Murder at the Pentagon (33 page)

“Where did you hear that?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s going to come out. A reporter …”

Foxboro leaned forward. “What reporter?” His expression was stern.

No more shadows. All sunshine from now on. “Her name is Louise Harrison. She’s with
The Washington Post
. She’s part of an investigative team looking into Cobol’s so-called hanging and Joycelen’s whistle-blowing.”

“You’ve been talking to the press?”

“Only once, and I offered little.”

“What else have you learned?”

“That you—that you had regular contact with Joycelen. Tuesday nights at midnight.”

He cocked his head and nodded. “I’m impressed,” he said. “Excuse me.” He went inside. Should she follow? She didn’t have time because he reappeared. “How did you find that out? This reporter?”

“No. She doesn’t know anything about it. But I do, and it upsets me. Were you the contact with Joycelen for Senator Wishengrad? Did Joycelen hand over materials for the committee to you?”

“Right again.” He drew a deep breath. “Your cappuccino is getting cold,” he said.

She stood. “Jeff, whatever went on between you, Senator Wishengrad and Joycelen is of no concern to me. At least it wouldn’t be if Joycelen hadn’t been shot, and I hadn’t been handed the lousy job of defending his accused murderer. Cobol didn’t kill Joycelen. I know that as surely as I know my own name. But someone did.”

“Are you suggesting that I might have?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. But if Joycelen’s death had something to do with the fact that he was providing sensitive information to your boss and his committee, then it might have had something to do with his being killed, and with Cobol being accused. I want to clear Cobol’s name. Not only have I made that pledge to his mother, I’ve made it to me. I don’t make many promises to myself, but when I do, I keep them, even if it means trouble for me.”

“Which it will.”

“I don’t doubt that,” she said. “What do those numbers mean on the paper?”

“Since you’re batting a thousand, you tell me what they mean.”

“I have no idea. A code of some sort. They can’t be dates. Dollar figures? Hundreds? Thousands?”

“Thousands,” he said.

Margit’s eyes opened wide.

“Joycelen was selling us the information. Every time I paid him off on a Tuesday night—a thousand, three thousand, whatever—I noted it on that piece of paper to keep track.”
He scrutinized her. “Does that satisfy your curiosity about the Foxboro-Joycelen connection?”

“Is there more?”

“Sure. Joycelen fed us enough to make a strong case against Project Safekeep and its California contractor, Starpath. There’ve been enough payoffs on that project to cut the national debt by half. The people involved are going to have their asses handed to them, and with pleasure. But Joycelen died too soon. He had more to give—correction, to
sell
us—bigger fish, tangible information about that wonderful organization you work for that’ll blow it out of the water, or at least bring it back to civilian control.”

“Organization? The military? The Pentagon? Information about what?”

“About selling out this country.” Now there was fire in his eyes. She saw it for the first time. A zealot’s eyes. An evangelist preaching something distinctly not religious, but an equally powerful metaphor. Patriotism. By his definition.

“I’d better go,” Margit said.

“I think you’d better stay,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because there’s more to talk about.”

“Not if it’s military-trashing time. I heard enough of that at the table tonight.”

“Fair enough. Feel like watching a video?”

“No.”

“Come.” He took her hand, led her to the living room, and indicated she should sit on the couch in front of the TV. “Just a short piece,” he said, inserting a cassette into the VCR. He sat next to her and hit Start on the remote control. A color grid appeared on the screen, then static, then—the desert erupted as the nuclear bomb that had been detonated in August lifted earth into the heavens, followed by the familiar-shaped cloud. The screen went black.

“Why did you show that to me?” she asked.

“To remind you.”

“Of what? That a bomb was tested? Hard to forget.”

“Not so hard for some people. Have you seen what’s happened since the demonstration?”

“Lots of concern. The UN …”

“Military muscle,” he said. “Billions more for arms in case the next bomb is aimed at somebody. Weapons systems that will bankrupt this country. The president’s about to deploy troops there again. Nice. Like the policy was written by the beneficiaries.”

“The military?”

“Right again, Major.”

They looked at each other before Margit broke their silence. “Are you suggesting that the United States—at least its military arm—
planned
this?”

