“Well, okay, Admiral. We’ll turn this thing in as a suspicious-incident report, and I’ll make sure a copy gets to Mcnair and company. I’ll forward this item to the police lab for analysis. You understand, Commander, it’s your car: If there’re drugs in this thing, you both may have some explaining to do.”
“I understand,” Karen said.
“Thank you, Officer,” Sherman said. “Please don’t forget about Mcnair.”
The cop nodded as he climbed back into the cruiser.
Karen suddenly needed to sit down and got into the Mercedes. Sherman walked around to the passenger side and got in. For a moment, they just sat there. His face was in shadow when he spoke.
“We were being watched,” he said. “That cop car was here too quickly.
Whoever put that thing in the car waited for us to come out, then called the cops.”
She swallowed but did not reply. She started the car, turned it toward the main entrance, and then turned right onto Old Dominion. “That’s a scary thought,” she said.
“But the good news is that nine-one-one calls can be traced.
Even if it turns out to be a pay phone, the call and the syringe are the first tangible evidence that something’s going on. This should also help to convince Mcnair that Galantz is real.”
“Maybe,” he said after a moment. “But I can see his problem: He has only my word for it that I got that letter, And he could make the case that I could have put that syringe in your car. That would explain how it got there without forcible entry.”
“But you were with me the whole time,” she protested.
“Think about it” was all he said as she turned in to his town house development.
Karen did think about it as she drove home. Train von Rensel had inferred something similar earlier. But why would the admiral commit murder? She had seen his house in Mclean. Money as a motive to kill his exgirlfriend seemed implausible to her. And Mrs. Klein had been first and foremost Elizabeth’s friend, and she wouldn’t be nice to Sherman if he had been some kind of bastard toward Elizabeth Walsh.
The admiral’s story about his marriage was depressing.
She wondered about how many of the chosen few who made it to the top in any American profession could tell similar stories about what happened to their families along the way.
The difference with this guy was that at least he seemed to have the capacity to be embarrassed about how it had all turned out, and he could admit that he bore a large share of responsibility for the wreck of their marriage.
She turned right on Springvale Road, and headed out toward the river, adjusting her mirror against the lights of a car behind her. She had met several senior naval officers with similar marriage histories who callously chalked it off to their having picked the wrong wife. The real bastards were the ones who happily let their wives slog through the sea-duty separations and the diapers and the teenager crises all by themselves while the Great Men climbed the ladder at sea, only to dump their wives in favor of new trophy wives to match the trophy stars.
Sherman didn’t seem to be one of those. And it must have been especially hard to know that his only son was out there somewhere, incubating a major psychic cyst.
She turned left on Beach Mill Road at the Frenc h restaurant and started down the winding hill. The car behind her was still there, not tailgating exactly, but staying right with her, its dazzling headlights making it look as if it was right on her bumper. She remembered the admiral’s comment about being careful and tried not to take any particular notice of the car following her. Beach Mill Road was only about a lane and half wide along here, and it wasn’t as if he could pass. Another two minutes down the road, she put her turn signal on and slowed. The car came right up behind her then, its lights filling all the rriiffors.
All right, jerk, hold your horses; I’ve got to make this driveway and then you can go play Richard Petty. Probably one of the local Masters of the Universe with gonads on fire to get his Porsche out of second gear.
She made the turn, going slower than usual just to spite him, and the car roared past. She tried to see who or what it was, but it was long gone in a howl of expensive valves.
She drove down the winding driveway to the house, warmed by the sense of security she felt every time she came down this tree-lined drive. The house Was a two-story Southern Living design, suitably scaled up to fit into the mansion decor of Great Falls. It had graceful white balustrade porches enveloping three sides on the ground level.
There were ten acres altogether, which included a separate two-car garage, a six-stall horse barn, and a small riding ring set within the moss-covered foundations of an enormous old hay barn, all framed by the graying remains of an ancient apple orchard. The rest of the property was divided into three pastures. The property bordered on a narrow strip of state park that formed the Virginia banks of the Potomac River. On still spring nights, she could hear the river from the porch.
