Murder at the Pentagon (26 page)

She strolled the Mall’s length. After passing the museums of American History and Natural History on her left, she paused at the skating rink and looked across the expanse of grass to the Freer Gallery, known for its collection of Oriental art; to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; and to the original Smithsonian “castle,” which now served as that institution’s “Pentagon.”

She continued her walk until reaching the National Gallery of Art, its two buildings directly across from the National Air and Space Museum, enjoying, among other features of
a fine day, the diversity of architecture in view. The gallery’s West Building, designed by John Russell Pope in the 1930s, was, architectural critics noted, the last great building in Washington conceived in the classical style. Next to it, in sharp contrast, was the East Building, completed in 1978, a vision of I. M. Pei; a trapezoid divided into two triangles of pink marble. That the collections housed in each of the buildings reflected their individual designs was to be expected—da Vinci, Degas, Renoir, and Monet in the West; Henry Moore and Noguchi sculptures, Mirό tapestries, and Alexander Calder mobiles in the East. It might be nice, Margit thought, if everything in Washington were as appropriate and as well thought out.

A cobblestone courtyard spanned the two buildings. Most people used an underground concourse that linked them, but Margit went to the courtyard where she was to meet Louise Harrison, who said she’d wait at the center fountain. Margit admired the fountain, a design that spewed streams of water into the air and, because there was no enclosure, allowed it to flow freely over cobblestones and down terraced concrete to a sheet of glass that formed a wall of the lower concourse.

“Major Falk?” a female voice said from behind. Margit turned. The woman smiled and extended her hand. “Louise Harrison.”

“Yes.” Margit shook the reporter’s hand.

Louise Harrison didn’t look the way Margit expected she would. Funny how voices can throw you off. Like having a favorite radio disc jockey for years and building a mental image of the person to whom the voice belongs. Then, meeting the big, booming voice and discovering its slight, slender owner. Margit had pictured Harrison as tall and lanky—somehow British in appearance (because of the name? a female version of Rex Harrison?)—and similarly regal in bearing. Instead, she faced a woman no taller than five feet two inches, with a pug nose, ruddy, fleshy cheeks, and heavy black eyebrows. Her hair was brown and straight, the cut severe.

“I’ve always loved this fountain,” Harrison said. “I can sit for hours and watch the water lift and flow.”

“It is beautiful,” Margit agreed.

“I appreciate your agreeing to meet me,” Harrison said.

“I’m still not sure I should have,” said Margit. “I almost changed my mind.”

“Glad you didn’t.” Harrison thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her tan raincoat and looked around. The buildings blocked the sun from the courtyard; it was chilly in the shade of a waning day. Few people were in the courtyard, most passing from one building to the other. Some lingered, including a young man pushing a baby carriage. He stood on the opposite side of the fountain and seemed to be admiring the flow of water over the cobblestones. His carriage was one of those tall British types, but his clothing was pure U.S. campus: jeans, white sneakers, and a black windbreaker. Margit’s initial, and fleeting, thought was that it was nice to see a young father taking his infant son or daughter for a stroll, perhaps freeing up the baby’s mother for errands, or for time with friends. Modern, and nice.

Harrison noted the young man, too. But he wasn’t likely to hear anything they said. He was thirty feet from them, and there was the gurgle of the fountain.

“Look, Major, I know you’re uncomfortable meeting with a reporter, and I can understand that.” Margit didn’t reply. Harrison said, “Then again, maybe I don’t understand. Half this town talks to the press on background, no quotes, no attribution. It seems to me that now that Captain Cobol is dead, there wouldn’t be any official reason to put a muzzle on you.” Again, no response. “Is there? I mean, is there any official reason not to discuss this with me?”

Margit raised her eyebrows. “Common sense, that’s all. I’m an officer in the air force. Even though that doesn’t impinge upon my First Amendment rights, we do have protocol when it comes to releasing information.”

“Let me ask you a question,” Harrison said. “You indicated to me when I reached you at Mackensie Smith’s house that you might have doubts that your client—is that what
they’re called in the military, client?—might not have hanged himself the way the official line would have us believe. Why?”

Margit, who’d been relaxed, now felt a tickle of nerves. She said, “I didn’t say that to you on the phone.”

Harrison said. “No, not exactly, but your tone, and the way you stressed ‘alleged,’ said a lot more than your actual words. Are you involved in the investigation of Cobol’s death?”

