31

SUNDAY, FORT GILLEM DRMO, ATLANTA, 8:00 P.M.

Wendell Carson sat in his pickup truck outside a phone booth, waiting for Tangent to return his call. Carson had never called his contact on a Sunday, but the developments of the early-morning hours couldn’t wait.

Those Army bastards had come back, and this time with twice the people and twice the equipment. And they’d nearly caught him inside the demil building. He’d been lucky the officer in charge of the Army team had been a young captain and not some hard-boiled lieutenant colonel.

There was no getting around it: They had come back. Which confirmed they knew the thing was missing, and that it had ended up at the DRMO. This had to be Stafford’s work. He’d said he was going to tell them.

The phone rang. He got out of the truck and picked it up. “Yes?”

“It’s me. What’s the problem now?” Tangent sounded impatient.

Carson recapped the events of the night before. He finished with his conclusion that Stafford had to be behind the Army’s revisit. Tangent was silent for a moment.

“How could Stafford know that the cylinder is there?” he asked.

“He can’t, and that’s what’s bugging the shit out of me. The only guy who knew what this was all about was Lambry, and Stafford never talked to Lambry.”

“Do you know that? Do you know where Lambry went? Is there a possibility that he’s still in the area and that maybe Stafford found him?” “No, I don’t know it,” Carson said. He couldn’t let Tangent know the truth about Lambry. Stealing the cylinder was one thing; Lambry’s demolition was quite another. “Remember I told you Lambry had a helper,” Carson replied. “Guy named Dillard. But as far as I know, Dillard never actually saw the cylinder. He may have known Lambry swiped something, but not exactly what. And definitely not what it looked like. I’m stumped.”

Tangent disagreed. “You can’t know that, either. If Lambry caught on to what this thing might be worth, he could have told his buddy everything, or enough to cover his ass if you tried to stiff him. It was Dillard who talked to Stafford?”

“Yes.”

“Well, hell, there it is, then. You pulled the string with Dillard?”

“No. I figured let sleeping dogs lie. If I talk to Dillard, he’ll know something’s up. This way, everything just subsides. Nobody who works here has seen the Army teams.”

“You’re probably right; you know the guy and I don’t, although I’m getting a little more concerned about this Lambry’s unexplained disappearance. You sure he didn’t go to Baby Jesus when his house blew up?”

Carson gripped the phone harder. He had forgotten telling Tangent about that.

“I guess that’s possible,” he replied carefully. “Except the arson people said no one was in the house when it went.” Eager to get off this line of conversation, he asked Tangent what he was doing about Stafford.

“We’re working that. Why, you got something new?”

“I’ve been thinking,” Carson said. “We need to get all this heat off the DRMO, at least long enough to do the deal, you know what I mean? This shit is beginning to spook me. I just want to do the deal, turn this damned thing over, get my money.”

“My client doesn’t know squat. Yet So I’m all ears, you got some ideas.”

“Yeah, well, is there some way you can make the Army think Stafford’s got this thing? Which is why he’s running off his chain?”

There was a moment of silence on the line. “That’s rucking brilliant,” Tangent said. “It doesn’t even have to hold up for very long.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. By the time the Army convinces itself he doesn’t have it, or even know where it is, we can be down the road and gone.”

“I like that. And, yes, I know just how to do that. The Army’s working this thing way offline. They have to be in a fucking panic. This fits hi with what we were going to do anyway, only this is much better. Look, you go back to your daily routine. Everything normal. No more night visits to the DRMO. Be thinking of how we’ll do the swap. How you want your money. Keep it simple. Think next forty-eight hours, max, okay?”

“I hear you.”

The line went silent as Tangent hung up. Carson put the phone back and looked around the exchange parking lot to see if anyone had been watching him, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Stafford with the cylinder, he mused. He smiled then. “Beautiful,” he announced to the ah-as he got in his truck. “Fucking beautiful.”

