“Major Marshall took a civilian flight at 2300,” he said. “Frankfurt to Dulles. Seven-hour layover and on to LAX from National. I issued the vouchers myself.”
“When?”
“As he was leaving.”
“Which was when?”
“He left here three hours before his flight.”
“Eight o’clock?”
The captain nodded. “On the dot.”
“I was told he was scheduled for night maneuvers.”
“He was. That plan changed.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure.”
I’m not sure seemed to be XII Corps’ standard-issue answer for everything.
“What’s the panic at Irwin?” I said.
“I’m not sure.”
I smiled, briefly. “When were Marshall’s orders issued?”
“At seven o’clock.”
“Written?”
“Verbal.”
“By?”
“General Vassell.”
“Did Vassell countersign the travel vouchers himself?”
The captain nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “He did.”
“I need to speak to him,” I said.
“He went to London.”
“London?” I said.
“For a short-notice meeting with the British Ministry of Defense.”
“When did he leave?”
“He traveled to the airport with Major Marshall.”
“Where’s Colonel Coomer?”
“Berlin,” the guy said. “Souvenir hunting.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “He went to the airport with Vassell and Marshall.”
“No,” the captain said. “He took the train.”
“Terrific,” I said.
Summer and I went to the O Club for breakfast. We got the same corner table we had used the night before. We sat side by side, backs to the wall, watching the room.
“OK,” I said. “Swan’s office called for Marshall’s whereabouts at 1810 and fifty minutes later he had orders for Irwin. An hour after that he was off the post.”
“And Vassell lit out for London,” Summer said. “And Coomer jumped on a train for Berlin.”
“A night train,” I said. “Who goes on a night train just for the fun of it?”
“Everybody’s got something to hide,” she said.
“Except me and my monkey.”
“What?”
“The Beatles,” I said. “One of the sounds of the century.”
She just looked at me.
“What are they hiding?” she said.
“You tell me.”
She put her hands on the table, palms down. Took a breath.
“I can see part of it,” she said.
“Me too.”
“The agenda,” she said. “It was the other side of the coin from what Colonel Simon was talking about last night. Simon was salivating about the infantry taking Armored down a peg or two. Kramer must have seen all of that coming. Two-star generals aren’t stupid. So the Irwin conference on New Year’s Day was about fighting the opposite corner. It was about resistance, I guess. They don’t want to give up what they’ve got.”
“Hell of a thing to give up,” I said.
“Believe it,” she said. “Like battleship captains, way back.”
“So what was in the agenda?”
“Part defense, part offense,” she said. “That’s the obvious way to do it. Arguments against integrated units, ridicule of lightweight armored vehicles, advocacy for their own specialized expertise.”
“I agree,” I said. “But it’s not enough. The Pentagon is going to be neck-deep in position papers full of shit like that, starting any day now. For, against, if, but and however, we’re going to be bored to death with it. But there was something else in that agenda that made them totally desperate to get Kramer’s copy back. What was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me either,” I said.
“And why did they run last night?” Summer asked. “By now they must have destroyed Kramer’s copy and every other copy. So they could have lied through their teeth about what was in it, to put your mind at rest. They could even have given you a phony document. They could have said, Here you go, this was it, check it out.”
“They ran because of Mrs. Kramer,” I said.
She nodded. “I still think Vassell and Coomer killed her. Kramer croaks, the ball is in their court, in the circumstances they know it’s their responsibility to go out and round up all the loose paperwork. Mrs. Kramer goes down as collateral damage.”
“That would make perfect sense,” I said. “Except that neither one of them looked particularly tall and strong to me.”
“They’re both a lot taller and stronger than Mrs. Kramer was. Plus, you know, heat of the moment, pumped up with panic, we could be seeing ambiguous forensic results. And we don’t know how good the Green Valley people are anyway. Could be some family doctor doing a two-year term as coroner, and what the hell would he know?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I still don’t see how it could have happened. Take out the drive time from D.C., take out ten minutes to find that store and steal the crowbar, they had ten minutes to react. And they didn’t have a car, and they didn’t call for one.”
“They could have taken a taxi. Or a town car. Direct from the hotel lobby. And we’d never trace it. New Year’s Eve, it was the busiest night of the year.”
“It would have been a long ride,” I said. “Big fare. It might stand out in some driver’s memory.”
“New Year’s Eve,” she said again. “D.C. taxis and town cars are all over three states. All kinds of weird destinations. It’s a possibility.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “You don’t take a taxi on a trip where you break into a hardware store and a house.”
“No reason for the driver to have seen anything. Vassell or Coomer or both could have walked into that alley in Sperryville on foot. Come back five minutes later with the crowbar under their coat. Same thing with Mrs. Kramer’s house. The cab could have stopped on the driveway. All the action was around the back.”
“Too big of a risk. A D.C. cabdriver reads the papers same as anyone else. Maybe more than anyone else, with all that traffic. He sees the story from Green Valley, he remembers his two passengers.”
