Cold Glory

by B. Kent Anderson

  The Judge turned off the television and sat back in silence. The stage was being set for the Glory Warriors. Grant and Lee’s original vision, as articulated at Appomattox, would be realized. Even more important, his father’s vision would become real. He was going to save the country he loved—that his father and grandfather had loved. Everything in the Judge’s life—law, the military, the political system, business—had been about arriving at this point.

  At seventy-one, and with his father dead for more than thirty years, the Judge still heard the old man’s voice at times, as clearly as he’d heard the birdsong when he walked around his property earlier. The Judge wondered what his father would think of him now.

  CHAPTER

  14

  “Dr. Journey! The document, now!”

  Journey saw Pete Parsons’s blood spurting, saw himself throwing up his hands as the young officer’s body fell toward him. He heard the shots, felt himself diving into the police car, flooring the accelerator. He felt the sick crunch as the body of the gunman bent against the force of the oncoming car.

  And then he was in another car on a highway in the bright winter California sunshine, and he was crawling around in the back of the station wagon, rolling a baseball back and forth. The family was going to visit Uncle Darren in Westminster, who lived very close to Anaheim Stadium, and who had been trying to teach his nephew to throw a curveball. Then there was a crash and the car was sliding sideways. Another impact, then another, the car shooting around in different directions. He felt himself being tossed from side to side. Glass was breaking, the world was tilting, his mother screaming, his father fighting the wheel. Danny and Mark were yelling, Mark reaching over the seat toward him, fingers outstretched … and then he was falling free.

  Journey woke up bathed in sweat, the sheets balled in his hands, his nails digging half-moon shapes into his palms. He was breathing hard, his heart thundering. He noticed that his legs were shaking.

  He hadn’t dreamed of his family in at least fifteen years. Journey closed his eyes again, but all the dreams—both of his family and of the parking lot at SCCO—were gone, wiped clean from his brain. Still, he’d killed a man. A man had lived and breathed and walked, and now he was dead because of Journey’s actions.

  I killed a man.

  A man who was shooting at me.

  A man who wanted something I have.

  Dr. Journey! The document, now!

  Journey made himself get out of bed, put on coffee, showered, and dressed. Within a few minutes, the door to Andrew’s room opened and the boy walked out, his thick hair sticking up in all directions.

  “Good morning,” Journey said. “How you doing, big boy?”

  Andrew hummed a little, then smiled, and Journey’s heart nearly broke—he looked so much like Amelia that it still startled him at times, especially when he smiled.

  “Come on, Andrew.” He steered his son into the bathroom, holding his breath against the smell of Andrew’s urine. He would put the pajamas and all Andrew’s sheets and blankets in the washer in a few minutes, as he did every day. He got the wet pajamas off him and dressed him in sweatpants and a loose-fitting shirt for a day at home.

  Andrew was growing fast. He’d probably be taller than his father within another couple of years. Will I still be changing diapers then? Journey thought, then chased that from his mind: This is the way it is, at least for now.

  The two of them had breakfast; then Journey took Andrew for a walk and back home to do puzzles, his hand over his son’s as they put the pieces in place. He knew he was distracted and that Andrew could tell, and after a while he patted his son’s hand and said, “You do it for a while.”

  Journey wondered about the phone call he’d made yesterday. When would Meg Tolman from the Research and Investigations Office check her messages? Someone should be calling him, better yet coming to see him, and soon.

  Assuming they don’t think I’m a nutcase.

  He took out the G.W. pins and found the little notch on the back of the newer one, the one he’d taken off the dead man Tuesday. He ran his hands over it, as if the metal could tell him something.

  “Maybe it can,” he said, and turned to his computer. In less than a minute, he’d found the Web site for the American Academy of Jewelry Engravers.

  SERVING FINE JEWELERS SINCE 1922, read the banner headline.

  Journey navigated around the site. It was the standard professional association site, with mission statements, services to members, how to apply for membership, a page of FAQs. He clicked that link and scanned the list. At the bottom was a link to a page listing the academy’s 108 member companies.

