OFFICIAL PRIVILEGE
by
P.T. Deuterman

St. Martin's Paperbacks titles
by P. T. Deutermann

scorpion in the sea

the edge of honor

official privilege

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you
should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was
reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher,
and neither the author nor the publisher has received
any payment for this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. Characters, military organizations, ships, and
places in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination,
or, if real, or based on real entities, are used fictitiously without any
intent to describe their actual conduct or character. Insofar as this
book addresses military issues, policies, and history, the work
represents the views of the author alone and does not necessarily
represent the policies and views of the United States Department of
Defense.

OFFICIAL PRIVILEGE

Copyright 1995 by P. T. Deutermann.

Cover photograph by Michael Hart/FPG International.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For
information address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York,
N.Y. 10010.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-1829

ISBN: 0-312-95713-0

Printed in the United States of America

St. Martin's Press hardcover edition/June 1995
St. Martin's Paperbacks edition/February 1996

10 987654321

acknowledgments

I would like to thank my editors at St. Martin's. Thanks
are also due to the lady at the Philadelphia Medical
Examiner's office and a forensic scientist in the Georgia
Bureau of Investigation who asked to remain
anonymous; to Debby and Kathy and Aubrey for
critical first readings; to Andy Fahy for help with the
battleship layout; to the Naval History Division in the
Washington Navy Yard; to the public affairs office of
the Washington Metropolitan Police; and to two young
army captains at Georgia Military College for help with
some army organizational material. Special thanks as
well to my agent, Nick Ellison, and his trusty sidekick,
Liz, for their continuing encouragement.

This book is dedicated to those officers who attain flag
or general officer rank in the armed forces and
continue to exercise the hands-on, personally-involved
style of leadership that got them their stars.

april 13, 1994

THE PHILADELPHIA NAVAL SHIPYARD

i'm not gonna let those bastards scare me, Benny thought. I know what
those dumb guineas are up to, a couple of 'em probably waiting down here
in the dark for me, gonna jump outta one of these hatches and try to
scare my ass. He stopped, then squinted through the scratched faceplate
of the mask at the hull diagram, trying to shine his hard-hat helmet
light down on the diagram and still keep an eye out in the darkened
second deck passageway. Sons a bitches, screwing off up there at the air
lock while I go nitrogen diving down here, doing their damn job.

Benny was nineteen, a high school graduate, and he was trying like hell
to convert an intern job in Production into a full-time job in the
Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.

That was probably why the ship's supe had told \ him to go to the
battleship and do a no-shit sounding!
and-security tour. Those goof-offs over in Shop 72 were [ reporting
everything secure, but the supe had seen i them up on the main deck,
sitting around when they were supposed to be inside, going space by
space through the Engineering Department. "You go do it, . Benny," he
said. "I know it's a little spooky in there, no lights and everything,
but they'll set you up with the breathing rigs, and you go through the
main holes in the Wisconsin and do the security tour right."

Benny was doing it right, but it was more than just a little spooky down
here--cold black steel, some of it five, six inches thick, creating
total darkness once you went through the air lock on the main deck.

There had been a temporary lighting string hung in the overhead of the
main deck's athwartships passageway, but once you went down to the
second deck, it was like total darkness, man. He had a single air-tank
rig on with a full facemask, because, below the main deck, the
mothballed battlewagon had been backfilled with nitrogen gas to displace
all the oxygen. No oxygen, no oxidation --nothing rusted. And no oxygen
meant nobody else should be down here, either--except maybe a couple of
wiseasses from Shop 72, waiting to scare the new kid.

He kept walking up the passageway, looking for the hatch down to
Gasoline Alley and the main engineering spaces, flicking his helmet
light from side to side, careful to step over the infamous
knee-knockers, those steel reinforcement frames that stuck up out of the
deck every twenty feet. He was cold--he should have worn the jacket,
like that guy had said. But that was the same guy who'd been talking
about ghosts and the souls of dead sailors wandering the passageways,
rolling his eyes, and Benny wasn't having any of that stuff.

He finally came to an armored hatch; he stepped closer to read the brass
plate on which the hatch number was engraved. Then he consulted the hull
diagram again. Bingo. Down this sucker to the third deck, from which
access to the fire rooms and engine rooms of the battleship could be
gained. He pointed his light down the steep ladder, marveling at the
four-inch-thick deck through which the hatch passed and the heavy
hydraulic arms supporting the hatch. What the hell was that! He snapped
his head around, but there was no peripheral vision in these damn masks.

He'd had the sense that somebody might be following him in the darkness,
**skip**but if there was, he knew it had to be one of those guys, come down
after him to spook him. He'd seen other breathing rigs stashed up there
by the air lock. Damn riggers--he wondered how long it had been since
any of them had come down here to check the main spaces.

He stepped onto the first rung of the ladder and then reached up and
snapped off the helmet light. He blinked at the total darkness. He had
hoped to catch a flash of light behind him in case one of the guys was
back there, but there was nothing--nothing but the blackness and the
sound of his breathing in the mask.

"The other place where the sun don't friggin' shine, man," the rigger
chief had said. "It's a friggin' tomb down there, man, and you're gonna
see why nobody in the shop wants to make the tour. Besides, they got all
those electronic flooding alarms and shit--what do they need a guy to go
down there for?"

But the ship's supe had laid it out: "Because they're supposed to do it
once a month, go down there and physically inspect the main spaces,
looking for the one thing that can spell disaster in a mothballed
ship--water.

The bilges are supposed to be bone-dry, so if there's water, there's a
goddamn leak somewhere, and that's serious shit, because rising water
can short out the flooding alarms, and then you get what the snipes call
a no-shitter going, that big-ass battleship sitting there without one
single swingin' dick on board and water rising in an engine room."

One of the mothballed heavy cruisers over in the west yard had settled
right to the bottom over the period of a month, flooding out the opened
steam turbines and eight boilers left opened under a dry layup.

They had had to scrap the ship.

He checked the area behind him, but there was still only blackness. If
there was somebody back there, they wouldn't be able to see him if he
just stepped down the hatch, so that's what he did, going down carefully
in the complete darkness, one step at a time, gently bumping his tank on
the hatch coaming and then the individual treads of the ladder. When he
felt his foot reach the solid-steel deck at the bottom of the ladder, he
turned around and looked back up to where the top of the ladder should
be. And he waited, watching for the telltale glow of another helmet
light up there. But there was still nothing, and then he remembered he
had eight main spaces to get through and about fifty minutes of air left
in the tank.

Screw it, he thought. They wanna screw around, let 'em. He snapped his
helmet light back on and consulted the diagram, his breathing again
audible in the mask.

Start from aft and work forward. Let's see ... where the hell is aft?

This way. First space to hit was the aftermost engine room, the hatch
all the way aft, port side.

Over the next half hour, he physically inspected each main engineering
space, stepping through the hatch from Gasoline Alley, shining his
flashlight down through the deck gratings three levels down to the
bilge, checking for any glint of water. He worked his way toward the bow
of the ship until he came to the last hatch, number one fire room, port
side, all the way forward.

The hatches had all looked much smaller than he had expected them to be.

Be a bitch to get outta these places, some heavy shit went down in the
middle of a sea battle, he thought as he worked his way forward.

Probably why they made them that way--keep the guys from booking
topside.

He undogged the final hatch and was surprised to see how loose the dogs
were; every other compartment along Gasoline Alley had been dogged down
all the way, damn near requiring three men and a small boy to move those
lever arms. But this one was hand-tight.

Weird. He started to open the hatch and then stopped.

I wonder if one of the guys is in there, snuck in when I was in one of
the other spaces. Gonna yell

"Boo" when I open the hatch. He toyed with
the idea of pushing the lever arm down instead of up, closing it, and
then faking some noise to make it sound like he was slapping a lock on
it. Whoever was in there'd shit a brick. But then he would not have
looked in, checked for water in the bilges. He thought about it, his
breath wheezing in the mask, looked at his watch, and once again
thought, Screw it. He opened the hatch.

He stopped to initial the small green logbook with the time, date, and
compartment number before stepping through. He tensed, expecting a
sudden movement or a noise, but there was nothing. It was just another
lifeless fire room, the huge shape of the boilers and all the piping
flickering in his vision as he stood on the grating above the fire room
and pointed the helmet light around the space.

The fire room was huge--nearly ninety feet wide and almost as long. The
immense two-story bulk of the stainless steel-clad boilers glinted in
the light, surrounded by a myriad of pumps and steam lines shrouded in
their white asbestos lagging. He checked his watch again--twelve minutes
left. "You don't have to go in and walk around," the supe had said.

"Just shine your light down into the bilges. Something shines back at
you, log it, then report back. You don't have to do anything else."

Benny shined the light straight down and saw only darkness,
except--there. He saw something white, like flour--some kind of white
powder in the bilges twenty feet below the platform he was standing on,
over near the centerline, under IB boiler. Shit, now what? Definitely
not water, but definitely abnormal. Should he log it? He looked at his
watch again. Ten minutes. Screw it.

Go down there, see what this shit is, log it, and get out of here.

Taking one last quick look out into the passageway to make sure nobody
was creeping up on him, he climbed down the ladder to the gratings of
the upper level of the fire room, where he looked again, down through
the deck gratings. Now he could see a white bag, shiny white powder all
around it down in the bilges. Damn mask. Couldn't really see shit. His
breathing sounded extra loud and raspy in the mask. Slow it down, man.

Using too much air. He looked at his watch again. Nine minutes. Looked
just like a big bag of flour had been dropped into the bilges under IB
boiler, where it had broken open. But no water. Okay. He pointed the
helmet light around until he found the ladder to the lower level at the
other end of the boiler-front aisleway, then went down one more level.

He tramped across the steel deck plates to the front of IB boiler, then
got down on his hands and knees and pointed the helmet light at the
remains of the bag. Even with all the scratches on the mask, he could
read the printing on the bag now: powder, desiccant, nstm 242-55-9010,
Milspec 9710la.

FOR USE IN WATERSIDES OF MARINE PROPULSION BOILERS during dry LAYUPS
only. There was some smaller print that began with the word Warning, but
he couldn't make it out through the mask. He sat back on his haunches
and shivered. It was cold down here, really cold. The place felt like a
burial chamber.

What the hell was a bag of desiccant powder doing in the bilges? He knew
what desiccant was--he'd originally been assigned to the boilers shop
before landing the intern position in Production. Desiccant powder was
hygroscopic. It soaked up moisture, kept metal structures like the steam
drums in a boiler bone-dry. He knew that desiccant powder bags belonged
up in the steam drum. He looked up, but there wasn't enough light to
make out the upper levels of the boiler front.

Watch your time. Eight minutes. He went back up the ladder and walked
over to IB's boiler front. He examined the steam drum's manhole, which
was visible because the big asbestos pad had been removed. He frowned.

Dry layup--the steam drum should be open; each of the boilers in the
other spaces had been open.

He turned around and saw that la's steam drum was open, the manhole
cover laid out on the gratings, with the two-inch-diameter bolts
collected inside, the big pad hanging on a hook. He looked back at IB's
manhole cover and saw that the eight bolts were on. He felt one and
found it was only hand-tight. Seriously weird.

Why was this thing bolted up? He checked his watch again. Seven minutes.

What the hell, I've supposedly got a fifteen-minute reserve on top of
the normal stay time.

He took off his glove and began backing off all eight of the bolts. Once
he had the bolts off, he pried the manhole cover, an elliptical-shaped
one-inch-thick steel cover about thirty inches across and twenty-four
inches high, back on its hinges. He dipped his head to shine the helmet
light inside, then felt his stomach grab in shock.

"Oh Jesus. Oh Sweet Jesus," he moaned into the mask, which promptly
fogged up from his sudden exhalation.

He stumbled back away from the boiler, back away from those staring,
wide eyes and the blackened, peeling features, one clawlike hand raised
as if reaching for the manhole. Then he ran for the hatch, trying not to
piss his pants. He took the ladder up to the entrance grating platform
two steps at a time and jumped over the knee-knocker, then nearly jumped
out of his skin when there was a blaze of light and a shout as two figures waved their arms and made ghost noises at him through their masks.

He knocked one of them flat on his ass and ran right for the hatch
leading up to the second deck. He went up the steel ladder, through a
second armored hatch, turned right, right again, down the passageway, up
the ladder where the light was showing, through the athwartships
passageway. He could hear the timer on his breathing rig ringing over
his sobs as his pounding lungs fought for breath. He burst through the
air lock and back into the blazing sunlight in a clatter.

He ripped his mask off and heard the laughter over his heaving sobs, all
the old hand riggers standing around, yukking it up at the new kid
getting the shit scared out of him by the foreman and his segundo, who
were stepping through the air lock even now. He tried to tell them, but
they were still roaring and carrying on.

A fat, grinning face stuck itself right in front of him.

"Hey, kid, how ya like the grand tour now, hunh?

Shit, look at him. He's--shit, lookit his face, Joey, you dipshit; you
went an' scared this kid shitless!"

"Dead guy," Benny gasped. It was all he could get out. "Dead guy."

The rest of the guys roared anew as Joe and his helper stripped off
their masks, but then the fat man saw the look in Benny's eyes and put
up his hand. "Wait a minute, wait a goddamn minute, here--hey, guys,
hold it, hold it, awright?" he yelled. "Benny, what's this shit about a
dead guy? Hey, Benny, calm down. What is it, what is it, hey? Hey, Joey,
the kid's hyperventilatin'.

C'mere, c'mere."

The gang stopped laughing and crowded around Benny as he sank down on
his knees, his lungs scraping for breath, his mask dangling across his
thighs. Then he threw up over the edge of the teak quarterdeck. There
was a sudden stunned silence as the men backed away from the mess.

"Hey, kid, what the hell ..." said Joey, covering his own nose and
mouth. "It was just a little joke, okay?

Shit, you knew it was us, right?"

But Benny was shaking his head, trying to wipe his chin, his face ashen,
miserable at the way his guts had betrayed him.

"Dead guy. In the boiler. Steam drum. One B boiler," he gasped. "I
swear. Jesus Christ. Saw his face.

A dead guy. A fucking mummy."

april 1934

WASHINGTON. D. C Comdr. daniel lane collins stood behind his desk chair
and stared out through the grimy, rain-streaked windows of his
fourth-floor Pentagon office. Facing him was the dreary space between
the slab cement walls of the E-ring and the D-ring. The rain trickled
down vertical ridges in the concrete, which still showed the imprint of
the pine boards used to form the Pentagon's walls back in 1942. The
sterile fluorescent lighting across the way showed the beginnings of
another great Navy Monday as other Navy staff officers soundlessly
shucked raincoats, made coffee, or began to sift through blooming
in-boxes. He spotted that pretty, blond lieutenant commander who worked
in OP-63 looking out her window, and he raised his coffee cup in a
good-morning salute. But she didn't return the gesture.

Didn't see him, or maybe was just ignoring him.

Besides, his gesture probably constituted sexual harassment in the
post-Tailhook era. He sighed.

His boss, Capt. Ronald K. Summerfield, USN, threaded his way through the
cluster of gray desks to his private office in a bustle of wet plastic
rain gear.

"You love it and you know it, Daniel," the captain announced cheerily as
he shook out his raincoat. Captain Summerfield, a tall, ruddy-faced
four-striper of some twenty-seven years service, was the 614 shop's
branch head, in charge of Dan Collins and the one other staff officer of
the NATO-Europe Plans and Policy Branch, Division of Politico-Military
Policy, Directorate of Plans, Policy, and Operations, Office of the
Chief of Naval Operations or code OP-614 for short.

It had taken Dan Collins several months to learn the Navy headquarter's
arcane office-coding system, but, given the mouthful presented by the
organizational titles, the OP codes were a practical necessity.

"It reminds me of Newport at sea detail, Captain," Dan replied, turning
away from the window. "Only there's no ship and no sea. It is just a
job, after all. That recruiter lied."

"They do that, recruiters," Summerfield said while hanging up his
raincoat and hat. He then fished a raunchy-looking coffee mug out of his
out-basket, turning it over to dislodge any overnight transients. "So,
no more adventure, hunh? At least you still have a shot at getting back
to sea. Me, now, I'm all done. All I get to do these days is make lots
and lots of policy here at Fort Fumble by the Sea. Jackson--where's the
goddamn coffee?"

Yeoman Second Class Jackson stuck his head around the corner of his
anteroom by the front door. Jackson was the shop's admin clerk and
general factotum.

"The element did a Three Mile Island when I plugged it in this morning,
Cap'n. We're sharing with Six-sixteen next door."

Summerfield shook his head. "When I have to go to the bubbleheads to get
my goddamn coffee, it is a shitty day," he grumbled.

Dan grinned as Summerfield, a dedicated surface ship sailor, headed next
door to bum some coffee from the submariners who ran the Navy's nuclear
and ocean policy shop. As Dan looked around the cramped office, with its
four desks crammed into a space designed in World War II for one
officer, the phone started ringing in Jackson's cubbyhole. The day
beginneth, he thought, sitting down to his own in-basket, where a few
hundred State Department overnight cables were piled for his personal
reading enjoyment. But Jackson was calling his name.

"Yeah, who?"

"Front office, Commander. EA says that oh-six B requests
the pleasure of your company, along with Six fourteen himself when he
gets back with his coffee."

"Roger that," muttered Collins. OP-06B. The Assistant Deputy Chief of
Naval Operations for Plans, Pol icy, and Operations. The deputy dog: a
senior aviator rear admiral whose main preoccupation seemed to be I the
fanging of various officers on the OP-06 staff for incomplete, tardy, or
otherwise objectionable staff work. A summons from Rear Admiral Carson
at 0735 was not a terrific way to start even a nice day, much less a
gray one. As he slipped into his service dress blues jacket with its
three gold stripes, he tried to remember which of his staffing packages
might have made it up to the deputy presence. He grabbed his staff
officer's notebook and went out the door, then turned right, heading I
up the polished tile corridor toward the front office. He f stopped by
the OP-616 shop to let his branch head know that he had been summoned by
the deputy. Sum merfield was standing in the doorway of Captain Ferring's office, but he waved him off like a friendly uncle.

"You're a big action officer now, Dan," he said.

"Give his lordship a tug on your forelock and my sincerest respects. And
be forthright: Admit right away that it's all your fault, whatever it
is. It will save you lots of time."

"Even if you chopped it, Cap'n?"

"Especially if I chopped it, Dan. Oh-six B knows full well that the
damage is done by the AOs and not us poor, overworked branch heads. The
roaches leave any sugar in that box, John?"

Dan laughed and headed down the E-ring corridor.

Summerfield had three years to go before mandatory retirement, unless he
made flag. In general, though, he didn't appear to sweat 06B, or anyone
else, for that matter. Dan was in a different boat: He had sixteen years
in the Navy, which meant he had four to go even to qualify for his
government pension. At thirty-seven, Dan Collins was beginning to show
the lines and traces of his career as a line officer in the surface-ship
Navy.

He was an even six feet tall, slender of frame and face, with a shock of
unruly black hair, bright blue eyes, an almost-too-long, straight nose,
and prominent cheekbones.

He had high, arching eyebrows that gave his face a perpetual expression
of mild surprise, and he walked with a slightly stooping gait born of
years of ducking through the low overheads in the destroyer force. His
slender build was deceptive: His athletic passion was rowing an elderly
George Pocock single along the middle reaches of the Potomac River just
upstream of the Key Bridge. He could do the Navy's annual PT test and
two-mile run without breaking a sweat.

The office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans, Policy,
and Operations, otherwise known within the headquarters staff as OP-06,
was a spacious corner E-ring suite befitting a three-star admiral. It
was located on one corner of the five-sided building, of ... which the
E-ring was the outer wall. The entire outside l| wall of the office was
given over to a line of ten-foot high windows that overlooked the
Pentagon helipad area and Arlington National Cemetery across the nearby
highway. The DCNO and ADCNO's offices were separated by a central
reception area, wherein the executive assistant, Capt. J. Robinson
Manning, held sway over a staff of two yeoman chief petty officers, two
junior yeoman petty officers, and a lieutenant who was the DCNO's
personal aide. The walls on either side of the reception area were
covered with several rows of official Navy portraits of former DCNOs and
ADCNOs. Near the front door, there were a large couch and two
upholstered chairs, where miscreants summoned into the presence of
either 06 or 06B could sit and perspire.

Manning, the EA, was an imperious officer whom many officers on the
staff called J.R. behind his back.

Well behind his back, Dan remembered. Manning sat stiffly erect behind
the desk nearest to the office of Vice Admiral Layman, the DCNO. His
desk looked like a command console, equipped with a standard multiline
telephone, a STU-III encrypted telephone, and the preaddressed telephone
system that networked all the other executive assistants on both the
Navy headquarters staff and also in the office of the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, who happened to be a navy admiral.

Dan knew the EA network was routinely used to short-circuit the naval
bureaucracy at the three- and four-star levels.

Manning peered briefly over a set of reading glasses as Dan came in.

"Ah. Commander Collins. Please have a seat."

"Morning, sir," Dan replied, but he remained standing, waiting by one of
the chairs. He had discovered that it was too hard to get his lanky
frame in and out of the ancient leather chairs. The door to the ADCNO's
office was closed, which was a bad omen. Routine staff business between
an action officer and 06B would have involved his knocking once,
sticking his head through the open door, getting yelled at, saying,
"Yes, sir" a few times, and withdrawing. A closed door meant that some
serious thinking was being shared with somebody. That was 06B's favorite
euphemism: Have Commander X come see me--I want to share my thinking
with him.

Dan also knew better than to ask the executive assistant why he had been
summoned. Manning had a standard reply to that question: a long,
rebuking look framed in silence that made it clear that when the
admirals in their power and glory resplendent were ready to enlighten
the summonee, they would do so.

While the clerical staff muttered through their paperwork and morning
phone calls and Manning dealt with a crisis involving staff cars, Dan
inspected the portrait gallery for the umpteenth time. This was his
second tour of duty in Washington on the Navy headquarters, or Opnav,
staff, and also his second tour of duty in OP06, the Navy's political
and diplomatic staff directorate.

There were five divisions in OP-06: Strategy (OP-60), Politico-Military
(OP-61), Technology Transfer (OP-62), Foreign Military Sales (OP-63),
and Fleet Operations (OP-64). Dan's first tour as a junior staff officer
in OP60, from 1990 to 1991, had been professionally stimulating.

This one in OP-61 had been less so, and now he was beginning to tire of
it as he found himself plowing through some of the same old bureaucratic
issues he had worked during his first tour. He was becoming convinced
that Captain Summerfield had it right: Just resurrect your old point
papers, change the date, and send them forward, because nothing ever
really changes on the Opnav staff, especially the Navy's position on
interservice policy issues. Summerfield had tacked up an old
cheerleader's signboard from his Academy days over the entrance to his
office. hold that line, it read, neatly summarizing the Navy
headquarters' going-in position on just about any issue affecting Navy
policy.

His two tours in Opnav had been separated by what now seemed an
all-too-brief assignment as executive officer in USS John King, a
guided-missile destroyer based down in Norfolk. His assignment as second
in command of John King had been professionally demanding, often
exhausting, and a huge education in just how many problems 285 sailors
could get themselves into in the space of eighteen months. But he had
been fortunate to have served under two very good commanding officers,
and he had ended up his tour with selection to commander, USN, and
screening for command on his first look. Sitting in the anteroom of the
OP-06 front office on a rainy Monday morning made him yearn for the days
when he could end the working day by pitching the wardroom softball team
to victory against the engineers.

The promise of another tour of sea duty was his only lifeline to
professional sanity. Screening for surface-ship command at the end of
his XO tour was the first, albeit crucial, step. That was the good news.

