eyes widen. The rock jaw did not drop, however. “The provost marshal,” I prompted.

Karl recovered and asked, “Are you both prepared to make a formal charge?”

Thank you for the ace, Karl. I replied, “No. I’m turning over our evidence to the FBI.”

“Why?”

“It needs some research and development.”

“Tell me what you know.”

I pulled into the parking field of the post chapel, a big Georgian brick structure, suitable for military weddings, funerals, Sunday worship, and solitary prayer before shipping out to a combat zone. We got out of the Blazer and stood in the hot sun. The lot was nearly full, and people were parking on the road and on the grass.

Cynthia took a piece of paper out of her handbag and handed it to Karl. She said, “That was in Ann Campbell’s computer. It’s a letter to Mrs. Kent.”

Karl read the letter, nodded, and handed it back to Cynthia. “Yes, I can understand Colonel Kent’s anger and humiliation at having his wife receive such a letter. But would that make him kill?” Just then, Colonel William Kent himself walked by with a wave of the hand. Cynthia informed Karl, “That is Colonel Kent.”

Karl watched him walk to the chapel. Karl observed, “He doesn’t look haunted.”

“He vacillates,” Cynthia replied. “I think he’s on the verge of convincing himself that what he did was right, then telling us the same thing.”

Karl nodded. “Yes, that’s the great secret of this job—not confronting a criminal with the moral question of right or wrong, but giving him the opportunity to explain his reasons.” He asked Cynthia, “What other evidence do you have?”

Cynthia gave him a quick rundown of the diary entries, the critical bootprint, the Jeep in the pine brush, and our conversations with the suspect. She concluded, “He had motive, opportunity, and probably the will to act, at least at that moment. He’s not a killer, but he’s a cop, and therefore no stranger to homicide. He also had good cover, being on the inside of the investigation, and was able to manipulate it and control the evidence—he let the crime scene become polluted, for instance—but his alibi for the time of the murder is weak or nonexistent, as is often the case with crimes of opportunity.”

Hellmann nodded as Cynthia spoke. Then the great one delivered his opinion. “If you’re right, and you can prove it, then you’ve ended this case before it engulfs everyone. If you’re wrong, this case will eat you both, and destroy many more lives while the investigation continues.”

Cynthia replied, “Yes, sir, that’s why we worked day and night. But it’s really out of our hands now.” She looked at me, then continued, “Paul is correct in that we don’t want to recommend formal charges. There’s nothing in that for us, for you, for the CID, or the Army.”

Karl contemplated the chess board in his head, then turned to me. “You’re uncharacteristically quiet.”

“I have nothing to say, Colonel,” I replied, using his rank to remind him that the buck stopped at his silver eagle.

“Are you upset over your prisoner fleeing?”

“He was a witness, and, no, I’m not.”

Cynthia chimed in, “He’s been sulky all morning. Even before you got here.” She smiled at me, but I stone-faced it, and her smile faded. I really wanted to be out of here, out of Hadley, out of the hot sun, out of Georgia, and out of touch. I said, “We won’t get a seat.” I turned toward the chapel and walked.

Karl and Cynthia followed. Karl spoke to Cynthia. “You should give him a last opportunity to confess.”

“You mean Paul?” she said playfully.

“No, Ms. Sunhill. Colonel Kent.”

“Right. We’ve considered that.”

“People confess to the most heinous crimes, you know, if you put them in the right mood. Murderers who have killed a loved one carry an enormous burden, and they want to share the weight with someone. Unlike professional criminals, they have no partners in crime, no confidants, and they are isolated, without a living soul to tell of the greatest secret of their life.”

“Yes, sir,” Cynthia replied.

Karl said, “Do you think it was simple expediency that made Colonel Kent call you and Paul regarding this crime? No. It was an unconscious desire to be found out.”

And on he went, saying things I already knew, and making the pitch for us to confront the suspect, who, though professionally damaged, was a high-ranking and powerful man with a lot of resources left to him. I sort of pictured myself in front of a board of inquiry, trying to make a case for Colonel William Kent as murderer, while seven steely-eyed officers sat there waiting to eat my ass for lunch. But sucker that I was, I was willing to give it a shot. However, I was going to keep Karl hanging until he ordered me to confront Kent.

I looked toward the chapel and noticed that the ceremonies relating to the receiving of the casket were completed; the honorary pallbearers were not on the steps, and, in fact, the old caisson, taken from the museum, did not have the casket on it.

The news media, according to a memo I’d seen on my desk, were limited to a pool of selected print journalists, and the only photographers present were two from the Army Public Information Office. The memo, signed by Colonel Fowler, had suggested not giving direct quotes to the journalists.

We climbed the steps and went into the narthex, where a dozen men and women stood conversing in hushed funereal tones. We all signed the guest book, and I walked into the dark chapel, which was no cooler than outside, and noted that the pews were nearly all full. The funeral of the commanding officer’s daughter was not a command-attendance situation, but only a moron would fail to show up here, or at least at the ceremonies later.

In fact, not all of Fort Hadley’s officers and spouses, or Midland’s civilian dignitaries, could fit into the chapel, which held about five or six hundred people, but I was certain that there were people already assembling at Jordan Field for the final send-off.

The organ was playing softly in the choir loft above us, and we stood in the center aisle a moment, each of us, I think, trying to decide if we should walk to the casket, which sat on a catafalque at the foot of the altar steps. Finally, I began the long walk, and Cynthia and Karl followed.

I approached the flag-draped and half-opened casket on the left, stopped, and looked down at the deceased.

Ann Campbell looked peaceful, as Kent had indicated, her head resting on a pink satin pillow, and her long hair sort of fanned out around her head and face. I noted that she had more makeup on in death than she’d probably ever worn in life.

They had dressed her in the evening white uniform that a female officer would wear to formal functions, and it was an appropriate choice, I thought, the white waistcoat with gold braid and the white ruffled blouse, making her appear gossamery, if not virginal. She wore her medals on her left breast, and her sheathed West Point saber was laid on her body so that her clasped hands, which might hold a cross or rosary beads depending on one’s religion, held, instead, the hilt of her sword at her midriff. The sheathed blade disappeared beneath the half-lid of the casket.

It was quite a striking sight, to be honest: the beautiful face, the golden hair, the gold braid, the glittering brass and steel of the saber, and the snow-white uniform against the pink satin lining of the casket.

I took all this in very quickly, of course, no more than five seconds, then, good Catholic that I am, I made the sign of the cross and moved around the casket and started down the center aisle.

I saw the Campbells in the first two rows on the right: the general, Mrs. Campbell, a young man whom I recognized from the family album in Ann Campbell’s house as their son, and various other family members, old and young, all wearing black outfits and black mourning bands, which are still customary in the military.

I avoided eye contact with any of them and proceeded up the aisle slowly until my coterie caught up with me.

We found three seats together in the same pew that held Major Bowes, whom I knew only from his name tag, and a woman I presumed to be Mrs. Bowes. Bowes nodded to Colonel Hellmann, who failed to acknowledge the presence of an adulterer and jackass. Mrs. Bowes, incidentally, was rather attractive, proving once again that men are basically pigs.

Despite having just viewed the mortal remains of a young woman, I was feeling slightly better, as people do who consider their position relative to less fortunate souls, such as people with big career problems, like Bowes, murder suspects, like Kent, or married people in general, and the sick, dying, and dead.

The chaplain, Major Eames, wearing only the green dress uniform with no ecclesiastic vestments, came to the pulpit, and a hush fell over the crowd. Major Eames began, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the presence of God to bid farewell to our sister, Ann Campbell.”

A lot of people sobbed.

I whispered to Karl, “The chaplain fucked her, too.”

Karl’s jaw dropped this time. The day still had possibilities.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FIVE

The simple service proceeded with prayers, organ music, and a few hymns. Senior military officers are great churchgoers, of course; it comes with the territory of God and Country. But they tend to be nondenominational, which is safe, gray, and nondescript, like most of their careers.

The upside of this at military weddings and funerals is that you get to pick and choose the best aspects of each denomination’s liturgy, hymns, and prayers, and you can make it short. I can tell you from experience that a Catholic funeral mass can be long and arduous enough to kill off a few of the old folks.

Anyway, at the designated time, Colonel Fowler mounted the lectern to deliver the eulogy.

Colonel Fowler acknowledged the presence of family, friends, fellow officers, coworkers, and Midland dignitaries. He said, “In our chosen profession, more than in any other profession, we see and hear of the untimely deaths of young men and women. We do not grow accustomed to death, and we do not become hardened to death, but rather we cherish life more because we know and accept the fact that Army life puts us in harm’s way. When we took the oath, we fully understood that we could be called upon to risk our lives in the defense of our country. Captain Ann Campbell understood that when she accepted her commission from the Military Academy, she understood that when she went to the Gulf, and she understood that when, at an hour when most people are safe in their homes, she volunteered to go out and see that all was secure at Fort Hadley. This was a completely voluntary act, not specifically related to her duties, but the sort of thing that Ann Campbell did without being told.”

I listened, and it occurred to me that, if I didn’t know better, I’d buy it. Here was a gung-ho young female officer volunteering for night duty officer, then taking the initiative to go out to check the guard and being murdered while she was doing a good deed. How sad. That’s not the way it happened, but the truth was even sadder.

Colonel Fowler went on, “I’m reminded of a line from Isaiah 21:11—‘Watchman, what of the night?’ ” He repeated it,“ ‘Watchman, what of the night?’ and the watchman replied, ‘Morning is coming.’ And aren’t we all watchmen? This is our calling in life, as soldiers, to stand the watch, each day, each night, eternally vigilant so that others may sleep peacefully until morning, until the day when it pleases God to call us into His Kingdom, and we need not stand the watch, nor fear the night.”

Fowler had a good, deep speaking-voice, and his delivery was flawless. Clearly, the man could have been a preacher, or a politician, if he weren’t so obsessed with right and wrong.