  He poured himself another cup of coffee, then returned to his computer and thought for a moment about how to narrow the parameters of the search. The AAJE had existed only since 1922, so there was no way to link to the G.W. of 1865. Still, he reasoned, if G.W. was a secret society formed in the Civil War era, and had existed in some form until now, perhaps the group started using a jeweler for its pins and continued with the same company for a long time. It was a starting point. Journey began clicking links to AAJE member sites—at least those who actually had a presence on the Web—and began looking for companies that had been in business for over a century.

  He reached for the phone, then pulled his hand back. Sunday, he thought. Most of the jewelers wouldn’t be open. He would start making phone calls first thing tomorrow morning.

  I’ll find you, he thought. Whatever you are, G.W., I will find you.

  CHAPTER

  15

  The wedding reception in Chevy Chase was as advertised, socially and musically lacking. Tolman played some jazz standards, a couple of movie love themes, and lots of filler. She worked in a few bars of the theme from the old Perry Mason TV series, but no one seemed to notice.

  No one except her father, that is. Ray Tolman had driven her to the gig and stayed through the whole thing, sitting in a chair ten feet away and listening to every note. He applauded at the end of every piece, which made all the other wedding guests look at him, and then a few of them applauded as well. That made his daughter smile.

  Still, she was not at her best. Her worlds kept spilling into each other, sitting at the keyboard while she chased thoughts of Nick Journey and the anonymous assassins whom the Pentagon insisted had been dead for several years. Her father drove her back toward Washington from the suburbs, and she tried to enjoy just being in his presence for a while. There weren’t many words between them—there rarely were—but it was an easy silence, not stiff or tense. They would talk when they had something to talk about. They listened to the radio, with news of Speaker Vandermeer’s murder on every station.

  “That’s the damnedest thing,” Ray Tolman said after a few miles.

  “Vandermeer?”

  “He was a crusty old fart, but to get blown away like that … it’s a shame. First Speaker in history to be killed in office.”

  Meg closed her eyes. “You ask the average American on any given day who the Speaker of the House is, and I bet they couldn’t tell you. But now they’ll remember this one.”

  “When did you get so damn cynical?”

  “I come by it naturally. You ever meet Vandermeer?”

  “A couple of times when Clinton went up to the Hill.” Ray Tolman shrugged. “He’s no better or worse than any other Congressman.”

  When they crossed south into the District on Connecticut Avenue, Meg Tolman told her father, “Just drop me at the office, okay?”

  Ray Tolman, a big man, muscular at fifty-eight, bald on top with close-cropped gray fringe, glanced sideways at her. “It’s Sunday and you just played for two hours. Take it easy for a while. I can make you some dinner.”

  “Dad, if I want bad cooking, I can do that myself. I have some things to catch up on.”

  “It’s Sunday, Meg.”

  “‘There’s no such thing as Sundays in my job.’ Who do I remember saying that when I was a kid?”

  “I wa
s on personal protective detail. It’s a little different.”

  “Not so different. Just because you protected three presidents and I sit at a computer, what’s so different? The job is what it is. I heard that one a few times, too.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” Ray Tolman said, but he was smiling. “Stop quoting my words back at me.”

  “See, I was listening when I was a teenager.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I’m too old to protect anyone now. Deputy assistant directors only protect spreadsheets, and since I don’t know a damn thing about spreadsheets, that is a bit of a problem.”

  His daughter punched him on the arm. “Now that’s bullshit. You’re in better shape than most of the guys on the detail now, I suspect. But be that as it may, don’t give me that ‘I’m too old’ crap. Everyone in the Service drives a desk at some point, and you might still get promoted up to an assistant directorship.”

  “No, I won’t, because I don’t kiss anyone’s ass, and I’m too old—don’t look at me like that, Margaret—to start. And I really don’t care.”

  Meg looked at him again. I really don’t care.

