to hack in and change the image of a shoeprint stored in a lab computer when you have the right technology. These NSA people can do miracles.”
“And the note they found in Berkowitz’s room?”
“A man with all the right credentials planted it in Berkowitz’s room yesterday. The right technology can also produce flawless forgeries.”
I didn’t say anything, so he added, “Look, Sean, don’t force us to do it this way. I admire you. I really do. I know all about your time in the outfit. You did some very courageous things, and you’ve been very dogged in this investigation. But I can’t let you damage your country. Don’t make this personal.”
Back when I was dancing with Sergeant Major Williams in the hard sell interrogation room, every time he hit me, something nasty took control of my brain. I kept mouthing off at Williams, and he kept hitting me harder and doing more and more serious damage to my frail body. I thought about that every night when the day’s session was over, and I knew I was facing another one the next day. The rational part of my brain warned me that passive resistance would spare me a lot of pain, but somehow every time they threw me back in that padded room with that sadistic monster, I couldn’t help myself. I climbed right back in the saddle, and he drew a little more blood and bounced me off the walls a little harder.
Now I was twelve years older, but was I twelve years wiser? All I had to do was give Tretorne what he wanted. I could get on with my life. Okay, I’d have to live with the fact that I’d participated in a whitewash. Everybody in life has a few blemishes on their record. That’s why Catholic priests do such a brisk confessional business. What made me any different? What made me so holy?
I said, “Okay, Tretorne, I’ll do it.”
He jerked himself off the wall and approached my cell. “You better mean that.”
I sounded angry, because I was. “I told you I’ll do it.”
Even in the dark, I could feel his mechanical eyes studying me.
“Give me your word as an officer,” he demanded. He was a West Pointer, so he’d been trained to believe that an officer’s word was an inescapably sacred bond. It was kind of funny, really. He looked right past the irony of forcing me to swear I’d lie on an official report.
“You have my word,” I said.
“Okay. In about two hours, General Murphy will come in here and swear you were with him the night Berkowitz was murdered. That’ll get you released. But you try to screw me, and I’ll have your ass right back in this cell. There won’t be any second chance, either.”
“Look, I gave you my word. Get me outta here, and I’ll do everything you want.”
“All right,” he said.
Then I heard his footsteps echoing down the hallway again. I was lying, of course. The second I got out of here, I was going to do every damned thing I could to screw Tretorne and Murphy and the whole United States Army. I had no idea what that was, but I sure as hell couldn’t get anything done sitting in this jail cell.
You are who you are, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. These guys framed me and blackmailed me, and I was mad enough to spit. Only I’d settle for a little revenge.
Chapter 25
At eight o’clock they came to get me. Martie accompanied the military policeman who carried the keys. He had showered and changed, and now he wore a striped suit with a striped shirt and a striped tie speckled with tiny stars. On top of his abominable taste, he was color-blind. It was all red, white, and blue. He resembled a walking American flag.
He looked tired, too, with lank hair and these big puffy dark things under his bloodshot eyes. He also looked mopey. He thought he had his crime solved, then the Army’s most respected brigadier general shows up to give me an alibi, and now poor Martie was right back where he started. Only a lot more tired.
I didn’t mind one bit, though. I mean, I liked Martie, but not enough to volunteer to stay here and be his culprit.
I went back to my tent, showered, shaved, and put on a fresh uniform. Delbert and Morrow were both back when I walked into the office. Nobody knew I’d been arrested and released. At least nobody acted as if they knew. The mole probably knew but was canny enough to keep it to himself. Or herself. Whichever.
I invited them both into my office. Then we spent an hour or so hashing through the motions of reviewing what they’d accomplished. The folks back at Bragg had told Delbert that a preemptive ambush wasn’t exactly what they’d envisioned when they wrote their rules of engagement. However, they reasoned, the parameters certainly fit as long as you stretched things the right way and as long as the team was under genuine duress. No surprise there.
Morrow had built a lengthy, intricate chronology of events that closely resembled the checkery outfit Martie had worn the day before. She’d produced this twenty-page computer-generated spreadsheet, composed of tiny color-coded blocks for each man in Sanchez’s team. It was an amazing piece of work. You could follow their every action for four straight days. I sarcastically mumbled something about how I couldn’t tell when they went potty in the woods, and she gave me this dead serious look and assured me she had that in an annex but would certainly integrate it in the master chronology if I thought that was necessary. I had no idea if she was kidding.
When we were done, Delbert and Morrow stood up and started to leave. Morrow suddenly paused at the door and asked if she could speak to me. In private, she stressed. I nodded, and she shut the door and returned to her same seat.
She looked deeply troubled. She paused, then said, “I’m having second thoughts.”
“About what?” I asked.
“It’s kind of hard to explain. Just a sense.”
“A sense about what?” I asked again.
“I no longer think they’re innocent.”
I shook my head and cleared my hearing. “You’re kidding, right?”
She looked me dead in the eye. “No. When I was working with them to construct this Chinese puzzle, I just got this impression that it was a little too fabricated. Does that make sense?”
“I wasn’t there,” I said in my most maddeningly ambivalent tone.
She stood up and began pacing. “Look, I make my living dealing with guilty clients. Sometimes, you know, you just get a sense. Well, I got that sense.”
“And just where was this sense last week?”
“Look, I know. I’ve changed my mind.”
She’d picked up a pencil and was holding it against her lip again. I don’t know why, I still found that sexy as hell.
“Look, Morrow, we’ve got two days to get this done. You saw those satellite pictures. You heard those transcripts.”
“I know,” she said, still moving back and forth across the front of my desk like one of those ducks in a carnival shooting gallery.
“Well, then, how in the hell do you explain it?”
“I can’t,” she said. “I just know. All nine of those men were able to perfectly reconstruct the events of those four days.”
I said, “Sure. They not only experienced it together, they also had ample time to discuss it among themselves. Get mad at that chunky Air Force jailer of theirs for letting them get away with that, but it doesn’t make them guilty.”
“Nine men don’t remember events with the kind of coordinated accuracy I heard over the past two days. It’s like they’ve been drilled and rehearsed. Like actors in a Broadway play. They never argued with one another. There were no contradictions.”
I stared at her incredulously.
She stopped pacing. “There’s a clincher, too.”
“And what’s this clincher?”