But now he was "in the bank" of commanders waiting for a ship to
command.

Since there were more commanders in the bank than there were ships to
command, this could be a longish wait, especially with the Navy retiring
so many ships.

The bad news was that he would perforce remain in the Pentagon until his
turn came up for command. These factors, coupled with the almost certain
knowledge that when he had finished his command at sea tour he would be
coming back to OP-06, did not improve his long term attitude. Lately, it
seemed that he had spent his professional life getting to the rank of
commander, USN, and sea command. Now that a command assignment was
glimmering on the horizon, he had begun to peer beyond it, and he was
beginning to see himself in the image of Summerfield.

Living alone was also getting to be a depressing business, despite the
tony surroundings of his town house in Old Town. It had taken him two
tours of duty to recover, if that was the word, emotionally and
spiritually from the death of his wife. But even after that long a time,
he still could not muster the interest to return to the
dating-and-mating game. His mind told him that living alone was probably
the wrong thing to do, but the energy and effort to change his personal
circumstances was simply not yet in him. It was still a pleasure to look
at a beautiful woman from a distance, but, since Claire's death, his
pleasure was directly proportional to the distance.

The intercom on Captain Manning's desk buzzed, and the EA picked up the
handset, listened for a moment, and then looked over at Dan.

"Yes, sir. Very good, sir," Manning purred, pointing wordlessly at Dan
and then to 06B's door. Dan walked over to the large white door, took a
quiet breath, ' knocked twice, and went in.

The ADCNO's office was twenty feet square, with its own window wall, two
couches and two upholstered chairs, a library table pushed up against
the corridor side wall, and a large mahogany desk centered against the
back wall. The front wall was covered by pictures of Navy airplanes. Two
curio cabinets filled with mementos from the admiral's own career
rounded out the decor.

1 Rear Adm. Walter Carson sat behind the desk, a pair ' of bifocals
pushed down on his scowling face. Carson was a florid-faced man whose
portly figure and sometimes pettifogging manner belied a brilliant
wartime record achieved during Vietnam as an A-6 pilot. His job as 06B
was faintly analogous to that of the executive officer aboard ship--the
final checkpoint for the quality and correctness of all the headquarters
policy staff work headed up to 06 and on the Chief of Naval Operations
himself. Carson was probably not going to advance to three stars, a fact
that sometimes tended to color his attitude. He was the antithesis of
the traditional naval aviator in that he was very formal, all business
all the time, and a serious nitpicker--in short, a perfect deputy.

Dan saw that there was one other person in the room, a heavyset civilian
who appeared to be in his fifties, dressed in a rumpled gray suit. The
man was visibly upset; he shot Dan an angry look when he came into the
office. But Dan was paying attention to the admiral, who was pointing
wordlessly to the single empty chair in the room. The admiral remained
at his desk.

"Okay," the admiral began brusquely, addressing the civilian. "Mr. Ames,
this is Commander Collins. Commander, this is Mr. Roscoe Ames, who is a
deputy director of the Naval Investigative Service."

Dan shook hands with Ames before sitting down, but Ames barely glanced
at him. Dan felt a tingle of apprehension at Ames's palpable hostility.

The NIS? Was he being investigated for something?

"Okay," the admiral said again. "Commander Collins, this is a verbal
appointing letter. Hard copy to follow.

You are hereby appointed to conduct a JAGMAN investigation into an
incident that has taken place in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. The
incident involves a death, which may be homicide. With me so far?"

"Uh, yes, sir, but--"

"But why is a politico-military specialist on the CNO's staff being
tasked to investigate an incident that normally would be in NIS's
bailiwick? First, because we say so, and that 'we' includes Admiral
Torrance, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations. Second, I need a senior
line officer to conduct a by-the-book, right-now, informal JAGMAN
investigation, and since the NATO Europe shop in OP-Sixty-one is not
exactly a hotbed of diplomatic activity at the moment, you've been
nominated.

Mr. Ames here is going to appoint someone from the NIS to be your--what
shall we call it, deputy?

Yes, deputy ... in the conduct of this investigation.

But you are going to be in charge of it. Your 'deputy' will be there to
marshal the investigative assets of the NIS as you require. Mr. Ames,
are we clear on the relationships here?"

Ames did not speak for a moment. Dan now saw that the civilian was not
just upset; he was furious. His mouth was drawn into a flat line and he
was practically glaring at the admiral. Brave man, Dan thought.

"Yes, Admiral," he said finally. "We are clear on the relationships. But
we--"

The admiral raised his hand. "Yes, I understand. The NIS protests most
vigorously, which protests have been carefully noted. But this is coming
directly from the office of the vice chief, as your boss, Admiral
Keeler, is probably finding out this very moment through other channels,
by the way. So let's not fart around anymore, okay? I have noted your
objections, and I presume you have noted my instructions. Thank you for
coming over at such short notice. That is all, Mr. Ames."

Ames rose from his chair. Dan could see that his hands were actually
trembling as he took one last shot.

"Sir, I will advise Admiral Keeler to take this entire matter all the
way up to the Secnav. This whole thing is out--"

"Fine, Mr. Ames," interrupted Carson, no longer looking at him. "That's
fine. I'm sure that the director of NIS, who, as I recall, is a
one-star, will listen very carefully to your advice, just like he'll
probably attend to the good counsel of the vice chief, who, in case
you've forgotten, is a four-star. Good day, sir."

Ames snapped his day-planner notebook shut and stalked out of the room,
closing the door forcefully behind him. Dan was surprised to see that
Carson was almost smiling as he got up and came over to the couch.

"I hate those NIS weenies," he muttered as he lowered himself onto the
couch. "Ever since the Iowa turret explosion business, they've brought
nothing but shit storms upon the Navy. Now let me tell you what this is
all about--no, we don't want notes. Just listen."

The admiral sat down and leaned back in the couch, took off his glasses,
closed his eyes, and rubbed the bridge of his nose for a moment before
beginning. Dan closed his notebook. No notes, the admiral had said.

"What we've got here are two things: an investigation and a political
power play. We've received a message from the shipyard in Philadelphia
that a body has been discovered in one of the mothballed ships, the
battleship Wisconsin. There's more in the report, but basically, they're
treating it initially as a homicide. And since it's on a naval
reservation, the local Philadelphia cops won't work it; it's a federal
beef."

"Meaning the NIS."

"Yeah, normally that would be true. Except that since I the Iowa mess,
and more recently, the Tailhook debacle, the NIS is not entirely in good
repute around the flag "

ranks in Opnav. Or in DOD, for that matter. I've heard the vice chief
categorize them as a bunch of incompetent goons, but that's probably
overkill, and flavored somewhat by OSD accusations that there was a lot
of command influence imposed on the NIS by Opnav during Tailhook."

"They were pretty useful to me when I was an exec in Norfolk," Dan
offered.

"I'm sure that, in the main, the majority of NIS people do a creditable
job. But this is an incident involving a battleship. You will recall the
last time NIS got involved in an incident on a battleship?"

"Ah, yes, sir. The Iowa turret explosion. All those conspiracy
theories."

"Right." The admiral nodded. "You might want to read the official
investigation report of that someday, especially the transcripts of the
NIS interviews. You'd see what the problem is, and why the vice chief
would probably disband the present NIS and start over if he had the
chance. Which might also explain why one of the vice's crown princes,
Rear Adm. Walker T. Keeler, is director of the NIS right now."

"Yes, sir. I guess we've all heard some NIS stories. I But still, the
Navy has homicides from time to time." I

"Yeah, but this one is going to stir up the press. It ] sounds like a
pretty bizarre case, but since you're going to investigate it, and since
I'm the officer appointing I you, I can't say any more about it. Command
influence ' and all that."

"Aye, aye, sir," Dan said. The investigating officer I was required to
discover the facts for himself, with no

overtones of command influence to taint his findings.

"But Mr. Ames did seem to be really pissed off."

"To put it mildly." The admiral snorted. "But there's precedent--before
there even was an NIS, incident investigations were always conducted by
a line officer, although these were usually operational incidents. And
we're not cutting NIS out--they've been tagged to cough up a deputy dog
and give your investigation technical support--crime-scene work,
forensics, and, best of all, I'm going to make them pay the travel and
logistics costs for your investigation."

"A high-level lesson being administered. The sound of hammers on rice
bowls. We can do without you."

The admiral nodded approvingly and got up.

"Summerfield said you were smart. It does have all the fingerprints of
the vice chief on it. And you know what happens to people who attract
the attention of the vice. But I wanted to make sure you know you'll be
playing two games. Do the investigation, like I said, by the book. But
require the full cooperation of the staff and resources of the NIS:
Opnav is to be clearly in charge, Dan."

Dan stood up. "Aye, aye, sir. And I assume that Opnav's objectives
visa-vis NIS do not take precedence over the investigation's
objectives?"

The admiral gave him a direct look. "Absolutely," he said. "You find
what you find. Facts, opinions, recommendations.

By the book, Commander."

"Yes, sir. Will you want reports?"

"Not on the investigation--we stay at arm's length on that until you
hand in your preliminary. But on the other matter, yeah. Be like E. T.:
Call home occasionally.

Talk to the EA. NIS is not just going to take this lying down, and you
may need the occasional cudgel taken up. And since he did not care to
come when he was called, you can use Captain Summerfield as your conduit
to the EA or to me--if he would be so kind."

Dan walked back to OP-614 and reported the gist of what had happened to
Captain Summerfield, including the tone of the admiral's last remark.

"Oh dear, maybe he'll transfer me out of Opnav," Summerfield said
wistfully. But then his face grew serious.

"I've heard of Opnav staffies being detailed into investigations, but
never outside the building. The vice chief must really want to jerk
NIS's chain."

"From the look on that guy Ames's face, we can consider said chain to
have been well and truly pulled. I guess I need to go upstairs to JAG
and get the latest gouge on doing a JAG investigation."

"Yeah, okay. And then go by the Oh-six travel office --you have to get
rolling on this thing most-skosh. Although, actually, he said NIS had to
pay the TAD costs?

I love it. You know, I'd recommend you drive up to Philly. 7t's easier
than doing all the airports, and you won't have to wait for the old
ladies up on the fifth floor to do the TAD orders paperwork. Now, are
there any actions you're leaving in the system?"

"Only two long-term actions: a nuke-submarine port visit to our beloved
allies in Greece, and the NATO Portuguese frigate. The port-visit
package is over in OP-Six-sixteen. And the frigate--"

Summerfield shook his head. "The NATO Portuguese frigate. Do you realize
that that turkey's been kicking around the system now for about twelve
years?"

"Yes, sir. I'm recognizing some of my old point papers."

Summerfield laughed. "I'll give it to Lieutenant Colonel Black of Her
Majesty's ever-enthusiastic Marines.

He will absolutely love the Portuguese NATO frigate issue."

Dan decided to get up to JAG before his Marine buddy found out what he
was inheriting. Snapper Black was a Marine F-18 driver who was suffering
manfully through every single day of a cross-training assignment to the
Navy staff, albeit with a wicked sense of humor.

He would need it when he inherited the Portuguese frigate issue, Dan
thought. As a result of the unending budget cuts, the military service
headquarters had been depopulated by about 40 percent. The cuts left the
other two working staff billets in 614 vacant, so Snapper would
necessarily inherit any currently working issues when Dan left to
conduct the investigation.

When Dan got back to the office an hour later, he was carrying a large
three-ring binder filled with the pertinent rules, regulations, and
checklists of the Navy Judge Advocate General (JAG) Manual pertaining to
the conduct of informal JAG investigations. Dan knew that the label
"informal" was a bit of a misnomer. The actual investigation was plenty
formal; it was just that courtroom rules of evidence did not apply until
the investigation was used to make the decision to convene a "formal"

military-justice proceeding, such as a board of inquiry or a
court-martial. The use of an informal investigation gave the
investigating officer the widest possible latitude in pursuing the facts
of a case, and, at this stage, the facts of the case were the objective.

He sat down at his desk and began to go through the checkoff lists and
forms. Snapper Black came in a few minutes later ana walked directly
over to Dan's desk.

"Greetings, comrade," he began. Snapper was built like a small tank, and
he had a round, froglike face and a gravelly voice.

"Commander Collins isn't here," Dan said hopefully, keeping his head
down.

"Commander Collins is a Communist, as the whole world knows. It's how he
wants to die that's in question.

The Portuguese frigate, for Chrissakes."

"You can't hurt me. The Vice Chief of all the Naval Operations has
appointed me boy investigator. I've got a letter and everything." He
waved his appointing letter in the air, on the theory that if Snapper
was going to bite something, he might go for the letter.

"Death and destruction be rained upon you," Snapper intoned. "May your
whiskey be perpetually watered. May the Communists suborn all your
children.

May--"

"Okay, Snapper," grumped Captain Summerfield from his inner office. "Go
get your crayons and work us up a novel idea about the Portuguese
frigate, you want to vent all that spleen."

Snapper cocked a theatrical eye in the direction of the inner office and
then leaned closer to Dan. "That blonde you've been lusting after, over
in OP-Six-three?

She's a he; Clinton rules. And has syphilis, which she got from your
mother. Who--"

"Snapper."

"Aye, aye, sir." Snapper backed away toward his desk, miming silent but
graphic gestures in Dan's direction.

Dan felt mildly sorry, but that was the code of the West: If somebody
was lucky enough to escape from Opnav for some kind of temporary duty,
the remaining inmates picked up the load. Yeoman Jackson was calling
him.

"Guy on line two says he's from NIS, wants to talk to you. What'd you
do, Commander?"

"He's been consorting with goats again," offered Snapper.

"Everyone's a comedian today," Dan said. "Patch him back here."

His phone rang once and he picked up.

"Commander Collins."

"Commander, this is Doug Englehardt over at NIS.

I'm the case officer on the Philadelphia problem."

"You the guy's gonna be my deputy dog on this investigation?"

There was a moment's pause on the other end.

"Well, Commander, not exactly. That's actually the reason I was calling.

I wonder if you can come over here to the Navy Yard for a little
meeting. We'll introduce you to your, ah, deputy at that time. Can you
make it this afternoon, say thirteen hundred?"

Dan thought quickly. Remembering the choleric Mr. Ames, Dan's political
instincts told him that his first meeting with the NIS troops ought not
to be on their home turf. One of him amidst all of them.

"Actually, Mr. Englehardt, I've got some policy issues to wrap up here
in Six-fourteen." From out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sumnierfield
and Snapper listening.

Snapper was rolling his eyes. "Let's do this. I'll get the OP-Oh-six
conference room at, say, sixteen hundred.

We'll do the first organizational meeting then.

And maybe you or your people can brief me at that time on the tech
support services NIS can provide to this investigation, especially if it
turns into a homicide case. And I intend to go to Philadelphia first
thing tomorrow to get this thing under way. I have the appointing
letter. Okay? See you here at the Puzzle Palace at Sixteen hundred? It's
room--"

"I know where the Oh-six conference room is, Commander," Englehardt
interrupted. His voice was decidedly less friendly. "We'll see what we
can do."

"Great, Mr. Englehardt. Appreciate your cooperation.

See you then." He hung up.

Summerfield was rocking back in his armchair and nodding in approval.

"Very good. Very good. They come to you. They work for you. I like
that."

"Those civilians are gonna hate life," Snapper observed.

"Come to a meeting away from their offices at sixteen hundred? Those
guys all go home at sixteen hundred."

"Everybody knows we Opnav weenies are dedicated," Dan said. "The hard
part will be getting the conference room. Jackson."

"I'm talking to the secretariat right now, Commander.

They say as long as you're out of there before Opsdep debrief at
seventeen hundred, you're good to go."

"Jackson, you stop being efficient," ordered Snapper.

"You're gonna scare the captain."

at 1610, dan collins and Captain Summerfield were waiting in the OP-06
conference room across the hall from Vice Admiral Layman's front office.

The room was long, stuffy, and narrow, with paneled walls, behind which
were banks of sliding wall-sized maps of the world. Although Dan, having
called the meeting, was nominally in charge, he was glad Summerfield had
come down. After two tours of duty in the Navy policy world, Dan felt
reasonably confident about his Washington bureaucratic skills, but
Ronald Summerfield was an acknowledged master within OP-06. He had spent
years in the Washington arena, including a three-year tour in OLA, as
the Navy's office of legislative liaison was known. Several of his Naval
Academy classmates were already flag officers, including the vice chief
himself.

Being a classmate, Summerfield was reputed to have an unusual degree of
access to the vice chief, access facilitated by the fact that he had
also been the executive assistant to the previous vice chief. But Dan
had noticed that, if all this was true, Summerfield was extremely
circumspect about it. A branch-head captain who took advantage of such
connections would be taking his chances with the one-, two-, and
three-star admirals in the Opnav chain of command between Summerfield
and the Vice Chief of Naval Operations.

Dan did not know very much about his boss on a personal level, other
than that he had an invalid wife and was a heavy-duty gun collector.

"From what you've told me," Summerfield was musing from his chair at the
side of the table, "NIS has no real incentive to cooperate with you.

They're also fully capable of running their own investigation behind
your back to make you look bad. You know they have an office in Philly,
just like they do at every other big naval installation."

"Yes, sir,"

Dan said, looking at his watch. "I've been thinking about that this
afternoon. I was going to ask the office of the NIS Resident
Agent-Philadelphia to fax down their preliminary incident report just as
soon as I get a chain of command established here. I'm planning to go
through this deputy for anything I want from NIS."

"Good. There are lots of potholes they can put in your way--lose your
paperwork, misplace evidence, break the chain of custody on physical
stuff, promise a report tonight but get it in after you leave town
tomorrow, that sort of stuff. But you are correct in assuming that the
cure is to put the NIS deputy on the hook to provide what you need. They
derail him, they look bad, not you."

"Have you figured out why the vice chief might be doing this?" Dan
asked.

The captain scratched the beginnings of a five o'clock shadow and looked
away. "Well," he replied, "the current director of the NIS is one of the
vice's proteges.

His name is Walker T. Keeler, and he's a classmate of mine. Even back at
the Academy, he always did think a lot of himself. What we may have here
is a case of the protege getting a little big for his britches and
somehow managing to offend his patron saint. This might just be an
attention-getting device of some kind. Ah, I think they're here."

The door was opening at the end of the conference room and four people
filed through the door, shedding raincoats. There were three men and one
very good looking woman. The first man, who introduced himself as Doug
Englehardt, was a well-fed and sleek-looking man of about fifty; he was
wearing a dark blue suit and carrying an expensive leather briefcase. He
introduced the second man, who was a young black'civilian named Robby
Booker. Booker was wearing a tan double breasted suit and had a
pronounced high-top fade-away hairdo. He immediately flopped into a
chair at the table, put a bored expression on his face, and began to tap
on the tabletop with the point of a pencil. The third man, named
Smithson, was older, about sixty. He was wearing a shirt and tie but no
suit coat. He carried a portable projector, which he positioned at one
end of the table and then went looking for the screen. Obviously a
briefer and not a participant, Dan thought.

Dan introduced himself and Captain Summerfield to the clutch of
bureaucrats, then focused on the woman, whom Englehardt identified as
Ms. Grace Ellen Snow.

Only about one inch shorter than he was, she was dressed in an
expensive-looking midcalf-length gray linen suit. Her dark hair was
pulled back along the sides and top of her head to a barrette and then
left to fall in a graceful cascade to her shoulders. She looked directly
at him when they were introduced, and he was struck by her bright green
eyes. She had a lovely, if somewhat aloof, face, he thought. As he tried
to get his brain back on track for the meeting, he caught the beginnings
of an amused expression on Summerfield's face. As every one found seats
around the table, Englehardt suggested they start, pointedly reminding
the two naval officers that it was quite late in the day. He took a
leather bound notebook out of his briefcase.

"Not for Opnav, Mr. Englehardt," Captain Summer field said with a
patronizing smile. "We all still have the Opsdep debrief to do, and then
our division director's meeting."

"I figure to be out of here by seventeen hundred at the latest," Dan
said from his position at the head of the table. "First order of
business is my appointing letter.

I've made some copies for everyone."

He passed the copies down the table to the three NIS people, ignoring
the slide pusher. Englehardt put his copy in his notebook without
looking at it. The young black man left his copy facedown on the table
and continued to play Gene Krupa with his pencil. Grace Ellen Snow
scanned her copy, then nodded once.

"The second thing I want to do is set a schedule," Dan continued. "I
plan to leave for Philadelphia early tomorrow morning, before rush hour.

I plan to use my own POV as the quickest way to get going, given the
normal delays we face here in Opnav making travel arrangements.

I plan to spend a few days or so in Philly to see what we've got, and
after that, we'll determine a formal schedule. Mr. Englehardt, that
appointing order says you guys owe me a deputy."

Englehardt nodded, still not looking at the appointing order, as if to
imply that its authority was of no consequence to him. He opened his
notebook, looked down, and cleared his throat.

"Commander, the NIS will cooperate with this investigation to the
maximum extent of its ability and authority under the law and the
charter of the NIS," he began. Dan thought he sounded like a diplomat
reading precise negotiating instructions. He looked over at Summerfield,
who rolled his eyes. Grace Snow was watching Englehardt.

"We propose to appoint Ms. Snow here as your operational liaison from
the NIS for the duration of this investigation, or until such time as
the investigation is devolved back into more, um, conventional
channels."

" 'Operational liaison'?"

"Yes, Commander. The assistant director of the NIS for criminal
investigations thought that would be a more appropriate title, since Ms.

Snow, who is a managerial employee of the NIS, necessarily must remain
under the administrative control of the NIS." He paused and looked up at
Dan.

"Okay. Continue."

"Right. Ms. Snow will accompany you during the field portion of the
investigation and will then prepare a separate report to be appended to
the report of your investigation required by the JAG Manual, based on
all the evidence gathered by you and whatever might turn up from the
efforts of our own field offices."

"Wrong."

Englehardt put down his piece of paper. "I beg your pardon?"

Dan could see that Summerfield was suddenly having trouble keeping a
straight face. Dan sat back in his chair and smiled politely at
Englehardt.

"I said, 'Wrong.' Or perhaps I should have said, Nice try. Look, I don't
care what Miss. Snow's title is. But there is only one investigation,
and only one investigating officer, and there will be only one report.

If you care to read that appointing letter, you will see that it has
been signed by the JAG himself, Admiral Crutch field, who works for the
Secretary of the Navy, who is at the top of your food chain and mine.

There had better not be any separate investigation activity going on at
your NISRA offices that I have not set in motion. That would lead to a
duplication of effort, confusion, people working at cross purposes, and
probably a compromise of evidence in this case. I've been led to believe
that these are the hallmarks of previous NIS investigations that lie
behind my appointing letter in the first place."

Englehardt's face reddened. Grace Snow had begun to study the table; the
young black man had stopped tapping his pencil and was looking at Dan
with some interest. The older man at the other end of the table began to
shuffle his slides, looking as if he wished he was elsewhere.

"If Ms. Snow is to be the operational liaison between my investigation
and the NIS," Dan continued, "I propose to task NIS for all the support
I need through Ms. Snow. It will be up to NIS to respond to Ms. Snow,
and she to me. She will be, in effect, the investigation's expert on the
capabilities of the NIS, and she will be the principal conduit of all
information that the NIS now has or will obtain pertaining to this
investigation. In that regard, my first tasking is to call for a summary
report of whatever information NISRA Philadelphia has on this incident
to be made available to me upon my arrival in Philadelphia, which should
be at around ten hundred tomorrow morning."

"Our arrival."

Dan looked over at Grace Snow, who had spoken for the first time.

"Yes, precisely, our arrival," he amended, nodding in her direction.

Englehardt was shaking his head. "I cannot agree to that," he began.

