House Divided (8 page)

Claire sat there looking at Gilbert, but she wasn’t really looking at him. She was staring at his chest, his shirt a narrow blue wall for her to focus on.

“Uh, you need me for anything else?” he said.

“Hush,” Claire said.

Hospice worker. Nurse. Drugs. No. Hospice worker. Dying people. Death-bed secrets.

“Get me the names of Russo’s last ten patients,” she said. “Leave the file on Hopper with me. Oh, and do a data dump on this doctor who did the autopsy, this Dr. Lee.”

David Hopper.

Claire reviewed the file Gilbert had compiled on the FBI agent, noticing that he had served in the army before joining the Bureau. She also noticed he was on the take.

Hopper was a GS-14 and thus made a decent salary, but he had two ex-wives and four children and had never been in arrears on either alimony or child support. Not only was he father-of-the year, but based on his credit card statements, he dined at some of the best restaurants in town, purchased his clothes from high-end stores, and owned a pricey and relatively new Mercedes. The supposed source of Hopper’s additional income was a trust fund established by a dead uncle, but a little research—the sort of research Claire’s people could do in their sleep—showed that the uncle had been an alcoholic insurance salesman who had three DUIs in an eight-year period. No way had Uncle Boozer left Nephew David any money.

Turning last to his phone records, she noted no calls to anyone who struck her as unusual. However, at about the same time as Paul Russo’s body was discovered, Hopper had received a call on his cell phone from another cell phone whose owner Gilbert had not identified.

She marched back out to the technician’s desk.

“Who made this call to Hopper?” she said, jabbing her finger at the phone record.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Well, find out.”

“I’ve tried,” Gilbert whined.

“Try harder. Don’t leave until you get me an answer.”

“Geez, Claire, I was hoping to get out of here on time for once. Can’t someone else—”

“Look at me,” she said.

Gilbert looked at her with the eyes of a martyr. None of her employees knew the demons that drove Claire Whiting. All they knew was that she was fanatical about her job and she would work until she dropped—and she would work you until
you
dropped. Gilbert also knew of another technician, a man with three kids all younger than eight, who had been transferred to a listening post on the North Korean border because he’d failed to meet Claire Whiting’s expectations.

“This could be important,” Claire said. “I need answers fast.”

Gilbert nodded and glumly turned back to his computer.

Whoops, Claire almost forgot. “Did you identify Russo’s last ten patients?”

“Yeah,” Gilbert said wearily, and pulled a sheet of paper from his printer. He had accessed the hospice’s billing records.

General Martin Breed’s flag-draped casket sat in the main aisle of the National Cathedral, bathed softly in the light coming through the cathedral’s magnificent stained-glass windows. The cathedral, even as big as it was, was half full, the pews occupied by men and women in uniform, high-ranking civil servants, and media-conscious politicians. Charles Bradford had just delivered Martin’s eulogy; after he stepped away from the lectern, he saluted the casket—his last tribute to Martin—and sat down with Martin’s family.

Replacing Bradford at the lectern was Martin’s brother, Jerry, a soft-looking dentist who bore little resemblance to his soldier sibling. Jerry began to speak about an incident that had occurred when he and Martin were boys, the point of the story being that even as a child Martin Breed had been fearless. Charles Bradford knew that Jerry Breed had no idea how truly courageous his brother had been.

Martin’s wife, Linda, begin to cry again as Jerry was speaking. She’d been incredibly brave during Martin’s illness and had held up well throughout the service. Her daughters, two pretty teenage girls, were pale and still as statues, stunned seemingly motionless by their father’s passing. Bradford put a fatherly arm around Linda Breed’s shoulder and pulled her close for a moment, letting her know he would always be there for the wife of a warrior.

