Bob knew the secret language of these things: where praise is the standard vocabulary, Case's belief in Donny clearly went beyond that into the eloquent.
Even Donny's loss of rating order, which demoted him from corporal to lance corporal, dated 12 May 71, was empty of information. It carried no meaning whatsoever: it simply stated the fact that a reduction in rank had occurred.
It was signed by his commanding officer, M. C. Dogwood, Captain, USMC.
No Article 15s, no Captain's Masts, nothing in the record suggesting any disciplinary problems.
Whatever had happened to him, it had left no records at all.
He stood up and went to the door of the sergeant major's aide.
"Is there a personnel specialist around? I'd like to run something by him."
"I can get Mr. Ross. He worked personnel for six years before coming to headquarters."
"That'd be great."
In time the warrant officer arrived, and he too knew of Bob and treated him like a movie star. But he scanned the documents and could find nothing at all unusual except-"Now this is strange, Gunny."
"Yes, sir?"
"Can't say I ever saw it before."
"And what is that, Mr. Ross?"
"Well, sir, on this last order, the one that sent Fenn to Vietnam. See here"--he pointed--"it says "DIST: "N."
That means, distribution to normal sources, i.e. the duty jacket, the new duty station. Pentagon personnel, MDW personnel and so forth, the usual grinding wheels of our great bureaucracy in action."
"Yes, sir."
"But what I see here is odd. In parentheses '(and WNY TEMPO C, RM 4598)."
" "What would that mean?"
"Well, I'd guess Washington Naval Yard, Temporary Building C, Room 4598."
"What's that?"
"I don't know. I was twelve in 1971" "Any idea how I could find out?"
"Well, the only sure way is to go to the Pentagon, get an authorization, and try and dig up a Washington Naval Personnel logbook or phone book or at least an MDW phone book from the year 1971. They might have one over there. Then you'd just have to go through it entry by entry--it would take hours--until you came across that designation."
"Oh, brother," said Bob.
The next night, Bob drove his rented car out to a pleasant suburban house in the suburbs of America and there had dinner with his old pal the Command Sergeant Major of the United States Marine Corps, his wife and three of his four sons.
The sergeant major grilled steaks out on the patio while the two younger boys swam in the pool and the sergeant major's wife, Marge, threw together a salad, some South Carolina recipe for baked beans and stewed tomatoes. She was an old campaigner herself and Bob had met her twice before, at a reception after he had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for Kham Due-1976, four years after the incident itself, a year after he finally left the physical therapy program and the year he decided he could no longer cut it as a Marine--and the next year, when he did retire.
"How's Suzy?" she asked, and Bob remembered that she and his first wife had had something of an acquaintanceship, at that point, he'd been higher in rank than the man who was hosting him.
"Oh, we don't talk too much. You heard, I went through some bad times, had a drinking problem. She left me, and was smart to do it. She's married to a Cadillac dealer now. I hope she's happy."
"I actually ran into her last year," Marge said.
"She seemed fine. She asked after you. You've had an adventurous few years."
"I seem to have a knack for trouble."
"Bob, you won't get Vern's career in any trouble? He retires this year after thirty-five years. I'd hate to see anything happen."
"No, ma'am. I'll be leaving very shortly. My time here is done, I think."
They had a nice dinner and Bob tried to hide the melancholy that seeped into him, here was the life he would have had if he hadn't gotten hit, if Donny hadn't gotten killed, if it all hadn't gone so sour on him. He yearned now for a drink, a soothing blur of bourbon to blunt the edge he felt, and he recalled a dozen times on active duty when he and this man or a man just like this man had spent the night recalling sergeants and officers and squids and ships and battles the world over, and enjoying immensely their lives in the place where they'd been born hard-wired to spend it, the United States Marine Corps.
But that was gone now. Face it, he thought. It's gone, it's finished, it's over.