"Easy fix," murmured Captain Summerfield.

"Sir?" said Englehardt, his voice strained.

"The Vice Chief of Naval Operation's office is twenty feet from here.

He's a classmate of mine. I'm sure I can get us on his calendar at
fairly short notice. Let's go see him, tell him about your problems. He
can call Admiral Keeler, your boss's boss, and maybe help clarify the
issue.

The vice chief is really swell at clarifying things."

Englehardt pursed his lips. Dan thought he saw Snow shake her head
fractionally while staring hard at Englehardt.

The young black man spoke up.

"Mr. Englehardt. This sounds workable. I'm gonna be the dude at NIS
workin' all this tasking. It's a nice clean line of communication, and
you and Mr. Ames can get a copy of everything and anything. That'd be
copacetic with you, right, Commander?"

"How you respond internally to tasking is NIS business, Mr. Booker. I
don't want to try to deal with all the various branches of the NIS--I'll
be looking to Ms. Snow."

"That's cool," said Booker. "She easy to look at."

In the moment of embarrassed silence that followed this remark,
Englehardt tried one last time. "Commander, this case is a probable
homicide. There are established procedures for dealing with a homicide,
with a crime scene, with evidentiary control. You know nothing-"

"But / do," interrupted Snow. Dan suddenly understood that there were
more bureaucratic currents at play here than he had realized. Englehardt
looked exasperated.

Dan decided to step back in.

"Look, Mr. Englehardt. That's precisely right. I'm a line officer. I
know how to run a Navy JAGMAN investigation.

Presumably Miss. Snow knows the NIS procedural drill. Mr. Booker here is
the designated action officer at NIS. There's no reason we can't all
work together at whatever the hell this is all about. But if the
rice-bowl issue is going to be that big a stumbling block, then let's
stop right now and do as Captin Summerfield suggests--go see the man
across the hall. I understand he's nothing if not decisive."

Englehardt folded. "I will accept these arrangements on a pro tern
basis, subject to the approval of the superiors.

I--" Dan cut him off. "Great," he said. "We have about thirty minutes
left. How about your briefer giving us a down-and-dirty on the NIS's
capabilities, and then we can get this thing under way. I--excuse me,
we--have an early start tomorrow morning."

Grace Snow pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders as the NIS group
stood on the steps of the south parking entrance to the Pentagon after
the meeting.

Englehardt had pulled her aside while the others kept their eye out for
the Navy Yard shuttle bus.

"You sure you know what you're doing here, Grace?" he asked.

Grace looked out over the sea of cars in south parking.

It was just after 5:00 p. m., and the lot was still full.

"I think so, Doug. This assignment is crucial for me, and I think I also
know what the game is here. But it's also obvious these people are
serious."

"Their bosses are serious. I think the commander is switched in, but
this JAGMAN investigation is just another temporary duty for him. When
it's over, he goes back to his day job. But if it's true that the vice
chief, Admiral Torrance, is behind this, we'll have to be very careful.

He's slated to be the next CNO, and Ames is scared shitless that when
this vice takes over, he might try to do away with NTS entirely."

"Ames
is always scared," she said. "That's part of our problem at NTS--a big
part."

Englehardt looked around to make sure the other two could not overhear
them. "Your views are well known, Grace. Please remember that you're not
in Career Services right now, due to your vast personnel experience."

"And I've been detailed to his little farce precisely because I'm in
personnel, right, Doug? A little slap at the blue-suiters: You want a
deputy, we'll give you a lawyer turned clerk?"

"So surprise them."

"Oh, I think I will, Doug. Trust me on this one."

Englehardt laughed. "Ames is a silly bastard who has no idea of what
he's unleashed," he said. "But how about Collins? Can you handle this
guy? I was hoping for some straight-stick line commander. Or better yet,
an aviator. But this guy's had some Washington time.

Witness where we did the meeting."

Grace looked over at him. " 'Handle'? I don't know if that's an
appropriate word. I think first we do the investigation.

Look, Doug, I still believe that our best chance to refurbish NIS's
credibility--and perhaps our political lease on life--is by doing as
good a job as we can on this investigation, despite its antecedents. We
play this one straight, the Opnav admirals have no casus belli.

We let Ames and the 'Gang of Two' play politics, we walk right into the
vice's trap."

"In your humble opinion."

"Well, now--"

"Here's the shuttle, thank God. You drove over, right?"

"Right. And I have your private fax number."

"Yeah. Okay. Take care, Grace Ellen Snow. This might be some serious
shit here."

"In your--"

He grinned. "Yeah. In my humble opinion."

Grace waved to the group as they boarded the Navy Yard shuttle bus, then
walked down to retrieve her white BMW from the guest-parking row at the
east end of the Pentagon parking lot. She drove out the south parking
entrance and into the stream of traffic going past the Pentagon heliport
toward Washington. She crossed the infamous X intersection just east of
Memorial Bridge and dropped down onto the GW Parkway.

She took the parkway along the river as far as the entrance to Roosevelt
Island Park before remembering that there was no ramp to Key Bridge
going into town from the northbound lanes of the parkway. She would have
to go all the way up to Chain Bridge, cross the river, and drive back
down into Georgetown.

"Damn it," she muttered to herself as she slowed down to creep through
Rosslyn with the rest of the herd, once again cursing all the gentry of
Georgetown for refusing to let the Metro system have a station there.

"Well, if one has a driver, my dear, what does one care about the
traffic?" Honestly, some of those people.

Grace Ellen Snow was thirty-five years old, a fact that had begun to
intrude more frequently during her moments of personal reflection.

Inching along under the high arches of the Key Bridge, the familiar
assets-and liabilities litany surfaced once again: You're reasonably
good-looking; you have money and a nice town house in Georgetown; you
come from a good family, have an economics undergrad degree from Brown,
a law degree from Georgetown, an executive-level--correction, more like
midlevel, isn't it?--civil-service job. And on the debit side,
counselor? A nose that's slightly too long, breasts too small, the
three-year-old emotional residue of a disastrous marriage, and a career
history characterized most prominently by a penchant for irritating
your superiors--irritating them to the point where they applied the
lateral arabesque for which the civil service is famous, or infamous,
depending on whether or not it's happening to you. From NIS
investigations policy as a GS-15 to the Career Services division. Still
as a 15, but with zero managerial responsibilities and some fairly clear
writing on the wall--and, oh, yes, while we're on the subject, the
social life of a tree.

She was slowly, very slowly, and very grudgingly getting used to the
idea that a traditional marriage, children, a family, and a Labrador in
the fenced backyard were all becoming increasingly remote possibilities.

Her parents had both passed on, so at least she did not have their
expectations to deal with. But still, why the hell not me? she thought.

Maybe it was all those advantages, and the dullards in government she
had had to work with. There you go being an elitist again, still
believing your ex-husband's line about people in government being
automatically second-rate.

In a conversation after the meeting, she had told Col lins she had eight
years of field-investigation experience.

But she had not told him that those eight years were in securities-fraud
work for the Securities and Exchange Commission, with the "field" being
the financial jungles of Manhattan. After her marriage to Rennie, the
broker, had become a nightmare, compared with which, even divorce
proceedings looked like a picnic, she had jumped at the offer of a
political appointment in the Justice Department toward the end of the
Bush administration. And, like many people who jump at things, she
discovered that she had been extremely naive. And then after not quite
two years had come the arrival of the great unwashed hordes from the
"other party," and suddenly she was just another low-level appointee
scrambling to find a job. She had applied at the FBI, but anyone
connected to the previous Justice Department had become persona non
exista. Grace had just about given up on the idea of staying in
government when a friend at Treasury had put her onto an opening at the
Naval Investigative Service, in their white-collar-crime division. Since
these were the people who chased down crooked military paymasters and
inside jobs at the Navy exchanges, her resume from SEC had been a pretty
good fit. And, of course, being a female hire, it would help NIS meet
the new and improved gender quotas. The NIS had been a comedown from
being a principal deputy assistant U.S. attorney general, but, unwilling
to admit to herself that she was too independent of mind to make a good
bureaucrat, she had jumped at it--again.

In retrospect, she realized that the late-term appointment to Justice
had been awfully convenient for two senior associate regional directors
at SEC's New York Region offices. She now suspected that her departure
had been gracefully engineered by one, if not both, of them. But the
debacle of her four-year marriage to Rennie and the ensuing divorce had
literally worn her out, making any appointment out of New York seem like
a godsend. Poor Rennie. When the Reagan bubble had burst, with the
subsequent economic corrections, life with Rennie, who definitely
considered himself one of Tom Wolfe's Masters of the Universe, had
turned into an abusive nightmare, complete with girlfriends and finally
a dependence on the shiny white powder.

Leaving Rennie had been easy; owning up to her mistake in marrying him
had not been quite so easy.

And even Justice had started off well, given her own emotional and
physical state of exhaustion. But that familiar pattern had emerged
during the first year. After only a few months at Justice, the signs had
surfaced once again that Washington, like New York, was very much a
man's world and that things were already getting a bit testy among her
coworkers and supervisors.

What had the deputy AG said one day after a two-day off-line management
seminar? "Bureaucratically speaking, you're a difficult woman, Grace.

You were never meant to work in an organization." He had initially come
on like a paternal adviser, telling her how she would make a great
litigator or even an independent counsel out there in private practice,
but then he had spoiled it by making a remark about her legs. She'd
thought she was doing well at SEC--until she was moved out. And the same
thing at Justice, although there had not been time for a real test
there, once the new administration had begun its purges. And now NIS: A
GS-15 job in policy had turned into a nonjob in personnel --correction,
Career Services. Her career path was once again looking more and more
like a career trajectory.

After the Spout Run divergence, the traffic finally opened up on the
parkway and she drove up to the Chain Bridge exit, cut across the
swirling black waters of the Potomac, and turned right to go down Canal
Road, back toward the city. When Canal became M Street at the Key
Bridge, she turned up into Georgetown proper on 33rd Street. Out of the
traffic mess along M and the Key Bridge, she made it home to her town
house on P Street in three minutes. For a denizen of Georgetown, she
lived in near luxury: She actually had a driveway, although no garage.

The street parking along the narrow passage of P Street was, as usual,
all taken, but at least her driveway wasn't blocked. She parked the car
inside the wrought-iron fence, got out, closed the squealing gate, and
went up the iron steps to the front door.

Fumbling in her purse for her keys, she reflected on the meeting. So now
an actual field investigation, a criminal investigation, a homicide
even. Right. An investigation to which she had been seconded in order to
offer insult to the blue-suiters who thought they ran the Navy. Collins
wouldn't stay fooled for very long--he seemed to be pretty smart.

"Switched in," as Doug had said. She was going to ride up to Philly with
him tomorrow, that would be the time to tell him. That way, there would
still be a chance to make this thing go. Even if her bosses in NIS
wanted the Opnav investigation to fall on its face, she needed to make
it succeed. It was her only chance to--what? Make a name for herself?

Make a fool of herself, more likely. She sighed. One of these days, she
would have to get a grip, see where all this career stuff was going. It
wasn't as if she had to work. But then, what was the point of even
living in Washington if you were not part of government, either in it or
on the outside waiting to get back in it?

commander collins was right on time the next morning.

He had arranged to pick her up in front of the Pentagon's south parking
entrance at 0600. She had agreed on the Pentagon after finding out that
he lived in Old Town Alexandria. Halfway between Georgetown and
Alexandria, the Pentagon parking lot turned out to be a good middle
ground, an island in the midst of the morning rush-hour traffic. She was
waiting in one of the covered bus kiosks when he pulled up in a large
blue Chevrolet Suburban and activated the door locks.

She put her single bag on the floor of the backseat and got in on the
passenger side. They exchanged brief good mornings and then she let him
concentrate on getting onto the George Washington Parkway to retrace his
journey through Old Town. It was still dark, and the streets were slick
from a persistent all-night drizzle.

"You're going to use the Beltway, Commander?" she asked as they slowed
down for the speed zone near Washington National Airport.

"Yeah. And the name's Dan, by the way. Save the

"Commander' bit for
meetings. If we can get over the Wilson Bridge in one piece without
falling through a pothole, we just follow I-Ninety-five up to just
before the Delaware Memorial Bridge, and then up the river and into
Philly."

"Please call me Grace. The Beltway scares me."

"It scares everybody. That's why I drive this big old hog. But New York
Avenue is worse during rush hour, even outbound when everybody is coming
in. Washington is hopeless where roads and traffic are concerned, or
maybe just plain hopeless."

She remained silent as he threaded the big vehicle through the traffic
along Old Town's main thorough fare, Washington Street, wincing only
once when they got to the jink in the street around the Confederate
soldier statue and he swung the truck almost on top of a Honda in the
right lane. He must have seen the wince.

"Laws of gross tonnage," he quipped. "Hondas mess with Suburbans at
their peril."

"I wasn't sure you saw him."

"Oh, I saw him. It's just that there's nowhere to go around that damned
statue, and he knew it. You get great visibility in one of these
things."

"We are rather up in the air. But it must be difficult in most
Washington traffic."

"Yeah, but I'm a rower. You know, crew? I keep a boat at the Potomac
Boat Club, over there by Key Bridge. It's just a single, but I get out
on the river each afternoon if I can get out of the Puzzle Palace in
time.

Sometimes I need to pull the boat to other rivers, or down to the
Occoquan. This thing has a towing package."

"Ah. That must be
beautiful," she said. She had often seen the crew teams practicing on
the river below the bluffs when she took her walks in the precincts of
Georgetown University. "I went to law school at Georgetown."

"You're a lawyer?"

She laughed. The way he had said "lawyer," he might have substituted the
term child molester.

"Fond of lawyers, are we?" she said.

It was his turn to laugh. "If I tell a lawyer joke, will it spoil our
working relationship?"

"Only if I've heard it. Actually, I'm not too sure what our working
relationship is supposed to be."

"Oh, that's easy. Look at that assh--Excuse me. I'm used to driving by
myself. The habits of living alone, I'm afraid--I talk to myself."

"You're not married?" she asked, then wondered where that question had
come from.

"No. I was. My wife died several years ago. I've never--"

"I'm sorry," she said automatically when he didn't

finish his sentence. "I didn't mean to pry. I really meant this business
between Opnav and NIS." She was suddenly anxious for some reason to
change the direction of the conversation. To her great relief, he went
with it.

"Oh, that. I'm not entirely sure what's going on with all that. If this
thing in Philadelphia is indeed a homicide, then I'd think it would be
entirely in NIS's jurisdiction.

But when the elephants dance, we mousies are well advised to just get
off the floor, you know?"

She digested this in silence for a few miles. He was either part of it
or he wasn't, but he was acting as if he wasn't.

"My bosses are pretty upset, actually," she said.

"That guy Ames certainly was. So what are your marching orders, then,
Grace?"

She was taken somewhat aback by this direct question.

" 'Marching orders'? I guess to act as your liaison with NIS, and to
assist in the investigation."

"Okay, that's fair enough," he said. "Mine
are to focus on the JAG Manual investigation. The Navy JAG-- that's
judge advocate general, head lawyer for the Navy Department--has some
fairly clear guidelines about how a JAGMAN is supposed to be done, and I
plan just to walk it down the checklist. I assume you're required to
keep those angry bosses of yours informed as to what's going on, right?"

"Yes, of course."

"Okay, and so am I. Do you think they would like my investigation to
fail in some way?"

"I ... I don't know. Bureaucratically, I suppose they would. But I've
seen no evidence that someone's waiting to sabotage it, if that's what
you mean." He was being very direct.

"Right. Okay. So let's make a deal: Let's strive to keep the integrity
of the investigation intact, and we take care of our respective
bureaucracies on our own time. If there's a conflict between those two
tasks, we talk about it, okay?"

"That sounds fair." This might be easier than I expected, she thought.

"Well, it's practical, because there probably will be conflicts. I think
the way to look at this situation is that you and I are both sort of
pawns in the larger rice-bowl game. Whatever the bigs are up to, on your
side or mine, is above our pay grade, so if we play it straight, we give
the elephants no excuse to trample us, if I can mix my metaphors. Ah,
here's the Beltway. Shields up, everybody."

For the next hour, they talked only sporadically as Dan concentrated on
surviving a trip around the Capital Beltway. She relaxed after awhile;
he was easy to talk to, and he did not seem to have many pretensions.

She told him about her years with SEC in Washington and New York, and
the fact that she had been married to a stockbroker in New York and
gotten divorced just before taking the appointment at Justice.

"So why NIS? Get run out of Justice by the new administration?"

"Yes, along with everyone else. I should have known better than to take
a late-term appointment."

"Yeah. I guess that goes with the territory of political appointments.

What does one do in Investigations Policy at NIS?"

Grace thought fast. Tell him, or play along? What if he already knows?

Play it.

"I imagine it's like the Opnav Plans and Policy that you work in," she
said. "We're supposed to develop organizational strategy, and we handle
the Services's interdepartmental relations. NIS has an important
counterintelligence role, and, of course, there are lots of people in
that game in this town."

"Amen, and all equally incompetent, apparently. The Navy had the Walker
case, and now CIA has Brother Ames. We do much the same thing in Opnav,
except we don't work counterspy, counterintelligence stuff. We do Navy
strategy and long-range plans, budget support, and the staff work on a
whole host of international treaties and agreements. The Navy does
business around the world, so Opnav tends to do more of that than the
other services. I'd call it quasi-important paper pushing." She asked
him where he lived, and he described his eighteenth-century house on
Prince Street in Old Town, two blocks up the hill from the river.

"Prince is one of the streets with the original cobblestones.

I thought they were really quaint when my folks passed it on to me, but
my ankles know better now. But for a Navy guy, the price was very
right."

She laughed. "My street has cobblestones and trolley tracks," she said.

"My parents bought me the house when I went off to Georgetown Law.

Father just assumed that the law school was on the campus, so I'm two
blocks from there."

"It isn't?"

"No. Never has been. It's downtown. I didn't have the heart to tell
him."

"I love it. I went to Gonzaga High School--supposedly a prep for
Georgetown. But my parents were schoolteachers, and we couldn't afford
Georgetown, so I went ROTC at GW instead." He told her that he had grown
up in the Washington, D. C., area. Born in 1957, the only child of two
Fairfax County schoolteachers, he had lived in various suburbs of
northern Virginia as his parents moved around in the school system. He
had enjoyed a gentle upbringing, making his way through childhood with
an easygoing, affable demeanor that allowed him to get along with just
about anybody and to fit into whatever group seemed handy. Given his
parents' profession--they were both history teachers--he developed a
taste for learning, if not necessarily for achievement. He attended
public schools up through junior high school, but by the time he reached
the eighth grade, his laid back, rather laissez-faire attitude about
grades had prompted his parents, both attendant Catholics, to hand him
over to the tender mercies of the Jesuits at the Gonzaga College High
School in downtown Washington.

For a boy coming out of the public schools of northern Virginia, Dan had
found his first year at Gonzaga to be an eye-opening experience, not so
much from the point of view of his academic qualifications, but, rather,
in terms of emphasis. Qualitatively, Fairfax County schools were above
the national average, but for a popular and gregarious kid who was on
the verge of puberty and whose focus had been happily coalescing toward
those heretofore entirely ignorable aliens called girls, Gonzaga had
provided a major course correction.

There were no girls at Gonzaga, only Jesuits, lots of Jesuits who were
seriously into academic and athletic competition, three hours of
homework every night, daily Mass, unabashed physical discipline for
miscreants, and an academic curriculum crammed with four years of
mandatory Latin, mathematics, science, history, and English, all
absorbed in a coat-and-tie atmosphere where all the adults were
addressed as either Father or Mr. And above all, there was a heavy
emphasis on personal achievement: There were daily grades, a First
Honors roll, a Second Honors roll, academic and athletic prizes, lists
in the hallways, and the constant pressure of the young black-robed
Jesuit scholastics, called Mr. instead of Father, who taught most of the
classes.

Dan had not been previously involved in organized sports, so the Jewies
drafted him for one of the freshman softball teams, where he surprised
everybody, especially himself, by showing a distinct talent for being a
pitcher. In the fall semester, the freshmen were organized into
intramural teams, which allowed the athletic director a chance to
inspect the talent for the coming spring season. Dan's selection to the
spring team was his first major triumph at Gonzaga, as well as the
beginning of his acceptance of the Jesuit system.

On the other end of the motivation spectrum, every classroom had a
student beadle who recorded classroom infractions and demerits, and an
after-hours detention hall called "jug," from the Latin jugum, where
those individuals who had earned a notation in the beadle's book would
be recalibrated under the supervision of the enormous and ubiquitous
prefect of discipline, one Father Shining. Jug would convene at 3:15,
immediately after school, and that day's crop of miscreants would be
instructed to write out things like the Nicene Creed one thousand times,
after which they were graciously free to go. ;

The Jesuits' unalloyed academic zeal transformed Dan's first year at
Gonzaga from just another school year with all his neighborhood buddies
into the centerpiece of his existence. At first, the schoolwork at
Gonzaga had been pell-mell, then totally unreasonable, then hard, and
finally, interesting. The Jesuits taught on the principle of challenging
young minds, and since there was a large variety of young minds, there
was an equally large variety of challenges. Dan found out that the
Jesuits took discipline seriously. Actually, the Jesuits took everything
seriously, but this did not become evident to him until about the middle
of his first year, when he had his first direct experience with the
prefect of discipline. One of the toughest kids in his ninth grade class
had been named Marty Murphy, a graduate of Blessed Sacrament up in Chevy
Chase and a stalwart of the CYO. Murphy made the grave mistake one day
of talking back to one of the Jesuit teachers, to the secret delight of
the whole class, although Dan failed to notice that there was a great
deal of emphasis on the secret part. Dan went down on the beadle's pad
as one of Murphy's accomplices--for laughing--and accompanied Murphy to
the basement for jug. Upon arrival, Father Shining had come in and
without further ceremony grabbed Murphy by the right arm. He took him
down the hallway to the front door and out into the school's tiny front
lawn, which faced Eye Street. The other inmates of jug watched through
the windows as Father Shining dragged Murphy over to the aging white
picket fence protecting the sparse lawn. Never relaxing his grip, the
huge priest grabbed a single fence picket and in one nail-screeching
movement tore it off the fence.

Realizing the possibilities, Murphy stopped squirming and concentrated
on the picket. Shining took his hand off Murphy's arm long enough to
grab the picket in both hands and split it lengthwise with his bare
hands right in front of Murphy's no-longer-insolent face. At this
juncture, the by-now-wide-eyed spectators in jug did a down-periscope
act at the windows and scrambled back to their desks, hoping against
hope that all they would have to do would be to copy out the New Testament a few hundred times. Dan concluded that these people were indeed
serious, and he began to pay attention, both to his studies and to how
the game was played in his new school. Murphy never told whether or not
Shining had actually used the fence picket, and no one had asked.

Graduating from Gonzaga with First Honors and as captain of the softball
team in 1974, Dan had matriculated at George Washington University,
again in downtown Washington, with a full Navy ROTC scholarship.

Given his grades and his athletic ability, he had had a shot at the
Naval Academy in Annapolis, but the competition in northern Virginia for
political appointments was fierce, and besides, he was tired of being in
an all boys school. At GW, he majored in international affairs, which
seemed to him an appropriate course of study for a budding naval
officer, and graduated with a commission and an appointment into the
surface line in 1978.

His mother and father had been quite proud of him on commissioning day,
although they seemed somewhat ill at ease among the many military
parents in the audience, as well as with the elaborate military ceremony
attending commissioning. The Vietnam War was over, but the social and
political bruises created by that conflict were barely healed, and Dan's
parents belonged to a profession that had made no secret of its
animosities toward things military. They had swallowed hard when Dan
opted for the Navy scholarship, but Dan was simply being practical: the
NROTC scholarship had been a forty-thousand-dollar ticket to a college
degree, and if he had to serve four years in the Navy afterward, well,
it would let him see the world, just like the poster said, a need his
parents probably would never understand.

