Murder at the Pentagon (23 page)

“Am I expected to attend the press conference?” Margit asked.

Bellis laughed. “No, no need for you to be there. Your role in this is finished.” He picked up that morning’s copy of the
Early Bird
. “Read this yet?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

He directed it across the desk to her. “Read the
Post
this morning?”

“No, sir.” Ouch! She knew what was coming without having to read anything. Her imprudent comments to the
Post
’s Louise Harrison … She picked up
Early Bird
and flipped through its crudely assembled pages until coming to the Harrison piece. She read it, recognized that Harrison had accurately quoted her, and placed the newsletter back on Bellis’s desk.

“I was surprised when I read this,” he said.

“I suppose you were,” Margit said, sighing. “The reporter took me by surprise. I was tracked down at Mackensie Smith’s house. I wasn’t very discreet. I talked before thinking.”

Bellis waved it away. “No matter. I can understand your feelings. I do suggest, however, that you commit to putting this behind you. We’re in the business of defending a nation. That’s what we’re paid to do.” He picked up an official handout that went to the thousands of citizens who took the conducted tour of the Pentagon each week, opened it to the first page, and placed it in front of her. It was the stated mission of the Pentagon:

Margit resented having been asked to read those familiar words in the presence of a superior—a schoolgirl being reminded of a basic tenet of responsible behavior.

Bellis continued. “I always remember a line from Emerson.
‘Not gold, but only man can make a people great and strong.’ I may not have it exactly right, but it’s close enough.”

“Sir, why are you telling me this? I’m well aware of my duties and responsibilities as a commissioned officer.” She wished she didn’t sound quite so angry.

“Don’t take offense, Major. Sometimes we all have to be reminded—or remind ourselves—of what’s important and what isn’t. Joycelen’s murder and Cobol’s self-inflicted death have ended an unfortunate episode, but hardly one that should rank high on our priority list as career soldiers. It’s done. See it that way.”

Margit’s anger now threatened to boil over. She forced herself to look at him.

Bellis came around the desk. “Take a couple of days off, Major. Don’t worry about your office. I’ll have it moved. Relax, take in a good movie, go out to dinner with your boyfriend.”

She went to the door, turned, and said, “Thank you, sir. I may take your advice. By the way, I was wondering whether you know of a designation, HP-5, used on personnel records.”

She couldn’t be sure, but her question seemed to prick him. He said, “No. Never heard of it. Why do you ask?”

“It was noted on Cobol’s records. Handwritten.”

“Means nothing to me. Thank you for the excellent job you were doing in preparing Captain Cobol’s defense. You were everything I thought you would be when I chose you.”

She went across the hall where Silbert and Woosky were preparing to leave. “Thanks for your help, guys,” she told them.

“Our pleasure, Major,” Silbert said, a rash of file folders under his arm.

“Those are case files on Cobol,” Margit said.

“Yes, ma’am. Colonel Bellis wants everything put into a central archive at Trial Defense Service.”

Margit looked to the open safe. It was empty. Everything was gone, including Cobol’s personnel file. She wanted to protest but knew it was fruitless. She thanked them again,
walked briskly down the hall, went downstairs, and started for the building exit. But she stopped, got her bearings, and went in another direction that took her to the Military Women’s Corridor, where outstanding military women of history—and the not-so-distant past—were honored.

She stood in front of a photograph of Civil War heroine Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, the only female recipient of the Medal of Honor. Dr. Walker wasn’t supposed to be in the army—any army—and she’d had to disguise herself as a man in order to reach the front lines, where she’d nursed the seriously wounded while under intense enemy fire. Her medal had been taken away from her in 1917, but President Jimmy Carter had reinstated the citation that restored it to her.

Margit moved on, pausing at a picture of Lieutenant Colonel Jacqueline Cochran, the first woman aviator to break the sound barrier, and the holder of more official flight records than any other person, male or female.

Before leaving the corridor, she read a plaque devoted to Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, who’d stayed on active duty until she was seventy-nine years old.

I’m proud of you, she thought. I wish I were half as good.

She spent the rest of the morning in her BOQ drinking coffee and reading that day’s
Washington Post
cover to cover. The story of Cobol’s suicide was boxed on the lower right-hand portion of the front page. There was other news on page 1, of course. The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations had called for an emergency session of the Security Council to discuss the imminent threat of nuclear attack upon his country by the Arab nation that now possessed nuclear weapons, stressing that the one that had been tested was not the only one in the Arab leader’s inventory. He said it with all the authority of Israeli Intelligence, which went unmentioned.

President David Beardsley’s National Security Council adviser had announced that the administration was considering deploying troops to the Middle East, just as a previous administration had done when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, and had been poised on the Saudi Arabian border.

She read news of lesser importance on the inside pages, features on neighborhoods, local political jockeying, cooking advice, fashion, gossip, “style,” the stuff of which newspapers are made, and forced herself to speed up. She stopped skimming in the business section and read more carefully.

The Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Wisconsin senator Henry Wishengrad, had announced it planned hearings into what it termed “the appearance of illegal activity by people involved with the development of Project Safekeep and its California contractor, Starpath, Inc.” No names were mentioned, but Margit immediately thought of Starpath’s lobbyist, Sam Caldwell, and of Joe Maize, the Pentagon’s lead auditor for the controversial weapons system. Were they among unnamed persons about to come under the scrutiny of Wishengrad’s committee? Jeff hadn’t mentioned anything about such a hearing, although that made sense. Ideally, everyone involved in a planned hearing kept his mouth shut until the official announcement was made. Of course, Washington seldom functions on an ideal footing. Margit admired Jeff’s discretion. At the same time she felt somewhat cheated that he hadn’t shared it with her. She certainly was sharing everything with him these days. Well, that made him a better person, she decided. “Think first and shoot later” was what she’d promised Mac Smith. She’d better start living that pledge.