I’m not a good public listener, and I tend to drift. So I drifted to Ann Campbell’s open casket, her face, the sword, and her folded hands around the hilt, and I realized what was wrong with that picture: someone had slipped a West Point ring on her finger. But was it her ring? And if it was, who had put it there? Fowler? General Campbell? Colonel Moore? Colonel Kent? Where did it come from? But did it make any difference at this point?

Colonel Fowler was still speaking, and I tuned back in.

He said, “I knew Ann as a child—a very precocious, high-spirited, and bratty child.” He smiled, and there was subdued laughter. He became serious again and continued, “A beautiful child, not only physically but spiritually beautiful, a special and gifted child of God. And all of us here who knew her and loved her…”

Fowler, smooth as he was, couldn’t slide over that double entendre, but it was only a momentary breath pause, noticed solely by those who had known her intimately and loved her well.

“… all of us will miss her deeply.”

Colonel Fowler had a lot of people sobbing now, and I could see one reason why the Campbells had asked him to deliver the eulogy. The other reason, of course, was that Colonel Fowler had not slept with the deceased, putting him on the short list of potential eulogizers. But I’m being cynical again. Fowler’s eulogy was moving, the deceased had suffered a great wrong, a wrongful and untimely death had occurred, and I was feeling like crap again.

Colonel Fowler did not mention specifically how she died, but did say, “The battlefield, in modern military jargon, is described as a hostile environment, which it most certainly is. And if you expand the meaning of battlefield to include any place where any soldier is standing and serving, then we can truthfully say that Ann died in battle.” He looked out over the crowd and concluded, “And it is only proper and fitting that we remember her not as a victim, but as a good soldier who died doing her duty.” He looked at the casket and said, “Ann, that’s how we’ll remember you.” Colonel Fowler came down from the lectern, stopped at the casket, saluted, then took his seat.

The organ began playing, and the service continued for a few more minutes. Chaplain Eames led the mourners in the Twenty-third Psalm, everyone’s favorite, and concluded with a benediction that ended with “Go in peace.”

The organist played “Rock of Ages,” and everyone stood.

All in all a good service, as funeral services go.

The eight honorary pallbearers stood in the front left pew and filed into the aisle at the foot of the casket, while the six casket bearers took up their positions on either side of the casket. I noted that the six casket bearers were all young male lieutenants, picked, perhaps, for their youth and strength, or perhaps for their lack of involvement with the deceased. Even Lieutenant Elby, I noticed, whose intentions had been honorable, had been barred from carrying the casket.

Likewise, the honorary pallbearers, who would normally be high-ranking associates of the general or close personal friends of the deceased, were obviously chosen for their clean hands; they were, in fact, all female officers, including the general’s other aide, Captain Bollinger. An all-female contingent of honorary pallbearers seemed appropriate on the surface of it, but for those who understood why senior male officers had been excluded, it seemed that the general had finally gotten his way in keeping his daughter’s intimates away from her.

The eight female officers proceeded toward the chapel entrance, and the six casket bearers closed the top half of the lid, covered it with the American flag, grasped the side handles of the casket, and hefted it off the catafalque.

Chaplain Eames walked in front of the casket, and the Campbells in the rear. As is customary when the casket is in motion, everyone in the pews who was in uniform faced the body and saluted.

The chaplain led the procession to the entrance, where the eight honorary pallbearers stood at attention and saluted as the casket passed between them. At this point, the mourners began filing out.

Outside, in the hot sun, I watched as the casket bearers secured the flag-draped casket to the old wooden caisson, which was, in turn, hitched to a humvee.

Assembled on a large stretch of grass across from the chapel were the escort vehicles—staff cars and buses to transport the family, the band, the pallbearers, the firing party, and the color guard. Every veteran has the right to be buried in a national cemetery with full honors, but you only get all this hoopla if you die on active duty. If there’s a war on, however, they may bury the numerous dead overseas, or, as in Vietnam, they send them back by the planeload for reshipment to various hometowns. In any case, whether you’re a general or a private, you get the twenty-one-gun salute.

People mingled awhile, as people do, speaking to one another, to the chaplain, comforting the Campbells.

I spotted a few of the journalists, who were trying to figure out whom to interview, and I saw the Army PIO photographers discreetly taking pictures from a distance. The news stories to date had been guarded and vague, but hinted at things that I thought were best left alone.

I noticed a young man standing near the Campbells who, as I said, I recognized from the family album as the son, John. But I would have recognized him anyway. He was tall, good-looking, and had the Campbell eyes, hair, and chin.

He looked a bit lost, standing off to the side of the clan, so I went up to him and introduced myself as Warrant Officer Brenner, and said to him, “I’m investigating the circumstances of your sister’s death.”

He nodded.

We spoke a moment, I passed on my condolences, and we chatted about nothing in particular. He seemed a likable guy, well-spoken, clean-cut, and alert. In many ways, he was what we called officer material; but he had not opted for that role, either because he didn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps or because he felt his free spirit might be a hindrance. He may have been right in both cases, but, like many sons of the high and the mighty, he had not found his place in the world.

John strongly resembled his sister in appearance, and my purpose in speaking to him was not solely to express my sympathy. I said to him, “Do you know Colonel William Kent?”

He thought a moment, then replied, “Name sounds familiar. I think I met him at some parties.”

“He was a great friend of Ann’s, and I’d like you to meet him.”

“Sure.”

I led him to where Kent was standing on the sidewalk, speaking to a few of his officers, including my recent acquaintance, Major Doyle. I interrupted the conversation and said to Kent, “Colonel Kent, may I introduce Ann’s brother, John?”

They shook hands, and John said, “Yes, we did meet a few times. Thank you for coming.”

Kent seemed not able to find the words for a reply, but he glanced at me.

I said to John, “Colonel Kent, aside from being a friend of Ann’s, has been a great help in the investigation.”

John Campbell said to Kent, “Thank you. I know you’re doing all you can.”

Kent nodded.

I excused myself and left them to chat.

One could criticize the appropriateness of introducing the suspected murderer to the brother of the victim at the victim’s funeral. But if all’s fair in love and war, let me tell you, anything goes in a homicide investigation.

I felt, of course, that Bill Kent was on the edge, and anything I could do to nudge him into taking that last step into the great abyss was right and honorable.

The crowd was thinning as people made their way to their vehicles. I noticed the Yardley boys, father and son, with a woman who looked enough like them to be a blood relative of both, but who was probably Burt’s wife—and his not-too-distant relative. I suspected that there weren’t many branches on the Yardley family tree.

There were a number of other civilians present, including the town mayor and his family, but it was mostly male officers and their wives, though I’m sure some wives chose not to attend. There were no enlisted personnel present except the post’s command sergeant major, who, by tradition, represented all the enlisted men and women at certain functions such as these, where privates and sergeants could not be specifically excluded, but where their numbers might present logistical problems. Basically, there is no fraternization between officers and enlisted personnel, in life or in death.

I spotted Karl talking to Major Bowes, the about-to-be-fired CID commander, and Bowes had his heels together, nodding vigorously like a malfunctioning wind-up toy. Karl is not the kind of guy who would fire somebody on Christmas Eve, or at the person’s birthday party, or wedding, or anything like that. But he might consider it at a funeral.

Cynthia was speaking to Colonel and Mrs. Fowler and General and Mrs. Campbell, and I gave her credit for that. I always try to avoid that sort of situation, which I find awkward.

Taking stock of the known lovers, I also spotted Colonel Weems, the staff judge advocate, sans wife, and young Lieutenant Elby, who was clearly out of his depth in this situation, trying to look both sad and brave while keeping an eye on the mass of brass around him.

At the edge of the thinning crowd, I saw Warrant Officer Kiefer, dressed in her officer’s uniform now, which was the ticket of admission to this event. I went over to her, and I filled her in on the Batmobile. Despite the occasion, she seemed perky as usual, and I suspected that she was always perky. Jerk that I am, and needing some ego reinforcement, I shamelessly flirted with her.

She found this amusing and interesting, and we made indefinite plans to have drinks here, or back at Falls Church.

Cynthia tapped me on the shoulder and said, “We should be going.”

“Okay.” I said good-bye to Kiefer and walked toward the parking field.

Colonel Hellmann fell in with us, and we ran into Colonel Moore, who was obviously looking for me, a sheaf of typed papers in his hand. I introduced Moore to Hellmann, who did not acknowledge Moore’s extended hand and regarded him with a look that I never want to see directed at me.

Colonel Moore, however, was too dense to be flustered, and he said to me, “Here is the report you asked for.”

I took it, and following my commanding officer’s lead, I didn’t thank Moore, but said to him, “Please remain available today, do not speak to the FBI, and do not speak to Colonel Kent.”

I got into my Blazer and started it up. Cynthia and Karl got in after the air-conditioning got cranking. We fell in with a long line of vehicles all moving south on Chapel Road, toward Jordan Field. I said to Karl, “I promised Colonel Moore immunity if he cooperated.”

Karl, in the rear, said, “You’ve given more immunity this week than a doctor.” Fuck you, Karl.

Cynthia said, “That was a beautiful service.”

Karl asked me, “Are you certain about the chaplain?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Does everyone here know about everyone else?”

I replied, “To some extent. She was not discreet.”

Cynthia commented, “Do we have to talk about that at this time?”

I said to her, “Our commanding officer is entitled to any information he wants or needs at this time, or any other time.”

She looked out the side window and didn’t respond.

I glanced at Karl in the rearview mirror and saw that he was a bit taken aback at my curtness. I said to him, “The deceased’s West Point ring had been missing throughout the investigation, but I noticed it on her finger.”

“Really? Perhaps it’s a substitute.”

“Could be.”

Cynthia glanced at me, but didn’t say anything.

We passed Beaumont House, then, later, the Psy-Ops School, then skirted around Bethany Hill and found ourselves on Rifle Range Road.

It was noon, and the sun was so hot I could see heat ripples rising from the blacktop. I said to Colonel Hellmann, “The CID is officially relieved of this case as of now.”

“I’ve gotten us another hour as a result of my presence here, and I can get us another hour more.”

Lucky us. “That’s good,” I replied with zero enthusiasm.