Bradford had met Martin at the Pentagon. He had just received his second star and Martin, only a major at the time, had been assigned to his staff. One evening, after a particularly frustrating day, he discussed with Martin his dissatisfaction with a member of the National Security Council who was preventing the army from dealing directly with an obvious threat. He wasn’t surprised Martin agreed with him—Bradford was, after all, his boss—but he knew Martin wasn’t simply telling him what he wanted to hear. He sensed immediately that Martin Breed was one of the special ones, one of those men like himself and John Levy, men who were willing to do whatever was necessary to protect their country.

It took many long philosophical discussions before he was totally satisfied that Martin was a man he could take into his confidence. These discussions primarily focused on three critical questions. Is it ethical for men in power, men entrusted by their countrymen with that power, to go outside the law if the situation demands it? Second, is it reasonable to expect the average citizen to understand what needs to be done? And last, is it logical to expect self-serving politicians to act on what needs to be done?

It was the politicians who frustrated Bradford the most. It seemed to him that their primary agenda was not losing the
next
election rather than accomplishing something meaningful once they were elected. They never agreed on anything, and by the time a decision was made it was often too late and the damage was already done. So as dangerous as it was for him personally, Bradford finally decided that it was cowardly and irresponsible for a man in his position to ignore obvious threats to national security and blame his failure to act on others. There was no one in a better position than he was to do what needed to be done. He had superbly trained personnel and virtually unlimited funding, and he was privy to almost as much intelligence as the president. He knew who the enemy was, what they were plotting, and what was at stake. All he need was the courage to act—and he found that courage.

A situation with the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey was the first assignment he gave young Major Breed. The base had been in existence since 1955 and was theoretically operated by NATO, meaning that in reality it was controlled by the U.S. government. It was a vital jumping-off point for deployments to the Middle East, but a charismatic member of the Turkish parliament had taken a popular position that the American infidels should be booted out of the country. The State Department had talked to the man until they were blue in the face, but neither money nor logic could move the Turk. He was adamant. The Americans had to go.

Bradford told Martin how the loss of the base was not just an expensive inconvenience. The base was a strategic necessity, and losing it would create a perilous hole in America’s security. Furthermore, there was a very good possibility the Turkish politician would one day be the prime minister of his country, and a onetime ally would become another hostile anti-American power. The Turk, he said to Martin, was as big an enemy as any terrorist with a bomb—but he didn’t propose a solution. He wanted Martin to arrive at the solution on his own, and finally he did. Martin said, “Sir, if this man is our enemy, then he should be treated as such.”

Martin flew to Turkey three days later, going supposedly to review the base’s security procedures. Accompanying him were two young enlisted men Bradford had personally selected for the assignment; Bradford didn’t tell Martin, however, which regiment the enlisted men came from. Not at that time.

A Christian lunatic was eventually executed for the Turkish politician’s murder.

It was after the operation in Turkey that he brought Martin completely into the fold and told him about the mission of the Old Guard, the true mission of the soldiers who protect the Unknowns’ tomb. He also told him about John Levy, but he didn’t tell him Levy’s name. He trusted Martin, but security procedures had to be followed.

Bradford knew that many Americans—not all, but many—would condemn what he and Martin had done in Turkey. Yet if those same Americans were asked, Do you wish Osama bin Laden had been eliminated when we first knew he posed a threat? what do you think their answer would be? Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization were known to be behind the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, and bombing of the U.S.S.
Cole
in Yemen in 2000. So why didn’t we kill him before 2001? The answer was because the politicians vacillated until it was too late. They were concerned about violating international law and what our Muslim allies might think if we killed bin Laden on their soil and without their approval. They were concerned the intelligence wasn’t one hundred percent accurate (it never was) and worried about the international reaction if innocent civilians were killed. They debated if we should capture him rather than kill him, and if there was some way to get the Saudis or some other Islamic government to do the capturing for us. They vacillated over
everything,
and because of this bin Laden was allowed to live, and three thousand American civilians died, and nothing has been the same since. Had Bradford taken the initiative before 2001—and he blamed himself to this day for not having done so—9/11 might not have happened. But now—thanks to men like Martin Breed and John Levy—he was taking the initiative.

