Zero Option

14

The commanding general of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps dropped into the backseat of the sedan with a grunt and a sigh. He was very definitely not in conformance with the required physical image of the modern Army, and a week in Germany had not helped his weight problem. Car rothers got in on the left side, in deference to General Waddelfs seniority. The official sedan drove off the terminal apron and headed for the main gate.

“Jesus, these cars keep getting smaller,” Waddell complained. “Okay, Lee, where are we with that um, situation, at Anniston?”

Carrothers, eyeing the civilian driver, debriefed Wad dell hi oblique language. “The western unit is conducting a sight inventory. Should be done late tomorrow if there are no discrepancies, day after tomorrow if there is a discrepancy. The southern piece of it redid their paperwork, a sight inventory of the empty tombs, and came up with the same results.”

“Let me get this straight: Isn’t the audit done by the sending agency an audit of what the receiving agency end reports it received?”

It was late, and Carrothers had to think about that for a second. “Yes, sir. That’s how they check on each other.”

“And a sight inventory, on the other hand, physically checks to determine what’s there that wasn’t there before the last shipment.”

“Yes, sir. And if that number does not equal what the southern people came up with, then we probably habeas a corpus.”.

“Wonderful,” Waddell grunted. He was silent for a few minutes as the sedan merged onto the Beltway and headed for Alexandria, Virginia, where Waddell had a town house.

“And everyone involved has been, um …”

“Yes, sir. Everyone.”

“Good. That needs to be airtight. If either CO thinks he needs to make it more airtight, he has my permission. Whatever it takes,”

“Yes, sir.”;. “And I want to see Ambrose Fuller tomorrow first tiling.

What’s the buzz from the E-ring?”

“General Roman briefed the chief of staff. If the CSA went up his tape, I haven’t heard about it. I’ve got his EA primed to give me a heads-up.” “Good. I suspect the CSA has not told our civilian masters yet.”

The general was silent for the rest of the ride, until the.sedan delivered him to his house. While the driver waited in the car, Carrothers got out and walked up to the front door with General Waddell, where he told him what Colonel Fuller had actually said. Waddell’s face sagged.

“I knew it. Damn!” Waddell said. “Okay. We have to be proactive here, Lee. I want people to start thinking about where this thing may have wandered off to. I want a task force set up in my office. Like right now. I want Chemical Corps, intel guys, COMSEC guys, the works. But Army eyes only for now, okay? No outsiders. No JCS staffers. No god damned civilians. If we have to tent this thing, I want people I can trust to keep their mouths shut. I couldn’t say it in the car, but I got a call from the chief of staff.”

“Yes, sir?”

“And he reminded me that all things chemical are in ill repute these days. The whole world wants chemical weapons just to go away, and, by association, the experts who feed and care for chemical weapons. That’s us. The only hook we Yiave to hang our professional hats on now is in the area of defense against chemical weapons. We’re the pros. We know how. But if we lose one, we’re not the pros; we’re the assholes du your.

The Army Chemical Corps as we know and love it will be history.”

“Yes, sir, I understand that,” Can-others said. He hesitated. “But what if we have indeed lost one?”

Waddell pursed his lips and looked out onto the car cluttered street with its faux gas lamps fluttering historically in the night air. Then he looked back into Carrothers’s eyes with all the force of his thirty-five years in the Army and said, “Lose a can of Wet Eye? That just cannot happen, General.” Then he went inside.

If the motel was in Graniteville, Stafford concluded, it would necessarily have a mountain view. The entire town, what there was of it, had nothing but a mountain view, nestled as it was in a deep valley between three green-clad granite peaks. The town itself was small, consisting of one main drag that led the state road north into and around the courthouse square. All the side streets appeared to go for only a few blocks before running into one of the mountains.

