Sweepers

by P. T. Deutermann

  But he has an alibi. A verified alibi for the time of death.

  “For the presumed time of death. And-it wasn’t really verified in any ironclad sense. That restaurant on a busy Friday night? Look, the Walsh matter-bottom line? He had a motive: the money. There was opportunity: -Re has a key to the house. He had full knowledge of her place, her domestic routines. She would gladly have let him in without a second thought. He had the means: He could have easily surprised her, pushed her down the stairs. And now the mysterious letter from the even more mysterious SEAL? We have only his word for it. His house was broken into, but did he report it to the cops? No. Were there busted windows or jimmied doors? No. And now, most conveniently, there is no letter. If I were the Fairfax cops, and I heard ihis little fable, I’d be thinking that this is smoke he’s blowing my way, a classic case of offense/defense. The killer doesn’t run from the cops, he runs toward them, all anxious and sincere. He feeds them stuff, lots of distracting stuff. Throws crap in the air, and-the slippers, the laundry downstairs instead of upstairs, and now this mysterious letter.”

  “Damn,” she said.

  Train leaned back and rubbed his hands together, making a sound like sandpaper. He had very large hands, with ridges of callus on the edges of his palms. “The Fairfax cops might, in fact, have something,” he was saying. “‘They might well be feeding out some rope and hoping like hell that Sherman gets cocky and wraps it around his own tricky neck. ” Karen thought about what he said for a long moment, then shook her head.

  “I don’t get that sense of it,” she said.

  “Obviously, there’s more to this story. He wouldn’t tell me anything about what happened back in Vietnam to start all this. Says he can’t tell, in fact.”

  “How convenient for him.”

  “Or it ‘could be true. I don’t know. I was just coming into the Navy when that war was ending. He’s made it to flag rank, but I get the impression he’s paid a personal price for his career success. Remember what he said about never wanting to remarry? I saw some pictures of Elizabeth Walsh in that house. She was extremely attractive, and yet he bailed out the moment she started even talking about marriage. Not because of her but because of what he went through the first time he was married. There must be some emotional wreckage somewhere back there in his wake.

  That’s why I’m going to go with him to this memorial service tonight.

  Now, what was that uh-oh all about?”

  Train was quiet for a moment. He looked around at all the spring greenery, his face an impassive mask. “I may be wrong,” he said. “But the Bureau told you Galantz was an MIA. If Sherman is telling the truth-that is, he knows Galantz was in fact alive after he had been declared MIATHEN Galantz may be doubly dangerous.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Yeah, I know. Let’s do this. See if you can set up a second meeting with the cops. Maybe-do it in Sherman’s house, or anywhere that’s not their turf, okay? You say you have a records-retrieval request in?”

  “Yes. They said it will take a few days.”

  “Okay. But if he’s an MIA, his record’may not be in deep storage. I’ll join you for this meeting. In the meantime, -I’ve got to check on something; then maybe I can explain what I meant about his being doubly dangerous.”

  “And you think we shouldn’t tell Admiral Carpenter anything about this letter?”

  “For now, that’s correct.” He looked straight at her. She was struck again by the incongruity between his physical size and the intelligence gleaming out of those eyes. “This could involve some heavy stuff,” he said. “I hope not. I hope our boy admiral is totally innocent.”

  “I guess I’m confused,” she said.

  He nodded slowly, and she sensed that there was some latent energy stirring in him. “Karen,” he said, “no offense intended here, but you might be getting way -out of your depth. I know I’m the new guy on the block and that I’m probably sounding presumptuous, but I strongly recommend you go slowly, very slowly, and carefully in this matter, okay?”

  She swallowed because her throat had dried up suddenly.

  She felt a chill that was out of place amid all the vernal warmth and light of the center court.

  Karen arrived promptly at Saint Matthew’s at 6: S. church was a smallish Methodist brownstone, and its entrance was set practically onto the sidewalk along Glebe

  “Road in Arlington. There was a small, heavily wooded graveyard next door, but there did not appear to be any preparations in place there.

