The Enemy

a rat and gone deeper underground. It would have made your job harder. It would have defeated my purpose.”
    “Your purpose?”
    “I wanted prevention, of course. That was the main priority. But I was also curious, Major. I wanted to see who would blink first.”
    He handed me the file.
    “You’re a special unit investigator,” he said. “By statute the 110th has extraordinary powers. You are authorized to arrest any soldier anywhere, including me, here in my office, if you so choose. So read the Argon file. I think you’ll find it clears me. If you agree, go about your business elsewhere.”
    He got up from behind his desk. We shook hands again. Then he walked out of the room. Left me all alone in his office, in the heart of the Pentagon, in the middle of the night.

    Thirty minutes later I got back in the car with Summer. She had kept the motor off to save gas and it was cold inside.
    “Well?” she said.
    “One crucial error,” I said. “The tug-of-war wasn’t the Vice-Chief and the Chief. It was the Chief himself and the Secretary of Defense.”
    “Are you sure?”
    I nodded. “I saw the file. There were memos and orders going back nine months. Different papers, different typewriters, different pens, no way to fake all that in four hours. It was the Chief of Staff’s initiative all along, and he was always kosher.”
    “So how did he take it?”
    “Pretty well,” I said. “Considering. But I don’t think he’ll feel like helping me.”
    “With what?”
    “With the trouble I’m in.”
    “Which is?”
    “Wait and see.”
    She just looked at me.
    “Where now?” she said.
    “California,” I said.

twenty-two
    The Chevy was running on fumes by the time we got to National Airport. We put it in the long-term lot and hiked back to the terminal. It was about a mile. There were no shuttle buses running. It was the middle of the night and the place was practically deserted. Inside the terminal we had to roust a clerk out of a back office. I gave him the last of our stolen vouchers and he booked us on the first morning flight to LAX. We were looking at a long wait.
    “What’s the mission?” Summer said.
    “Three arrests,” I said. “Vassell, Coomer, and Marshall.”
    “Charge?”
    “Serial homicide,” I said. “Mrs. Kramer, Carbone, and Brubaker.”
    She stared at me. “Can you prove it?”
    I shook my head. “I know exactly what happened. I know when, and how, and where, and why. But I can’t prove a damn thing. We’re going to have to rely on confessions.”
    “We won’t get them.”
    “I’ve gotten them before,” I said. “There are ways.”
    She flinched.
    “This is the army, Summer,” I said. “It ain’t a quilting bee.”
    “Tell me about Carbone and Brubaker.”
    “I need to eat,” I said. “I’m hungry.”
    “We don’t have any money,” Summer said.
    Most places had metal grilles down over their doors anyway. Maybe they would feed us on the plane. We carried our bags over to a seating area next to a twenty-foot window that had nothing but black night outside. The seats were long vinyl benches with fixed armrests every two feet to stop people from lying down and sleeping.
    “Tell me,” she said.
    “It’s still a series of crazy long shots, one after the other.”
    “Try me.”
    “OK, start over with Mrs. Kramer. Why did Marshall go to Green Valley?”
    “Because it was the obvious first place to try.”
    “But it wasn’t. It was almost the obvious last place to try. Kramer had hardly been there in five years. His staff must have known that. They’d traveled with him many times before. Yet they made a fast decision and Marshall went straight there. Why?”
    “Because Kramer had told them that’s where he was going?”
    “Correct,” I said. “He told them he was with his wife to conceal the fact he was actually with Carbone. But then, why would he have to tell them anything?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Because there’s a category of person you
have
to tell something.”
    “Who?”
    “Suppose you’re a rich guy traveling with your mistress. You spend one night apart, you
have
to tell her something. And if you tell her you’re dropping in on your wife purely to keep up appearances, she has to buy it. Maybe she doesn’t like it, but she has to buy it. Because it’s expected occasionally. It’s all part of the deal.”
    “Kramer didn’t have a mistress. He was gay.”
    “He had Marshall.”
    “No,” she said. “No way.”
    I