I followed the long line of vehicles onto Jordan Field Road, and we passed the MP booth, where two unfortunate MP corporals were standing in the sun, saluting every car that went by.

More MPs were directing the vehicles to wide expanses of ample parking on the concrete in front of the hangars. I drove around awhile until I saw Kent’s staff car parked near hangar three. I parked close to it, and we all got out and followed the crowd to a designated assembly area. The body is usually interred at this point, of course, but in this case, the body was to be flown to Michigan for burial, and the Air Force had generously provided air transportation, a big, olive-drab C-130 that sat on the concrete apron nearby.

As I suspected, people who had not attended the chapel service had come to Jordan Field, including a hundred or so enlisted personnel in uniform, some of the curious from Midland and the surrounding area, plus veterans groups from town, and the remainder of Fort Hadley’s four hundred or so officers and spouses.

Everyone was assembled, including the band, the color guard, the firing party, and the honorary pallbearers. The drummer began beating a slow, muffled march, and the six casket bearers appeared from between two hangars wheeling the caisson to a spot near the open tailgate of the C-130. Those in uniform saluted, and those in civilian attire put their right hands over their hearts. The caisson was positioned in the patch of shade under the tail of the C-130. The drumming ceased, and everyone lowered their arms.

It was not only brutally hot, it was windless, and the flags never stirred unless one of the color guard moved the staff. The short ceremony proceeded.

The honorary pallbearers took the edges of the flag that was draped over the casket and held it waist-high over the casket as Chaplain Eames said, “Let us pray.” At the conclusion of the committal service, the chaplain intoned, “Grant her eternal rest, O Lord, and let Your perpetual light shine upon her. Amen.”

The seven-member firing party raised their rifles and fired three volleys into the air, and as the final volley trailed away, the bugler, stationed near the casket, sounded taps into the quiet air. I like this bugle call, and it is appropriate, I think, that the last call that a soldier hears at night has been chosen to be played over his or her grave to mark the beginning of the last, long sleep, and to remind those assembled that as day follows night, so will the final taps be followed by the great reveille to come.

The pallbearers folded the flag and gave it to Chaplain Eames, who presented it to Mrs. Campbell, who looked very dignified. They spoke a moment as everyone stood motionless.

It must have been the sun, I suppose, as well as the rifle volleys, the bugler, the associations with Fort Hadley and Jordan Field—but whatever it was, my mind went back to the summer of 1971, to the White Camellia Motel, of all places, a swinging spot on the highway outside of Midland, and I recalled a midnight pool party there at which no bathing suits were required. My God, I thought, how young we were, and how we stood that town on its ear—thousands of us full of hormones and alcohol. But we were not your typical carefree, callous youths with no thought of the future. Quite the opposite—the future hung over every thought, every word, every frenzied sexual encounter. Eat, drink, and be merry, we said, because the body bags were piling up at Jordan Field.

I recalled two infantry-school buddies who had been detailed to unload body bags here for a month or so. And one day, they got orders—not to Vietnam, but to Germany—and they kept reading the orders and made everyone else in the barracks read them, as if they had gotten a lawyer’s letter telling them they were heirs or titled nobility.

There appeared to be some cause-and-effect relationship between unloading bodies from Vietnam and not becoming one yourself, so, all of a sudden, hundreds of infantrymen were volunteering for the ghoul detail, hoping to get their tickets punched for Germany or some other good place. And so I unloaded bodies at Jordan Field, too, but the assumption that the Army was sensitive to the feelings of body handlers turned out to be untrue; I got my orders saying, “You are hereby ordered to report to Oakland Army Base for further assignment to Southeast Asia.” Even the Army didn’t use the “V” word.

I came back to the present, which was no less burdensome than the past. I saw the general and Mrs. Campbell speaking to a few people who had come forward, including family, the Fowlers, and the general’s aide, Captain Bollinger. The casket, I noted, was gone, and had been carried up the tailgate of the transport plane during my mental absence.

Suddenly, the four turboprops fired and exploded into action, giving off a deafening roar. Then the general saluted those around him, took Mrs. Campbell by the arm as John Campbell took her other arm, and they walked up the inclined tailgate of the aircraft. For a moment, I thought they were entering the aircraft to say a final good-bye, but then it occurred to me that they had picked this time to leave Fort Hadley for good, and to leave the Army forever. In fact, the tailgate rose up and locked into place. A ground controller signaled the pilots, and the big aircraft moved off the apron onto the taxiway.

Most everyone was surprised, I think, by this sudden departure of the Campbells on the same aircraft that was bearing their daughter’s body to Michigan. But on second thought—and it seemed as if everyone had that second thought simultaneously—it was the best thing for the Campbells, for the fort, and for the Army.

Everyone watched as the C-130 lumbered down the runway, picked up speed, then, about four thousand feet from where everyone stood, it rose off the ground, silhouetted first by the tall line of green pines, then by the blue sky. As if that were the signal everyone needed, the crowd broke up, and the color guard, firing party, band, pallbearers, and others marched in formation to the waiting buses.

Vehicles began starting up behind me, and I turned and walked toward them, Cynthia and Karl on either side of me. Cynthia was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. She said to me, “I’m not feeling very well.”

I gave her my car keys. “Sit in the air-conditioning awhile. I’ll meet you in hangar three when you’re up to it.”

“No, I’ll be all right.” She took my arm.

As the three of us walked to the vehicle, Karl said to me, “Paul, I ask that you go in for the kill now. We don’t have any time left, and we have no choice.”

“It’s true that we have no time, but I do have a choice.”

“Do I have to make this a direct order?”

“You can’t order me to do something that I think is tactically incorrect and may jeopardize the case for the FBI.”

“No, I cannot. Do you believe it’s incorrect for you to confront Kent at this time?”

“No.”

“Then?”

Cynthia said to Karl, “I’ll confront him.” She looked at me. “In the hangar, right?”

I didn’t reply.

Karl said to her, “Fine. Mr. Brenner and I will wait in the vehicle for you.”

Having shown enough petulance, I grunted, “All right, I’ll do it. I’m up to my ass in trouble anyway.”

Cynthia motioned up ahead, and I saw Kent, with two junior officers, walking toward his staff car. I said to Cynthia, “Wait ten minutes, then join me.”

I came up behind Kent and tapped him on the shoulder.

Kent turned around, and we stood there a second looking at each other. Finally, I said, “Colonel, may I see you alone?”

He hesitated, then replied, “Sure.” He dismissed his two subordinates, and we stood there on the hot concrete in front of the hangar as cars began pulling out around us.

I said, “It’s hot in the sun. Let’s go into this hangar.”

We walked side by side, as though we were colleagues, cops on the same mission, and I suppose, when all was said and done, that’s what we were.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SIX

Hangar three was slightly cooler than outside and much quieter.

Kent and I walked past Ann Campbell’s BMW and continued on toward the area where her home was laid out. I indicated an upholstered chair in her study, and Kent sat.

Cal Seiver, dressed in his class A uniform, had apparently just come from the ceremonies himself. I separated from Kent and took Seiver off to the side, and said to him, “Cal, please clear everyone out of here except Grace. I want her to print out the relevant entries in Captain Campbell’s diary.” I cocked my head toward Kent. “Then she can leave. Have her leave the disk here.”

“Okay.”

“Did you hear from the footprint guy in Oakland?”

“Yes. What it comes down to is that he can’t say for sure now. But if he had to say, he’d say that Colonel Kent’s print was made before St. John’s print.”

“Okay. And the paint flecks from the damaged tree?”

“I had the tree section helicoptered to Gillem a few hours ago. They tell me the paint is black in color and tentatively matches the type used by Chrysler for the Jeep model. Where’s the Jeep, by the way?”

“It’s probably in Colonel Kent’s garage. He lives on Bethany Hill. So why don’t you send someone there, photograph the scrape on the Jeep, and scrape off some paint for comparison.”

“Can I do that?”

“Why not?”

“I need something in writing from his immediate commander to do that.”

“His immediate commander has resigned and just flew off to Michigan. But he told me it’s okay to do whatever we have to do. Don’t get civilian on me, Cal. This is the Army.”

“Right.”

“Can you demonstrate to Colonel Kent and me your footprint graphics on the monitor screen?”

“Sure can.”

“Good. Kent’s print definitely came first.”

“Understood.” He glanced at Kent sitting in Ann Campbell’s study, then said to me, “Is this it? The bust?”

“Could be.”

“If you think it’s him, go for it.”

“Right. And if he slaps the cuffs on me and takes me to the lockup, will you visit me?”

“No, I’ve got to get back to Gillem. But I’ll write.”

“Thanks. Also, tell the MPs outside to keep the FBI out while I’m in here.”

“Done. Good luck.” He slapped me on the shoulder and walked off.

I rejoined Kent and sat on the couch. I said to Kent, “We’re tying up some loose ends before the FBI gets here.”

He nodded, then commented, “I understand that your witness in the arms sales case beat feet.”

“You win some, you lose some.”

“How about this one?”

“This one’s a squeaker. Clock ticking, FBI massing, only one suspect.”

“Who’s that?”

I stood and took off my jacket, exposing my shoulder holster with the Glock 9mm. Kent did the same, exposing his shoulder holster with a .38 Police Special, sort of like show me yours, and I’ll show you mine. That out of the way, we sat, loosened our ties, and he asked again, “Who’s the suspect?”

“Well, that’s what I want to speak to you about. We’re waiting for Cynthia.”

“Okay.”

I looked around the hangar. The remainder of the forensic team were leaving, and I saw Grace at the PC, printing out.

I glanced across the hangar toward the personnel door but did not see Cynthia yet. Despite my current mood regarding her, she deserved to be in on the end, whatever the end was to be. I knew that Karl would distance himself from this—not out of a normal instinct to cover his ass if it went badly, but out of a respect for me and my work. Karl never micromanaged, and he never took credit from the investigators in the field. On the other hand, he didn’t deal very well with failure, especially if it was someone else’s failure.

Kent said, “I’m glad that’s over.”

“We all are.”

He asked me, “Why did you want me to meet John Campbell?”

“I thought you might like to say something comforting to him.”

