sorting through it.”
“I heard there’s lots of new reporters in town.”
“A whole army. They’re climbing all over the information officer’s ass. And you know how the feeding cycle works. They chew on his ass, he chews on mine.”
“I guess,” I said. “So is there anything specific you want to talk about?”
“Uh, yeah, actually.” He looked up and stared at my ceiling. “Just thought I should inform you that I’ve got two agents in your tent right now. I’ve got a military judge’s order to search your personal possessions and to borrow your running shoes.”
I didn’t like the sound of this one bit. I took a sip of coffee and tried not to look distressed. This wasn’t easy. I was feeling very distressed. I don’t know why, I just was.
I gave him a hard stare. “And may I ask why?”
“Just some lingering concerns about a few notes Berkowitz left behind. Don’t get all bothered, though. We’re just borrowing your shoes to compare them with some molds back at the lab.”
“But I shouldn’t be concerned?”
“No. It’s just standard procedure. We’re collecting lots of molds. You never set foot in that latrine, right?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Then we’ll get you cleared faster than you can say Jack the Ripper.”
Chapter 22
One thing you learn when you practice criminal law is that the moment a police officer tells you not to be concerned, start gnawing on your nails. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I didn’t have anyway near enough time or attention to worry. I kept writing my opus summary while I waited for Imelda to bring me some materials on Operation Phoenix.
She waltzed back in at quarter after eleven and dropped a bunch of printouts on my desk.
“Where have you been?” I bellowed.
She bent over and began writing on my yellow legal pad.
“Workin’,” she said. “I made the supply run, then ran all over this damn post lookin’ for printer cartridges.”
I watched what she was writing. I said, “Well, I’ve gotten a lot of work done, and I want someone to start typing.”
“And what’s with you?” she barked. “Is your ass glued to that chair or something? You can’t tell those clerks to type?”
She straightened back up and I read what she had written. “Found on Internet. To be safe, used supply room terminal.”
“Okay, okay,” I grumbled. “Just take what I’ve finished and get it typed.”
She collected my stack of yellow pages and departed. I grabbed the printouts she left behind and dug in. It took nearly thirty minutes. There was a lot of stuff on the Internet concerning Operation Phoenix. There were extracts from history books. There were testaments from guilt-ridden veterans who were participants. There were some wild ramblings from antiwar groups who made reference to it in fairly negative ways. Some of the articles made for pretty fascinating reading, and some made you wonder if everyone who posted things on the Internet had all their marbles.
Operation Phoenix was a secret operation run jointly between the CIA and the Green Berets during the Vietnam War. A secret pact was made between the two that actually bypassed the military chain of command. Neither the Joint Chiefs nor General Westmoreland even knew it was happening.
It was a classic counterinsurgency operation where the CIA penetrated a number of communist cells that were operating in South Vietnam, then the Special Forces did the nasty work of eliminating the suspects. Some of the material Imelda got off the Internet said the Green Berets only killed a few dozen operatives. Others claimed they killed thousands. Killed them without trial, without proof, just knocked off whoever the CIA told them to take out. The sterile euphemism they used was “sanctioned.”
I guess I was too engrossed in trying to study the anatomy of my high school cheerleading squad to have been paying attention, but the operation got exposed sometime in the early or mid-seventies, just as the war was winding down. Then there was a mad rush by various congressional investigating committees to help the Army sort fact from fiction, to borrow General Partridge’s phrase. The word for what the Green Berets were doing was assassination. The words for what the CIA was doing was playing God. It was a war, but the people being summarily executed were South Vietnamese citizens, thus technically our allies. That’s a pretty vital distinction.
I saw immediately why Bill Tingle wanted me to research this. I mean, it made a lot of sense. Here was Jack Tretorne, aka Mr. Jones, masquerading as an NSA employee while he helped cover up a possible massacre committed by a Green Beret team. You couldn’t escape the parallels. Still, it struck me as beyond stupidity. Operation Phoenix had apparently led to an explosive scandal, and I just couldn’t believe that the same folks who did it the first time would turn right around and try it again. That’s like Ford Motor Company trying to reintroduce the Edsel.
Besides, this was not a war. At least, technically this was not war. There were no communist cells being infiltrated, no suspects being assassinated. This was a NATO police action, or whatever silly word was being used to describe an attempt to coerce the Serbs by bombing the crap out of them. As simple as that.
On the other hand, there was the murder of Jeremy Berkowitz. Maybe Tretorne told General Murphy to “sanction” him. As bizarre as that sounded, everything going on here struck me as bizarre. So why not? Tretorne seemed to me to be exactly the kind of guy who would order someone killed in cold blood. There was no sign of life or moral gravity in those eyes of his. And, if a man would help engineer a cover-up, then he was already breaking some very serious laws. What was a few more?
I decided I needed to be cheered up. All morning I’d been working out another scheme, and I decided its time had come. It was time to do some flushing, as they say in quail-hunting circles.
I left the office and walked back over to the NSA facility. The guards passed me through to the inner sanctum, I pushed the doorbell and looked up and stuck out my tongue at the camera in the corner. Sometimes I wonder how I ever made major.
A moment later, the door made that humming sound, and I pushed it open. Miss Smith was waiting. I gave her a shy grin, and she returned it with one of those wonderfully plastic smiles she must have perfected at some northeastern preppy college. She reminded me of a thousand cheerleaders I used to lust after.
“How are you today?” I asked.
“Fine.”
“That’s nice. I hope this isn’t inconvenient, but I need to talk with Mr. Jones again.”
“Follow me,” she said, and I studied her lovely sway as she led me back through the building, then to the stairway in the rear. We went down the stairs again, and I noticed that her hair roots were brown, not blond. The more I learned about this woman, the less real she seemed.
We reached the conference room at the end of the hall again, and Miss Smith’s long, manicured fingers very elegantly slid her little plastic card through the lock slot, then she pushed the door open. There were about five men in the room, all sitting around the table, with Jack Tretorne at the head. Aside from Tretorne, it looked like a nerd’s convention. There were lots of thick bifocals and pocket penholders and short-sleeve white shirts. These were NSA employees, no doubt about it. They had that certain charisma.
Tretorne had on his duck-murdering vest again. He looked badly out of place, like a jock at a software programmers’ convention. He glanced up and the room fell quiet. If I were a courteous guy, I would’ve said, “Excuse me. I’m obviously interrupting, so why don’t I just leave and you can call me when it’s convenient for you.”
I didn’t say anything; I just stood there. Tretorne’s marble eyes studied me, but I had no idea what he was thinking. Then he looked around the table and said, “If you all can please excuse us for a few moments, Major
