by Nick Cook
‘I doubt she’ll see me, Doctor Cain.’
‘But you know her assistant, right?’
‘Olive-Ann and I are on first-name terms. What may I tell her?’
‘I have the results of her blood test.’
‘Blood test?’ Molly says. ‘Was that an appointment you made through me?’
‘No. Sorry. I should have told you, Molly. I took her bloods a while back.’
There’s a pause. She knows as well as I do there was no blood test. The note conveys a message of a different kind.
‘Very well, Doctor Cain. What should I say if Olive-Ann asks me about it?’
‘That her boss has nothing to worry about. But I’d like to drop around to speak with her all the same.’
‘At her office?’
‘No. At her home.’
‘You have her address?’
I don’t. Just that she lives in Alexandria. On the waterfront.
Molly appears, hands me the address and picks up my envelope. I hear the outer door close.
I try Reuben again.
Still busy.
When I look up, a big guy in an ill-fitting suit is standing by Molly’s desk. His back is to me and he has a phone pressed to his ear. The last time I saw DJ we swapped pathology notes over Gapes’s tattooed body.
‘Special Agent Wharton.’
He turns and hangs up.
‘Lefortz said I should come see you,’ he says.
‘Sorry, you’re going to have to back up.’
‘He didn’t tell you?’
‘Tell me what?’
‘That we got together before he picked you up at Dulles.’
‘Anything I should know about?’
‘Gentleman Jim and I go way back, Colonel Cain, and I know that he rated you highly. We shared a lot of data. I think I know pretty much everything he knew about the Gapes case. And I’m guessing you were there when he died.’
I say nothing. I promised Reuben and Cabot I wouldn’t.
Wharton holds his hands in the air and smiles awkwardly. ‘Listen, that’s OK. Of course there are things he was working on he couldn’t share with me. The President’s probe, for example …’
‘Probe, Agent Wharton?’
‘All I’m saying is, if you need Bureau support …’
‘Is that why you’re here?’
‘No. I’m here because Jim said I should come see you if the Assistant US Attorney and I got the proffer session in place.’
‘Proffer session?’
‘Between the Gapes family lawyer, Katya Dedovic, and the US Attorney’s Office.’
He taps his watch and says he’ll give me the details en route.
20
CHARLES LAND, SENIOR PARTNER AT COLLINS LOVELOCK LAND, forty years in the federal-slash-government litigation bullpen, is a large man who sweats profusely. He leans forward and the table tilts, slopping some of my coffee over Hetta’s notes.
Katya, pale, frail, almost birdlike, her shoulders hunched, sits next to him. She’s not said a word yet and avoids looking at me.
‘Who is the target of this investigation?’ Land addresses the question to the Assistant US Attorney, a pasty guy in his mid-thirties seated to my right.
He looks across at Wharton.
‘The MPD is,’ DJ says.
‘And Ms Dedovic?’
‘At this moment,’ DJ says, ‘she has subject status, which—’
Land lifts a finger to his cracked, fleshy lips. ‘I agreed to this meeting owing to the deeply serious events at Clarke’s Crossroads last night, and because my firm, Ms Dedovic’s employer, is keen to assist in any way that it can. However –’ he gestures to each of us, ‘– this is a proffer session, not a trial, and we’re under no obligation.’
He draws breath to speak again.
‘Mr Land?’
‘Yes …’
Hetta dabs at the coffee on her notes with a Kleenex. ‘Last year, Ms Dedovic met with an Army legal team in a compensation case involving Duke Gapes. We believe Gapes was involved in activity that may have a bearing on threats made against Ms Dedovic in order to secure her silence.’
‘That is simply untrue,’ Land says.
‘She told Colonel Cain she was terrified.’
‘Untrue again. My colleague denies she ever met with Colonel Cain.’
‘May we put that question to Ms Dedovic?’
‘No.’ His lips thin. ‘Ms Dedovic isn’t the target of your investigation.’