That night they went to a baseball game, Legion Ball, where the youngest boy, a scholarship athlete at the University of Virginia, got three hits while giving up only two as pitcher over the game's seven innings. Again: a wonderful America, the best America--the suburbs on a spring evening, the weather warm, the night hazy, baseball, family and beer.
"Do you miss your wife?" asked the sergeant major's wife.
"I do, a lot. I miss my daughter."
"Tell me about her."
"Oh," said Bob, "she's a rider. She's a great horsewoman.
Her mother has her riding English in case she decides to come east for college."
And off he went, for twenty uncontrollable minutes, missing his daughter and his wife and the whole thing even more. Black is black, he thought, / want my baby back.
The game was over and in triumph everybody went back to the sergeant major's house. Beer was opened, though Bob had Coke, some other senior NCOs came over and Bob knew a few, and all had heard of him. It was a good time, cigars came out, the men moved outside, the night was lovely and unthreatening. Then finally a young man showed up, trim, about thirty, with hard eyes and a crew cut, in slacks and a polo shirt. Bob understood that he was the sergeant major's oldest boy, a major at Quantico, in the training command, back recently from a rough year in Bosnia and before that an even nastier one in the desert.
Bob was introduced and they chatted and once again he encountered a young man who loved him. What good did it do if his own family didn't? But it was nice, all the same, and eventually the talk turned to his own day. He'd spent it in the DOD library in the Pentagon, where the sergeant major's pass had got him admitted, going painfully through old phone books, trying to find out what this office was.
"Any luck?" asked the sergeant major.
"Yeah, finally. Room 4598 in Tempo C in the Washington Navy Yard, it was the location of an office of the Naval Investigative Service."
"Those squid bastards," said the Command Sergeant Major.
"At least now I've got a name to go on," Bob said.
"The CO was some lieutenant commander named Bonson.
W. S. Bonson. I wonder what became of him."
"Bonson?" said the gunny's son.
"Ward Bonson?"
"I guess," said Bob.
"Well," said the young officer, "he shouldn't be too hard to find. I served a tour with the Defense Intelligence Agency in ninety-one. He was in and out of that shop."
"You knew him?"
"I was just a staff officer," he said.
"He wouldn't notice or remember me."
"Who is he?" asked Bob.
"He's now the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency."
CHAPTER thirty-six.
He watched through binoculars as the car, a black Ford sedan, arrived at 6:30 a.m. and picked up the occupant of 1455 Briarwood, Reston, Virginia. Bob followed at a distance. The lone passenger sat in the back, reading the morning papers as the car wound its way through the nearly empty streets. It progressed toward the Beltway, then followed that road north, toward M at the George Washington Parkway it surged off, westward, until it reached Langley, and then took that otherwise unremarkable exit. Bob languished back, then broke contact as the car disappeared down the unmarked road that led to the large installation that was unnamed from the road but which he knew to be the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Instead, he drove back to Reston and relocated the house. He parked on the next court over--it was in a prosperous unit of connected townhouses--and slid low int
o the seat. It took almost two hours before he figured the pattern. There were two security vehicles, one a black Chevy Nova and the other a Ford Econoline van. Each had two men in them, and one or the other showed up every forty minutes, pausing on the street in front of the house and on the street in back. At that point, one of the men walked around back, bent in the weeds and checked something, presumably some sort of trembler switch that indicated if any kind of entry had been made.
Bob marked the address and drove to the nearest convenience store. There, he called the fire department and reported a fire in the house two down on the court. By the time he got back, three trucks had arrived, men were stomping in bushes, two cop cars with flashing light bars had set up perimeter security--it was a carnival. When the black Nova arrived, an agent got out, showed credentials, conferred with the police and firemen, then went to Bonson's door, unlocked it and went in to check the house and secure it. He went around back to reset the trembler switch.
Bob went, found a place for lunch, then came back and parked a court down the line. He checked his watch to make certain neither of the patrol vehicles was expected, then walked back to Bonson's house, where he knocked on the door. No answer came and, after a bit, he used his credit card to pop the door and slipped inside.
