Caravan of Thieves

by David Rich

  The colonel sat back in his chair as if intending to leap out when the g-forces abated. His face was a shrine to rage and resentment. Somewhere along the line, he must have noticed it, or noticed how others reacted, and decided to try to hide it with false ease and tinny relaxation. The result was a nasty hiss and eyes that seemed reluctant to focus. His online bio said he was only forty-two, but he looked at least ten years older and probably had since he was a teenager. Maybe it was because his blood was always boiling. After my first deployment to Afghanistan, back at Camp Pendleton for Recon Indoc training, Gladden was the exec and the major recommended me for Officer Candidate School. Gladden disagreed with his assessment. Eventually I got in anyway, and Gladden, not able to take it out on anyone above him, naturally held it against me. I helped him along because I believed, foolishly, that I could make his thermostat evaporate.

  The MPs left and closed the door.

  A civilian sat across from Colonel Gladden. He nodded at me and looked me over, but Gladden didn’t introduce him. Gladden started right in. “You can’t stop, can you, Lieutenant?” He paused as if it were a question. “No, you can’t. The investigation goes on in Afghanistan and I get reports, I get reports and they’re horrifying. Are you a traitor, Waters?”

  I stared at him. He was just showing off. What happened there was not his business and he knew it.

  “And now you’ve destroyed Marine property. What’s next?”

  “Whatever you would like, sir. I’m open to suggestions.”

  “Do you know a Dan Waters?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “Who is he?”

  I knew that he knew the answer to that one, but I had to play along. “My father, sir.”

  “It says here he’s a scumbag. Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “Because you think everyone is a scumbag, sir.”

  The other man in the office chuckled. The colonel looked at him like he thought the man was a scumbag. The man did not seem to mind. He was about forty, thin, with curly dark hair and the kind of lines on his face that make people think you’re wise. The colonel returned his attention to me. “Your file says you’re a hero. But I don’t think you are and a lot of other people around here don’t, either. You’re just another soldier who thinks the rules don’t apply to him. Another…another…” And here he made the mistake of pausing.

  “Scumbag? Sir.”

  Colonel Gladden’s hands balled up into fists, his nostrils flared, and he started to get up, but he glanced at the other man first, then sat back down. He didn’t call in the MPs to hit me or to take me back to my cell to be worked over. This was a test and Gladden had flunked. For some reason, the other man was in charge here. I turned to him.

  “I’m Lieutenant Roland Waters. Everybody calls me Rollie.”

  The other man reached into his shirt pocket and handed me a card. “Steve Shaw. Treasury Department.” Then to Gladden: “May I?” The direct civility nauseated Gladden. He said nothing.

  “What does your father do? For a living?”

  I could see Dan the first time I asked that question. One hand on the doorknob, he stopped and smiled and said it as if he had been given a special gift: “I’m a middleman, Rollie Boy, best job in the world. The money flows through the middleman.”

  I said to Shaw, “He’s had many jobs. All sorts of things.”

  “When was the last time you saw your father?”

  “About three years ago. Between tours. I was in Arizona, sitting in a bar. He walked in.”

  “Just like that?” Now the Treasury man sounded just like any cop. “You were there and he walked in, or the other way?”

  I could remember the scene exactly as it happened. I sat at the bar. Bought drinks for the two girls next to me. They were giggly, friendly college girls with too little to do, just preparing for the real drinking that would happen later when their friends arrived. I knew they saw me as an exotic specimen, but I didn’t mind. I saw them the same way. And I was in just the right mood for company with someone who never took orders without arguing or complaining, someone who thought having bitchy friends was a major problem in life. The dark-haired one was interested and I started to think I had a chance, though I knew she would want to get drunk and I didn’t like screwing drunk girls. Then someone poked me in the back. It was my father, Dan.

  I remember most clearly the awful feeling of being woken from a pleasant dream. Me wanting to stay there chatting up the girls, Dan offering to join us. I suddenly felt a horrible sense of responsibility; I couldn’t do that to them. The pleasant part of my dream was over. I said good-bye without asking for a telephone number and went to a booth with Dan.