Kent did not respond to that.

I noticed that the refrigerator in Ann Campbell’s kitchen had been plugged into an extension cord, and I walked through the invisible walls, opened the refrigerator, and saw that it was filled with beer and soft drinks. I took three cans of Coors and carried them back into the study, giving one to Kent.

We popped them and drank. Kent said, “You’re off the case now. Right?”

“I’ve been handed a few more hours.”

“Lucky you. Do they pay overtime in the CID?”

“Yes, they do. Double time after the first twenty-four hours of each day, triple that on Sundays.”

He smiled, then informed me, “I have a pile of work back in my office.”

“This won’t take long.”

He shrugged and finished his beer. I gave him the extra one, and he opened it. He said, “I didn’t know that the Campbells were leaving on the aircraft.”

“Took me by surprise, too. But it was a smart move.”

“He’s finished. He could have been the next vice-president, maybe president one day. We were ready for a general again.”

“I don’t know much about civilian politics.” I saw Grace put the printouts and floppy disk on the table beside her. She got up, waved to me, then headed out. Cal went over to the PC and put his footprint graphic program in and began fooling around with it.

Kent asked me, “What are they doing?”

“Trying to figure out who did it.”

“Where’s the FBI?”

“Probably crowded around the door outside waiting for my clock to run out.”

“I don’t enjoy working with the FBI,” Kent commented. “They don’t understand us.”

“No, they don’t. But none of them slept with the deceased.”

The door opened, and Cynthia appeared. She came into the study and exchanged greetings with Kent. I got her an RC Cola from the refrigerator and another beer for Kent. We all sat. Kent, at this point, began to look uneasy.

Cynthia said, “It was very sad. She was young… I felt awful for her parents and her brother.”

Kent did not respond.

I said to him, “Bill, Cynthia and I have turned up some things that are disturbing us and that we think need some explaining.”

He drank more of his beer.

Cynthia said, “First of all, there’s this letter.” She took the letter from her bag and handed it to Kent.

He read it, or actually didn’t read it, since he probably knew it by heart, and handed it back to Cynthia.

She said, “I could see how you’d be disturbed by that. I mean, here was a woman who was giving it out all over post, and the one person who cared for her is the person who she causes trouble for.”

He seemed a bit more uncomfortable and took a long hit on his beer. Finally he asked, “What makes you think I cared for her?”

Cynthia replied, “Just intuition. I think you cared for her, but she was too self-absorbed and disturbed to respond to your concern and honest feelings for her.”

A homicide cop has to speak badly of the dead in front of the suspect, of course. The murderer doesn’t want to hear that he killed a paragon of virtue, a child of God, as Colonel Fowler had described Ann Campbell. You don’t completely remove the moral question of right and wrong, as Karl suggested; you just cast the question in a different light and suggest to the suspect that what he did was understandable.

But Bill Kent was no idiot, and he saw where this was going, so he said nothing.

Cynthia continued, “We also have her diary entries regarding each and every sexual encounter she had with you.”

I added, “They’re over there near the computer.”

Cynthia went to the computer desk and came back with the printouts. She sat in front of Kent on the coffee table and began reading. The descriptions were, of course, explicit, but not really erotic. They were the sort of thing you’d read in a clinical study; there was no mention of love or emotion, as you’d expect in a diary, just a cataloging of the sex that transpired. Certainly, this was embarrassing to Bill Kent, but it was also an affirmation that Ann Campbell thought no more of him than she did of her vibrator. I could see in his face that he was getting angry, which is the least controllable of human emotions, and the one that invariably leads to self-destruction.

Kent stood and said, “I don’t have to listen to this.”

I stood also. “I think you should. Please sit down. We really need you here.”

He seemed to be deciding whether to stay or go, but it was an act. The most important thing in his life was happening here and now, and, if he left, it would happen without him.

With feigned reluctance, he sat, and I sat.

Cynthia continued reading as if nothing had happened. She found a particularly kinky entry and read, “ ‘Bill has really gotten into sexual asphyxia now after resisting it for so long. His favorite is putting a noose around his neck and hanging from a spike on the wall while I give him a blow job. But he also likes to tie me to the bed, which he did tonight, and tightening the rope around my neck while he uses the big vibrator on me. He’s become good at it, and I have intense and multiple orgasms.’ ” Cynthia looked up at Kent for a moment, then flipped through the pages.

Kent seemed no longer angry, nor embarrassed, nor uncomfortable. He seemed, in fact, sort of far away, as if he were remembering those better days, or looking into a bad future.

Cynthia read the last entry, the one that Grace had read to us over the phone. “ ‘Bill is becoming possessive again. I thought we solved that problem. He showed up here tonight when Ted Bowes was here. Ted and I hadn’t gone downstairs yet, and Bill and he had a drink in the living room, and Bill was nasty to him and pulled rank on him. Finally, Ted left, and Bill and I had words. He says he’s prepared to leave his wife and resign his commission if I promise to live with him or marry him or something. He knows why I do what I do with him and the other men, but he’s starting to think there’s more to it with us. He’s pressing me, and I tell him to stop. Tonight, he doesn’t even want sex. He just wants to talk. I let him talk, but I don’t like what he’s saying. Why do some men think they have to be knights in shining armor? I don’t need a knight. I am my own knight, I am my own dragon, and I live in my own castle. Everyone else are props and bit players. Bill is not very cognitive. He doesn’t understand, so I don’t try to explain. I did tell him I’d consider his offer, but in the meantime, would he only come here with an appointment? This put him into a rage, and he actually slapped me, then ripped off my clothes and raped me on the living room floor. When he was done, he seemed to feel better, then left in a sulk. I realize he could be dangerous, but I don’t care, and, in fact, of all of them, he’s the only one except for Wes who has actually threatened me or hit me, and it’s the only thing that makes Bill Kent interesting.’ ”

Cynthia put the papers down, and we all sat there. I asked Kent, “You raped her right over there on the living room floor?” I nodded toward the next room.

Kent wasn’t answering questions. But he did say, “If your purpose is to humiliate me, you’re doing a fine job of it.”

I replied, “My purpose, Colonel, is to find out who murdered Ann Campbell, and, not least of all, to find out why.”

“Do you think I… that I know something I’m not telling?”

“Yes, we think so.” I picked up the remote control and turned on the TV and the VCR. Ann Campbell’s face came into focus, in the middle of a lecture. I said to Kent, “Do you mind? This woman fascinates me, as I’m sure she fascinated you and others. I need to see her every once in a while. It helps.”

Captain Ann Campbell was speaking. “The moral question arises concerning the use of psychology, which is usually a healing science, as a weapon of war.” Ann Campbell took the microphone from the lectern and walked toward the camera. She sat on the floor with her legs dangling over the edge of the stage and said, “I can see you guys better now.”

I glanced at Kent, who was watching closely, and, if I could judge his feelings by my own, I guessed that he wished she were alive and in this very room so that he could speak to her and touch her.

Ann Campbell continued her talk about the morality of psychological operations, and about the wants, needs, and fears of human beings in general. She said, “Psychology is a soft weapon—it’s not a 155mm artillery round, but you can take out more enemy battalions with leaflets and radio broadcasts than with high explosives. You don’t have to kill people if you can get them to surrender to your will. It’s a lot more satisfying to see an enemy soldier running toward you with his hands on his head, dropping to his knees at your feet, than it is killing him.”

I turned off the TV and commented, “She had a certain presence, didn’t she, Bill? One of those people who keep your attention visually, verbally, and mentally. I wish I’d known her.”

Kent replied, “No, you don’t.”

“Why not?”

He took a deep breath and replied, “She was… evil.”

“Evil?”

“Yes… she was… she was one of those women… you don’t see many like that… a woman whom everyone loves, a woman who seems clean and wholesome and sweet… but who has everyone fooled. She really didn’t care about anyone or anything. I mean, she seemed like the girl next door on one level—the kind of girl most men want, but her mind was completely sick.”

I replied, “We’re starting to find that out. Can you fill us in?”

And he did, for the next ten minutes, giving us his impressions of Ann Campbell, which sometimes touched on reality, but often did not. Cynthia got him another beer.

Basically, Bill Kent was drawing up a moral indictment, the way the witch-hunters did three hundred years ago. She was evil, she possessed men’s minds, bodies, and souls, she cast spells, she pretended to worship God and tend to her labors by day, but consorted with dark forces at night. He said, “You can see by those videotapes how charming and nice she could be around men, but just read those diary pages—just read that stuff, and you can see what she was really like. I told you she was into Nietzsche—Man and Superman, the Antichrist, and all that sick crap.” He took a breath and went on. “I mean, she would go into men’s offices at night and perform sexual acts with them, then the next day barely acknowledge they were alive.”

And on he went.

Cynthia and I sat and listened and nodded. When a murder suspect speaks badly of the deceased, he’s either not the murderer, or he’s telling you why he did it.

Kent realized he was going on a bit and toned it down. But I think, sitting there in Ann Campbell’s house, so to speak, he was speaking as much to her as to us. Also, I think her image, reinforced by the videotape, was very much on his mind. Cynthia and I were setting the mood for him, and obviously on some level, he knew it. The four beers helped a bit, which is my answer to the ban on truth drugs. Works almost every time.

I stood and said, “Take a look at this.”

We all walked to the far side of the hangar where Cal Seiver sat at the computer. I said to Cal, “Colonel Kent would like to see this display.”

“Right.” Cal called up a fairly good graphic of the crime scene, including the road, the rifle range, the bleachers, and the pop-up target, but without the spread-eagled body. “Okay,” he said, “it’s about 0130 hours now, and the victim’s humvee pulls up…” A top view of a vehicle entered the screen traveling from left to right. “It stops, the victim dismounts.” Instead of a profile or top view of a woman, the screen showed only two footprints beside the humvee. “Okay, from the latrines comes Colonel Moore…” Yellow footprints appeared on the screen walking from the top, toward the humvee, then stopping. “They talk, she takes off her clothes, including her shoes and socks—we don’t see that, of course, but we see now where they leave the road and begin walking out onto the rifle range… She’s red, he’s still yellow… side by side… We picked up her bare footprints there and there, and we’re extrapolating the rest, which are blinking to show the extrapolation. Same with his. Okay?”

