The Enemy

types. The O Club in an hour?”

    We carried our bags over to the Visiting Officers’ Quarters and found our rooms. Mine looked pretty much the same as the one Kramer had died in, except it was cleaner. It was a standard American motel layout. Presumably some hotel chain had bid for the government contract, way back when. Then they had airfreighted all the fixtures and fittings, right down to the sinks and the towel rails and the toilet bowls.
    I shaved and took a shower and dressed in clean BDUs. Knocked on Summer’s door fifty-five minutes into Swan’s hour. She opened up. She looked clean and fresh. Behind her the room looked the same as mine, except it already smelled like a woman’s. There was some kind of nice eau de toilette in the air.
    The O Club occupied half of one of the ground floor wings of the main building. It was a grand space, with high ceilings and intricate plaster moldings. There was a lounge, and a bar, and a dining room. We found Swan in the bar. He was with a lieutenant colonel who was wearing Class As with a combat infantryman’s badge on the coat. It was an odd thing to see, on an Armored post. His nameplate said:
Simon.
He introduced himself to us. I got the feeling he was going to join us for dinner. He told us he was a liaison officer, working on behalf of the infantry. He told us there was an Armored guy down in Heidelberg, doing the same job in reverse.
    “Been here long?” I asked him.
    “Two years,” he said, which I was glad about. I needed some background, and Swan didn’t have it, any more than I knew anything about Fort Bird. Then I realized it was no accident that Simon was joining the party. Swan must have figured out what I wanted and set about providing it without being asked. Swan was that kind of guy.
    “Pleased to meet you, Colonel,” I said, and then I nodded to Swan, like I was saying thanks. We drank cold American beers from tall frosted glasses and then we went through to the dining room. Swan had made a reservation. The steward put us at a table in the corner. I sat where I could watch the whole room at once. I didn’t see anyone I knew. Vassell wasn’t around. Nor was Coomer.
    The menu was absolutely standard. We could have been in any O Club in the world. O Clubs aren’t there to introduce you to local cuisine. They’re there to make you feel at home, somewhere deep inside the army’s own interpretation of America. There was a choice of fish or steak. The fish was probably European, but the steak would have been flown in across the Atlantic. Some politician in one of the ranch states would have leveraged a sweet deal with the Pentagon.
    We small-talked for a spell. We bitched about pay and benefits. Talked about people we knew. We mentioned Just Cause in Panama. Lieutenant Colonel Simon told us he had been to Berlin two days previously and had gotten himself a chip of concrete from the Wall. Told us he planned to have it encased in a plastic cube. Planned to hand it on down the generations, like an heirloom.
    “Do you know Major Marshall?” I asked him.
    “Fairly well,” he said.
    “Who is he exactly?” I asked.
    “Is this official?”
    “Not really,” I said.
    “He’s a planner. A strategist, basically. Long-term kind of guy. General Kramer seemed to like him. Always kept him close by, made him his intelligence officer.”
    “Does he have an intelligence background?”
    “Not formally. But he’ll have done rotations, I’m sure.”
    “So is he a part of the inner team? I heard Kramer and Vassell and Coomer mentioned all in the same breath, but not Marshall.”
    “He’s on the team,” Simon said. “That’s for sure. But you know what flag officers are like. They need a guy, but they aren’t about to admit it. So they abuse him a little. He fetches and carries and drives them around, but when push comes to shove they ask his opinion.”
    “Is he going to move up now Kramer’s gone? Maybe into Coomer’s slot?”
    Simon made a face. “He should. He’s an Armor fanatic to the core, like the rest of them. But nobody really knows what the hell is going to happen. Kramer dying couldn’t have come at a worse time for them.”
    “The world is changing,” I said.
    “And what a world it was,” Simon said. “Kramer’s world, basically, beginning to end. He graduated the Point in Fifty-two, and places like this one were all buttoned up by Fifty-three, and they’ve been the center of the universe for almost forty years. These