And, unlike some of his classmates, he had graduated with a job, the
chance for a career if things went well, and a ticket out of Washington,
D.C.

He told Grace a little bit about his subsequent career in the Navy,
skirting over the dreadful year in Monterey when his wife had died.

Grace let him ramble, not paying too much attention, while her mind
focused on what would happen once they got to Philadelphia. She was
especially concerned about how they would be treated by the NIS field
office, which was known in Navy parlance as NISRA Philadelphia: NIS
Resident Agent Philadelphia. If the headquarters executives were going
to throw a wrench into the workings of the Opnav investigation, the
resident agent, one Mr. Carl Santini, would be their instrument. That
would be a shame, because she really did want to know how on earth a
body had come to be discovered in the bowels of a sleeping battleship.

april 1992

WASHINGTON, D. O, for the third day in a row, Malachi Ward sat in the
darkened Ford, watching the entrance to the apartment building perched
above the E Street Expressway viaduct.

With the viaduct on one side and an apartment complex on the other, the
street was deserted. The windshield wipers, set on intermittent, groaned
once as they swept away the mizzle that was descending all over
Washington. He had watched the woman leave in the morning darkness, at
the same time each morning. She was a daily commuter: a creature of
habit. She returned home again between quarter to seven and seven each
evening. Apparently, she was also dedicated.

He looked at his watch again: 6:45 p.m. Anytime now.

The sounds of a diminishing rush hour echoed up from the viaduct,
drifting in through the partly lowered window on the passenger side. He
heard the voices of two women coming up the sidewalk, their features
blurred in his misted-over right-side mirror. Fat, shapeless features.

Not her. The one he was waiting for was definitely not fat. She was very
pretty, in fact; into high leather heels and a snappy, staccato stride.

She'd worn a stylish tan raincoat when she left that morning at 6:10.

Out the front door, turning left onto the sidewalk and walking up to
23rd Street, then left again and up 23rd toward the Metro station near
George Washington University.

One quick jaywalk across 23rd to get a paper, a second jaywalk back to
the left side of the street, and on to the Metro station. Considering
that daylight saving time had just started and it was still dark at that
hour, she wasn't very careful about it. Definitely a type A: out the
door at zero-dark-thirty; first one into the office, probably the last
one to leave. Go to work in the dark, come home in the dark: the
Washington good life.

Going to get ahead, our girl.

Heels. He swiveled his head around. Tan coat, fast stride. Here she
comes and here we go. He picked up the stubby German binoculars from the
seat of the car and focused in on the lobby. He had called her answering
machine forty minutes ago, told her about the visit, depositing the
message late enough so that she would not have checked it from the
office. Special Agent Demarest, FBI. A security matter in the Pentagon,
a possible classified-material compromise. He would need only twenty
minutes or so. Strictly routine.

She clacked by his car, oblivious to the big man in the driver's seat,
her head down against the wet mist. Up the steps, into the lobby. He
leaned forward to watch her in the yellow light of the lobby. He focused
the binoculars on the security door's keypad, conscious of her blurry
image to one side as she busied herself with her mailbox, extracting the
day's take. Closing it. Walking over to the door. Punching the keypad as
he focused in: 4-4-7-8. Pushing open the door, and now she was gone. He
waited. Give her time to get upstairs, take the coat off, kick off those
heels, run the answering machine.

He waited some more, then picked up the car phone and dialed her number.

"Hello?"

"Yes, Miss. Hardin, this is Special Agent Demarest, FBI, calling. I left
a message on your machine awhile ago. Did you get it?"

"Why yes. Yes, I just did. But--"

"Please don't be alarmed, Miss. Hardin. This has nothing to do with you
directly, but I do need to interview you regarding some
classified-material control procedures having to do with an office you
work with. And because of the details of the case, I didn't want to do
that in your office. You know, the FBI is here to see you --people talk,
right?"

"Well, yes, but--"

"Right. So I propose to come by this evening. Fifteen, twenty minutes
and we're done."

"I just got home. I--"

"I understand, Miss. Hardin. Actually, it's Lieutenant Hardin, isn't it?

Look, I'm calling from a car phone. If I have the address right, I'm
about five minutes away.

You are in apartment four-twelve, the Kendall Apartments, correct? Is
there parking nearby?"

"Well, Mr.--Demarest, was it? Parking's kinda tough.

You'll have to use the street. The garage requires a magnetic card."

"Don't they all. I'll tell you--sometimes the cases are simple compared
to finding a parking place in this town. Again, I apologize for the
intrusion. I'll make it as quick as possible; then we can both call it a
day."

"Okay," she said with a sigh. "Press the button for four-twelve in
the lobby when you get here. I'll buzz the door open."

"Thanks so much, Miss. Hardin. See you in a bit."

He hung up the phone and waited some more. Make it ten minutes. Time to
get there, find parking. She had a nice voice--educated, but with a
brassy overtone. The file said she was a public information officer, so
she should be accustomed to dealing with all kinds of people on the
phone.

He sat back in the seat and recalled the phone message that had led to
his being here. From the captain, naturally; the principals never called
directly. There was a little problem that needed his special talents.

Please meet the captain in the Army-Navy Town Club library at eleven
o'clock. He had been waiting on the third floor in the magazine reading
room when the captain showed up. The captain had looked tired and
annoyed; it had apparently been a long day, and it probably wasn't over.

They had retired to the back reading room, where the problem had been
explained, and it turned out to be a story very familiar to Malachi. It
seemed that a certain senior officer had been indulging his tastes for
younger women again, this time with a young lady on the Navy
headquarters staff.

"Your 'great man' into uniforms now?" Malachi had asked.

The captain had just looked at him. They both knew the Washington rule
about playing around in your own sandbox, but the captain was not there
to discuss the right, wrong, or smarts of it. Malachi had waved his hand
as if to say, Okay, go on.

"The young lady in question has decided that she does not want to
continue the um, relationship. My principal was not ready to, shall we
say, acquiesce in that decision."

"He liked it; she didn't."

The captain shrugged. "Whatever. I think she simply got a little scared.

What had seemed like a good idea at the time and all that. In any event,
she said some intemperate things, according to my principal."

" 'Intemperate.'"

"His words."

Malachi had smiled from the depths of his armchair.

He loved the way these executive assistant types talked.

"Like back off or I'll do an Anita Hill number on you."

"Something like that. So now the principal wants the young lady warned
off, or, at the very least, convinced to keep her mouth shut."

"Until some calls can be made and a suitable assignment can be found,
preferably on the distant fringes of the empire."

"That does not concern you. What we want from you--"

"I know what you want from me. You want me to fix it. But what's so
special about this one?"

The captain was silent for a moment, and then he produced an eight and
one half-by-eleven manila envelope and handed it to Malachi.

"The subject," he announced gravely.

The subject, Malachi thought. Not the girl, or the woman, or her name,
like she just might be human. The subject. Malachi opened the envelope
and withdrew a glossy black-and-white official government photograph I
of an attractive woman naval officer, a full lieutenant, in blues. He
stared at the picture for a minute. The woman was black.

"The principal is an idiot," he said finally.

The captain apparently decided to keep his own counsel. Malachi put the
photograph back in the envelope.

"I presume the principal does not want to buy her silence?"

"The principal is not wealthy."

"At least not wealthy enough to pay both me and her.

So then he wants the young lady scared into silence, right?"

"Well--"

"Well?"

"Well, no physical violence, of course. But you have succeeded in, um,
delicate missions in the past. The principal, of course, doesn't really
care or need to know--"

Malachi laughed. "Principals never do. Right. Got it.

You have the retainer?"

The captain had passed over an envelope with Mala chi's standard fee, in
cash. He then pointed to the envelope containing the photograph.

"Her address and some particulars are in there."

Malachi had looked at his watch. "I'll take care of it.

You look tired. You ought to come here more often, have a drink, read a
good book. Relax a little."

The captain had simply looked at him, shaken his head, and left.

That had been last week. Malachi glanced at his watch again, nodded to
himself, and got out of the car.

He took a shiny leather briefcase and locked the car behind him. He wore
a dark gray pinstripe suit, white shirt, and a conservative tie under an
inexpensive but functional tan trench coat. J. Edgar would have
approved.

He carried the shield and photo ID of an FBI special agent in a
credential case inside his breast pocket, and a 9-mm Beretta
semiautomatic in a shoulder holster under his left arm. He looked both
ways up and down the sidewalk to see if there were any spectators, or
early muggers. Sometimes when he was bored, he sort of hoped for
muggers, especially when he was carrying. Except that nowadays, the
Washington muggers were likely to be sporting submachine guns. Still, it
might beat watching Jeopardy. He stepped up to the doors of the lighted
lobby and went inside.

Even at fifty-two, Malachi Ward was a visibly hard man. His large head
was blocky, in a Teutonic cast, and he had a prominent, slightly hooked
nose; deep-set and gleaming gray eyes under dark brows; wide, almost
sensuous red lips; and sparse gray hair tonsured to an even quarter inch
all over, and receding on his forehead behind a prominent widow's peak.

His complexion was smooth except for crow's-feet around his eyes and two
pronounced vertical creases framing his mouth. His face had ruddy
patches on each cheek and an overall roseate flush that revealed a
fondness for bourbon. If one looked closely, a network of scars could be
seen just above his shirt collar. He was not especially tall, but he had
a massive upper body, with trunklike forearms that were noticeable in
the way his arms filled out the upper sleeves of the trench coat. He
stood very straight when he walked, as if to keep all that upper-body
muscle mass from getting ahead of him.

He looked the part of a cop, although he knew he had two features out of
character for an FBI agent. The first was his overall size, especially
his massive hands-- workman's hands, all calloused and red around the
edges from his toughening exercises, with blunt, spatulate fingers and
square-cut yellow nails. In the Army, he had been self-conscious about
his oversized hands until he'd made it into the Military Police corps
and found that, sometimes, just the sight of his two enormous fists was
enough to settle a lot of problems before they really got going. In his
current line of work, Malachi would let people discover his hands as
part of the process of intimidation. If the object of his attentions was
at all observant, one good look tended to dissolve any doubts one might
have about the aura of physical violence he projected. Where some men
talked tough, Malachi could project tough with a steady stare and his
physical presence.

The second uncharacteristic feature was his voice: a deep, hoarse,
almost raspy voice, but one that had very little staying power, the
result of an incident in Ger many while he had been in the Army, which
made him now a man of few words. But he had learned how to use that
voice to add menace to his conversations whenever he needed to, a
faculty that came in handy when he had to sit down with someone, as he
was about to do.

He walked over to the keypad and, after looking around to make sure no
one was watching, punched in the code. The door lock emitted a
satisfying click. He nodded to himself. Always have two ways in and two
ways out of every situation. Then he went back over to the
communications pad, pressed the 412 button, and waited.

"Who is it?" asked a crackly voice from the speaker at the top of the
panel.

"Special Agent Demarest, Federal Bureau of Investigation, to see It.

Elizabeth Hardin," Malachi intoned.

His reply echoed officially around the faux marble tiles of the lobby,
but there was no one there to appreciate the act. He had to move quickly
to catch the door when the buzzer sounded. He went inside, found the
elevator, and rode it up to the fourth floor. Stepping out of the
elevator, he looked around to find the exit stairs. He checked the
stairwell door to make sure it was unlocked on the stairwell side, then
took a look down the stairs to see if there was a fire block anywhere.

Only then did he go looking for apartment 412, which was six doors down,
to the right of the elevator. He knocked twice and produced his
credentials, stepping back away from the door a little. Elizabeth Hardin
cracked open the door on a chain and peered out.

"It. Elizabeth Hardin?" he asked formally.

"Yes."

"Special Agent Demarest of the FBI. My credentials, Miss. Hardin."

Malachi held up the two-sided leather folder. She flicked a glance from
the picture to his face, then nodded. She closed the door, removed the
chain, and stood aside to let him in. Malachi stepped in and took off
his raincoat and hung it on a coat tree by the door. Elizabeth Hardin
preceded him into a living room that was small and plain, with one
large, curtained dow overlooking an interior courtyard framed by the
windows of several other apartments. There was a dining room table in
one corner, an open kitchen area, and a door that presumably led to the
bedroom and bath.

Elizabeth Hardin indicated one of the two upholstered chairs in the room
and asked if she could get him anything.

"Thank you, no, Miss. Hardin. As I said, I apologize for the
inconvenience, and I'll get this done as quickly as possible."

"It's your voice. Sounds like it needs a drink. Excuse me for a moment
while I get my beer, then, Mr. Dema rest. I just got home."

Malachi arranged his briefcase on his knees and opened it while he
tracked her out of the corner of his eye. She went into the kitchen and
opened some drawers and then the icebox. She returned with a frosty
pewter mug and sat down across from him at one end of the couch. Malachi
realized that she was indeed very pretty --about five foot six, maybe
120 pounds. Her face had an intensely black, smooth complexion, high,
arching eyebrows, slightly slanted brown eyes, and features that Malachi
would have called more white than African.

Her hair had been straightened and pulled back in a glistening, tight
bun. She wore a brightly patterned blouse and a long, flowing, shapeless
skirt. He noticed that she was in her stockinged feet, and that she was
watching him while he looked her over.

"I'm guess I expected you to be in uniform, Lieutenant," he began.

"I'm in CHINFO--that's Navy public relations. The media types seem to
feel more comfortable talking to people in civvies, so we oblige." She
sipped some beer.

"So what's this all about, Mr. Demarest? We don't do classified where I
work."

"The possible compromise of some classified material, Miss. Hardin. But
first let me verify some details about you."

He opened the briefcase, putting the raised lid between them, and rooted
around for a leather folder containing a pad of yellow legal paper. He
spread the [

folder and set it on the briefcase, out of her direct view, using the
briefcase as a lap desk. He pretended to scan some notes for a moment,
and then verified her social security number.

"You are Elizabeth Terry Hardin, born here in Washington, D.C. Date of
birth: December 6, 1965?"

She smiled. "Your data banks are correct," she said.

"And you are a staff public affairs officer in the Navy headquarter's
Chief of Information Office, as well as their computer information
management specialist?

And you've been assigned there for two years now?"

"Two years, that's right. I took a degree in computer science from GW.

CHINFO is fully networked, but you know how computers are. Actually, we
have good machines; it's the users who are defective. I'm the one they
call when their machines defeat them. I'm also the CHINFO database
administrator, and I do research for news organizations or with other
offices in Opnav. Basically, I'm their data dink."

"Opnav, Dink?"

"Opnav." She sighed patiently. "The headquarters staff of
the Navy. The executive staff of the Chief of Naval Operations.

Operations, Naval; unit of issue, one each. Opnav. We also work for the
office of the Secnav."

"The Secretary of the Navy."

"You're getting it. And dink is another word for nerd, Mr. Demarest."

"Right. I guess I don't associate a word like dink with a beautiful
young woman, Miss. Hardin."

He saw her stiffen. "And just what do my looks have to do with the
classified-material problem here, Mr. Demarest?" she asked.

Malachi closed his notebook, lowered the briefcase lid, and sat back in
his chair. The lady was on guard.

Good. Now she would pay attention.

"Well, nothing at all, Miss. Hardin," he said, smiling.

"But your looks have everything to do with why I'm really here."

Alarmed, she put down the mug. He put up a hand.

"No, no, don't get all upset. I'm just a messenger boy, all right?"

She shifted on the couch, putting her hands down as if ready to get up
quickly.

"I want to see those credentials again, Mr. Dema rest," she said. "And
if you're--"

Again he put up his hand. "Those credentials are entirely authentic,
Miss. Hardin. I am a special agent with the FBI--by day. It's just that
I'm moonlighting right now. I'm here to talk to you about your sexual
involvement with a certain senior person in the Navy."

He heard her sharp intake of breath but continued before she could say
anything.

"I've been sent here to give you some advice ... some really good
advice. You can either listen to what I have to say or you can say the
magic word and I'll leave immediately. But before you do that, think
about something.

Think about the kind of power that can get an off-duty FBI agent to come
calling about your love life."

"How dare you! Since when is my private life the business of the
god damned FBI!" Her hands were clenched and her eyes wide in anger.

"Exactly," he said gently, and waited for her to get it.

She stared at him for a few more seconds, then slowly leaned back in the
couch. He pressed on.

"I'll get straight to it. The background I have is that this senior guy
got the hots for you, and you saw a chance maybe to get close to a
powerful man. You did what lots of pretty girls do in this town, and
then after the two of you got it on, you got cold feet about the whole
thing, wanted to shut it off unless it could be put on the up-and-up.

But he's senior, married, and wasn't ready for that, and he also wasn't
ready just to say sayonara. He pressed to keep things as they were, you
shut him off, he pushed harder, and you threatened to go public. That
about sum it up?"

She was silent for almost a minute, glaring at him. He could see that
she was really angry now; small round shadows flushed on her dusky
cheeks. But she was also worried.

"No," she said finally. But then she looked down at the floor for a
moment. "There was more to it than that. There is more to it than that."

"Not anymore," he said. Her head snapped up and she stared back at him.

He realized in that instant that offering money would never have worked.

The dummy was in love. The captain had had it backward. He decided to go
straight at it. He leaned forward.

"Not anymore," he repeated softly. "Basically, you are going to forget
about it and him. Just flat forget about it. That way, you keep your
nice Navy career intact and everything works out for the best. But only
if you keep your mouth shut and get used to the fact that it is now all
over. Gone and down the road. In return, you get what you wanted: The
great man keeps his mouth shut and doesn't bug you anymore. But no kiss
and-tell. No Navy Times scandals, no sexual harassment news conferences,
no Anita Hill scene, no nothing. You are probably not the first pretty
pasture he's plowed in his career, and you probably won't be the last.

But you are going to keep your mouth shut."

"You really don't understand, do you?" she said. "I only threatened to
expose him because he ... he kept after me. I told him that a secret
affair had been a mistake."

She paused, looking down at the table. "The whole thing was a mistake.

Bigger than he knows."

"You've got that precisely right," Malachi agreed. His voice was getting
tired. "But then, twenty-something women who fool around with guys my
age are always bound for grief--especially when you're mixing black and
white."

She flared. "And just what the hell does that mean?"

He realized he'd gone too far, but her snippy attitude was starting to
offend him. Goddamn women were all alike.

"It means that whites and blacks shouldn't breed, that's what it means.

It's against nature."

"You bastard! Against nature? Against nature! Who or what the hell are
you?" she shouted.

Malachi felt his own temper surge. He put the briefcase down, stood up,
and stepped closer to the couch.

He was looming over her. What are you? Impudent little bitch. He
narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice as she recoiled against the
couch, her hands clutching the cushion, her face filling with fear.

"What am I? I told you. I'm the messenger," he whispered, putting his
hand out to point a thick finger right into her face, letting her see
those hands. "And the message is that you need to keep your head down
and your mouth shut and your legs closed. And if you don't, you stand to
lose a lot more than just your job."

But she wasn't getting it. There was still as much anger in her face as
fear. He put his right hand in her face, his fingers clawing, advancing
to grab her chin, when he glimpsed a flash of steel and felt a searing
pain across the back of his fingers. He jumped back with a hiss of pain
as she lunged sideways off the couch to face him, her body in a crouch,
a long kitchen knife in her left hand. She had cut him across the backs
of all the fingers on his right hand. There was blood welling up all
over the back of his hand as he raised it to see how badly he was hurt.

"You get out--get out of here!" she was yelling.

"Right now! Move!"

He stepped backward and straightened up, a white hot rage framing his
voice. Another god damned woman with a knife--he could almost feel the
other pain again, the sickening knowledge of what the German bitch had
done. He thought about the gun for a moment but then regained control of
himself. He took a deep breath and held his bleeding hand up in front of
his face, turning it this way and that as if to inspect it, letting the
blood run down his shirtsleeve and not on the carpet. Then he looked
back at her. She was trembling but standing her ground.

"Right," he said calmly, his right arm still up in the air, turned so
that she could see what she had done. "I will leave now. You've made a
big mistake, bigger even than falling in lust with the wrong guy, as you
will see in good time."

"You just get out," she said again, her courage
rising when she realized he was going to leave. "You're the ones who've
made the big mistake, buster, as you all are going to see first thing
tomorrow. See and hear. I work in public relations, remember? Now you
shag your white ass out of here."

She gestured toward him with the knife. He bent down and picked up the
briefcase with his left hand and backed away toward the door, his right
arm still held upright. Then he stopped, dropped the briefcase, and
undid his suit coat, shucking it off awkwardly and then wrapping it
around his bleeding hand. With the coat off, she could see the 9-mm gun
in its shoulder rig, and he saw her eyes widen as she stopped in her
tracks. He could feel without looking that the elbow of his shirtsleeve
was soaked through, so he wrapped the rest of the suit coat around his
forearm. He lifted his raincoat off the coat tree with his left hand and
then opened the door carefully, glancing out into the hall to make sure
no one was watching, deliberately smudging the metal of the door handle
to wipe any prints. He picked up the briefcase and looked back at her.

"It's never nice to hurt the messenger, Lieutenant," he said with a cold
smile as he backed into the hall. She moved quickly toward the door and
kick-slammed it in his face.

Out in the hallway, Malachi tightened the suit coat around his forearm,
wiggled his way into the raincoat, and headed for the stairway. He took
the stairs down to the ground floor, cracked the fire door to see if the
hallway was clear, but then chose to go out a fire exit that led to the
parking garage's entrance area. His hand was beginning to really hurt,
but he was more worried about being seen.

The parking garage was an unattended underground lot with a
machine-operated door. The stairway door had come out on the first
level, right next to the street doors. He walked quickly over to the out
ramp and waved his left hand in front of the electric eye, which
triggered the door opener. A minute later, he found himself out on the
rainy street. He walked around the block containing the apartment
complex before approaching his car. Bitch might have called the cops,
and he did not want to walk into any traps. He kept the bloody bundle
that was his right hand out of sight as best he could, but there was no
one around. There was a flare of headlights as a car pulled into the
apartment garage, the driver working his card key to open the door, but
then the street was empty again. He walked quickly back to his car,
unlocked it awkwardly with his left hand, threw the briefcase in, and
got in. The material of the suit coat was beginning to feel wet and
soppy.

Hands and heads bleed the worst, he remembered from his Army first-aid
courses. Another car came down the street, and he sank down in the front
seat until it had gone by. Still no cops. He had an idea. He dialed her
number again. Busy. So she was on the phone. Have to think about that; a
possible loose end there.

When he was satisfied that the street was not going to fill up with
flashing blue lights, he started the Ford, did a U-turn, and went back
out to 23rd Street. He turned right and took 23rd down to Memorial
Bridge and across the river to Arlington, struggling to keep the suit
coat wrapped tightly around his right hand. He was being very careful to
contain the blood. He was pretty certain he had dripped none in her
apartment, although the knife might show traces if she hadn't washed it.

He might have to go back there during the day to check on that. That
would be easy enough. He had the keypad number, and those apartment door
locks were a joke.

Once in Virginia, he took Arlington Boulevard over to the 10th Street
exit, drove up Wilson to Quincy Street, turned right, and then turned
left into the underground parking garage of the Randolph Towers
apartment building. For several years, he had maintained a one-bedroom,
Spartanly furnished safe-house apartment in the Randolph Towers, which
was a twenty four-story high-rise one block from the Ballston Metro
station. With the apartment came secure underground parking. He rarely
stayed in the apartment, but it was there as a bolt-hole if he ever
needed one, another one of Monroney's recommendations. He could still
hear his old Saigon mentor's hoarse voice and clipped New York accent:
"If you're gonna get into the shadow-land

business, you need to have at least one hidey-hole, Mal achi, and at
least two, maybe even three vehicles, with lots of different paperwork,
the whole bit, for everything.

