Reckoning

by James Byron Huggins

  Nothing but an uncomfortable silence.

  Finally Radford met Kertzman's eyes. "We still have no real evidence, Kertzman. I can't write this report up the way you put it. You don't have anything but opinion. And that's not enough. There's really nothing but conjecture to indicate that this is the work of a professional, especially ours. If you were still a cop, Kertzman, you might have enough for something. But this is not enough for an intelligence finding. We're supposed to, at least, look like we can back up what we say."

  Kertzman grunted. "Gentlemen," he said, his natural belligerence asserting itself. "This guy is active in some element of our government. He's an ex-SEAL or ex-Delta or maybe even Special Forces. But SF would make him old, because they haven't seen continuous combat since seventy-two. So he's probably not regular Army. I think he's cross-trained in covert civilian warfare with us and with foreign intelligence agencies like the Mossad. Of course, this guy could be foreign. Israeli, Russian, whatever. But I don't think he is. I think he's family. Maybe a CIA tactical guy out of Delta. Maybe a counterinsurgency guy out of SEALs. He might even be one of those guys we plant in foreign countries and wait to activate, the kind of guy trained to do it all, anything, whatever it takes to get the job done." He gazed around the table. "An artist. A psychopath."

  Kertzman shook his head. "No, I don't have any proof. At least, not yet. This is all just a hunch. But it's based on evidence. And, like I said, if this guy isn't active, then he's not long gone, and he's on a rampage. And that, gentlemen, is a situation. He might be settling old debts or using what he's learned against us. Anything's possible."

  Kertzman stared at everyone in turn. "You have to ask yourself, what is so important that one of our own operatives, if he is one of ours, would kill Sims and Myrick to protect? Or to hide?"

  He let the question settle. "And what do all these people have in common? The college? What is the key that ties 'em all together? The Army? Special Forces? Rogue covert ops running some underground financial scam that's gotten out of hand? What kind of situation could be bad enough to cost five men their lives, two of which had security clearances to the highest levels of this government? What can be that bad? Or that big?" He paused. "When we find the answer to that, gentlemen, I can assure you that we'll find something that leads straight back to this room."

  Radford folded his hands. "That's a little out of line, isn't it, Kertzman?"

  Kertzman waited, allowing whatever influence he possessed to work its way into the nervous impatience of his listeners. He knew that they hated his words; and he knew that his determination to find the bottom-line truth was the only real power he had. If he allowed himself to be swept in with the rest of them, they would own him, giving him what they wanted, when they wanted. He would be a puppet, a yes-head nobody with no guts, no respect. He couldn't settle for that. Ten years as a city street cop, Vietnam, twenty years in the FBI, and four years as a Pentagon criminal investigator had given something to him, meant something. He knew that, now, if he ever sold out he would lose the soul-weight of every right decision, every back-against-the-wall gutsy move he had ever made, lose the center of what he had risked his life a thousand times to defend. It would have all been for nothing, meaning nothing. He couldn't do it, had decided long ago that he couldn't do it. So since his first days in the Pentagon with the stonewalling and the complexity concealing game-playing he had adopted one unbending code of conduct; anybody came at him hard, tried to crush him, he came back at them harder; pushed into a corner, he'd burn the house down laughing his guts out and nobody gets out of here alive, boys!

  Kertzman smiled at the thought; better to be hated and feared than to live on his knees.

  "Gentlemen," he began, with only the slightest trace of a Midwestern upbringing in his words, "regardless of what I can prove, if something looks like a bull, if something walks like a bull and smells like a bull, then it's probably a bull." He winked at Radford. "If you know what I mean."

  He let that solidify, gazed around the table. Radford didn't move, stared at him. Then, allowing his anger to brace his boldness, Kertzman stood up, slowly walked down one side of the table. "Do you know what we need to understand here, Mr. Radford?" he projected. "We need to understand a little bit about trackin'. About huntin'."

  Confusion, or shock, blinked in Radford's eyes.

  "Before I left South Dakota," Kertzman went on, "and came to this godforsaken part of the country, I did a lot of huntin'. Moose, elk, bear. Whatever. Any of you ever tracked a bear in the high country, brought it down with your own hands?"