The Army Learjet touched down with two bruising puffs of blue smoke from its tires at almost exactly six pm. On board were Brigadier General Carrothers, Major Mason, and an FBI polygraph operator named W. Layon Smith. The plane had been delayed getting out of Andrews due to a movement of the presidential 747; Carrothers’s single star had not been enough to get them a ramp time before the field was locked up while Air Force One landed after a maintenance stint in California. Then they had been stacked up over Atlanta by the Sunday-afternoon business travelers’ rush hour, followed by more delays in getting Smith’s gear through airport security. None of this had unproved Carrothers’s attitude.

The jet pulled up to the ops building and shut down. Carrothers emerged first, where he was met by the depot’s commanding officer and his operations officer. They went directly to an Army staff car. Major Mason and Smith followed in a Suburban. The commanding officer, a full colonel, looked tired and drawn. Carrothers afforded him little sympathy. The investigation had narrowed the cause for this fiasco down to two possibilities: Either Tooele had screwed up the arrival transfer of the special weapons shipment in Utah or Anniston had screwed up the outgoing shipment here in Alabama. Until one or the other was proved, both commanding officers were good prospects for a general court-martial. The staff cars proceeded to the commanding officer’s office. Once there, Carrothers held a quick conference.

“You have this man Stafford in isolation?”

“Yes, sir, General,” the colonel replied. “Since this morning.” The operations officer nodded eagerly in confirmation.

“Okay, I have a one-hour-stay time here. We’re going to stage a little drama out in the tombs. Here’s what I want to do.”

They came for Stafford at 6:30. There were three of them, fully dressed out in Army chemical warfare protective gear: camouflaged full body suits, sealed gloves and black rubber boots, hoods and respirators. They did not speak, just motioned for him to follow them. They were not armed, but they were big enough for that not to matter very much.

It was dark when they took him outside, through a different door this time, to a waiting Humvee transport. They motioned for him to get in, one actually helping him; then two of them got in back with him, one on either side. The third got in on the driver’s side, and they rumbled off into the evening. They went down a long, straight two-lane road for about ten minutes before turning off onto another road, which had a rail line running down the middle of it. Stafford could see fairly well out the windows, but there wasn’t much to see other than the endless pine forest.

They finally arrived at a gate complex, which consisted of two gate towers flanking a fifty-foot-wide sliding double-gate assembly set into a thirty-foot-high double chain-link fence with razor wire at the base and on the top; there was a dog run in between the fences. Insulators on the wire strands indicated that the fence was electrified. There were sodium-vapor light fixtures mounted beneath the guard towers and every fifty feet along the fence, turning the dark green of the trees an ominous black where the fences curved into the forest. The rail line went under the gate and then turned to the right behind one of the guard towers. Stafford thought he could see what looked like a machine-gun barrel protruding from each guard tower.

The Humvee stopped at the gate and the driver communicated with someone in one of the towers. His voice sounded strangely clipped from inside the hood. Stafford could not hear a reply, but the outside gate rolled back, allowing the Humvee into the space between the fences. Then the outer gate closed behind them, and the inner gate opened. The Humvee drove over a vehicle-trap mechanism buried in the roadway, then turned carefully through four enormous concrete tetrahedrons planted in the road as crash barriers. The road continued straight through some more trees, with the rail line running right alongside.

They went about a half mile before turning off onto a cinder road. A spur from the rail line turned with them. They passed through about a hundred more yards of trees before coming upon the first of the bunkers.

Stafford sat up when he saw them; this didn’t look like a place where interviews would be held. Not polite ones, anyway. All his imaginative plans for righteous defrance looked less and less like a medium for success here.

The Humvee drove down between two lanes of bunkers, which were much bigger than he had expected. They were nearly a hundred feet long and about thirty feet in width. They looked like concrete Quonset huts that had been partially submerged in the red Alabama clay. There were sodium-vapor lights mounted at each end of the bunkers, illuminating concrete ramps descending to steel doors. Branches from the rail spur went down the ramps to the steel doors of each bunker. He looked out both sides of the vehicle. The bunkers stretched in endless rows and lanes, looking like some kind of industrial mausoleum. This depot must be enormous, he thought.

