“That’s it.”
“All the way from Minnesota just to use my computer?”
“All right, how about your computer and you let me buy you dinner?”
“Oh, Bo, I’d love to. But I have to pick up little Gus at day care. And then Jamie and I have an early meeting at church tonight. You wouldn’t care to baby-sit, would you?”
“No thanks. I did enough of that on Dignitary Duty. Sounds like a good life, Robin.”
“The best.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, shoot. I’m late for my workout. Let me log off.” She sat down at her computer and ended her connection with the system. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. Will that be enough time?”
“Should be.” Bo smiled. “You look good, Robin.”
“So do you, Bo. So do you.” She kissed his cheek. “Ciao.” And she left.
Bo logged on and accessed the Internet. He did a search for NOMan and came up with 427 hits. He scrolled until he found the home page for National Operations Management. He went there, then clicked on a side bar notation that read “History.”
The precursor to NOMan, he learned, was an agency within the Department of Defense called the Office of Branch Communications. Created following World War II, it was responsible for coordinating communications among all the branches of the military. Headed by Marine Colonel Woodrow (Woody) Gass, the office proved so effective that it came to the notice of Congress. On March 10, 1963, it was made a part of the General Accounting Office, its name was changed to National Operations Management, and the scope of its authority was broadened to include all areas of government service. Every division of every department was required to have an employee whose responsibility, in part, was as a liaison with NOMan.
Although the agency was officially under the aegis of GAO, the director of NOMan didn’t report to GAO’s comptroller general but was responsible instead to Congress directly. The term of appointment was the same as that for the comptroller general, fifteen years, which made the position less vulnerable to shifting political whims. Woody Gass was the first director of National Operations Management. He served in that capacity for thirty years, or two terms. When he stepped down, he was replaced by the current director, a NOMan veteran named Arlo Grieg.
In its capacity as watchdog for effective, interdepartmental communications, NOMan had been credited with saving the government billions of dollars through consistent monitoring and upgrading of communication channels. It had effected a network that, within one of the largest and most complex bureaucracies in the world, had become a model of efficiency.
This was the official line, anyway.
Bo clicked around some more, looking for anything that might shed a more unofficial light. On a Web site that called itself Big Brother Buster, he found a discussion of the budgets for several government offices, NOMan among them. According to the information presented there, NOMan didn’t operate in exactly the way its official budget indicated. Much of the operating expense of NOMan was picked up by the offices it served. Not only did each office pay a fee for service (that indispensable help with efficient communication that Bo, as an agent of the federal government for nearly two decades, had yet to see), but it also picked up the entire salary cost for the mandatory employee who served as a liaison with NOMan, employees like Donna Plante of the USDA. Therefore, any dollar amount appearing officially in the federal budget as allocated to NOMan to cover operating costs in fact represented only a small percentage of the actual money NOMan had available for its use.
It wasn’t a new idea. Bo knew the CIA had been operating that way for most of its history. He found a government Web site that gave a long list of individuals whose service to the nation included sitting on NOMan committees. Among them were representatives of the FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, WHCA, as well as a number of well-known congressional leaders.
He stumbled across a discussion of Woodrow Gass, former director of NOMan. Woody Gass appeared to be a feisty son of a gun. A marine commander in the Philippines during World War II, he’d been taken prisoner on Bataan, been on the infamous Death March, survived a year of prison camp at a place called Cabanatuan, escaped with several other prisoners, and had made his way to the Australian forces on Borneo in a stolen boat. He’d continued to serve in a distinguished manner for the rest of the war. Afterward, he was outspoken about the blundering in the Philippines. To quiet him (the discussion implied), he was put in charge of an insignificant new division that dealt with communications.
The information was interesting, but what was more interesting to Bo was the name of one of the men who’d escaped from the Philippines with Gass. Private William Dixon.
“Still at it?”
Bo looked up from the screen. Robin was back. She had her blazer slung over her arm, and there was a slight gloss to her skin.
“Good workout?” he asked.
“Great. But I wilted walking back through that damn humidity.” She eyed her desk and the chair in which Bo sat. “Get what you needed?”
“I’m not sure what I got.”
“Anything I can help with?”
“No. I’ll figure it out.” He allowed himself one final, approving look. “You’re gorgeous, you know that?”
“I do. Jamie’s a lucky guy, and he knows it.”
Bo laughed. “I’ve got to go, Robin. Take care of yourself.”
“You, too. And if you see Chris, tell him I wish him well.”
“Will do.”
They hugged briefly, then Bo headed off.
Robin was right. It was hot and humid outside the building. Bo was dripping by the time he reached the cool sanctuary of his hotel. He went to his room and laid out everything he had so far.
He had a suspicion that Senator William Dixon was involved in something darker than mere back room politics. He’d found a strong connection between Dixon and NOMan, a very low profile organization with a finger in every branch of the government. He’d discovered a wartime link between Dixon and the man who’d organized and headed up NOMan for several decades. But how this information fit into the death of Robert Lee, if it fit at all, was still unclear.
Bo checked his watch. It was still early enough that he could make one more visit.
The receptionist gave him an odd look when he stepped in.