I glanced at Kent. “Okay?”

He stared at the screen.

Seiver continued. “Okay, they stop at that pop-up target, and she lies down…” A spread-eagled stick figure, in red, appeared on the screen at the base of the target. “We see no more of her footprints, of course, but after Moore ties her up, he leaves, and we can see where he turned and walked back to the road.” Seiver added, “Colonel, your dogs picked up his scent in the grass between the road and the latrines.”

I commented, “This is the sort of visual display that impresses a court-martial board.”

Kent said nothing.

Seiver continued, “Okay, at about 0217 hours, General Campbell shows up in his wife’s car.”

I looked at Kent, who seemed no more surprised by this revelation than by the revelation that Colonel Moore had met Ann Campbell, staked her out on the ground, and left her.

Seiver continued, “It’s a problem getting a general to give you his boots or shoes that he wore to the scene of the crime, but I suspect that he never got more than a few yards from the road and did not approach the body. Okay, they talk, and he leaves in the car.”

I said to Colonel Kent, “Are you following this?”

He looked at me, but again said nothing.

Cynthia prodded him. “Colonel, what we’re saying is that neither Colonel Moore nor General Campbell killed Ann. This was an elaborate setup, planned with military precision, sort of a psychological trap for the general. She was not meeting a lover out there, as some of us suspected, nor was she jumped by a maniac. She was getting back at her father.”

Kent did not ask for an explanation of that, but just stared ahead at the screen.

Cynthia explained, “She had been gang-raped when she was a cadet at West Point, and her father had forced her to remain silent and had conspired with high-ranking men to cover it up. Did you know any of that?”

He looked at Cynthia, but gave no indication that he understood a word of what she was saying.

Cynthia said, “She was re-creating what had happened to her at West Point to shock and humiliate her father.”

I didn’t think I wanted Kent to know all of that, but in Kent’s present state of mind, perhaps it was just as well that he did.

I said to Kent, “Did you think she was out there to act out a sexual fantasy?”

He didn’t reply.

I added, “Such as having a series of men come along to rape her?”

Finally, he replied, “Knowing her, a lot of people thought that.”

“Yes. We thought that, too, after we found that room in her basement. I guess you thought that, too, when you first saw her out there on the ground. It looked to you like an Ann Campbell script, and it was. But you weren’t reading it right.”

No response.

I said to Cal, “Go on.”

“Right. So the general leaves, then here we see this set of prints… these are your prints, Colonel… the blue—”

“No,” Kent said, “mine came later. After St. John and my MP, Casey, got there.”

“No, sir,” Cal replied, “yours came before St. John’s. See here, we have your print and St. John’s print superimposed… The plaster cast verifies that St. John stepped on your footprint. So you got there before he did. No doubt about that.”

I added, “In fact, Bill, when you got there, after the general left, Ann was alive. The general went off and got Colonel and Mrs. Fowler, and when they returned to the scene, Ann Campbell was dead.”

Kent stood absolutely motionless.

I said, “Your wife’s Jeep Cherokee, with you in it, was spotted by one of your MPs at about 0030 hours, parked in the library lot across from Post Headquarters. You were again spotted,” I lied, “driving in the direction of Rifle Range Road. We found where you turned off onto Jordan Field Road and hid the Cherokee in the bush. You left tire marks and hit a tree. We have matched the paint on the tree to your wife’s Jeep, and have seen the scrape on the Jeep. Also, we found your footprints,” I lied again, “in the drainage ditch along Rifle Range Road, heading south, toward the scene of the crime.” I added, “Do you want me to reconstruct the entire thing for you?”

He shook his head.

I said, “Given the amount of evidence—including the evidence for motive, which is the diary entries, the letter to your wife, and other evidence of your sexual involvement and obsession with the deceased—given all that, plus this forensic evidence and other evidence, I have to ask you to take a polygraph test, which we are prepared to administer now.”

Actually, we weren’t, but now or later it didn’t really matter. I said to him, “If you refuse to take the test now, I have no choice but to place you under arrest, and I will get someone in the Pentagon to order you to take the polygraph.”

Kent turned away and began walking back toward the layout of Ann Campbell’s house. I exchanged glances with Cynthia and Cal, then Cynthia and I followed.

Kent sat on an arm of an upholstered chair in the living room and looked down at the carpet for a while, staring, I suppose, at the spot where he’d raped her on the floor.

I stood in front of him and said, “You know your rights as an accused, of course, and I won’t insult you by reading them. But I’m afraid I have to take your weapon and put the cuffs on you.”

He glanced up at me, but didn’t respond.

I said, “I won’t take you to the provost building lockup, because that would be gratuitously humiliating to you. But I am going to take you to the post stockade for processing.” I added, “May I have your weapon?”

He knew it was over, of course, but like any trapped animal, he had to have a last growl. He said to me and to Cynthia, “You’ll never prove any of this. And when I’m vindicated by a court-martial board of my peers, I’ll see to it that you’re both brought up on charges of misconduct.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied. “That is your right. A trial by your peers. And if you are found not guilty, you may well decide to bring charges against us. But the evidence of your sexual misconduct is fairly conclusive. You may beat the murder charge, but you should plan on at least fifteen years in Leavenworth for gross dereliction of duty, misconduct, concealing the facts of a crime, sodomy, rape, and other violations of the punitive articles contained in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

Kent seemed to process this, then said, “You’re not playing very fair, are you?”

“How so?”

“I mean, I voluntarily told you about my involvement with her in order to help find her killer, and here you are charging me with misconduct and sexual crimes and then twisting the other evidence around to try to show that I killed her. You’re desperate.”

“Bill, cut the crap.”

“No, you cut the crap. For your information, I was out there before St. John, and when I got there, she was already dead. If you want to know what I think, I think Fowler and the general did it.”

“Bill, this is not good. Not at all.” I put my hand on his shoulder and said to him, “Be a man, be an officer and a gentleman—be a cop, for Christ’s sake. I shouldn’t even be asking you to take a lie-detector test. I should just be asking you to tell me the truth, without me having to use a lie detector, without me having to show you evidence, without me having to spend days in an interrogation room with you. Don’t make this embarrassing for any of us.”

He glanced at me, and I could see he was on the verge of crying. He looked at Cynthia to see if she noticed, which was important to him, I think.

I continued, “Bill, we know you did it, you know you did it, and we all know why. There’s a lot of extenuating and mitigating circumstances, and we know that. Hell, I can’t even stand here and look you in the eye and say to you, ‘She didn’t deserve that.’ ” Actually, I could, because she didn’t deserve it, but just as you give a condemned man any last meal he wants, so, too, you give him anything he wants to hear.

Kent fought back the tears and tried to sound angry. He shouted, “She did deserve it! She was a bitch, a fucking whore, she ruined my life and my marriage…”

“I know. But now you have to make it right. Make it right for the Army, for your family, for the Campbells, and for yourself.”

The tears were running down his cheeks now, and I knew he would rather be dead than be crying in front of me, Cynthia, and Cal Seiver, who was watching from the other side of the hangar. Kent managed to get a few words out and said, “I can’t make it right. I can’t make it right anymore.”

“Yes, you can. You know you can. You know how you can. Don’t fight this. Don’t disgrace yourself and everyone else. That’s all that’s left in your power to do. Just do your duty. Do what an officer and a gentleman would do.”

Kent stood slowly and wiped his eyes and nose with his hands.

I said, “Please hand me your weapon.”

He looked me in the eye. “No cuffs, Paul.”

“I’m sorry. I have to. Regulations.”

“I’m an officer, for Christ’s sake! You want me to act like an officer, treat me like one!”

“Start acting like one first.” I called out to Cal, “Get me a pair of handcuffs.”

Kent pulled the .38 Police Special out of his shoulder holster and shouted, “Okay! Okay! Watch this!” He put the revolver to his right temple and pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SEVEN

The human eye can distinguish fifteen or sixteen shades of gray. A computer image processor, analyzing a fingerprint, can distinguish two hundred fifty-six shades of gray, which is impressive. More impressive, however, is the human heart, mind, and soul, which can distinguish an infinite number of emotional, psychological, and moral shadings, from the blackest of black to the whitest of white. I’ve never seen either end of that spectrum, but I’ve seen a lot in between.

In truth, people are no more constant or absolute in their personalities than a chameleon is in terms of color.

The people here at Fort Hadley were no different from, no better or worse than, people I’d seen at a hundred other posts and installations around the world. But Ann Campbell was most certainly different, and I try to imagine myself in conversations with her if I’d met her when she was alive, if, for instance, I’d been assigned to investigate what was going on here at Fort Hadley. I think I would have recognized that I was not in the presence of a simple seductress, but in the presence of a unique, forceful, and driven personality. I think, too, that I could have shown her that whatever hurts other people does not make her stronger, it only increases the misery quotient for everyone.

I don’t think I would have wound up like Bill Kent, but I don’t discount the possibility, and, therefore, I’m not judging Kent. Kent judged himself, looked at what he had become, was frightened to discover that another personality lurked inside his neat, orderly mind, and he blew it out.

The hangar was filled with MPs now, and FBI men, medical personnel, plus the forensic people who had remained behind at Fort Hadley and who had thought they were almost finished with this place.

I said to Cal Seiver, “After you’re done with the body, get the carpet and furniture cleaned up and have all the household goods packed and shipped to the Campbells in Michigan. They’ll want their daughter’s things.”

“Right.” He added, “I hate to say this, but he saved everybody but me a lot of trouble.”

“He was a good soldier.”

I turned and walked the length of the hangar, past an FBI guy who was trying to get my attention, and out the door into the hot sun.

Karl and Cynthia were standing beside an ambulance, talking. I walked past them toward my Blazer. Karl came up to me and said, “I can’t say I’m satisfied with this outcome.”

I didn’t reply.

He said, “Cynthia seems to believe that you knew he was going to do that.”

“Karl, all that goes wrong is not my fault.”