They finally stopped in front of one of the bunkers, and his escorts got out. There were more suited figures waiting by a second Humvee under the lights by the entrance, and Stafford could now see that this bunker’s steel doors were open, although he could not see inside the bunker because of the painfully bright lights. His escorts invited him to step out, and he did, cautiously, wondering why he was the only one out here not dressed out in protective gear. He was taken down the long concrete ramp to the front of the bunker, where one of the guards motioned for him to wait. Two of the hooded figures were taking readings from an electronic monitoring panel mounted beside the external doors.

They waited. There was no sound other than the raspy inhalations and exhalations from the soldiers’ respirators, and the occasional squawk from one of the Humvee radios. He tried to see into the bunker, but saw that there was a second set of steel doors, which were still closed.

They appeared to be hydraulically operated, as there were four large hydraulic cylinder arms reaching from concrete pylons to the middle of the doors. Everyone waited some more, and Stafford remembered the old Army adage about hurry up and wait.

Carrothers finished suiting up, leaving only his hood and gloves off before getting into the mobile ammunition carrier. He thought about what he was about to do. He had studied Stafford’s bio sheet on the plane ride down. David W. Stafford, senior investigator for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. Forty-three years old. Formerly with the Naval Investigative Service and, before that, seven years as a private investigator for a law firm after having been a police detective with the Norfolk, Virginia, metropolitan police. Four-year enlisted hitch in the Navy before that. Solid citizen, and a professional investigator.

There was nothing in the bio about any whistle-blowing incident. He thought about the little maneuver with the Crown Vie. Heads-up ball, that.

The question was, What did he know? General Waddell would be all for locking Stafford up at the depot until they found the cylinder.

Carrothers Was not so sure about that option. The elephants, as the three-and the four-stars in the Pentagon were known, were starting to panic, which meant that lesser beings like brigadier generals now ought to be reviewing their own political escape routes. Waddell had made it clear that Carrothers’s second star was riding on getting this ball of snakes back into its box. And yet … If someone had stolen a cylinder of Wet Eye, that constituted a genuine national emergency. Maybe Waddell was right: Whatever it takes, do it. But find it. Get it back. Which was why he was trying this little stunt.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”

After about fifteen minutes of just standing there, Stafford heard something coming. He thought it might be another Humvee, but he saw instead an enclosed vehicle of some kind coming down the rail spur, powered by nearly silent electric motors. The vehicle had a passenger compartment forward, and what looked like twenty-foot-long dual enclosed cargo bays behind the passenger compartment. The interior of the passenger compartment was red-lighted, giving the vehicle a menacing buglike appearance, an image reinforced by two whip antennas mounted above the cab. The vehicle clicked along the rail spur, slowed, and then turned left and descended into the bunker alley in front of the steel doors, where it stopped with a squeal of hydraulic brakes. Stafford saw that everyone around him was now standing at attention, as best they could manage in their suits. The doors of the cab opened upward like gull-wing flaps, and a tall figure, also dressed out in a chemical warfare protective suit, got out of the right side of the cab and walked over to where Stafford, who was trying not to reveal his apprehension, stood.

“Open the inner doors,” the tall figure ordered, his strong, commanding voice overcoming the acoustic masking effect of his respirator. Two men went to separate control panels mounted on either side of the inner doors. They If each put a key into a lock, put their hands on two separate II switches, looked at each other, nodded their hoods once, turned the keys, and depressed the switches simultaneously. There was a loud hiss as the partial vacuum inside the bunker was broken, and then the hydraulic arms began to retract, pulling the steel doors open on steel tracks embedded in the concrete. Lights came on inside the bunker, and the tall figure motioned with one outstretched hand for Stafford to precede him inside the bunker. I Reeling almost naked among all the suited figures, Stafford willed his feet to start walking while he stared into the bunker. Inside were stacks of bombs. The bombs were massive, painted olive-drab, and about six feet long and three feet in diameter. They were girdled with two steel reinforcing rings around their circumference. The tail-fin assemblies were missing, and there were shiny fuze ports blanked off at each end. Each bomb was resting in a wooden cradle, the wood smashed down under the crushing weight. There was white stenciling on each bomb case, indicating a hang weight of two thousand pounds. There was a bright yellow band painted around the midsection of each bomb’s nose, and some more letters, which were unintelligible to Stafford.

The tall figure motioned for him to go farther into the bunker. Stafford noticed that none of the others followed them in. He had to be careful of his footing, because the rail line came all the way into the bunker.

