Murder at the Pentagon

by Margaret Truman

  Harrison noted the young man, too. But he wasn’t likely to hear anything they said. He was thirty feet from them, and there was the gurgle of the fountain.

  “Look, Major, I know you’re uncomfortable meeting with a reporter, and I can understand that.” Margit didn’t reply. Harrison said, “Then again, maybe I don’t understand. Half this town talks to the press on background, no quotes, no attribution. It seems to me that now that Captain Cobol is dead, there wouldn’t be any official reason to put a muzzle on you.” Again, no response. “Is there? I mean, is there any official reason not to discuss this with me?”

  Margit raised her eyebrows. “Common sense, that’s all. I’m an officer in the air force. Even though that doesn’t impinge upon my First Amendment rights, we do have protocol when it comes to releasing information.”

  “Let me ask you a question,” Harrison said. “You indicated to me when I reached you at Mackensie Smith’s house that you might have doubts that your client—is that what they’re called in the military, client?—might not have hanged himself the way the official line would have us believe. Why?”

  Margit, who’d been relaxed, now felt a tickle of nerves. She said, “I didn’t say that to you on the phone.”

  Harrison said. “No, not exactly, but your tone, and the way you stressed ‘alleged,’ said a lot more than your actual words. Are you involved in the investigation of Cobol’s death?”

  “I’ve been taken off the case.”

  “You have no continuing interest in it? Officially, that is?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Have you changed your mind?”

  “About what?”

  “About doubting whether Cobol died by his own hand.”

  Margit looked away from the reporter and focused on the water. There were certain aspects of some people’s personalities that invariably annoyed her. One was playing games, like women who use four-letter words and then put their fingers to their lips, saying “Pardon my French.” Or men who are always coming close to consummating something—personal or professional—but who keep it going rather than concluding it, never committing. But here she stood, Margit Falk, who had agreed to meet a reporter to discuss what is very much on her mind these days, but who now plays coy. Say good-bye, Margit, or tell her what you’re really thinking.

  “I don’t think Captain Cobol killed Dr. Joycelen, nor do I think he took his own life,” she said, looking directly into Harrison’s almond eyes. Cobol’s note to her was like a large weight in her purse.

  “Neither do I,” Harrison said.

  “Maybe you know more than I do,” Margit said.

  “What was Cobol like?”

  “Very nice.”

  “A good officer?”

  “I think so.”

  “Was he gay?”

  Margit hesitated. The man had been dragged through the mud in ways considerably more savage than revelations about his private sexual life. He died, accused of murdering a scientist, with no recourse, no hearings. Okay, no games. “Yes, he was,” she said.

  “Joycelen?”

  “That’s what’s been alleged. I don’t buy that.”

  “Cobol was CIA,” said Harrison.

  “Right,” Margit confirmed. “He was on liaison duty at the Pentagon. There are a lot of people from the Company assigned to the Pentagon.”

  “I thought you had regs against homosexuals in the service.”

  “We do.” Margit didn’t like the direction Harrison was taking them. She would not—could not—implicate Major Reich, or others who might have been involved in allowing Cobol to continue in the army despite knowing that his private life blatantly violated regulations. She said, “My guess is that the homosexual population in general is reflected, to some degree, by their percentage in the military.”

  “Did Cobol keep it private?” Harrison asked.

  Did she know something? Was she aware that Cobol had been found out? Reporters, Margit knew, along with lawyers, liked to ask questions to which they already had the answers. “I have to assume he had,” Margit answered.

  She looked through the water at the young father, who had lowered his head and pushed the carriage toward the glass wall overlooking the underground passageway.

  “I really should be going,” Margit said. She had a date with Foxboro at seven-thirty.

  “Sure. Have you heard that Joycelen might have been a whistle-blower?”

  “No,” Margit said, realizing at the same time that, in essence, she was on the verge of becoming one.

  “You know about Wishengrad’s hearing,” Harrison said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “I read about it,” Margit said.

  “One of our political-affairs correspondents has a source who says Joycelen was telling tales out of school.”

  “About DARPA?” Margit asked.

  “About Project Safekeep.”

  “That’s news to me,” Margit said. She thought about Foxboro.

  “Opens up some interesting possibilities, doesn’t it?” Harrison said.

  Margit chose not to answer. She said instead, “Listen, I really have to go, Ms. Harrison.”

  “Call me Louise.”

  “Okay. I wish I had more to offer you. This was wasted time for you.” How easy to pull out Cobol’s note and hand it to the reporter. She couldn’t.

  “Not at all,” Harrison said. “Just knowing that someone close to the Cobol case shares the same skepticism I have means something.”

  “Don’t read too much into what I’ve said,” Margit said.

  “I’ll try not to. Could we meet again?”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Just to talk. Your place, your time. I’ll show up whenever and wherever you say.”

  “Louise, let’s leave it this way. If I think I have something to offer you, I’ll call.”

  “Fair enough.”

  They shook hands. Margit said, “Why don’t you leave first.”

  “You’re concerned about being seen with me.”

  “I guess I am.”

  “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Major. After all, you’re not giving me operational secrets about Star Wars.”