She parked in the garage and then diverted down a branch of the driveway that led to the small horse barn to see her three charges. Actually, only one was hers, a steady Morgan mare named Duchess. The other two residents were boarders, one belonging to a neighbor who rarely came to see the creature, and the other to a high school student who lived farther up Beach Mill in what the locals called a “mansion graveyard,” a cluster of huge homes sited much too close together on a hill overlooking Beach Mill Road. The student, a pretty sixteen-year-old named Sally Henson, took care of all three horses in return for’ a break on her board bill.
Karen peered into the near paddocks, but the horses were apparently hanging out in one of the darkened fields, glad to be out of the barn now that winter was over. She took a quick look around the barn, flipping on the aisle lights briefly, but everything seemed to be in order. Sally was conscientious. The sounds of insects and tree frogs were amplified in the confines of the aisleway. She turned out the lights, then returned to the house via the garden pathway, a bricked walk that led through a sixty-foot-long, eight-foot high boxwood hedge passage. She was reassured by the scent of new boxwood leaves and the loamy perfume of freshly mowed grass permeating the night air. There was a bright moon back lighting the low cloud cover and diffusing the shadows among the apple trees and the spreading oaks in the near yard.
The house seemed artificially still in the moonlight as she walked up the steps of the front porch.
A quick peek through the front windows failed to reveal any lurking bad guys. She heard snuffling behind the front door, and she quickly unlocked it to let Frank’s elderly Labrador, Harry, out for a late-night tree-watering mission. She reassured the alarm system, then stood out on the porch while the dog ran around, making his usual federal case out of which tree was going to be honored this evening.
Watching the old dog snuffle around the dark yard, she felt a familiar weight of depression at the prospect of living alone again. It didn’t help that, in all -likelihood, Frank had dishonored the last years of their marriage. An image of Admiral Sherman came to mind, sitting in his living room, rubbing the sides of his face with both hands as he struggled with the ghosts of his scary past. Sherman was a handsome, physically fit, intelligent, and successful man about her own age. But she felt no particular attraction toward him, other than a growin reservoir of sympathy. In her younger years, before Frank even, that kind of man would have had her attending to her makeup, But now all he had were his stars, and a nice, big, empty town house in Mclean with which to share them. She called the dog, but, like an old man with selective hearing, Harry ignored her, intent on pursuing some scent into the bushes.
Over the past few years in the Pentagon, she had watched in amazement as each new crop of flag officers seemed to redouble their efforts to impress, coming in at seven and going home at seven, as if those shiny new stars meant they suddenly had to shoulder the cares of the entire Navy. By his own recounting, Sherman had spurned what had been his best shot at a second chance to have a life pro partner, at least in
part because of the demands of his’career.
And now some vengeful ghost from a long-lost war had apparently come back to make his life’truly meaningful.
What a deal. She looked at her watch. It was just past eleven.
“Harry, get in here,” she called.
As she turned back toward the front door, she heard the sound of -a car going by out on Beach Mill Road. It seemed to slow as it went by her front gates, its headlights creating a strobe effect through the double row of tree trunks parading along the driveway. The dog stopped for a moment, as if to listen to the car, but then reluctantly came in. It’s not him, Harry, she thought. But thanks for looking.
FRIDAY Early Friday morning, Karen had decided on an abbreviated workout, and she was coming back toward the Pentagon athletic club’s building from a two-mile run when she saw a small knot of runners clustered around a grassy knoll, about two hundred yards from the athletic club’s entrance.
She finished her cooldown exercises and then jogged over to where the small crowd was gathered. She was surprised to see that they were watching Train von Rensel, who stood like a stubby oak tree, alone in a space about fifteen feet square. He was wearing a martial arts outfit consisting of a white short-sleeved cotton jacket, white cotton trousers, and canvas tennis shoes. He had-a narrow red-and-white cloth wrapped around his forehead and, with both eyes closed, was gripping a thick curved wooden stick shaped to look like a Japanese sword. The stick was about four feet long, three inches thick, and made of what looked like rosewood.
