The Enemy

"The crowbar didn’t walk in by itself," Summer said. "One of those twenty-eight names brought it in. Obviously. It can’t have gotten here any other way."

I said nothing.

"Want dinner?" she said.

"I think better when I’m hungry," I said.

"We’ve run out of things to think about."

I nodded. Gathered the twenty-eight medical charts together and piled them neatly. Put Summer’s original list of thirty-three names on top. Thirty-three, minus Carbone, because he didn’t bring the crowbar in himself and commit suicide with it. Minus the pathologist, because he wasn’t a convincing suspect, and because he was short, and because his practice swings with the crowbar had been weak. Minus Vassell and Coomer and their driver, Marshall, because their alibis were too good. Vassell and Coomer had been stuffing their faces, and Marshall hadn’t even come at all.

"Why wasn’t Marshall here?" I said.

Summer nodded. "That’s always bothered me. It’s like Vassell and Coomer had something to hide from him."

"All they did was eat dinner."

"But Marshall must have been right there at Kramer’s funeral with them. So they must have specifically told him not to drive them here. Like a positive order to get out of the car and stay home."

I nodded. Pictured the long line of black government sedans at Arlington National Cemetery, under a leaden January sky. Pictured the ceremony, the folding of the flag, the salute from the riflemen. The shuffling procession back to the cars, bareheaded men with their chins ducked into their collars against the cold, maybe snow in the air. I pictured Marshall holding the Mercury’s rear doors, for Vassell first, then for Coomer. He must have driven them back to the Pentagon lot and then gotten out and watched Coomer move up into the driver’s seat.

"We should talk to him," I said. "Find out exactly what they told him. What kind of reason they gave him. It must have been a slightly awkward moment. A blue-eyed boy like that must have felt a little excluded."

I picked up the phone and spoke to my sergeant. Asked her to get a number for Major Marshall. Told her he was a XII Corps staffer based at the Pentagon. She said she would get back to me. Summer and I sat quiet and waited. I gazed at the map on the wall. I figured we should take the pin out of Columbia. It distorted the picture. Brubaker hadn’t been killed there. He had been killed somewhere else. North, south, east, or west.

"Are you going to call Willard?" Summer asked me.

"Probably," I said. "Tomorrow, maybe."

"Not before midnight?"

"I don’t want to give him the satisfaction."

"That’s a risk."

"I’m protected," I said.

"Might not last forever."

"Doesn’t matter. I’ll have Delta Force coming after me soon. That’ll make everything else seem kind of academic."

"Call Willard tonight," she said. "That would be my advice."

I looked at her.

"As a friend," she said. "AWOL is a big deal. No point making things worse."

"OK," I said.

"Do it now," she said. "Why not?"

"OK," I said again. I reached out for the phone but before I could get my hand on it my sergeant put her head in the door. She told us Major Marshall was no longer based in the United States. His temporary detached duty had been prematurely terminated. He had been recalled to Germany. He had been flown out of Andrews Air Force Base late in the morning of the fifth of January.

"Whose orders?" I asked her.

"General Vassell’s," she said.

"OK," I said.

She closed the door.

"The fifth of January," Summer said.

"The morning after Carbone and Brubaker died," I said.

"He knows something."

"He wasn’t even here."

"Why else would they hide him away afterward?"

"It’s a coincidence."

"You don’t like coincidences."

I nodded.

"OK," I said. "Let’s go to Germany."

Chapter Eighteen

No way was Willard about to authorize any foreign expeditions so I walked over to the Provost Marshal’s office and took a stack of travel vouchers out of the company clerk’s desk. I carried them back to my own office and signed them all with my name on the CO lines and respectable forgeries of Leon Garber’s signature on the Authorized by lines.

"We’re breaking the law," Summer said.

"This is the Battle of Kursk," I said. "We can’t stop now."

She hesitated.

"Your choice," I said. "In or out, no pressure from me."

She said nothing.

"These vouchers won’t come back for a month or two," I said. "By then either Willard will be gone, or we will. We’ve got nothing to lose."

"OK," she said.

"Go pack," I said. "Three days."

She left and I asked my sergeant to figure out who was next in line for acting CO. She came back with a name I recognized as the female captain I had seen in the O Club dining room. The one with the busted arm. I wrote her a note explaining I would be out for three days. I told her she was in charge. Then I picked up the phone and called Joe.

"I’m going to Germany," I said.

"OK," he said. "Enjoy. Have a safe trip."

"I can’t go to Germany without stopping by Paris on the way back. You know, under the circumstances."

He paused.

"No," he said. "I guess you can’t."

"Wouldn’t be right not to," I said. "But she shouldn’t think I care more than you do. That wouldn’t be right either. So you should come over too."

"When?"

"Take the overnight flight two days from now. I’ll meet you at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle. Then we’ll go see her together."

Summer met me on the sidewalk outside my quarters and we carried our bags to the Chevy. We were both in BDUs because we figured our best shot was a night transport out of Andrews Air Force Base. We were too late for a civilian red-eye and we didn’t want to wait all night for the breakfast flights. We got in the car and logged out at the gate. Summer was driving, of course. She accelerated hard and then dropped into a smooth rhythm that was about ten miles an hour faster than the other cars heading our way.

I sat back and watched the road. Watched the shoulders, and the strip malls, and the traffic. We drove north thirty miles and passed by Kramer’s motel. Hit the cloverleaf and jogged east to I-95. Headed north. We passed the rest area. Passed the spot a mile later where the briefcase had been found. I closed my eyes.

I slept all the way to Andrews. We got there well after midnight. We parked in a restricted lot and swapped two of our travel vouchers for two places on a Transportation Corps C-130 that was leaving for Frankfurt at three in the morning. We waited in a lounge that had fluorescent lighting and vinyl benches and was filled with the usual ragtag bunch of transients. The military is always on the move. There are always people going somewhere, any time of the night or day. Nobody talked. Nobody ever did. We all just sat there, stiff and tired and uncomfortable.

The loadmaster came to get us thirty minutes before takeoff. We filed out onto the tarmac and walked up the ramp into the belly of the plane. There was a long line of cargo pallets in the center bay. We sat on webbing jump seats with our backs to the fuselage wall. On the whole I figured I preferred the first-class section on Air France. The Transportation Corps doesn’t have stewardesses and it doesn’t brew in-flight coffee.