Yes, Martin Breed had done much for his country, and the most important things he had done would never be known. Bradford always believed that if he had ever asked Martin to die for him, he would have done so without hesitation—and then it turned out, when it was time for Martin to die, that Martin turned against him. But he didn’t feel bitter toward his friend. Who knows what effect the cancer had on his mind at the end? And who knows what any man might do when faced with the prospect of meeting his Maker? He liked to think that impending death would never change his principles, but he had no right to judge Martin harshly. He had not yet walked in Martin’s shoes.

Linda Breed let out a heart-wrenching moan, and Bradford took her small hand into his. But as he held her hand, his thoughts turned to John Levy. Bradford prided himself on his ability to compartmentalize issues and problems, and his focus this morning had been on Martin’s funeral and his eulogy. Now that his part in the service was over, however, he couldn’t help but wonder how Levy was faring.

Levy had to find out who had identified that young soldier through his fingerprints.

“That’s her,” Perkins said, pointing at the monitor on his desk.

Perkins—a lanky, balding, bookish man in his forties—was an agent who worked for the PFPA, the Pentagon Force Protection Agency. The PFPA is the Pentagon’s police force and is composed of guards, criminal investigators, and highly trained technicians responsible for protecting the Pentagon and other DOD assets in the D.C. area. John Levy was nominally the deputy director of the agency. The reality, as Perkins and every other member of the force knew—including Levy’s boss—was that Levy reported to no one. And people in the Pentagon quickly learned to do whatever Levy asked of them. If they didn’t, someone very, very high up the chain of command would make a phone call and instruct them in the error of their ways. Levy was a shadowy presence who, for reasons no one could understand, was incredibly powerful and totally autonomous.

Levy looked at the monitor and saw a stocky black woman with henna-colored hair and black framed glasses wearing a dark pantsuit.

“We got that picture from a surveillance camera located near the hospital pharmacy,” Perkins said. “We started with a general description of the woman from a nurse’s aide, who said that a black woman identified herself as an Arlington police officer and took the fingerprints of the John Doe corpse. We showed the aide this surveillance photo, and he confirmed this was the woman.”

“So who is she?” Levy said.

“Her name is Alberta Merker. I used Homeland Security’s facial recognition software.” A second photo flashed up on the screen, showing a round-faced black woman, her hair cut in a short Afro. “That’s her Maryland driver’s license photo, minus the wig and glasses.”

“Put both photos on the screen at the same time,” Levy said. Perkins did and Levy studied the two pictures. Yes, it was the same woman, but the simple disguise she’d worn made it tough to tell.

“She’s not an Arlington cop, is she?” Levy said.

“No, sir. All I could find out about her is that she’s ex-army enlisted and works for the Department of Defense. DOD personnel records identify her as a GS-Eleven procurement specialist, but her file has nothing in it that identifies exactly what she does or which division she works for. And a title like
procurement specialist
is not much help; she could be procuring anything from combat boots to tanks.

“I mean, this is really strange,” Perkins added. “I’m certain this woman is connected in some way to the Pentagon, but it’s like her personnel records have been sanitized.”

Levy just stood there, looking at the two pictures of Alberta Merker still visible on the monitor. He didn’t say anything, but he was thinking that the Department of Defense employed over two million military personnel and almost a million civilians. It was spread over the entire planet and had more departments, divisions, and bureaucratic niches than anyone could possibly imagine or keep track of. The fact that Merker’s personnel records were incomplete didn’t necessarily mean that someone was trying to hide the identity of her employer—but he suspected that in this case someone was.

“Where does she live?” Levy asked.

“College Park, Maryland, according to her tax returns. Also, per her tax returns, she’s single. But I don’t know if she lives alone or not.”

When Levy didn’t say anything, Perkins added, “Sir, if you told me why you’re interested in this woman, maybe I’d be able to get more data.”