by Davis Bunn
“Greene’s office. Three o’clock this afternoon.” He threw the metal fragments at the trash can and missed. “You tell that fed if he meddles in my case I’ll lock him up as an accomplice to murder.”
Before Matt could relay the message, Pecard said, “Meet me at the armory in an hour.”
The National Guard Armory was a monument to ugly. Built in the heyday of Teddy Roosevelt imperialism, the exterior was a belligerent boast. The eye slid off it, like passing a brute who embarrassed anyone caught staring. The stone fortress so crammed a city block at the base of Reservoir Hill, even the sidewalks were constricted. Dozens of rifleslits were carved into granite walls. The chimneys were shaped like watchtowers. All the doors were steel, blistered with a century of rust and painted army green. It rose into the sunlit sky like a stone tumor.
Pecard was standing outside the armory’s main entrance when they pulled up. Ray-Bans masked his eyes. He kept his face pointed at the traffic as they approached.
D’Amico offered no greeting. Matt said, “Thanks for your help.”
“Let’s go.”
The building’s interior was no better. The front foyer was as big as a basketball court and shadowed by the bars crossing the tall smoked-glass windows. Halls were squared off, twenty feet to a side, painted a yellowish gray as dismal as the cement flooring. Lighting was too high and too weak.
A noncom stood at parade rest behind a desk bearing forms and a phone. “Help you?”
Pecard replied, “We’re here to see General Robards.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes. Arranged through Agent Bannister with the FBI.”
“Names?”
“Just use Agent Bannister.”
“And them?”
“With me.”
“I need your names, sir.”
“Make the call, soldier. You don’t want to keep your commanding officer waiting.”
The MP did not like it one bit. But he picked up the phone and spoke softly. He set the phone down and went back to standing and staring at nothing. Giving them the military freeze.
Footsteps echoed down a hall. A captain in tailored khakis demanded, “Which one of you is the FBI affiliate?”
“That would be me.”
“This way.”
The MP objected, “Sir, the lieutenant says I need names and IDs for all visitors.”
“Not these, Soldier.”
“Sir, the lieutenant—”
“Corporal, these visitors do not exist. They are not here.” Spelling it out in bullet-sized chunks. “You do not see them. So you can’t ask them for anything.”
“But I’m ordered—”
“Call your duty officer.”
The MP dialed a number, spoke a few words, then handed the captain the phone. The captain turned his back to the room, talked softly, then handed back the receiver.
They waited for the MP to listen and then return the receiver to its cradle. He did not look pleased. The captain said, “Let’s go.”
The general’s office was at the end of the hall. It wasn’t as large as a football field, but it wasn’t much smaller either. The outer office had four desks and still had room to lose a grand piano. The general’s office made up for its size with a total absence of taste. The floor was polished linoleum, the battered desk as big as a boat, the chairs wooden and uncomfortable. A sofa set from a fifties sitcom occupied the far wall. Flags and dusty trophy cases flanked the windows. The general remained seated behind his desk and watched them approach. “You’re Pecard?”
“I am indeed, General.”
“Bannister and I go way back. He speaks highly of nobody. But he could not say enough about you. That’s the only reason you’re here. You read me?”
“Loud and clear, sir.”
“Show me some IDs.”
The captain collected their documents and passed them over. The general lined them up on the front of his blotter. He was a soldier’s soldier, grizzled and tough and starched and bemedaled. He touched each ID in turn, then studied the corresponding face. His eyes were a very light brown, dyed to match his uniform. “Bannister assured me that this meeting never happened.”
“In and out like ghosts, General,” Pecard confirmed.
“All right. Tell me what you need.”
Pecard said to D’Amico, “Fire away, Detective.”
D’Amico started, “We’re investigating a murder, General. Just trying to follow up on some loose ends.”
“Of the candidate’s wife. The bombing.”
“Megan Kelly. Yes sir.”
Khaki eyes looked down at Matt’s ID, and then up at Matt. But the general said nothing.
D’Amico went on, “Preliminary analysis suggests the explosive device was a decommissioned claymore.”
The general snorted. “The bombing was two weeks ago and your department is still on preliminary?”
D’Amico said nothing.
“Okay. So you suspect a claymore.”
Pecard spoke up. “We don’t suspect, General. We know.”
D’Amico leaned forward to look around Matt. “I’ll handle this.”
The general looked from one to the other. “Well, well.”
“Sir, following the theft here, you told the FBI all the claymores were accounted for.”
The general’s smirk vanished. “Are you asking or telling?”
“Whichever will help me get to the bottom of this.”
“Your word, Detective. Will any record exist of this meeting?”
“Not from my end.”
The general cut a glance at Pecard, who replied, “Agent Bannister did not ask; I will not offer.”
Before Matt could reply, D’Amico said, “He’s with me.”
“All right. Then the answer is, yes. That’s what I said. Sixteen FBI agents spent a month and a day in here. Disrupting our work. Giving us nothing but scorn. Treating me and my men and our operation here like we were no better than the filth who robbed us. So they finally pulled their sting and arrested those punks. Then they asked me. Can I confirm all the claymores are accounted for? I told them what would get them out of my hair.”
