Thrunstone glared at Slaight. “Do you think you can come before this Congress and lecture us about our duty to this nation?”
“Congressman Thrunstone, you saw your duty to your nation when you turned eighteen and registered for the draft, and you shirked it. Every person in this room has seen photographs and television footage of you playing celebrity golf tournaments. They’ve seen you swimming in the ocean down there on the Gulf Coast where you have your condo, and they’ve watched you skiing at Aspen with movie stars and corporate moguls. And I can tell you this, Congressman. Every young woman in the Army, every young woman at West Point—all of those female troops who you think can’t measure up? Every one of them knows if you can golf and swim and ski, you could sure as hell have done the push-ups and sit-ups and other physical tests necessary to qualify for military service. You want to talk about standards, Congressman? Why don’t you tell the members of your committee why you couldn’t meet the minimum standards for the draft. Why don’t you explain how itchy skin prevented you from wearing the uniform of the United States Army.”
Chairs scraped behind Slaight as reporters ran for the exit. TV cameramen spun their lenses, getting a close-up of Thrunstone’s face, a Vesuvius of bulging blood vessels and quivering flesh. He banged his gavel, and still the room did not come to order. The senior Republican on the committee leaned over, covered Thrunstone’s mike, and whispered to him. The faces of senior Democrats seated to the left of the Chairman wore satisfied looks as Republican committee aides scurried wildly behind them.
At the rear of the room, television correspondents could be seen madly making notes for their stand-ups, which would lead footage of the hearings on the nighty news. A half-dozen committee staffers left the dais and were busily spinning the correspondents, seeking to control the damage they could already see had been done. The hearing had backfired. The most panicked faces in the room were those of committee members who did not look forward to the ocean of faxes and E-mails and phone calls that would flood their offices in the morning. Deep down in their political bones they knew the television news was going to show them as complacent pawns of a chairman who had led them in a charge against a foe who sat there before them unvanquished. He had waved their dirty laundry before the cameras, and there was not a thing they could do about it.
Several younger Democrats seized the opportunity and began loudly calling “Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!” with raised hands, seeking to question Slaight. Thrunstone ignored them, huddling with his deputy chairman and other senior members of his party on the committee. Finally he turned to face Slaight and gaveled the committee to order.
“I have been informed that we have a vote on the floor of the House. This committee will stand in recess.” He struck his gavel once and hurried out one of the side doors behind the dais.
Slaight turned around and faced a forest of microphones and cameras. He answered a few questions, then he elbowed his way through the pack. Bassett and Buck and Sam were waiting for him near the door. Sam took his hand and squeezed hard. “Jacey will be so proud of you.”
“I’m afraid the boys across the river at the Pentagon aren’t going to be too happy with me. I did what they told me not to do. I picked a fight with a powerful committee chairman.”
One of the Pentagon lawyers walked up and handed Slaight a cell phone. “It’s General Meuller, sir. For you.”
Slaight took the phone. “General Slaight, sir.”
“We’ve been watching you on C-Span. Drabonsky wants to say something to you.” There was a brief pause, and then General Drabonsky came on. “Slaight, goddammit, we’re going to be dealing with the fallout from your appearance today the rest of this year, but let me tell you this. You ate his lunch. That man won’t be able to get his phone calls returned over here. There isn’t a person in uniform who doesn’t owe you a debt of gratitude, Slaight. Damn, that was fun to watch.” He handed the phone back to Meuller. “Ry, we’ll talk tomorrow. You broke every rule in the damn book, but maybe it was about time we threw the book away and slugged it out with that bastard. Good job.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You don’t have to have any worries about the President asking for your resignation. He’s already weighed in. He called a few moments ago. He was laughing so hard I could barely understand him. He said he’d been waiting for someone to chop Thrunstone down to size for years.”
“I didn’t set out to stir things up, sir. But when he went after Jacey . . .”
