Sweepers (22 page)

Scrawny figure. Black motorcycle jacket opened over a white T-shirt. A cigarette hanging from his lip in impudent mockery of the somber proceedings down the hillside. As Karen looked on, the young man apparently made eye contact with Sherman, because he grinned at the admiral. There was no mistaking it: an almost ugly flash of teeth. But then the midshipmen up on the hill moved across her line of sight, and he was gone. She looked back at Sherman, who was now sitting back down.

Baffled, she looked for Train.

He was no longer in sight.

Forty minutes later, Karen and the admiral were heading back into Washington in his official sedan. She was anxious to ask him what it was that had attracted his attention up on the hill. But then she decided that she had better talk to Train first.

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Admiral,” she said. The words sounded trite. She glanced over at the driver, a civilian from the Defense Department motor pool. “But we still have some business with the Fairfax County, um, people.

They do want to meet.”

“Well, not tonight,” he said immediately. “I’m still too upset about losing Galen. How about tomorrow? Although I shouldn’t even say that without looking at my calendar.

Damn it.

She waited for a few minutes. “I’ll talk to them. Perhaps we could meet off-line again, maybe in Great Falls this time,” she proposed. “Perhaps at my house. Same deal as last time, after working hours. That would be better than your having to go to Fairfax.”

“Fine,” he said distractedly.

He was staring out the rightrear window, his mind a thousand miles away.

“I”Il call them this evening, then,” she offered. “Tentatively for tomorrow evening, say nineteen hundred?”

“Fine.”

At 5:30, Rear Admiral Carpenter walked down the C-ring to the offices of the Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear Adm. Kyle St. John Mallory. He smiled as he reached the door and glanced at the name board. What was it about the intel world, he wondered, that seemed to attract these pretentious-sounding names?

“Come in, Thomas,” said Admiral Mallory, who came around his desk to shake hands. He was a tall, slim, and perfectly bald officer, and he was known for affecting British mannerisms and dress, even to the point of insisting on the traditional British pronunciation of his middle name as “Sin-Jin.’ True to form, he was wearing an off-white Royal Navy cardigan sweater that was about two sizes too big for him over his uniform shirt and trousers. He was senior to Carpenter, thus the instant familiarity and first name.

“Kyle,” the JAG responded, shaking hands and then taking a chair as the DNI’s executive assistant withdrew, closing the door behind him. Mallory took the adjacent chair and offered coffee. Carpenter demurred.

“Are your fields Working?” Carpenter asked, glancing up at the odd-shaped black boxes perched in the ceiling comers.

“They’d bloody well better be,” Mallory replied.

“Whose ears might be about to bum?”

“Those people up the fiver.”

“Ah. Just a moment, then, please.” He turned to reach the intercom on his desk. “Full SCIFF, if you please, Petty Officer Martin.” He waited, looking expectantly at the intercom box.

“Full SCIFF, Admiral.”. A low humming sound filled the room, and the panel of floor-to-ceiling windows behind the DNI’s desk went opaque.

“Thank you,” Mallory replied in an almost-singsong voice as he switched off the telephone console and turned back around to face Carpenter.

“Funny you should mention that lot. But by all means, you first.”

Carpenter cocked an eyebrow at him, then proceeded to tell the DNI about his probe regarding an ex-SEAL. He did not reveal the full context of his inquiry, but he did tell Mallory that the case involved homicide and that the ex SEAL was a likely suspect. He also mentioned that the individual supposedly had gone MIA back at the end of the Vietnam War.

Mallory nodded patiently as Carpenter described the Technical Operations Directorate’s initial answer.

“Well, that explains something,” he said when Carpenter was finished.

“The deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency rang me up this morning. Seems those people were coming through channels, for a change.

Wanted the Navy, the whole Navy, one presumes, to cease and desist making any further inquiries regarding one”-he got up and went to his desk to retrieve a piece of paper-“one Hospital Corpsman Galantz. That your fellow?”

“That’s him. And that’s very interesting. First, my guy hits the old stone wall. Never heard of this individual, they tell him. Now you say they’re warning us off?”