D’Amico nodded slowly. “May I please ask you, General, what is the truth?”
“The truth?” The general leaned back and laced his fingers across his uniform jacket, just below the lowest of his six rows of medals. “The truth, Detective, is I don’t have idea one. You want to know why?”
“Please.”
“All right. I’ll tell you. My roster calls for seven hundred and fifty active-duty enlisted men and forty-eight officers.” He glanced at his aide, who had taken station by the side window. “Captain, what’s our roster show this morning?”
“One hundred eighty-nine, sir. Officers and enlisted.”
“Hundred and eighty-nine,” the general repeated. “And where are the rest of my men?”
“That would be England, General. An air base by the name of Upper Heyford. Sent there in January. On a sixty-day assignment that’s lasted over nine months.”
“But I’m still getting directives to open my facility to local events. What is it today, Captain?”
“Seniors basketball tournament, General.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Dog show. Straight through ’til Sunday.”
General Robards asked the detective, “You getting the picture?”
“Yes sir. I sure do.” D’Amico matched the general for false ease. “How do you figure the perps pulled it off?”
“They waited for the biggest event of our calendar year. The flower show. They waltzed in unnoticed. They overwhelmed my men on duty at the entrance to our vaults. They burned their way into the two vaults closest to the entrance. They loaded up a dozen empty flower boxes. They waltzed out. End of story.”
“You’ve thought a lot about this.”
“Every day and every night since it happened. Don’t like closing out my career with a scandal on my watch. No sir. That I
do not.”
“And you didn’t share this with the FBI?”
“They chose not to ask.” The smile was a greater lie than his easy manner. “Why should they? We’re all just lazy scum, right? Bottom-feeders on the military food chain.”
D’Amico smiled back. “The flower show is chaotic.”
“Turns this place into a loony bin with silk. Five hundred contestants start wheeling in here long before dawn. Screaming and shrieking and hand-wringing and driving my men totally berserk. You could drive an armored troop carrier through here and nobody’d notice. I begged Washington to let me drop this one event, to move it someplace less strategic. But the flower folks’ve been coming here since before the Second World War. It’s history. It’s tradition. And there’s one thing you can say about the flower folks. They’ve got civic clout.”
“Glad I missed that one.”
“Yes sir, that you are. Now ask me the other half of your question.”
“Your records.”
The general’s smile broadened. “Bet you’re good at your job, Detective.”
D’Amico just waited.
General Robards asked his aide, “What’d we receive documentation for this week, Captain?”
“That would be for a shipment of rocket-propelled grenade launchers, sir. Still in their grease. Compliments of that very same air base in England.”
“What’d we receive?”
“All the boxes we’ve opened so far hold carbines. But there might be some grenades in there somewhere. A few. Maybe.”
“I assume you have complained, Captain.”
“That we have, sir. And I will again. But not to our men. The English countryside seems to have swallowed them whole.”
D’Amico rose to his feet. “This helps us a lot, General. Thank you.”
“Not at all.” Robards came around his desk, handed back the IDs, and shook hands with them all. Pecard last. “Give Agent Bannister my regards.”
“I will that, sir.”
“Tell him if he wants to waste a bullet on his predecessor, give me a call. I’ve got some nobody’ll ever miss.” He nodded a military farewell. “Gentlemen.”
When they came back outside, the weather had erased all color from the day. Brilliant one moment, winter dreary the next. Schizoid like the rest of Baltimore.
D’Amico kicked a couple of loose rocks as he crossed the parking lot. Pecard observed to Matt, “The detective looks ready to welsh on our deal.” Talking loud enough for D’Amico to hear.
Matt responded at the same volume. “Detective D’Amico is a man of his word.”
D’Amico slid into the car, slammed his door, gunned the engine.
Pecard said, “Would you care to drive down with him or me?”
“Why don’t we all go together?”
Pecard laughed out loud. The sound was hoarse and derelict. He turned and headed for his own ride.
When Matt slid into the passenger seat, D’Amico said, “I was wrong to go with this.”
“We would never have gotten what we just learned. Not in a billion years.”
D’Amico burned rubber leaving the lot. He did not speak again until they were well south of BWI. “What can you tell me about Sol Greene?”
“He’s my father’s best friend. Has been since Nam. They came back and Sol went into politics, my dad into business. But they got together all the time. A year or so back, I heard my parents talking about how Sol wasn’t doing so hot. He’d lost three major races in a row. Some folks were saying he’d lost his edge.”
“This was when your parents decided to go for the national slot?”
“Around then. Sol had helped Pop with his runs for the state legislature. He’d been after my father for years to try for a seat in Washington. Called him a natural. My mother always liked the idea.”
“You and Greene close?”
“It’s not that simple.” Matt shifted in his seat. “My pop and I never got along all that well. Sol has played the go-between pretty much all my life.”
D’Amico glanced over. “You don’t have to do this, Matt.”
“Yes I do.”
Matt readied himself for the argument. But the detective merely sighed and took the exit for the Beltway.