He drove the white government Crown Vie carefully along the main street, which was lined with stores typical of small-town America: clothes, hardware, stationery and office supply, most complete with second-story false fronts. The traffic sign at the square directed drivers to circle the square to the right, yield to anyone coming from the left, and to continue all the way around to get to the granite quarry. From the square, there appeared to be three options: one north, one east, and a third, which led up to what looked like a quarry on one of the western slopes. The courthouse itself was a traditional Georgia landmark, red brick with lots of gingerbread, complete with a white clock tower and slant-in parking on three sides. The obligatory white marble soldier monument to the heroic Confederate dead, its back turned pointedly toward the perfidious North, leaned precariously on the eastern lawn of the courthouse.

Stafford drove all the way around the square twice, dodging pickup trucks and looking for signs for the motel.

He finally took a chance on the road leading north up and out of town between the two highest hills. As he left the square, he picked up a cop car in his rearview mirror. He passed a large Baptist church, a closed-up diner called Huddle House, a dilapidated feed store, three vacant lots, and a lumberyard as he left the town square. As he crossed a deep ravine through which a mountain stream cascaded down towards the town, the motel appeared on his right hand side. The cop car stayed with him.

He pulled into the motel parking lot and shut the car down. There was a small Waffle House diner surrounded by pickup trucks in front of the motel. The motel itself was a single line of ten rooms that stretched back toward a creek, with the office on the end nearest the diner. The motel appeared to be at least fifty years old, but the place was clean, at least on the outside. A small red neon light in the office window proclaimed that there were indeed vacancies.

He got out and stretched. It had taken a little longer than he had expected to get to Graniteville, but a brilliantly sunny day and the north Georgia mountain scenery had been worth the drive. The air was fresh and cool after the hazy heat of Atlanta. He had called Carson’s secretary and told her that he would be out for the day, but he had not told her where he was going. The cop car, something of an antique Ford Fairlane, complete with a bubblegum dome on top and a huge chromed spotlight on the driver’s side, pulled into the diner parking row. The lettering on the side of the car proclaimed longstreet county sheriff’s DEPARTMENT.

Stafford got out, put his suit jacket on, and reached back into his car for his briefcase and an overnight bag. Because of his arm, he had to pull them out one at a time. When he straightened back up, a large uniformed man was approaching him. He wore a dove gray Stetson hat and had huge black eyebrows over down-sloping dark, almost black yes, whitish gray sideburns, and a large black handlebar mustache that reminded Stafford of pictures of Wy att Earp. He wore a tan uniform shirt and trousers, brown boots, and a large chrome-plated pistol on his right hip. The expression on his face seemed generally friendly, for which Stafford was suddenly glad.

“Good day, Mr. Stafford. I’m Sheriff John Lee Warren. Welcome to Graniteville, suh.”

Stafford returned the greeting, offering his left hand, which caused an awkward moment, but then the sheriff took it in his own right hand.

He wondered how the sheriff knew his name. The sheriff anticipated his question. “Mrs. Warren told me you’d be comin’ up from the city. Asked if I might show you out to Willow Grove.”

“I’d appreciate that, Sheriff. Should I call Mrs. Warren first?”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Mr. Stafford,” the sheriff replied. He had a deep, authoritative voice. “But you might want to grab a bite; the food here isn’t bad. If you’d care to join me?” “My pleasure, Sheriff,” Stafford said. He put his bags back in his car, locked the doors, and followed the sheriff over to the diner. Propriety required he tell the sheriff why he was here. He hadn’t exactly been sneaking into town, not with the big white government sedan. But he knew about the power Georgia county sheriffs exerted within their rural fiefdoms, and he guessed that up here in the mountains, that power was not trivial. He also wondered about the name Warren.

“What happened to the arm?” the sheriff asked as they entered the diner.

“Zigged when I should have zagged,” Stafford said. “Caught a nine through the humerus. I’m working on getting it back again.”