  I said to Shaw, “I didn’t see him when I walked in. He tapped me on the shoulder. We talked a bit. That’s all.”

  “Why were you in Arizona?”

  You’ll never know that. “What do you want?”

  Shaw said, “Just what I asked. Why were you in Arizona?” His voice stayed calm, but he was not going to budge.

  “I’d been back from Afghanistan a month and I missed the desert. That’s all.” I shrugged, hoping Shaw would believe I thought it sounded foolish.

  Colonel Gladden never believed anything. He jumped in, “And then last week when you went AWOL, were you on your way to Arizona? You must really like it there.”

  Had it been a week? “It’s very beautiful, sir.”

  Gladden almost choked. Shaw seemed to be holding back a smile. He said, “In 2003, a few months after we took Baghdad, we began finding stashes of U.S. dollars that Saddam Hussein had squirreled away. Hundreds of millions, in fact. A few soldiers got tempted, grabbed a few bundles as souvenirs. Most got caught. It’s safe to assume a few got away with it. I wouldn’t know. That’s military business.” He nodded toward Gladden as if he were in charge of military business.

  Gladden hissed, “It’s not over.”

  “Two years ago a man named John Saunders, a former major in the Third Infantry, was arrested in Colorado for beating his girlfriend. He paid his lawyer in crisp new hundred-dollar bills and bragged that there was plenty more where that came from. The lawyer was suspicious and contacted us. It happens. By the time we checked it out, Saunders had been run over and killed. His girlfriend said when he got drunk he talked about shipping home the stolen money in body bags. It’s been a long investigation. Day before yesterday, three graves were dug up in a veterans’ cemetery in Oklahoma. They didn’t find the money. So you know what they did?”

  They both watched me carefully. It was easy to act puzzled. I didn’t know where the money was, and I didn’t know if I was even supposed to answer. A story that included the words Dan and stolen hardly merited comment in my world.

  Shaw went on. “They dropped everything and started searching for your father.”

  I knew I was expected to say something. “Well, traditionally, Dan has been a lousy place to look for money. Still, I wish them luck. Sincerely.”

  “He was in Arizona,” Gladden said.

  “It’s very beautiful there, sir.”

  He pounded on his desk and stood up. “You’re going to find your father and you’re going to find the money, whether you’re in on it or not. And if you don’t, if there’s any trouble from you…” He waited and breathed through his nose a few times, and for a second I thought he was going to start counting with his hoof. “You wrecked a jeep, then went AWOL with a bullshit story about someone trying to kill you. I don’t know how long I can lock you up for that, but if you don’t cooperate fully, I can guarantee that no matter what happens to the other charges, you’ll never see a combat zone again in your life.” I realized suddenly that Gladden knew me pretty well. Some people might have considered that a pretty mild threat, but not me. And now I knew Colonel Gladden, too. He was a guy who knew where to insert the needle.

  3.

  Shaw drove. The SUV was rented because, he said, he thought the bad guys could trace a government vehicle. They had resources. I sat
beside him. Pongo and Perdy filled the backseat, two huge chiseled slabs, silent and serious, bumping their heads against the ceiling. Shaw had argued, but Gladden had insisted the two MPs accompany us, or else I was going back to the brig. I’m six foot two, but I felt like a terrier next to them. Their real names were Patterson and Pruitt. We left through the western gate; the ocean sparkling ahead was all we could see.

  I said, “Why haven’t developers stolen the base by now? Why isn’t it all condos and golf courses and ugly mansions with pillars? It wouldn’t cost much to bribe the Congress and a few bureaucrats. Certainly less than the cost of a couple of seaside lots. Every time I come out this way, I wonder how long it will be.”

  Shaw said, “Are you asking me?”

  “No.”