  Silence.

  "Well, I have. They gave a lot to me, and I gave a lot to them. And I'd do it clean. No guides. No fancy machinery flying around chasing 'em into trees like the cowards do nowadays. It'd just be him and me, alone in the high ground. And sometimes when the rock would be so hard that I couldn't track, I'd begin to wonder if he might not 'a circled back around. Maybe he was tracking me."

  Kertzman paused, eyebrows slightly raised. "Believe me, boys, that's a bad feeling. And I would always use a Casull .454 so I'd be close when the moment of truth came."

  Radford gazed distantly at the wall. "Is this really important, Kertzman?"

  "So there I'd be," Kertzman continued, smiling, "alone in the high country. And he'd be with me, huntin' me just like I was huntin' him. And do you know how I would realize it when he had finally come up in back of me?" Kertzman stopped at the far end of the table, looked around. "It was the silence," he said, a remembered fear steady and centered in his gaze. "One minute I'd be trackin', looking for sign, not finding anything. Bird and squirrel and every other kind of critter would be chirpin' and hollerin' and making a racket. Then, all of a sudden, this terrible silence."

  Kertzman waited, allowing a quiet to settle on the room. "Then there'd be that ol' strong ammonia smell 'a bear. He'd be hunting me, right on me. The meanest thing you've ever seen on four legs was right beside me in the trees and I couldn't even see him. But I'd know he was there. Because of the silence."

  Kertzman walked along the table, stopped at the opposite end. He put both hands, fingers spread, on the smoothly polished wood. Radford appeared reluctantly impressed. Absently, he once again tapped his pencil on the table.

  "So what are you saying, Kertzman?"

  Kertzman leaned forward, meeting the NSA man's gaze.

  "What am I saying?" he repeated, palms flat on the table. "I'm saying that it's awfully strange that I can't see no tracks in any 'a this. I'm saying that it smells like I'm real close to something I should see, but I can't." He nodded to Radford.

  "I'm saying it's awfully strange that everybody's so quiet in here."

  *

  ELEVEN

  Kertzman entered the spacious and lavishly furnished Pentagon office of Vice-Admiral Richard Talbot at 5:30 P.M. on Monday, January 15, approximately seven days since the seminary incident and three days since the Special Investigative Committee hearing. A pair of glossy flags honoring the Navy and the United States stood on either side of access into the Admiral's inner sanctum. Kertzman glanced around without appearing to notice the surroundings. It wasn't the office of an Admiral; it was the throne room of an emperor.

  A secretary of advancing years, her stark white hair adding a perfect complement to her impeccable lavender dress, turned her studious attention to him as he approached the desk. Kertzman saw her practiced gaze center only for a second on his identification badge, but he suspected she had read every word.

  "Nathaniel Kertzman," Kertzman said in introduction, knowing she already knew. She probably knew everything. "I'm here to see Admiral Talbot."

  "Yes, Mr. Kertzman," she replied with perfect, superior courtesy, gesturing toward the inner door. "The Admiral is expecting you."

  Kertzman moved past her.

  Surprisingly, since he had been walking the most secretive corridors of this building for five years, it took the full measure of his practiced control to appear calm and relaxed.

 
; Tall, thin, and authoritative, Admiral Talbot was a striking model of military composure. Even at this late hour of the day, his white duty uniform was flawless, dress shoes polished to a high sheen, every carefully trimmed gray hair in place. Not muscular, the Admiral still seemed exceedingly fit for a man in his sixth decade, vaguely reminding Kertzman of a dedicated long-distance runner. On his evenly tanned face a pair of clear prescription aviator reading glasses glinted goldenly from the light of the restored eighteenth-century ship lamps.

  As Kertzman entered the office, the Admiral turned respectfully, regarding him with a sudden and friendly smile.

  Kertzman instantly recognized the man speaking with the Admiral, Thomas Blake Carthwright, special assistant to the NSA's Director of Operations, formerly a special prosecutor in the Justice Department. Carthwright spent most of his time at the White House but because of his seemingly vast responsibilities in overseeing American intelligence, Kertzman had often glimpsed him within the halls of the Pentagon.