  She went in and found Sherman, who was also still in uniform, sitting in one of the back pews, as if unsure of how he might be received by the small crowd of Elizabeth’s coworkers clustered up front. Karen was relieved when an elderly gentleman slipped into the pew behind theirs as the service opened and squeezed Sherman’s arm. Sherman introduced her to Adm. Galen Sc - hniidt. Five minutes after the service started, Mrs.

  Karen could sense Sherman’s discomfiture, and she felt a sudden lump in her own throat when she realized where she was. The absence of a coffin in the center aisle of the church only highlighted the stark fact that Elizabeth Walsh was indeed gone. She knew only too well what that felt like. She wondered if Sherman was adding the what-if mantra to the sorrow of his own loss: If I had not run away from this woman, would she still be alive? Or worse: Is she’dead now because of something that happened in a far-off place a very long time ago? That would be a tough one. Train von Rensel’s warning came fleetingly to mind. Looking out of the side of her eyes, she still couldn’t picture this intense man as a murderer. And yet Train’s logic made some sense.

  The service was secular and short. When it was over, Karen remained seated in the pew while Sherman’talked quietly to Mrs. Klein and the elderly admiral. Galen Schmidt was of medium height and spare frame, with a congenial, handsome face that she remembered from when he had been Chief of Naval Personnel a few years back. But now his hair was snow white and he had a porcelainlike complexion.

  Although he looked as if he were nearing his mid-seventies, Karen knew he couldn’t be much past sixty-three or -four, so that heart condition must be pretty serious. People started to leave, and Sherman herded his small group out the front door.

  “Nice service, Tag,” Admiral Schmidt said, adjusting his raincoat and looking at the scudding overcast. Karen stood behind them as she slipped on her own black Navy raincoat.

  Schmidt said he was going to get right home before the rain hit. “You going to be okay tonight?” he asked Sherman.

  “I think so, Galen. Thanks for coming. Besides you and the ladies here, I’m afraid I was the odd man out. I don’t really know any of those people.”

  “They’re not who you came to say good-bye to, Tag.

  Chin up. Life goes on. Commander, Mrs. Klein, nice to meet you all. I am sorry for your loss, Tag. Come see me in a day or so.”

  “I will, Galen. Thanks again for coming out tonight.”

  Schmidt shook hands with everyone. Karen noticed that the bones in his fingers felt like bird bones, featherlight, almost fragile. Sherman waved as the old man steamed off down the sidewalk toward his Cadillac, and then he looked around, as if trying to remember where he had parked his own car. Mrs. Klein made her own hasty departure, and then it was just Karen and the admiral standing on the sidewalk as the rest of the other people came out. Everyone seemed to be concentrating on the first raindrops spattering on the steps. The admiral was not wearing his raincoat, and there were a few stares, but no one came over to them.

  “Damn it, I knew it,” he said above a sudden gust of wind.

  “You go ahead, Admiral,” she said. “I’m parked in the next block.”

  “Right. Look, I’ve decided I do want to talk to that detective. “

  “Good,” she replied, holding on to her hat. Then she remembered von Rensel’s suggestion. “How about doing the meeting at your house instead of in the Pentagon? Tomorrow night?”

  “Okay,” he said. “Would you set it up? A
nd call me in the morning? Oh, and thank you for coming tonight, Karen.” Then he was jogging away down the sidewalk as the rain began in earnest. Karen followed with her head down, reflecting on how everyone was always anxious to get away from a funeral. Her mother had organized a service for Frank out in Chevy Chase, and she had dreaded leaving the church when it was over. Probably because they then had to go to the cemetery. Elizabeth Walsh had spared them that trauma by donating her body to medical science.