Hetta turns to the attorney.
‘We assert that Ms Dedovic’s reluctance to tell us what she knows is based on a malpractice breach.’ He shuffles his notes. ‘The privilege between Ms Dedovic and the Gapes family was invalidated by Ms Dedovic’s disclosure of confidential – possibly classified – information to a third party.’
He means me.
Land opens his mouth, but the attorney continues. ‘Yes, we heard you, Mr Land. That meeting never took place. But if this serves as an incentive, we are offering Ms Dedovic a selective waiver that will grant her witness status, regardless of the—’
‘Attorneys are covered under work-product immunity,’ Land states confidently.
‘Unless there is, as you know, substantial need,’ the attorney says.
‘OK, then convince me.’
The attorney turns to me.
I clear my throat. The air conditioning hums. ‘Whatever Gapes was doing, it wasn’t mail-merge programs in some Department of Defense back office. His recovery support specialist – who oversaw Gapes’s rehabilitation in Maryland – is dead, and that may have had a bearing on his decision to go on the run.
‘We also have reason to believe –’ I look at Katya, who told me this, ‘– that there was a period in which he was foreign-deployed. He made a call to his mother while on the run to say he was terrified about being sent to the desert. Such pressures may also have tipped him over the edge.
‘Whatever the truth, Gapes was desperate enough to go to ground for three whole years before surfacing at the church.’ I look again at Katya, who continues to stare at the plush carpeting. ‘Which is why it’s absolutely essential we know what she knows.’
‘So …’ Land leans forward. ‘We’re agreed that there’s more to this than meets the eye. And I need to know, Colonel Cain, what you were doing in that tower in the first place.’
Lightning flashes across the room. The networks warned that another storm was inbound. Rain. Hail. The works.
Everybody is waiting for me to say something.
‘Mr Land, Doctor Cain isn’t under the spotlight,’ the Assistant US Attorney interjects. ‘Our request couldn’t be more straightforward.’
‘Nor could mine.’ Land gathers up his notes. ‘I think we’re done here.’
Five minutes later, we’re out on Massachusetts Avenue.
The US Attorney’s Office can subpoena Katya’s ‘materials’ – the background to her negotiations with the Defense Department, as well as her phone and email records. Land, however, will simply appeal against it. This could go on for weeks, maybe months.
Wharton and his attorney buddy return to FBI headquarters to regroup, leaving us to find shelter from the rain.
‘You OK?’ Hetta asks.
‘Fine.’
‘You don’t look so good.’
I move on. ‘Did Lefortz ever tell you about some kind of probe he was conducting on behalf of the President?’
She frowns. ‘No.’
I tell her about the cryptic conversation I had with DJ in Molly’s office.
‘Sure he wasn’t talking about this investigation – Gapes and all?’
‘Seemed like he was referencing something else.’
‘Wharton and I go back a ways. Why don’t I ask him?’
We duck into a doorway. There’s another rumble of thunder. I ask if there’s any news on Voss, the guy they substituted for Gapes.
She shakes her head. ‘Nothing on any of our databases, but we’re not playing with a ful
l deck. If he was Special Forces, he could be on a classified register.’
I make a mental note. If that’s true, Christy may be able to help.
‘What about the cabin?’
‘Upside-down man. Gapes’s inversion of the old guy wasn’t a mistake.’
‘Who is he?’
‘A Benedictine abbot. Johannes Trithemius. Sixteenth century. Lived in southern Germany. Invented steganography.’
‘Which is what?’
‘It’s about disguising the message in a seemingly random piece of text or imagery, so that nobody apart from the sender and the recipient knows that it exists. The way I see it, everything on Gapes’s walls is a message – the whole cabin is, in fact.’
‘What about? Who to?’
‘Still working on that. The code’s wrapped up in the pictures with numbers.’
‘And the ones that were removed?’
She shakes her head. ‘Without my original photos we’re fucked.’
