okay?”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. Let’s get back to the orifice.”
Karen finally got the call to go see Admiral Carpenter at 3:30. After Train’s warning, she had called the front office again for an appointment. The chief had put her on call for the afternoon.
Apparently, the JAG was handling a flap about a breaking drug scandal down at the Naval Academy.
Wonderful, she thought. The CNO will have been foaming at the mouth, which would put the JAG in a really swell mood.
In the intervening hours, she had mulled over the issue of how much of what she had learned in the meeting with the cops and at dinner she should tell Admiral Carpenter.
But she had promised Sherman not to reveal what he had told her over dinner, and she still could not see any relevance between his failed marriage and his current situation.
Admiral Sherman, at least in her mind, deserved some consideration, assuming that he was the target of a stalker. But what if Train was right and Sherman was involved somehow in the death of Elizabeth Walsh?
What had Train said?
“Sherman could still be making all this up”-that was it.
Well, I know how that three-star was acting. She thought the word shabby just about described it. She and Train had reviewed the case file again after lunch, but there were too many loose ends for any effective brainstorming. Just about when she had decided to ask if he wanted to go with her to see Carpenter, Train had signed out for the Navy Yard and left the office.
She entered the JAG’s office three minutes after getting the call. The admiral was sitting in his desk chair, his back to the door. He, too, was talking on the telephone. Karen wondered irreverently if he was talking to the yeoman on the other side of the door. She made a noise to alert him that he was not alone, and he acknowledged her presence with a wave over his shoulder. A minute later, he hung up and turned around.
“Okay, commander. I can give you ten minutes. Bring me up-to-date on the matter of William Taggart Sherman.”
Karen took a look at the expression on his face and decided to tell him everything. It took twenty minutes, not ten.
She detailed the events of the past week, since the first meeting on Tuesday. She told him about the meeting with the police at Sherman’s house, the session with Admiral Kensington, the mysterious threatening letter from the SEAL, the syringe incident, and now the news of Galen Schmidt’s heart attack. The only part that she deliberately left out was the story behind Galantz and the dinner conversation about Sherman’s marriage. She was halfway hoping that Carpenter would be satisfied to absorb the big picture and not worry about details. But of course the Vietnam story was his first question.
“Why would this individual be after Admiral Sherman?
What is this stuff about an incident back in Vietnam?”
Karen hesitated. “Admiral, he asked me not to reveal that part of it. At least not within the”Navy hierarchy,’ as he calls it. I think he’s afraid that the story might create a scandal if it got out now.”
Carpenter frowned. “He did, did he? The”Navy hierarchy’? And yet you just told me he shared this story with the civilian police?”
Karen colored but did not reply. He looked at her and nodded. “Right. I forgot. He’s a pretty boy. Okay, let’s stop with the games. Sherman is a flag officer, but you work for me, not him. Besides, a basic rule of life applies here: When you’re in trouble, you don’t hold things back from your lawyer. Ever.”
“But are you his lawyer, Admiral?” she asked. And then she caught her breath when she realized how impertinent that question might sound.
Carpenter surprised her with a quick grin. “Good point, Commander. But in a sense, I am. I’m the JAG. I’m the whole uniformed Navy’s lawyer.
Not to be confused with the Secretary of the Navy’s general counsel, who is the Navy Department’s lawyer. But practically speaking, I’m ‘of counsel’ to that flag-officer hierarchy that Sherman’s still so afraid of. Hell, he’s still acting like a captain. If he wasn’t such a brand-new flag officer, he’d have known to come see me a long time ago.
Now, give.”
She recounted the facts of the Vietnam story, and of the night visitation in San Diego. She was surprised when he interrupted her. -
“What was the name again? Galantz?”
“Yes, sir. HMI Marcus Galantz.”
Carpenter was writing down the name. “And he was a SEAL?”
“Yes, sir. That’s one of the reasons I am definitely going to need Mr. von Rensel’s help. I’m waiting for Galantz’s record to come back from the archives. Oh, and Admiral Sherman feels that, given the circumstances, Galantz was probably listed as MIA.”
“He does, does he? Why isn’t von Rensel in here with you right now? Does he know all this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So, where is he?”
“He’s over at NIS right now, sir. He and I-” She ran out of words.
“You and he what? Disagreed? Let me guess, you think Sherman is being screwed over, and von Rensel thinks he’s guilty of something. Am I right?”
She swallowed and nodded.
“Tell-me something,” he said. “What was his recommendation regarding this bullshit about keeping back information from the Navy hierarchy?”
“He told me that I should tell you everything.”
Carpenter nodded with satisfaction at her answer, but he did not comment out loud. Instead, he went back to Sherman’s situation. “And the good admiral has no proof of the letter, or of that long-ago nocturnal visit from this supposedly MIA SEAL, right?”
“Yes, sir. That’s true.”
The admiral turned in his chair, his face scrunched up again in a frown as he stared out the windows at nothing.
“For what it’s worth, Admiral,” Karen said. “I don’t think Admiral Sherman is making this up. Or that he’s involved in the death of Elizabeth Walsh. Nor do the police, as best I can tell.”
Carpenter wheeled the chair around slowly to face her.
“And this feeling is based on what facts, precisely?”
Karen paused before replying. “Admittedly, just a gut feeling, I guess.
He didn’t have to tell us about the discrepancies he noticed at Elizabeth Walsh’s house. Or, for that matter, the mysterious letter, or the incident back in 1972.”
“Unless he’s a really clever devil. He is a flag officer, after all.”
Karen managed to keep control of her face, but Carpenter caught the effort. “You can think it, Commander,” he said with a frosty grin. “But you’d better not say it.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” was all she could manage, glad to have the tension broken.
“Okay. What I was getting at, of course, is that by offering up some morsels, he could be running a game on the cops-a dangerous game to be sure, but a game nonetheless.”
“But what about the syringe business?”
“It was in your locked car, after you and he had taken a ride to the restaurant. Do you know that he didn’t just plant it, make a quick call to the cops from the restaurant, and then go through some charade with the patrol cops, all in order to make it look like someone was watching the two of you?”
This is just what Train was saying, she thought. “That’s all possible, I suppose,” she said. “I’ve made a note to see if the cops can tell where that call came from. I’m pretty sure they caller-ID all nine-one-one calls as a matter of policy.
“Okay, you do that. Now, tell me precisely what Mr. von Rensel is doing with all this. And why you think you need NIS’s help.”
“Because Galantz is-was-a SEAL. SEALS work in the unconventional warfare area-which has ties to the world
