The Artifact (24 page)

An agent in a back row spoke up. “You mean they’re gay?”

“A few of us have been on this for a couple of days now,” Paula answered, “as soon as we caught up with their surprise retirement. Jerry?”

Jerry Roland stood up from his first row seat to face his peers. “There were muscle and male skin magazines in Geoff’s mail box, plain brown wrapper, along with a couple of flying mags. Super said a big guy fit Callaghan’s description visited pretty regular. Geoff’s apartment’s been swept, vacuumed and repainted for the next tenant. He swapped his furniture to pay the five months left on the lease.”

“Callaghan’s house on base was clean as a whistle,” Paula added.

An agent in a back row asked, “Nobody knows where they went?”

“Nada,” Roland answered. “We couldn’t find a single friend, confidant, enemy, hint or lead from any other officer, personnel files or separation papers.”

“When did they put in for retirement?”

“Their applications were submitted six months ago,” Roland said. “Somehow, Callaghan slipped them by without JCS or Pentagon approval, got them signed last week by his immediate superior. They drove through the main gate and disappeared.”

“Start checking the gay hangouts in cities and towns around the Fort,” Najarian told them, “flights from surrounding airfields. Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Asheville. Bear in on suspect fags on the base.”

“Upon recovery of the artifact,” Paula resumed, “there is nothing we need or wish to know from Callaghan or his people.” She threw a quick glance at the exit through which Harrington had departed, pausing for emphasis. “If Callaghan and his accomplices in this fiasco were unable to stand trial, it would save the government millions of dollars in legal costs and obviate the need to open this Pandora’s box to the press.”

She folded her arms across her breasts under the green jacket and beige silk blouse that enclosed them, moving to the side of the podium in an effort to seem open and available, displaying a pleated navy skirt and shapely legs.

“I will not be sitting in my office poring over your reports. Expect me to join any team that encounters a lead or problem. Do not bother me with minutia. The perpetrators are experienced combat veterans. Do not engage them without adequate backup. You were selected to head these teams based on your previous success in the field. And your proven loyalty to the best interests of your country. You know your job. Do it.”

Andrea had refused to allow Sammy to contact her Uncle Jim to inform him of her condition, or ask his assistance in making the many decisions that Dr. Lawton had warned would confront her as the disease progressed. She was even reluctant to allow him to contact the ALS Association to arrange a visit from one of their caseworkers in order to assess her needs. Her physical deterioration had remained stable during the past few weeks, and she refused to ‘pander’ to an illness that was going to kill her regardless of what she did or did not do. When her condition worsened, she declared, she would allow a caregiver experienced in taking care of patients with ALS, but until she couldn’t use the john or bathe herself, Sammy could provide all the assistance she needed.

On the day after the assassination of the Preacher Lady, Andrea was startled at a news report that as a veteran of the Iraqi War, Sergeant Hannah Ogilvie, the real name of the religious iconoclast, would be buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

“Ogilvie, Ogilvie,” Andrea murmured. “Why does that strike a familiar chord?”

They remained silent as they listened to CNN report the details of the funeral arrangements. Since no organized religion, church, temple or consecrated edifice would host a memorial ceremony for the Preacher Lady, her flag-draped coffin would lie on a catafalque in state for a single day under a large canvas tent on the grassy expanse of the Washington Monument.

Andrea turned away from the TV and spoke to Sammy. “Where is that list of KIA and MIA names you found in that Ft. Bragg newspaper?”

Sammy went to the two-drawer filing cabinet next to the escritoire, fished through a file folder and handed a sheet of paper to Andy.

Rand Duncan was puzzled and concerned when his secretary informed him that Dick Nuzzo of NBC News was on the line. “Hello, Mr. Nuzzo, to what do I owe the pleasure of your phone call?”

“To express my empathy with your own sadness regarding Andrea’s illness.”

After learning of her diagnosis with secret glee, Duncan had put the troublesome reporter out of mind. “Uh, Andrea? Oh, yes, terrible, terrible.”

“She could be a problem,” Nuzzo said, “but she certainly delivered the goods.”

“Hoist on her own petard.”

Nuzzo grimaced on the other end of the line. “I’ve been talking to a couple of other networks, and we think it would be more appropriate to run a retrospective now instead after she’s gone, to acknowledge her contribution to the broadcast news industry over the past 25 years. Voice our appreciation and support while she is still with us.”

“Nineteen-thirties first baseman they named her disease for. Told 60,000 Yankee fans he was ‘the luckiest man on the face of the earth’ to have their support.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember.” Duncan had to refrain from laughing. “An excellent idea for Andy.”

“I’m sure NNC will want to take the lead in this, Rand. We’ll need to coordinate airdates and content so we don’t all run the same thing. I assume you’d be willing to share tapes of the most significant stories she‘s turned in lately.”

Rand hung up the phone laughing. When he recovered, he pressed his intercom. “Maria, get that still photographer up here right away. Tell him to clear the decks for a special assignment, and make sure he has one of those telescopic lenses.”

Out in his reception area, while Duncan had been speaking to Nuzzo, Maria had been stealing surreptitious glances at the two burly men in business suits seated in the padded armchairs against the left wall.

She looked down at the two calling cards on her desk, speaking softly into the mouthpiece. “Detectives Kruger and Leonard are here to see you, Mr. Duncan.”