Remember, you can buy any kind of vehicle paperwork you need from those
scary-looking Haitians in the District, the ones who hang around the
Traffic Division up on New York Avenue." Malachi had registered each of
his three vehicles under assumed names and addresses, taking advantage
of the District's rather porous tax-by-mail system. As long as he sent
in the checks, the renewals came right back. He even had two driver's
licenses--one from Virginia and one from the District--that matched the
names and geographical registrations of each vehicle. In the age of
computers, it wasn't a foolproof system, but it would withstand a
street-side traffic check.

The Randolph Towers had good security at night after ten o'clock, but
until then there were three entrances out of sight of the front desk, so
he could come and go without attracting any attention. Several of the
foreign embassies in town maintained blocks of apartments there, so
transients and strange new faces were a way of life. The exits from the
garage were also conveniently out of view of the security people at the
front desk, and they were operated by automated access cards.

Malachi had taken Monroney's advice about vehicles to heart, and he
maintained three for his operations: a pickup truck, a small van, and a
Ford sedan. The Ford stayed at the Randolph Towers. He had purchased it
at a police auction in Fairfax County. It was old, dented, painted
black, with tinted windows and a small whip antenna on the trunk, as
well as a chrome-plated, remotely-operated spotlight in front of the
driver's side mirror. He kept two sets of plates for it: one from the
District, when he operated in Virginia, and another from Virginia, when
he was operating in the District, both sets arranged after a meeting in
the parking lot of the District of Columbia's Traffic Division, just as
Monroney had said. The Ford looked exactly like what it had been, an
umarked cop car, which solved a lot of

problems in certain neighborhoods and also made parking around
Washington simpler. He could hit any empty space that said reserved for
government vehicles, of which there were hundreds in Washington.

He circled down two levels to the bottom level and parked. Keeping the
coat bunched around his hand, he shucked the raincoat and rolled up the
blood-soaked shirtsleeve. Making sure no one was watching, he retrieved
the first-aid kit from the trunk of the car, dropped the suit coat, and
bandaged his fingers by the light coming from the trunk. The cuts were
deep and raw-looking; his entire hand already felt hot and tender, with
swelling evident along the base of his fingers. Should have stitches, he
thought, but there was no way he could go to an emergency room now. He
put some antibacterial cream on the cuts, wincing at the stinging pain,
and then used four butterfly bandages to pull the cuts together as best
he could. He replaced the first-aid kit in the trunk and climbed back
into the car. Making sure he had retrieved the FBI credentials from the
suit jacket, he wiggled back into his raincoat, slipping his injured
right hand into the raincoat pocket.

He waited while a sudden swarm of evening commuters sought their parking
spaces in the garage, but when everyone had headed for the elevators, he
got back out of the Ford, locked it, and walked up the ramp to the
Randolph Street garage entrance, carrying the ruined suit coat. He
triggered the door and walked out past the deli on the ground floor,
pitching the bloody suit coat into one of the apartment building's
Dumpsters as he walked by. He went across Randolph Street, into the
parking lot behind the dentist's office, past the IHOP, across Stafford,
and into the entrance of the Ramada Renaissance Hotel. With his right
hand stuffed into the raincoat pocket, no one paid any attention to him
as he went through the lobby area, past the concessions, out the glass
doors of the hotel's back entrance, and directly down into the Ballston
Metro station.

He took the first Washington-bound train that came through and dropped
into an empty seat. It was a Blue Line train, going back into town at
the end of rush hour, and therefore pretty much empty. He sat back in
his seat and closed his eyes. He badly needed a drink and a cigarette.

Hold that thought, he said to himself.

Get home, wash this mess up, get proper bandages on it, maybe some sulfa
powder, and then have a little session with Mr. Harper's hundred proof.

He started to review the events in the woman's apartment, but the
insistent, throbbing pain in his hand was too distracting.

He must have dozed, because he was suddenly startled by a push of people
boarding the train at the Metro Center station. When he looked around,
he saw that he was now the only white man in the car. But he was used to
that: The trains leaving Metro Center at night going to Virginia were
mostly filled with whites; going east toward Capitol Hill and Northeast
Washington, the crowd was predominantly black.

Malachi lived up on Capitol Hill, which by day was the province of the
almost entirely white national legislature and its staffs and the
Capitol Hill police. Once the working day was over, though, the area
reverted back to what it had been before serious gentrification had set
in during the eighties: a very black part of town.

He had acquired the place in 1975, once again, courtesy of Monroney. The
Army had stationed him at Fort Me Nair, the mostly ceremonial
installation at the junction of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, while
he had been waiting for his discharge papers to come through after the
incident in Germany. Monroney, retired by then and running his own
consulting business in Washington, had introduced him to a middle-aged
Realtor lady who had a passion for whiskey that was almost as large as
Malachi's. Without telling her any more than absolutely necessary, he
had revealed that he had saved some money and was looking for somewhere
to live that might also be an investment he could make before getting
out of the Army. Besides being a kindred soul in matters of good
whiskey, she had steered him into buying a run-down brick duplex on 5th
Street NE, three blocks back from the Supreme Court building, with the
suggestion that he could restore the two houses himself.

It had given him something to do during his final months in the Army,
and now he lived in one and kept the second one, which he had eventually
retitled under an assumed name, as a safe house for clients who needed a
discreet place to hole up from time to time.

The lady had given him some damn fine advice: The duplexes had
appreciated many times in value since then, and having the spare house
also brought in some nice retainer income from three congressional
offices that seemed to have an occasional need for extremely discreet
living quarters.

Two very large ladies were giving him a suspicious once-over as the
train approached the Capitol South station, but he ignored them, pushing
his throbbing hand deeper into the raincoat pocket. He focused hard on
the help he could expect from Mr. Harper and on what he would do the
next morning. Goddamned woman. Twelve years in the Army, and no man had
ever really hurt him physically. Only a god damned woman.

He knew her commuting routine cold. He would up the ante in the morning.

at quarter to six the following morning, Malachi waited in his white
Ford F-250 pickup truck on the southbound side of 23rd Street, just
behind a bus loading zone. The truck had a yellow caution flasher
mounted on the roof of the cab, a large steel push grate mounted on the
front bumper, and magnetic signs displaying the logo of the Washington
Metropolitan Transit Authority attached to both doors. Monroney had
pointed out that in Washington, a Metro service vehicle could park damn
near anywhere except in front of the White House. He sat there with the
cabin light on and a large clipboard resting on the steering wheel. A
Metro bus schedule checker, waiting for rush hour. Three cop cars had
passed him without so much as a glance.

He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and a dark tie.

From time to time, he would hold up his bandaged right hand to ease the
aching pain. The little bitch. She had had that kitchen knife under the
sofa cushions the whole time. Another hostess with the mostess. City
dweller. Especially in this city, the murder capital of the free world.

What was it--an average of two murders a night in the District for the
past three weeks? Springtime in Washington. He looked at his hand again,
the fingers buried now under a bulky white bandage. Four deep red cuts
in a row right across the base segments of his fingers. Lucky she had
slashed instead of jabbed. He was getting careless in his old age. Not
expecting a woman to pull a knife: For Malachi, that was incredible.

His mind shied away from a sudden vision of Inge, the German barfly who
had put him down for the count in Frankfurt that night. Yes, he would
have to pay much better attention.

He checked his watch again. Maybe thirty minutes now until she came out.

There was little traffic in town as yet, although the surburban arteries
were probably already swelling. A 17A bus with the words foggy bottom
illuminated on the signboards pulled in ahead of him, the driver waving
casually in his mirror. Malachi waved back and pretended to write
something on his clipboard. He had twice more tried her phone last
night, but it had been busy both times. Telling somebody about her night
visitor maybe. Definitely a possible problem there, depending on whom
she had called.

But probably not somebody at work--she would have had to explain the
nature of the problem. A relative perhaps. The file said she had a
brother, but he was away in the Navy somewhere. Her mother--he would
have to check that out. The knife and the phone call-- two loose ends.

He yawned and lit another cigarette, lowering the window some more.

Getting a little old for this shit.

Twelve years in the frigging Army, nine of those in the military police,
and he was having trouble with a little early reveille. Maybe the booze
hadn't been such a good idea. The whiskey hadn't helped like it used to.

By the time he'd had enough to dull the pain in his hand, his head had
begun to hurt. When he had rolled out at four thirty, his head and his
hand were competing to see which could hurt the most.

He had bought the Metro signs four years ago from a guy who needed a
little help, and the flasher unit was out of a catalog. With these two
accessories mounted on a plain pickup truck, he had gained another
vehicle that could go anywhere and park anywhere in the city without
attracting attention. Before leaving his garage, he had taken the
precaution of spraying WD-40 over the entire front end, lights, hood,
bumper, and especially the heavy steel push grate, just in case he got
too close. He had made two careful circuits of the local streets to
check out his escape route before parking in the bus zone, making sure
that the city's diggers and fillers hadn't placed a baby Grand Canyon in
his way.

He looked at his watch again. Ten, fifteen more minutes and she should
come clacking up the street on his side, cutting across about a hundred
feet down 23rd Street for her paper. Commuters: absolute creatures of
habit. They had to have their morning papers. Usually all he had to do
was place one of his enormous hands on someone to convince them where
the path of righteousness lay. So round one to the lady. Round two would
involve a little escalation: This morning he would scare the living shit
out of her with the truck. Power steering, bitch. Don't need two hands
for that. Make sure she saw his ugly face at the moment of truth. Let
her understand that she was extremely mortal, she wanted to press on
with something. He waited, his head and his hand emanating pain in
stereo. He gave up and fished in the glove compartment for his flask and
took a hit, the whiskey immediately sanding down some of the rougher
edges in his head.

Twelve minutes later, as another Metro bus pulled away in a roaring
cloud of diesel smoke, he saw her at the far end of the block. He looked
around, wincing at the movement. His mouth was dry and there was an aura
of needlelike pain around the periphery of his eyes. But it looked
pretty good: no other pedestrians around, still too early for serious
commuter traffic on the street. He checked the mirror and saw the
traffic lights up at Washington Circle behind him blink from yellow to
red. Perfect. The street would be clear for another ninety seconds. He
took a deep breath to steady his nerves, thought fleetingly of maybe one
more little tug on the flask, and then put the big truck in gear,
hearing the 460 V-8 engage the drive gear with a dull clank. He gently
eased the nose of the big truck out into the street itself but then
stopped before going more than a few feet. He kept the lights off. Down
the block, the woman continued up the sidewalk. He could just make out
the bottom of her face, her jaw out thrust in the glow of the
streetlights as she strode determinedly, probably thinking about what
she was going to do and say this morning, maybe an indignant
confrontation with the great man, pumped by some deeper apprehensions
that her career might suddenly be at risk. He saw her look briefly up
23rd Street and then step out to cross to the newspaper dispenser. He
waited until she had taken three solid steps out into the street before
mashing the accelerator, causing the truck to lunge out of its parking
place and jerking his neck as it accelerated into the street with a
clean surge of horsepower, passing forty by the time she finally saw it
over her left shoulder, then fifty when she absorbed what was looming at
her up the shadowy street. Malachi aimed right behind her, just to her
left, intent on making it very close, leaning forward to put his face in
the windshield so she could see it, see who it was. He assumed that she
would jump clear, but she didn't. She froze instead, transfixed by the
truck that was filling her vision, and then, instead of moving, she was
focusing on his face, a flare of recognition visible in her eyes at the
last critical instant when she finally did try to move. But her foot
slipped on the damp asphalt and she lurched sideways and the left side
of the push grate caught her, the eight thousand-pound impact spinning
her around and catapulting her deformed body seventy-some feet across
the street, where it crashed in a heap of bloody clothes against the
front stoop of a brownstone.

Malachi, his face frozen, had no time to look back.

He knew a direct hit when he felt it. With the blood pounding in his
head and a cold feeling spreading through his stomach, and suddenly very
sober, he careened down 23rd for one more block, slowing down, braking
on the gears as he went, and made the first available left, onto F
Street. He crossed three more streets and then took a right onto 19th
south.

The stupid bitch! The stupid, defiant little bitch! All she had to do
was jump!

He flipped on the police scanner mounted under the dash as he took 19th
down to Constitution, where he made a left and then turned on the yellow
flasher unit as he headed up Constitution toward Capitol Hill at just
over the speed limit. His headache was gone, he noticed. Nothing like a
little adrenaline rush to clear the head. Her face--at the last moment,
something had happened to her face. For an instant, she had become Inge.

If he closed his eyes for even a fraction of a second, he could still
see it--that same angry glare and then the shock. But, no: not like
Inge's face at all. Inge had been white. Damn it!

He slowed down once again as he got into heavier traffic near the
Russell Senate Office Building, then turned south on 2nd Street, intent
on driving around for a while in the warren of side streets surrounding
Capitol Hill, just part of the Metro fleet of supervisors, out
monitoring the capital's daily morning madness.

There was some chatter on the scanner now, some codes, and finally, a
request for an ambulance, code eight. Twenty-third Street. Code
eight--too late. The "don't hurry" code.

After driving down into Southeast Washington for a few minutes, he
turned into an empty automated car wash. Normally, the place was filled
with young men washing and waxing their rides, but at this hour he had
the place to himself. Before running the truck through, he got out and
took down the flasher unit and peeled the magnetic Metro decals off the
sides of the truck. He drove the truck through the car wash twice, then
headed back toward the duplex on Capitol Hill. After pulling into the
garage, he shut the door, got out, and then carefully inspected the
front of the truck with a flashlight. Nothing. The hard rubber on the
push grate was still dripping water from the car wash, creating a small
pool on the grimy concrete floor, but there were no visible dents, no
broken glass, bits of fabric, scratches, or bloodstains on the truck. He
stood up and closed his eyes for a moment, his mind's eye contrasting
the sterile sheet-metal sides of the truck with the black and-white
image of her body deforming against the push grate, that black-white
face twisting out of human shape as she was spun around and launched by
the impact.

He took a deep breath, shuddered, and then smiled. Ah well, at least the
truck was clean. A clean machine. Cleanliness was next to godliness. And
what the hell. An accident, that's all it was. And an unnecessary
accident at that: All she had to do last night was say, Okay--I've got
the message. I'll be good, and I'll be quiet. But no, she had to pull a
god damned knife on him, cut his hand, forcing him into having to try
again.

Another god damned treacherous woman with cutting on her mind.

He put the flashlight back, shut off the light in the garage, and
checked the locks on the electric door.

Squeezing by the truck, he went through the backyard door and up the
broken concrete walk toward the house, lighting a cigarette on the way,
sending a huge puff of blue smoke into the dawn air. Hell, he had only
meant to scare her; it was her fault she had chosen to look instead of
leap. One of life's little choices, as Monroney used to say. Besides,
Mr. I.W. Harper knew how to deal with unpleasant images. The only
unsettling part of it was when his brain had flickered that overlay of
Inge's face onto the lieutenant's face. Bad sign, seeing that face
again. The girl had essentially killed herself by not getting out of the
way. But where was the image of Inge coming from after all these years?

He walked up through the tiny, neglected backyard, up the wrought-iron
back steps, and through the kitchen door of the left side of the duplex,
hesitating for a moment in the kitchen to stare at the whiskey bottle
but then continuing on through the house and grabbing his black
windbreaker as he went out the front door. He walked the seven blocks
over to the Eastern Market Metro station and caught an Orange Line train
heading back into town. He got off at the Foggy Bottom station and
surfaced on 23rd Street, across from the George Washington University
Hospital complex. Something appeared to be causing a traffic jam down on
23rd, just a few blocks away. He stopped in at a 7-Eleven for coffee and
a doughnut and asked the Korean proprietor what was going on down on
23rd.

"Hit-and-run. Some lady got killed by a car," the proprietor replied.

"Got traffic all screwed up. You want a bag for that?"

the following morning, Malachi went out early to get a morning paper and
some cigarettes from the convenience store over on East Capitol Street.

He walked across the street to the bakery and bought a coffee and a
prune Danish, then walked the four blocks up to Capitol Hill. It was a
pleasant spring morning, with a solid green haze showing among the tree
branches and a hint of warmth in the air. A few commuters trying to
avoid the major avenues sped through the quiet neighborhood streets,
paying only very casual lip service to the stop signs. He felt the
rumbling vibrations of a passing Metro bus on the uneven pavement as he
crossed 2nd Street behind the Library of Congress. His head no longer
hurt, because this time he hadn't made the mistake of interrupting his
whiskey intake. He had not slept last night, or at least not for more
than a half hour at a time. He had watched a series of increasingly
boring night talk shows, smoked all his cigarettes, and killed a quart
of Harpers. But he wasn't drunk, just pleasantly--stable, yeah, that was
the word. The bourbon was warm in his veins and the lurking headache was
being kept firmly at bay.

Reaching the small park behind the Supreme Court building, he found a
bench that was upwind of the lumpy vagrants sleeping in the bushes,
spread out his paper, and scanned the Metro section. He found it right
away: A female Navy lieutenant had been the victim of an early-morning
hit-and-run accident on 23rd Street.

She had been DOA at George Washington University Hospital of multiple
fractures and blunt-force trauma.

She had been identified as Lieutenant Elizabeth T.

Hardin, USN, age 27 attached to the Chief of Information (CHINFO) Office
at the Navy headquarters in the Pentagon. She was survived by her
mother, one Mrs. Agnes Hardin, of District Heights, in Southeast
Washington, where the lieutenant had been born and raised, and a younger
brother, who was a lieutenant (junior grade) supply corps officer
stationed on a ship in the Navy. According to the paper, there had been
no witnesses to the accident, nor were there any leads. Good, if true.

The article closed with a police spokesman-- correction,
spokesperson--making some remarks about the dangers of jaywalking,
especially in the early-morning darkness. Two column inches. Ho hum. He
spent the next half hour drinking his coffee, finishing the Danish and
the paper, and watching the flow of women staffers clicking their way up
the street to the various Hill office buildings. Every one of them was a
looker.

No wonder all those congressmen can't keep their pants zipped. Go ahead
and look, Malachi: Locking's all you got left.

When he returned to the duplex, however, his answering machine was not
ho-hum. There was a belligerent, almost hysterical message from the
captain, directing him to call in at once on the private number.

Treating him like a junior officer again. Malachi grinned and erased the
tape. Let him stew for a while. The phone rang as he headed up the
stairs. He stopped to listen to a second call from the captain, a repeat
of the first message. The captain was trying to sound slightly more
threatening, but came off sounding mostly frightened.

Malachi gave the machine a mock salute and went upstairs to shower and
shave.

He went back downstairs a little after 9:00 a. m., squeezed one last cup
of last night's coffee out of the percolator, added a small--well, maybe
a medium-- whiskey helper, lit a cigarette, and called the captain's
direct number, sipping the whiskey-flavored coffee.

Gotta keep the levels right, he thought. A yeoman said the captain was
not available and asked if he could take a message. Malachi left his
number and the agreed upon cover name. While he was waiting, he found
the personnel file on Elizabeth Hardin and ran it through his shredder.

The captain called back twenty minutes later, and Malachi let him talk
to the machine again.

Finally at around 10:00 a. m., the phone rang again, and this time
Malachi picked up.

"Yes?" he said.

"What the hell have you done!" whispered the Captain.

"Can't talk?" Malachi asked innocently. "Got people around with their
ears on fire?"

"You heard me, goddamn it!" A stage whisper now.

Malachi sat down on the bottom stair, his customary position when
talking on the hall phone.

"Hell, I did what you wanted," he began. "I went to see her, got in
right after she came home, told her I was an FBI guy. She bought the FBI
bit, and once I was in, I brought up her love life and gave her the
word. But she didn't want to play ball. She got all righteous and
excited, threw me out. That's it. What's the problem with that?"

"The problem is that she's dead, for Chrissakes!"

Malachi feigned surprise. "Dead? Dead? She was damn well alive when I
left her--calling me names, but very much alive and very pissed off.

What do you mean dead?"

"Don't you read the goddamn papers? Watch the TV news?"

"Nope."

"Well, you should. She was run down on Twenty-third Street early
yesterday morning, the morning after you paid your little call."

"No shit. So?"

"Well, I assumed you had something to do with that, Malachi."

Malachi put a little metal in his voice. "You assumed wrong. You
specifically said not to hurt her, so I just did the monster-mash
routine--gave her the word, just like you wanted, and then beat feet
when she went herman tile. I figured you'd be on the receiving end next,
shit she was saying. That's what I was going to report when I called,
see what you wanted to do about it."

"What kinds of things was she saying?"

"Like she was gonna go see the great man and ream his ass out. Like she
was gonna get extremely public.

She reminded me that she worked in public relations, emphasis on that
word public. I figured you were calling me this morning to tell me about
a bitch kitty scene in the great man's outer office." Malachi was
enjoying this.

There was a moment's silence on the line. Then: "He doesn't know about
it yet."

"What, doesn't he read the damn papers? Watch the TV news?"

More silence.

"Ah," said Malachi. "I get it. You're elected to go tell him."

"Probably."

"Wonderful. Well hell, you're a big captain now, so go tell him. Or tell
his wife, and let her tell him; that would be interesting. But get off
my case. I talked to the little bitch. I did not do anything else. And
like I said, she didn't scare so good. So you go tell your big guy.

And here's a freebie: When he gets all teary-eyed and melancholy, point
out to him that he's in the clear vis-avis any Anita Hill scenes, right?

Silver lining sort of thing."

"Silver lining."

"One on every black cloud, Captain. See ya."

Malachi hung up and walked into his kitchen, whose rear windows
overlooked the tiny backyard and the dilapidated fence running along the
alley. He shook out another cigarette and then tore the filter off
before lighting up. Every true addict knew that the tobacco they put in
filter cigarettes had to be twice as strong as the unfiltered ones. The
coffeepot was empty, so he got out the makings, eyeing the scant remains
of the Harper hundred. Okay. Now, just those two little loose ends: the
phone calls and the knife. The knife was simple.

If the cops thought it was what the paper said it was --a hit-and-run
and not a homicide--there'd be no detectives going to her apartment. So
he ought to be able to just go over there, middle of the day, when
everyone was at work, punch in the code, slip the locks, find the knife,
clean it, and put it back under the couch, where she'd kept it. Where a
friend or relative might know she'd kept it. But then he paused and
thought about it. She'd probably already done that, and cleaned it off,
too. But either way, the knife bit was simple if he moved right now.

He filled the percolator with water and plugged it in.

The phone calls were more troubling. Depending on whom she had been
talking to for nearly an hour, the cops might yet be coming around after
all. Like if she'd called her mother, told her what was going down, and
told her about the night visitor with the big hands. He held his right
hand up and looked at his bandaged fingers again. Deep skin cuts. Hurt
like hell. He'd had to change the bandages three times so far, but the
sulfa powder was working its magic--there was no sign of general
infection. If she had talked to her mother and the mother had told the
cops, then he had better not go over there with his bandaged hand and
walk into a stakeout. He sat back down at his kitchen table and thought
about it as the coffeepot began making intestinal sounds.