Mallory said nothing, but just raised his eyebrows expectantly, as if waiting for Carpenter to answer his own question. But the JAG just sat there, ostensibly thinking.

“This may have been as simpld as a mild rebuff for going direct, Thomas,” the DNI prompted finally. “Was there some reason you did not bring the um, inquiry through our office?”

“Yes,” Carpenter said.

“There’s a client privacy problem. This involves another flag officer.”

Almost as an afterthought, he added the fact that the CNO had been apprised.

“All, I see,” Mallory said, his peevish expression revealing that he did not see at all.

Carpenter ignored it. “I need to find this Galantz individual. We have reason to believe he may have survived his MIA status and is now here in the Washington area. Oh, and did I mention that the Fairfax County Police are involved?”

“You said homicide,” the DNI said, resuming his seat.

“What assets have you put on this problem?”

“I have a new NIS operative on my staff. A guy called von Rensel.”

“Ah, yes, we know Mr. von Rensel,” Mallory said.

“He’s not famous in the intelligence community for being a team player,-

I’m led to understand.”

“From what I’ve heard, it was team playing that brought Navy Intelligence the Walker soy ring and that Korean thing,” Carpenter retorted. “Anyway, I plan to turn him loose to see what he can find.

What I came to ask you to do was to pull the string with those people.

Spook to spook.”

Mallory didn’t like the crack about the spying cases. “I rather think their warning preempts any good that I might be able to do,” he said.

“Going spook to spook, as you so quaintly put it.”

Carpenter gave him a level look. “This, matter has the potential to embarrass the Navy flag community, Kyle. I need to find Galantz, or, which I suppose would be equally useful, prove that he does not exist-that he went MIA and stayed that way. I guess what I’m saying is that I need you to tell them that we can do this the easy way or hard way.”

“Oh dear,” Mallory protested. “That sounds like a threat.

Do you know how those people usually react to threats from other government entities?”

I’m not sure I give a damn, Carpenter replied. “Since the Fairfax County cops are involved, I can always just turn the whole thing over to CHINFO, let him invite the Washington press corps in for a chat. That way, those people can exercise their newfound expertise at . doing damage control fight here in River City.”

Mallory, rolled his eyes. “And then I get to explain to the CNO why this thing got loose, is that it, Admiral?”

Carpenter got up. “You’re the official pipe into the cave of the intel bears, Admiral My lawyerly instincts tell me if, Galantz went MIA and then was resurrected somehow, the American version of the Lavender Hill Mob was probably involved. Basically, I’m proposing to give our client one free shot at extricating himself from this tar baby. But my bottom line remains the preservation of the herd. Just make the call, okay, Kyle?”

Mallory frowned and pursed his lips. “Very well, I’ll will make the call.

But there’s something else they said in their call. Do you perchance know what a sweeper is-in their vernacular, that is?”

“Nope. Although I would assume it has to do with cleaning up a mess.”

“Rather more elaborate than that, Thomas. As you know, those people have the need from time to time to take-how shall I put this?-to take extreme measures connected with their line of work.”

“This is news, Kyle?”

“I suppose not. But the people they engage to perform these distasteful functions are not nice people. Not gentlemen, shall we say.”

“Understood. And the point to all this is-“

“The point is, Thomas, that from time to time, these ungentlemanly people themselves require the imposition of disciplinary measures. Think about it. Think about what kind of people would be good at imposing disciplinary measures on the wet-work mechanics. That is the function of the so-called sweepers. Which makes the rest of their message rather important.”

Carpenter stared at him. “And that was?”

“That they don’t acknowledge the existence of this fellow Galantz. But that if he did exist, he might be involved in certain extracurricular activities, and that, because of what he is, they are of the opinion that they are best equipped to look into that problem, not us. One assumes that will happen sooner rather than later, but one never knows with those people.”

“Forgive me, Kyle, but I still don’t get it. If Galantz is one of their wet-work mechanics, as you call them, and he’s gone wrong, why don “t they get one of those-what’d you call ‘em, sweepers? Why don’t they put one of those guys onto the problem?”

“Well, nobody over there is speaking in declarative sentences, Thomas.

But you may have I touched on the heart of the problem. My guess is that this fellow Galantz is a sweeper.