  Carthwright was dressed in an austere but impressively tailored gray suit that announced both his significant social station and his profoundly influential position. Though they had rarely talked, Kertzman had long ago measured Carthwright as both cultured and extremely comfortable with the rich and powerful, the product of Old Money. But with slight satisfaction Kertzman had also perceived something more within the expensively dressed assistant – a sort of nebulous weakness concealed by his privileged status; an emptiness of soul hidden behind the carefully subdued arrogance.

  Kertzman didn't believe that Carthwright had worked his way up from the middle class. He was obviously smart and powerful but the brains came from an expensive education and the power was inherited.

  Kertzman didn't respect either.

  The Admiral's voice; "Do you know Mr. Carthwright, Nathaniel?"

  Kertzman extended his hand.

  Carthwright's grip was solid, confident.

  "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Kertzman." He seemed to select the words carefully. "I've heard a great deal about you. I hope you don't mind me sitting in on this."

  Kertzman looked at Admiral Talbot, who nodded.

  "It's alright, Nathaniel. Mr. Carthwright is here to contribute to the situation. Have a seat."

  Admiral Talbot gestured with the thin manila file that he held in his hand and sat behind his desk, focusing on Kertzman down a long, thin nose.

  Massive in the dim light of the office, Kertzman sat into a large, plush, black leather chair situated directly in front of the desk, leaning slightly forward, an elbow on one knee, hand on the other knee. Brutal face hardening in concentration, Kertzman cut a quick, narrow glance toward Carthwright as the NSA man eased casually and comfortably into a red, gold-studded leather chair beside him.

  Kertzman possessed an intimate understanding of the tactics of intimidation. All of them had been used on him at one time or another and he had used a few himself. But he was slightly unnerved by the sudden and profound intensity of the Admiral's centered gaze. The old man's voice was low.

  "So how did the meeting go on Friday?"

  Kertzman met the Admiral's gaze, thought of Carthwright.

  "I just told it like I see it," he replied. "A lot of it, I've already told you."

  The Admiral waited. "And?"

  Kertzman frowned, vaguely confused. "Admiral, just what is it that you want to know? I already told you what I think. I can't prove anything. They thought I was just shootin' my mouth off. They'll do the investigation their way. They'll go by statements, paper trails, work the system, try to find computer records that lead somewhere. In this case I don't think they're going to find any." Kertzman shrugged. "I don't agree with them. They don't agree with me. It's their show."

  Admiral Talbot leaned back in his leather swivel chair, rocked silently for a moment. The hawk like gaze continued to search.

  "But what do you suggest we do?" he asked quietly.

  Kertzman felt a game begin. The impression, as always, made him angry. He knew that Carthwright had a hand to play but he couldn't put it together.

  "Look, Admiral, I don't have any authority in this situation. Two days ago, when you asked me for my opinion, I told you that there might be active military elements involved in this. But then, Sims and Myrick might 'a just been a couple 'a yahoos on a personal vendetta. For all I know, they might 'a been killed by the janitor. The truth is, I got no idea. But there are a lot of unanswered questions."

  The Admiral continued to stare at him. Kertzman wondered how far to go.

  "It's that situation at the seminary that doesn't fit into anything," Kertzman continued, hesitant. "Whoever sent Sims and Myrick across the river is a real mystery. It keeps bothering me, sort of like when I feel a high cold blowing in over heat. There's a pressure in the air. And it just feels bad, like a cyclone's brewin'." He paused. "You might not see it, but you can feel it. Smell it. It's like... a feelin' of danger that just don't leave, no matter what you do. And then there's that shootin' in the professor's house. Archeology. Theology. This Hall of Ancient Languages. None of it makes any sense. Guys like Sims and Myrick don't die at seminaries. They die trying to steal industrial secrets or they get shot down flying dope out of Central America. Despite the way I feel about 'em, I have to admit they were good at what they did. And in the open market they'd make a lot of money doing wet work. But not over anything to do with religion. Sims and Myrick had probably never even seen a church or a seminary. And whoever it was that put them down don't belong there, either. I don't know what kind of intelligence network, working out of a place like that, could be so important that men could get killed over it. I mean, I would anticipate that we would have something, like recruitment or language training. But nothin' big enough to end in a tactical fiasco like this." He waited, face hardening in thought. "The thing is, we've got killers running around in a place where they shouldn't be. Instead of trying to find out who, exactly, killed 'em, which might be impossible, I suggest you find out what Sims and Myrick were doing at the college." He nodded. "You find out why they were there and you'll probably get a line on whoever it was that did 'em in. I think that's the best way to go."