An alarm immediately began to whine. He knew he had sixty seconds to defuse it. The sound of the device enabled Bob to find it in ten seconds, which left fifty.
Without giving it a lot of thought, Bob pressed 1-4-7 and nothing happened. The alarm still shrilled. He then hit 1-3-7-9 and the alarm ceased. How had he known? Not that difficult: most people don't bother with learning numbers, they learn patterns that can easily be found in the dark, or when they are tired or drunk, and 1-4-7, the left-hand side of the nine-unit keypad, is the simplest and the most obvious, 1-3-7-9, the four corners, is the second most obvious. He waited a bit, then slipped out the back and found the trembler switch attached to an electric junction outside the house. It blinked red to indicate entry.
With his Case knife, he popped the red plastic cone off the bulb, unscrewed the bulb, then squeezed and compressed the red cone to get it back on. Covering his tracks in the loam, he reentered the house. Soon enough the CIA security team rechecked the house on their rounds, but when the agent got out to check the trembler indicator, he did not get close enough to note the jimmied bulb.
He was tired. He'd been through a lot. He returned to the truck.
Like his codes, Bonson's home was plain. The furniture was spare but luxurious, mostly Scandinavian and leather, but it was not the home of a man whose pleasures included pleasure. It was banal, expensive, almost featureless.
One room was a designated office, with a computer terminal, awards and photos on the wall that could have been of any business executive except that they showed a furiously intense individual who could not broadcast ease for a camera but always seemed angry or at least focused.
He was usually pictured among other such men, some of them famous in Washington circles. His house was clean, almost spotless. A University of New Hampshire bachelor's and a Yale law degree hung on the wall. Nothing indicated the presence of hobbies except, possibly, a slightly fussy fondness for gourmet cooking and wines in the kitchen. But it was the house of a man consumed by mission, by his role in life, by the game he played and dominated. No wife, no children, no relatives, no objects of sentimentality or nostalgia, seemingly no past and no future, instead, simplicity, efficiency, a one-pointed existence.
Bob poked about. There were no secrets to be had, nothing that could not be abandoned. The closet was full of blue suits, white shirts and red striped ties. The shoes were all black. Brooks Brothers, five eyelets. He appeared to have no casual wear, no blue jeans, no baseball caps or sunglasses or fishing rods, no guns, no porno collections, no fondness for show tunes or electric trains or comic books. There were huge numbers of books--contemporary politics, history, political science, but no fiction or poetry. There was no meaningful art in the home, nothing soiled, nothing that spoke of uncertainty, irrationality or passion.
Bob sat and waited. The hours clicked by, then the day itself. It turned to night. It got later. Finally, at 11:30 p.m., the door opened and the lights came on. Bob heard a man hanging up his raincoat, closing the closet. He walked into the living room, took off his suit coat, loosened a tie and unbuttoned his collar. He had his mail, which included some bills and the new issue of Foreign Policy. He turned on a CD stereo player, and light classical oozed out of the speakers. He mixed himself a drink, went to the big chair and sat down. Then he saw Bob.
"W-who are you? What is this?"
"You're Bonson, right?"
"Who the hell are you!" Bonson said, rising.
Bob rose more pugnaciously, pushed him back into the chair, hard, asserting physical authority and the willingness to do much harm fast and well. Bonson's eyes flashed fearfully on him, and read him for what he was: a determined, focused man well-versed in violence. He recognized instantly that he was overmatched. He got quiet quickly.
Bob saw a trim fifty-seven-year-old man of medium height with thinning hair slicked back and shrewd eyes.
The suit pants and shirt he wore fit him perfectly and everything about him seemed unexceptional except for the glitter in his eyes, which suggested he was thinking rapidly.
"The false alarm, yeah, I should have figured. Do you want money?"
"Do I look like a thief?"