  She looked back to see if Sherman had reached his car, when she heard the dissonant sound of a motorcycle coming toward them. She looked up the street and saw the bike and its rider approaching down the inside righi lane, pursued by a small vortex of rain and traffic mist. The motorcycle looked like a fat wingless wasp, shiny and black, with chrome exhaust pipes, an oversized headlight, and only a small windshield. Its engine was running rough, battering the evening air with a painfully loud staccato that seemed incongruous in this neighborhood of older homes and nicely fenced yards. The helmeted rider, wearing a sleeveless, black T-shirt and dark jeans, looked too spindly to be piloting the big two-seater machine. As the bike drew abreast of where the admiral was fumbling with his car keys, she suddenly realized that the’rider had his visor raised and was looking right at Sherman.

  Karen, who had stopped about thirty feet away, saw the admiral look back at the rider and then freeze. He whirled around as the bike went by, but it was already accelerating along the right lane in a cone of smoky spray. Karen stood there for a second and Was about to start forward, but the admiral was scrambling to get his car door open, as if anxious to pursue the bike and its rider. But it was not to be: The stream of rush-hour traffic made it impossible for him to get out of his parking place, and she saw him thump the steering wheel in frustration. The rain became heavier, and she hurried to reach her own car. She looked back once more and saw the admiral push his way into traffic, provoking an angry constellation of brake lights and horns behind him.

  She got in and struggled out of her dripping raincoat. The rain drummed hard on the roof, and she decided just to wait it out for a few minutes, turning on the engine to get the defroster going. So what the hell was that all about? she wondered. She had had only the briefest glimpse of the rider’s face. The predominant impression was -thin: thin face, narrow hatchetlike head, a hank of greasy-looking black hair down one side, the flash of an earring. But there was no doubt that he had been looking at the admiral, almost as if he had been willing the admiral to see him.

  Mystified, she switched on her car phone, got out Mcnair’s card, and placed a call to his office. She got his voice mail. She asked if it would be amenable to meet with Admiral Sherman at his home in Mclean at 6:00 P.m. tomorrow night and said to call her if this would work. As the rain squall passed, she began watching the traffic for an opening. She made a mental note to close the loop with von Rensel first thing in the morning. She would also have to figure out how to put off any questions from Carpenter for one more day.

  As he piloted his Suburban carefully through the evening rush-hour traffic on I-95, Train von Rensel made a mental inventory of some things he needed to do before the lovely lady commander got herself too much further into the Sherman matter. A disappearing letter from a disappearing, SEAL who was also supposed to be an MIA-he shook his head.

  Assuming the good admiral was being honest, Train felt that his first comment in the snack bar had been the simple truth. Navy SEALS have the reputation of being the baddest of the bad in the Special Forces world, where bad inferred supreme competence rather than a capacity for malice.

  If a SEAL had been declared ‘missing in action and then had reappeared back in the States some time afterward, still being carried as an MIA, then there was a high probability that he had found himself a new government job.

  Fortunately, Train still had one contact in that organization all the spooks loved to hate, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Dr. Mchale Johnson was a senior scientist in the Computer Operations and Machine Intelligence Division of the FBI’s Washington laboratories, or at least that’s what he said he was. Train had first met him during an NIS counterintelligence operation connected with the Walker cryptography spy ring. Up to that point in his career, Train had been under the nayve impression that there were rigid rules governing the boundaries of counterintelligence operations, with the FBI solely in charge of domestic counterintelligence, while another agency dealt with security issues beyond U.S. borders. Mchale Johnson quickly had disabused him of this quaint notion, demonstrating repeatedly that both federal agencies had their own interpretations of this rule.

  During a subsequent Joint Intelligence Board debriefing on the Walker case, a board member from that other agency had tried to pin Train down as to whether or not he had seen any evidence that the FBI ever operated off the reservation. Train had testified solemnly that he had seen absolutely no evidence of any violations of’this rule during the investigation. Since then, Mchale Johnson had been available for informal consultations from time to time. The FBI kept score.

  But first, he needed to be convinced that this wasn’t some kind of smoke-blowing exercise on the admiral’s part. He was a little bit surprised that Karen Lawrence would be so ready to believe such a story.

  On the other hand, she was a commander and Sherman was a flag officer.

  He had long since learned never to underestimate the capacity of naval officers to put the star-wearing elect of the military congregation up on exceedingly high pedestals.