As she came up on the small group of watchers, Train was executing a carefully choreographed set of maneuvers with the wooden sword, moving almost in slow motion, while stamping out a metronomic rhythm with his feet, first one foot, then the other. He resembled one of those sumo fighters in the way he moved, a careful exertion of great physical mass, but without all the fat rolls. With every other stamp, he pronounced a low grunt in whit sounded to Karen like Japanese, while simultaneously executing the next move. Train’s concentration appeared to be complete, and he gave no sign that he had seen Karen or was even aware that people were watching. Finally, he gave a huge shout and whirled around in a complete circle while holding the stick straight, out at waist level with both hands. Even though it was just a stick, everyone watching instinctively moved back a few more feet as the huge man began to execute a swift series of what were obviously fighting moves, vertical and horizontal slashes, each followed by a defensive posture against an imaginary attacker, then another thrust, a jump, a slash, a crouch, a lunge, another defensive position, then a running attack, each move punctuated by an unintelligible cry. He continued this drill for about three minutes, at the end of which his close cropped head and face were pouring with sweat and his chest heaving under the straining jacket.
With a final shout, he jumped into a two-handed position, arms and knees bent, legs spread, the stick held vertically in front of him and his eyes focused directly on it. Then, eyes closing, he began some breathing exercises, after which he extended his arms straight out and lowered the point of the stick. With arms fully extended now, he began a turn, the point of the heavy, thick staff describing . a menacing eye-level cirrle through the crowd. Karen’s shoulders ached in sympathetic pain as he did it, because he was no longer gripping the stick with his fingers, but, rather, holding the butt end extended between his flat palms, which were pressed together, a position that obviously took great strength. At the end of the circle, and with his eyes still closed, he growled and then did something with his hands that made the stick jump, spinning first around one forearm and then the other, like a drum majorette’s baton.
Moving ever faster, Train flicked it around his shoulders, along his forearms, behind his head, the thick staff making a wicked hissing sound in the still air, his massive hands a blur as he spun it, stopped it, balanced it, and then chopped it into a different motion or direction with almost casual flat-handed strikes. This exercise went on for almost sixty seconds, to the utter fascination of the crowd, and then ended abruptly with the stick held once again motionless, vertically in front of him. He raised his right leg and stomped the ground like a pile driver and shouted out a single word. Then he bowed to his imaginary opponent, put the stick down on a rectangular piece of canvas on the ground, and, still ignoring the people watching, reached for his towel as if he had been doing nothing more unusual than a few casual jumping jacks on the lawn.
Karen sensed that the people around her didn’t know whether to applaud or simply to exhale. As people drifted away, Karen pushed her way forward.
“Morning, Counselor,” he said through his towel.
“Didn’t know you worked out so early.”
“Every day,” she said. “And what, pray tell, was all that?”
“Just a stick drill,” he replied. “I use it to unwind after working the weights.”
“That’s some stick. May I see it?”
“‘Help yourself,” he said, reaching down and picking it up. He offered it to her butt-first. She. was surprised to feel how heavy it was. “It’s heavier than it looks,” she said.
“Why the sword shape? I thought kendo used a plain staff?”
He grinned as he began to gather up his gear. “That’s not kendo. Kendo is stick drill. This is just my version of kenjutsu, which is sword drill. Nothing mystical-just exercise. And the stick is shaped like a sword because of this.”
He took the heavy stick back from her hands, held one end, twisted it slightly, and withdrew a glistening full-sized Japanese fighting sword.
She blinked in surprise. A Marine standing nearby exclaimed when he saw the sword.
“Would you hold this, please?” he said, handing it to her. She grasped the handle with both hands. The sword was beautifully balanced, and the steel surface of the blade appeared to be marbled in various colors.
Train fished an oily rag out of his gear bag, took the sword from her hands, and proceeded to wipe down the entire weapon.