Karen was not surprised to find Train waiting in the otherwise-empty office when she got back to the Pentagon at 5:30. He was now dressed in his regular office clothes.

The rest of the JAG offices along the C-ring halfway were dark, except for the workaholic Appellate Defense Division, where they always worked late.

“Counselor,” Train pronounced when she came through the door.

“Well if it isn’t Igor, the grave diggers’ assistant,” she replied brightly. She was secretly glad to see him, if only because the empty corridors of the Pentagon after working hours were a mildly spooky place. She slung her purse over the back of the yeoman’s chair and sat down. “So what was Admiral Sherman jumping up about toward the end of the ceremony? I saw you take off.”

“Some kid on a motorcycle. He was standing up there on the hill among all the tourists and midshipmen. It looked to me like Sherman recognized him, which is why he stood up. By the time I got up the hill, the kid was jumping on a big Kawasaki two-seater and hauling ass. Never really saw his face. Any ideas?”

Karen shook her head. Something was playing at the edges of her memory, but she couldn’t surface it. “No ideas,” she replied. “I was going to ask Admiral Sherman about it, but he was really down about the old man’s death.”

She dialed into the voice-mail system, and there was one message, from Detective Mcnair, requesting a meeting as soon as possible-like tonight.

She told Train about the message and that Sherman wanted to put it off a day.

“Homicide cops don’t like to wait,” Train said. “Better call Sherman.”

She put a call in to OP-32. The admiral was in conference, having left orders not to be disturbed. Karen hesitated, then told the yeoman to tell the admiral that the Fairfax business meeting had to be tonight.

She said she would remain in her office until he was able to return her call.

Train slouched down in a chair by the office door. Karen thought he looked like a big old bear trying to balance on a rock. A treacherous part ‘of her brain began to speculate on what a hug might be like from such a bear. He killed her thoughts with the observation that he wasn’t surprised that Sherman wanted to duck the cops.

“Oh, c’mon, Train. You don’t still think he had anything to do with killing those two people, do you?”

Train looked away for a moment. “I’m still bothered by the fact that all the current information on this mysterious Galantz comes from Sherman. I want some external corroboration.

“But how about the syringe? I mean, I saw that thing, and the look on his face when he saw it.”

We’ve been over this: He had an opportunity to put that thing in your car.”

She shook her head in exasperation. “But why? The syringe had blood in it that matched the old man’s blood type, as well as traces of a substance that could’ve killed him.

Why on earth-“

“Because he could be playing a game,” Train interrupted. “A dangerous game, but still a game. Those cops have to be wondering, too. I know,” he said, seeing the look on her face, “motive. That’s where I’m stuck.

I can’t figure the motive.”

The phone rang before Karen could reply.

“Navy JAG, Commander Lawrence speaking, sir.” She mouthed the name Sherman at Train.

“Tonight, huh?” Sherman was saying.

I’ll m afraid so, sir. Althouah I haven’t called him back.” There was a pause. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be done here in about thirty minutes. At this hour, thirty minutes to get home.”

“Let me give you directions to my house,” she said, ignoring the sardonic expression spreading over Train’s face.

“It’s about twenty minutes beyond where you live, but a lot closer for him, coming from Fairfax.”

He agreed, wrote down directions, and hung up. She called Mcnair and made the necessary arrangements. She told him that Sherman had wanted to put it off a day, hoping she could find out why they wanted the meeting so urgently.

“Two people are dead, Commander-in a week’s time. i As I think I mentioned, some people here are starting to’t view this as a situation involving a serial killer. By the rules, we’re supposed to bring the FBI into it, sooner rather than later. We want to talk to Sherman again because he’s the common’thread. Plus…” He hesitated.

“Plus?” 11 I I m going to ask that you not tell him this, Commander. need to see his reaction when I ask the question. Deal?”

“Yes, of course, Detective. I can keep a secret.” Train was watching her when she said that, his eyebrows rising.

“Well, I contacted Admiral Schmidt’s lawyer today.

Asked him our standard questions about contacts, possible business or tax problems, etcetera. Tried not to highlight the fact that I was a homicide: guy, if you follow my drift.”