Official Privilege

by P. T. Deutermann

  There was an octagonal brick patio in the center of the garden just big enough to contain a small, circular wrought-iron table and four chairs whose cushions undoubtedly harbored an interesting ecology all of their own. Two ancient but wonderfully high brick walls running down each side of the twenty-eight-foot-wide lot provided a sense of real privacy.

  There was a back wall that ran parallel to an alley between the row of houses on Prince Street and the rest of the block. His neighbors on either side had much larger houses and gardens, complete with some massive old oaks whose overhanging shade and company Dan could share without losing any space, at a cost of dealing with cubic yards of leaves in the fall. His dad had installed two real gaslights in the corners of the garden area, which Dan used to attract the hordes of summer bugs on those evenings he wanted to sit outside. But the Washington springtime was wonderfully free of insects, and the cool, Lambent air in the garden was conducive to the digestion.

  He decided to aid and abet said digestion with a glass of Courvoisier from a decanter secreted in a stone hibachi on the edge of the patio.

  As he sat in the gathering darkness, he thought about Grace Snow. He conjured up her face, and some fleeting images of expensive-looking clothes and shoes.

  Other than that one night at the restaurant, she had operated behind a facade of intelligent reserve—strictly business. She was undoubtedly frustrated with her status at NIS but strangely unaware of how much resentment her socioeconomic status must have generated in the ranks of the workaday civil service. A house in Georgetown, a late-model BMW, those clothes, and degrees from two prestigious private universities were the attributes of an upper-level political appointee at State, not a GS-14 or even 15 down in the trenches of the federal bureaucracy. Dan had been around midlevel civil servants for most of his naval career. He knew that many of the Washington bureaucrats did not have a college degree, and that they were more likely to live in Dale City or Herndon than in Georgetown, along with a working wife and a mountain of debt.

  So why the hell did she stay? She did not get along with the ways of the bureaucracy and was vocally impatient with turf fights and all the other elements of internecine warfare civil serpents found to be perfectly normal and even interesting. Given her education, she was theoretically capable of contributing a lot more to society in civilian life than she ever could as a government worker.

  As he sipped the cognac, he considered an even more interesting question. Grace Ellen Snow was a very attractive woman. Why was he reluctant to do what any normal guy would have done by now—that is, call her for a date? He had been almost ambivalent about his intentions to call her during yesterday’s parting on the Pentagon steps. Could it be that, after six years, he still had not recovered from the loss of his wife, Claire?

  And did that mean he preferred wallowing in his comfortable pond of self-pity to engaging an attractive, intelligent, hell, even wealthy young woman?

  Something slithered along the margins of the shrubbery and he smiled into the darkness. The bush Nazi would be skipping up the brick walk at the speed of heat over such a sound. But maybe his unkempt garden was a fitting metaphor for his personal life, his outside the-Navy life: a ragged, unattended, almost random sprawl of not very interesting shrubbery, somewhat gone to seed, alive with the seasons, asleep in the winter, and going nowhere in particular, but nonetheless contented in its existence. It wasn’t as if he was completely dead inside when it came to women: He still appreciated the passage of an attractive woman going down the E-ring corridor, and Grace stretching in her running togs had been cause for a second look. But whenever he contemplated the effort of going back into the dating-and-mating game, his inner self immediately said to hell with it.

  His marriage to Claire had been entirely joyous. He was beginning to understand as he looked around at the marriages of many of his contemporaries in the Navy, that the unalloyed happiness he remembered with Claire was due at least in part to the fact that it had been tragically brief, unburdened by the pressures and strains of children, mediocre Navy pay, and the long separations caused by sea duty. He also understood that, at his age, the women with whom he would normally associate were typically focused on a single purpose: collaring a mate.

  After what had happened to his wife, Dan was not that anxious to try it again. And the Navy, with its extended terms of sea duty and soon, command, offered the perfect excuse to maintain his present course.

  Because it guaranteed that every two or three years, just as he was getting bored with his current assignment, he would move on to the next.

  Maybe he was just getting lazy in his old age. Grace Ellen Snow was perhaps a complication he did not need. And yet, now that the Hardin thing was subsiding, he might just call her. Was she worth the trouble?

  Probably. Was he worth her trouble? Ah, now there was a question. So call her. will. But not tonight. Next week.p>

  On that note, he finished his cognac and went inside.

  At noon on Friday, Dan was finishing a sandwich at his desk when the yeoman told him the 06 EA wanted to see him. Dan groaned. Captain Manning had already called down twice complaining about a staff package that Snapper had sent up during Dan’s absence. Snapper had made the basic error of writing down the simple, military truth about one of State’s proposals regarding foreign military sales, which truth was at odds with current Navy policy, as directed by current Defense Department policy. Since the issue had originally been Dan’s before he had gone off to Philadelphia, Snapper had quietly neglected to change the name at the top of the staff paper before sending it up the line, and the EA now wanted to share his thinking with said name.

  Dan wolfed down the rest of his sandwich and got his uniform jacket. He sought some sympathy from Captain Summerfield, but the captain was less than interested.

