Cold Glory

by B. Kent Anderson

  “Is there a point to this?”

  “Meg, you’ve built up five years’ experience. Your evaluations are perfect every quarter. You could get on with any number of other agencies.”

  “You trying to get rid of me?”

  “Certainly not. I just do not understand why you stay with RIO with the way you feel about the office in general. I say this not only as your supervisor, but as your friend, too.”

  Tolman smiled. “It’s about balance. Music is all emotion and expression and gut-wrenching feeling—at least it is when I’m doing it right. RIO is connections and information and assembling things, whether on paper or on a computer screen. Music is open-ended—it’s always there, even when I’m not playing. With a RIO case, I immerse myself in it totally for days or weeks, and then it’s closed and I move on. Balance. I’ve had precious little of that in my life.”

  “Your mother,” Hudson said.

  Tolman had told very few people about her mother’s illness and the car crash. She’d told Hudson one Saturday at the office two years ago. She assumed he already knew, as it would have shown up in her preemployment background check. But he’d never brought it up, which earned him Tolman’s respect. When she trusted him enough, she’d broached the subject herself.

  “Yeah,” Tolman said. “But not just her, not just her illness and the accident. My dad being in the Service, posted all over the country, moving every year or two. Then I was all about music, did the Vienna year, flopped at it. Then the Academy, getting into that world. RIO helps me get a balance that I’ve never had. That, plus an understanding boss who doesn’t give me shit about going off to perform.”

  “As long as you fill out your paperwork on time.” Hudson smiled.

  Tolman patted his arm. “Don’t worry about me. You and RIO and I are all pretty well suited to each other, don’t you think?”

  “Speaking of performing, you have something at noon tomorrow, yes?”

  Tolman closed her eyes. “The Vienna Kiwanis or Rotary or Lions Club luncheon or something like that. I can call and cancel in the morning.”

  “No, go ahead and play your performance. I can hold things down at the office for a few hours. I don’t know if Graves and Díaz will need us again, but I’ll deal with them.”

  Tolman looked at him in the dark truck. “Okay. I’ll keep it, then. Thanks. It’s not Vienna, Austria, but it’ll have to do.”

  Five minutes later, the Dakota rolled down the Seminary Road exit, turned a sharp corner, and stopped in front of Seminary Hill Apartments. As Tolman put her hand on the car door, Hudson touched her shoulder and said, “Give me your best instinct. Is Nick Journey involved in a plot to assassinate Chief Justice Darlington?”

  “No,” Tolman said.

  “Then tell me this: Does a plot exist to assassinate the chief justice and Journey is somehow connected to it? Or is he living a complete fantasy?”

  Tolman hesitated a long moment. “I don’t know.”

  Hudson nodded. “I thought you might say that.”

  “I may have more of a feel for it after I play the piano.”

  “You are a complicated and often frustrating woman, Meg. But I understand.”

  Tolman smiled. “I know you do,” she said, and got out of the truck.

  CHAPTER

  18

  Journey dropped Andrew at Carpenter Center Middle School in the morning and stopped to talk for a moment with the special education teacher. The school was small, and Andrew was the only child with autism in the town, so there was no dedicated autism class, just a generalized special education classroom. Journey had fought for and won a personal assistant for Andrew, however, who had specialized training for children with autism. She was good with him, and he trusted her. After his experience with Amelia, that was rare for him, when it came to other people and his son.

  He drove to the office and made it just in time for his eight thirty class, the jam-packed undergraduate section of U.S. History to 1877. He sleepwalked through the lecture and talked with a couple of students afterwards. Back upstairs, he went into his office and closed the door, wondering when Margaret Tolman—or someone like her—was going to get in touch with him.

  He started to work on the jewelers. Of AAJE’s 108 member companies, seventy-two had Web sites. Of those, Journey eliminated forty as not being in business long enough. Then he started making phone calls.

  He called all thirty-two that remained. He reached two voice mail messages, three disconnect notices, and spoke to twenty-seven. None said the elliptical pin with G.W. engraved on it sounded familiar.

  Journey went back to the AAJE Web site and started on the list of thirty-six companies that did not have Web sites. He would have to call every one of them, finding out how long they’d been in business. He started down the list.

  The twenty-first jeweler was Detheridge and Company, with an address on West Forty-seventh Street in New York. A woman answered the phone, and Journey gave the now well-rehearsed speech.

  “My name is Nick Journey. I’m a professor of history at South Central College of Oklahoma. May I ask how long your company has been in business?”

  “Our longevity is our guarantee, Mr. Journey,” the woman said. “We are one of the oldest family-run jewelers in the country. Detheridge and Company first opened in 1850.”

  “That’s quite impressive in this day and age.”

  “Indeed it is. How may I help you?”

  “I’m trying to trace a piece of jewelry to its manufacturer. Two pieces, actually. There’s an older one that dates from around the time of the Civil War, and a newer one, very recent.”

  “Can you describe them?”

  “They’re both gold pins, with the kind of clasp that could go on a shirt collar. They’re round, and have the letters G.W. engraved on them.”

  “Can you hold a moment, please?”

