Darpa Alpha

that everyone knew about.

Freeman thought, as he sipped the strong, black coffee, that right then he couldn’t have given Aussie, Margaret, or anyone else a good, rational argument for his suspicion that it was probably the DARPA installation outside Bangor on Puget Sound’s Hood Canal or the naval testing lab near Keyport, thirty-five miles west of Hood Canal in Puget Sound, but he felt it in his gut. He called one of his many contacts in the Puget Sound area and discovered that his hunch was, as Aussie would have said, as useful as “tits on a bull.” Completely off track.

He did a computer news search of all the major naval establishments on the West Coast. Nothing. Next, he did a specific search on the Net for any current media mention of naval establishments on the East Coast. None had been referred to by either the networks’ anchors or their affiliates in the last twenty-four hours, and there was nothing on the main blogs. Of course, he reminded himself, these days the government, citing the Patriot Act in this long war against terror, had annoyingly, if understandably, shut down thousands of Internet sites with hitherto available defense-related information and links. The American Civil Liberties Union was particularly vexed by FBI and Homeland Security “visits” to any blogger who persisted in Internet searches vis-a-vis classified defense establishments.

In frustration, Douglas Freeman decided to call Marte Price. Surely his occasional trysts with her after Catherine died, when Marte was embedded with various units of his overseas, ought to be worth something. Besides, he had never been cavalier with Marte, never treated her as a “ready lay” but as a good-looking, savvy newswoman who, on tough, life-endangering assignments, needed the same kind of sexual release he did. It had been discreet — or as discreet as any liaison can be in the field. It had, of course, been strictly against army rules and regulations, but the war had slammed peacetime propriety hard up against the certainty of their own mortality. He had seen her a few times since and spoken with her on the phone. But now that he was remarried, he knew that a call to an old flame from his own house would not be a good tactical move. And the call would have to be made on a land line. Anyone who used a cellphone these days for anything confidential had no idea of just how pervasive the National Security Agency phone taps were, especially since 9/11. Not even Voice Over Internet Protocol- encrypted phone data was being respected by the NSA.

“I’m going down to the 7-Eleven for the Times,” he told Margaret as she walked into the living room.

He’d always preferred the feel of a good newspaper, such as the old International Herald Tribune that he used to scan every day in Heidelberg during his Cold War posting in Germany. A good newspaper with a second cup of coffee was one of the great pleasures in life, and something he usually enjoyed after each morning’s ten-mile run, fantasies of coming in first in the Olympic marathon in his head, the crowd on its feet for his sensational last-minute dash to victory. Well, hell, Georgie Patton had made it to the 1912 Olympics.

“You haven’t been for your run,” she said at the very moment he’d thought it.

He smiled at the synchronicity. Here was a marriage, he hoped, that would last.

“Ah, I’ll run later.”

“Oh? This DARPA thing must be important then.”

“Well, I don’t like stories that are aired once then die, especially given that this is an election year. Something’s fishy. Might be something in the papers, though.”

“Douglas?”

“Yes?”

“While you’re on the phone with her, why don’t you invite the old tart around for dinner? I’d love to see the competition.”

He stood there stunned, as if a grenade had exploded nearby. Speechless.

“Oh,” said Margaret, her arms akimbo, smile gone, her tone acidic. “Why so shocked, Douglas? You two were very chatty last time there was a terrorist attack. I assume you want to chat again.”

“Margaret,” Freeman began, “I didn’t want you to think—”

“I’m already thinking it.”

“I’m sorry,” said the general. “Honey, honest to God, Margaret, there is no subterfuge in this. I just thought it more—”

“Discreet?” she proffered angrily. “To contact your tart from the 7-Eleven?”

“Don’t call her that. She’s just an old—”

“Tart,” said Margaret. “I know. I have the misfortune to see her regularly on the boob tube because my legendary general of a husband just happens to be obsessed with watching CNN. And guess who is one of the anchors?”

“Margaret, stop it! That’s enough, dammit. I merely want to know what happened to a story that was alive and well one moment and dead the next. Smells fishy, and I want to get to the bottom of it. You know as well as I do that I’m still on a Special Forces advisory retainer for the White House. The president himself wanted retirees kept on a potential call-up basis. We’re spread — our forces are spread too thinly all over the world. And seeing they’ve put me on retainer, small though it is, at least they’ve given me something after pushing me out, and the way I keep that unofficial job, with entree to the national security adviser, I might add, is to stay current. It’s like anything else. If you’re not current, you’re dead.”

Margaret was rigid — glacial ice.

“Ah, dammit, I’ll call from here.”

“No, go. Go get the papers. Keep current. There might be a picture of her in the obituaries.”

Son of a bitch, this is getting out of control. All I said was I’m going to the 7-Eleven and, BOOM, I’m in a minefield!

Margaret turned abruptly, stormed out of the living room, and slammed the bedroom door.

“Shit!” said Freeman. I’m cut off for a week.

He put on his jogging suit, grabbed his old SF forage cap and his keys, along with his phone card and ID, and left, thinking again of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, the old imperialist’s advice to “fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—” But he knew Margaret was going to need more than sixty seconds. Sixty hours, maybe? Dammit, he should have just called Marte Price from home, just do it in plain sight, with Admiral Horatio Nelson’s stratagem in mind: “Never mind maneuvers. Go straight at ’em!”

Well, he thought, this is what you get when you try to do things by stealth, but then again, as a virile, fit man in his sixties, feeling closer to a fit forty, he was hugely flattered by Margaret’s jealousy. When she got that cold look, the softer features of her face taking on a distinctively intimidating expression reminiscent of Julia Roberts’s in Erin Brockovich, she was dauntingly beautiful. He strode down to the 7-Eleven.

“No, Douglas,” Marte Price assured him. “I don’t know anything about an attack on a navy base. Who told you there was?”

“Aussie Lewis. You remember him. He’s one of my old team. You interviewed him after the team cleaned up those gangs of no-hopers on the Olympic Peninsula up in Washington state.”

“Oh — wait a minute.” Freeman could hear the rustle of papers at her end. “Yes,” Marte said, “there was a news feed from some affiliate, something about a breaking and entering caper, but it all proved bogus.” Marte laughed. “Embarrassing as hell, really. We had to run a retraction. I don’t think,” she said, laughing, “that the stringer who phoned it in will be paid for anything he or she pitches at our newspeople now. Apparently it was just some rumor. Probably some blogger screwing with us.”

“Uh-huh,” said the general, wiping his forehead with the heel of his right hand as he held the phone in the other. “And my name, for the record, Marte, is Shirley, and I’ve got the biggest hooters in Monterey County.”

“Good for you, Shirley,” she quipped.

“Oh, come on, Marte. Give me a break. Don’t give me that stringer rumor crap. CNN has faster intel half the time than No Such Agency.” He meant the National Security Agency. “You don’t run anything unless it’s reliable, has to be fact-checked.”

“I’m sorry, Douglas, but I’m telling you the truth. I hate to say it, but sometimes we actually do make mistakes — like that kid in San Diego, remember? Back in forty-one, alone in the newsroom on the Sunday, December seventh? Couldn’t get any confirmation, but he was going to run the header ‘Japs Bomb San Francisco’ until they got it sorted out at the last moment.”

“Bad analogy, sweetheart,” said Freeman. “The Japanese—‘Japs’ is politically