‘We’re not fucked.’
She looks up.
‘Byford has the USB I gave to Lefortz.’
‘As in, Christy Byford? The National Security Adviser?’
I nod. ‘She’s on the inside.’
‘The inside of what?’
This seems as good a time as any to tell her about No Stone.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a curious beast. Two individuals can witness the same event and each be affected completely differently. It’s the meaning you attach to the experience that determines the degree to which the trauma will kick in, or whether it kicks in at all.
Hope knew that bad things had happened to me in Iraq. She’d asked me to tell her about them. But how could I? We were good friends with the Kantners. Hope and Heather had looked after each other while Reuben and I had been deployed. If I’d opened up about Fallujah, the whole story would have come tumbling out. There would have been inquiries. Charges, maybe. Reuben didn’t pull the trigger or toss the grenades into that basement, but he gave the order.
Even if we got off, I doubt his political career would have flourished with civilian atrocities in his resume. Mine either. But for me, that wasn’t the point. Reuben, somehow, seemed to be able to live with himself after what had happened. I couldn’t.
And every time I looked at Hope, it all came flooding back.
Before I went to war, we’d been trying for a baby. It didn’t happen.
Not then, at least.
Ted knows, because I told him at the time of my breakdown. He also knows we’d traveled to meet Reuben and Heather in Lakeland – and that during the course of the meal, Reuben announced he’d landed his dream job as a senior staffer for Tod Abnarth, advising the senior Democratic Senator from Wisconsin on defense policy.
We’d all applauded and raised our glasses, but I could see, from the way Hope looked at me across the table, that there was something else going on.
Sure enough, on the way home, on the road to the freeway, she’d told me she was pregnant. I’d seen her expression in the glow of the dash and what it said: that this would change everything; that this was our new start. Instead of thinking about us, we’d have someone else to focus on: our own beautiful little girl.
Perhaps it was because I hadn’t reacted in the way she’d hoped that she pulled the ultrasound image from her purse.
The photo of our baby at twelve weeks.
I open my eyes, half expecting to see the grille of the blood-red Kenworth: all fifty thousand pounds and six hundred horsepower of it.
Ted is sitting back in his chair. He doesn’t speak, and, thank God, he doesn’t judge either. The truck driver had made no attempt to brake because he’d been asleep. Analysis of the tire marks left by our Jeep, on the other hand, demonstrated that, at the very last minute, I had attempted to brake, but I hadn’t attempted to swerve.
Because the last thing I remember is the glare of the headlights in the second before it slammed into us, I was at a loss to tell the investigating officers from the Florida Highway Patrol and the Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office how this could have been.
Nothing was ever said officially, but background checks, of course, go way beyond. Hetta’s warning and Graham’s aggressive insinuations tell me that I am under a shedload of scrutiny, that Cabot and Co. are digging into the unofficial post-crash conclusions: that owing to some imbalance of mind, I had deliberately steered for the oncoming vehicle.
There’s a knock on the door.
Ted says ‘come’ and Susan walks in with two cups of coffee. As she hands me mine, she gives my shoulder a squeeze.
She is preparing for another trip to Kenya, where she’s working on a dig-site with her students. She’s a decade younger than her husband, with long, gray hair and a smile that’s wider than wide. She kisses the top of my head, tells Ted his dinner will be ready in fifteen, and heads back upstairs.
‘Josh,’ he says, as soon as the door clicks shut, ‘these are the ripple effects of conflict.’ The way he speaks, too earnestly, tells me, despite his claim to the contrary, that he’s shocked by what I’ve told him. ‘You have to allow yourself to let it all go.’
‘I know.’
‘Perhaps you will feel some improvement now that you’ve told me, but …’
I wait.
‘Your guilt over Fallujah has been compounded by the guilt you feel about Hope. Of course you ruminate on these events. But it’s fifteen years since she died. When you had your breakdown, I slapped a Band-Aid on you …’
I sense another ‘but’ coming.