  “Still …”

  “We might be able to do somebody some good. Cobol’s memory. Joycelen’s. The nation? Call me,” said Harrison. She walked away.

  Margit lingered a few moments. She was alone in the courtyard. She hunched her shoulders against a chill, then headed for her car on Sixth Street. As she approached it, she saw the young father with the baby carriage standing next to his car, which was parked on the opposite side of the street.

  Margit got in her Honda, sat a few moments pondering the conversation she’d had with Louise Harrison, started the engine, and slowly pulled away from the curb. The young man with the baby carriage watched her stop at the corner for a red light. Another car that had been parked on Margit’s side of the street fell in behind her as the light changed to green, and Margit turned the corner.

  The man reached inside the baby carriage, removed a pink blanket, picked up a lifelike doll, and threw both into the trunk. He collapsed the carriage and tossed it, too, into the trunk—on top of his plastic baby.

  24

  Foxboro had cooked spaghetti and made a green salad, which he and Margit ate at a small kitchen table in his Crystal City apartment. Throughout the simple meal, he’d demonstrated intense interest in her activities that day. She’d mentioned lunch with Max Lanning, and Foxboro repeatedly asked what they’d talked about. At one point Margit had laughed. “I can’t possibly remember everything we discussed,” she’d said. “We just … talked. He’s a nice young man who works for Bellis, mostly as his driver, and who seems interested in anything and everything.”

  “How come Bellis has a lieutenant as his driver? I thought enlisted men were drivers.”

  Margit again laughed. “Not in the Pentagon, Jeff. It may be that way everywhere else in the system, but in the Pentagon, lie
utenants are buck privates.”

  Now, as they sat at the table sipping coffee and eating grapefruit halves, Margit changed the subject. “I read about the hearing into Project Safekeep and Starpath. Did you know it was in the works?”

  Foxboro picked up their empty spaghetti plates, took them to the sink, and rinsed them. He said over the sound of running water, “I knew something was brewing.”

  “Tell me about it,” she said. “You must have known earlier.”

  He shut off the water, turned, and leaned against the sink. “What’s to tell? We think there’s been some hanky-panky with that weapons system, and we want to get to the facts.”

  “You must already have facts to justify a hearing, “Margit said.

  “That’s right. Hand me the salad plates.”

  She assumed he was going to rejoin her at the table, but he left the kitchen and didn’t return. She finished clearing, and found him in what would be a small second bedroom, had it been needed for that purpose. Instead, the bachelor had turned it into a home office. A desk lamp cast a muted pool of yellow light on the desktop. Through open blinds the lights of the city flickered across the Potomac. Foxboro was in his chair, his feet propped on the desk.

  “Jeff,” Margit said from behind, “is something wrong?”

  He answered without turning. “Maybe there is.”

  “Want to share it with me?”

  “Maybe what’s wrong is us,” he said.

  “Oh. Maybe you’d like to share your thoughts about that.”

  He dropped his feet to the floor and turned. “Look, Margit, I’ve got a ton on my mind. I’m being stretched six ways from Sunday, and it’s getting to me.”

  She came to the side of the desk and sat in a yellow director’s chair. “I understand that,” she said. “Are you suggesting that I’m imposing additional pressure?”

  He shrugged. “I just know I feel trapped.”

  “Trapped? By me?”

  “No, it’s just that—look, I don’t want to talk about it. Maybe that’s what’s bugging me, that we get together and we talk shop. The little bit of time I have away from the Hill, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Fine. I respect that.”

  “Then why do you keep asking me about it? About the hearing, for instance?”

  “Jeff, you spent the entire dinner pumping me about what I did today, whom I saw, what I talked about. I’m flattered you’re interested, but I’d like to think it’s a two-way street.” When he didn’t reply, she added, “Is it?”

  His answer was to leave the room. He went to the hall closet and pulled out a tan golf jacket. She stood in the living room and watched him put it on. “Are you leaving?”

  “Yeah. I need a walk. I need to be alone.”

  “Then I suppose I should leave,” Margit said.

  She wanted him to protest. He didn’t. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but no words came from him. He opened the door and left.

  Margit returned to his office and sat in the chair he’d occupied, looked across the river at the same lights he’d been watching. Did those lights have the same meaning to him that they did for her at that moment? Washington’s light show had always represented beauty to her, a kind of benign grandeur, as it did to millions of other people who lived there, or visited. But now, as she sat in the shadowed small room and gazed at the lights, they represented something dangerous and unwholesome, each light a cynical wink that taunted her, that said: You were better off where you were before. This is not a place for people with ideals, with commitment to Pollyanna concepts of fairness and decency. You don’t belong here, Margit, she could almost hear a voice saying. This place—this system—will suffocate you, just as it’s doing to your relationship with Jeff. You can’t survive it. Either be a good soldier or get out. Go to Bellis and tell him you’d like a transfer somewhere else. He’s offered you that. Take advantage of it—before it’s too late.

  She rested her elbows on the desk and tried to force order into her thinking. Surely, it was possible to inject reason into this situation—into any situation. Nothing is ever solved until the emotional quotient is replaced by hard-nosed cognitive reasoning. She’d always prided herself in having that ability. Law demanded it of you. So did flying a helicopter. She hadn’t saved her skin and accomplished those missions in Panama by allowing emotions to fly her chopper.