Sol Greene’s Washington office was on Eighteenth Street a half block off K. He occupied the first two floors of an attractive Napoleon III manor that had once housed France’s representative to the court of Pennsylvania Avenue. The brick was French provincial gray, the mansard roof was slate, the ceilings high, the voices muted, the decorations discreetly expensive.
Inside the main doors a receptionist sat at a sculpted desk and talked into her wireless headset. She watched their approach with cold eyes until she recognized Matt, then she cut her connection and came to her feet. “Mr. Kelly, good afternoon; your father is upstairs with Mr. Greene. Shall I show you the way, sir?”
His phone rang. “Excuse me a moment.” Matt turned away. “This is Kelly.”
“Van Sant here. This a good time?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Just the same, what I have can’t wait. Something you need to understand. Everybody in this business wants his or her own watch center. A watch center is where the traffic comes in. If the station assimilates as well as gathers, then it’s called a fusion center. Having a fusion center means you’re the first in the know. It’s a status thing. You don’t have to go hat in hand to anybody for anything. A major player has his hands on the raw stuff and has it first. This means high-level prestige. Lose prestige, you lose access. Lose access, you don’t have the power to dictate budget or anything else. An in-house watch center is a signal to the world that you’re operating at the top of the intel pile.”
“The ambassador has his own?”
“Takes up most of this floor. What the ambassador likes most about this, besides the power badge, is the speed. The ambassador measures his day in microseconds. Which is why I’m able to call and report there’s no record of a murder or bomb attack in the past eighteen months anywhere in the United States using a decommissioned claymore.”
“This is news?”
“No, that was the windup.” Van Sant was enjoying himself. “But there was one in England. Upper Heyford, to be exact.”
Matt hurried to the receptionist desk and made a writing signal. The receptionist came up with pen and steno pad. “The air base?”
“Just outside the main gates. Only reason our system flagged it. Treated the base as U.S. territory. The victim was civilian, but on an army consulting contract. Guy by the name of Barry Simms.”
“Spell that last name, please.”
Van Sant did. “Air force chopper pilot, retired. Three tours in Nam. Served for the past eight years as a flight instructor on choppers.”
“This is extremely interesting.”
“Tell me. Same MO as your case. Man opened his door, boom, gone. Took out one wall of his house, the rest completely intact. The cops there made an arrest, but there was no conviction.”
“So the accused is still at large?”
“And living in the same village. Retired Adjutant Geoffrey Snedley-Cummins. Needless to say he’s a Brit.” Van Sant spelled that name as well. “I’ve arranged for you to hitch a ride on a military transport leaving Andrews this evening for Upper Heyford. This flight, you’re just a ride-along. You know the term?”
“Yes.”
“You sit in the back of the bus. You make yourself very small. You don’t hear a thing. You don’t speak unless spoken to. Knowing these guys, they won’t even see you.”
“I owe you big-time.”
“Tell me. I’ll have the file on this Snedley-Cummins guy messengered to planeside. Your flight leaves in three hours. Oh, and a word to the wise. Eat before you board. Air force flights have carried the same meals since Normandy. Smart guys wouldn’t eat them then either. I want a full report soon as you’re back on American soil.”
Matt shut his phone to find the receptionist wa
tching and waiting. He was close enough to smell the spices in her perfume. Matt pulled D’Amico to one side and related what he’d just learned. D’Amico nodded several times, then asked, “You sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.”
D’Amico turned and said to Pecard, “My show. You got that?”
“I merely have one question I wish to ask.”
“Not part of the bargain.”
“I assure you, Detective, you will want my help on this.”
“Not a chance in the world.”
“I have something—”
“My show,” D’Amico repeated, the edge sharper.
Pecard sighed quietly and looked away.
Matt looked at the receptionist, who remained standing by her desk. Wearing the same look of bulletproof cheerfulness. A real Washington pro. Matt said, “I know the way.”
“Certainly, Mr. Kelly. I’ll just tell them you’re coming.”
The stairway was broad and marbled and formal. A signed Chagall print almost as tall as Matt hung from the right-hand wall. Midway up Pecard said, “I heard you were over with the marines right before the fall. I happen to have taken part in—”
D’Amico did not even glance over. “Don’t go looking for a way to buddy up, Pecard. You won’t find one.”
Everything about Sol Greene’s outer office was muted. Pastel carpet, shades, lighting, desks, chairs. Soft conversation from a trio standing in the corner. An almost-musical hello from the secretary. She showed them straight in.
Matt’s father had pulled one of the visitor chairs over behind Sol’s desk. He and Sol were working through a pile of documents when they entered. Paul Kelly scowled at the disturbance. Sol gave them nothing. The secretary asked, “Would you gentlemen care for anything?”
“They won’t be staying that long,” Paul Kelly snapped.
The secretary smiled. “I’ll just leave you alone then.”
Paul Kelly took aim at his son. “You couldn’t do the right thing just this once, could you?”
There were only two chairs in front of the desk. Matt walked to the conference table and pulled over a third.
“No matter what it is, no matter what I ask, my son has to go and do the opposite.”