After a few false starts she called Cobol’s mother on Long Island. She let the phone ring a dozen times. As she was about to hang up, Flo Cobol answered. “This is Margit Falk. I’m so sorry about Robert.”

Flo began to weep. Margit waited, then said, “Mrs. Cobol, is there anything I can do for you?”

Flo said, “He’s being buried tomorrow.”

“In New York?”

“Yes, in a family plot with his father and my mother.”

“What time?”

“Eleven. From our local parish.”

“I’d like to be there.”

Flo regained her composure. “That would be very nice,” she said. “I mean, I would be honored to have you.”

Margit received instructions on how to get to the church. She asked, “Who told you about his death?”

“I received a call from his immediate supervisor at the CIA. He’s a colonel. His name is Kale. I think it’s spelled with a K. Maybe it’s C.”

Margit talked with her, comforted her with words of belief in Robert, and then said good-bye. She went for a noontime run. It was a lovely day, sunny but crisp, perfect jogging weather. She ran longer and farther than usual, more than ten miles by her estimate as she followed a route along the Anacostia Freeway to the Anacostia River, traced the river to Anacostia Park, ran its length, then doubled back along local streets through Southeast Washington, Fort Stanton Park, and home.

At first she didn’t see the envelope that had been slid beneath her door. She’d walked right over it. It was after she’d quenched her thirst some with bottled water, and had sat in a living-room chair to remove her running shoes and socks, that she saw it. A small white envelope. Printed on it in black letters was M
AJ
. F
ALK
.

Margit picked it up, returned to the chair, and opened it. Inside was a single sheet of white paper with blue lines. The first thing that struck her was that the writing on the paper was not the same as that on the envelope. She started to read:

He had signed it:
Robert D. Cobol, Capt., United States Army
.

Margit dropped the note to her lap and looked around the room as though in search of some tangible answer that might be there, a tablet hanging from the ceiling upon which all truth and wisdom was engraved. There was no such thing, of course, and she left the chair without the slightest idea of what her reaction to the note really was.

She showered, then took a drive—no destination, no purpose—simply fulfilling the need to be in motion. She didn’t know how long she’d driven, but she eventually pulled up in front of the Sign of the Whale. It was five-thirty.

It had taken some persuasion on Margit’s part to convince Maitland to accompany her to Cobol’s funeral. She’d been getting nowhere until she realized he was uncomfortable confronting Cobol’s mother. “Brian,” she’d said last night, “Robert Cobol’s mother is a lot more sophisticated and understanding than you might think. She’s a nice person, and has been aware for years of Robert’s homosexuality. You have nothing to worry about when it comes to Flo Cobol. Trust me.”

And he did, as evidenced by the fact that they drove east together on New York’s Long Island Expressway to the church, and to the cemetery that would be Cobol’s final resting place.

Margit wore dress blues; Maitland, who would never be voted among Washington’s best dressed in a
Washingtonian
magazine poll, wore a blue-and-white plaid shirt with a small collar, a green tie not much wider than a strand of spaghetti, and an oversized sport jacket.

He’d been nervous when they first met up at National Airport,
but he visibly relaxed during the short flight. By the time they’d turned off the expressway and had started following local directions to the church, he’d become a pleasant, even witty, traveling companion.

St. James’s was in a lower-middle-class, or middle-class, neighborhood in Franklin Square—Margit never had learned how to differentiate. Small, square houses rested on even smaller plots. The houses looked as though they’d been built in the 1930s, although myriad additions and extensions had taken them out of any defined architectural camp, if they had ever been in one. A nice, quiet neighborhood.

As Margit and Maitland walked from their rented car to the church, two other cars parked next to hers. Four men in uniform came out of each vehicle and fell into a loosely grouped formation, as military people tend to do. They headed in Margit’s direction. Of the eight men, seven were unknown to her. But one, who brought up the rear of the contingent, was Monroney’s aide, Major Anthony Mucci.

She and Maitland waited until the group reached them. “Good morning, Major Mucci,” Margit said.

Mucci, whose perpetually sober expression was made for funerals, nodded, mumbled a greeting, and kept in step with the others as they went up the stairs and disappeared through the church door.

“Who are they?” Maitland asked.

“I suppose some of Robert’s colleagues,” Margit said. “It’s nice to see the military sent a group to pay its respects. Come on, let’s go in. The service will be starting.”

Margit and Maitland sat directly behind the eight uniformed mourners. Flo Cobol was on the other side of the aisle, with people Margit assumed were family. The minister, a chubby-cheeked young man who wore his hair in a ponytail, conducted the service with a minimum of religious rhetoric, but with considerable enthusiasm. He debunked the comforting notion that death brought its victim closer to God. “The fact is,” he said, “death stinks, and no matter how many nice things we say, it doesn’t make it any different. God is with us, anyhow.”

The only lay person who spoke was introduced as Robert’s cousin Susan, a slender, pretty girl whose body and voice trembled as she remembered the good times she’d enjoyed with her “favorite cous.” As she neared the end of her remarks, her trembling intensified, but her voice became stronger as she looked out over the gathering. “My cousin Robert was one of the nicest people in the world. It’s bad enough he isn’t with us anymore, and I will miss him very much. I also know that God knows Robert never killed anybody or anything, and that if he took his own life, it was because the pain he suffered recently from the lies was too much to bear.”