  He walked up the E-ring to the front office, where Manning treated him to a three-minute wait while he went through the elaborate drill of placing a phone call for the DCNO to another admiral. Since it was a three star calling a two-star, protocol demanded that the three-star’s EA call the two-star’s EA, ask if his great man was available to speak to the other’s great man.

  The two-star’s EA would get the junior admiral on the phone, and then the three-star’s EA would put him on hold, and go in and get the senior admiral to pick up his phone. After he had orchestrated what seemed to Dan like an interplanetary connection, Manning listened for a few seconds on his muted handset to make sure that the great men were indeed speaking and that there was nothing juicy to record, then hung up and handed Dan the offending staff package.

  “This is unacceptable; you know full well we can’t send anything so …

  so declarative up to the CNO.

  I’ve already talked to the CNO’s EA and he told me not to bother. So rework it, and conform it to policy, please. By the way, did you actually write this?”

  “My name’s on it.”

  “So it is, although that’s not an answer, is it, Commander?

  Oh, well, you’re an owner, if not an author.

  There’s another thing.”

  “Sir?”

  “Rear Admiral-select Randall would like to see you, On the Hardin matter, I believe.”

  “I’ll go right up.”

  Dan left the front office, carrying the staffing folder under his arm as if it were a miscreant child. He would

  have a word or three with 614’s resident jungle bunny when he got back.

  He could just imagine Snapper trembling at the thought. He walked up the E-ring corridor past OP-04, the office of the DCNO for Logistics on the left, and the Visiting Flag Officer suites on the right. He waved at Captain Mccarthy, the OP-04 EA, who was the only friendly executive assistant up on Elephant’s Row. Probably because he was an aviator.

  The Vice Chief of Naval Operation’s outer office seemed to be actually smaller than O6’s, with much more space being devoted to clerical operations than visitors. Both Randall and the VCNO’s personal aide sat at
their desks like mannequins in full uniform, coats on and buttoned.

  The ornate mahogany door to Admiral Torrance’s inner office was closed.

  Dan noticed that the clerical staff were all women petty officers, and all very good-looking women at that. He also noticed that no one greeted him as he came into the front office.

  He approached Randall’s desk, where the EA sat reading through a staffing package. Randall ignored him for a full minute, and Dan was careful not to look over at the aide as if asking for help. The aide was a supercilious lieutenant well known among Opnav staffers as being promising raw material for the national penile-implant program. Dan did not want to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that he was being treated like a truant schoolboy by the EA. More than one commander on the staff looked forward to seeing that lieutenant in the fleet one day.

  After another full minute, Randall put down the staffing folder and looked up at Dan.

  “Yes, Commander?”

  “Captain Manning said you wanted to see me, Captain?”

  “Do I? Do you have a name?”

  “I’m Commander Dan Collins, Op-Six-fourteen, sir.”

  Randall stared at him for a few seconds. Dan knew damn well that Randall knew who he was. This was just part of the game: I’m a terribly important EA, very busy, couldn’t possibly know everyone’s name, have to deal with so-o-o many people, you see. Dan had been about to prompt him, to mention the Hardin case, but he kept his silence. If his lordship here couldn’t remember, Dan would happily go back to 614 and do something useful, like jump in Snapper’s shit.

  “Ah, yes,” Randall said finally. “Commander Dan.

  You worked on that murder investigation, the what’shis-name case.”

  Dan noticed that some of the petty officers had stopped their fierce concentration on their work at the word murder.

  “The Hardin case, yes, sir,” Dan said. “But I understand that’s gone back over to NIS. I’ve turned in the summary report to Captain Manning.”

  “Yes, I know that,” Randall said, leaning back in his chair, which was when Dan saw his investigation folder on Randall’s desk. He saw the barest hint of a smile cross Randall’s face, but it was quickly erased.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. There’s not very much real substance in this report. What do you think actually happened to Hardin, and why?”

  “We didn’t get that far, Captain Randall. We suspect that he didn’t end up in the battleship under his own volition, and that he was alive for a while after he had been bolted into that boiler. Why he was killed, or by whom? We have no idea.”

  “And few prospects for finding out, it would seem to me.”

  “Yes, sir. The incident is two years cold, and there was nothing immediately visible in his record to indicate a reason for murder. But I think we barely scratched the surface.”

  “You keep saying ‘we.’ “

  “Yes, sir, Miss. Snow of the NIS and I. I assume you remember Miss.

  Snow? From the meeting—”

  “Yes, of course I remember Miss. Snow. And the NIS’s objections to having Opnav involved in the first place. We are fully briefed up here, despite what the staff might think. I just was wondering if there was anyone else involved in the investigation effort besides you and this Miss. Snow.”

  Dan’s mind conjured up the image of Captain Vann, but for some reason he did not want to bring Vann into this conversation. The yeomen were listening hard now, but Randall put them back to work with a quick glare in their direction.

  “No, sir, just the people we interviewed,” Dan said.