  In less than a minute, the woman was back. “I thought it sounded familiar, but had to check with Don on the exact letters. Yes, we’ve been making those pieces for quite a long time.”

  Journey’s hand tightened around the phone. “For how long?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have details on the account, but Don is our senior engraver. He started with the company in 1953, and he remembers doing them every year.”

  “Do you … Do you know what the G.W. stands for?”

  “Here, sir—I’ll let you talk to Don.”

  In a moment, a whispery old man’s voice said, “Don Ferguson.”

  “Mr. Ferguson, I’m asking about the G.W. pins that you’ve worked on over the years.”

  “What about them?”

  “Do you know what the G.W. stands for?”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Nick Journey. I’m a historian from Oklahoma, and I’m—”

  “Why do I want to talk to a historian from Oklahoma about some jewelry pieces? Let’s say I don’t want to. Let’s say I have other work to do. You could be anyone.”

  “True,” Journey said. “Does anyone else ever ask about those pieces?”

  “No, never,” the old man said a little too quickly.

  Journey waited a moment, listening to Ferguson’s wheezy breath. “You’ve been working on them for a long time.”

  “Hell of a long time. Have you seen any of them?”

  “Yes, sir.” Journey thought of the man in the parking lot, shooting at him, and how he’d taken the pin from his shirt. “One of them made its way to me not long ago. You do quality work.”

  “Damn right I do. New one, or an older one?”

  “Fairly new.”

  “You have one?”

  “It’s in my hand right now.”

  “Turn it over. Tell me what you see on the back.”

  “You mean the little AAJE notch?”

  “I’ll be damned,” Ferguson said. “Guess you do really have one of them. I never know what happens to those once they leave here. I never see any of the usual paperwork. Whatever member of the famil
y is currently in charge comes down to me once a year and tells me how many to make. When I finish with them, I give them right back and that’s it. No invoices, no work orders.”

  “The family? What family?”

  “The Detheridge family, of course. We’re still a family business. Little Gene Detheridge is in charge now. Every year, along about April, he comes down and tells me to make more of those pins, and tells me how many. Been that way as long as I can remember.”

  “Do you know what the letters mean?”

  “See, that account’s been active for as long as I’ve been around, and I’ve been here since Truman was president. Now that was a president, not like this dumb-ass Harwell in the White House now. Well, I took over that job from Ralph Detheridge himself. Members of the family used to do the actual work around here back then. Little Gene, he’s not a jeweler. He just signs checks, doesn’t do any real work. But he brings that G.W. order down to me every spring.”

  Journey felt like screaming.

  “So,” Ferguson went on, “Ralph used to do those pins, and he’d done them every year for thirty years or more. And you know, I asked him about those letters and he told me it was none of my goddamn business. His exact words. But I used to go out and drink with Ralph on occasion, and it didn’t take much to get him talking. He told me that his father, Alden Detheridge Jr., and his grandfather, Alden Sr., made those pins, too.”

  “And?”

  “One night when Ralph was loaded up on single-malt Scotch, I asked him about those pins, he said everything was going to be different when the Glory Warriors took over.”

  “Glory Warriors.”

  “G.W.—Glory Warriors. That’s what he said. Of course, he was in his cups, and he never went drinking with me again after that. I think it was some kind of veterans’ group. I’m a veteran myself. U.S. Marines, Korea, 1951. Semper fi. I belong to all of them, the VFW, the American Legion, and I never heard of these guys. Maybe it was just for officers or something. I don’t know … the family keeps bringing me orders and I keep making the pins, though I’m going to have to turn the job over to someone younger one of these days.”

  “Glory Warriors,” Journey said again.

  “Don’t know how Little Gene Detheridge is mixed up with them. He was never in the service, that’s for sure. Hell of name for a bunch of old officers, don’t you think? Like they never figured out the war was over. But then, look at this country now. I guess in one way or another, a war’s never over, is it?”

  Journey thanked the man and hung up. His heart was pounding again, and he felt a fringe of perspiration along his hairline. He realized he’d forgotten to take his blood pressure medication this morning. He fumbled around in his backpack and found his pills, then dry-swallowed two of them. He sat back down and tried to center his thoughts.

  Glory Warriors.

  G.W.

  “Dr. Journey! The document, now!”

  He’d been on the phone for over three hours, and hadn’t checked for messages. He flipped open his phone again to see if he’d missed any calls. There were none.

  He checked his e-mail again and copied down Meg Tolman’s number, then called it. He heard the voice mail lead-in again: “This is Meg Tolman in the Research and Investigations Office. I’m away from my desk…”

  Journey hung up. He thought again of the group whose name he now knew, and of the man from whose shirt he had torn the pin.

  The Glory Warriors.

  He felt very much alone.

  CHAPTER

  19

  Tolman’s apartment was all neutral earth tones, neither cramped nor spacious. Much of the furniture had come from her grandmother’s house, and the rest she had scavenged from yard sales. Friends had told her it looked like the home of a perpetual graduate student.

