up.
“I’ll hit the road now. I’ll come back and do Gutter’s outside perimeter training this afternoon. Stay in the house and keep Gutter with you. If you do go outside, say to the barn, keep Gutter with you. Just tell him to heel. If he needs to go to a tree, he’ll let you know, but then tell him to heel.”
He bent down to pet the dog one more time. Then he put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “Now,” he said briskly, “what’s the best way down to the Pentagon from here?”
She gave him directions and he left. She watched him go, surprised to find herself wishing he hadn’t gone. It would be very easy to get used to having him around.
Ninety minutes later, -Admiral Carpenter’s yeoman announced that Mr. von Rensel was out in the front office, as requested.
“Give me five minutes and then bring him in,” the admiral replied. “And don’t disturb us.” He hung up the intercom phone and called Captain Mccarty on the secure phone.
“Yes, Admiral.”
“I’m about to talk to Mr. von Rensel. I want to get his take on the Sherman business. The last update I had was from Karen Lawrence on Friday, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right. Okay. Based on what the DNI told me, I think I’m going to tell him to lay off the SEAL angle. But I’m not going to tell him that we’ve been asked to lay off. Basically, I want to see what he does.”
“You mean you really want him to run free to see what the hell’s really going on here?”
“Basically, yes.”
Mccarty was silent for a moment. “If von Rensel actually flushes this guy,” he asked, “are we going to get across the breakers with the DNI and/or other interested parties?”
Carpenter thought for a moment before answering. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I don’t particularly sweat the Office of Naval Intelligence; they’re pretty far down the food chain in the intel world. Besides, the way I’m going to frame my instructions to von Rensel, I can always claim later that he was freelancing. The lifer spooks think he’s a loose cannon anyway. And if it starts to get wormy, I can always pull Karen out of it and let von Rensel and the spooks sort it all out in some dark alley.”
“Suppose it gets wormy before you find out about it?
The last thing spooks do is tell somebody when one of their operations goes off the rails.”
“I’ll think of something. But first I want to get an independent assessment from von Rensel.”
“Independent of Karen Lawrence?”
“Yeah. He’s an experienced investigator. She isn’t.”
There was a pause on the line. “Whatever you say, Admiral,” Mccarty said finally, his tone of voice implying that he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of using Train to check on Karen Lawrence.
Carpenter frowned to himself. “Just so,” he said, and hung up abruptly.
He resumed scribbling continents on an appeal letter while. waiting for the five minutes to elapse.
Finally, the yeoman brought in Train.
“Mr. von Rensel, come in. Have a seat.”
“Good morning, Admiral,” Train said, sitting down on the sofa. The admiral remained at his desk.
“You getting all settled in here in the puzzle palace?”
“Yes, sir.. I spent some time in ONI a few years back; not much has changed.”
“In ONI or the Pentagon?”
“Neither, Admiral. One’s a pile. of old concrete; the other’s a pile of … well.
Carpenter smiled. “Yes, precisely my view, Mr. von Rensel. Our so-called intelligence community is like an onion.
CIA, NSA, DIA, ONI, all that damned alphabet soup, and all rolled up in a tight little ball that makes you cry whenever you try to get into it.
What’s going on in the Sherman matter?”
Train paused to gather his thoughts. He wondered why Carpenter was asking him this question instead of Karen Lawrence, who was nominally in charge of the Sherman problem. Was Carpenter checking up on her? Or had the admiral perhaps detected her sympathy for Sherman? He launched into it.. He took fifteen minutes to bring the admiral up-to-date, including the events of the preceding night.
When he had finished, Carpenter was no longer smiling.
“Is Karen, Lawrence safe?” he asked.
Train told him about taking one of his Dobes out to her house. “But if there’s a rogue SEAL on ‘ the loose, no one is safe,” he concluded. “The good news is that Karen is not his target. Sherman is. The bad news is that someone’s been knocking off everyone who’s close to Sherman.”
“Are Karen Lawrence and Sherman ‘close’?”
Train hesitated for a fraction of a second. Good question, that one.
“Not in a personal sense, not that I know of. But she’s been with him at the Walsh apartment, the Walsh memorial service, the funeral, and two meetings with the cops, one in his house, one in her house. And somebody sure as hell knew where to find her last night.”
“Did she actually see this guy?”
“No, sir.”
“So nobody has ever seen this guy, right?”
“Correct. Nobody except Admiral Sherman, and that was twenty-some years ago. But I don’t think Karen imagined all this. She was really scared.
She put on a good front this morning, but whoever did this knew how.”
“So you think this Galantz guy is for real? I mean, all the records say he was lost in Vietnam. He’s even on the MIA list.”
Train hesitated. “It’s possible,” he hedged. “As you know, that MIA classification covers everything from someone who was actually observed being blown to little bits to guys who simply went out and never came back.”
“So he could be alive?”
“Admiral Sherman says he is, or at least was back in 1972. The only other possibility is that Sherman is doing it.
He’s had opportunity in at least a couple of these incidents.
Even last night, for instance. But what’s his motive?”
“So you’re coming down in favor of HMI Galantz,” Carpenter persisted, ignoring Train’s question.
Train wasn’t quite sure where this was going. “Possibly,” he said. “Or someone calling himself that. Oh, did I mention Sherman’s son?”
Carpenter shook his head patiently. Train told him about Jack, and the fact that, after many years of estrangement, Sherman had seen him twice recently, both times in circumstances that suggested the son knew something about what was going on.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” the admiral muttered. “Okay.
We’ve got two problems with this Sherman situation’ The first is that, given the Navy’s intense sensitivity to bad PR, Admiral Sherman is becoming a political liability.”
“The big guys are ready to just drop him over the side?”
Carpenter gave a small shrug. “There is an unlimited supply of eager-beaver flag-material captains in the surface warfare community who do not bring baggage of this sort along with them.” Train nodded. “Karen told me about their little sdance with Admiral Kensington. I take it he’s a heavyweight here in Opnav?”
“Heavy enough. Especially when the problem concerns a surface guy, and Sherman is surface Navy.”
Train nodded. “And the second problem: Might that involve a certain government agency?”
Carpenter gave him a speculative look. “It might,” he said.
Train stared down at the carpet. The picture was getting a little clearer, and he now understood why Carpenter was talking to him and not Karen. He laced his hands together and cracked his knuckles, then looked back at Carpenter, who was watching hirh intently.
“Are you telling me not to try to find Galantz?”
Carpenter got up from his desk and came around to sit in one of the chairs. “Not exactly, Train. I am going to