  Train stared out at the stalled river of evening commuters.

  Being that he considered himself a Washington-area native, he should be used to this. Born in 1949, he had been the only child of Gregor von Rensel and his wife, Constance.

  He had grown up on the family’s riverside home near Aquia, Virginia, which was about thirty-five miles south of Washington.

  His father, a Washington attorney, had been on Macarthur’s staff during World War 11. He had followed Macarthur to Tokyo when the war ended, and he’d spent two years on the Tokyo Occupation Staff. Despite being part of the hated army of occupation in that devastated city, Gregor found himself quite taken with the Japanese approach to life.

  When he came home to the Washington area in 1947, he met and subsequently married the daughter of an American banker, Hiram Worthfield, of the San Francisco Worthfields, who had himself taken a Japanese wife long before the war.

  Wolfgang had been born two years later, growing up on the family estate at Aquia until his ninth year, when his mother contracted breast cancer and then died a year later.

  The Worthfield family,- conscious of Gregor’s old-world attitudes about raising their only grandchild, prevailed upon him to accept two young Japanese retainers from their own San Francisco household, Hiroshi and Kyoko Yamada.

  Kyoko had quietly become Train’s surrogate mother, while her husband, Hiroshi, took over as groundskeeper, chauffeur, and general factotum.

  Hiroshi had generally ignored young Wolfgang until the child’s twelfth year, at which point Gregor von Rensel, aware of impending puberty, had had a quiet word.

  With patience and quiet persistence, Hiroshi had infiltrated Wolfgang’s nonschool hours, skillfully bringing the prepubescent boy into his orbit and teaching him the essential arts of manhood. To the young Wolfgang’s eyes, Hiroshi was an aloof, taciturn, stoical man of little apparent humor who was inexplicably starting to take up a lot of his time.

  But over the next three years, the rapidly growing teenager was exposed to the best concepts of the Japanese upperclass traditions: a strong sense of honor, an -awareness that there was such a thing as duty, and the iinpoilance of personal integrity. Hiroshi had come from a military family and had received extensive military -training in anticipation of -the impending U.S. invasion of the home islands. When the time came to instruct his new master’s son in the duties of manhood, he imparted a high regard for personal selfsufficiency, including extensive and daily instruction in the martial ar
ts.

  Content with Hiroshi’s work, Train’s father insisted on boarding school as the next step, then prelaw at the University of Virginia. It had been Train’s . idea to try military service, and he served for thirteen years in the Marine Corps, first as an infantry officer, and then, after time out for law school from 1975 to 1978, as a Marine Corps JAG officer until 1983.

  Two factors drove him to resign his commission in the Marines: the increasingly complex demands of managing his financial affairs after his father’s death in 1982, and the fact that he had developed a passion for the art of investigation, following an assignment to prosecute a widespread contracting-fraud ring with foreign government industrialespionage overtones in 1980. He put away his major’s uniform in late W83, and he split the next eleven years between the Office of Naval Intelligence and, later, the Naval Investigative Service. He operated increasingly as an independent investigator, to whom his superiors often turned to handle those politically sensitive cases that needed as much discretion as detective work He sighed as the traffic restarted and then groaned immediately to a stop again. Although Train was one of the very few -people out on the interstate who did not have any particular deadline by which to get home, the house at Aquia was increasin gly his little island of tranquillity along the Potomac-a tranquillity he sincerely hoped was not about to be disturbed by the appearance of a rogue SEAL. Maybe he could ask around the NIS operations directorate tomorrow, talk to some of the people who’d worked with the SEALS, see if anybody had ever heard of this guy.

  THURSDAY Karen called Admiral Sherman’s office the next morning at nine to relay the message about the proposed meeting.

  Mcnair had agreed to meet with Admiral Sherman at his house, as requested. The yeoman put her on hold and then came back on the line.

  “Admiral asked if you can come down here commander.

  Says something’s come up.”

  She agreed and hung up. Now what? She looked around to see if Train von Rensel was in yet, but then she remembered he had to go back over to NIS to close out some files.