Memorial Bridge (41 page)

Dillon interrupted, "I don't know what that is."

When Eason looked toward him their eyes met for the first time since that morning on the generals' launch. "Technical consultation." Eason went on now to address himself to Dillon, as if he too finally recognized that the OSI director was the one to satisfy in this. "Officers on TC are permitted to draw a per diem from civilian contractors."

"As well as from the paymaster?" Dillon's words floated in silence. "Are you telling me, General Eason, that the air force permits double billing of expenses?"

"We don't call it that."

"What are the regs defining this policy?"

"It's informal. Not a matter of regulations."

Once more Dillon let the silence build. Then he asked the chief of staff quietly, "Sir, do you remember a discussion we had once, in the air secretary's briefing room, I believe it was?"

"You were a civilian then."

"General Eason, it was a discussion about discrepancies in the way the system of law in the air force applies to general officers."

Crocker interrupted, "Good God, Dillon, double billing isn't the issue here. We have to develop a response to this slander—" He held his hand out for the document. Dillon crossed to give it to him. "I'd like to call it slander, Macauley, but I don't know, given what you've said, if I can. It slanders the airplane, I know that much."

"It slanders me, Mr. Secretary."

"Do you realize how vulnerable you are tomorrow? That minority counsel is going to have you for lunch. You and the air force too! Wait until those committee members hear about your per diem! About Las Vegas!" Crocker slammed the pages down on his desk, and one floated
to the floor. Dillon had never seen him angry like this. "You've scutded the air force here, Macauley. Do you understand that? If you cannot deny the allegations,
all
of them, in one sentence, you're dead! If you can't say it's all a pack of lies from A to Z, the B-36 is dead! And so is SAC, and so is the air force, except as a fleet of flying boxcars. That committee isn't going to sit still for a minute while you start making distinctions between what you won at roulette and what you took in per diem! Jesus! Congratulations, Macauley. You have just bought the navy a new strategic aircraft carrier fleet and a new light bomber!"

During this outburst Dillon had moved to pick up the sheet that had fallen to the floor. Now he stood by Crocker's desk, immobile, studying the page.

When Crocker had fallen silent, Dillon asked quietly, "What do we know about Newfield?"

Nevin answered, "A Taft Republican from Orange County."

"Did he serve in the military?"

"I don't know."

"Is he young enough to have been in the war?"

"Yes." Nevin stepped to the phone. "I know someone who can answer the question." Nevin turned away to place the call. The others waited. After a quick exchange, he hung up. "Newfield was in the navy. He is a captain in the Reserves, attached to San Diego."

Eason grunted. "You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to know the navy is behind this."

"Can you prove it, General?" When Eason did not reply, Dillon asked Nevin, "What time is the hearing?"

"Ten o'clock."

"So what can we do, Sean?" Crocker seemed to expect no answer.

Dillon brushed the secretary's moroseness aside with the efficient clip of his response: "We have to keep General Macauley from being interrogated on this matter under oath. The way to do that is to shift the committee's concern away from the accusations in this document to its source."

"How do we do that?"

"I don't know yet." Dillon asked Macauley, "Who else could possibly have access to your bank records? An aide? Your exec? A lawyer?"

Macauley shook his head.

"Were you robbed in Omaha? Burglarized at any point?"

At first Macauley didn't respond, then he sat up. "Ginger's purse was stolen, right out of the commissary at Offutt. It disappeared from the cash-register table when she wasn't looking, about six weeks ago."

"Was her bankbook in the purse?"

"Yes, the savings book
and
the checkbook. We changed both accounts."

"Did you file an OSI report on the theft?"

"I put my provost marshal on it."

"Your provost marshal?" If Dillon was cold before, he was ice now. "And did your provost marshal solve the case?"

"No."

"And General, now that you need it as corroboration, do you suppose your provost marshal kept a complete record of the theft report, as the OSI surely would have, with a listing of the items inside the purse, including the crucial savings book?"

"He probably didn't."

Dillon could only nod mutely in frustration.

Crocker said, "Do what you can, Sean."