  She wished she’d been direct and had asked Jeff about the rumor that Joycelen might have been a whistle-blower to the Wishengrad committee. She thought of his pumping her over dinner about her day. He must have had a reason for it, but he hadn’t been direct, either. The two of them, supposedly in love (were they?) playing games with each other. Joisting and parrying, like a couple of second-year law students at a mock trial.

  She decided to leave. Jeff had made it plain he wanted to be alone. She opened a desk drawer and rummaged through supplies in search of a piece of blank paper, to leave him a note. He could let her know if he ever changed his mind. As she withdrew a sheet of white bond, several scraps of paper came up with it, including one on which was written an address, a phone number, and a series of digits: 2, 2, 5, 5, 10, 2.

  Margit stared at it. It meant nothing to her. Yet she felt it was something she’d seen before or at least should connect with. Without much thought, and wanting to be out of there before he returned, she shoved the scrap into her pocket and closed the drawer, rolled the blank page into a typewriter, and typed:

  Dear Jeff—

  I know you need to be alone at this moment, and I respect that. At the same time, Jeff, I don’t think it’s accurate, to say nothing of fair, that I should be lumped into the problems that cause you to seek seclusion.

  Perhaps I have been too aggressive in trying to find something in this relationship that evidently isn’t there, and perhaps never can be. I haven’t meant to disrupt you, or us. To the contrary, I’ve been doing a pretty good job lately of protecting us, which, as both of us know, generally ends up a futile exercise. Maybe academic is more apt, because maybe that’s what it’s been since we first met in school.

  I’m sitting here in your office feeling sorry for myself, and not very happy with my current circumstances. I’d thought that coming back to Washington represented a milestone in my life. An assignment at the Pentagon where I could use my legal training. A chance to nurture a relationship with you that has always meant a great deal to me. An opportunity to renew friendships, and to step up to the next plateau in my life. It hasn’t worked out that way. It seems that everything I touch these days fails, or dies. But there I go feeling sorry for myself again.

  I know I’ve probably bored you quoting things my father said to me when I was growing up, but I’ll add one more. He used to say that any action is better than taking no action. It wasn’t original with him. Most good psychologists offer the same advice. But it didn’t come from a psychologist. It came from him, and because it did, it has additional meaning to me.

  Col. Bellis suggested I take leave, get away, put Washington and the Pentagon and Cobol and Joycelen and everything else behind me. I may just do that, although I’m not sure that running away ever represents an answer. My experience has been that you drag with you whatever it is that churns inside. Still, at this moment sitting in your apartment, it seems an appealing and viable option.

  I once had a friend from a small town who took a job in New York City. She stood at her hotel window her first night there and proclaimed in a loud voice, “Gotham I’ll conquer you yet.” We laughed when she told me that, but the last time I heard from her, she had conquered New York City, at least to her satisfaction. I intended to “conquer” Washington, but the battle turned out to be one-sided. I feel very defeated at this moment and, like all animals, might slip away and lick my wounds.

  Enough whining. If, at some point down the road, you want to catch up again, give me a call. If nothing else, I will always consider you a good and valued friend. And, if you feel like going through with our
plans for this Saturday, I’m willing.

  She signed it, Love, Margit.

  “I really feel as though I’ve barged in on you,” Margit said to Mac and Annabel as she sat with them in their den.

  “Don’t be silly,” Annabel said. “All you’ve interrupted was a potential argument over where to take our next vacation. Mac wants to go to London—again—but I’m in the mood for white-water rafting.”

  “A regular Amazon,” Smith said, laughing. “A wild and crazy woman.”

  Margit smiled. She hadn’t wanted to impose upon them when she left Jeff Foxboro’s apartment, but it was as though a hand had led her to the phone booth and had punched in their number. They hadn’t hesitated. “You sound upset,” Annabel had said. “Come on over. I’ll put on coffee.”

  “Jeff and I broke up tonight,” Margit told them after Annabel had placed a steaming mug in her hand.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Annabel said.

  “I am, too,” said Margit. “It was coming.”

  “Mind if I ask what brought it about?” Smith put in.

  “Nothing in particular, Mac. We’d been drifting apart. Jeff was upset. He told me he thought part of his problem was us, and that he needed time alone.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily sound like a breakup,” Smith said. “We all need time alone now and then. Too much togetherness can stifle a relationship.”

  Margit smiled. “Being together too much was hardly our problem,” she said. “Maybe if we’d spent more time together, things would have gone smoother.”

  Smith leaned back and scrutinized her, a gallery visitor examining a painting. “The Joycelen-Cobol mess has a lot to do with this, doesn’t it?”

  Margit bit her lip. “Yes.”

  “Jeff wasn’t happy with your unwillingness to accept how it ended up?”

  Margit thought for a moment before answering. “Yes and no. Initially, he was critical of my involvement with the case. But now that it’s over for me, he’s been encouraging me to keep pushing.”

  “What caused that turnabout?” Smith asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “It’s still gnawing at you,” Annabel said.