There was an ammunition-handling crane positioned all the way at the back of the bunker, and a gantry track running along the arched concrete ceiling. The figure stopped when they had reached the ammunition crane.

Dave turned to face him.

“Mr. Stafford, do you know why you’re here?” the figure asked. His voice had a hiss to it, but there was still no mistaking the authority in it.

Stafford could not make out a face behind the goggles above the respirator mask, only piercing eyes. He had to struggle to find his own voice; the atmosphere in the bunker was very dry and filled with the peculiar smell of very old metal.

“No, I don’t. Who are you? And why am I being held this way? What is this place?”

“This is the Anniston Army Weapons Depot, Mr. Stafford, as you well know. It is a depository for special weapons — chemical weapons. This is a CW storage bunker, sometimes known as ‘a CW tomb.’ These are two thousand-pound gravity bombs. They contain substance VX, which is a nerve gas. These bombs are almost fifty years old. In theory they are not leaking. Our monitoring instruments tell us they are not leaking.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Stafford said, trying to put some sarcasm in his voice. “Seeing as I’m the only one not in protective clothing.

Why have I been brought here?”

The figure stared at him, as if waiting for Stafford to realize something. Then he leaned forward. “Mr. Stafford, we want you to understand something, and understand it very clearly. The substance in these bombs is one of the most lethal compounds ever devised by man. One cubic centimeter volatizing can paralyze simultaneously the central nervous systems of a thousand human beings. One of these bombs exploded upwind of a medium-sized city would extinguish very nearly the entire human and animal ‘ population in a matter of a very few minutes.”

Stafford just looked at him. The figure leaned even closer, to the point where Stafford could smell the rubber of his suit

“Mr. Stafford, you should understand that while these bombs are extremely toxic, they do not contain the most toxic substances in die arsenal. There are some substances which do far more horrible things than VX does. There are substances that cause human blood to boil. There are substances that cause the arteries in human lungs to swell and rupture. There are substances that consume human skin. There are substances for which we have no names, only numbers.”

Stafford swallowed hard. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked in a strained voice. The smell in the bunker seemed to be getting stronger.

The tall figure stepped back away and looked around, as if listening for something. Then he turned back to Stafford. “These are the most lethal man-made substances on the face of the earth, Mr. Stafford. We are experts in containing and handling them, and we are terrified of them.

Nevertheless, we feel very strongly that we do not need your help or anyone else’s help with any aspect of these weapons. Any aspect at all.”

He paused for a moment. “Unless, of course, you know something we do not, Mr. Stafford. Unlikely as mat seems to me, we felt it only appropriate to ask. Once.” The figure stared down at him. “Well?” it said.

Stafford was tongue-tied. Do it, his brain screamed at him. Tell them what you know. But he couldn’t do it. He was afraid. This was a part of the Army he had never seen, and there was a ruthless edge to the tall figure’s voice. He did not want to end up being held incommunicado out here, and his instincts were to keep his mouth shut. First get free.

Then regroup, find some way to warn them. From a distance.

“Just so, Mr. Stafford. The Army appreciates your cooperation in conning here tonight. We have one last detail to attend to with you, but for right now, you may return to your vehicle.”

The figure pointed Stafford toward the entrance to the bunker. Dave had to resist the impulse, a very, very strong impulse, to bolt. He had not missed the sarcasm about his cooperation. As if he had had any choice in the matter, which was, of course, the point the man was making.

Mustering as much dignity as he could, his useless arm stuck in a pocket, he picked his way among the huge bombs, nearly twisting an ankle and losing his balance when he stepped into the indentation of the rail line running down the center of the bunker. When he reached the inner doors, the guards motioned for him to proceed to the Humvee. He got back in, as did his escorts, and the vehicle doors were closed. They drove back out to the service road between the line of bunkers. The last image he had of the bunker was a small crowd of suited figures silhouetted in the lighted entranceway of the bunker, all looking his way as the Humvee, pulled away. V

General Carrothers pulled off his hood and mask once he was back inside the ammunition transport carrier. Beside him, Major Mason did the same.

