by Tom Clancy
“I mean, right after the call from Pittsburgh, that Brown girl who got whacked, Em called here about him. Now you. How come?”
“His name came up. We’re not sure why, and it’s just a quick check. What can you tell me about him?”
“Hey, Mark, you’re on vacation, remember?” Allen pointed out.
“You’re telling me I won’t be back to work soon? I’m supposed to turn my brain off, Frank? Did I miss the article in the paper that says the crooks are taking a few weeks off?”
Allen had to concede the point. “All this attention, now I’m starting to think there might be something wrong with the guy. I suppose I have some information on him—yeah. that’s right, I forgot. Wait a minute.” Allen walked away from his desk toward the file room, and Charon pretended to read the statements for several minutes until he came back. A thin manila folder landed in his lap. “Here.”
It was part of Kelly’s service record, but not very much, Charon saw as he paged through it. It included his dive-qualification records, his instructor’s rating, and a photograph, along with some other gingerbread stuff. Charon looked up. “Lives on an island? That’s what I heard.”
“Yeah, I asked him about that. Funny story. Anyway, why are you interested?”
“Just a name that came up, probably nothing, but I wanted to check it out. I keep hearing rumbles of a bunch that works out on the water.”
“I really ought to send that down to Em and Tom. I forgot I had it.”
Better yet. “I’m heading that way. Want me to drop it off?”
“Would you?”
“Sure.” Charon tucked it under his arm. His first stop was a branch of the Pratt Library, where he made photocopies of the documents for ten cents each. Then he hit a photo shop. His badge enabled him to have five blowups of the small ID photo made in less than ten minutes. Those he left in the car when he parked at headquarters, but he only went inside long enough to have an officer run the file up to homicide. He could have just kept the information to himself, but on reflection it seemed the more intelligent choice to act like a normal cop doing a normal task.
“So what happened?” Greer asked behind the closed door of his office.
“Roger says an investigation would have adverse political consequences,” Ritter answered.
“Well, isn’t that just too goddamned bad?”
“Then he said to handle it,” Ritter added. Not in so many words, but that’s what he meant. There was no sense in confusing the issue.
“Meaning what?”
“What do you think, James?”
“Where did this come from?” Ryan asked when the file landed on his desk.
“Detective handed it to me downstairs, sir,” the young officer answered. “I don’t know the guy, but he said it was for your desk.”
“Okay.” Ryan waved him off and flipped it open, for the first time seeing a photograph of John Terrence Kelly. He’d joined the Navy two weeks after his eighteenth birthday, and stayed in . . . six years, honorably discharged as a chief petty officer. It was immediately apparent that the file had been heavily edited. That was to be expected, as the Department had mainly been interested in his qualifications as a diver. There was his graduation date from UDT School, and his later qualification as an instructor that the Department had been interested in. The three rating sheets in the folder were all 4.0, the highest Navy grade, and there was a flowery letter of recommendation from a three-star admiral which the Department had taken at face value. The Admiral had thoughtfully tucked in a list of his decorations, the more to impress the Baltimore City Police: Navy Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat “V” and two clusters in lieu of repeat awards of the same decoration. Purple Heart with two clusters in lieu of—
Jesus, this guy’s everything I thought, isn’t he?
Ryan set the folder down. seeing that it was part of the Gooding Murder file. That meant Frank Atten—again. He called him.
“Thanks for the info on Kelly. What brought it up?”
“Mark Charon was over,” Allen told him. “I’m doing the follow-up on his shoot, and he brought the name up, says it came up in one of his cases. Sorry, pal, I forgot I had this. He said he’d drop it off. He’s not the sort of guy I’d figure for being drugged up, y’know, but . . . His voice went on past the point of Ryan’s current interest.
This is going too fast now, too damned fast.
Charon. He keeps appearing, doesn’t he?
“Frank, I got a tough one for you. When that Sergeant Meyer called in from Pittsburgh, anybody else you mention that to?”
“What do you mean, Em?” Allen asked, annoyance beginning to form in his mind at the suggestion.
“I’m not saying you called the papers, Frank.”
“That was the day Charon popped the dealer, wasn’t it?” Allen thought back. “I might have said something to him . . . only other person I talked with that day, come to think of it.”
“Okay, thanks, Frank.” Ryan looked up the number of Barracks “V” of the State Police.
“Captain Joy,” said a very weary voice. The barracks commander would have taken a bed in his own jail if he’d had to, but by tradition a State Police barracks was just that, and he’d found a comfortable bed for his four and a half hours of sleep. Joy was already wishing that Somerset County would go back to normal, though he well might make major’s rank from this episode.
“Lieutenant Ryan, City Police homicide.”
“You big-city boys sure are interested in us now,” Joy commented wryly. “What do you want to know?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I was on my way to bed last night when another one of your people called down here. Lieutenant Chair-something like that, I didn’t write it down. Said he could ID one of the bodies . . . I did write that down somewhere. Sorry, I’m turning into a zombie.”
“Could you fill me in? I’ll take the short version.” It turned out that the short version was plenty. “The woman is in custody?”
