‘What facts?’
‘The Pentagon didn’t entirely trust your sister.’
‘That’s a hell of a thing to say.’
‘She was on a watch list, Jake. She must have been. As soon as her name hit the wires, those feds saddled up. Three of them. That was a procedure.’
‘They didn’t stay long.’
I nodded. ‘Which means they weren’t very suspicious. They were being cautious, that’s all. Maybe they had some small thing on their minds, hut they didn’t really believe it. They came up here to rule it out.’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘Information,’ I said. ‘That’s all the Human Resources Command has got.’
‘They thought she was passing information?’
‘They wanted to rule it out.’
‘Which means at some point they must have ruled it in.’
I nodded again. ‘Maybe she was seen in the wrong office, opening the wrong file cabinet. Maybe they figured there was an innocent explanation, but they wanted to be sure. Or maybe something went missing and they didn’t know who to watch, so they were watching them all.’
‘What kind of information?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Like a copied file?’
‘Smaller,’ I said. ‘A folded note, a computer memory. Something that could be passed from hand to hand in a subway car.’
‘She was a patriot. She loved her country. She wouldn’t do that.’
‘And she didn’t do that. She didn’t pass anything to anyone.’
‘So we’ve got nothing.’
‘We’ve got your sister hundreds of miles from home with a loaded gun.’
‘And afraid,’ Jake said.
‘Wearing a winter jacket in ninety-degree weather.’
‘With two names floating around,’ he said. ‘John Sansom and Lila Hoth, whoever the hell she is. And Hoth sounds foreign.’
‘So did Markakis, once upon a time.’
He went quiet again and I sipped coffee. Traffic was getting slower on Eighth. The morning rush was building. The sun was up, a little south of east. Its rays were not aligned with the street grid. They came in at a low angle and threw long diagonal shadows.
Jake said, ‘Give me somewhere to start.’
I said, ‘We don’t know enough.’
‘Speculate.’
‘I can’t. I could make up a story, but it would be full of holes. And it might be completely the wrong story to begin with.’
‘Try it. Give me something. Like brainstorming.’
I shrugged. ‘You ever met any ex-Special Forces guys?’
‘Two or three. Maybe four or five, counting the Troopers I knew.’
‘You probably didn’t. Most Special Forces careers never happened. It’s like people who claim to have been at Woodstock. Believe them all, the crowd must have been ten million strong. Like New Yorkers who saw the planes hit the towers. They all did, to listen to them. No one was looking the wrong way at the time. People who say they were Special Forces are usually bullshitting. Most of them never made it out of the infantry. Some of them were never in the army at all. People dress things up.’
‘Like my sister.’
‘It’s human nature.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘I’m working with what we’ve got. We’ve got two random names, and election season starting up, and your sister in HRC.’
‘You think John Sansom is lying about his past?’
‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘But it’s a common area of exaggeration. And politics is a dirty business. You can bet that right now someone is checking on the guy who did Sansom’s dry-cleaning twenty years ago, wanting to know if he had a green card. So it’s a no-brainer to assume that people are fact-checking his actual biography. It’s a national sport.’
‘So maybe Lila Hoth is a journalist. Or a researcher. Cable news, or something. Or talk radio.’
‘Maybe she’s Sansom’s opponent.’
‘Not with a name like that. Not in North Carolina.’
‘OK, let’s say she’s a journalist or a researcher. Maybe she put the squeeze on an HRC clerk for Sansom’s service record. Maybe she picked your sister.’
‘Where was her leverage?’
I said, ‘That’s the first big hole in the story.’ Which it was. Susan Mark had been desperate and terrified. It was hard to imagine a journalist finding that kind of leverage. Journalists can be manipulative and persuasive, but no one is particularly afraid of them.
‘Was Susan political?’ I asked.
‘Why?’
‘Maybe she didn’t like Sansom. Didn’t like what he stood for. Maybe she was cooperating. Or volunteering.’
‘Then why would she be so scared?’
‘Because she was breaking the law,’ I said. ‘Her heart would have been in her mouth.’
‘And why was she carrying the gun?’
‘Didn’t she normally carry it?’
‘Never. It was an heirloom. She kept it in her sock drawer, like people do.’
I shrugged. The gun was the second big hole in the story. People take their guns out of their sock drawers for a variety of reasons. Protection, aggression. But never just in case they feel a spur of the moment impulse to off themselves far from home.
Jake said, ‘Susan wasn’t very political.’
‘OK.’
‘Therefore there can’t be a connection with Sansom.’
‘Then why did his name come up?’
‘I don’t know.’
I said, ‘Susan must have driven up. Can’t take a gun on a plane. Her car is probably getting towed right now. She must have come through the Holland Tunnel and parked way downtown.
Jake didn’t reply. My coffee was cold. The waitress had given up on refills. We were an unprofitable table. The rest of the clientele had changed twice over. Working people, moving fast, filling up, getting ready for a busy day. I pictured Susan Mark twelve hours earlier, getting ready for a busy night. Dressing, finding her father’s gun, loading it, packing it into the black bag. Climbing into her car, taking 236 to the Beltway, going clockwise, maybe getting gas, hitting 95, heading north, eyes wide and desperate, drilling the darkness ahead.
‘Let’s assume the leverage,’ I said. ‘Let’s assume it was totally compelling. So let’s assume Susan was on her way to deliver whatever information she was told to get. And let’s assume these are bad people. She didn’t trust them to release whatever hold they had over her. Probably she thought they were going to up the stakes and ask for more. She was in, and she didn’t see a way of getting out. And above all, she was very afraid of them. So she was desperate. So she took the gun. Possibly she thought she could fight her way out, but she wasn’t optimistic about her chances. All in all, she didn’t think things were going to end well.’
‘So?’