The car operator, isolated in the control cab of the car, remained suited up as they proceeded back toward the main gates, following the route taken by the Humvee containing Stafford.

“Did it work, General?” Mason asked.

“I’m not entirely sure. He should have been scared shitless in there.

Instead, I think he was processing. He was a little scared, of course, but I had the impression he knows more than he’s telling. He even tried to bluster a little bit He may be too cool a customer for what I have in mind. Don’t forget that little caper with the car from the motor pool.”

“Do you think he’s in a suitable mental state to be fluttered?”

“I don’t know. The FBI guy is supposedly set up and waiting for him right now.”

“Suppose he refuses to take a lie-detector test, General?”

Carrothers’s face hardened. “Then I’ll let him spend a couple of nights underground in one of the bunkers. One of the really old mustard gas bunkers.”

Mason shivered involuntarily. “Christ,” he said, glancing over at the control cab. “I’d go out of my mind, and I know these weapons are safe.

But a lie-detector test wouldn’t be worth much after an experience like that, sir.”

“I don’t really give a shit about the results of the test, Major. I’ve given Smith the two questions I really want answered, and he’s salted them into a laundry list of CW related questions. The only truth I’m after is how sensitive he is to those two questions. That will tell me what I want to know.”

Mason glanced again at the back of the driver’s head as the transport approached the security gates and was switched out onto the main rail line. “And if he does know? Do we just let him go?”

“Actually, yes. We have no legal justification to hold him, although we don’t have to let Stafford know that. If we get an indication that he knows something, turning him loose might be to our advantage: My guess is he’ll try to find the cylinder. If in fact someone’s taken it, an individual investigator like Stafford might be more effective than I we are.” I “Sir?” I “Because we can’t admit we’re looking, Major, that’s why.”

“Yes, sir, I understand that. But if he’s loose, he can talk. Complain to his superiors. Maybe go public.”

“General Waddell talked about that possibility when we first found out about DCIS snooping around that DRMO. The general has been talking to the head of DCIS. This Stafford apparently has made some significant enemies up in D.C. General Waddell said DCIS can be neutralized if necessary, although I’m not sure how that would be managed.”

Mason was perplexed, and Carrothers caught the expression on his face.

“See, Major?” he said. “Even brigadier generals don’t know everything.”

Mason snorted. “Only second lieutenants know everything, General,” he said.

Carrothers laughed. “You’ll go far, Mason.”

“You want me to what?” Stafford exclaimed. “No fucking way!”

The stumpy lieutenant colonel standing in front of him nodded patiently.

They were back in the windowless room again, accompanied by two more oversized MPs. This time everyone was back in regulation working fatigues. The lieutenant colonel had identified himself as the Anniston Depot’s provost marshal. He had just asked Stafford if he would submit to a polygraph test. The provost marshal had made it sound as if he was asking him to have a cup of coffee.

Stafford was getting tired of all the games. He knew instinctively that the little seance in the bunker had been intended to intimidate him, although to what exact end, he wasn’t entirely clear, and he really wanted to know who that tall guy in the chem suit had been, especially after watching everybody come to attention when he’d first arrived. But even more importantly, these people had no legal authority to hold him in the first place, much less to ask him to take a lie-detector test.

“What’s your name again, Colonel?” Stafford asked.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” the lieutenant colonel said, even though his name was spelled out in black letters right there on his shirt. Stafford pressed on.

“Because my business is law enforcement, Colonel,” Stafford said, his voice rising. “Federal law enforcement. Right now I am planning to file charges of kidnapping, illegal search and seizure, attempted intimidation of a federal law-enforcement officer, and obstruction of justice against every officer in the chain of command at this post between you and the CO, you included. I work for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service — Defense, as in Department of Defense — which organization is senior to the Department of the fucking Army, in case you’ve forgotten.

Now I want a vehicle to take me back to Atlanta and I want it now. And then you and your cohorts here need to go find a good lawyer.”

The lieutenant colonel looked at him impassively. “And if we don’t?” he asked.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t get you that vehicle. Don’t let you out of here. Don’t tell a fucking soul that you’re here. On a restricted special weapons reservation. Where nobody comes unless we let them. What then, Mr. Big-Deal Federal Agent with One Arm?”

