morning’s happenings. Only yesterday, they had all seen this big guy lounging around the office, and today he was snack food for worms. Actually, to do Berkowitz credit, he was more on the order of an eight-course meal.
Delbert came in first, then Morrow, who gave me a full dose of those sympathetic eyes. “Are you in any trouble?” she asked. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Nope, no trouble,” I assured her. “The MPs heard I was the smartest guy on the compound, and they just wanted to stop by and see what I thought about that dead journalist.” I looked down at my watch. “In fact, I’m expecting a call from CID any minute. It’s really hell when everybody knows you’re smart.”
Delbert had this perplexed look on his face, like if the MPs and CID wanted to talk to me, then why the hell hadn’t they dropped in to have a chat with him, too? He was the one who went to Yale. He was the one who had maybe the best prosecutorial record in the Army. Morrow, on the other hand, gave me the look all mothers award to their naughty three-year-olds.
“I’ve got some terribly good news,” I quickly said to get the subject changed. “Because of the outstanding progress we’ve made, the Army has decided to shorten the time line of the investigation.”
“To when?” Morrow asked.
“Four days, starting this morning.”
“Wow, that is short,” Delbert said, restating the obvious, which was yet another trait in his legion of bad habits.
I said, “If we had to vote today, where would we be?”
They stared at each other for a moment. Morrow scratched her chin, while Delbert pulled on an ear. Morrow scratched her chin some more, and Delbert nearly pulled the lobe off his ear.
“Hey,” I said, very chummy-like, “this isn’t that hard. You’re not committing to anything. If you had to vote today, how would you vote?”
They both, at the same time, said, “No grounds for prosecution.”
“Okay. So is that no grounds because you think they’re innocent? Or is that no grounds because you think there’s insufficient evidence to prosecute?”
“The former,” Delbert said.
“The former,” Morrow echoed. Then she added, “What about you?”
I said, “If I had to vote today, I would abstain.”
“You can’t abstain,” Morrow said. “Our orders say we can only make two choices.”
“Okay, I’d write a long letter and say I vote no, because there’s insufficient evidence, but I don’t feel this team had time to make a proper recommendation. Do the rules allow me to do that?”
We all knew that the rules did not mention anything about that. We also knew that if I did such a thing, it would invalidate the entire investigation. You can’t really have the head of an Article 32 investigating committee expressing no confidence in the outcome and expect the report to carry even an iota of credibility. Not that either of them should really give a damn. I mean, it would be an embarrassment for the Army, which would then have to appoint a whole new investigating team and go through this whole routine again. But that should mean nothing to Delbert and Morrow, who would’ve done their jobs ably and to the best of their abilities. The thing was, they were both organizational creatures right down to their Army-issued green underwear, and the Army had appointed them part of a committee, and they just naturally felt it was their duty to bring home a unanimous verdict. They couldn’t help it. They just were that way.
Morrow said, “Then we have four days to either change your mind or change our own.”
“That’s the way I see it,” I admitted.
“What would it take for you to change your mind?” she asked, which told you exactly where she was coming from.
“I’d have to see some positive confirmation that Sanchez and his men aren’t lying.”
“There is no confirmation,” Morrow said, quite painfully. “We’ve already been all through that. These nine men are the only living witnesses.”
A strange expression suddenly came over Delbert’s face. “Maybe there’s an alternative to a living witness,” he said, bouncing in his seat like an overexcited schoolboy who thinks he knows the answer to the teacher’s question.
“What?” I asked.
“The NSA or somebody must have satellites orbiting over Kosovo. I’ve never personally seen a satellite photo, but from what I hear, they can read the print on a dime.”
“Delbert, you little genius, you,” I declared. “You’re absolutely right.”
I can’t begin to tell you how painful that was for me to say. Not only because I had these vague ill feelings toward Delbert, but also because I wanted to give myself a good, hard kick in the ass. If anybody should have thought of this, it was the guy who spent five years living in the world of supersecret operations where we used up satellite photos like toilet paper.
I checked my watch. If I called right now, I could catch Clapper just as he arrives at the office. I dialed the number and waited. It took three rings before Clapper’s secretary, Nora, picked up.
“Hello, Nora, Drummond here. What happened?”
“What?”
“You didn’t pick up till the third ring. You’re slipping.”
“What?” she said again in her dry, humorless voice.
“Forget it,” I said. I mean, why should I waste any more of my golden wit on this block of ice? “Is the general in?” I asked.
“The general’s in a meeting and I should not interrupt him.”
“This is brutally important.”
“So is the general’s other meeting.”
“I’ll bet mine’s as important,” I said.
“Major Drummond, I know who you are, and I know what you’re working on, and I assure you this meeting is more urgent.”
“Anything to do with a certain reporter who got strangled in a bathroom?” I asked, which really was more in the nature of a simple deduction than a blank question.
“I’ll put you right through,” she said.
A moment later, Clapper said, “Hello, Sean.”
“Hi, General, having a nice day?”
“I haven’t had a nice day since I took this job. You know, Sean, this town is full of big, glitzy law firms that pay a million dollars a year to their partners. One more thing goes wrong, and I’m gonna be banging on their doors.”
“Geez, you really do sound depressed. Don’t you think that’s a little drastic?”
He did not chuckle, which I took as a bad sign. Either I was not as witty as I thought or his mood was really sour. Had to be the sour mood thing, of course.
“You’ve heard about this dead reporter?” he asked.
“You mean the guy who called me the other day?”
“Right. Did you actually meet with him?”
“He stopped by yesterday. We had some words. He went on his way.”
“The editor in chief of the Herald called the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He’s promising to raise hell until we catch whoever did this.”
“I don’t blame him. Poor guy’s standing at a urinal and the next thing he’s pissing and bleeding all over the wall while someone chokes him to death. What a world, huh? Listen, the reason I called is we might have a breakthrough. Actually, Delbert thought of it. We’d like to see if NSA or any of those other supersecret agencies might have any surveillance tapes or pictures of Zone Three that were collected between the fourteenth and the eighteenth.”
“It’s a good idea,” was all he said.
“Can you run the request, sir? You know those spook guys. A request from a major isn’t even going to make them peek inside their vault.”
“I’ll make the calls as soon as this meeting is over.”
“Thanks, General,” I said, then we both hung up.