“How’d you finish it up with Sherman?” he asked. “He reveal any more about this Galantz problem?”
“We went down to a local restaurant and had dinner. He told me some of his personal background. Look, I’m going to cramp up if we just stand here. And-“
“Right,” he said, understanding. There were too many people around, some still gawking at his unusual athletic getup. H gathered his gear and the sword, then indicated they should walk toward the small tidal channel on the other side of North Parking.
Karen told him about the syringe. That got his attention.
“In your car? In your locked car? And then the patrol car just shows up as you’re standing there?”
“I know,” she said. “It means we were being watched.”
“And tracked. From his house down to the restaurant.
Damn, Karen, this changes everything, I think.”
“You think?”
“Well, technically speaking, Sherman could still be making this all up.
I mean, the logical explanation of how that thing got in your car without a breakin was that somebody with recent access put it there-namely, him. Was there some interval of time during which he could have called in that patrol car? Some time between the end of dinner and going out to the car?”
“No,” she said. Then she hesitated. “Wait. Yes.
He said he was going to use the bathroom. I waited out by the front door. But-“
“But what, Karen? That’s as plausible an explanation as some mysterious stalker.”
She shook her head in exasperation. “Why are you so anxious to pin this stuff on him?” she demanded.
“Why are you so ready to believe everything he says?”
Train retorted. “Just because he’s an admiral?”
“No, damn it!” she said, glaring at him. But then she frowned. “Oh, I don’t know. I just wish you could have heard him tell the story of what happened to his marriage.
I just can’t find any motivation on his part to
make all this up, or to do something to Elizabeth Walsh. I’m beginning to think he’s being set up somehow.”
Train didn’t answer, just turned around, steering them back toward the POAC building. He stopped when they were about to go through the door, stepping aside to let people go by.
“I’m going to pull the string on this Galantz guy with some contacts at the FBI. And elsewhere,” he said. “I have a bad feeling about a guy who’s supposedly an MIA but who isn’t missing. That syringe was a nasty touch. I’ll see you up in the office.”
He left before she had time to answer. He seemed either angry or concerned, and she couldn’t tell which.
Train fumed at himself as he tied his tie for the second time in front of the foggy mirror of the locker room. He should not have said that out there, that bit where he asked her why she was so anxious to defend this guy. Besides, he knew the answer. She was Navy, he was an admiral, and a Studly Dudley one at that. Plus, she was not a trained investigator.
He was willing to bet that she was simply failing under this charmer’s spell. As o posed to your charming personality? -P It has nothing to do with that. Not at all. Hahi It didn’t help that she looked positively ravishing in that damp tank top.
But after this syringe business, the SEAL story had some more legs, and he had not been kidding about a bad feeling.
He gathered up his gear bag and the sword case, closed the temporary locker, and headed downstairs. Suppose what Sherman was saying was the truth, that some badass had come back from the grave to get revenge. Was the syringe a warning? Or the next step? Have to talk to Mchale Johnson at the FBI, he reminded himself as he crossed the wide pedestrian overpass between North Parking and the Pentagon building.
As soon as Karen got back to her desk, she called the front office to get an appointment with Admiral Carpenter.
Twenty minutes, later, Captain Mccarty called back and asked why she s, she asked only that the front office confirm that she could call on Mr. von Rensel and the NIS regarding the Sherman case. Mccarty was obviously perplexed, and he asked why she was asking. As he remembered it, the JAG had already assigned the new guy from NIS to the Sherman case. Mentally holding her breath, she explained only that the police might need help in tracking down an exenlisted man in connection with the Sherman matter. She was careful not to allude to Navy Special Forces or to Vietnam. She left it at that, hoping that the EA would be sufficiently distracted by the press of business not to probe further. She knew she was taking something of a chance, but if and when the business with Galantz got out, she wanted to be able to say that she had asked about involving the NIS, especially if her bosses raised hell about not being informed right away. Mccarty said impatiently that he would look into it and get back to her. She hung up, hoping that it would stop with the EA.
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