Official Privilege

by P. T. Deutermann

  But with Summerfield gone and Ward in a rubber room …” He shrugged.

  Grace shuddered at the mention of Summerfield’s name again. Dan took her hand.

  “I still don’t understand Summerfield’s motives in all this,” she said.

  There was a moment of silence while they watched a two-man shell make a less-than-graceful landing alongside one of the pontoons, accompanied by a great deal of rude and raucous commentary from other club members.

  “I think it was the EA mentality that got him,” Dan said finally. “You know, that total dedication to the promotion and preservation of their admiral, or whoever their principal is. Summerfield explained part of it to me awhile ago, the fact that there can be no mistakes, no ripples around the great man. This thing probably started as relatively minor damage control—you know, the old-hand EA showing the new guy how it’s done in the big city. My guess is that the EAs were never going to let the vice chief find out that Keeler had even screwed up.”

  “You said in your statement that he had been an EA himself,” Vann said.

  “Yeah. That’s why I think he reacted the way he did.

  Because of his wife’s stroke, he had to take himself out of contention for flag and give up the EA job. I think he missed the action and the intensity; OP-Six-fourteen is not exactly a career-enhancing assignment for a flag contender captain. But once the hired hand dropped them all in the septic tank, they just did what Washington horse-holders do: They hung on and hoped like hell no one would make waves; that somehow it would just go away.”

  “Murder never just goes away,” Vann said, a bleak expression on his face.

  “You lost a son,” Grace said.

  “A son I never really had,” Vann said after a moment of reflection. “I should have done more than just talk when he said he was going to look into something about Elizabeth’s death.”

  “You couldn’t possibly have known what that was all about,” Grace protested.

  “That’s the amazing part about it. Somebody says something like what Wesley said, and it’s like that TV show I saw on PBS the other night, the one about volcanoes.

  These scientists are standing out on this solidified lava field, a supposedly dead one, and then they walk over to this hole in the lava, and you can look down there and see this goddamn river of fire flowing under their feet, going like all hell. You’d never know it was even there.”

  They were silent for a while, watching the Potomac and the rowers and listening to the sounds of the traffic high up on the bridge above them.

  Vann finally turned to Dan.

  “You said you’re gonna be leaving town?”

  “Yeah. Summerfield was right. My continued presence on the Opnav staff is apparently unsettling to some influential people up the E-ring.

  They’re sending me to command, though, so I can’t bitch.”

  Vann nodded, then, glancing at Grace, asked Dan if he was going by himself.

  “Never again,” Dan said, squeezing Grace’s hand.

  “Good,” Vann said. “That was my other screw up in life—walking away from Angela. I’ve got to do something about that, but I’m damned if I know how, or even what.”

  “Does she know how this all came out?”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t bring her kids back, does it? But maybe she can see the road clear to being at peace about it. Maybe this time I can even help. But lemme ask you something, Commander. After all this, you gonna stay in, past your twenty, if you make captain?”

  Dan paused before answering. He and Grace had spent a considerable amount of time since Monday night talking about this exact issue.

  “I think I’m going to have to see what kind of Navy it is when I get back from sea duty,” he said slowly. “You see, there’re really two Navies: There’s the fleet, and then there’s the so-called Washington establishment.

  The fleet is mostly about taking ships to sea and keeping them and your people safe as you can while you go do what warships do. There’s politics, of course, but when the sea rises up, everybody understands that politics goes overboard. Washington is mostly about the game of getting promoted. I can’t answer your question right now, I guess is my real answer.”

  Vann nodded again, remaining silent when he realized Dan wasn’t finished.

  “See, the hell of it is,” Dan continued, “you have to be good ashore in order to get up the ladder so that you can go back to the ships in increasingly responsible jobs —department head, executive officer, and finally command.

  And that’s always made sense to me, because the net result of playing the political game well is that captain’s chair on the bridge. After command, though, you’re a relatively old man, and there are very, very few slots for admirals at sea. That’s where I think the system has fallen down. We ended up World War Two with ten thousand ships and maybe five hundred admirals.