Nevin added, "Whatever you come up with, there won't be time to prep anyone else. You should come ready to testify."

"My advice to you, Mr. Nevin, is to assume General Macauley is going to have to explain himself. You'll need affidavits from his wife, both about the source of those four deposits in her account and about the theft."

"My wife! I won't allow—"

"General, if you had had the local OSI detachment handle the theft, we would not need the one affidavit, and the other is your only chance to head off a criminal indictment for bribery. You're lucky not to be in a court of law, where your wife's testimony would be inadmissible."

"My wife is in Omaha," Macauley said miserably.

"You're the air force, aren't you? You can have a plane out there and back by morning."

"Sean," Crocker said quietly, "we're
all
the air force here. The future of the air force is at stake in this."

"I understand that. But you will forgive me if I tell you that the fate of the air force is of secondary importance to me. My oath, even as a general officer, is to uphold the United States. I don't have a position on the B-36. My position is on how this government conducts itself." He
faced Macauley. "And, General, I have no interest in seeing you exonerated if you do not deserve to be. But this"—he held up the page—"is no way for the United States Congress to be making its decisions. If this is bullshit, I'll do my best to expose it as such."

Dillon sensed how the other men had ceded everything to him. He turned back to the desk and began to collect the other pages. "I'll need these overnight."

Nevin said, "You can't take the originals. I'll give you the photostats I had made."

"I need the originals."

Neither Dillon nor Nevin moved.

Randall Crocker said, "I think this is where I came in, Sean." He smiled, thinking of the similar standoff that occurred five years before, between Dillon and Crocker's insufferable old friend Cheever. "Drop it, Lloyd," Crocker said simply.

Dillon then reached farther across Crocker's desk to pick up an odd page of an unrelated report. He held it up to the light, then did the same thing with a page of the accusing document.

"Congressman Newfield said this came from a private citizen in California?"

"That's right."

Dillon lowered the pages. "Then why do you suppose it has a 'GSA–District One' watermark, like every other piece of typing paper in this building?"

Dillon replaced the odd page on Crocker's desk, nodded at the secretary and crossed to the door. Only there did he stop, turn, draw himself up and salute.

"General Dillon's residence, hello?"

"Cass?"

"Sean?Is that you?"

"I'm sorry I haven't gotten to you before this. I know it's late. Did you let Jones go yet?"

"Of course I did, hours ago. I thought I'd fry you a cube steak or—"

"That's not what I meant, Cass."

"What time will you—?"

"I won't be coming home at all tonight."

"What?"

"It's impossible to explain."

"I wasn't asking you to explain."

Silence.

Then, "Cass, I need your help."

"What do you mean?" "Don't ask me to explain."

"I won't."

"I need you to bring the car,
our
car, the Studebaker, to the Pentagon, to the farthest section of the south lot, the side facing Shirley Highway." "How can I—"

"First, drive to an all-night taxi stand. There's one at the Willard. Tell
a taxi to follow you. Then, when you get to the Pentagon, leave the car there. Leave the keys under the seat, and take the taxi back. Tell the driver your husband works the night shift, a maintenance supervisor. Then take the taxi to the Willard. Wait for it to disappear. Then take another cab back to Boiling. The whole thing won't take forty-five minutes."

"You mean leave Richard?"

"He's asleep, isn't he? He never wakes up."

"I couldn't leave Richard alone. How can you ask me to do that?"

Silence.

"What about Sergeant Hewitt, Sean?"

"I sent Hewitt home. I can't involve my people in what I'm doing, and I need the car."

"What will you be doing with the car?"

"I'll be going downtown."

"To the Bureau?"

Silence.

"Why don't you use a Bureau car?"

"Cass, I called you because there are problems with every other way of doing this."

Silence.

"What if I bundle Richard into the backseat. He'll stay asleep, you know him. I could drive you."

"That's ridiculous, Cass. If I'm not going to involve the orderlies, I'm sure as hell not going to involve our child. Never mind. I'll arrange—"

"Wait, I can do it, Sean."

"How?"

"A woman I know from church. She lives on base. I could ask her to come over."