  “You could bribe the congressmen and bureaucrats for a rea-sonable amount. The problem would be the developers who saw they were being left out. You’d have to buy them off or include them. The pie is big but the pieces would be small,” Shaw said, speaking as if he had been thinking about it, too.

  “You think that’s it? Those zombies look ahead and say, ‘I won’t eat the body because I’m only going to get a little piece’?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think the Marines are too tough, too scary for them to take on. Makes me proud to be a Marine.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” He chuckled. He couldn’t tell if I was serious.

  “Maybe I’ll give it a try with the money I find. How much is it?”

  “Twenty-five million. We think.”

  We turned east on I-10, making for Phoenix, where, Shaw said, Dan had lived and worked for the past three years.

  “You’ve got the wrong Dan Waters,” I said. “The Dan I know never worked at anything for three years, and he certainly wouldn’t do it if he had stolen money to spend.”

  “Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think,” Shaw said.

  “I hardly know him at all.” I know Dan taught me to like this situation: they wanted me for what I knew; they thought they knew more than I did.

  Shaw laid out the background, explaining that Dan Waters had been a civilian contractor working with the Third Infantry in Iraq at the same time the money was shipped home. It looked like he either was in on the plot from the start and betrayed the gang, or found out which grave would hold the money, dug it up, and replanted the casket. I saw no reason to favor either scenario. Each was equally plausible and my stomach tensed and my breathing got short as I contemplated how perfectly this fit into what I knew of Dan. Shaw went through Dan’s criminal record, filled with charges I wasn’t aware of as well as the many I knew too well.

  Shaw had details, but I didn’t need the official version. I could see the places to skim, the ways to cheat. I could hear the schemes. Shaw brought up Dan’s most recent job, the one he left a few days ago, and my skepticism about that. I didn’t reply. I was answering other questions. What did they want with me? Who did they want me to be? A patriot? A child ashamed of his past? An ambitious officer? A greedy chip off the old block? I would give them glimpses, enough to make them praise their own wisdom in demanding my help. I was undercover again, and I liked that.

  “Maybe I don’t really know him.” Lie, lie, lie. “What do you plan to do with him when you catch him?”

  “We’ll get him to cooperate. Help us catch the others.”

  The perfect answer because it gave me the opportunity to practice keeping a straight face. Inside I was laughing and trying to remember the last time I thought of Dan as someone who might help or cooperate. “The guys who are after him, who are they?”

  “A retired colonel named Frank McColl. He runs a small company providing security to companies doing business overseas. Mainly in the Middle East.”

  “Frank McColl?”

  “Know him?”

  “I knew a guy in basic training named Shane Ayala. He had the prettiest girlfriend, stunning, and sweet, too, but he never went to bed with her. No sex. He would screw around with plenty of other girls, but no more than a deep kiss with Lucy. This went on for six months, longer than that. She asked me about it and I wasn’t the only one. One night Shane was drinking and decided the time had come to claim his prize and he showed up unannounced at Lucy’s place and found another guy there. They were on the couch. Shane went nuts on the guy, but the guy was tough and he clubbed Shane with a baseball bat. I went to visit him in the hospital. He was a mess. But I asked him why he kept Lucy waiting so long.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me to go to hell. But I’m thinking if we can get hold of Frank McColl, we might ask him. He left that money in the ground a long time. Years. At least he intended to.”

  Shaw changed the subject, asked me to make a list of towns Dan had lived in, addresses if I could remember them, friends, bosses, girlfriends. I told him a few short half-true stories about moving from place to place with Dan, between stints in foster homes or temporary parking with friends or business associates. I mentioned Lita, along with her address, because I knew she wasn’t there anymore and I knew she didn’t leave any forwarding information. I did not mention the smell of beer and cigarettes when she came home late and found me in her bed and how she let me stay there for the night. Or how, in the morning, I would wake up snuggled close to her and I would lie there, still as could be so I wouldn’t wake her. Sometimes she would sleep until noon and I pretended I slept, too, and that’s why I missed the school bus. That lasted four months. Then she brought home a man who kicked me out of the bed and I kicked him back. Lita called Dan, who showed up two miserable weeks later. There was a big fight. Dan took me with him to Nevada and pretty soon after that I was in another foster home.

