The Jefferson Allegiance (23 page)

To that, Evie had no reply. They drove past the Thayer Hotel on the right and Buffalo Soldier Field on the left, where Ducharme had spilled blood playing intramural football and soccer as a cadet.

They drove onward, passing a low stonewall that flanked the sidewalk to the right. Officer’s quarters were perched on the hillside above them to the left. A couple of cadets, bundled up against the cold in bulky sweats, jogged by, their breath smoky in the cold air. A cloudy, grey sky seemed to be reaching down to blanket the ground. The ‘Gloom Period’ in all its dreariness.

Large foreboding buildings covered in grey stone appeared ahead: the main campus of West Point, although Ducharme couldn’t recall ever hearing anyone call it a campus. It was the Academy, pure and simple. Not your average college. A rockbound, highland home to the sentimental; Hudson High those who were not.

Mahan Hall went by on the right and New South Barracks on the left, where Ducharme had spent four years as a member of company G-1. Then Bartlett Hall, home to the hard sciences on the right and old Pershing Barracks, still standing from the days of MacArthur, on the left. Ducharme glanced up at the clock tower where, according to legend, MacArthur and several other cadets had hauled the reveille cannon to the top as part of a cadet prank in one night. It took two weeks to remove it.

“Someone liked stone and grey,” Evie noted.

“Keen powers of observation.” Ducharme slowed down as the Plain appeared directly ahead. West Point was centered on a parade field with a large statue of George Washington mounted on a steed overseeing it.

Ducharme had spent untold hours out there drilling and marching. A memory popped to mind and he felt a momentary thrill, remembering Passing in Review as a Firstie—a senior cadet—in command of his company, barking orders. Which was immediately followed by an earlier memory of the feeling of disorientation from his first day at the Academy, R-Day, Reception Day, when he’d marched out there, head shaven, having been screamed at all day, and raised his right hand and sworn an oath, the words of which had never left his mind:

I, Paul Ducharme, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

“Having a moment?” Evie asked.

Ducharme blinked. He had stopped the Blazer and was staring through the windshield at the Plain. He didn’t remember stopping, and that scared him. Traces of snow streaked the withered crew-cut grass, the blast of winter’s fury coming down the Hudson River having left its mark. Looking up, he could see that Storm King Mountain’s top was masked by low clouds.

“I’m all right,” he said. “Was just thinking about taking my oath of office out there, years ago.”

Evie nodded. “Did you—“ she pause, gave a sheepish smile, then continued—“know that the oath of office was the very first Federal law ever enacted? June first, seventeen eighty-nine,
First Congress, First Session, Chapter One, Statute One. Apparently, the Founding Fathers took the matter very seriously as it was the absolute first thing Congress concerned itself with. They didn’t want the military swearing allegiance to any person. They wanted the allegiance to be to the Constitution, which is the core of the country.”

“The President is in there,” Kincannon said from the back seat. “You know POTUS? The big cheese? The commander-in-chief?”

“Only that you’ll obey the President’s legitimate orders,” Evie said. “The Oath is to the Constitution with no qualifiers. Pre-empts all else, including the President. Also, there’s the part about all enemies, foreign
and
domestic.”

Ducharme opened his mouth to say something, but pain stabbed through his mind like a spike of molten metal. He struggled to focus, pressing his foot on the brake. It passed less than a second later, and he blinked hard.

“What’s wrong with you?” Evie asked, putting a hand on his right forearm to lessen the thrust of the question.

Ducharme looked in the rearview mirror. Kincannon nodded slightly. Ducharme leaned back in the seat, closing his eyes. “I was in Afghanistan running an MTT—Mobile Training Team—with the Afghan army, teaching counter-insurgency. We were driving down a road and some kid came out with a can of Coke, trying to sell it to us. Except it was a bomb. I sensed it, tried to knock it away, but it went off.” He reached up and touched the scar under his eye. “Piece of metal went in. No big deal. But it was the trigger for a larger ambush. Because then a buried IED went off. Threw our Humvee ten feet and buckled it. The kid was pretty much vaporized. Apparently he wasn’t in the know on the bigger plan for the ambush. Or maybe he was and just didn’t give a shit about living anymore.”

He fell silent, remembering.

“And?” Evie persisted.

“The Humvee was Up-Armor, so we had some protection,” Ducharme said. “The blast-proof glass wasn’t perfect in this case. Ever since, I’ve had some pain episodes. They’re very short. A second at the most. According to the Army I’ve been fixed and am serviceable once more.”

“I’m sorry,” Evie said.

Ducharme wasn’t sure what to say. He realized no one had ever said they were sorry. Not the Army, not the Administration, not the General who pinned the Purple Heart on him and quickly moved down the line in the hospital ward. There had been a lot of wounded to pin and forget.

“It hasn’t been a problem,” he lied. “A lot of people in the War on Terror have sustained brain injuries from IEDs. But since you can’t directly see the damage, it’s been largely ignored. Some are even saying it’s PTSD, not a real injury, which I can tell you is bullshit.”

“A lot of things have been ignored,” Evie added, touching his arm.

Ducharme was flustered. He noted in the rearview mirror that Kincannon was pointedly staring out the window. “Yeah.” He took his foot off the brake and continued down the road.

Ducharme looked about and had his first surprise. He hadn’t been back to the Academy since graduating. Where tennis courts had once graced the landscape behind a scowling statue of General Patton holding a pair of binoculars, was a large building, albeit one bearing the same gray stone granite façade. Had he simply forgotten about the building?

“That’s new,” Kincannon muttered, which was a relief.

“Well, it’s appropriate,” Evie said as they rolled past and saw the sign in front of the building:
Thomas Jefferson Hall Library
. “Looks like someone finally remembered who founded this place. And picked the most appropriate building to put his name on. Probably a statue of him inside.”