"She would? In the middle of the night?"

"It's only nine o'clock. I'd call her now. She doesn't have children of her own."

"You'd have to lie to her, say there's an illness or something."

"Don't worry."

"But she lives on base? Her husband's air force? I can't allow that. What I'm doing could backfire. The woman's husband—"

"He won't know anything. No one will. This will be between two women who meet at church."

"But she'll have to tell her husband something."

"She helps out at the base infirmary as a volunteer. She can tell him she's going there."

"Will she lie to—"

"It's been known to happen, big fellow. Let this end be my problem."

Silence.

Then, "All right."

"But, Sean."

"What?"

"I'm not taking a taxi home, not right away. I'm going to drive you."

"No, Cass."

"You have to let me."

Silence, and silence.

Then, "Wait for me at the far end of the south parking lot, on the edge near the ramp off the highway. No one will notice you. Sit there with your lights out. I'll show up between midnight and one."

"I'll be there. And Sean?"

"Yes?"

"Whatever it is, be careful."

"Thanks, Cass. I will. Oh, and bring my raincoat. My civilian one."

Half an hour before midnight Dillon left his office. He was dressed in his blue uniform with the star on each shoulder. He carried a leather satchel. Instead of going to his right to follow E-Ring around to the massive center well of ramps that would take him down to the river entrance, he went left and circled away from the offices of the Air Staff. He greeted cleaners who were just finishing up, as well as the patrolling night guard, who knew him from his coundess late nights. If either noticed that Dillon was going the wrong way, he gave no sign of it.

A few minutes later he was still in E-Ring, but on the second floor instead of the fourth. Here the walls of the corridor were a pale blue instead of green, and the paintings hung at intervals depicted ships instead of airplanes. No one would know him here, especially now. No longer dressed as an air force general, he was a white-smocked member of the night cleaning crew. Under his smock he wore the matching forest-green pants and shirt that were the maintenance workers' uniform. He was pushing a canvas-sided trash dolly. A broom handle stuck
up from the cart, and a pair of washerwoman's rubber gloves was hooked on the side.

He cruised along the corridor, whistling faintly through his teeth, the wheels clacking, until he had located each of the three suites he needed. Then he returned to the first door, the fancy double one over which the gold-leaf sign read, "The Secretary of the Navy."

Dillon stood very still, listening. Not a sound came from inside, not a sound from either direction in the corridor. He took from his pocket a palm-sized, hinged set of lockpicks. He hadn't used it since the time during the war he'd covered Embassy Row, but he had also never disposed of it. The lockpicks, more than his gun would have been, or even his badge, were a relic of his time in the Bureau, though he had never expected to use them again. Certainly not on E-Ring.

Stooping, he eyed the door lock, then applied the slimmest of the tiny hooked steel rods. He pushed the pick, pulled it, then removed it altogether and selected another. He tested that one, then began to nudge it past each tumbler in turn until they were aligned. The slightest tug and click! The lock opened. He pocketed the tool, put on the rubber gloves before touching the knob, opened the door and went in. He pulled the trash cart in behind him.

Once he closed the door, the room was pitch dark. He had to stand frozen for a long moment while his eyes adjusted. He used the time to listen.

Nothing.

He reached into the trash cart, pushed aside a layer of rags and crumpled paper to take out a flashlight and a large manila envelope containing sheets of plain, government-issue typing paper. He swept the room with the beam of the light. He saw a spacious reception area, heavy furniture, chairs, couches, four desks separated by low, dark wood railings. At each desk was an adjoining typewriter table, each typewriter with its cover.

He began with the one immediately to his left. At the typewriter he took the flashlight in his teeth, like a football fan holds a hot dog. It filled his mouth, and the taste of the metal casing revolted him, but he was able to aim the cone of light as he uncovered the typewriter and rolled a piece of fresh paper into it. "Underwood," he read, and so he typed that word onto the blank page. Then he punched out every letter of the alphabet, in both cases, a clumsy procedure because of his gloves. He then identified
the page, "SON, Recept, left #1." He whipped the sheet out of the machine and covered the typewriter, to leave it as before.