The Waffle House was full of locals, but the sheriff walked confidently to a back corner table, which was evidently his for the lunch hour. A waitress followed them back. He invited Stafford to order and told the waitress he’d have his usual. When she left, he gave Stafford an expansive look and asked what might be bringing a federal officer to Graniteville. He had a southern accent, but it was not very pronounced.

“Not quite sure myself, Sheriff,” Stafford replied. “I got a call from a Ms. Gwen Warren that she would like to talk to me, so here I am.”

“And how might that lady know you, suh?” The sheriff’s expression remained amiable, but those dark eyes never wavered. Stafford was aware that people in the diner, mostly men, were giving the two of them covert glances.

Stafford explained a little bit about the DCIS, then briefly described the incident at the airport. “I’m following up on an ongoing investigation involving possible fraud at one of the Atlanta military bases. I gave her my card that day in the airport. Her call came as a surprise, frankly, but she didn’t want to discuss it over the phone, so here I am. Oh, and here are my credentials.”

The sheriff examined his ID and then handed it back. “Thank you, suh. I knew about the FBI, the CIA, the ATF, and the DBA. I must admit that DCIS is a new one to me. And I apologize for all the questions, but sometimes we have federal officers who come through and, uh …”

“I understand, Sheriff. It’s my agency’s policy to keep local law-enforcement officials informed anytime we operate off the federal reservation. I would have checked in with you in any event, except that I still don’t know what this is about.”

The sheriff nodded as the waitress brought Stafford his hamburger. The sheriff had a platter of scrambled eggs, bacon, grits, biscuits, and hash browns. The sheriff fell to his late breakfast without further conversation, so Stafford did the same. The diner was noisy, with waitresses calling in raucous orders in the code peculiar to Waffle House restaurants throughout the South, acknowledged by ribald comments from the cook amid the clash and clatter of crockery from behind the counter. When they had finished, the waitress brought them both a cup of hot black coffee without their asking, then cleared the plates away.

“So, Mr. Stafford,” the sheriff began. “You think mebbe Mrs. Warren knew this man — what was his name, Carson?”

“I don’t know, Sheriff,” Stafford replied. “Well, actually, when Carson went down, he appeared to be engaged in a staring match with a young girl who was with Mrs. Warren.”

The sheriff paused with his coffee mug in the air and gave Stafford a searching look. “Can you describe the girl, suh?”

Stafford did, and the sheriff began to nod his head slowly. “That there would be Jessamine,” he said. “She’s one of the children at Willow Grove.”

“Jessamine? And Willow Grove is what, an orphanage?” — The sheriff nodded again. “They’re not called that in

” Georgia anymore, of course. Orphanage is no longer politically correct. Now they’re group homes. State-licensed, inspected, and, to a degree, funded. Mrs. Warren is the director.” “Jessamine,” Stafford said. “Interesting name.”

The sheriff gave him a speculative look. “A jessamine is an Appalachian flower,” he said. “And, yes, she is an interesting child. A very interesting child. And I suspect that’s what Mrs. Warren wants to talk to you about, but I think we should let her do that. When you’re finished, I’ll show you the way up there. The motel will keep you a room.”

They left the diner after paying at the register, and Stafford followed the sheriff in his own car. They drove back into the town center, went around the square, and headed out the eastern road. They crossed what appeared to be that same deep creek that ran by the motel, then began to climb through a narrow canyon, flanked on either side by sloping slabs of dynamited rock. After a few minutes, a small plateau opened up on the left, revealing a large two story farmhouse set back about two hundred feet from the road. The house was an old Victorian with screened porches surrounding all four sides on both floors and a dark green copper roof.

A landscaped driveway led up from the road to a graveled circle at the front of the house. On the left was a large pond surrounded by a dense stand of willow trees; on the right was an orderly grove of old pecan trees. There was a sloping open field with protruding rock ledges to its right. The pond dam, which overlooked the road, was partially obscured by the willows at the lower-left side of the property. A small creek flowed under the road from a deep pool at its base. There was a rambling white picket fence running from the corner of the pond across the front of the property, with drooping double wooden gates at the driveway.