“No one’s blaming you.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Well, you might have anticipated it and gotten his gun—”

“Colonel, to be perfectly honest with you, not only did I anticipate it, but I encouraged it. I did a fucking head number on him. She knows that and you know that.”

He didn’t acknowledge this because it was not what he wanted to hear or know. It wasn’t in the manual, but, in fact, giving a disgraced officer the opportunity and encouragement to kill himself was historically a time-honored military tradition in many armies of the world but never caught on in this Army and has fallen out of favor nearly everywhere. Yet, the idea, the possibility, permeates the subconscious of every officer corps who are linked by common attitudes and overblown feelings of honor. Given my choice of a court-martial for rape, murder, and sexual misconduct that I knew I couldn’t beat, or taking the .38-caliber easy way out, I might just consider the easy way. But I couldn’t picture myself in Bill Kent’s situation. Then again, neither could Bill Kent a few months ago.

Karl was saying something, but I wasn’t listening. Finally, I heard him say, “Cynthia’s very upset. She’s still shaking.”

“Comes with the job.” In fact, it’s not every day that someone blows his brains out right in front of you. Kent should have excused himself and gone into the men’s room to do it. Instead, he splattered his brains, skull, and blood all over the place, and Cynthia caught a little of it on her face. I said to Karl, “I’ve been splattered in ’Nam.” In fact, once I’d gotten hit in the head by a head. I added, helpfully, “It washes off with soap.”

Karl looked angry. He snapped, “Mister Brenner, you’re not funny.”

“May I go?”

“Please do.”

I turned and opened my car door, then said to Karl, “Please tell Ms. Sunhill that her husband called this morning, and he wants her to call him back.” I got into the Blazer, started it, and drove off.

Within fifteen minutes, I was back at the VOQ. I got out of my uniform, noticing a spot of gore on my shirt. I undressed, washed my face and hands, and changed into a sports coat and slacks, then gathered up my things, which Cynthia had laid out. I gave the room a last look and carried my luggage downstairs.

I checked out, paying a modest charge for maid and linen service, but I had to sign an acknowledgment-of-damage slip regarding my writing on the wall. I’d be billed later. I love the Army. The CQ helped me put the bags in my Blazer. He asked me, “Did you solve the case?”

“Yes.”

“Who did it?”

“Everybody.” I threw the last bag in the back, closed the hatch, and got in the driver’s seat. The CQ asked me, “Is Ms. Sunhill checking out?”

“Don’t know.”

“Do you want to leave a forwarding address for mail?”

“Nope. No one knows I’m here. Just visiting.” I put the Blazer in gear and headed out through main post, north to the MP gate, and out onto Victory Drive.

I drove past Ann Campbell’s town-house complex, then reached the interstate and got on the northbound entrance. I put a Willie Nelson tape in the deck, sat back, and drove. I would be in Virginia before dawn, and I could catch a morning military flight out of Andrews Air Force Base. It didn’t matter where the flight was going, as long as it was out of the continental United States.

My time in the Army had come to an end, and that was okay. I knew that before I’d even gotten to Fort Hadley. I had no regrets, no hesitation, and no bitterness. We serve to the best of our ability, and if we become incapable of serving, or become redundant, then we leave, or, if we’re dense, we’re asked to leave. No hard feelings. The mission comes first, and everyone and everything are subordinate to the mission. Says so in the manual.

I suppose I should have said something to Cynthia before I left, but no one was going to benefit from that. Military life is transient, people come and go, and relationships of all kinds, no matter how close and intense, are understood to be temporary. Rather than good-bye, people tend to say, “See you down the road,” or “Catch you later.”

This time, however, I was leaving for good. In a way, I felt that it was appropriate for me to leave now, to put away my sword and armor, which were getting a little rusty anyway, not to mention heavy. I had entered the service at the height of the cold war, at a time when the Army was engaged in a massive land war in Asia. I had done my duty, and gone beyond my two years of required national service, and had seen two tumultuous decades pass. The nation had changed, the world had changed. The Army was engaged now in a drawdown, which means, “Thanks for everything, good job, we won, please turn out the lights when you leave.”

Fine. This was what it was all about, anyway. It was not meant to be a war without end, though it seemed so at times. It was not meant to give employment to men and women who had few career prospects, though it did.

The American flag was being lowered on military installations all over the world, and all over the nation. Combat units were being dissolved, and their battle flags and streamers were being put into storage. Maybe someday they’d close up NATO Headquarters in Brussels. Truly, a new era was dawning, and, truly, I was happy to see it, and happier that I didn’t have to deal with it.

My generation, I think, was shaped and molded by events that are no longer relevant, and perhaps, too, our values and opinions are no longer relevant. So, even if we do have a lot of fight left in us, we’ve become, as Cynthia sort of suggested to me, anachronisms, like old horse cavalry. Good job, thanks, half pay, good luck.

But twenty years is a lot of learning, and a lot of good times. On balance, I wouldn’t have done it any differently. It was kind of interesting.

Willie was singing “Georgia on My Mind,” and I changed the tape to Buddy Holly.

I like driving, especially away from places, though I suppose if you’re driving away from a place, you have to be driving to a place. But I never see it like that. It’s always away.

A police car appeared in my rearview mirror, and I checked my speed, but I was only doing ten mph over the limit, which in Georgia means you’re obstructing the flow of traffic.

The jerk put his red flasher on and motioned me over. I pulled over to the shoulder and sat in the Blazer.

The officer got out of the police car and came over to my window, which I lowered. I saw that he was a Midland cop, and I remarked, “You’re a little far from home, aren’t you?”

“License and registration, sir.”

I showed him both, and he said, “Sir, we’re going to get off at the next exit, come around, and you’re going to follow me back to Midland.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know. Got it over the radio.”

“From Chief Yardley?”

“His orders, yes, sir.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then I have to take you in cuffs. You pick.”

“Is there a third choice?”

“No, sir.”

“All right.” I pulled back onto the highway. The cop car stayed behind, we went around the cloverleaf, and I found myself heading south toward Midland.

We got off at an exit near the west edge of town, and I followed him to the town recycling center, which used to be called the dump.

The car stopped at the incinerator, and I stopped behind him and got out.

Burt Yardley was standing near a big conveyor belt, watching a truck being unloaded onto the moving belt.

I stood and watched, too, as Ann Campbell’s basement bedroom headed into the flames.

Yardley was flipping through a stack of Polaroid photos and barely gave me a glance, but he said, “Hey, look at this, son. You see that fat ass? That’s me. Now look at that teeny weenie. Who you suppose that is?” He threw a handful of the photos onto the conveyor, then picked up a stack of videotapes at his feet and also threw them onto the belt. “I thought we had an appointment. You gonna make me do all this here work myself? Grab some of that shit, son.”

So I helped him throw furniture, sexual paraphernalia, linens, and such onto the belt. He said, “I’m as good as my word, boy. Didn’t trust me, did you?”

“Sure I do. You’re a cop.”

“Right. What a fucked-up week. Hey, you know what? I cried all through that funeral.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Cryin’ on the inside. Lots of fellas there cryin’ on the inside. Hey, did you get rid of that computer stuff?”

“I burned the disk myself.”

“Yeah? None of that shit floatin’ around, is there?”

“No. Everyone is clean again.”

“Until next time.” He laughed and pitched a black leather mask onto the conveyor. “God bless us, we’re all gonna sleep better now. Includin’ her.”

I didn’t reply.

He said, “Hey, sorry to hear about Bill.”

“Me, too.”

“Maybe them two are talkin’ it out now, up there at the pearly gates.” He looked into the incinerator. “Or someplace.”

“Is that it, Chief?”

He looked around. “Pretty much.” He took a photo out of his pocket and looked at it, then handed it to me. “Souvenir.”

It was a full frontal nude of Ann Campbell standing, or actually jumping, on the bed in the basement room, her hair billowing, her legs parted, her arms outstretched, and a big smile on her face.

Yardley said, “She was a lot of woman. But I never understood a goddamned thing about her head. You figure her out?”

“No. But I think she told us more about ourselves than we wanted to know.” I threw the photo onto the conveyor belt and headed back toward my Blazer.

Yardley called out, “You take care, now.”

“You, too, Chief. Regards to your kinfolk.”

I opened the car door and Yardley called out again, “Almost forgot. Your lady friend—she told me you’d be headin’ north on the interstate.”

I looked at him over the roof of my car.

He said, “She asked me to tell you good-bye. Said she’d see you down the road.”

“Thanks.” I got into the Blazer and drove out of the dump. I turned right and retraced my route to the interstate, along the road lined with warehouses and light industry, a perfectly squalid area to match my mood.

Down the road, a red Mustang fell in behind me. We got onto the interstate together, and she stayed with me past the exit that would have taken her west to Fort Benning.

I pulled off onto the shoulder and she did the same. We got out of our vehicles and stood near them, about ten feet apart. She was wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and running shoes, and it occurred to me that we weren’t in the same generation. I said to her, “You missed your exit.”

“Better than missing my chance.”

“You lied to me.”

“Well… yes. But what would you have said if I told you I was still living with him, but that I was seriously thinking about ending it?”

“I’d have told you to call me when you got your act together.”

“See? You’re too passive.”

“I don’t take other people’s wives.”

A big semi rolled by, and I couldn’t hear what she said. “What?”

“You did the same thing in Brussels!”

“Never heard of the place.”

“Capital of Belgium.”

“What about Panama?”

“I told Kiefer to tell you that to get you to do something.”

“You lied again.”

“Right. Why do I bother?”

A state trooper pulled over and got out of his car. He touched his hat to Cynthia and asked, “Everything okay, ma’am?”

“No. This man is an idiot.”

He looked at me. “What’s your problem, fella?”

“She’s following me.”

He looked back at Cynthia.

Cynthia said to him, “What do you think of a man who spends three days with a woman and doesn’t even say good-bye?”

“Well… that’s mighty low…”

“I never touched her. We only shared a bathroom.”

“Oh… well…”

“He invited me to his house in Virginia for the weekend and never bothered to give me his phone number or address.”