Without knowing about the phone calls--whom she had called and what she
had said--he really couldn't go take care of the knife. He conjured up a
picture of the young woman in his mind. What would you do, Miss. Navy
Lieutenant, you cut some guy with a knife you kept under the couch
pillows? A big guy with big hands who was scaring you? You'd run him out
of the apartment, and now you're standing there in your living room with
a bloody knife in your hand. That's right:

you'd go into the kitchen, drop it into the sink, and then wash it off,
and your hands with it. And probably put it back. You wouldn't be
thinking forensics; you'd be slightly sick to your stomach at seeing a
man's blood running down his arm after you slashed him. You'd wash it
off and then wash your hands really good. So screw the knife--go find
out what the cops were doing with the incident and who'd been talking to
them about what. He got up and found a mug, poured the last of the
Harper into it, sucked on his tattered cigarette while he waited for the
percolator to finish.

When he was ready to make his calls, he went to his office, which had
once been the dining room of the town house back when it had been a
home. He sat down at his desk and activated the voice synthesizer.

After what had happened to his voice in Germany, the machine had become
a necessity. No one who heard his real voice would ever forget it,
especially on the phone.

And phones were his life. It was Monroney who had introduced him to the
fact that you could find out almost anything in Washington simply by
picking up the phone, Washington being as big a phone town as LA.

That, plus the fact that every government organization published their
phone book, which allowed you to find anyone who was connected with the
government.

He chose voice program six, then made his first call to the Washington
Post, asking for the reporter who had done the piece on the hit-and-run.

While the operator was putting him through, he opened the Yellow Pages
to

"Attorneys." The phone rang four times and then he got voice mail. He
hung up, then tried again a half hour later, and this time he got a
human voice.

"Kit Freeman."

"Mr. Freeman, I'm calling about the piece in the Metro section today
about the young Navy lieutenant who got run over."

"Yes? And your name?"

"My name is Farrell Greenberg, Mr. Freeman. I'm an attorney at Lyle,
Spencer, Watkins and King, out here in Bladensburg." He closed the phone
book.

"Oh, Jesus. I don't believe this, Greenberg. Let me guess, you're a
personal injury liability guy, and--"

"No, no, Mr. Freeman. Not every attorney in this town is an ambulance
chaser." Malachi wrote down the name Farrell Greenberg on a pad next to
the synthesizer, and the number 6.

"Now that's news," Freeman said. "So what's your angle?"

"Our firm represents a client who is compiling statistics about the
District of Columbia Police Department's solution rate on fatal traffic
incidents--especially hit and-runs. Your article today identified
Lieutenant Har din as being a black woman. My client believes that the
police department relegates black traffic deaths to the back burner in
terms of putting in the hours to find the perpetrators."

"The article didn't say she was black."

"It said she was from
Washington, and her mother lived in Southeast, in District Heights. I
concluded that she was black. Was I mistaken?"

"No."

"So, regarding what our client--"

"That's bullshit, and you know it."

"I said that our client believes
that. Our--that is, my :--instructions are to follow up on all such
incidents in the city, such as the one that involved Lieutenant Har din,
to see what the police have done with it."

"So why are you calling me?"

"Because when I called the police hit-and-run division, I got
stonewalled--investigation in progress, that sort of thing. I fully
appreciate that it's been only one day, but most vehicular homicides are
'solved' about fifteen minutes after they happen. I'm calling you to
find out if they know any more than they're telling, or perhaps to see
if this incident is going to just dry up and blow away."

There was a moment's silence on the line. Malachi sat back in his chair.

He was counting on the lawyer bit to distract the reporter from making
any mental connections between the caller and the accident. It had been
an accident, after all.

"Tell me, Mr. Greenberg," Freeman said. "What do your stats show so
far?"

Malachi rustled the pages of his notebook, as if looking up the data.

"In twenty-four cases of vehicular homicide or manslaughter in the past
thirty months in the District, eighteen have involved black people, and
sixteen of those are, quote unquote, 'solved.' That's eighty-eight
percent. In two other cases, the witnesses told such convoluted stories,
nobody could make sense of them. The remainder were either white people
or other races, and about the same rate applies--eighty five percent."

"So why doesn't your client just give it up?"

"My clients are not the kind of people who necessarily let facts
distract them from their political agenda."

"Ah, an interest group. Right. That makes more sense, the way people act
in this town. Okay: the Har din case. The cops are stumped, literally
stumped. Guy came out of his town house, on his way to work, found the
girl's body draped across the trash cans next to his stairs. Deader than
hell. No screech of brakes, no witnesses, no signs of robbery or any
other crime than hit and-run. Cops feel it's just what it looks like--a
hit-and run. They're going to work the usual guilt angle: Whoever you
are out there, you know what you've done.

Give yourself up--right now, it's an accident. We gotta come find you,
it's manslaughter or even murder. That usually works, by the way."

Malachi went silent for a moment, then said, "Sorry, taking notes. So,
there's nothing to indicate that they're sluffing it off."

"Nope. Although--"

"Yes?"

"The girl's mother. The detective on the case said the girl's mother was
really strange about it. I mean, there was the expected grief reaction
when a parent loses a child, even a grown child, but this was as if she
had been expecting something to happen to her daughter.

Not the normal reaction, whatever that is, but ... Hell, I don't know."

"Oh dear. We never know how grief will manifest itself, do we?"

"You see a lot of grief in your business, counselor?"

"People rarely call their lawyers to celebrate one of life's little
triumphs, Mr. Freeman. But I guess I need to put this one in the open
column for now."

"Yeah, well, this being D. C., a hit-and-run can't compete with last
night's umpteen drug shootings, so it isn't on the front burner, but
it's not on the back burner, either. They just have nothing to go on so
far. But as to that theory that the D.C. cops put black incidents--"

"I know, Mr. Freeman. I've got the statistics, remember?

But thank you for your time and information. I'll pull the string with
the police in about a week and see what they've got."

"Have a ball."

Malachi hung up and went back into the kitchen. So one phone call,
assuming there had been more than one, may have been to mother dearest.

He wondered if the girl's mother had known anything about her daughter's
romantic entanglement with the great man--mothers often knew a lot more
than their children ever gave them credit for, even their adult
children. But the reporter could also be sandbagging him, or, more
likely, he was just ignorant. Freeman had sounded like a kid.

But one thing was clear: If the mother had told the cops that the
daughter had called about being threatened the night before she was run
down, the cops would have buried that little factoid deep indeed and
opened a homicide file. He would have to find out what the mother
actually knew, and if the cops were really working it.

malachi waited two days before setting out to probe what the cops were
doing with the case. He made one call to the police department, posing
as a reporter, and, predictably, got nowhere. He then reset the
synthesizer, called into Navy CHINFO, posing as a friend named Henry
Bronson, and asked when and where the memorial service for Lieutenant
Hardin would be. The young female petty officer who answered told him
that it was a

Baptist church up in District Heights--tomorrow afternoon.

He thanked her and was about to hang up when he sensed she had something
else to say. He probed. At first, she hesitated for a moment, and then
she asked him if he was a white man. Momentarily taken aback, Malachi
said yes.

"Well, Mr. Bronson, here's the thing: The CHINFO himself--that's Admiral
Kenney--wanted to set up a memorial service over at Arlington--like at
that chapel they got over there? She being active duty and all. So he
had the deputy call Mrs. Hardin--that's Lieutenant Hardin's mother."

"Yes?"

"And, well, Mrs. Hardin, she got really, kind of, like, hostile about
it. Told the deputy that she's had enough grief in her life from her
daughter's involvement with the white man's Navy--her words, Mr.

Bronson--and that there would be a black memorial service at their
church for the black people who knew her daughter, that the service
would be for her black family. Made it kind of clear that white people,
and especially white Navy people, would not be welcome there. When the
word got out in CHINFO, Admiral Kenney got us all together and said that
people handle grief in different ways and that we should all kind of
just, like, cool it. So I'm not sure just what to tell you ..."

"Right. I thank you for the heads-up. The last thing I'd want to do is
crash a funeral, Petty Officer Berger.

Appreciate the info, okay?"

"Yes, sir."

Malachi had briefly considered going up there, maybe sit outside the
church and see what he could see, but he immediately thought better of
it. He had never been to District Heights, but Southeast metropolitan
D.C. was a no-go area. A white guy sitting in a car outside a black
church, spying on a crowd of emotionally upset black people. Right. He
would be as inconspicuous as a bunny in the tiger cage, with about the
same prospects. Even if he made it look like he was in a cop car, the
results would be the same. Maybe worse.

But what did the mother know? He wanted to probe the captain, but he had
an inflexible rule in place there: The captain initiated any and all
contact between them, never the other way around. In all probability,
the captain and the great man had filed the whole thing away by now as a
serendipitous happenstance--shame about the girl, but ... The mother had
already told off the Navy. Maybe if he just called her, acted as if he
was another military guy trying to be nice, he might find out something,
see whether her hate-on for Mr. Charley's Navy was personally specific
or just general hostility.

The funeral was tomorrow afternoon. He looked at his watch. No time like
show time, he thought, and went to find his phone book.

There were seven Hardins in the directory, but only one with an address
in District Heights. He gave it a shot, conjuring up an identity as one
Major Carr, U.S. Army chaplains corps, Fort Myer. Using yet another
voice program, he identified himself to the young female voice that
answered the phone and was told to wait a minute. He logged the new name
and the synthesizer channel. A much stronger woman's voice came on the
line.

"I thought I told you people to leave us alone," she said.

"Is this Mrs. Hardin? This is Major Carr calling, from the Fort Myer's
chaplain's office."

"The who?"

"The chaplain's office at Fort Myer. We provide the military ministry
facilities for interments in the Arlington National Cemetery. We--"

"I
told you people. I told that Navy man, that Chimpo or whatever, that
we're all done with the Navy.

My little girl got all the way through school, through George Washington
University, got her computer degree, got her a commission in the ROTC,
and what it'd get her? You tell me--what'd it get her! Dead on. the
streets, just like every other black child in this city.

That's what--"

There was a moment of silence and then a young man's voice came on the
line.

"Who is this, please?"

Vv>"

M'fc?/

"This is Major Carr, from the Fort Myer chaplain's office, Mr.--"

"This is It. (jg) Wesley Hardin, Major. I'm 'Lizbeth's brother."

"Ah, yes, Lieutenant. I'm an Army chaplain. I was calling in to offer
condolences and to see if the family needed anything in the way of
assistance with services, that sort of thing. I spoke to Admiral
Kenney's office, where I understand Eli--Lieutenant Hardin was
stationed.

They told me that the family had, uh, rebuffed the Navy's offer of a
memorial service. They asked that we give it a try, since everything
Navy seems to be on the family's, uh--"

"Shit list, Major?"

"Well, yes. If the military's done something wrong, we'd sure as heck
like to rectify it."

He heard the young man sigh. There was considerable noise in the
background--people talking, furniture being arranged, from the sounds of
it.

"Well, Major, I'm down here on emergency leave from my ship, which is in
the yards in Philadelphia. I'm the supply officer there. Hang on a
minute." There was a sound of a door closing, and then Lieutenant Hardin
was back on the line, the background noise much diminished.

"I'm not quite sure what to tell you, Major," he continued.

"My mother doesn't want anything from the Navy or anyone else in the
military. She's very upset.

We all are. Elizabeth was something of a star hereabouts, and stars are
kind of rare in our neighborhood --you know what I'm saying?"

"Yes."

"So, there's kind of a reaction going on here, okay?

I'm the second of two kids, and right now I gotta tell you, I'm not
going around reminding people that I'm in the Navy. But I'll tell you
what, there's more to it than just that. My sister called me the night
before she was-- before she died. When this funeral's done, there're
some things, some personal things, I plan to check out.

I really don't want to say any more than that, and you don't, I believe,
want to know any more than that. You follow me?"

"I'm not sure I do, Lieutenant, but I'll respect your wishes. Just be
assured that if you or your mother change your mind--you need or want
anything from us, just call the chaplain's office here at Fort Myer.

Sometimes, after a few days go by, things pile up, you know?

We can help a lot. That's what we're here for, okay?

Can I give you the number?"

"We'll find it if we need it. Thank you, Major."

"And I'm sorry for your loss, Lieutenant."

Malachi hung up and reflected. Some personal things to check out. Maybe
she hadn't told her mother after all. Maybe she had told her brother
instead.

three days after his discussion with Lieutenant (jg) Hardin, Malachi's
machine recorded a summons from the captain. The designated meeting
place was the Arlington County central public library. Late that
afternoon, Malachi caught the Metro to the Ballston station in Virginia,
walked over to Quincy Street, giving the Randolph Towers a passing
mental salute as he walked by, and entered the library. He found the
captain, in full uniform, reading The Wall Street Journal in the
magazine section up on the second floor. He sat down in an adjacent
chair and waited for the captain to look up from his paper. The captain
was in his early fifties and looked to Malachi like a middlingly
prosperous banker, except for the blues and the stripes.

"Ah, you're here," the captain said, looking over the top of the paper.

"Indeed I am," Malachi responded, looking around.

There was no one sitting very near.

"We have another problem with the Hardin case."

"The great man get over his loss, did he?"

The captain put the paper down on the floor next to his chair. "Yes, I
think so. I wish you wouldn't call him that."

"You'd rather I use his name?"

"Well--"

"So what's the new problem? Something about her accident?"

"I don't think he's made any connections between your operations and the
tragic, uh, incident on Twenty third Street. At least he's made no
mention of it."

"I thought you said that he didn't know anything about
me," Malachi said.

"He knows that I engage contractors from time to time to take care of
... special problems. He doesn't know who you are, specifically."

"That's good to hear."

"It's just normal procedure, Malachi. Air gaps are important when you
want things sanitized--especially if they comprehend an accident like
this."

Malachi nodded. He loved the way these guys talked --"air gaps ...

comprehend."

"Well," he replied. "There was no connection between my visit and the
accident, except that she may have been preoccupied that morning."

"That's very good to hear. But this new problem is related,
unfortunately. The young lady has a brother."

Malachi sat back in his chair, his fingers tented over the lower part of
his face. He would reveal nothing to the captain about his own
inquiries.

"So?" he said.

The captain leaned forward and lowered his voice.

"This brother--who also happens to be in the Navy, by the way--has
requested an appointment with my principal."

"Ah."

"Yes. My principal demurred for the time being-- heavy schedule, senior
officials do not normally entertain calls from lieutenants junior grade,
all that."

"But he persisted, didn't he? Maybe even got a little pushy."

"He bordered on being obstreperous, yes."

"And?"

"I'm not entirely sure what's going to happen. The principal, of course,
wants him just to go away, which would usually be your province. But if
he's coming in swinging, then any intervention on your part might be
extremely provocative."

Malachi thought for a moment. An old man came over and asked the captain
if he was done with the Journal. The captain picked the paper off the
floor and handed it to him without a word.

"I think you're going to have to let the brother come in," Malachi said.

"But maybe do it somewhere outside the great man's office. That way, if
it develops into a scene of some kind, it's a private scene."

"Yes, that's what I'd thought--especially about the locus for the
meeting. The girl must have said something to her brother, or there
would be no reason for him to be calling my principal."

Malachi snorted. "Well, obviously," he said. "The question is whether or
not the brother suspects there's a connection between her dustup with
the great man and her flying lesson on Twenty-third Street."

The captain gave Malachi a pointed look. "And is there?" he said.

Malachi returned the look, saying nothing until the captain blinked.

"All right. I won't bring it up again," he said.

"That's good to hear. I did not do that. For one thing, you didn't pay
me enough."

The captain nodded slowly. "All right, I'll recommend that the principal
meet with the lieutenant.

Somewhere private."

"With both of you?"

"The usual setup--he'll meet with the principal; I will listen and
record."

"Okay, then. What do you need from me?"

"We think--I want you to be nearby when we meet.

Not present, but nearby. We want you to see the lieutenant, get a good
look at him. We may need you to, uh, speak to him at some point in
time."

Malachi smiled. "We." All these guys used the royal we.

"Where is this guy stationed? In case I have to go see him."

"In a ship. USS Luce--that's a guided-missile destroyer.

The ship's in overhaul up in the yards in Philly."

Malachi remembered the kid saying something about Philadelphia. "Okay.

Anything else?"

The captain gathered himself to leave. "No," he said.

"Actually, yes. See if you can find out if there's any special police
investigation going on with respect to Miss. Hardin's accident. For
obvious reasons, we can't make that call."

"I already did. There's nothing. Traffic Bureau knows an accident when
they see one, and they've kicked it over to the hit-and-run division.

They'll keep it as an open file. But I'll tell you what, that all might
change if your young lieutenant decides to broaden his complaint,
whatever it is."

The captain paused halfway out of his chair. He pursed his lips. "Right.

We'll keep that in mind."

"You do that."

Malachi remained in the library after the captain had left. He strolled
around the reading room right after the captain had disappeared down the
circular stairway, then watched out the windows as the captain walked
across the parking lot toward his car. No one in the parking lot
appeared to be very interested. Satisfied that no one had followed the
captain's car when he drove out onto 10th Street, Malachi busied himself
with some magazines for a while.

There was little question in his mind that suggested this Hardin
business wasn't over yet. She had spent a long time on the phone that
night. The mother had turned down funeral service help from the Navy and
harbored visible animosity for the service. Why? Had she known or
suspected her daughter was having an affair with a senior government
official? A married and white senior official? And yet it was the
brother who was asking questions. Maybe the girl had confided in her
brother, not the mother, and now he planned to brace up the great man,
maybe even make some accusations: My sister said that some big guy had
come around, sent by you, sir. Threatened her unless she agreed to keep
her mouth shut. She had to cut on the bastard to get him to leave. Then
she gets run down in the street the next morning. How convenient for
you, sir. You have the connections to have goons come around, flashing
FBI ID, why don't I just call the real FBI and tell them what she told
me, hunh?

Malachi thought some more. The lieutenant might confront the great man,
but he wondered about the police angle. The kid had sounded like this
was something he might want to handle himself in some way. What was the
current expression--"getting some get-back"? On the other hand, this guy
was a naval officer. Hard to figure. He looked at his watch. Dinnertime.

The Queen Bee was only six or eight blocks down Wilson Boulevard.

He could take the Metro to Clarendon, or even walk it. Best North
Vietnamese chow in town. He smiled. The North Vietnamese may have won
the war, but now, twenty years after their "victory," the whole country
was still on its ass. The North Vietnamese just never understood about
money. But the South Vietnamese, now, they sure as hell understood about
money. Hell, they'd even made him semirich back in those days. He went
downstairs; he had decided to walk it.

Two days later, he paid a call on Capitol Hill at the request of the
administrative assistant of a prominent Democratic congressman. Malachi
had known the AA more than twenty years ago when the AA had been a
captain on Westmoreland's staff in Saigon and Malachi had been a first
lieutenant in the military police at Tan Son Nhut air base. For the past
eight years, Malachi had done odd jobs for the AA when his boss took one
of his not-infrequent walks on the wild side. The latest was typical:
The congressman, loaded to the gills, had fallen in lust with one of
Washington's more notorious drag queens at a bar. Given the reluctance
of Wash ingtonians in general to tell one of the kings of the Hill that
he had no clothes on, or the wrong kind of clothes in this instance, the
congressman had gone blissfully back to the Willard Hotel with his
prize. Upon discovering the error of his ways, the congressman had
staged a colorful scene on the sixth floor of the hotel, the containment
of which had required some muscle from the hotel security staff. A
certain stringer for the Washington Times had gotten wind of it and had
come sniffing around. Malachi had been asked to pay the reporter a call
and convince him that the story was not based in fact.

"Appreciate the help, Mr. Ward," the AA had said.

"My principal has asked that we increase your retainer.

Just to show our continuing appreciation, you understand."

Malachi had pocketed the check and thanked him; the AA had been part of
the sergeants' thing back in Saigon and understood how to encourage
discretion. It was always a pleasure to do business in this town with
people who knew how to act, and Capitol Hill was simply bursting with
people who knew precisely how to act.

He decided to walk back to the duplex.

Malachi had lived in Washington since his discharge from the Army in
1975. He had built himself a discreetly profitable client list over the
years. His old mentor from the Saigon days, M. Sgt. Tommy Monroney, U.S.

Army, Retired, had already been in the business when Malachi got out of
the Army, and he had showed him the ropes.

"You go for the horse-holders, Malachi--the executive assistants,
executive secretaries, administrative aides--guys like that. These are
the guys who take care of problems for the big guns. Sometimes the
problems have to be worked off-line, if you know what I mean.

Some of the problems don't smell so good, you get close to the
situation. In Washington, people don't want problems, see? Shit,
everybody's got enough problems, and the movers and the shakers in the
government, they got the problems of the whole frigging world to deal
with, see? That's where guys like you and me can do a nice little job of
work."

Monroney had put him on his own payroll and showed him how things were
handled.

"You don't want to do piecework, see--you wanna be on retainer. That's
the secret to real money in this town. They pay you for the privilege of
calling you when they need you. Now, you gotta understand something
here: They call, you frigging well gotta come, see? But since they
almost never get themselves in the shit all at the same time, you go get
eight, ten, twelve permanent clients, and take a retainer from each one
of them. It adds up, man."

And so it had. Because of his physical size, Malachi had specialized in
what Monroney euphemistically called "off-line personal liaison work."

Malachi thought Monroney was a hot shit, always using these two- and
three-word phrases to describe what was a simple job of strong-arm. But
his years in the military police had somewhat diluted his
none-too-strong sense of right and wrong. He had done a good bit of
strong-arm in the MPs, and the system on the outside was no different.

Some guy is giving a great man gas pains, you go around and see the guy,
share your thinking with him, convince him that there's another way to
get ahead in life than the one he is currently pursuing. "Washington is
the city of opportunity, the land of alternative choices," Monroney
would say. "Alternative choices," --Malachi loved it.

Malachi had been an Army brat himself; his father had been a sergeant
all the way through World War II, rising to the rank of master sergeant.

After the war, he had ended up assigned in Washington at the Arlington
Hall station, an Army Intelligence organization. His mother had been a
mousy little woman who kept her own counsel for the duration of her
marriage to his father, who finally drank himself to death two years
after retiring on thirty from the Army. Malachi later realized that the
big war had probably been the highlight of his father's life. His old
man had been an equal-opportunity hater: He had hated blacks, Jews,
Catholics, foreigners, officers, lawyers, and just about any other
recognizable ethnic or professional group. Malachi had soaked up more
than a few of these notions along the way.

Life on a succession of Army posts as a kid had taught Malachi that
there were two very clearly denned strata of people in the army: the
officers and the enlisted.

To hear his father talk about it over the sixth or seventh beer of the
evening, the officers were the root of all the Army's problems. And
while the adults had been clearly grounded in the differences, enlisted
kids living on the base had to learn the hard way that officers' kids
were better than the kids of the enlisted, just like officers' housing
was much better than housing for the enlisted. The officers' club was a
brick mansion at the end of the post's parade ground; it had a big
fenced-in swimming pool that was reserved for officers and their
dependents only. The enlisted club was a glorified beer hall, with a
smaller, not so terrific pool, and something made it against the rules
for the enlisted people's kids to use the officers' swimming pool. And
about the only lesson his mother had taken the time to impart to him was
that the underlying difference among all these people was what happened
to them after high school: Officers' kids went to college and became
officers, or lawyers, or bankers, and enlisted people's kids went into
the Army and became troops.

After his father died at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center of liver
failure, his mother decided to go back to Arkansas. Malachi, an only
child, was given the option of moving in with an Army warrant's family
to finish high school in Northwest Washington. The warrant, a crusty
signals officer assigned to the Navy's security group command on Western
Avenue, reinforced what Malachi's mother had told him: that a high
school education would condemn him to second-rate status in just about
anything he tried. With the warrant's help, he had plugged himself into
the Army's enlisted education network and found out that there were
college scholarships available to Army enlistees who had a high school
diploma--scholarships that could lead to a commission.