“Funny.” Ducharme was at the stop sign, getting ready to make a left and continue on around the parade field when Evie spoke again. “I want to go into the library.”

Ducharme looked at her. “We’re not here to sightsee.” He tapped the watch on his wrist. “We’re on the clock. Good chance someone’s going to be dying in New York City today.”

“There’s something I want to check on, something that seeing that library reminded me of. Something that could be important.”

Ducharme sighed. She had that info-bot look again. “Going to tell me what that is?”

“I’m going to show you,” Evie said.

Ducharme pulled into a spot clearly marked ‘No Parking.’

“Breaking a rule?” Evie asked.

“Fuck the MPs,” Ducharme snapped. “They wouldn’t dare mess with this vehicle.”

“That’s the spirit,” Kincannon said.

“Is it special? Covert?” Evie asked. “Will they not be able to see it?”

“Real funny, woman.” Ducharme got out, meeting Evie and Kincannon on the sidewalk outside the façade of the new library. They walked in the front doors of the library, a blast of warmth greeting them. Along with a portrait of Thomas Jefferson hanging on the wall to the right.

Evie stopped to admire it. “This is Sully’s original portrait of Jefferson. A classic.”

Ducharme had vague memories of seeing the painting in the old library somewhere. He hadn’t exactly lived among the stacks as a cadet. “This is what you wanted to see?”

“Partly,” Evie said. “A copy of this hangs at the University of Virginia. The other copy done by Sully hangs in Philosophical Hall in Philly. But there’s also something we need to check.” She led the way to a computer and sat down in front of it.

A cadet wearing the diagonal white belt, polished breastplate and saber of a cadet on duty came walking up to them. “Excuse me, sir, these computers are for official use only and the library is only for—“

Ducharme pulled out his identification card and put it in front of the cadet’s face.

The cadet snapped to attention. “I’m sorry, sir.” He spun on his heel and quickly walked away.

“Now that’s discipline,” Ducharme told Kincannon.

Who, of course, laughed. “Don’t get too used to it.”

Evie ignored both of them, immersed in her work. She wrote down something on a slip of paper and then headed toward the stacks.

“Should we follow?” Kincannon asked.

“I think she can survive the stacks on her own,” Ducharme said. He looked at the cadets hard at work, studying, researching. The atmosphere was different than Ducharme remembered: this was now a military academy during wartime. Ducharme had graduated before 9-11. Every cadet here now had made the decision to come to the Academy knowing that the country was already at war. War was all they knew for years.
How had everything gone so wrong?
The question reverberated through his brain.

“We might need some reinforcements,” Kincannon said. “I’m gonna make a call or two.”

Ducharme glanced at the Sergeant Major. He had his satphone out and was scrolling through his long list of contacts. Having been on active duty for twenty-five years, Ducharme knew the Sergeant Major had a very long list. Apparently he found someone to his liking, because he took a few steps away and made a call.

“Anyone I know?” Ducharme asked when Kincannon was done on the satphone.

“Chopper pilot whose ass I saved in Iraq. Stationed up at Stewart Airfield in the National Guard.”

“He going to help?”

“Of course.” Kincannon looked insulted. “I rescued her after her bird was shot down.”

“Her. Right. That all you did?”

“She was grateful,” Kincannon said with a warm grin. “Nice lady. Very nice lady. And a damn good pilot. I fear she took advantage of me.”

“Poor her,” Ducharme said.

Evie was coming back to them, a book in her hands. “Let’s go.”

“Aren’t you going to check it out?” Ducharme asked.

“You are a rule follower,” Evie rolled her eyes. “We’ve got people getting killed and you’re worried about checking out a book?” She walked out the door. She tapped her wrist, which, of course had no watch strapped to it. “We’re on the clock.”

“I guess we’re going,” Ducharme told Kincannon.

Kincannon snapped to attention. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m surrounded by funny people,” Ducharme muttered.

“Better than the alternative,” Kincannon said as they went out the doors back into the winter cold. “Sometimes all you can do is laugh at the absurdities.”

Ducharme glanced at the painting of Jefferson on the way out. “Sometimes you can do more.”

*************

The Blackhawk helicopter flew up the Hudson River, Manhattan to the right, and the Palisades to the left. The pilots had it low, fifty feet above the surface of the dark water. In the back, Burns stared at Turnbull who was talking on the satellite link. Turnbull had been on the link since they left the FBI field station in Baltimore after catching a few hours of sleep on cots.

Burns was waiting. He was good at waiting. He’d watched Turnbull texting at certain times. He knew about the secure burst text mode the top levels of the FBI were now using; in fact, he’d been part of the FBI Task Force assigned to test the program.

Turnbull pushed the off button and began to make another call. Burns reached over and grabbed the man’s wrist. “Evie Tolliver’s file?”

Turnbull gave him an irritated look. “Tolliver isn’t a suspect.”

“She’s part of this, like Ducharme. I need to know about her.”

Turnbull stared at him for a few seconds, his face unreadable. “Fine. I’ll Bluetooth it to your satphone.”

As Turnbull worked the keys on his phone, Burns pushed a button on the back of his. There was a beep as the information was downloaded. And that wasn’t all that was being transmitted—Turnbull might have the latest technology, but that didn’t mean he knew all its possible uses. Not only was Burns’s phone getting the data, it was sending a virus to Turnbull’s phone.

The download finished, Turnbull turned away and went back to talking on his phone.

Burns checked his satphone. It had copied not only the file, but also the text-burst encryption on Turnbull’s satphone perfectly. With the virus he’d sent, any text message that went to Turnbull’s satphone, would now also go to Burns’s.