  Shaw decided we would start with Dan’s most recent employer, even though he assumed McColl and his bunch would have beaten us there. “Maybe something we find there will connect to your list or spark some memory.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Good idea.” I closed my eyes and I pretended to sleep. Pongo and Perdy stayed silent as statues in the back. Maybe they pretended to sleep, too. I did not check. I wondered for a little while about ways to escape, but I, too, wanted to see what Dan left behind. The best choice was to go along until I was certain where to find Dan. I relaxed and the mirage slowly formed behind my eyes. A porch swing, shutters, those twisting mesquite trees. Movement in the house? I could not be certain. Maybe a fluttering curtain.

  4.

  The office was on the first floor in a brick two-story building near Glendale. The sign on the door said “Western Construction.” Dan’s boss, Alvarez, was caught off guard by our visit. He was a short, trim man, with his belt pulled tight. He looked like the type who watched his diet because of the cost of food. Someone had already been there, he said. He thought they were FBI. Shaw showed his ID. “They had something just like that,” the boss said.

  “Did they take his computer?”

  “No, but they spent enough time in there.”

  Shaw went into Dan’s office. Pongo and Perdy started to follow but stopped when they saw me lingering. I settled my gaze on Alvarez. He met my eyes with a kind of defiance, as if challenging me to accuse him of something. I said, “What did Dan do here?”

  “Well, lately it’s been collections, which is about all we’re doing. At first he sold jobs. We do paving. Did a lot of new developments. That was then.”

  “Good at it?”

  “He could sell.”

  “I’m his son. Dan’s son. Rollie.”

  Instead of Alvarez being surprised, he surprised me. “Oh, yeah, he mentioned you a few times. But he didn’t say anything about you being with the government. He said you were a financial guy in New York.”

  I was consoled that there was at least one lie involved. I went into Dan’s office, followed by the MPs. The computer had nothing personal on it. The drawers were barren, too. There was no appointment book. No checkbooks. Nothing with easily obtainable account numbers or passwords.

 
There were no photos on the desk or the walls. Shaw looked at me, expecting me to draw a conclusion from this. Dan would have knickknacks around his office, but only things that meant nothing to him. He’d have stuff scattered around to show he was like everyone else. Dan valued the appearance of normalcy very highly.

  “Well, we won’t find twenty-five million here,” I said.

  “I can send you back with the MPs on the next flight, Lieutenant. McColl has a big head start and who knows what he took out of here. Where would you go next?”

  I turned and walked out of the office. Pongo and Perdy flanked me. Alvarez’s door was closed. I knocked and walked in. Alvarez had a phone in his hand and pretended to be interrupted. “All done?”

  “They take a lot out of here?” I tried to sound friendly.

  “Few things. A book, a photo, but I thought that was something he just bought somewhere.” Alvarez was a lousy liar.

  “A woman?”

  “Nah, some mountains, desert, something like that.”

  Shaw and the MPs stood behind me now, in the doorway. Alvarez squirmed a bit as if he felt the walls closing in on him. I asked, “How much did he owe you?”

  Alvarez shook his head and tried to look disappointed. “Eight thousand bucks, plus.”

  “Eight thousand? Eight thousand U.S. dollars? You consider yourself a stupid man, Mr. Alvarez? You let all your employees get into you for so much?”

  “Looks like I made a mistake.”

  “And now you want the Treasury Department to believe that you stole the knickknacks and photo frames from his office to recover the money? Plan on getting about fifty bucks altogether on eBay? He owed you about, what, five hundred? Tell the truth, I might pay you off.”

  Alvarez was living in a world of take what you can get. I could see him making the calculation. “I fronted him about one thousand. But I don’t know yet how much he stole,” Alvarez answered.

  I wasn’t insulted. “He stole, but not from you. You don’t have enough to make it worth his while.”