  Which was partially true. The notion that Grace might keep on with the Hardin case was also something Dan instinctively did not want to share with this man.

  “Very well,” Randall said. “NIS has an advance copy of this. We will now forward it formally to them.

  They’ve assured me that they will pursue the matter with all deliberate speed. You may go.”

  As Dan started to leave, Randall raised his left hand, index finger poised in the air. “One more thing, Commander.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “As far as you are concerned, this matter is concluded, understood?”

  Randall lowered his finger, pointing it at Dan like a gun.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And a matter that deserves the exercise of your complete discretion.

  Admiral Torrance is someone who really appreciates discretion, and the converse is also true, understood?”

  “Yes, sir. Understood.”

  “Very well, Commander. That’s all.”

  Dan got out of there, aware of a dampness around his collar as he headed back down the corridor to 614 with the staff package under his arm. The matter is concluded.

  Stay away from the Hardin case. The vice chief expects the exercise of your complete discretion, so keep your frigging mouth shut or we will severally squash you. Yes, sir, clear as a bell, sir. What the hell do I tell Grace, sir? And why does this guy want this case under such tight wraps? He decided he better back brief Summerfield on this conversation.

  on friday afternoon, Grace returned to her house from her weekly run to Neam’s, the local posh grocery store over on Wisconsin Avenue. She put away the groceries and then checked her answering machine, which was flashing. She looked at her watch: It was just past 4:15. They hadn’t missed close of business by much, she thought. She called up the message, expecting Doug Englehardt’s voice. But it wasn’t.

  “Miss. Snow, this is Captain Rennselaer, executive assistant to Admiral Keeler, Director NIS. We’ve been apprised by Mr. Englehardt of the Policy Division that you wish to resign from your position with the NIS.

  The admiral has authorized me to accept your resignation, effective this afternoon. Since you are on leave, I have instructed the director of Career Services to clean out your desk and personal effects. These will be shipped to you at your home address on Monday morning. We request that you return your NIS credentials and weapons permit by traceable means as soon as possible. You do, of course, have the option of seeking another appointment within the civil service at your current grade, and you may contact the appropriate civil service office to begin that process. Your performance records and other administrative data will be forwarded for disposition.

  I’ve directed Career Services to confirm all of this in writing, of course, which you should receive at the beginning of next week. We thank you for your loyal and dedicated service at the Naval Investigative Service.

  Goodbye.”

  Stunned, Grace sank slowly into her desk chair. What in the hell had happened? Had Doug not transmitted her offer? Had he really just gone up there and said Grace Snow was ready to resign? Or had Doug played it straight and this was Rennselaer playing hardball? By not submitting anything in writing, and by relying on a back-channel approach through Englehardt, she may have walked into a trap. And she knew that she was vulnerable, having burrowed in from a political appointment to a GS position. But as her emotions tilted from initial shock through apprehension to bewilderment, she also experienced a growing sense of anger. Okay, people, you want to play hardball, I’ll go to the Merit Service Board and toss a grenade into the civil service grievance system and show you some hardball of my own. But as quickly as the anger came, it melted away as soon as she allowed the cold light of reality to illuminate her situation. The deal she had offered was not something she could hold them to, because it would have circumvented civil service regulations. She had acknowledged that she would resign, albeit in sixty days.

  They had simply pocketed her willingness to leave and advanced the date.

  She certainly couldn’t claim to be desperately happy there—shunted off to a nonjob after a series of acrimonious arguments with her boss in Policy, where she had been dead right on the issue but politically off base. In the context of Washington bureaucracies, such behavior made one extremely vulnerable.

  And her appointment at NIS had been thr
ough the good offices of a friend at Justice. If someone wanted to get nasty, the case could be made that her job was the result of improper influence, that the “competition” for the job in the first place had been a farce. The fact that most civil service job competes were a farce was beside the point: If someone wanted to make the case, she would lose. Face it, kiddo: If they want you out in this town, they can squeeze you out, especially if someone jiggered the system to get you in in the first place.

  She picked up the phone to call Englehardt but then put it down after only a few rings, realizing that is was after 4:30 on a Friday. No one in this town would answer a government phone after 4:30 on a Friday, except maybe those poor fools over at the Pentagon, in their zeal to demonstrate their dedication to duty. That gave her an idea: Call Dan.

  She picked up the phone again.

  And tell him what? That you followed his suggestion and walked into a trap?

  That god damned Rennselaer had lived up to his reputation.

  She had often visualized the EA sitting like a spider up there outside the admiral’s office, with strands of his web reaching into every nook and cranny of the NIS headquarters. He must have felt the vibrations of vulnerability as soon as she made the pitch to Englehardt, then lifted the essential kernel out of what Englehardt was saying—that she’s willing to go. Discarding all the rest, he told the admiral that the problematical Ms. Snow has finally seen the light and was willing to resign. Yes, sir, I’d recommend we pocket this, sir. Today, sir. Fine, sir. I’ll make it happen, sir.

  The dial tone erupted into a series of angry beeps in her hand and she put the phone down again.