“Then my boss will find out I’m missing, and he’ll tell every cop in Atlanta that another cop’s gone missing. They’ll end up here at your front gates eventually.”

“That boss being one Mr. Sparks?”

Stafford tried to keep the sinking feeling from showing in his face.

“He’s the local supervisor,” he said. “He’s not the one who sent me down here in the first place.”

The lieutenant colonel pulled a notebook from his pocket. The two MPs looked on with interest, admiring then-boss at work. “That would be Colonel Parsons, AUS, retired, am I right? Selected for one star, elected to take early retirement for the DCIS job? That Colonel Parsons?

“Troy Parsons?”

Stafford just looked at him. The message was pretty clear. Parsons may be DCIS now, but he was one of us long before he was one of you. The lieutenant colonel closed his book.

“Look, Agent Stafford,” he said. “Here’s how we think things shake out: You’re off your reservation. You were not assigned to stick your nose in here or anywhere other than into a fraud case at the DRMO in Atlanta.

Your local supervisor is apparently eager to have a little chat with you about that, by the way. We, on the other hand, are interested only in the national-security aspects of your attempted intrusion into the depot here and into a restricted Army exercise in Atlanta. The polygraph operator is a civilian from the Atlanta office of the FBI. You take the test, we’ll give you back your ID card, get you that car, and you’re free to go anywhere you want.”

“And if I don’t?”

“C’mon, Stafford, that was my line, remember? You don’t have that option and you know it. We’re not afraid of all your threats. Put it another way: Where chemical weapons are concerned, my generals can beat up your colonel. Or better yet, we can make a deal to keep a shit storm from happening, you being such a popular guy up there and all.” He put his notebook back in his pocket. “Hell, you’re a big agent now,” he said, clearly mocking him. “Haven’t you ever secretly wanted to see if you could spoof a flutter?”

* * *

Thirty minutes later, Stafford sat rigidly in a straight backed chair at a small table in yet another windowless room. The polygraph operator, who had introduced himself as a Mr. Smith from the FBI, looked like every Bureau technician Stafford had ever encountered: quietly competent. The operator was sitting behind him at a second table with his equipment.

“Remember,” he said. “Only yes or no answers. One word, each question.

Yes or no. Ready? Say yes or no.”

“I guess so,” Dave said deliberately.

Smith sighed. “Yes or no, Mr. Stafford. You can do it. I know you can.

Here we go. First question: Is your name David Stafford?”

“Yes.” Dave was very conscious of his breathing and his heart rate. Even so, he imagined that the instruments, wires, and cuffs attached to his skin were somehow hardwired to his lungs and heart. And his nerves.

“Are you an agent of the DCIS?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a GS-Fifteen grade in the civil service?”

“Yes.”

“Is your height five feet ten inches?”

“Yes.” The man was obviously reading data from his credentials. Stafford knew enough about polygraphs to recognize the calibration procedures.

“Are you of Chinese descent?”

“No.”

“Are you Caucasian?”

“Yes.”

“Are you presently located at the Army Anniston Weapons Depot?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what CS is?”

“No.” But I have an idea, he thought.

“Do you know what VX is?”

“No. Yes.” The bombs in the bunker. The tall man had told him VX was nerve gas. There was a scratching on the paper behind him.

“Do you know what VX is?” the operator repeated.

“Yes.”

“Do you know what cryptosporidium is?”

“No.”

“Do you know what anthrax is?” ‘

“Yes.” Cow disease. Cryptosporidium? Anthrax? These weren’t chemical weapons. Those sounded like biologics. “Do you know what Wet Eye is?”

“No.”

“Do you know what botulinum toxin is?”

“No.”

“Have you seen it?”

Dave felt his heart jump and mentally cursed. Seen what — the cylinder?

Damn it! That needle must be going s all over the place. But he had not seen it. She had.

“No.”

There was a pause, some more rustling of paper. Then the list of questions started all over again.

“Is your name David Stafford?”

“Yes.”

The man went through the same initial questions. This time, when he got to the one asking if he’d seen it, Stafford had himself under much better control. The man kept right on going this time, without the ominous pause of earlier.