He laughed. “You could make a living as a fortune-teller.”

“No.”

She went to the sliding doors to the terrace and looked through them.

“
Yes
,” he said from the couch. “Your folks planned it. Sold the weapons to our friendly Arab dictator.”

She spun around. “This is insane,” she said.

“It happens to be true.”

“That was what Joycelen told you?”

“That was what he started to tell us.”

Margit returned to the couch. “Why did Joycelen decide to cooperate with you? With Wishengrad and the committee?”

“The numbers on the paper. He was a whore. Money.”

“He sold cheap.”

“For Project Safekeep information. His price was considerably higher where the bomb was concerned. Actually, he wasn’t in much of a position to make demands of us. Once he’d sold out on Safekeep and Starpath, we had him.”

“Had him?”

“Right. Had him. All we had to do was leak his actions to DARPA and the Pentagon, and he was dead meat. We pointed that out to him, and he saw our logic.”

“I—I find this incredibly distasteful,” Margit said.

“Why?”

“You work for a United States senator, not a district attorney. You sound as though you were out to put a mobster away.”

“What’s the difference? The people in the military who arranged for the bomb—bombs—to be delivered to the Mideast are no different from any mob organization. Arranging to deliver nuclear weapons to another country is against the law in this land of ours, Margit. The military mafia. Thugs. Traitors. Different uniforms.”

“Some of them, maybe. Damn few. Can you prove it?” she asked, unable to control the rising emotion in her voice.

“Not yet. Will you help?”

“Me? Help betray the United States?”

“Wrong, Margit. Help
save
the United States.”

The next question wasn’t easy for her, but she said anyhow, “Or to advance the career of an ambitious young man named Jeff Foxboro?”

He ignored it. “Ever hear of an organization called Consulnet?” he asked.

She didn’t reply.

“Arms dealers. A consortium. One of the shadowiest, biggest, and most powerful in the world.”

“So?”

“So—they pulled in the plum of their shady existence. Provide nuclear weapons to one nut in the Mideast so that this country will panic and pump billions into the Pentagon.”

“Proof?”

“Help us find it.”

“By being a Joycelen?”

“Yup. You’re inside. You’re sitting at the right elbow of what makes the Pentagon tick. You’ve also proved with this Cobol thing that you have all the investigative zeal of a TV Columbo. Maybe a Miss Marple is more apt.”

She sprang to her feet, grabbed her shawl from where she’d tossed it on a chair, and went to the door.

“Aren’t you overreacting?” he asked.

“You should see this Miss Marple when she really overreacts. Good night.”

“Sleep on it,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Wrong. I am spending tomorrow by myself. I fly at two. That’s because I am a commissioned officer in the United States Air Force, and damned proud of it.”

“Wait. I’ll drive you home.”

“I think I’d rather find my own way—home.”

“Margit, please listen to me. We could work together. Joycelen is gone. You’re not.”

“Why don’t you add ‘not yet’?”

“At least let me drive you.”

“No,” she said. “I know where I’m going now. And I think I know how to get there.”

Zero-five-hundred hours. The next morning. Sunday.

The helipad at the Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency had been dark. Now, as an army colonel in flight suit, a master sergeant in coveralls, and an army major in a tan, short-sleeved summer uniform approached a waiting helicopter, floodlights washed the area with harsh white light.

They climbed into the chopper, received permission to lift off, and headed in the direction of Andrews Air Force Base.

Their sudden and unannounced appearance in Andrews Ops took the duty officer by surprise. He’d been lounging in a chair behind the flight desk reading the paperback edition of Ronald Reagan’s autobiography, although the reading resembled sleeping. He stumbled to attention as the major approached.

“Good morning, Lieutenant,” the major said. He pulled a set of orders from a slim briefcase and placed them on the desk. The lieutenant read carefully. “Two choppers tonight?” he said.

“Right. Overnight.”

“Yes, sir.” The orders had been drawn by the Central Intelligence Agency’s director of clandestine services, and had been signed by the director of the CIA himself, Thomas Hickey. That’s clout, thought the Ops officer.

“Let me see today’s flight schedule,” the major said.

“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant slid a clipboard across the desk. The major studied it. “Mind if we choose?” he asked.