“Mr….” She thought a moment. “…Lingenfelter.”
“You’re good,” Bo said.
“We don’t get many visitors. And almost no one who comes twice in one day.”
“I’d like to see Ms. Hansen again. And no, I still don’t have an appointment.”
“I’ll see if she’s available.” She punched in a number on her phone. “Dan, Mr. Lingenfelter is here again. He’d like to see Laura. Again.” She flashed him a playful smile. “Uh-huh. All right. Thanks.” She hung up. “Someone will be right up.”
Bo checked the fish again. They were darting around now, as if looking for something in that empty water. Bo figured it must be close to feeding time.
The door behind the receptionist opened. Ms. Laura Hansen was not who appeared. But the man who did come out was someone Bo had seen before. Although they’d passed only briefly in the Stillwater hospital after Tom Jorgenson was attacked, the man’s damaged face, the bubble of burn scars that welted his right cheek, his reconstructed right ear, all made him impossible to forget.
Bo hoped his own face was really as forgettable as Lorna Channing seemed to think.
“I’m Hamilton Gaines, Mr. Lingenfelter. An assistant director here at NOMan. I understand you have quite an interest in our office.”
“It’s an interesting office,” Bo said.
“Not many people share your view. Ms. Hansen is unavailable at the moment. I wonder if there’s something I could help you with.”
“I hope so,” Bo said. “As I explained earlier to Ms. Hansen, I’m on a little fact-finding mission for the party folks back in Pueblo. She was kind enough to give me some minutes of a meeting that our Senator Dixon attended last week. But
it’s my understanding that the senator had to leave that meeting very early. In fact, I understand that he often leaves early. I was just wondering what might pull him away while he’s here at NOMan.”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” Gaines replied.
“You don’t know the answer?”
“It’s more a security issue, Mr. Lingenfelter. Senator Dixon has been associated with this office for a very long time. We rely on his expertise significantly, particularly in areas that deal with sensitive information and security. If we know he’s here, we often ask him to sit in on a meeting when such issues are being considered.”
“Ms. Hansen seemed to be under the impression that there weren’t any meetings like that last week.”
“Ms. Hansen is responsible for public relations. She’s not necessarily aware of everything that occurs here at NOMan.”
“Of course. I wonder if it might be possible to get minutes from some of the other nonsensitive meetings that Senator Dixon was scheduled to attend recently.”
“I’d be happy to have them sent to you.”
“That’s okay. I’ll pass on it. But I’m sure the folks back home would be interested in knowing why Senator Dixon’s presence is consistently recorded at these meetings if, as I’ve been told, he often slips away.”
“That’s not an issue I can address.”
“I see. Would you mind if I asked you a personal question?”
“About my face,” Gaines said, as if that was always the question.
“Vietnam. Napalm burns.”
“I thought it was our side who dropped napalm.”
“Friendly fire, as they say. A mistake that wiped out most of my platoon. Is there anything else, Mr. Lingenfelter?”
“That wasn’t actually what I was going to ask about.”
“No? I’m sorry. What would you like to know?”
“What do you think of our senator?”
“In my opinion, a great man.”
“The folks back home will certainly be glad to hear that.”
“Please give my best to those folks. In Pueblo, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“Right.” Gaines smiled broadly but unconvincingly. “Good day, Mr. Lingenfelter.”
Outside, Bo stood on the sidewalk pondering questions that lay on him even more oppressively than did the heat of the afternoon sun. What was Hamilton Gaines doing at the hospital in Stillwater? And was there a connection between Tom Jorgenson and NOMan?
He looked back at the Old Post Office. NOMan is an island, Robert Lee had noted on his chalkboard. Lee had purposely distorted the quote to fit the truth. NOMan had done its best to secure a place in the vast, bureaucratic ocean, a place isolated from general knowledge and public scrutiny. Bo sensed something dark and creepy beneath the organization’s mundane exterior. Whatever that darkness was, it spread out far beyond the agency’s office, beyond even the capital itself. In a hospital room a thousand miles away was a man Bo had always admired greatly. Now he wondered if Tom Jorgenson lay in the shadow of that darkness, too.
He had to hit three used bookstores before he found what he wanted, a copy of Jorgenson’s autobiography, The Testament of Time. Several years had passed since he’d read it. This time around he’d be looking at it with a different eye.
Bo knew of a cyber café near Dupont Circle. He grabbed a taxi and in fifteen minutes was on the Internet again, calling up the Web sites he’d found earlier using Robin’s computer. He printed out the information he felt might be useful, then did a search with the terms Thomas Jorgenson and NOMan. He got no hits. He tried various combinations but came up with nothing pertinent. Next he searched using William Dixon and Philippines. He got the whole story. Bataan. The Death March. Cabanatuan. The escape and sea journey in a stolen boat. He got something else, too. The names of all the men who’d escaped with Dixon and Gass. One by one he searched them on the computer.
Four of them had served very long terms in Congress. Two of them were still there. One of the men had been an assistant director of the CIA before establishing a consulting firm. One had been an assistant for national security to a previous president. One had died in the war. The final man was someone named Herbert Constable. He’d been a cryptographer for the army, stationed in Manila at the outbreak of the war. He claimed to have broken the Japanese code prior to Pearl Harbor and to have notified his superiors of the impending attack. He died in a mental institution in 1950.