‘What is it you’re not telling me?’
‘The guy – the guy they shot – he knew everything, Ted.’
‘What do you mean, everything?’
‘He knew about Hope. He knew about our place on the beach. He knew she was going to have a baby …’ I pause. ‘There’s nobody alive knows that, except for you and Reuben.’
Ted lifts his cup and sips his tea, watching me all the while.
‘Where do we retain memory, Josh?’
‘Memories aren’t stored in any one area in the brain. You know that.’
‘Explicit memory.’
‘In the hippocampus, the neocortex and the amygdala.’
‘The classical version. Science orthodoxy.’
‘Is there any other?’
‘From my research, there is growing evidence that our brains are physically incapable of retaining the quintillion bits of data we acquire in the course of a full life. So where do we store them?’
‘There are only two options.’
‘And they are?’
‘First, that there are facets of the brain and its storage system we don’t understand.’
He nods. ‘Second?’
‘That memory is held off-site, in a field of collective consciousness – much as Jung believed.’
He sits back.
‘Your point being …?’
‘There are things out there, Josh – things about our innermost selves – that we’re simply at a loss to explain.’
21
‘YOU HART?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ She extends her hand. ‘Phone, please.’
Byford digs into her pocket. She knows my concerns. They were in my note about the non-existent blood test. Hetta places her cell in a briefcase with a wire mesh lining – a mini Faraday cage, impervious to signals, in or out. Ours are there already.
The waterfront complex where Byford lives used to be a tobacco warehouse. We’re parked up just inside its heavy wrought-iron gates. I sit in back. Christy is in front, next to Hetta, still brushing the rainwater from the sleeves of her trench coat.
I’ve met Christy three times. She was retired and eking out a living as a lecturer at the Naval Academy in Annapolis when, in the face of one or two raised eyebrows, Thompson asked if she’d be his National Security Adviser. She hesitated before saying yes. She is divorced, has no kids, and there are rumors about her sexuality. She’s smart, dresses smart and sports a fuck-you p
ower hairdo that was probably last seen on Farrah Fawcett. And she and Thompson have known each other since he first arrived in Washington, when they worked together on the Hill.
She hands Hetta the USB.
It takes the spatial frequency pattern-monitoring software less than thirty seconds to compare the photos Hetta had taken on her phone with the ‘official’ imagery compiled by Graham’s forensic unit.
We all lean forward.
On screen are three images that have been picked out by the algorithm.
All three have come from the main body of the cabin. When Hetta noticed that some of the images were missing, she couldn’t, of course, say which – the unique way in which she processes things merely alerted her to the fact that something about the cabin was different.
Now we can see exactly what and where.
The first image to have been flagged appears to be a cutaway of a planet: an outer shell with inner shells that merge in what looks like an orange core. It had been in the top left corner of the wall, opposite the door, and has been replaced by a picture of a soccer stadium.
The second is a black-and-white photo of a man who looks like a young Napoleon – twenty-something, a little swarthy, a lock of lank, black hair across his brow.
The third is an overhead of a building – a drone or spy satellite shot. The resolution is as good as the picture that allowed us to identify the cabin. Unlike the cabin, however, this place appears to be bunker-like and is set in a sort of compound.
There’s an odd look to it – and something familiar: it’s the kind of facility that hits the wires when the Pentagon needs to persuade us that a rogue state has been developing WMDs.
‘These were all removed overnight?’ Byford asks. Like the other members of the National Security Council, she would have been sent the Secret Service’s initial report on the cabin in the small hours, and then updates during the day.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And you’re sure it’s just these three images?’
‘The algorithm doesn’t lie,’ Hetta says.
‘Who removed them?’
‘We don’t know. The Army muscled into the cabin as part of the forensic investigation. Gapes is their man and Director Cabot was under pressure to give Army CID access. In the end, it was agreed we both would have access. I’m hoping you may be able to help us here …’