“We know. Go home. Get some rest. Tomorrow’s another day. Damn fine job, Supe.”
Slaight handed the phone back to the lawyer. Bassett patted him on the back. “Masterful,” he said. “Just gorgeous.” Buck came alongside as they walked out of the hearing room, heading for the street.
“That reminded me of a slugfest I saw one time when I was a kid. There was a county chairman back in Illinois . . .”
Sam took his arm, and they walked out on South Capitol Street listening to Buck spin his story of down-and-dirty county politics in Illinois. Buck was just warming to his tale. It was going to be a great flight home.
CHAPTER 52
* * *
JACEY AND Ash took the laundry bag full of Honor Committee files to Captain Patterson late Monday afternoon as her parents were on their way back from Washington. They had missed the C-Span coverage because they were in class all day. Patterson had seen most of it, and he filled them in on how Thrunstone had accused Jacey of condoning drug use and how Slaight had counterattacked Thrunstone for dodging the draft. Jacey high-fived Ash when she heard how her father had stood up for her.
Then the three of them went down the hall to a conference room, spread the contents of the case files across the table, and went through them in minute detail. The deceptions that were employed by Rose and the others went far beyond concealing the makeup of Honor Boards. All ten of the cases fit a pattern. Two of the charges were brought by the same person. Jacey called Debbie Edwards over in the Fourth Regiment. She checked company records and discovered he was a former roommate of Favro’s. Another charge was brought by one of Rose’s former roommates. The fourth was brought by a guy who had gone to high school with Rose on Long Island.
Even the charges preferred against the accused had similarities. Three of the women were accused of falsifying an official document. What document was that? The card they signed certifying their PT test results.
Other attempts had been made to conceal the way they fixed the Honor hearings. The minutes of the hearings were signed by different Honor reps, but it looked like all of them had been written by the same person. The same word was misspelled on seven of the ten minutes, and the sentences recording the testimony of witnesses were unvarying from one set of minutes to the other. It looked as if either Rose or Favro had run the minutes off on their computer and handed them to an Honor rep to sign.
One thing about every hearing that produced a guilty verdict could not be concealed. General Gibson signed every case file, recommending dismissal for each person accused. Four of the other case files they had carried out of the Committee storage room had guilty verdicts as well, but in two of those cases, General Gibson had recommended suspension for a year, and in the other two cases, Gibson had reversed the findings of the Honor Board and recommended that the accused cadet be retained in the Corps and given extra Honor training.
It seemed like the only cases where there was a rush to judgment by both the Honor Committee and the Commandant were the ones that were fixed.
When they were finished going through the case files, Patterson sat down and put his feet up on the conference table. “I’ll tell you what this stuff proves to me. They were using the Honor Code to remove certain cadets from the Corps. The question is, on whose orders? We don’t know if it was Rose who was fixing the cases and handing them off to Gibson, or Gibson telling Rose to get a certain cadet, and then Rose went off and fixed the case on Gibson’s orders.”
“Maybe it was a little of both,
” said Ash. “Maybe they were in close enough agreement that the decision could come from either source.”
“That’s very likely,” said Patterson. “Gibson might not have known enough about every cadet to have a reason to want them out of West Point.”
“I don’t see Rose setting up the system and taking it to Gibson,” said Jacey. “I think Gibson picked Rose and he taught him how to work the system. It made Rose feel like a big man to have the equivalent of life-and-death power over the Corps of Cadets. He’s getting off on it.”
Patterson got up from his chair. “You guys take this stuff down to Kerry. I’ll go down there and see him later today. He’s going to have to be briefed on just exactly how the system worked in order for him to use the evidence against Rose and the others.”
“I don’t think I’m up to walking all the way down there,” said Jacey.
“I’ll bring you down with me in my car later, then,” said Patterson.
“Do you want me to show him what we found out today?” Ash asked.