"Who are you? What are you doing here?"
"You and I have business."
"Are you an agent? Is this something over a vetting or an internal security report or a career difficulty? There are channels and procedures. You cannot do yourself any good at all with this kind of behavior. It is no longer tolerated.
The days of the cowboys are over. If you have a professional problem, it must be dealt with professionally."
"I don't work for your outfit. At least not for thirty years or so."
"Who are you?" Bonson said, his eyes narrowing suspiciously as he tried to click back to his file on thirty years ago.
"Swagger. Marine Corps. I done some work for y'all up near Cambodia, sixty-seven."
"I was in college in 1967."
"I ain't here about 1967. I'm here about 1971. By that time, you was a squid lieutenant commander, in NIS.
Your specialty was finding bad boy Marines and having them shipped to the "Nam if they didn't do what you said.
I asked some questions. I know what you did."
"That was a long time ago. I have nothing to apologize for. I did what was necessary."
"One of those boys was named Donny Fenn. You had him shipped from Eighth and I to "Nam, even though he was under his thirteen. He served with me. He died with me on the day before DEROS."
"Jesus Christ--Swagger! The sniper. Oh, now I get it.
Oh, Christ, you're here for some absurd revenge thing? I sent Fenn to
"Nam, he got killed, it's my fault? That is probably how your mind works! What about the North Vietnamese, don't they have something to do with it? Oh, please. Don't make me laugh. Another cowboy! You guys just don't get it, do you?"
"This ain't about me."
"What do you want?"
"I have to know what happened back then. What happened to Donny. What was that thing all about? What did he know?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I think the Russians tried to kill him. I think it was him they were targeting, not me."
"Ridiculous."
"There was no Russian involvement?"
"That's classified. High top-secret. You have no need to know."
"I'll decide what's ridiculous. I'll decide what I need to know. You talk, Bonson, or this'll be a long evening for you."
"Jesus Christ," said Bonson.
"Finish your drink and talk."
Bonson took a swallow.
"How did you find me?"
"I shook your Social Security number out of your service records. With a Social Se
curity number you can find anybody."
"All right. You could have made an appointment. I'm in the book."
"I prefer to talk on my terms, not yours."
Bonson rose, poured himself another bourbon.
"Drink, Sergeant?"
"Not for me."
"Fair enough."
He sat down.
"All right, there was Russian involvement. Tertiary, but definite. But Fenn could not have known a thing. He knew nothing that would make him valuable enough for the Russians to target. I went over that case, over and over it. Believe me, he could not have known a thing."
"Tell me the fucking story. I'll decide what it means."
"All right. Swagger, I'll tell you. But understand I am only doing so under what appears to be threat of physical duress, because you have threatened me. Second, I prefer to tape this conversation and the terms under which it took place. Is that fair?"
"It's already being taped, Bonson. I saw your setup."
"You don't miss much. You'd make a good field man, I can tell."
"Get to the fucking story."
"Fenn. Big handsome kid, good Marine, from Utah, was it?"
"Arizona."
"Yes, Arizona. Too bad he got hit, but a lot of people got hit over there."
"Tell me about it," said Bob.
Bonson took a drink of his bourbon, sat back, almost relaxing. A little smile came across his face.
"Fenn was nothing. We were after someone much bigger.
If Fenn had played his part, we might have gotten him, too. But Fenn was a hero. I never counted on that. It didn't seem there were any heroes left at that time. It seemed it. was a time where every man looked after his own ass. But not Fenn. God, he was a stubborn bastard!
He really ripped me a new asshole. I could have had him up on charges for insubordination! He might have spent the next ten years in Portsmouth instead of--well, instead."
Bob leaned forward.
"You don't say nothing about Donny. I won't listen to any lip on Donny."
"Oh, I see. We can't tell the truth, we just worship the dead. You won't learn anything that way, Sergeant."
"Go on, goddammit. You are pissing me off."
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