“Do you know the kill density per cubic centimeter of substance G?”

“No.”

“Do you know the visible signs of a mustard gas attack?”

“No.”

“Do you know the chemical constituents of phosgene gas?”

“No.”

“Can you name the four agents known as ‘blood boilers?”

“No.”

“Do you have it?”

Another surprise. But he was almost ready for it. “No.” The operator then shifted gears and asked him fifteen more questions about chemical weapons, each one increasingly more graphically specific as to its effects on the human body. Stafford answered no to every one of them.

“Okay,” the man said. “From the top. Is your name David Stafford?”

They went through all the same questions again, including the two Stafford figured had to do with the missing weapon. Then the man did something that caused his trace machine to begin what sounded like a print session while he stood up and began to remove the sensors from Stafford’s body.

“That’s it, Mr. Stafford. I’ll go get the provost: I think you’re all done here.” The way he said the word done made Dave wonder if it was meant innocuously, but Smith’s face revealed absolutely nothing.

“Did I pass?” Stafford asked, struggling to get his right arm into his shirt. Smith had gathered up a long roll of trace paper and was at the door.

“Pass, Mr. Stafford?” The technician stopped in the doorway. “There’s no pass-fail in a polygraph test. Just questions and answers, truth tellers and liars. Simple, really. Like saying yes or no.”

Stafford did not reply as the man closed the door. Twenty minutes later, he was in the backseat of an Army staff car, speeding through the Alabama countryside, headed back to Atlanta. He was in the dark, literally and figuratively.

* * *

Carrothers sat in his chair in the executive cabin of the Learjet, listening to Smith debrief the polygraph session. The flight crew was making final checks for departure, and one engine was already running.

Major Mason stood beside him, taking notes. Carrothers pursed his lips when Smith had finished.

“So, in your opinion, he does know something about the item in question?” he asked.

“His answer indicated a lie, especially on the ‘Have you seen it?’ question. He was able to damp down the reactions on the repeat runs, but the anomalies were still there. Since I don’t know what ‘it’ is, I couldn’t branch down the questions.”

Carrothers nodded. “Yes, I understand. In this case, Mr. Smith, ignorance is truly bliss. We thank you very much for your help. We’ll be launching for Atlanta directly.”

The FBI technician nodded and withdrew to the middle cabin. Mason remained behind.

Carrothers rubbed his eyes and then fastened his seat belt. “I love working with the FBI,” he said. “Nobody knows when to shut his trap like an FBI man. Okay. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to reconstitute the Security Working Group, only this time it will consist of you, me, and Colonel Fuller. Second, we need to take this Stafford fella off the board. I’ll need General Waddell’s help with that. Third, I need to know that our fluttermeister in there is going to keep his mouth shut about this little excursion.”

“I think he will, General. I briefed the whole thing to him as an internal Army CIC effort to trap a dirty DCIS agent. I told him that Stafford was a whistle-blower who burned some people in Washington, including a Bureau man, but now we think all that was done to cover up his own game.”

“In other words, payback. The Bureau guys are into payback. He Buy it?”

“The Bureau does not love whistle-blowers. He sincerely wished us luck.

Said he was glad to help.”

“But he’ll have to report it, right?”

“Oh, yes, sir. I told him to contact us if his bosses had any further questions. Full cooperation. We owe them one, that sort of thing. I’m hoping the SAC Atlanta will just put it away in his favor bank.”

“Okay, let’s rock and roll. And Major?”

“Yes, sir?”

“As far as General Waddell is concerned, this thing has been destroyed, just like you said. So all we’re doing now is making sure there are no loose ends. Like Stafford.”

The hatch closed with a bump and a hiss. Mason frowned, looking worried.

Well he should be, Carrothers thought as he watched Mason’s face. He was proposing to go behind the commanding general’s back, with the major’s connivance. It would be interesting to see if Mason remained loyal to him or to the CG.

“With respect, General,” Mason replied, “is there a new ‘right answer’ to what’s happened to that thing?”

Carrothers rolled his eyes as the aircraft began to taxi. “Go get your seat belt on, Major. Tray tables and seat backs in the upright position, and all that.”

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