The state trooper looked at me. “That true?”

I said to him, “I just found out she’s still married.”

The trooper nodded. “Don’t need that kind of trouble.”

Cynthia asked him, “Don’t you think a man should fight for what he wants?”

“Sure do.”

I said, “So does her husband. He tried to kill me.”

“Gotta watch that.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” Cynthia said. “I’m going to Benning to tell him it’s over.”

The trooper said to her, “You he careful, now.”

“Make him give me his phone number.”

“Well… I don’t…” He turned to me. “Why don’t you just give her your phone number and we can all get out of the sun, here.”

“Oh, all right. Do you have a pencil?”

He took a pad and pencil out of his pocket, and I told him my phone number and address. He ripped off the page and handed it to Cynthia. “There you are, ma’am. Now, let’s everybody get in their cars and go off to where they got to be. Okay?”

I walked back to my Blazer, and Cynthia went to her Mustang. She called out to me, “Saturday.”

I waved, got into my Blazer, and headed north. I watched her in my rearview mirror making an illegal U-turn across the center divide, then heading for the exit that would take her to Fort Benning.

Passive? Paul Brenner, the tiger of Falls Church, passive? I crossed into the outside lane, cut the wheel hard left, and drove across the center divide through a line of bushes, then spun the Blazer around into the southbound lanes. “We’ll see who’s passive.”

I caught up with her on the highway to Fort Benning and stayed with her all the way.

More Nelson DeMille!Please see the next pagefor a bonus excerpt from The Lion’s Gamecoming soon in hardcover from Warner Books

We are happy to include here a chapter of Nelson DeMille’s next novel, THE LION’S GAME, which will be published soon by Warner Books. The main character in THE LION’S GAME is John Corey, NYPD, who first appeared in Nelson DeMille’s bestseller, PLUM ISLAND.

You’d think that anyone who’d been capped three times and almost became an organ donor would try to avoid dangerous situations in the future. But, no, I must have this unconscious wish to take myself out of the gene pool or something.

Anyway, I’m John Corey, formerly of the NYPD, now working as a Special Contract Agent for the Anti-Terrorist Task Force. I was sitting in the back of a yellow cab on my way from Twenty-Six Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan to John F. Kennedy International Airport. The trip meter was spinning like an out-of-control one-armed bandit, and I wondered if I had enough bucks to pay the Pakistani suicide driver behind the wheel.

I still couldn’t get used to the fact that the Feds would actually reimburse me for things like a fifty-buck cab ride. Even in my former exalted position as an NYPD homicide detective, the department questioned twenty-five-cent phone calls.

It was a nice spring day, a Saturday, moderate traffic on the Belt Parkway, late afternoon, and seagulls from a nearby landfill—formerly known as a garbage dump—were crapping on the taxi’s windshield. I love spring.

I wasn’t headed off on vacation or anything like that—I was reporting for work with the Anti-Terrorist Task Force. This is sort of a weird organization that not too many people know about, which is just as well. The ATTF is divided into sections which focus on specific bunches of troublemakers and bomb chuckers, like the Irish Republican Army, Puerto Rican Independence Movement, Black Radicals, and other groups that will go unnamed. I’m in the Mideastern section, which is the biggest group and maybe the most important, though to be honest, I don’t know much about Mideastern terrorists. But I was supposed to be learning on the job.

So, to practice my skills, I started up a conversation with the Pakistani guy, whose name was Fasid, and who for all I know is a terrorist, though he looked and talked like an okay guy. I asked him, “What was that place you came from?”

“Islamabad. The capital.”

“Really? How long have you been here?”

“Ten years.”

“You like it here?”

“Sure. Who doesn’t?”

“Well, my ex-brother-in-law, Gary, for one. He’s always bad-mouthing America. Wants to move to New Zealand.”

“I have an uncle in New Zealand.”

“No kidding? Anybody left in Islamabad?”

He laughed, then asked me, “You meeting somebody at the airport?”

“Why do you ask?”

“No luggage.”

“Hey, you’re good.”

“So, you’re meeting somebody? I could hang around and take you back to the city.”

Fasid’s English was pretty good—slang, idioms, and all that. I replied, “I’m meeting somebody, but we have a ride back.”

“You sure? I could hang around.”

Actually, I was meeting an alleged terrorist who’d surrendered himself to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, but I didn’t think that was information I needed to share with the taxi driver. I said, “You a Yankee fan?”

“Not anymore.” Whereupon he launched into a tirade against Steinbrenner, Yankee Stadium, the price of tickets, the salaries of the players, and so forth. These terrorists are clever, sounding just like loyal citizens.

Anyway, I tuned the guy out and thought about how I’d wound up here. As I indicated, I was a homicide detective, one of New York’s finest, if I do say so. A year ago this month, I was playing dodge-the-bullets with two Hispanic gentlemen up on West 102nd Street in what was probably a case of mistaken identity, since there seemed to be no reason for the attempted rub-out. Life is funny sometimes. Anyway, the perps were still at large, though I had my eye out for them, as you might imagine.

After my near-death experience and upon release from the hospital, I accepted my Uncle Harry’s offer to stay at his summer house on Long Island to convalesce. The house is located about a hundred road miles from West 102nd Street, which was fine. Anyway, while I was out there, I got involved with this double murder of a husband and wife, fell in love twice, almost got killed again, and wound up being forcibly retired from the NYPD on a three-quarter disability pension. It’s a long story and kind of a sad one. And the ending is still to come. The perp who did the murders hasn’t been tried yet, and I hope my testimony gets him fried, or whatever the great state of New York decides is the most humane and cheapest way to avoid overcrowding on Death Row. Also, one of the women I fell in love with, Beth Penrose by name, is still sort of in my life. Maybe more on that later.

While all this was going on out on eastern Long Island, my divorce became final. And as if I wasn’t already having a bad R&R out at the beach, I wound up making the professional acquaintance of a schmuck on the double homicide case named Ted Nash of the Central Intelligence Agency who I took a big dislike to, and who hated my guts in return, and who, lo and behold, was now part of my ATTF team. It’s a small world, but not that small, and I don’t believe in coincidence.

There was also another guy involved with that case, George Foster, an FBI agent, who was okay, but not my cup of tea either. Funny how all these Federal types got involved with this local double homicide for what turned out to be the wrong reasons, to wit: The husband and wife who were murdered were U.S. government biologists at Plum Island, not far from where I was supposed to be convalescing. This island is a sort of secret government facility, so when this couple got iced, in come the FBI and the CIA. Ted Nash at first put out this bullshit that he was with the Department of Agriculture, which theoretically runs this Plum Island laboratory that maybe does work with biowarfare stuff. But later, under some pressure from yours truly, he admitted he was CIA, but never mentioned the Anti-Terrorist Task Force, and even if he had, it wouldn’t have meant much to me then. Now it means I’m his partner. Cruel fate. Or something else.

Anyway, it turns out that this double homicide was not a Federal case and Nash and Foster disappeared, only to reappear in my life a few weeks ago when I got assigned to this ATTF Mideastern team. But no sweat, I’ve put in for a transfer to the ATTF’s Irish Republican Army section, which I will probably get. I don’t have any real feelings about the IRA either way, but at least the IRA babes are easy to look at, the guys are more fun than your average Arab terrorist, and the Irish pubs are primo. I could do some real good in the anti-IRA section. Really.

But to backtrack, the two biologists that got murdered out near Plum Island, Tom and Judy Gordon, were actually friends of mine, which is one reason I got involved with that case. The other reason is that I’m stupid.

Anyway, after all this mess out on Long Island, I get offered this great choice of being hauled in front of the NYPD disciplinary board for moonlighting or whatever, or taking a medical disability and going away. So I took the medical, but also negotiated a job at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan where I live. Before I got shot and before the Plum Island mess, I’d taught a class at John Jay as an adjunct professor, so I wasn’t asking for much and I got it.

Starting in January, I was teaching two night classes at JJ and one day class, and I was getting bored out of my mind, so my ex-partner, Dom Fanelli, knows about this Special Contract Agent program with the Feds where they hire former law-enforcement types to work with ATTF. I apply, I’m accepted, probably for all the wrong reasons, and here I am. The pay’s good, the perks are okay, the assignments sound like they could be interesting, and the Federal types are mostly schmucks. I have this problem with Feds, like most cops do, and not even sensitivity training would help.

But as I say, the work seems interesting. The ATTF is a sort of unique and, I may say, elite group (despite the schmucks) that only exists in New York City and environs. It’s made up mostly of NYPD detectives who are great guys, FBI, and some quasi-civilian guys like me hired to round out the team, so to speak. Also, on some teams, when needed, are CIA prima donnas, and also some DEA—Drug Enforcement Agency people who know their business, and know about connections between the drug trade and the terrorist world. There are other Federal types from agencies I can’t mention, and last but not least, we have some Port Authority detectives assigned to some teams. These guys are helpful at airports, bus terminals, train stations, docks, some bridges and tunnels under their control, and other places where their little empire extends. We have it all pretty much covered, but even if we didn’t, it sounds really impressive.

The idea of the ATTF is to put together all these agencies and contract civilians with their expertise in specialized areas to combat domestic terrorism. The ATTF, for instance, was one of the main investigating groups in the World Trade Center bombing and the TWA 800 crash as well as the African Embassy bombings, though the name ATTF was hardly mentioned in the news, which is how they like it.

The reason the almighty Feds decided to team up with the NYPD, by the way, is that your average FBI guy is from Kansas and doesn’t know a pastrami sandwich from the Lexington Avenue subway. The CIA guys are a little slicker and talk about cafés in Prague and the night train to Istanbul and all that crap, but New York is not their favorite place to be. The NYPD has street smarts, and that’s what you need to keep track of Abdul Salami-Salami and Paddy O’Bad and Pedro Viva Puerto Rico and so on. Not only are the Feds clueless about the streets and subways and buses and all, but they don’t really understand the types they’re watching.

