that the Army actually had a lawyer who used to belong to that special unit that doesn’t exist.”
“A guy could write a real great novel about something like that, couldn’t he?”
“Or a few really good newspaper articles. I mean, why would the Army pick a guy like that to head up the investigation?”
“First, there would have to be such a guy. Personally, I did my time in an infantry battalion in the 82nd, and if you’d like, I’ll bring you some witnesses-”
“Of course you did, Major. But what would worry me is that the Army might pick just such a guy because he’d be most likely to feel some sympathy for that A-team. Hell, after living in a secret world, where he’s had to lie to everyone he knows about what he does, he might even be more inclined to help build a cover for that team.”
I grinned at him, and he grinned back at me.
Then he added, “Of course, like I said, all of this was just for the sake of argument.”
“Is there a point to this argument?”
“No, it’s only academic. After all, you’ve already agreed to cooperate with me, so there’s really no need for me to see how far I could go in checking this story.”
“That’s good, because it’s all wrong,” I said.
We both chuckled at the irony of that. There’s nothing like starting a relationship of trust based on what we both knew was an outright lie.
“So,” he said, “what’s their story?”
“Their story is that they were detected by the Serbs and had to fight their way out. The team leader felt the Serbs were boxing his team in. He decided that ambushing a large column was the best way to make the Serbs believe his unit was larger than it was and to make the Serbs slow down and become more cautious.”
Berkowitz let out a loud whistle. “No kidding.”
“That’s what they say.”
“You believe ’em?”
“So far, sure. It meets with the facts, and all nine men are telling the same tale.”
His eyes kind of lit up, and the letters PULITZER seemed to emerge on his forehead. “Jesus, what a great story line.”
“Yeah, it really is, isn’t it.”
“Here these poor bastards were, trapped behind enemy lines, doing a secret mission this administration ordered them to do. They fight their way out, and instead of getting the medals they deserve, they get stuffed behind bars and investigated like common criminals.”
“That about sums it up,” I said. “Frankly, it’s an embarrassment for me to be part of this. I almost can’t stand to look those men in the eyes. I mean, these guys are genuine heroes.”
“No kidding.”
“Nope, no kidding.”
His face got very serious. “You’re sure you’re not kidding, right?”
“God’s honest truth. Left to me, I’d wrap this whole thing up in two days. Only problem is, one of the other investigating team members is a real prick and seems dead set on proving they did something wrong. He keeps nitpicking little details, even though all he’s doing is making a damned nuisance out of himself. The rest of us are convinced he’s an idiot and these men are innocent.”
I could see he was now itching to race out of my office and file a story. The international press were all convinced these guys had committed a heinous crime, and now Jeremy Berkowitz was about to break the real story, that these men were not only innocent, but heroes to boot. He’d paint the administration as cruel and unfair for persecuting these poor, decent guys who were only doing their job the best they knew how. The story would play well. The President, everybody knew, was a draft-dodgin’ lefty who once wrote a letter about how much he detested the military. He wrote that letter a long time before, in a very different era, but the opposing party had a copy of that letter engraved in bronze and kept shoving it in everybody’s face every time the President did anything that could halfway be construed as antimilitary, or antidefense, or anti-American. According to the opposing party, about everything the President ever did fell into one of those categories, and now Berkowitz here was staring at yet another opportunity to remind the great unwashed public that the President once wrote such a letter.
He walked toward the door, then turned around. His feet did this little shifting thing. “You know I have to refer to you in the story?”
“Uh, actually, no,” I lied. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“I’d like to call you ‘a source on the investigating team.’ Anything more generic and the story loses credibility. My editors, and the public, they have to know this is coming from inside.”
“I don’t know… there’s only a few of us… and, uh-”
“Hey, Major, I’ve never had a source caught. Trust me on this.”
I let out a heavy sigh and scratched my head a few times. Finally, I reluctantly said, “If it’s absolutely necessary, then okay.”
I felt pretty smug when Berkowitz walked out the door. It isn’t often when you get two vindictive retaliations for the price of one. Berkowitz would print his story, make a big splash, bask in his fifteen minutes of glory, then as soon as I proved that Sanchez and his team had cold-bloodedly murdered the Serbs, he’d look like a worldwide horse’s ass.
The White House and Clapper would have no reason to suspect me of being the leaker. I had pooh-poohed myself in the story. Pretty slick that. Now Delbert or Morrow or whoever was leaking on me was going to be suspected of leaking to the press also.
About a minute after Berkowitz departed, the door flew open and in marched Imelda. She shut the door behind her, then plopped into a seat in front of my desk.
She snorted once or twice, then said, “That a reporter?”
“Yep.”
“That the same reporter that wrote that shitty article?”
“One and the same, Imelda.”
She seemed to consider that a moment. She played with her hair and fiddled with the rim on her glasses. Then she gave me this stern, disapproving glare, which, given that this was Imelda Pepperfield, could burn paint off walls.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Reporters are nothing but low-life trash. Don’t you let him come suckin’ up here again, stinkin’ up my building. Got that?”
“Sure, Imelda. And thanks.”
She pushed herself out of her chair, grunted something brief that sounded either like, “You’re really very welcome, sir, and I admire the hell out of you,” or “Frigamugit,” then shuffled back out.
In her inimitable way, she was warning me that the surest way to get caught leaking to the press was to allow Berkowitz to show his face here again. What a woman.
Chapter 14
Henry Kissinger once said that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they really aren’t trying to get you. Suddenly I was beginning to think it was true, he was right, and he’d been talking about me.
Someone inside my organization was leaking things to somebody who worked for the President of the United States, who, for some inexplicable reason, spent his early mornings listening to someone talking about me. One, or maybe both, of my co-investigators was spilling their guts about how incompetent I am to the chief of the Army’s JAG Corps. A ruthlessly ambitious reporter knew something very dangerous about my background, and to top everything off, the very same general who got me this assignment had suddenly developed a severe case of character deficiency.
That’s a fairly long list of crappy things to discover in only one day. The problem was, like most paranoids, I wanted someone to lash out at. But who?