“Sure. I’ll come down and back you up and clue him on how it adds up to violations of the UCMJ. We’ll have to separate out all the moves they made and determine which of them fit which crimes. Like, making a false official statement is one crime. Conspiracy to violate the legal rights of an accused person, even in an administrative hearing like an Honor Board, is another crime.”
“This is what Kerry has been waiting for,” said Ash. “He’s come up dry on them assaulting Jace. Maybe he can use this stuff to split them.”
“Yeah, Kerry will know exactly what to do with it,” agreed Patterson.
KERRY WAS having more luck than they knew. That day he had received results back from the Army crime lab at Fort Gillem, Georgia. He had FedExed the olive-drab blanket to the lab, along with the scrap of blanket he had taken from the stolen car, the taillight bolt, and the sliver of steel he had removed from the blanket.
They had conducted a microscopic forensics examination of the evidence and reached the conclusion he had hoped for. In a thick report, the lab confirmed that the scrap of fabric had come from the blanket, and the sliver of steel had come from the taillight bolt.
Kerry had lifted two partial prints from the dashboard. One was a fingerprint he had found on the power button for the radio. The other was a partial palm print that came from the rocker panel on the driver’s side. He had talked the lady into letting him print her, and neither of the partials came from her. The one on the radio button almost certainly belonged to Favro. He had sent the print down to the FBI lab to get their opinion. The partial palm he kept. When he arrested Rose again, he would print his whole hand and compare them.
Ash arrived just as he finished typing up a summary report detailing how he had found the stolen car. When Kerry told him of his find, Ash leaped from his chair.
“I can’t believe it! You found the car!”
“It was luck. I never would have thought of going after the stolen cars if I hadn’t seen that chase on the news.”
“That wasn’t luck, it was detective work,” said Ash. “Man, you are the best!”
Kerry managed a smile. The kid was right that sometimes good old-fashioned legwork paid off.
Ash laid out the Honor Board case files and went through them one by one, pointing out the deceptions and Xeroxed Board lists and the other methods that had been used to conceal the cases that had been fixed. Now it was Kerry’s turn to rejoice. He gave a low whistle when Ash explained how they’d done the minutes.
“You guys did some fine five-finger detective work of your own. That’s good. That’s very good.”
“Can you use this stuff?”
“You’re damn right I can.”
“What about the evidence rules?”
“We’d be screwed if I went up there and snatched those files. But you’re on the Honor Committee. You can make a case that you are entitled to remove the files and examine them. If you voluntarily turn them over to me, I can accept them, and they are valid and legal evidence.”
“Well, I’m volunteering them.”
Kerry shook his hand. “And I’m accepting them.”
It was well after dark when Jacey and Patterson showed up. Patterson and Kerry sat down and went over the possible charges. Since Patterson wasn’t the prosecutor, they didn’t have to nail every little thing down. They settled on three major charges they figured would stick: Conspiracy to wrongfully interfere with an administrative proceeding, making false official statements, and dereliction of duty. They were serious charges. You could get less jail time under the UCMJ for negligent homicide than you could on any one of the other three.
Kerry decided he shouldn’t waste any time. He would haul in Rose and Favro and Ivar on the Honor Committee charges the next day. There was no way Percival could spring them when confronted with the mountain of evidence Ash and Jacey had amassed. Once he had them in the interrogation room, he owned them. Even if they lawyered up he could go after them hard on the Honor stuff. One of them was bound to get scared and talk, and he knew just who that would be.
CAPTAIN PATTERSON dropped Jacey off at Quarters 100 when they were finished with Agent Kerry. She found her parents where she usually did, in the kitchen, standing around, drinking wine and talking. Leroy Buck and Colonel Bassett were there when she walked in. Sam rushed to the kitchen door, took her hand, and kissed her forehead.
“Did you watch it on C-Span?”
“I couldn’t. I had class.”
“Fran taped it,” said Bassett. “I’ll get you a copy. It was a spectacle I won’t soon forget.”