“I’ve been taken off the case.”

“You have no continuing interest in it? Officially, that is?”

“That’s right.”

“Have you changed your mind?”

“About what?”

“About doubting whether Cobol died by his own hand.”

Margit looked away from the reporter and focused on the water. There were certain aspects of some people’s personalities that invariably annoyed her. One was playing games, like women who use four-letter words and then put their fingers to their lips, saying “Pardon my French.” Or men who are always coming close to consummating something—personal or professional—but who keep it going rather than concluding it, never committing. But here she stood, Margit Falk, who had agreed to meet a reporter to discuss what is very much on her mind these days, but who now plays coy. Say good-bye, Margit, or tell her what you’re really thinking.

“I don’t think Captain Cobol killed Dr. Joycelen, nor do I think he took his own life,” she said, looking directly into Harrison’s almond eyes. Cobol’s note to her was like a large weight in her purse.

“Neither do I,” Harrison said.

“Maybe you know more than I do,” Margit said.

“What was Cobol like?”

“Very nice.”

“A good officer?”

“I think so.”

“Was he gay?”

Margit hesitated. The man had been dragged through the
mud in ways considerably more savage than revelations about his private sexual life. He died, accused of murdering a scientist, with no recourse, no hearings. Okay, no games. “Yes, he was,” she said.

“Joycelen?”

“That’s what’s been alleged. I don’t buy that.”

“Cobol was CIA,” said Harrison.

“Right,” Margit confirmed. “He was on liaison duty at the Pentagon. There are a lot of people from the Company assigned to the Pentagon.”

“I thought you had regs against homosexuals in the service.”

“We do.” Margit didn’t like the direction Harrison was taking them. She would not—could not—implicate Major Reich, or others who might have been involved in allowing Cobol to continue in the army despite knowing that his private life blatantly violated regulations. She said, “My guess is that the homosexual population in general is reflected, to some degree, by their percentage in the military.”

“Did Cobol keep it private?” Harrison asked.

Did she know something? Was she aware that Cobol had been found out? Reporters, Margit knew, along with lawyers, liked to ask questions to which they already had the answers. “I have to assume he had,” Margit answered.

She looked through the water at the young father, who had lowered his head and pushed the carriage toward the glass wall overlooking the underground passageway.

“I really should be going,” Margit said. She had a date with Foxboro at seven-thirty.

“Sure. Have you heard that Joycelen might have been a whistle-blower?”

“No,” Margit said, realizing at the same time that, in essence, she was on the verge of becoming one.

“You know about Wishengrad’s hearing,” Harrison said. It was a statement, not a question.

“I read about it,” Margit said.

“One of our political-affairs correspondents has a source who says Joycelen was telling tales out of school.”

“About DARPA?” Margit asked.

“About Project Safekeep.”

“That’s news to me,” Margit said. She thought about Foxboro.

“Opens up some interesting possibilities, doesn’t it?” Harrison said.

Margit chose not to answer. She said instead, “Listen, I really have to go, Ms. Harrison.”

“Call me Louise.”

“Okay. I wish I had more to offer you. This was wasted time for you.” How easy to pull out Cobol’s note and hand it to the reporter. She couldn’t.

“Not at all,” Harrison said. “Just knowing that someone close to the Cobol case shares the same skepticism I have means something.”

“Don’t read too much into what I’ve said,” Margit said.

“I’ll try not to. Could we meet again?”

“For what purpose?”

“Just to talk. Your place, your time. I’ll show up whenever and wherever you say.”

“Louise, let’s leave it this way. If I think I have something to offer you, I’ll call.”

“Fair enough.”

They shook hands. Margit said, “Why don’t you leave first.”

“You’re concerned about being seen with me.”

“I guess I am.”

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Major. After all, you’re not giving me operational secrets about Star Wars.”

“Still …”

“We might be able to do somebody some good. Cobol’s memory. Joycelen’s. The nation? Call me,” said Harrison. She walked away.

Margit lingered a few moments. She was alone in the courtyard. She hunched her shoulders against a chill, then headed for her car on Sixth Street. As she approached it, she
saw the young father with the baby carriage standing next to his car, which was parked on the opposite side of the street.