“You bet she is.”
“Captain, you keep her that way until I say different, okay? Excuse me, please keep her that way. She may be a material witness in a multiple homicide.”
“Yeah, I know that, remember?”
“I mean up here, too, sir. Two bad ones, I have nine months invested in this.”
“She isn’t going anywhere for a while,” Joy promised. “We have a lot of talking to do with her ourselves, and her lawyer’s playing ball.”
“Nothing more on the shooter?”
“Just what I said: male Caucasian, six foot or so, and he painted himself green, the girl says.” Joy hadn’t included that in his initial recounting.
“What?”
“She said his face and hands were green, like camouflage stuff. I suppose. There is one more thing,” Joy added. “He’s a right good shot. The three people he whacked, one shot each, all in the X-ring—like, perfect.”
Ryan flipped the folder back open. At the bottom of Kelly’s list of awards: Distinguished Rifleman, Master Pistol.
“I’ll be back to you, Captain. Sounds like you’ve handled this one awfully well for a guy who doesn’t get many homicides.”
“I’d just as soon stick to speeders,” Joy confirmed, hanging up.
“You’re in early,” Douglas observed, coming in late. “See the paper?”
“Our friend’s back, and he got on the scoreboard again.” Ryan handed the photo across.
“He looks older now,” the sergeant said.
“Three Purple Hearts’ll do that.” Ryan filled Douglas in. “Want to drive down to Somerset and interview this girl?”
“You think . . . ?”
“Yes, I think we have our witness. I think we have our leaker, too.” Ryan explained that one quietly.
He had just called to hear the sound of her voice. So close to his goal, he was allowing himself to look beyond it. It wasn’t terribly professional, but for all his professionalism, Kelly remained human.
“John, where are you?” The urgency in her voice was even greater than the day before.
“I have a place,” was all he was willing to say.
“I have a message for you. James Greer, he said you should call him.”
“Okay.” Kelly grimaced—he was supposed to have done that the day before.
“Was that you in the paper?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she whispered, “three dead people on the Eastern Shore!”
“I’ll get back to you,” he said almost as fast as the chill hit him.
Kelly didn’t have the paper delivered to his apartment for the obvious reason, but now he needed one. There was a dispenser at the corner, he remembered. He only needed one took.
What does she know about me?
It was too late for recrimination. He’d faced the same problem with her as with Doris. She’d been asleep when he’d done the job, and the pistol shots had awakened her. He’d blindfolded her, dumped her, explained to her that Burt had planned to kill her, given her enough cash to catch a Greyhound to somewhere. Even with the drugs, she’d been shocked and scared. But the cops had her already. How the hell had that happened?
Screw the how, son, they have her.
Just that fast the world had changed for him.
Okay, so now what do you do? It was that thought which occupied his mind for the walk back to his apartment.
For starters, he had to get rid of the .45, but he’d already decided to do that. Even if he had left no evidence at all behind, it was a link. When this mission was over, it was over. But now he needed help, and where else to get it but from the people for whom he had killed?
“Admiral Greer, please? This is Mr. Clark.”
“Hold, please,” Kelly heard, then: “You were supposed to call in yesterday, remember?”
“I can be there in two hours, sir.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“Where’s Cas?” Maxwell asked, annoyed enough to use his nickname. The chief who ran his office understood.
“I already called his home, sir. No answer.”
“That’s funny.” Which it wasn’t, but the chief understood that, too.
“Want me to have somebody at Bolling check it out, Admiral?”
“Good idea.” Maxwell nodded and returned to his office.
Ten minutes later a sergeant of the Air Force’s Security Police drove from his guard shack to the collection of semidetached dwellings used by senior officers on Pentagon duty. The sign on the yard said Rear Admiral C. P. Podulski, USN, and showed a pair of aviator wings. The sergeant was only twenty-three and didn’t interact with flag officers any more than he had to, but he had orders to see if there was any trouble here. The morning paper was sitting on the step. There were two automobiles in the carport, one of which had a Pentagon pass on the windshield. and he knew that the Admiral and his wife lived alone. Summoning his courage, the sergeant knocked on the door, firmly but not too noisily. No luck. Next he tried the bell. No luck. Now what? the young NCO wondered. The whole base was government property, and he had the right under regulations to enter any house on the post, and he had orders, and his lieutenant would probably back him up. He opened the door. There was no sound. He looked around the first floor, finding nothing that hadn’t been there since the previous evening. He called a few times with no result, and then decided that he had to go upstairs. This he did. with one hand on his white leather holster . . .
Admiral Maxwell was there twenty minutes later.
“Heart attack,” the Air Force doctor said. “Probably in his sleep.”
That wasn’t true of his wife, who lay next to him. She had been such a pretty woman, Dutch Maxwell remembered, and devastated by the loss of their son. The half-filled glass of water sat on a handkerchief so as not to harm the wooden night table. She’d even replaced the top of the pill container before she’d lain back down beside her husband. Dutch looked over to the wooden valet. His undress white shirt was there, ready for another day’s service to his adopted country, the Wings of Gold over the collection of ribbons, the topmost of which was pale blue, with five white stars. They’d had a meeting planned to talk about retirement. Somehow Dutch wasn’t surprised.