  She woke early, called and checked in with Hudson—he was in the office by 7 A.M., even after the late night—then fed Rocky, her solid white, blue-eyed cat. She showered and dressed in black slacks and a simple white silk blouse. By ten thirty she was on the Metro, headed to Vienna in Fairfax County, the western terminus of the Metro’s Orange Line. From the station, she walked two blocks to the small hotel where the monthly luncheon of the Fairfax County Kiwanis was held. Sixty or so members, mostly men, mostly middle-aged, ate the obligatory chicken and listened to three of their members talk about service projects and scholarships and the upcoming fall picnic. Tolman tuned them out—she’d played enough of these sorts of things to hear every possible variation on it many, many times.

  Still distracted, she thought of Nick Journey.

  “I think the chief justice is going to be next.”

  The words were softly spoken, hesitant. Tolman remembered the sound of the high-pitched wail in the background: the man’s son, shrieking without words.

  Tolman tried to drive the thoughts away. She heard “Margaret Isabell Tolman” off to her left, then a little polite applause. She rose, nodded to the group, and moved to the piano. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the deep cleansing feeling of music begin to take hold. She raised her hands to begin a Rachmaninov prelude.

  “Excuse me, Margaret.”

  Hands two inches above the keyboard, Tolman froze. She looked toward the voice. The man at the podium was looking at her.

  “I know you have a program you’ve planned for us,” the man said.

  Tolman stared at him. The room was silent.

  “But since our great tragedy this weekend with the death of the Speaker of the House, I wonder if you would take a moment and play our national anthem before you get to the rest of your program.”

  Tolman stared.

  Feet shuffled, chairs scraped. People were getting to their feet and turning at a slight angle to face an American flag that rested on a stand in the corner of the room.

  Tolman nodded. She knew the piece, of course. Any musician who played events like this had to keep it in their repertoire. You’ll have to wait a minute, Sergei, she thought.

  She lowered her hands, then stopped.

  The national anthem.

  The rockets’ red glare.

  Bombs bursting in air.

  Michael Standridge and Kevin Lane. U.S. Army Special Forces, killed by improvised explosive devices in Iraq.

  Gave proof through the night, that our flag was still there.

  “Margaret?” said the man at the podium.

  People began putting their hands over their hearts.

  The land of the free, the home of the brave.

  The brave. Elite troops. Standridge and Lane. Dead in Iraq in 2006, alive in Oklahoma last week.

  Our flag was still there.

  Still there.

  I know how to find them, Tolman thought. I know how to trace exactly where they are.

  She folded her hands back into her lap.

  All eyes in the room were on her.

  Tolman stood up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to go.”

  Before any of them could say a word, she was out the door of the meeting room, and then out of the hotel itself. She had to get to the office. She had to talk to Hudson. This wasn’t something she could do alone. She would need the man’s bureaucratic muscle.

  Within fifteen minutes, she was on the Metro, headed back toward Washington.

  * * *

  “Rusty, I need a court order,” Tolman announced as she walked into the office forty minutes after boarding the train in Vienna.

  Hudson looked up from his computer. “Would you say that again, please?”

  “I had a thought about how to track my anonymous shooters from Oklahoma.”

  “Meg, I thought you were playing the piano right now.”

  “I was, but I came back. They’ll get over it.” Tolman flopped into the chair across from Hudson. “I was sitting there in this hotel meeting room, with all these balding, graying men, and they asked me to play the national anthem, sort of as a tribute to Vandermeer.”

  “What does this have to do with a court order
?”

  “I was about to play it, and I thought of the words to the song, how our flag was still there and all that.”

  “Meg, I’m tired and not in a good mood.”

  “It made me think, that if these guys were killed in Iraq, there would be payments to their survivors. Land of the free, home of the brave. Brave guys who get killed defending their flag get benefits. If I get access to their bank records, and those of their families, I could see if benefits have been paid and when. If there were no survivors’ benefits paid, then I can prove they aren’t dead, even if the army says they are.”

  “You arrived at all this by thinking of the words to ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

  “The power of music.”

  “Meg, these sorts of things aren’t as simple as you seem to think they are. Digging around in our own databases is one thing, but accessing the bank records of private citizens is quite another.”

  “Jesus, Rusty, we’re part of Homeland Security. File the request under the Patriot Act or something.”

  “Can you demonstrate a verifiable terrorist threat? You don’t even know for certain that the men in the Journey incident are these same men who allegedly died in Iraq. I even called the Pentagon for you this morning. I got nowhere. I think that, for whatever reason, you’re finding ways to look at this case that really have no bearing on the case itself.”

  Tolman leaned forward, folding her hands over the edge of Hudson’s desk. “The facial-recognition program—”

  “Perhaps you’re putting too much faith in the program.”

  “Rusty, you got us the goddamn thing! Don’t be such a fucking bureaucrat! What if someone—let’s say whoever is behind the attack on Journey—really is after the chief justice?”

  Hudson met her eyes. “Meg, I give you a great deal of latitude in how you speak to me and the way you go about your job. I do this because you are very, very good at your job and because I count you as a friend. But in most organizations, if a subordinate spoke to their supervisor the way you just spoke to me, they would be gone. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Tolman spread her hands apart. “Okay, I’m sorry. I have my father’s mouth. But I can—”