“They didn’t see it as a risk. They weren’t anticipating a story. Because they thought Mrs. Kramer wasn’t going to be home. They thought she would be at the hospital. And they figured no way would a couple of trivial burglaries in Sperryville and Green Valley make it into the D.C. papers.”
I nodded. Thought back to something Detective Clark had said, days ago. I had people up and down the street, canvassing. There were some cars around.
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe we should check taxis.”
“Worst night of the year,” Summer said. “Like for alibis.”
“It would be a hell of a thing,” I said. “Wouldn’t it? Taking a cab to do a thing like that?”
“Nerves of steel.”
“If they’ve got nerves of steel, why did they run away last night?”
She was quiet for a moment.
“That really doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Because they can’t run forever. They must know that. They must know that sooner or later they’re going to have to turn around and bite back.”
“I agree. And they should have done it right here. Right now. This is their turf. I don’t understand why they didn’t.”
“It will be a hell of a bite. Their whole professional lives are on the line. You should be very careful.”
“You too,” I said. “Not just me.”
“Offense is the best defense.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“So are we going after them?”
“You bet your ass.”
“Which one first?”
“Marshall,” I said. “He’s the one I want.”
“Why?”<
br />
“Rule of thumb,” I said. “Chase the one they sent farthest away, because they see him as the weakest link.”
“Now?” she said.
I shook my head.
“We’re going to Paris next,” I said. “I have to see my mom.”
nineteen
We repacked our bags and moved out of our VOQ rooms and paid a final courtesy visit to Swan in his office. He had some news for us.
“I’m supposed to arrest you both,” he said.
“Why?” I said.
“You’re AWOL. Willard put a hit out on you.”
“What, worldwide?”
Swan shook his head. “This post only. They found your car at Andrews and Willard talked to Transportation Corps. So he knew you were headed here.”
“When did you get the telex?”
“An hour ago.”
“When did we leave here?”
“An hour before that.”
“Where did we go?”
“No idea. You didn’t say. I assumed you were returning to base.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Better not tell me where you’re really going.”
“Paris,” I said. “Personal time.”
“What’s going on?”
“I wish I knew.”
“You want me to call you a cab?”
“That would be great.”
Ten minutes later we were in another Mercedes-Benz, heading back the way we had come fifteen hours before.
We had a choice of Lufthansa or Air France from Frankfurt-am-Main to Paris. I chose Air France. I figured their coffee would be better, and I figured if Willard got around to checking civilian carriers he would hit on Lufthansa first. I figured he was that kind of a simpleton.
We swapped two more of the forged travel vouchers for two seats in coach on the ten o’clock flight. Waited in the gate lounge. We were in BDUs, but we didn’t really stand out. There were American military uniforms all over the airport. I saw some XII Corps MPs, prowling in pairs. But I wasn’t worried. I figured they were on routine cooperation with the civilian cops. They weren’t looking for us. I had the feeling that Willard’s telex was going to stay on Swan’s desk for an hour or two.
We boarded on time and stuffed our bags in the overhead. Buckled up and settled in. There were a dozen military on the plane with us. Paris always was a popular R&R destination for people stationed in Germany. The weather was still misty. But it wasn’t bad enough to delay us any. We took off on time and climbed over the gray city and struck out south and west across pastel fields and huge tracts of forest. Then we climbed through the cloud into the sun and we couldn’t see the ground anymore.
It was a short flight. We started our descent during my second cup of coffee. Summer was drinking juice. She looked nervous. Part excited, and part worried. I figured she had never been to Paris before. And I figured she had never been AWOL before either. I could see it was weighing on her. Truth is, it was weighing on me a little too. It was a complicating factor. I could have done without it. But I wasn’t surprised to be hit with it. It had always been the obvious next step for Willard to take. Now I figured we were going to be chased around the world by BOLO messages. Be on the lookout for. Or else we were going to have a generalized all-points bulletin dumped on us.
We landed at Roissy–Charles de Gaulle and were off the plane and in the jetway by eleven-thirty in the morning. The airport was crowded. The taxi line was a zoo, just like it had been when Joe and I arrived the last time. So we gave up on it and walked to the navette station. Waited in line and climbed into the little bus. It was packed and uncomfortable. But Paris was warmer than Frankfurt had been. There was a watery sun out and I knew the city was going to look spectacular.
“Been here before?” I said.
“Never,” Summer said.
“Don’t look at the first twenty klicks,” I said. “Wait until we’re inside the Périphérique.”
“What’s that?”
“Like a ring road. Like the Beltway. That’s where the good part starts.”
“Your mom live inside it?”
I nodded. “On one of the nicest avenues in town. Where all the embassies are. Near the Eiffel Tower.”
“Are we going straight there?”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “We’re going to be tourists first.”
“Why?”
“I have to wait until my brother gets in. I can’t go on my own. We have to go together.”