It involved taking a chance, because he would have to enlist first, then
apply. If he didn't get it, he would do a four-year hitch in the
barracks. But Malachi, with no other prospects, had enlisted in the Army
Reserves one month after graduating from Wilson High in Northwest D. C.,
and he applied for the college-bound program after half a year of going
to monthly Reserve meetings.

He had gained a place at the University of Maryland three months later.

Although not part of the ROTC program, he had been assigned to the Army
ROTC unit for administrative purposes, and he surreptitiously competed
with the more privileged cadets, even though he was technically an E-2
in the Army Reserves and they were already officer candidates.

Malachi had been a big, bruising kid when he went in, and he grew even
bigger in the summers of basic and then midlevel infantry training
required by the program.

He found out that he was smart, or at least smarter than most of the
cadets who were drinking their way through the ROTC program in the very
early sixties. But in a way, it was the Army base all over again: There
were a lot of officers' kids in the ROTC program. Unlike them, he had no
money for fraternities or a car, and he worked two jobs all year long to
pay his expenses, living with three other enlisted guys who were in
similar straits. He majored in criminology after seeing a training film
produced by the military police corps when they came on the campus
recruiting, and he graduated in 1961 with a full bachelor's degree.

After OCS, he had spent the obligatory eighteen months with the
ground-pounders before being accepted for the military police corps in
1963.

Everything changed in 1965 when he was sent off to Vietnam and the brave
new world of LBJ's counterinsurgency program, where the U.S. Army was
bravely grappling with the mysteries of winning over the hearts and
minds of unruly Asian Communists. As a first lieutenant, he had been
assigned to run an MP shift out of the military police headquarters on
the sprawling Tan Son Nhut air base outside of Saigon. Becoming bored
with being a glorified police desk sergeant, he had taken to cruising
the base in an MP jeep after dark, mostly to get out of the office and
away from all the Vr, y>.

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paperwork, and also to see what he might see. He had heard some
interesting stories about a black market that was supposedly operating
on the base, right beneath the Army's nose. None of the senior officers
in the provost marshal office could understand how it could be going on
when only the Americans had control and access to the goodies. Malachi,
never having really graduated mentally from his enlisted background and
upbringing, thought he might know how it was being done. One night he
had apprehended three men who were loading up a deuce and a half with
treasures from the back of the main exchange warehouse. One of them
turned out to be a sergeant first class by the name of Monroney, a
noncom Malachi had known back in the States when he was going through
basic. Monroney had invited Malachi to take a little walk away from the
warehouse, then had shown him five thousand American dollars in cash.

Since the Army in Vietnam was using military scrip currency at the time,
all that real cash was a mesmerizing sight.

"This is walking-around money for the guys who've playing the game
right, Lieutenant," Monroney had said. "You want in, we can always find
a use for a right thinking provost marshal guy who knows the score."

Malachi had just stared at all that money.

"Who's 'we'?" he had asked finally.

"A buncha us sergeants. No slopes, okay? Just regular Army GIs, guys
like you and me--grew up in the outfit all our lives--who've figured out
this ain't no real war. So we're gonna make a buck or two out of it.

Everybody knows this Vietnamese counterinsurgency stuff is all bullshit,
so why the hell not? You been here awhile, you look around. The slope
generals and colonels are all putting all that American AID money in
their Swiss bank accounts. The American senior officers, the lifers, are
all out here for the medals and the career shit. The only guys getting
their asses kicked are the troops, as usual, hunh? But this is still
Asia, see? Somebody's gonna run a black market. The big war, it was the
civilians. Korea, there wasn't one until after the armistice. This time,
it's gonna be the good guys, the sergeants."

Monroney had shuffled through the stack of bills and then invited
Malachi to take a quick count, allowing him to discover what a wonderful
sound money could make when it came in such quantities.

"Whaddaya say, Lieutenant?" Monroney purred.

"Guy like you, inside the military police: You can name your price. And
you don't hafta do bad-guy shit--you just hafta not do certain good-guy
shit at the right time.

You follow me?"

Malachi had made up his mind right there and then.

His commission was not much more than skin-deep, anyway. He was a
reserve, and all his superiors were regulars from West Point and the
ROTC program. The ROTC guys had been given their commissions upon
graduation; Malachi and his roommates had all had to go through OCS to
get theirs. The real officers couldn't figure out who had to be running
the black market scam right under their high-and-mighty noses. What this
Monroney guy was offering was the first sensible proposition Malachi had
seen since coming to this crazy country, an dover the next two and a
half years, Malachi made more money than he had ever dreamed of making
in ten careers in the Army--in cash, nice, green, untaxable cash,
complete with accommodating Chinese bankers in Cholon who could move
things around a network of extremely discreet banks all over the world.

The sergeants' network had expanded to Germany as the Vietnam War
dragged on, and Malachi, after two and half years in Saigon, had been
part of it there, too.

So it had been only natural that he migrated to Tommy's business when he
got out, especially with Monroney right there in D.C. with yet another
growing concern on his hands. Considering how Malachi's tour in Germany,
and effectively his career in the Army, had ended, Malachi had been very
fortunate indeed that Tommy Monroney was waiting outside the gates. And
when Monroney had "retired" three years ago, Malachi had picked up some
of his business, which gave him a sprinkling of clients across the
spectrum of unofficial Washington. All of his business was on low-level
monthly retainers, retainers that were sweetened from time to time when
the great men and their horse-holders recognized that Malachi, given
some of the things he knew about, had proved himself capable of
exceptional discretion.

Two nights later he was on the second floor of the Army and Navy Town
Club, sitting in a chair in one corner of the bar. He was dressed in a
subdued dark business suit.

The captain had booked one of the suites on the third floor in his own
name. The great man was supposedly attending a Defense intelligence
association reception in the main dining room that evening. The plan was
for the principal to break away from the reception to come upstairs to
meet It. (jg) Hardin in the captain's suite for fifteen minutes. Once
the great man had gone to the suite, the captain would come back
downstairs, walk by the lounge, and give Malachi the signal, at which
point he had been instructed to move from the lounge to the third-floor
library and sit at the far end of the main library table, where he would
have a clear view of the elevators. The idea was for Malachi to get a
good look at this Lieutenant (jg) Hardin when the captain brought him up
to the meeting. Once Malachi had had his look at Hardin, he was to
return to the lounge on the second floor so that neither the principal
nor Hardin would see him when they left the suite. After the meeting,
the captain would back-brief him with new instructions, if any.

Sitting in an ancient leather chair that was beginning to hurt his legs,
Malachi sipped a Harper hundred and watched the denizens of Geezer Gulch
as they went through their martinis and cackled about the latest
administration outrage. He was mildly amused at all the maneuvers laid
out by the captain. It wasn't as if he didn't know who the captain's
principal was. But maybe it was for the best--the old deniability rule:
What you never saw, and so on.

The captain appeared from the second-floor elevators and walked by the
entrance to the cocktail lounge.

He looked in as if casually surveying the room, then turned around and
headed for the double stairway that led back down to the main reception
area. Malachi finished his drink, got up, and took the elevator to the
third floor. He went into the library and did a quick tour. The offices
were closed and there was no one in the library. He pulled a chair over
to the end of the main table, the one farthest from the entrance, and
then went over to the panel of light switches and turned off half the
lights in the library, casting the main room into shadow. He settled
back in his chair, popped out a book from the stack on the table, put it
on his chest, folded his arms, and appeared to go to sleep. To anyone
going by the double-door entrance to the library, he should look like
all the rest of the old fuds who came up here to read the papers and
fall asleep in their chairs.

Five minutes passed, and then the elevator doors chimed and the captain
came out, leading a young black officer in uniform. The captain stopped
near the entrance to the library to ask the lieutenant a question.

Good moves, Captain, Malachi thought as he looked the kid over through
slitted eyes; the kid was paying attention to the captain and never once
looked into the library. He was young, very young--maybe twenty three,
twenty-four; not very tall, kind of thin, in fact, his double-breasted
uniform coat with its one and a half stripes looked like it would wrap
right around him. He had a narrow, intense face, close-cropped hair, and
he was clearly agitated. His hands moved around a lot when he talked.

Probably speaking in jive, Malachi thought unkindly. He doesn't look
like an officer, Malachi thought. More like a kid in costume.

Finally, the captain led the lieutenant out of sight down the hall.

Malachi listened for the sound of a door, waited another minute, and
then got up and went down the hall. He had asked the front desk when he
had arrived where the suites were on the third floor. There were two,
all the way at the far end of the hall, overlooking 17th Street. He
walked down the carpeted hall until he came to a pair of partially
opened fire doors that led to the executive suite hallway. He could hear
voices coming from one of the suites, and he crept closer to that door.

But the voices remained indistinct; the club was an old building, and
all these big oak doors were real. He listened for a few minutes,
keeping one eye on the hallway, until he heard the voices starting to
rise. Somebody was losing his temper. He still could not make out what
they were saying, but the tone and the volume were pretty much
self-explanatory. The lieutenant was not there for a social call--which
meant he did know something.

Malachi backed away from the doors and went back to the elevators,
taking one down to the second floor and returning to his corner seat in
the lounge. His empty glass was still right where he had left it,
sitting in a pool of condensation. Really alert service in here, he
thought. The waitress saw him come in. She looked puzzled, but when he
raised the glass, she smiled and went to get him a refill. While he
waited for the captain to return, he considered the problem. He began to
rummage around in his mind for contacts in Philadelphia while he waited
for the captain to escort the kid out of there. Angelo Fiori, he
thought. I'll bet old Angelo can help me out with this little problem.

Angelo owes me one from our Saigon days.

The captain came back ten minutes after escorting the lieutenant
downstairs. He found Malachi and pulled up a chair.

"Well, this thing gets more complicated by the hour."

"What does the kid want?"

"He came steaming in there, would not sit down, would not shake hands,
big chip on his shoulder."

"What does he want?" Malachi repeated.

"He came right out with it--he confirmed that the girl had called him in
Philadelphia, told him that she had been having an affair with the
principal, that she had shut it off, and how things had started getting
nasty.

She told him about your little seance, and that you threatened her. She
also told him she ran you out of there with a knife. Did that really
happen, by the way?"

The captain was looking at Malachi's right hand with its four bandaged
fingers. Malachi ignored the question and leaned toward the captain, his
eyes intent, staring at him until the captain was forced to stop looking
at his hand.

"Cut to the chase," Malachi said. "What does he want?"

"Want. Well, he wants ... satisfaction. Unless my principal can prove
that his sister's accident wasn't intentional, our lieutenant will go to
the media and expose the story of this very senior, married white naval
officer having an illicit affair with a black woman who also happened to
be a junior officer."

Malachi sat back in his chair. "And what did your principal say to
that?"

"He did the adulterer's dance. Denied everything.

Denied that there had been an affair. He said that he had met the girl
socially, in the course of official business, and had had drinks with
her twice, both times in the context of official functions where they
were both required to be. He made it out to be a father confessor sort
of thing, that he'd been giving the girl career advice.

Hinted that the girl had perhaps been indulging her imagination in
thinking that there was more to it than that. Said that the notion of it
being a sexual thing was ridiculous--he was more than twice her age, and
he certainly knew better than to fool around with a junior officer. He
added that she was a good-looking black woman who would necessarily
prefer any attractive black male to some elderly white man--that seemed
to hit home, by the way. It seemed to reinforce the kid's own notions of
how things ought to be--I could see it in his face. Anyhow, he went on
that he had never sent anyone around, because there was nothing going on
in the first place. Said the girl had sought his advice because she had
been having some problems adapting to a very white Navy headquarters
staff job and had taken the opportunity to talk to someone about it,
someone not directly in her own organization. He was good-- very good.

He's pretty smooth and convincing when he wants to be."

"That's probably what she thought at one time," Mal achi observed. "Just
before her Skivvies came off."

"Please. The girl's dead, for God's sake. Anyway, I actually think he
talked the young man down. He said he would use all the resources at his
command to confirm that it had been an accident."

"What'd the kid say to that?"

"He said that he'd give us--that's a good
sign, by the way: He was depersonalizing it at the end--he'd give us a
week. I had the impression that as my principal talked to him, the kid
was beginning to realize whom he'd been talking to in a loud and
disrespectful voice, and it was beginning to scare him a little. He's
only a lieutenant junior grade."

"Okay." Malachi nodded. "I have no further information on what the
Traffic Bureau is doing, if anything.

My guess is they're going to stick with the old 'do the right thing'
dodge. They'll issue a public statement: Whoever ran the girl down, turn
yourself in and we'll discuss degrees of accident. If we gotta come find
you, it becomes something ugly."

The captain was shaking his head in exasperation.

"That doesn't do us any good. I'm going to have to think of something
else."

"Can this kid find out what was really going on?"

"My principal says that he and Miss. Hardin were extremely discreet. But
as an active-duty officer, the lieutenant can, of course, get into the
Pentagon building and into the CHINFO offices. But unless she had some
close friends there in her own office whom he can get to, and they're
people she confided in, and if they're willing to talk to him--a lot of
ifs and ands. What I really wish is that the son of a bitch would just
disappear, go back to Philadelphia or wherever he came from, and butt
the hell out of something that doesn't really concern him."

Malachi nodded and smiled. "I guess I can relate to that," he said,
looking at his watch. He would definitely have to go see Angelo up in
Philly.

angelo fiori had gotten really fat. He was moon faced, triple-chinned,
and his suit made him look like a shiny dark blue sausage. Malachi
remembered that when he had first met Angelo in Saigon, he was already
tending to fat, beginning to pop out of his wrinkled sergeant's uniform
and always mopping perspiration in the punishing tropical heat. But now
he was a miniature Pillsbury Doughboy. Malachi tried not to stare as
they slid into a booth at Fiori's in South Philly, He felt the table
move in his direction as Angelo squeezed in, puffing with the effort.

Malachi had a headache after the flight up from Washington, and perhaps
from the night before.

"So, Angelo, you ever hear from any of the boys?" Malachi asked,
adjusting his dialect so as not to sound so much like Washington. He
wondered if they had Harper hundred here. Probably not; probably all
they had was god damned wine.

Angelo was scratching the back of his neck. "Nah.

One of my cousins, Salvatore, he's up in the Apple, but the rest of the
guys, most of 'em are all retired, down south somewheres. How about
you?"

"I see some guys from time to time in D.C. Gal lagher, Monroney,
Jackson--you remember, Jackson, that big guy, sergeant first class at
the truck depot, heisted all those deuce and a halfs, then lost all the
keys?"

"Who could forget. I thought goddamn Monroney was gonna kill him."

Malachi laughed. "He would have, too, 'cept Jackson got caught in a
curfew violation and was in the stockade out there at Tan Son Nhut when
Monroney came looking."

Angelo was toying with the bread sticks. "We did all right, those days.

I gotta tell ya, these days it's tougher, lots tougher."

"The feds getting organized?"

"Yeah, that, and these fuckin' kids nowadays; they got no sense of
organization, you know? It's all gangs this and gangs that, the blacks
going' totally crazy with all this disrespect warfare shit. You can't
make no fuckin' sense outta territories or nothin'. It's a pisser.

You wanna order? I'm starvin'."

Malachi nodded and Angelo signaled the maitre d', who came trotting
over, a waiter in tow. Stuffing a bread stick in his mouth, Angelo asked
Malachi what he wanted to eat. Malachi told him to order for both of
them, it being his joint. Angelo rattled away in Italian to the maitre
d' and the waiter, who listened without writing anything down. The
maitre d' nodded, left, then returned with an opened bottle of Chianti
and a bottle of cold mineral water before disappearing again. The
restaurant was crowded, but their booth gave them quite a bit of
privacy, which Malachi took to be a sign of Angelo's importance. In
Saigon, Angelo had been considered long on cunning, if a bit short on
brains.

One night, Angelo had been caught up in a bar fight in which a
Vietnamese woman had been knifed with what looked very much like an Army
knife. Malachi had taken the incident call, then had managed to drop
another knife at the scene, thereby clouding the evidence.

Monroney had then paid off some white mice, the national police, and the
issue had gone away, leaving Angelo firmly in Malachi's debt.

With the waiter gone, Angelo signaled with his eyebrows that he was
ready to listen. Malachi lowered his voice.

"So," he said, "there's this guy, a Navy guy, over in the shipyard. I
need him to get some religion. He's been messing around with a client of
mine down in D. C., and I need him to get the message that it's time to
butt out, get his nose out of other people's business."

"So what kinda guy is this? You said a Navy guy?"

"An officer--a black officer, a lieutenant junior grade. See, something
happened down in D. C., and this lieutenant, he's making noises like my
client had something to do with it. Which he didn't, okay? But this kid
doesn't listen to reason. Believe me, we've talked to him. But all he
comes back with are threats. So I was wondering if you had some guys
down in that shipyard could maybe go see him, scare the living shit out
of him, make him be quiet."

Angelo finished up the bread sticks without replying and poured himself
some wine. He tipped the bottle in Malachi's direction, but Malachi
shook his head. He hated wine. Angelo tried some wine, put the glass
down, and wiped his mouth with his napkin.

"Yeah, we got some people who can do that. We in a hurry, or what?"

"Yeah, a little bit of a hurry. This guy's talking about going to the
press, the little shit. So, this week, if it could be managed."

Angelo nodded solemnly. "In the shipyard, you say-- this a yardbird?"

Malachi sighed mentally. Angelo wasn't paying very good attention. "No.

A Navy guy. An officer--a young black lieutenant junior grade. He's
assigned to a ship over there, the USS Luce. He's the assistant supply
officer or something like that."

Angelo looked around the room casually and then nodded slowly. "Yeah, I
think that can be managed.

What's this all about, or do I wanna know?"

"I'm just taking care of a problem for a client. This client is an
important guy down in D. C., and this guy, this lieutenant, is putting
some heat on the client. Over the guy's love life, if you can believe
it."

"So what's the message, exactly?"

"Keep your nose out of your sister's affairs; who she's been seeing is
none of your business, and when you start talking about going to the
papers, you might be shortening your life expectancy. Something like
that."

Malachi declined to tell Angelo that the sister in question had just had
her own life expectancy shortened.

Angelo nodded again, drinking some more wine.

"And that's what you do nowadays, you take care a shit like this
for--whaddaya call 'em, clients? After all that money we made over there
in the Nam?"

"Yeah. It's not the money--like you said, we made plenty, and I've still
hung on to most of it. But yeah, ll that's what I do down there. I kind
of like D. C., you know? It's sleazy, but they're sleaze with class most
of the time. What I really like is when these picture-perfect Washington
weenies, these great men with their thousand-dollar suits and their
executive assistants and all that high-and-mighty shit, get their asses
in a crack and then have to come to guys like me to unscrew it.

And the money's pretty good besides. Anyway, this little deal--the
client himself doesn't exactly know how his problem is going to be taken
care of. And his people don't know about it, either."

"So, this ain't a contract deal--this is on your nickel?"

"Right. See, this lieutenant can maybe put me in the shit, too, he tries
hard enough to do my client. That's why I'm up here, on my own, so to
speak. This boy desperately needs to see the light."

Angelo, having finished off the bread sticks, was looking around the
table to see what else could be eaten. He poured some more wine. "Yeah,"

he said over his glass. "I got it. I think we can work something out.

We've definitely got some guys in the yard down there. We run some, you
know, low-level shit down there, materials mostly, and of course we got
the big unions, the metal benders, guys like that, and the scrap
haulers. The unions keep some animals around to keep everything
peaceful." He smiled for a moment at the image of peace on the labor
front. "Some a those guys in Washington, they're pieces a work, am I
right? I see those guys on the TV, those shiny shits, two-hundred dollar
hairdos, smooth as a baby's ass, and then you hear all this shit,
congressmen humping the page boys in the bathrooms, that big chairman of
some shit or other--guy's taking cash for stamps, for Chrissakes,
fucking stamps! These are the guys pass the laws, tell us regular
assholes how we're gonna live?"

"You don't know the half of it." Malachi snorted.

"That's just the shit that comes out in the papers. Guys like me, we
shovel a lot more than that down the sewer."

"Yeah, I can believe it. Look, there's something you gotta know here.

These things, these deals where we send somebody around to talk to a
guy, they can sometimes get outta hand, you know what I'm sayin'? Like,
if it's a guy in the business, he'll know when to take good advice. We
may still break his leg, but he knows as soon as he sees the guys what
it's all about, what can happen, and what everybody expects. But a
civilian ... well, shit, you don't never know what a civilian's gonna
do, right? So I gotta be up front with you. Sometimes what starts out as
a little talk can turn into a big deal, the guy don't act right, okay? I
gotta tell you that."

"I understand," Malachi said. "Believe me, I know
how that shit can go down."

"Okay, because I gotta tell you, up front like, so's we don't have no
surprises. You know, the kinds'a guys do this shit, we're not talkin'
math majors here, okay?"

"I understand," Malachi repeated. "And I guess if something was to
happen, then what I gotta have is that the problem, if there is a
problem, and I'm not saying there should be a problem, okay, but if
there is a problem, the problem's gotta totally goddamn disappear."

Angelo stared at him like a lizard for about ten seconds.

Malachi wondered for a moment if they were talking past each other.

"Look," he explained. "I really don't want the guy whacked; this isn't
like business between two families, where I need to reinforce some rules
or anything. I just want him so scared that he stops even thinking about
talking to anyone about what happened down in D. C., that's all. What I
think you're talking about is a contingency, covering the bases, like,
and I agree. But all I'm saying is that, if there's a real problem, I
can't have a goddamn stiff popping up in the Delaware."

"Contingency,"

Angelo said blankly.

"Yeah. I mean, this is just good planning. But mostly I want him
crapping a quart of loose prunes anytime the thought even occurs to him
to go running his mouth. That's what I really need. Look, I brought some
money--ten thousand."

"This is your money," Angelo said again, his
little eyes unblinking.

"Yeah. And I know what you're going to say--that you'll do it as a
favor, memory of old times and Saigon and everything. But I want you to
take it; that way, you can lay some cash out, make things go smooth,
especially since it's real short notice. It's the least I can do, okay?"

Angelo looked around the crowded dining room and then back at Malachi as
he tried unsuccessfully to erase the glint of greed in his eyes. "Well,
you're right," he said. "I would do it as a favor. We go back, you and
me.

You ran some slick shit in your day, and without your cover, our little
thing there in Saigon wouldn'ta been so good. And I still owe you big
time for that time in Cholon."

"Forget about it. We scratched each other's backs pretty good over
there. I don't remember any debts.

This is a favor, but the money ... well, that's just a little grease,
make things go smoother, you know?"

"Yeah, well, you know how to act. You always did."

Malachi handed over the envelope, keeping his hands below the level of
the table. "Saigon was such a sweet deal," he said. "Here. Take the
money. I appreciate the hell out of it, and you never know, some guy
might get a little sideways, want a bunch of money just to do his job.

This way--"

"Yeah. You're right about that. Some a these guys today ..." Angelo
rolled his piggy eyes.

"Right," Malachi said. "So, the mark's name is Har din, It. (jg) Wesley
Hardin, stationed on the USS Luce, which is a destroyer. I think it's a
destroyer going through overhaul. There's a description in the
envelope."

Angelo nodded thoughtfully, absorbing the information.

The envelope had magically disappeared into the folds of his voluminous
coat. "Hardin, yeah, okay, I got it. And he needs an attitude
adjustment. Maybe get snatched, get wrapped head to toe in duct tape,
maybe get folded into a dryer, down the laundromat, and go for a little
spin, something like that. Give him a little Halloween, coupla six
months early. I got some people who can do that. And you need it this
week."

"If you can, yeah, this week. I'm guessing it can't be that hard. I
mean, I've made some checks. He's living aboard the ship, probably has a
car he parks in the yard somewhere. I'll bet they have a parking lot for
officers, something like that. He's single, most likely goes out at
night and howls at the moon like we used to do when we were that age.