“Who?”

“From the District Police Department.”

A motorcade lead a caisson carrying Hannah’s remains behind the traditional rider-less horse, silver spurs glinting on polished knee-length riding boots reversed in the stirrups of a burnished leather saddle. A contingent of several thousand disciples and a covey of vocal antagonists protesting her message trailed the funeral procession proceeded by police motorcycles, a military honor guard, airborne officers and non-coms and a few brave dignitaries. Their journey through the streets of the Capital was less than two miles, onto Independence Avenue, skirting the circle around the Lincoln Memorial, over the Arlington Memorial Bridge to the Virginia Hills and the Cemetery itself.

When a CBS cameraman covering the entourage behind the caisson zoomed in to pan across several faces of the airborne officers marching before the caisson, Andrea almost fell off the sofa shouting, “Callaghan! Callaghan!” pointing an accusatory finger at the television screen.

Sammy starred wide-eyed at the brief image of the retired general and his Major Geoff attired in full-dress olives, their chests plastered with the silver airborne insignia above overlapping rows of sparkling medals hung from colorful ribbons, brazenly marching in cadence to the rolling

drumbeat, slow-step dirge of the procession.

Andrea’s weakened arms had forced her to succumbed to the necessity of using the motorized wheelchair, and she reached for it now where Sammy had propped it against the arm of the couch. “Get me out there, Sam! I’m gonna grab that man and stay on him like stripes on a zebra!”

Seventeenth Street, Henry Bacon and 23
^rd
Streets were cordoned off at Constitution Ave., so Sammy took the access ramp to Roosevelt Bridge to cross the Potomac, then doubled back southeast on Jefferson to Memorial Drive and the Cemetery entrance. Andy produced her press pass for the gate guards, described her incapacity, and Sammy followed directions to Weitzel Drive at the far north end of the national graveyard.

Only the first hundred or so mourners and no protestors were admitted to the internment site. Sammy had to park the car in a narrow cutoff some distance from Hannah’s final resting place. Andy continued to badger Sammy to hurry as he pulled her wheelchair out of the trunk, opened and locked it carefully into operating position. She started the motor and drove off toward the crowd ahead, admonishing Sammy to speed it up.

“Now you know why I call you Princess,” Sam said as he jogged beside her.

Annoyed looks and grumbled epithets followed Sammy guiding Andy through the crowd toward the flag-draped coffin resting on a catafalque at the edge of the open grave. General Callaghan stood at attention at its head reading the 23
^rd
Psalm.

“...though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

Callaghan closed his Bible. The lieutenant in charge of the burial detail raised his sword and

uttered the commands; the five soldiers on the opposite side of the grave raised their rifles and fired a three volley salute. The crisp sound of a bugle cut into the echoing report of the rifles with the sorrowful lament of Taps.

Two of the uniformed pallbearers removed the American flag from her coffin, folded it into a precise triangle and presented it to Callaghan, who saluted, turned on his heel and strode away through the parting mourners with Major Charles Geoff a half step behind.

“General Callaghan!” Andrea called out.

When he didn’t turn or acknowledge her shout, she put the wheelchair into motion, nearly rolling over several people’s feet as she chased the two officers. “Sam, go slow them down, will you? We can’t lose them now, dammit!”

Sammy sprinted ahead to accost the ex-general and managed to get him to stop. Callaghan cast a pained look back at Andrea approaching, shaking his head in mixed admiration and bewilderment.

“Have you no sense of propriety?” he asked.

“We found the experts you commissioned to translate the ancient artifact document.” she

blurted, out of breath.

misinterpret and spin?”

Major Geoff said, “We’d better move out General. They’ll have seen you on television.”

“I’ll get you on television,” Andrea threatened, “with a version of this probably treasonable theft and obstruction of justice that could land you in Leavenworth.”

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” Geoff said.

“Lieutenant Mitchell’s squad found the artifact in the desert, you smuggled it back to the states in a coffin, denied its existence, then paid and/or coerced ancient language experts to translate it.”

Callaghan’s eyebrows shot up beneath the gold braid on the visor of his cap. “You have done a commendable job of ferreting out facts from an extremely well-planned strategy of denial and obfuscation.”

interview during which I will reveal the entire history of the document in question.”

Andrea looked up at him from her wheelchair, shaking her head in disagreement. “Not good enough, General. Time to change, hide, destroy the manuscript, or whatever other devious intent you may have for it. Give it up now.”

“Or what?” Geoff asked her.

“Or I go to the authorities, lay it all out in the press.” Andrea produced the photo she had taken of demented George Mitchell in the VA sanitarium. “Your theft, denial, secreting Mitchel away in an insane asylum, your responsibility for his murder, falsifying KIA and MIA statistics, your connection to the Preacher Lady, Mitchell’s Second Platoon Sergeant, Hannah Ogie—I’m sure the FBI, Military, State and Justice departments would all have a vested interest in your arrest, trial and incarceration in Leavenworth for a very long period of time.”

“Goodbye, Miz Madigan,” Callaghan said, turning to follow Geoff to a black limousine shorn of his fender flags of rank. A tall soldier with a thick brush mustache and aviator sunglasses, wearing dress greens held the rear door open.