  Yes, you do, she thought. You care more about a lot of things than you let on. She found herself thinking of the only time she’d ever seen her father cry, in the hospital the day of the crash. She was relatively unscathed herself, aside from a bump on the head. Her mother had gone through the windshield and into the Potomac. Her father was with President Clinton at Camp David when he got the call. The president himself called later in the day to see how Ray Tolman was. By that time, her father had calmed himself, but she remembered sitting with him in the ER and watching him cry.

  Everyone around him, even the president of the United States, kept telling him they were sorry for his loss—meaning her mother, of course. Only Meg understood that her father cried not because his wife was dead, although he certainly grieved. But he cried because of what his daughter had told him about those last few minutes. He cried not only for Janet Tolman, his manic-depressive wife who refused to take her medication, but he cried for his daughter as well, who would forever carry her mother’s last minutes with her.

  “I really don’t,” Ray Tolman said. “And it’s not going to bug me to drive my desk into retirement. Four more years, and I’m going fishing.”

  “You don’t even like fishing, and if the fish get one look at that bald head, they’ll all swim away as fast as they can go.”

  “That’s cruel, Meg.”

  She smiled. “It certainly is. Just drop me at the office.”

  Ray Tolman waited a moment. “Something’s going on with you. I could tell even when you were playing.”

  “Yeah. Kind of an interesting case.”

  “Hmm, that’s a change for RIO.”

  “Tell me about it. You ever have any trouble with DOD?”

  “The Pentagon? Never had to deal with them much, thank God. What’s up?”

  She shook her head, thinking of her call to the Pentagon yesterday. “I’m not sure yet. Probably just a mistake.”

  “Yours or theirs?”

  “Maybe both. Maybe neither.”

  “Ah. They’ve turned you into such a bureaucrat.”

  “But I’m a bureaucrat who can play Rachmaninov.”

  “Point taken.”

  They reached her office building, and her father pulled his Crown Victoria to the curb. “Thanks for coming today, and for the ride,” Meg said.

  Her father shrugged. “I haven’t heard you play in a while. You should learn some Beatles songs.”

  She laughed. “Say hi to Granddad for me.”

  “Yeah, I’m headed out to see him now. Probably take him some dinner. He’s not that wild about the food at the assisted-living place. Imagine that.”

  She watched as the long black car—he’d been driving government cars for so long, even his own personal vehicle looked like one—pulled away from the curb. A little uncomfortable at times, a little lost at being in the gray area between middle and old age, but he was trying. He always tried. She envisioned a stone marker in a cemetery not far from here: RAY TOLMAN. HE TRIED. There were worse epitaphs. She smiled a little at that.

  * * *

  The RIO office suite was empty. Tolman was slightly surprised that Rusty Hudson wasn’t in, but even he went home sometimes. She drifted down the hallway, flipping on lights as she went. In her office, she tossed her bag on the spare chair and kicked off her shoes. She booted up her computer and let it cycle through the start-up routine. “Come on, come on,” she said, restless to get started. “I don’t have all fucking day.”

  Attempting to log in to the Pentagon database, she again found herself locked out. No surprise, given what had happened yesterday, but she still didn’t like it. She folded her hands together, interlocking her fingers. Tolman sat still, replaying the brief conversation with Meares yesterday.

  “Those two men were Army Rangers who were both killed in action in Iraq in 2006.”

  Tolman leaned forward and began working her mouse and keyboard. The U.S. Army Rangers were an elite unit, and in five minutes, she knew that there were only three posts where Rangers were based: Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia; Fort Lewis, Washington; and Fort Benning, Georgia.

  Next, she accessed a Web site called Iraq Coalition Casualties, one of many that listed casualty reports, sorted not only by name, but also by date of death, unit, cause, and place of death. She started her search with Hunter Army Airfield. Ten soldiers stationed there had died in Iraq. None were listed as part of the Seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment. She went up the list to Fort Benning. Sixty-six from there were killed in action. Seven were Rangers. She scanned the dates: four of them were killed in 2003, two in 2005, one in 2007.