“God have mercy,” Dutch said, seeing the only friendly casualties of Operation BOXWOOD GREEN.
What do I say? Kelly asked himself, driving through the gate. The guard eyeballed him pretty hard despite his pass, perhaps wondering how badly the Agency paid its field personnel. He did get to park his wreck in the visitors’ lot, better placement than people on the payroll, which seemed slightly odd. Walking into the lobby, Kelly was met by a security officer and led upstairs. It seemed more ominous now, walking the drab and ordinary corridors peopled with anonymous people, but only because this building was about to become a confessional of sorts for a soul who had not quite decided if he were a sinner or not. He hadn’t visited Ritter’s office before. It was on the fourth floor and surprisingly small. Kelly had thought the man important—and though he actually was, his office as yet was not.
“Hello, John,” Admiral Greer said, still reeling from the news he’d received a half hour before from Dutch Maxwell. Greer pointed him to a seat, and the door was closed. Ritter was smoking, to Kelly’s annoyance.
“Glad to be back home, Mr. Clark?” the field officer asked. There was a copy of the Washington Post on his desk, and Kelly was surprised to see that the Somerset County story had made the first page there, too.
“Yes, sir, I guess you can say that.” Both of the older men caught the ambivalence. “Why did you want me to come in?”
“I told you on the airplane. It may turn out that your action bringing that Russian out might save our people yet. We need people who can think on their feet. You can. I’m offering you a job in my part of the house.”
“Doing what?”
“Whatever we tell you to do,” Ritter answered. He already had something in mind.
“I don’t even have a college degree.”
Ritter pulled a thick folder from his desk. “I had this brought in from St. Louis.” Kelly recognized the forms. It was his complete Navy personnel-records package. “You really should have taken the college scholarship. Your intelligence scores are even higher than I thought, and it shows you have language skills that are better than mine. James and I can waive the degree requirements.”
“A Navy Cross goes a long way, John,” Greer explained. “What you did, helping to plan BOXWOOD GREEN and then later in the field, that sort of thing goes a long way, too.”
Kelly’s instinct battled against his reason. The problem was, he wasn’t sure which part of him was in favor of what. Then he decided that he had to tell the truth to somebody. “There’s a problem, gentlemen.”
“What’s that?” Ritter asked.
Kelly reached across the desk and tapped the article on the front page of the paper. “You might want to read that.”
“I did. So? Somebody did the world a favor,” the officer said lightly. Then he caught the look in Kelly’s eyes. and his voice became instantly wary. “Keep talking, Mr. Clark.”
“That’s me, sir.”
“What are you talking about, John?” Greer asked.
“The file’s out, sir,” the records clerk said over the phone.
“What do you mean?” Ryan objected. “I have some copies from it right here.”
“Could you hold for a moment? I’ll put my supervisor on.” The phone went on hold, something that the detective cordially hated.
Ryan looked out his window with a grimace. He’d called the military’s central records-storage facility, located in St. Louis. Every piece of paper relating to every man or woman who had ever served in uniform was there, in a secure and carefully guarded complex, the nature of which was a curiosity, but a useful one, to the detective, who’d more than once gotten data from the facility.
“This is Irma Rohrerbach,” a voice said after some electronic chirp
ing. The detective had the instant mental image of an overweight Caucasian female sitting at a desk cluttered with work that could have been done a week earlier.
“I’m Lieutenant Emmet Ryan, Baltimore City Police. I need information from a personnel file you have—”
“Sir. it’s not here. My clerk just showed me the notes.”
“What do you mean? You’re not allowed to check files out that way. I know.”
“Sir, that is not true. There are certain cases. This is one of them. The file was taken out and will be returned, but I do not know when.”
“Who has it?”
“I’m not allowed to say, sir.” The tone of the bureaucrat’s voice showed her intensity of interest, too. The file was gone, and until it came back it was no longer part of the known universe as far as she was concerned.
“I can get a court order, you know.” That usually worked on people, few of whom enjoyed the attention of a note from somebody’s bench.
“Yes, you can. Is there any other way I can help you, sir?” She was also used to being blustered at. The call was from Baltimore, after all, and a letter from some judge eight hundred miles away seemed a distant and trivial thing. “Do you have our mailing address, sir?”
Actually, he couldn’t. He still didn’t quite have enough to take to a judge. Matters like this were handled more as a matter of courtesy than as actual orders.
“Thank you, I’ll get back.”
“Have a good day.” The well-wish was in fact the bland dismissal of one more forgettable irrelevance in the day of a file clerk.
Out of the country. Why? For whom? What the hell’s so different about this case? Ryan knew that it had many differences. He wondered if he’d ever have them all figured out.
“That’s what they did to her,” Kelly told them. It was the first time he’d actually said it all out loud, and in recounting the details of the pathology report it was as though he were listening to the voice of another person. “Because of her background the cops never really assigned much of a priority to the case. I got two more girls out. One they killed. The other one, well . . . He waved at the newspaper.