She said nothing to that. Just glanced at me. The bus started up and pulled away from the curb. She watched out the window the whole way. I could see by the reflection of her face in the glass that she agreed with me. Inside the Périphérique was better.
We got out at the Place de l’Opéra and stood on the sidewalk and let the rest of the passengers swarm ahead of us. I figured we should choose a hotel and dump our bags before we did anything else.
We walked south on the Rue de la Paix, through the Place Vendôme, down to the Tuileries. Then we turned right and walked straight up the Champs-Élysées. There might have been better places to walk with a pretty woman on a lazy day under a watery winter sun, but right then I couldn’t readily recall any. We made a left onto the Rue Marbeuf and came out on the Avenue George V just about opposite the George V Hotel.
“OK for you?” I said.
“Will they let us in?” Summer asked.
“Only one way to find out.”
We crossed the street and a guy in a top hat opened the door for us. The girl at the desk had a bunch of little flags on her lapel, one for each language she spoke. I used French, which pleased her. I gave her two vouchers and asked for two rooms. She didn’t hesitate. She went right ahead and gave us keys just like I had paid with gold bullion, or a credit card. The George V was one of those places. There was nothing they hadn’t seen before. Or if there was, they weren’t about to admit it to anyone.
The rooms the multilingual girl gave us both faced south and both had a partial view of the Eiffel Tower. One was decorated in shades of pale blue and had a sitting area and a bathroom the size of a tennis court. The other was three doors down the hall. It was done in parchment yellow and it had an iron Juliet balcony.
“Your choice,” I said.
“I’ll take the one with the balcony,” she said.
We dumped our bags and washed up and met in the lobby fifteen minutes later. I was ready for lunch, but Summer had other ideas.
“I want to buy clothes,” she said. “Tourists don’t wear BDUs.”
“This one does,” I said.
“So break out,” she said. “Live a little. Where should we go?”
I shrugged. You couldn’t walk twenty yards in Paris without falling over at least three clothing stores. But most of them wanted a month’s pay for a single garment.
“We could try Bon Marché,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Department store,” I said. “It means cheap, literally.”
“A department store called Cheap?”
“My kind of place,” I said.
“Anywhere else?”
“Samaritaine,” I said. “On the river, at the Pont Neuf. There’s a terrace at the top with a view.”
“Let’s go there.”
It was a long walk along the river, all the way to the tip of the Île de la Cité. It took us an hour, because we kept stopping to look at things. We passed the Louvre. We browsed the little green stalls set up on the river wall.
“What does Pont Neuf mean?” Summer asked me.
“New Bridge,” I said.
She looked ahead at the ancient stone structure.
“It’s the oldest bridge in Paris,” I said.
“So why do they call it new?”
“Because it was new once.”
We stepped into the warmth of the store. Like all such places the cosmetics came first and filled the air with scent. Summer led me up one floor to the women’s clothes. I sat in a comfortable chai
r and let her look around. She was gone for a good half hour. She came back wearing a complete new outfit. Black shoes, a black pencil skirt, a gray-and-white Breton sweater, a gray wool jacket. And a beret. She looked like a million dollars. Her BDUs and her boots were in a Samaritaine bag in her hand.
“You next,” she said. She took me up to the men’s department. The only pants they had with ninety-five-centimeter inseams were Algerian knockoffs of American blue jeans, so that set the tone. I bought a light blue sweatshirt and a black cotton bomber jacket. I kept my army boots on. They looked OK with the jeans and they matched the jacket.
“Buy a beret,” Summer said, so I bought a beret. It was black with a leather binding. I paid for the whole lot with American dollars at a pretty good rate of exchange. I dressed in the changing cubicle. Put my camouflage gear in the carrier bag. Checked the mirror and adjusted the beret to a rakish angle and stepped out.
Summer said nothing.
“Lunch now,” I said.
We went up to the ninth-floor café. It was too cold to sit out on the terrace, but we sat at a window and got pretty much the same view. We could see the Notre-Dame cathedral to the east and the Montparnasse Tower all the way to the south. The sun was still out. It was a great city.
“How did Willard find our car?” Summer said. “How would he even know where to look? The United States is a big country.”
“He didn’t find it,” I said. “Not until someone told him where it was.”
“Who?”
“Vassell,” I said. “Or Coomer. Swan’s sergeant used my name on the phone, back at XII Corps. So at the same time as they were getting Marshall off the post they were calling Willard back in Rock Creek, telling him I was over there in Germany and hassling them again. They were asking him why the hell he had let me travel. And they were telling him to recall me.”
“They can’t dictate where a special unit investigator goes.”
“They can now, because of Willard. They’re old buddies. I just figured it out. Swan as good as told us, but it didn’t click right away. Willard has ties to Armored from his time in Intelligence. Who did he talk to all those years? About that Soviet fuel crap? Armored, that’s who. There’s a relationship there. That’s why he was so hot about Kramer. He wasn’t worried about embarrassment for the army in general. He was worried about embarrassment for Armored Branch in particular.”
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