Margit got in her Honda, sat a few moments pondering the conversation she’d had with Louise Harrison, started the engine, and slowly pulled away from the curb. The young man with the baby carriage watched her stop at the corner for a red light. Another car that had been parked on Margit’s side of the street fell in behind her as the light changed to green, and Margit turned the corner.

The man reached inside the baby carriage, removed a pink blanket, picked up a lifelike doll, and threw both into the trunk. He collapsed the carriage and tossed it, too, into the trunk—on top of his plastic baby.

Foxboro had cooked spaghetti and made a green salad, which he and Margit ate at a small kitchen table in his Crystal City apartment. Throughout the simple meal, he’d demonstrated intense interest in her activities that day. She’d mentioned lunch with Max Lanning, and Foxboro repeatedly asked what they’d talked about. At one point Margit had laughed. “I can’t possibly remember everything we discussed,” she’d said. “We just … talked. He’s a nice young man who works for Bellis, mostly as his driver, and who seems interested in anything and everything.”

“How come Bellis has a lieutenant as his driver? I thought enlisted men were drivers.”

Margit again laughed. “Not in the Pentagon, Jeff. It may be that way everywhere else in the system, but in the Pentagon, lieutenants are buck privates.”

Now, as they sat at the table sipping coffee and eating grapefruit halves, Margit changed the subject. “I read about the hearing into Project Safekeep and Starpath. Did you know it was in the works?”

Foxboro picked up their empty spaghetti plates, took them to the sink, and rinsed them. He said over the sound of running water, “I knew something was brewing.”

“Tell me about it,” she said. “You must have known earlier.”

He shut off the water, turned, and leaned against the sink. “What’s to tell? We think there’s been some hanky-panky with that weapons system, and we want to get to the facts.”

“You must already have facts to justify a hearing, “Margit said.

“That’s right. Hand me the salad plates.”

She assumed he was going to rejoin her at the table, but he left the kitchen and didn’t return. She finished clearing, and found him in what would be a small second bedroom, had it been needed for that purpose. Instead, the bachelor had turned it into a home office. A desk lamp cast a muted pool of yellow light on the desktop. Through open blinds the lights of the city flickered across the Potomac. Foxboro was in his chair, his feet propped on the desk.

“Jeff,” Margit said from behind, “is something wrong?”

He answered without turning. “Maybe there is.”

“Want to share it with me?”

“Maybe what’s wrong is us,” he said.

“Oh. Maybe you’d like to share your thoughts about
that
.”

He dropped his feet to the floor and turned. “Look, Margit, I’ve got a ton on my mind. I’m being stretched six ways from Sunday, and it’s getting to me.”

She came to the side of the desk and sat in a yellow director’s chair. “I understand that,” she said. “Are you suggesting that I’m imposing additional pressure?”

He shrugged. “I just know I feel trapped.”

“Trapped? By me?”

“No, it’s just that—look, I don’t want to talk about it. Maybe that’s what’s bugging me, that we get together and we talk shop. The little bit of time I have away from the Hill, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fine. I respect that.”

“Then why do you keep asking me about it? About the hearing, for instance?”

“Jeff, you spent the entire dinner pumping me about what I did today, whom I saw, what I talked about. I’m flattered you’re interested, but I’d like to think it’s a two-way street.” When he didn’t reply, she added, “Is it?”

His answer was to leave the room. He went to the hall closet and pulled out a tan golf jacket. She stood in the living room and watched him put it on. “Are you leaving?”

“Yeah. I need a walk. I need to be alone.”

“Then I suppose I should leave,” Margit said.

She wanted him to protest. He didn’t. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but no words came from him. He opened the door and left.

Margit returned to his office and sat in the chair he’d occupied, looked across the river at the same lights he’d been watching. Did those lights have the same meaning to him that they did for her at that moment? Washington’s light show had always represented beauty to her, a kind of benign grandeur, as it did to millions of other people who lived there, or visited. But now, as she sat in the shadowed small room and gazed at the lights, they represented something dangerous and unwholesome, each light a cynical wink that taunted her, that said: You were better off where you were before. This is not a place for people with ideals, with commitment to Pollyanna concepts of fairness and decency. You don’t belong here, Margit, she could almost hear a voice saying. This place—this system—will suffocate you, just as it’s doing to your relationship with Jeff. You can’t survive it. Either be a good soldier or get out. Go to Bellis and tell him you’d like a transfer somewhere else. He’s offered you that. Take advantage of it—before it’s too late.