  The Admiral leaned forward.

  "Indulge me, Nathaniel. Hypothesize. What does your investigative instinct suggest about this alleged operation? Why do you believe they were there?"

  Kertzman organized his logic, tried not to repeat himself. "My best guess is that Sims and Myrick wanted to steal somethin', or hurt someone. I don't know what, or who. Maybe they wanted to hurt this woman who's missing. Retribution. Something like that. Not directly related to the seminary. It's people that were the target, not the school. And then this mystery man got involved for some reason. I don't know what. Maybe he was squared off against Sims and Myrick in some sort of weird covert operation. Maybe they're all runnin' drugs or working a private sanctioning agency, and now they're in a feud over profits." He shook his head again with a dismal gesture. "God only knows."

  Talbot's interest seemed to sharpen. Kertzman allowed a glance at Carthwright, saw only astute and polite attentiveness, dignified and patient.

  The Admiral shifted. Behind the polished glasses and hawkish nose Kertzman sensed a keen intellect turning in tightening circles. Carthwright moved forward, debating some turn of thought.

  It was the Admiral who spoke. "Do you know why the NSA asked for your opinion on this, Nathaniel?"

  Kertzman shook his head. "No."

  "Because," he continued, rising, "we believe there is a situation that has gotten ... out of hand."

  Carefully Admiral Talbot moved around the desk, an approach of purposeful and measured authority. He sat down on the edge at the front, the imposing image of an elite military commander, leaning over Kertzman.

  "What I am about to tell you must not leave this room," Talbot began in a conspiratorial tone. "It is, as you already suspect, a sensitive matter. No doubt I do not need to remind you of your contractual agreement."

>   Kertzman weighed everything, wondering where the game would lead.

  "Alright," he said, "I'm reminded. But I don't play games, Admiral. And I'm not military. Not anymore. I don't even know why the NSA asked me to sit in on the—"

  Talbot silenced him with a gravely raised hand.

  "I'll explain it to you, Nathaniel," he added slowly. "You were selected by the NSA to sit in on the meeting because the White House has authorized a Special Inquiry into a rather unusual military situation. And Justice has been selected to run the investigation, with the cooperation of the Joint Chiefs."

  A long silence.

  "What kind of military situation?"

  Without hesitation the Admiral answered, "An investigation to determine whether there are rogue military personnel of this government engaging in nonsanctioned covert operations against the American civilian sector."

  Unblinking, Kertzman said nothing. Wondered how much of this drama was for theater.

  "These activities, if they do indeed exist, are highly illegal military affairs," continued the Admiral, his voice solemn and heavy. Then he shook his head, as if answering an unspoken question. "The nature of these operations are officially unknown to us, but members of the NSA suspect that they are extensive. Possibly, they only involve members of our military engaging in nonsanctioned surveillance and intelligence gathering. But there is also the possibility that far more serious crimes have occurred. It is even possible that crimes of a violent nature are involved. And there are allegations that some of these military operations have involved the use of deadly force against American civilian authorities." He paused. "So, as you can see, I am not misstating to say that the situation may be out of hand."

  Kertzman said nothing. Didn't move. He was suddenly and sharply aware of Carthwright's poised presence.

  "Mr. Carthwright and I have brought you here because we want you to lead the investigation," the Admiral continued. "Needless to say, it must be done quietly and with exceptional circumspection. You will be dealing with professionals, men trained in the craft of intelligence. If they suspect that someone is attempting to uncover their network, they will immediately close ranks and cease operations. Then we'll never locate them and the military will be compromised for decades to come. That would be intolerable. We cannot allow an elite society, even a society from within our own ranks, to misuse either our authority or our resources."