The lieutenant laughed. “No, sir.” Where does a gorilla sleep?

The major jotted down two aircraft numbers—617 and 439. “We’ll take those,” he said. “Don’t want to interfere with your schedule today. Busy. Looks like both are due back by sixteen hundred hours. They’re fully operational?”

“Yes, sir.”

The major nodded at the sergeant who’d accompanied him from Langley. “This is Sergeant Chilton,” he said. “Line chief for our fleet. He’ll check these two choppers out now, and give them another look after they’ve been flown this afternoon.” Chilton was a burly man with large, hairy hands, a shaved head, and a beer belly that he worked hard to suck in.

“Yes, sir—Major Reich,” the Ops officer said, reading off the major’s name tag.

Margit awoke at seven Sunday morning with a pulsating headache. The taxi she’d called last night from a pay phone in Jeff’s lobby had taken its time to arrive. Eventually, after she’d got across to the Egyptian driver where she wished to go, they headed for Bolling. A boxy gray sedan had fallen in behind them.

“Pull over,” she told the driver. He didn’t. “Stop!” she shouted.

He understood that simple command and pulled over. The sedan slowed, then started to pass them. Margit, who’d kicked off her pink pumps in the cab, opened the door and jumped out. In stockinged feet she shook her fist at the sedan’s
driver, who turned his head away and continued up the street.

She was dropped off at the main gate to Bolling, and wearily walked the rest of the way to her BOQ. Sleep did not come easily. When it did, it had been interrupted by a succession of dreams, none of them pleasant.

She lingered in bed Sunday morning, but eventually tired of trying to find a comfortable position to alleviate the pain that shot up the back of her neck and spiraled around her skull. She made tea and pretended to clean her quarters, but her mind worked overtime. What Foxboro had claimed—that the United States had provided nuclear weapons to an Arab dictator in order to create a military budgetary feeding frenzy—was preposterous. Wasn’t it? She hated the idea that such a question would even occur to her. Foxboro’s accusations were spun of fantasies, self-serving needs to justify the importance of his existence. And Wishengrad’s existence, too. America was obviously, and as usual, at war with itself—Congress versus the Pentagon, hawks versus doves, everyone puffed up with moral right. It was wrong. It wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. It was not the America she’d pledged to defend.

The phone rang three times that morning, but she let her answering machine respond, and she monitored the calls.

The first:

“I have to see you, Margit. There are things you just don’t understand because you don’t want to. I know you’re there, damn it. Pick up the phone.”

Foxboro slammed his phone down.

The second was from Mac Smith:

“Good morning, Margit. This is Mac. I trust you’re out doing something pleasant. I’m just calling to let you know that Tony came back and has some interesting, but maybe not terribly useful, information about our psychiatrist friend in New York. Give me a call, and I’ll fill you in or arrange
for you and me to get together with Tony at the house. Have a good day.”

The third call was another familiar voice:

“So, I can’t be trusted
,” Bill Monroney said.
“I didn’t wait for you to call me because I think it’s too important that we talk, and do it fast. Now that I’m a bachelor, please call me at my BOQ at Andrews.”

He left his number.

There was the natural temptation to answer the calls, but she resisted. The conversation with Jeff had been unsettling, at best. She hadn’t realized just how upset she was until getting out of bed and reflecting upon it in the morning light. As reluctant as she was to admit it, Foxboro’s principal interest in her seemed to be as a potential source of information for his boss, and for the committee his boss chaired. Could anyone be that callous, that
driven
to ignore the basic rules of decency in a relationship in order to advance a career? That was the only way she could read it. The personal aspects of their coupling obviously meant little to him, which was a bitter pill for her to swallow, not so much because it had happened, but because she had been so incapable of judging another person.

She spent time in Building P-15, where she sweated out anger and frustration. Showered, and dressed in her jumpsuit, she felt better. As tricky as flying a helicopter might be, the machine was more dependable than the human beings with whom she’d been recently interacting. Or, in Pentagon management, interfacing. You push a button in a chopper, and unless something is broken, a familiar reaction occurs. Not so clear-cut with people, she thought as she checked her flight bag one final time, got in her car, and headed for an hour with the copter to which she’d been assigned.