and when it was done, it was done; a judgment reached by Naomi Kharmai had all the permanence of the sun’s place in the universe.
If General Hale wanted to be left alone, he certainly picked the right place for it, she thought. She had missed the turnoff once, and had to backtrack along the rutted dirt road that was bordered on both sides by ragged trees and bushes. After about ten minutes, she located the dented black mailbox marked only by the house number. Hale’s driveway had been recently paved, but was still almost as overgrown as the main road. The branches scraped against the side of her vehicle as she drove deeper into the dense vegetation.
Suddenly the trees were gone and Naomi’s rented Explorer broke into a vast field of wild grass. At the very center stood a large ante-bellum mansion. The front was dominated by a white portico that reflected the red light of the fading sun. The portico was held above the ground by four towering Doric columns, which led in turn to a gabled roof sweeping down to end chimneys that occupied both sides of the house. High windows were shadowed by a trellis overrun with fading vines of blue wisteria, Confederate jasmine, and Lady Bankshire roses. Despite the onset of winter, the pleasant smell of the flowering plants was heavy in the air as Naomi parked the Explorer and walked up to the front door.
Her first knocks went unanswered, and trying the door, she found it locked. Moving around to the rear of the house, she noticed a mud-caked red Chevy pickup parked on a bare patch of ground. Walking over to the vehicle, she placed the palm of her good arm on the hood and felt that it was warm, the engine ticking as it cooled.
“What are you doing?”
She whirled at the voice. Standing before her was a large man wearing a faded-red flannel shirt, brown corduroy pants, and muddy hiking boots. His hair was white and his shoulders stooped with age, but his vivid blue eyes seemed to compensate for the physical toll the years had obviously taken on his body.
“I said, what are you doing?” he asked again.
She smiled and stuck out her hand. “Hi, my name is Naomi Kharmai. I’m looking for General Hale.” The man looked her up and down quickly, and then swallowed her small hand in his. She could feel rough calluses running over her own smooth knuckles.
“Well, you found him. What can I do for you?” he asked.
Naomi held out her credentials, which Hale quickly examined.
“I’m with the Agency, and I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about some soldiers that were under your command at Fort Bragg,” she said.
Immediately, his face clouded with suspicion.
“I understand completely if you want to call for verification. The number for the switchboard is-”
“I’ll get the number. Follow me.”
He walked around to the rear of the house, a shaded, white wooden porch coming into view. Naomi trailed awkwardly behind, the spiked heels of her knee-high leather boots sinking into the muddy ground.
Hale noticed and laughed heartily. “You picked the wrong shoes for Georgia, Ms. Kharmai.” He reached the screen door of the porch and, to her amusement, held it open for her.
“Why don’t you have a seat here? I’ll be back in a few. Can I get you anything?”
“No, I’m fine, thank you,” she said. Holding her identification by his side, he walked into the main house, disappearing from sight. She turned her attention to the view before her. The sky was something to see after the heavy clouds moving over Washington; ripples of purple, red, and gold were smeared across the orange sky, the sun dipping low on the horizon. The fields behind the house were empty, but far in the distance she could make out several low-slung clapboard buildings framed against a line of gnarled, ancient trees.
She was startled by the sound of the screen door squealing open on rusty hinges. Hale reappeared with a bottle of beer in one hand. He handed Naomi her credentials and eased his weight into a chair of wrought iron across from her.
“Well, you checked out, young lady. I’m a little confused, though. Seems like you could get any information you needed from John.”
“You know Deputy Director Harper?”
“Oh, sure,” Hale responded, an easy grin spreading over his worn features. “He sent us a lot of good people for some operations we ran in Kosovo and, before that, Iraq. Hell of a guy to have in your corner.”
She nodded respectfully and pointed to the buildings in the distance. “Are those part of your property?”
The general nodded in affirmation. “They used to be the slave quarters. What you’re looking at is just a little piece of the land attached to this house. There’s over a hundred acres beyond those trees there, mostly empty fields. They used to hold corn, cotton, tobacco, anything that would turn a profit. The plantation was built in 1857 by a Confederate colonel who died at Shiloh. It was actually in my wife’s family for over a century, until she passed away three years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Naomi said, with as much sympathy as she could muster. Hale nodded his head sadly.
“I sure do miss her. This is a lot of space for one person.”
Naomi waited the decent interval, but the general beat her to the punch. “So, what kind of information are you looking for? Is this about Kealey?”
Once again she was surprised. “How did you know?”
“It was just a guess. You’ve seen the file, I imagine. Everything you need should be in it.”
“Not quite everything,” she said. “Why did he leave? I mean, he made major in eight years. Isn’t that good, even for a Green Beret?”
Peter Hale laughed and took a long pull from his beer. “First of all, they don’t like to be called Green Berets. That’s what they wear, not who they are. And to answer your question, yes, that is damn good. Ryan Kealey was going places.” The amiable expression faded from the general’s face as he looked out across the fields. His voice lowered, as if to reveal a confidence. “It’s a damn shame what happened to him. Was there anything in the file about Bosnia?”
“No. Please tell me,” she said. The tinge of desperation in her own voice was disappointing to Naomi Kharmai, but she knew that Hale was probably her only chance for answers.
“To understand,” he said, “you have to have some idea about what was going on at the time. The Serbs were killing the Muslims indiscriminately, without regard to age or gender. It wasn’t just murder, it was torture, mutilation, and gang rape. It was genocide on a grand scale. In 1995 alone, it’s estimated that 7,000 Muslims were slaughtered, and that’s a low-ball figure. The full measure of what happened there never really made its way into the international press, but Europe hasn’t seen anything worse since the Holocaust. So you can imagine, it was a very dangerous time for the American soldiers who were stationed there as part of the NATO peacekeeping force.”
Naomi nodded slowly, her gaze focused on the dark buildings in the distance. “Please, go on.”
“Kealey was there in an advisory capacity only, working under the ground commander, General Wilkes. He was a first lieutenant at the time, if I’m not mistaken, based at Camp Butmir in Sarajevo with the NATO contingent.
“Occasionally, Kealey would go out with the SFOR patrols. There was a young Muslim girl who took a particular shine to him; she might have been twelve or thirteen years old. I can’t remember her name; someone told me once, but I’ve forgotten it now. Of course, I wasn’t in Bosnia at the time. This information comes from the soldiers who were on patrol with him. Anyway, there was this girl, a pretty little thing from all accounts. She would bring him chocolate, flowers, that sort of thing. I guess it was a schoolgirl crush. Ryan would always stop to talk with her for a little while. The other soldiers used to kid him about it, said he was leading her on. One day, the girl’s mother came out of the house crying, screaming at the soldiers. Turns out the Serbian militia found out that the girl was talking to the Americans. You can guess what happened from there.”
“They killed her?”
“If that was all, then it wouldn’t have been so bad. They raped her repeatedly, beat her face in so that she couldn’t be recognized, and then disemboweled her while she was still alive. Her mother identified her by a birthmark on her leg, and even then she had to look at the body twice to be sure.”
Naomi shivered once, but it was just the cool breeze coming through the screened walls of the porch. The story did not bother her.
“So Kealey started to ask around. The leader of the local militia was a man by the name of Stojanovic. In truth, he didn’t count for much at the time, didn’t hold a lot of power. Kealey didn’t care; all the fingers were
