'Admiral, why don't we mothball the bullshit and talk about what happened?' Rodgers suggested.
'Sure.'
'No, I mean what really happened,' Rodgers said.
'What do you mean?'
'I mean that Stone told us everything,' Rodgers said.
'Oh? What did he tell you?'
'How all of this was a plot to stop Senator Orr's candidacy, an operation to kill the USE'
Link looked at Rodgers. 'Did he?'
Rodgers nodded.
Link glanced around. The two marines were standing twenty or so yards behind him. The tall, yellow grasses hissed lightly, and wind filled the field with a low yawn that would mask their conversation. The admiral looked down.
If a man is lucky, there is at least one moment in his life that Rodgers called the cornerstone. It is when a man has to make a decision based on principle not on personal security. It was a single building block that shaped the rest of his life. It was a moment he would look back on with pride or with regret. Rodgers had seen cornerstones in combat, when the decision was typically more one of instinct than a deliberative process. Some men froze under fire, others put the risks behind them and charged. The ones who choked never got over it. The ones who acted felt like gods for however many decades or seconds remained of their lives.
Admiral Kenneth Link was facing a cornerstone. Rodgers could see it in his bloodshot eyes. He was trying to decide whether to finish the lie he had just begun, which he might or might not be able to make stick.
Or whether to embrace the truth and acknowledge the war he had apparently been fighting.
'Did Stone tell you that Senator Don Orr and Kat Lock-ley planned the murder of William Wilson?' Link asked.
'He did.'
'Do you believe him?'
'I'm not sure,' Rodgers admitted. 'Why would the senator and Kat have done that? And why would he have confided in you?'
'We were his staff, his close advisers,' Link said. 'And he felt that his plan left him bulletproof. As for why he would do it, hate, for one thing. Politics for another. Orr felt that a tawdry death, a heart attack in the middle of sex, would destroy not just the man but the head of steam people had built for his fiscal plans. He believed that having it happen right after the Georgetown party would call attention to the USF. It would give him a platform to enunciate the differences between himself and the other Euro-friendly presidential candidates.'
'But Op-Center screwed that up.'
Link nodded. 'Orr did not anticipate that Darrell McCaskey would discover the puncture wound. The son of a bitch wanted attention, not a murder charge.'
'If you knew this, why didn't you go to the police?' Rodgers asked.
'We did,' Link said. 'Detective Howell was reluctant to move against Orr without conclusive evidence.'
'He could have seen the wound.'
'That would not have implicated Orr,' Link said. 'Just Lucy, who was doomed anyway because she gave Wilson and Lawless the injections.
Besides, Howell was being blackmailed '
'The gay date rape charge.'
'Yeah.'
'You could have gone to the FBI, or given the information to Scotland Yard,' Rodgers said.