“I heard,” said Jacey, breaking away from her mother. She went over to her father and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Daddy. There aren’t many kids whose fathers would do what you did for me today.’’
“There aren’t many fathers who would get the opportunity,” said Slaight, laughing. “Besides, he was using you to attack West Point. I wasn’t about to let that go unanswered.”
“Who dropped you off?” asked Sam.
“Captain Patterson. We just came back from Agent Kerry’s office. We turned over a huge pile of Honor records to him. Ash and I . . . well, let’s say we removed them from the Honor Committee files. It turns out Rose and Favro and some of the others have been using the Honor System to run cadets out of the Corps.”
“With the eager connivance of the Commandant, I’d bet,” said Slaight.
“Who the hell is this guy?” asked Buck. “He thinks he’s this big savior of West Point, and he’s down there feedin’ shit to Thrunstone, and now we find out he’s been messin’ with the Honor Code?”
“I think he’s crazy,” said Sam.
Bassett chortled. “That is always the great question, isn’t it? Who is he?”
“I’m afraid Gibson has made the mistake of wanting power for its own sake,” said Slaight. “Power is expensive. You had better have something you really want to use it for if you’re going to pay the price to get it. Gibson has confused getting power with exercising it. Bad move. Power is like electricity. It wants someplace to go. If you don’t know what to do with power once you get it, it’s going to arc the gap and shock you. Gibson is about to get the jolt of his life.”
CHAPTER 53
* * *
AGENT KERRY didn’t want to give the Honor Committee any more time to discover that Ash and Jacey had removed the case files. He wanted to arrest Rose and Favro and Ivar before they had a chance to compare notes and line up behind a stone wall of denials. The rest of them—Reade and Lessard were two, and there were others—could wait. Kerry wanted Rose, and the way to get Rose was to turn either Favro or Ivar against him. Kerry had to find a way to erode some of the mortar in their wall of denial, break a few bricks loose. Then all he had to do was sit back and watch it fall.
Kerry went down to the barracks when it was still dark and woke up six of his best MPs. When they had gotten dressed, he briefed them on the mission. They were going into three cadet rooms
before reveille. They were to arrest Cadets Rose, Favro, and Ivar.
One of the MPs clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in astonishment. “You mean the football star Ivar?”
“One and the same.”
“Man. This is gonna ruffle some feathers.”
“That’s why you can’t screw it up. I want their rights read to them twice. Have them sign off on DA Form 3881. No cuffs. Let them get dressed and bring them straight back here to the MP barracks.”
“We’re not taking them to the Provost Marshal’s office, sir?” asked one of the MPs.
“Negative.” Bassett wanted Percival cut completely out of the picture, so Kerry had cleared out rooms in the MP barracks. Three of them would be used to hold the cadets. The other would serve as the interrogation room.
“I want these assholes kept separated at all times. We’re going to use those free rooms in the basement to hold them. I want them treated right. No rough stuff, no snide remarks. I don’t want anything for them to hang a complain on. Got it?” The MPs nodded. “I’ll be going along on the Rose arrest. He’s the one who did the assault on Jacey Slaight. I want him bad.”
They piled into squad cars and took off down Thayer Road, heading for the barracks. Two cars went into Central Area to the Second Regiment barracks. The other car headed down Brewerton Road for North Area after Ivar in the Fourth Regiment. Kerry jumped out of his car and sent one team after Favro. He and his team went up the stairs for Rose.
Kerry knocked on the door. There was no answer at first, so he tried the handle. It was locked. He knocked harder. He heard a voice. “Who is it?”
“Military Police. Open up.”
“What do you want?” Rose asked from behind the door.
“I want you, Mr. Rose,” said Kerry as plainly and clearly as he could. Rose opened the door. When he saw Kerry, his lip curled into a sneer. “What are you? A fool? You’ve been told to leave me alone.”
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