Bo printed out all this information as well, gathered up everything, and left. Back in his hotel room, he grabbed a Heineken from the room refrigerator, lay all the material out on the table, and looked things over carefully. It was on his third pass that he caught two small, but important, details he’d missed earlier.
One: The man who’d been an assistant director for the CIA was named James J. Hammerkill. The company he’d established after leaving the government was Hammerkill, Inc., a security consulting firm that now employed Jonetta Jackson, the only eyewitness to Robert Lee’s death. Bo thought about Jackson, a strong woman, trained to be capable of killing. It wasn’t a huge leap of logic to speculate that she might have been more involved in Robert Lee’s death than as a mere witness. On that isolated inlet, a small army could have been involved, and no one would have been the wiser.
Two: Senator William Dixon had been one of the two sponsors of the bill that created NOMan. His cosponsor had been the then freshman senator from Minnesota, the Honorable Thomas Jorgenson.
Bo lay down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. Jonetta Jackson. Hamilton Gaines. William Dixon. These were people who, in the service of their country, had placed their lives in jeopardy. They deserved to be honored. Yet they were involved in an organization that was not at all what it seemed and that may have been responsible for the murder of Robert Lee. To what end did they betray their honor, if indeed betrayal it was?
That was a question Bo couldn’t answer, but he was pretty certain he knew who could. He used the hotel phone, called Northwest Airlines, and made a reservation on a flight the next morning that would take him back to Minnesota. Then he picked up The Testament of Time and began to read.
chapter
thirty-seven
As the 747 dropped low over the Minnesota River valley and Bo saw the wetlands sliding beneath him, he was, as always, happy to be home. He took a shuttle to the remote lot where he’d parked his car and from there drove directly to the St. Croix Regional Medical Center in Stillwater. It was late morning when he arrived. Tom Jorgenson was awake. The stroke had left him weakened, particularly on the right side of his body, but no permanent damage had been done. He greeted Bo with a smile, albeit a lopsided one. The black around his eyes that the E.R. doctor had called battle signs had faded to the point where the shadows simply made him look exhausted.
“Invitation to the White House,” Jorgenson said. He spoke slowly.
Bo sat down beside the bed. “I’ve been there a lot of times, but never as a guest.”
“How’s Clay?”
“I’d say he’s having a tough time right now.”
Jorgenson nodded gravely.
Bo held up the copy of Jorgenson’s autobiography that he’d purchased in D.C. “A fine book, Tom. Just finished rereading most of it.”
“Nothing better to do?”
“I was especially intrigued with the section in which you discuss your experience on the U.S.S. Indianapolis during World War Two. When it was torpedoed and sank, nearly a thousand men went into the ocean, is that correct?”
“Nine hundred.”
“Without lifeboats, food, or water. After four days, after countless shark attacks, after the effects of exposure, only what, three hundred survived? It must have been a nightmare.”
“It was hell.”
“In the book, you blame the military command. A Japanese submarine was in the area, but that information was never communicated to the ship’s captain. After the torpedoes hit, the ship’s distress signa
l was ignored. And nobody seemed to notice or to care that the Indianapolis was long overdue for docking.”
Jorgenson shook his head. “Criminal neglect.”
“You were bitter.”
“A waste of fine men.”
“Still bitter?”
Jorgenson seemed surprised by the question. “What are you getting at?”
“Do you know a man named Hamilton Gaines?”
Jorgenson’s eyes, only tired before, grew wary.
“Now there’s a man with plenty of reason to be bitter,” Bo said.
“Senator William Dixon, too. What do you suppose men like that do to deal with all that bitterness? Do they maybe find ways to get even?”
Jorgenson waited. “Some of them,” he finally replied.
“Not all?”
Jorgenson shook his head. “Not all.”
Bo leaned over the edge of the bed. “Tell me about NOMan.”
Jorgenson didn’t reply.
“Did you know that while you were in a coma, Hamilton Gaines was here, asking questions about you?”
Jorgenson’s face, already the color of biscuit dough, went even whiter.
“That’s right,” Bo said. “What do you suppose that was about? Could it be NOMan was afraid that in your weakened state you might give away secrets?”
Bo moved even closer, so that as he spoke his breath rippled the casing of the pillow.
“Don’t play dumb, Tom. You cosponsored the legislation that created NOMan. You and I both know that what NOMan appears to be and what it is are two very different things. NOMan scares me. And looking at you right now, I’m guessing it scares you, too. Talk to me.”
Jorgenson closed his eyes. “I don’t know anything.”
“NOMan assassinated Robert Lee.”
The blue eyes opened a crack.
“I’m certain of it, Tom. I just don’t know why. I think more people are going to die, but unless I can figure NOMan’s motive, I don’t know who those people are or how to help them. I need answers and I need them now.”
Jorgenson spoke in a voice quieter than could be accounted for by his weakness alone. “I can’t help. NOMan and I parted ways a long time ago.”
The Devil’s Bed Page 26