  “Okay, then,” she said. The office was feeling warm, and she opened the top button of her white blouse.

  Fort Lewis had seen 179 of its soldiers killed in Iraq. Only six were Rangers. But four of them had died in 2006, two of them in March in Ramadi, the other two in August in Taji.

  Tolman clicked on the name of the first March soldier and was instantly taken to Defense Link, the official DOD news-release site. A two-sentence statement reported the deaths of the two soldiers. Their names, ages, and hometowns were listed below, along with a contact phone number at the Pentagon for Army Public Affairs. A similarly worded statement was online for the August deaths.

  “Dead end,” Tolman said, staring at the screen. She tapped a bare foot on the floor, humming a few bars of the Perry Mason theme.

  Tolman went back to the Iraq Coalition Casualties Web site, then copied and pasted the date the March soldiers died. She did a search for the date, cross-referenced with “Iraq deaths.” Dozens of references came back, online news stories about that day’s fighting in Ramadi. The Associated Press, HNC, NPR, the online editions of all the major newspapers … there were pages and pages. Tolman read a few of them and came away with a pretty good feel for the battle where the men had died.

  She did the same search for the two August soldiers. Several pages of hits came back, but not so many as for the March date.

  She clicked on the HNC link. The story discussed troop movements, new units being deployed in Baghdad, the IED explosion in Taji that killed members of the Sixty-sixth Armored Regiment, First Brigade, Fourth Infantry Division, based at Fort Lewis, Washington.

  Tolman read it again, then blinked at the monitor. Back at the search screen, she clicked on the Associated Press story. Same story with a few variations. Soldiers killed from the Sixty-sixth Armored Regiment.

  She read three more online news accounts of the day’s fighting. No mention was made of the deaths of two soldiers attached to the Seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment at Fort Lewis.

  What the fuck? Tolman thought; then she said it aloud, then said it again.

  The Rangers were an elite unit, the army’s pride. The deaths of two of its members were worth noting, worth reporting. Probably worth a sidebar story or two, feature-type stories that the medi
a loved.

  Slowly she went back to the names of the two Rangers who’d been reported killed on that date.

  Sergeant Michael Standridge, 30, Moscow, Idaho

  Sergeant Kevin A. Lane, 26, Pineville, Louisiana

  Tolman searched for the newspapers from the hometowns. The Moscow-Pullman Daily News carried an obituary for Michael Standridge. The date was right. Tolman scanned it quickly. Standridge had been a high school basketball player and track star, was known as an outdoorsman and hunter. He’d joined the army straight out of high school. He was unmarried, but the story quoted his high school girlfriend about his sense of patriotism and duty. The photo posted with the story was from his high school graduation. She’d seen the face before, except it had been older, bloodied, and lifeless in the crime-scene photo from Oklahoma.

  The newspaper in Pineville, Louisiana, was called The Town Talk, and its obituary of Kevin A. Lane called him a “bona fide hero” who felt called to serve his country from the age of six. He was third-generation army, excelled in science in high school, and was known locally as being able to repair anything, from cars to computers. He’d left behind a wife and a six-month-old daughter. His photo was from the army, in full dress uniform, wearing the Rangers’ red beret.

  Although the photo from the security camera at South Central College had been at long distance and poor quality, she recognized the shape of Kevin Lane’s face, and a little scar beside his left eye.

  “Shit,” Tolman muttered.

  Back to the media. There were no mentions of any U.S. Army Rangers from Fort Lewis dying on that date. But the DOD official news releases, and obituaries in hometown media days later, said these men had died in Taji.

  DOD could control the hometown media, it could create an official paper or cybertrail and seal the records, but it couldn’t stop the reports from the actual scene, not in this era of journalists “embedded” with military units.

  Standridge and Lane hadn’t died in Iraq in 2006, and they’d been in Carpenter Center, Oklahoma, a few days ago.