  Now we have fewer than four hundred ships, an dover two hundred admirals. And it’s not just the Navy; the other services have the same problem. Getting to stars has become such a high-stakes game in itself that people will do almost anything to get a shot, like these EAs did. I guess I’m going to keep going for as long as I can see a reasonable opportunity to be a naval officer. But after that …”

  Vann smiled as he gathered up his briefcase and jacket. “After that, you’ll probably hang in there till they throw you out,” he said. “Just like we all do. I gotta split, guys. It’s been a trip, you know that?”

  “We’ll let you know what the orders look like.”

  “Yeah, you do that.”

  Dan stood up and shook hands with the policeman.

  Grace reclaimed Dan’s hand as the captain walked up toward the clubhouse.

  “I wonder if he’ll ever get out from under that Wesley cloud,” she mused.

  “If he does, it’ll be because he tries to help Angela Hardin. That ‘if only I had’ game is a bitch when you try to play it one-handed. You are still going to marry me, right?”

  She smiled and squeezed his hand. Her smile almost made the shadows under her eyes disappear. “I believe I’ve answered that question, Commander. About three dozen times, I think.”

  “Just checking,” Dan said, looking back out over the glinting gray river and rubbing his bandaged ear absently.

  “Just checking,” he said again, squeezing her hand. “Things get loose sometimes.”

  in a dimly lit, windowless room, Malachi sat on the floor, his one good eye fixed on the green steel door across the room. He was wearing a loosely fitting restraint web over hospital pajamas, but he was not in diapers. The room had a steel bed and a commode, and even a chair that was bolted to the floor. But he preferred the floor for right now. He could think better— think about getting out, think about the captain.

  The dreams were better now; that was good medicine they brought him. Not as good as the Harper, but life was full of little compromises. Time enough to get back to the Harper when he got out. He had actually joked about whiskey with the orderly who brought him his two meals a day.

  After three weeks in here, he had started really working on making friends with the orderly. Making little deals with him: Since that first day, I’ve given nobody any problems, so maybe loosen the restraints one notch—just one. And yesterday, or maybe the day before—he wasn’t sure—the orderly had brought a helper in and they had loosened things up a little.

  The medicine made him sleep a lot, but that was all right, too. The sleep was like passing out after an all nighter with the Harper, but without the hangover. Although that might be because they kept him on the medicine round the clock. You don’t ever leave the bar, there’s never a hangover. Every drunk knew that. But his victory on the restraints had been important. That first day, when they’d found him in the boiler, he’d been just a little hysterical. And then he had really lost it when they restrained him again at the hospital. They just didn’t understand. But it was okay now. He knew he was safe. And he knew some other things, too, things
that he would never tell the doctors or the police or anyone else who came to talk to him. Malachi had a plan.

  He would just wait them out—weeks, months, years even. He would reinforce their preliminary conclusions: that he remembered nothing about the Hardin case, that being bolted into the boiler had seared every memory from his previous life right out of his brain. Hell, it damn near had. But he was tougher than they knew. He would be a model prisoner—excuse me, patient. No violence.

  Absolutely no displays of bad temper. No lunging for the momentarily unguarded door. No mashing any of the other residents into the drains at shower time. No snapping the neck bones of the younger orderlies who looked sideways at his face and whispered about the state of affairs below his belt.

  None of that. He would be entirely docile. A disastrous past, a little mental trauma there, locked up in that boiler, but an entirely tranquil present. Eventually, and we’ll take our time here, he would be able to converse normally. Participate in therapy, group discussions.

  And over time, no longer present a threat to anyone.

  Eventually, they would stop worrying about him. Turn their attentions to newer, noisier casualties. He would become just another damaged box in the warehouse.

  Detached, peaceful, cooperative. Even friendly. Hell, maybe even a trusty. This was a public institution, and Malachi knew his civil servants. They would get lax about him, and then he would make his move.

  And find the captain, and his precious principal.

  There were sounds of people out in the corridor.

  Malachi hunkered down on the floor, composed a bemused expression on his battered, one-eyed face, tested the straps again, and carefully watched the door.