There appeared to be horse paddocks and outbuildings behind the main house, although Stafford did not see any horses in the fields. A tree covered mountain slope on the opposite side of the road loomed close above the road, and the fields’ behind the house were shaded by an even larger hill. The pastures behind the house occupied what little flat land there was on the property.

The sheriff turned in at the drive, drove straight up to the house, and parked. Stafford followed, parking off to one side. The sheriff went up onto the front porch and rang a bell. Stafford waited on the steps until the door opened, and the woman from the airport greeted them. She was wearing a gray dress and had a light sweater draped over her shoulders.

She appeared to be perfectly composed, except that Stafford noticed that she was gripping the edges of the sweater with the fingers of her right hand.

“Gwen, this is Mr. Stafford from Washington,” the sheriff said. “We had lunch down at the Waffle House. Had us a little chat.” He paused for a second, as if suddenly lost for words. Stafford noticed that some of the sheriff’s authority seemed to have deserted him. “Well, I guess I’ll leave y’all to your business, then,” he finished.

“Thank you, John Lee,” the woman murmured, dismissing him with a brief smile as she opened the screen door for Stafford to enter. She did not offer to shake hands, sparing Stafford the embarrassment of the left-handed dance. The sheriff nodded once at Stafford and went back to his car. She looked after John Lee Warren for a moment, long enough to give him a parting wave, which gave Stafford a moment to examine her.

She was indeed tall, almost exactly his own height, but he was fascinated by her face. In profile, she reminded him of a Roman cameo: up swept hair, pronounced high cheekbones framing extraordinary green eyes, full, slightly parted lips.

Her expression was serene, almost regal, enhanced by the composure of a woman who knows she is attractive. She appeared to be in her early forties, and she had an attractive figure, which her workaday clothes did little to flatter. When he finally realized she was looking back at him, her eyes held the barest hint of a smile. He felt himself blushing a little. “Shall we go inside, Mr. Stafford?” ‘

At the agreed time, Carson placed a call to Tangent at the 800 number.

“This is Tangent.”

“Carson.”

“Right. We are ready to proceed.”

Carson stopped to think out what he was going to say. An 800 number from a pay phone would be hard to tap and trace, but not impossible. They both understood that it was prudent to speak somewhat in code.

“All right,” Carson replied. “Do you have a proposed date?”

“We do. This coming Sunday. Time at your convenience.”

“That’ll work. How about here at the DRMO? Say after nine P. M.?”

This tune it was Tangent who hesitated. “I don’t know — // if that will work. We were thinking somewhere off federal property.”

Dammit, Carson thought “But here in Atlanta?”

“Oh, yes. Our pickup team is prepared to go anywhere you want in Atlanta. Within reason, of course.”

Pickup team. An image of the drug deal in a parking lot flashed through his mind again. “All right,” he said. “But I was proposing here at the DRMO so that the item doesn’t have to be moved. For obvious reasons, I should think.”

Another hesitation. “Yes. We understand. Let me speak to my principals.

How do you want the payment?”

“In cash.”

“That’s available. But you might want to think about other forms of value. That amount in cash is a lot of paper. Don’t mistake me — we can and will do that. But there are other possible modalities.”

“Such as?”

“Such as diamonds. Purchased by us from a jeweler of your choice. He authenticates their value for you and holds them as trusted agent. We get the item; it’s what you say it is, you go get the diamonds. Just as good as cash, if not better. And much easier to conceal. We’re talking twenty top-quality stones.”

Carson knew absolutely nothing about diamonds. “Let me think about that,” he said. “I’m … I’m nervous about all this. This is a lot of money.”

“I understand.”