Your average Fed is Wendell Wasp from West Jesus, Iowa; whereas the NYPD has mucho Hispanics, lots of blacks, a million Irish, and even a few Muslims now, so you get this cultural diversity on the force that is not only politically cool and correct, but actually useful and effective. And when the ATTF can’t steal active duty NYPD people, they hire ex-NYPD like me. Despite my so-called disability, I’m armed, dangerous, and nasty. So there it is.

We were approaching JFK, and I said to Fasid, “So, what do you do for Easter?”

“Easter? I don’t celebrate Easter. I’m Muslim.”

See how clever I am? The Feds would’ve sweated this guy for an hour to make him admit he was a Muslim. I got it out of him in two seconds. Just kidding. But, you know, I really have to get out of the Mideast section and into the IRA bunch. I’m part Irish and part English, and I could work both sides of that street. Please, God, get me out of the Mideast and into Clancy’s Pub on Third Avenue.

Fasid exited the Belt Parkway and got on the Van Wyck Expressway heading south. These huge planes were sort of floating overhead making whining noises, and Fasid called out to me, “Where you going?”

“International Arrivals.”

“Which airline?”

“There’s more than one?”

“Yeah. There’s twenty, thirty, forty—”

“No kidding? Just drive.”

Fasid shrugged, just like an Israeli cabbie. I was starting to think that maybe he was a Mossad agent posing as a Pakistani. Or maybe the job was getting to me.

There’s all these colored and numbered signs along the expressway, and I let the guy go to the International Arrival building, a huge structure with all the airline logos, one after the other out front, and he asked again, “Which airline?”

“I don’t like any of these. Keep going.”

Again he shrugged.

I directed him on to another road, then another, and we were now going to the other side of the big airport. This is good tradecraft, to see if anybody’s following you. I learned this in some spy novel or maybe a James Bond movie. I was trying to get into this antiterrorist thing, but the meter was past fifty bucks already, so I got Fasid pointed in the right direction and told him to stop in front of a big office-type building on the west side of JFK that was used for this and that. I paid the guy, tipped him, and asked for a receipt in the exact amount. Honesty is one of my few faults.

Fasid gave me a bunch of blank receipts and asked again, “You want me to hang around?”

“I wouldn’t if I were you.”

I went into the lobby of the building, a 1960s sort of crap modern architecture, and instead of an armed guard with an Uzi like they have all over the world, except maybe England, there’s just a sign that says, RESTRICTED AREA—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. So, assuming you read English, you know if you’re welcome or not.

I went up a staircase and down a long corridor of gray-steel doors, some marked, some numbered, some neither. At the end of the corridor was a door with a nice blue-and-white sign that said, CONQUISTADOR CLUB—PRIVATE—MEMBERS ONLY.

There was this electronic key-card scanner alongside the door, but like everything else about the Conquistador Club, it was a phony. What I had to do was to press my right thumb on the translucent face of the scanner, which I did. About two seconds later, the electronic genie said to itself, “Hey, that’s John Corey’s thumb—let’s open the door for John.”

And did the door swing open? No, it slid into the wall as far as its dummy doorknob. Do I need this nonsense?

Anyway, there’s also a video scanner overhead, in case your thumbprint got screwed up with a chocolate bar or something, and if they recognize your face, they also open the door, though in my case they might make an exception.

So I went in, and the door slid closed automatically behind me. I was now in what appeared to be the reception area of an airline travelers’ club. Why there’d be such a club in a building that’s not a passenger terminal is, you can be sure, a question I’d asked, and I’m still waiting for an answer. But I know the answer, which is that when the CIA culture is present, you get this kind of smoke-and-mirrors silliness. These clowns waste time and money on stagecraft and such, just like in the old days when they were trying to impress the KGB. What the door needed was a simple sign that said, KEEP THE FUCK OUT.

Anyway, behind the counter was Nancy Tate, the receptionist, a sort of Miss Moneypenny, the model of efficiency and repressed sexuality, and all that. She liked me for some reason, and greeted me cheerily, “Good afternoon, Mr. Corey.”

“Good afternoon, Ms. Tate.”

“Everyone has arrived.”

“I was delayed by traffic.”

“Actually, you’re ten minutes early.”

“Oh…”

“I like your tie.”

“I took it off a dead Bulgarian on the night train to Istanbul.”

She giggled.

Anyway, the reception area was all leather and burled wood, plush blue carpet, and so forth, and on the wall directly behind Nancy was another marquee of the fictitious Conquistador Club. And for all I knew, Ms. Tate was a hologram.

To the left of Ms. Tate was an entranceway marked CONFERENCE AND BUSINESS AREA that actually led to the interrogation rooms and holding cells, which I guess could be called the Conference and Business area. To the right, a sign announced LOUNGE AND BAR. I should be so lucky. That was in fact the way to the communications and operations room.

Ms. Tate said to me, “Ops Room. There are five people including yourself.”

“Thanks.” I walked through the bar-and-lounge doorway, down a short hallway, and into a dim, cavernous, and windowless room that held desks, computer consoles, cubicles, and such. On the big rear wall was a huge, computer-generated color map of the world that could be programmed to a detailed map of whatever you needed, like downtown Islamabad. This was big-time.

Anyway, this facility wasn’t my actual workplace, which is in the aforementioned Federal building in lower Manhattan. But this was where I had to be on this Saturday afternoon to meet and greet some Arab guy who was switching sides and needed to be taken safely downtown for a few years of debriefing.

I kind of ignored my teammates and made for the coffee bar which, unlike the one in my old detective squad room, is neat, clean, and well stocked. Compliments of the Federal taxpayers.

I fooled around with the coffee a while, which was my way of avoiding my colleagues for a few more minutes.

I got the coffee the right color and noticed a tray of donuts that said NYPD and a tray of croissants and brioche that said CIA and a tray of oatmeal cookies that said FBI. Someone had a sense of humor.

Anyway, the coffee bar was on the operations side of the big room and the commo side was sort of elevated on a low platform. A guy was up there monitoring all the gidgets and gadgets.

My team, on the operations side, was sitting around somebody’s empty desk, engaged in conversation. The team consisted of the aforementioned Ted Nash of the CIA, George Foster of the FBI, Nick Monti of the NYPD, and Kate Mayfield of the FBI. WASP, WASP, Wop, WASP.

Kate Mayfield came to the coffee bar and began making herself tea. She is supposed to be my mentor, whatever the hell that means. As long as it doesn’t mean partner.

She said to me, “I like that tie.”

“I once strangled a Ninja warrior to death with it. It’s my favorite.”

“Really? Hey, how are you getting along here?”

“You tell me.”

“Well, it’s too soon for me to tell you. You tell me why you put in for the IRA section.”

“Well, the Muslims don’t drink, I can’t spell their f-ing names on my reports, and the women can’t be seduced.”

“That’s the most racist, sexist remark I’ve heard in years.”

“You don’t get around enough.”

“This is not the NYPD, Mr. Corey.”

“No, but I’m NYPD. Get used to it.”

“Are we through attempting to shock and appal?”

“Yeah. Look, Kate, I thank you for your meddling—I mean mentoring—but in about a week, I’ll be in the IRA section, or off the job.”

She didn’t reply.

I looked at her as she messed around with a lemon. She was about thirty, I guess, blond, blue-eyed, fair skin, boyish kind of build, perfect pearly whites, no jewelry, light makeup, and so on. Wendy Wasp from Wichita. She had not one flaw that I could see, not even a zit on her face or a fleck of dandruff on her dark blue blazer. She probably played three sports in high school, took cold showers, belonged to 4-H, and organized pep rallies in college. I hated her. Well, not really, but about the only thing we had in common was some internal organs, and not even all of those.

Also, her accent was hard to identify, and I remembered that Nick Monti said her father was an FBI guy, and they’d lived in different places around the country.

She turned and looked at me, and I looked at her. She had these piercing eyes, the color of blue dye No. 4, like they use in ice pops.

She said to me, “You came to us highly recommended.”

“By who? Whom?”

“Whom. By some of your old colleagues in homicide.”

I didn’t reply.

“Also,” she said, “by Ted and George.” She nodded toward Schmuck and Putz.

I almost choked on my coffee. Why these two guys would say anything nice about me was a total mystery.

“They aren’t fond of you, but you impressed them on that Plum Island case.”

“Yeah, I even impressed myself on that one.”

“Why don’t you give the Mideast section a try?” She added, “If Ted and George are the problem, we can switch you to another team within the section.”

“I love Ted and George, but I really have my heart set on the anti-IRA section.”

“Too bad. This is where the real action is. This is a career builder.” She added, “The IRA are pretty quiet and well behaved in this country.”

“Good.”

“The Palestinians and the Islamic groups, on the other hand, are potentially dangerous to national security.”

“No ‘potentially’ about it,” I replied. “World Trade Center.”

She didn’t reply.

I’d come to discover that these three words in the ATTF were like, “Remember Pearl Harbor.” The intelligence community got caught with their pants down on that one, but came back and solved the case, so it was a draw.

She continued, “The whole country is paranoid about a Mideast terrorist biological attack or a nuclear or chemical attack. You saw that on the Plum Island case. Right?”

“Right.”

“So? Everything else in the ATTF is a backwater. Nobody’s seen a Black Panther in years, the Puerto Ricans want statehood, the IRA just wants Yankee dollars, the Reds are finished, the neo-Nazis and militia guys from Idaho are afraid of getting mugged in New York, and the other fringe political groups are either nonviolent or too stupid to worry about. The real action is in the Mideast section, and you look like a man of action.” She smiled.

I smiled in return. I asked her, “What’s it to you?”

“I like you.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“I like New York Neanderthals.”

“I’m speechless.”

“Think about it.”

“Will do.” I glanced at a TV monitor close by and saw that the flight we were waiting for, Trans-Continental 175 from Paris, was inbound and on time. I asked Ms. Mayfield, “What’s the name of this guy we’re waiting for?”

“Khalil. Asad Khalil.”

NELSON DEMILLE is a former U.S. Army lieutenant who served in Vietnam and is the author of nine acclaimed novels, including the New York Times bestsellers The Charm School, Word of Honor,

The Gold Coast, The General’s Daughter,

Spencerville, and Plum Island.