“I mean, everything up to now has been some cash hi an envelope. Money by mail. But this—”

“I.understand. For a million, you’re afraid we might stiff you. But consider this: We stiff you, you can always go public. Yes, you’d be in trouble, but if it got out that there was a cylinder of this stuff loose in the arms market, we’d be unable to sell it. It would become a useless, dangerous liability. Surely you understand that we’re going to make more than we’re paying you for this thing. I’ll be honest with you: What you’re getting is the ultimate client’s deposit money, okay? But it’s not our money, so we have no motive to mess around with this deal.

More importantly, the whole thing has to remain secret. Optimally, the Army won’t even know it’s missing, and no one else can know it’s moving through clandestine commercial channels.

That’s also your protection.”

“Yes, I suppose,” Carson said, not wanting even to mention the obvious: They could take the cylinder and kill him, and maintain their precious secrecy. Tangent seemed to read his thoughts.

“And you could always preposition something that could be released to the public in the event something happened to you. We’re assuming you will have done that. Look, Carson, we’ve been doing business for a long time. Good business. Smart business. Low-level, intermittent, nothing to attract auditors. Yes, this is a lot of money. But it’s potentially a hell of score for us, too. And we know this is a onetime deal. Hell, we could both retire, you know? So we have no motivation to screw around here. You know you can’t move it by yourself. You can’t even destroy it.

Where would you dispose of something like that?”

“That’s true.” Actually, that isn’t true, he thought. There’s always the Monster. The real question is, Why would I ever want to destroy it?

“So think about those payment terms, and get back to me in, say, twenty-four hours. We’ll evaluate the DRMO as the place to do the deed.

Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now, second item — Stafford. Our sources tell us he is who he says he is, but the real reason he’s down there has very little to do with any auction scams or even with DRMOs.”

“That sounds like good news.”

“It is. He’s been shit-canned. Thrown out of Washington. He’s a damned whistle-blower. Got some Senior Executive Service guy in the DCIS up on charges, and then got a senior FBI guy in the shit, too. Now he’s a pariah in the DCIS. He may make it sound like he’s on some big deal case, but he isn’t. We’ll need to be circumspect, of course, but our information is that he’s not a player.”

“That is good news.”

“Yes, we think so. This is a guy whose world is imploding. His wife left him when all the shit started over the whistle-blowing. Divorced his sorry ass and ran off with some Air Force colonel. And in the middle of that, he was getting gas one night in some minimart. Unbeknownst to him, two of Washington’s upstanding citizens were doing a smash-and-grab. He took a stray round in the arm.”

“Yeah, that’s him; he’s basically one-armed. Keeps his right hand in his suit pocket all the time.”

“Right, that’s the guy, then. He supposedly started drinking big-time, but our source wasn’t sure if he was still on the sauce. Hell, after all that, I’d be drinking like a fish. Anyway, be polite, bury him in cooperation and bureaucratic bullshit, but let’s proceed. I’ve gotta go.

Let’s talk same time tomorrow, okay? Think about how we’re going to do this thing.” “Okay,” Carson said, feeling much better already.

“Here’s the new eight hundred number,” Tangent said.

Carson wrote it down, hung up, and walked back to his car. Everything Tangent had said made sense, and it confirmed his own judgment about Stafford. He could forget Investigator Stafford. Truth was, it wasn’t Stafford he was worried about; it was Tangent and that royal “we” he used all the time. He realized now that he knew absolutely nothing about Tangent other than a constantly changing 800 number and his voice. And several years of reliable cash, he reminded himself.

But this deal was for a million dollars, which upped the stakes considerably. So now he had to think in detail about how tp do it. As he left the pay phone, he felt a return of that fluttery feeling, a sense that what he was up to was perhaps getting away from him. By the time he got back to his office, his secretary had returned from lunch. He asked her where Mr. Stafford was. She said he had left a message that he would be out for the day. Back tomorrow afternoon. He thought about that. Now what was that guy up to? On the other hand, he thought, why should I give a shit?