Maybe some guys could watch the parking lot at night, and--"

Malachi noticed that Angelo's body was jiggling like a plastic bag full
of Jell-O. Angelo was laughing at him.

"Pretty soon you gonna be telling me how to make good pasta, hey,
Malachi? You want this spade to turn white for a night, he's gonna do
it, okay?"

"Shit. Sorry, Angelo. Yeah, absolutely. He needs to forget all about
what he was doing in D.C. The whole thing's gotta disappear right out of
his mind. Poof. Like the magic dragon."

"Yeah. Hey, you remember those goddamn DC threes--what'd they call 'em?

Puff, yeah, Puff, the magic dragons. Like you just said. Had those GE
electric cannons, shoot a gazillion rounds out the door.

Looked like a horse pissin' fire down outta the sky at night, hose down
a whole province at a time. Remember those guns?"

"Hell yes. Vulcans, they called 'em. And I remember when you guys
boosted a shipment of those Vulcans down at the docks in Saigon."

"Yeah, and you had to come blow up the heist so's you could cool some
CID heat that was sniffin' around the HQ."

"I picked on that one because you guys--I think it was even Monroney,
said he couldn't figure out what to do with the guns after you heisted
them."

"Yeah, we knew we couldn't go sellin' that shit to the VC."

"Right. Couldn't have the bad guys using electric twenties to zap our
own guys. That wouldn't have been right."

"Absolutely."

They looked at each other for a second and then laughed as the waiter
showed up with their food.

Five days after Malachi got back from Philadelphia, Angelo called. It
was eleven o'clock at night, and Malachi was sitting in his kitchen,
abusing some Harper and watching a movie rerun. Angelo was apologetic.

"The deal went totally wrong, Malachi. Totally. Your guy went apeshit,
is what my people are telling me. Absolutely apeshit."

"I know what you mean," Malachi said, remembering the knife in the
apartment. "It must run in the goddamn family."

"What?"

"Nothing. So what happened?"

Angelo paused. It sounded to Malachi as if Angelo was eating something.

"Well, they snatched him up, just like you suggested.

At night, in that officer's parking lot there, near Dry Dock Five. Put
him in a van, sat him down between a coupla guys, work for a moving
company, you know?

They call 'em 'piano horses' in the business."

"Big guys."

"Yeah, really big guys. Anyways, they went some wheres and they did some
shit, and they had a little talk with your guy. Went back to the
shipyard, had another little talk, let him outta the van, back in the
parking lot, musta been around one in the morning, real private like.

Anyways, he wasn't doin' so good, is what my guys say. But he had a big
mouth on him, they said; took some time to get that big mouth under
control. So, anyways, he gets about fifty feet away from the van and
then starts yellin', says he knows who sent them, gonna get that
motherfuckin' somebody or other. Guys couldn't understand what he was
sayin'--you know how it is, those people get to screamin' like that."

"So what'd they do?"

"They did a French Connection scene. Right outta the movies. Took after
his ass with the van; guy ran around like a striped-assed ape, it's one
a them cinder lots, so there's gravel and shit flyin' and this guy's
runnin' in an' outta parked cars. Christ, I almost wish I'd been there,
you know? But then the fuckin' guy does something really stupid: He
picks up this fuckin' brick and throws it through the windshield of my
guy's van. My guy's brand-new van."

"Wonderful."

"Yeah, wonderful is right. My guy gets pissed off now. I mean, up to
here, it's been almost comical--it's one o'clock in the morning, they're
chasin' this spook around this five acre parking lot in a van, the piano
horses in the back of the van hangin' and bangin' around like a coupla
hippos in a bumper car. But now, he runs the guy to the dry-dock wall in
the van, jumps out, and, this guy, if you can fuckin' believe it--
Mickey's two fifty, two seventy-five, six three, awright?

--and this guy runs his mouth, calls him a honky motherfucker, the whole
bit. Unbelievable."

"I can believe it."

"Well, my guy grabs his ass and throws him up against the sill wall, and
suddenly the guy's out cold, bleedin' all over the god damned place, with
his head kinda like stove in a little bit. Like I told you, these things
can sometimes get outta hand, you know? You remember me tellin' you
that?"

"Yup."

"I mean, nobody went out there to whack nobody or anything. It was just
gonna be a little three-on-one social, and your guy up and goes
apeshit."

"I believe it. So what did they do?"

"Well, now, Malachi, is that something' you really wanna know? Because if
it is, I'll tell you. I mean, swear to God, it doesn't make a shit to
me. But you oughta think about it. You know, shit you don't know is shit
nobody can make you talk about, am I right?"

"Absolutely, Angelo. Forget I asked. I just hope that everything got put
away like the kingdom of heaven. As in forever and ever."

"Oh yeah. Forever and ever. Saecula, saeculorum, like when I was an
altar boy. I like that. But, yeah, absolutely.

Where the sun ain't never gonna shine. I mean, hell, he's a Navy guy.

Where he is now, he's gonna feel right at home."

"Well, okay. I guess that's that. Sounds like the problem is taken care
of."

"Absolutely. I mean, if I told you where they put him, you'd never
fuckin' believe it."

"I'd believe it."

"I feel like I oughta give you your money back," An gelo said.

Malachi smiled at the phone. Fat chance.

"Shit, no, Angelo," he said. "I wanted the kid to stop talking. Sounds
to me like he's stopped talking. There'll probably be some heat down
here from some guys, but as long as no bodies turn up, my problem and my
client's problems are over."

"Well, okay, then," Angelo said. "Just so's
you remember: I did tell you. Sometimes these things get a little fucked
up."

the very next morning, the captain summoned Malachi to an urgent one
o'clock meeting at a bar called the Black Crystal in the Crystal City
underground. The Black Crystal was a well-known watering hole for the
thousands of Navy types, military and civilian, who worked in the maze
of high-rise office buildings near the airport called Crystal City. It
had the advantage of offering very subdued lighting and private booths,
amenities much appreciated by anyone looking for a discreet meeting
place for business or pleasure, and especially pleasure. Malachi took
the Metro over to Virginia to the Crystal City station, walked up the
escalator, and turned left into the underground, which was a labyrinth
of shops, bars, service stores, parking garages, and restaurants that
spread underground from one end of Crystal City to the other.

He had to stand in the entrance foyer of the bar for a few minutes to
adapt his vision; must be ladies' day, he thought. It being one o'clock,
the bulk of the lunch crowd had gone back to their office cubicles or
over to the Sheraton. But with the black carpets and black painted
walls, he still could not see very well. He finally went to the bar,
turned around, scanned the darkened room until he found the captain in
an end booth. He walked over, slid into the booth, waved off a
miniskirted waitress, and looked over at the captain, who looked, as
usual, agitated.

"You called," Malachi said.

The captain gave him a speculative look. "Malachi," he began. "We've had
another development in the Har din business, and I'm beginning to think
that you've not been entirely honest with me."

"I'm as honest as my clients," Malachi replied. "No more, no less. What
happened? He do it? Your lieutenant go public on you?" The captain
continued to look at him. Malachi was surprised to see that he had a
martini going. At the Black Crystal, martinis were taken seriously.

Knowing what was coming, he suddenly wanted a Harper. But he didn't need
whiskey to handle this guy--especially if the captain needed a martini
to talk to him.

"The lieutenant," the captain said, sipping some of his drink and then
staring at Malachi again over the rim of the oversized glass. "The
lieutenant has disappeared.

Vanished into the pollluted air of South Philadelphia.

There's a message in from his ship."

"Vanished."

"Vanished. He's the ship's disbursing officer, so the first reaction has
been to count the payroll. But there was nothing out of order. He's just
... gone. The Navy has queried the immediate family, which apparently
now consists of only his mother; she knows nothing."

Malachi tried to ignore the cold feeling that was spreading around his
stomach, but he waited to see where the captain would take it. The
captain continued to just sit there, looking across the table at
Malachi, nursing his martini. Malachi knew this game. There were some
people who could not stand a break in a conversation--any prolonged
silence, pause, whatever, had to be filled. The captain was trying to
manipulate him into saying something. He waited. At length, the captain
gave it up and broke the silence.

"I need to know, Malachi. Did you have anything to do with this young
man's disappearance?"

"Nope."

"Anything? Even indirectly?"

"The last time I heard the lieutenant's name and the word disappear in
the same sentence, it was you doing the talking," Malachi said. "Maybe I
should ask you: What have you done?" The captain's face hardened. "Yes,"

he said, "I did say that. He was being a pain in the ass over something
that did not concern him. He was capable of causing some real trouble,
depending on who was ready to listen.

But we were working on that. We had some pretty good damage control
lined up. Now he's over the hill without a trace."

" 'Was being a pain in the ass'? 'Was capable of causing'?

You're talking about the lieutenant in the past tense, Captain. There
something you know that I don't?"

The captain leaned back in the booth. "Making people change their minds,
influencing the directions they're taking, helping them to reconsider
their positions --that's your game, Malachi. We, people like my
principal and I, we have the need for such services sometimes, but you,
you have the means to get them done. We have political agendas, career
objectives, turf to protect, privileges to protect, reputations to
polish.

You have big hands for hire. I'm thinking if anyone could make the
lieutenant disappear, you could. You even have something of a motive."

Malachi was suddenly tired of all the dancing around.

He needed to calibrate this horse-holder. He leaned forward, put those
big hands on the table, let the captain see those big hands, and put an
edge in his voice.

"Seems to me, Captain," he said, "that I was paid by you and your
principal to indulge in some less-than legal coercion and intimidation.

Paid. And it was not for the first time that I did some dirty work for
you. I know what the lieutenant only suspected, remember? I know

nothing about your lieutenant's disappearance, but if I did, if I did,
I'd be recommending that you stop asking questions if you can't stand
all the possible answers, understand?

It seems to me that your principal's problems with the Hardins are
really over now. He should be forever grateful to you, and you to me."

The captain was shaking his head. "I was willing to give you the benefit
of the "doubt when the girl had her 'accident.' My principal made no
connection, but he was upset, visibly upset, when I told him what had
happened.

But now he's concerned on a different level. The girl has a fatal
accident. Her brother comes around making accusations, and before we can
deal with it, and I mean deal with it on a civilized level, he
disappears.

My principal is not stupid."

"He was when it came to pretty young girls. I think your principal is
mostly frightened." The captain said nothing for a moment. Malachi moved
to shut it off. He was glad Angelo had called him.

"Here's the thing," Malachi said, leaning closer. "I know some things
that could spoil your principal's whole day, yours, too, you want to get
right down to it.

But I've taken money to work out some of those things, which means if
you go down, I could go down. I've got something on you; you've got
something on me. In certain circles, that's known as a 'lock,' and locks
are not all bad, see, because when there's a lock, there's no incentive
for either side to run his mouth."

"That sounds like a threat."

"Wrong. That's a statement of fact. And there's some implicit advice in
there, too."

"Advice."

"Yes, advice. Let me close with a little parable. It's set during
Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, you know, dead of the Russian winter,
cold as hell, snow and ice everywhere. This French corporal finds a
little bird freezing to death in a snow-bank alongside the road.

Stop me if you've heard this."

The captain just blinked. Malachi smiled, enjoying
himself now. What the hell, the lieutenant was history; the problem
really was over.

"This corporal finds this frozen little bird by the side of the road;
thing's half-dead. But a big old ox comes by, dragging a cannon, and
drops a big, fresh, steaming flop in the road. The corporal stuffs the
bird in that hot cowpat, right up to his neck, to revive it. The bird
soaks up the heat from the cowpat and it's so happy, it begins to sing.

A big bad wolf out in the woods hears the singing, comes looking, finds
the bird, and eats it. Now here's the moral--you listening to me? You
need to tell this story to the great man. He needs to know this. Because
it's not necessarily the bad guy who puts you in the shit, and it's not
necessarily the good guy who gets you out, but whenever you're in the
shit up to your neck, Captain, don't cheep."

april 1994

THE PHILADELPHIA NAVAL SHIPYARD

they made it into the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard by ten that Tuesday
morning and drove directly to the NISRA office on Broad Street. One of
the desk officers gave them a copy of the preliminary report, then told
them that base security was waiting to take them down to the waterfront
to the crime scene. He then handed them each a pair of yard coveralls
and showed them where the rest rooms were. They took a minute to skim
through the report, then went to change. Ten minutes later, leaving
their bags and street clothes in the Resident Agent's office, they went
out front, where a Sergeant Degiorgio of the shipyard police department
picked them up in an ancient white Navy police car for the drive through
the controlled industrial area. Degiorgio was a pleasant individual
whose overstuffed blue uniform bespoke a fondness for the excellent
Italian restaurants outside the yard's main gates in South Philadelphia.

He amiably pointed out the various yard shops--boilers, electrical, hull
mechanical, propellers, the foundry, combat systems--as he threaded the
cop car between the huge industrial buildings, avoiding rumbling yard
cranes, smoke-belching yellow forklifts, clumps of shuffling hard hats
carrying tool bags and lunch pails, and stacks of palletized materials
that littered the sides of every street.

Dan sat on the right-hand side of the backseat, the customary position
of an officer in an official car. Grace Snow sat on the right side of
the front seat, a white plastic hard hat bobbing incongruously on her
head.

She held on to the armrest as the cop car bounced and bumped over
cobblestones, potholes, and crane tracks.

Their coveralls smelled in equal proportions of old grease and a very
strong detergent. The grimy brick and stone buildings with their
dirt-encrusted glass windows ranged along their upper walls made for a
depressing sight, reminding Dan that the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard was
over a hundred years old, accounting for its haphazard layout along the
banks of the Delaware River. As a surface line officer, he also knew its
reputation as one of the sloppiest yards on the East Coast--an
installation where indifferent work and costly, impacted unions had
prompted repeated, if futile, attempts by the Navy Department to shut it
down.

"There," Sergeant Degiorgio said, pointing through the dirty windshield.

"That there's the Wisconsin. Ain't she something?"

Both Dan and Grace leaned forward as the car cleared the last of the big
dry-dock sill walls and pointed down a long, flat pier that lay parallel
to the river, where the dull gray bulk of the sleeping battleship filled
the horizon. Across the river, the flares from two oil refineries seemed
to frame the majestic silhouette of the sixty-thousand-ton ship, her
sixteen-inch guns pointed flat along her teak-covered decks, her almost
nine-hundred-foot-long hull rising in a graceful sheer of armored steel
from waist to stem. As they drew nearer, however, they could see the
hallmarks of the mothball fleet: gray paint that was fading and
flecking, with several vertical lines of running rust smeared down her
sides. The enormous white bow numerals proclaiming battleship number 64
had begun to fade into the background of the surrounding hull paint. The
five-inch mounts ranged along her port side were covered in blister
canopies, and the windows of the captain's and flag bridges were boarded
over with sheets of plywood. The lifelines sagged along her decks and
the signs of a flourishing pigeon colony desecrated, the looming
director towers. A large umbilical bundle of cables and steam lines rose
from the pier amidships to the main deck, where there was a wooden guard
shack mounted at the top of the cage-covered gangway. Dan could see that
there was a small clump of men standing at the top of the gangway, four
of whom were dressed out in coveralls and wearing yellow-colored plastic
hard hats. Several of the men were wearing what appeared to be a
harness rig that supported a single yellow air tank of a
breathing-apparatus set. There were two other shipyard security police
cars and an ambulance parked at the foot of the gangway.

As their car pulled up, Dan thanked Degiorgio and reached for his own
hard hat. They got out and Dan led Grace up to the gangway. She tried to
stuff her hair underneath the hard hat with minimal success as they
climbed the gangway up the sheer slab sides of the battleship.

At the top of the gangway, they were met by the ship's superintendent
for USS Wisconsin, Lieutenant Graveley, Civil Engineering Corps, USN,
and the Philadelphia Naval Investigative Service resident agent, who
introduced himself as a Mr. Carl Santini. Santini greeted Dan in a civil
manner but appeared to be somewhat less pleased to see Grace Snow.

Dan found out that the four yellow hats were riggers who would escort
them to the fire room in which the body had been discovered. The ship's
superintendent, who was also dressed out in a breathing rig and
coveralls, handed both of them a harness and a breathing apparatus set.

Dan saw that the riggers were ogling Grace; the coveralls, unlike her
fashionable business suits, revealed that she was definitely a woman.

"Why do we need these?" asked Grace as Lieutenant Graveley showed her
how to put on the harness.

"The ship has been deactivated for quite a while," Gravely said, as if
this explained everything. Seeing Grace's blank expression, Dan cleared
it up for her.

"When they long-term mothball a big ship like this, they seal her up
hermetically below the main deck.

Then they evacuate all the air and replace the atmosphere in the
interior compartments with nitrogen. The nitrogen displaces all the
oxygen, and without oxygen, nothing rusts. There's no breathable air
anywhere inside there."

"Oh my goodness. Then how did the body get down there?"

"That's the main reason we're calling it a homicide," said Santini with
an air of exaggerated patience. He was a middle-aged man with a
completely bald head, and he was talking to Grace like an uncle who was
less than thrilled that the nephews and nieces were here for the summer.

"Somebody had to take him there, or at least put him in there. There's
no sign of a mask on the body."

"Somebody wearing breathing equipment."

"Absolutely. If the dead guy was alive, say, maybe unconscious, when
they took him in there, he would have been dead by the time they got to
the fire room."

Grace looked at Dan. Pretty clearly a homicide, she thought.

"If we're ready to go in, I need to give you a quick safety briefing,"

Lieutenant Gravely said. He checked both of their harness rigs, blushing
a little when he had to explain to Grace that those last two straps went
between the legs. He then helped them hook on their air bottles and
explained the mechanics of the masks and the lights that strapped onto
their hard hats. He had them size their mask straps, then reviewed the
main safety rules.

"I've got to emphasize there's no air down there-- only nitrogen. That
tank you're wearing is good for an hour of walking-around activity; we
use forty-five minutes as a safe stay time, and that's what I'm going to
set your timers for. The more strenuous the activity, the less time.

We're going to walk into the ship, go down a couple of decks to
Broadway, from which access to the fire rooms and engine rooms can be
gained. We've had a set of temporary lights rigged along the route, but
there's still not much lighting, so watch your step and watch your shins
on the bulkhead dividers. There's a box of flashlights over there and
everybody will carry one, and your hard hats have headlights, of
course."

"What if we need more than forty-five minutes at the scene?" asked Dan.

Santini, standing behind him, rolled his eyes as if to say, What for?

"Well, sir," Graveley replied, "we all come back out, change out air
bottles, and go back in."

"We've done the crime-scene work," said Santini impatiently. "This is
mostly for your benefit--to see the body in situ before we remove it for
autopsy."

Dan got the message: This is a drill, for the benefit of the amateurs;
the actual cops have already done the real work. But he kept his
patience.

"I understand that, Mr. Santini. But we do have to go down there and see
what we see."

Santini shrugged his shoulders and began attaching his mask to his face.

The others followed suit, and once the lieutenant had checked their air
systems, they entered the air lock mounted to the athwartship passageway
hatch and went inside. Dan found that the atmosphere against his neck
and hands was cold and palpably dry, and that the lieutenant had
understated the lighting problem. Rigged to the overhead cableways was a
thick industrial extension cord with a single caged bulb mounted every
twenty feet. Through the slightly fogged and scratched visor of his
breathing mask, the passageway looked like a steel mine-shaft tunnel
with dull green sides. All of the bulkhead-mounted fittings-- electrical
junction boxes, hose reels, hatches and doors, ventilation diffusers,
and fluorescent light fixtures-- were in shadow, and his eyesight was
further restricted by the limited peripheral vision caused by the mask.

The probing white light from their helmets briefly illuminated brass
fittings, the asphalt tiles on the deck, the dull gray cabling running
along the overhead, and the brass ladder rails of the first main
passageway ladder going down to the second deck.

They went down the double-wide ladder to the second deck. They passed
through what appeared to be a berthing area, and Dan tried to imagine
what it had been like when the ship was alive with its crew of over a
thousand men. Now it was like being inside a pharaoh's tomb--literally,
considering what they were going to see. They proceeded aft for about a
hundred feet, and then turned right into a vestibule to go down through
a second hatchway, ducking their heads and using their hands to deflect
the hanging lightbulbs. Dan was reminded that they were in a battleship
when he noticed that the deck through which this ladder descended was
several inches thick. He shined his light on the hatch, which was held
back by glistening hydraulic arms; five inches thick itself, it must
have weighed a couple of tons. At the bottom of this ladder, they
entered a longer and much narrower passageway, which was even darker
than the one above. This passageway appeared to have a series of
watertight hatches running down either side, each leading to one of the
main propulsion machinery compartments arrayed in a line down the ship's
center line--hence its name, Gasoline Alley. This deck was lined with
stainless-steel plates that had a raised herringbone pattern. Each of
the side hatches was less than man-high and was surrounded by a battery
of remote operating steam-valve wheels, emergency fuel shutoff handles,
and emergency communications ports.

Dan tried to remember the layout diagram he had seen that morning at the
NIS office: The battleship had eight main machinery spaces, laid out in
a boiler room/ engine room, boiler room/engine room configuration,
aligned along the centerline, with Gasoline Alley running longitudinally
down the centerline, on top of the machinery spaces. In addition to the
four boiler rooms, the ship had four main steam turbines, one per engine
room, which together were capable of driving the armored behemoth at
nearly thirty-eight miles per hour.

The body had been found in number-one fire room, in the steam drum of
the port-side boiler.

The lieutenant led them to the hatch leading into number-one fire room;
it was marked by a cluster of lights suspended from the overhead around
the hatch and, incongruously, considering the nitrogen atmosphere, by
some yellow crime-scene tape. The hatch itself was open, and its six
dogging handles were wrapped in what looked like clear plastic wrap.

Lieutenant Gravely led the way through the hatch, stepping up over the
knee-high hatch coaming and onto a steel platform just inside the fire
room. He pointed down a steep ladder with his flashlight, then
descended, followed by the others. The ladder rails, like the dogging
handles, were also wrapped in plastic. At the bottom of the ladder, Dan
found himself standing on deck grating between the two steam boilers,
which stood side by side like two stainless-steel buildings. He was
actually on the upper level of the fire room, standing one level above
what was called the "firing alley." The steel gratings were closely
spaced but allowed a clear view of the boiler-front area beneath them.

There were six caged bulbs on a temporary string suspended between the
boiler fronts. The steam drum on the port-side boiler was open, and a
single portable floodlight was positioned to shine into the opening of
the steam drum.

The steam drum was a heavy steel cylinder at the top of the boiler; it
looked to be about twelve feet long and about three feet in diameter.

Access to the internals of the steam drum was through an oval manhole,
whose cover and hold-down bolts had been removed and were lying on the
deck gratings in front of the boiler. The lieutenant pointed soundlessly
to the steam drum's opening and stepped back. The riggers stayed
together over by the ladder leading up out of the space.

Dan and Grace approached the manhole and peered in, bumping their
facemasks against the cold steel. The body was lying on its back, left
hand at its side, right hand raised slightly, the head thrown back at an
odd angle, feet toward the aperture of the manhole. It was dressed in
what looked to Dan like Navy working khakis, and the single silver bar
of a lieutenant junior grade glinted in the white spotlight. Dan could
not see the entire face, but from what he could see of the neck and
arms, the body had apparently mummified in the cold, dry, anaerobic
atmosphere within the ship. The chest had lost definition, and the
entire body seemed to have shrunk and flattened. The hands were
clawlike, with dark, dry skin pulled over the bones like parchment.

One of the body's shoes had a hole in the sole. Lumpy bags of desiccant
powder surrounded the body like cement pillows. Dan backed away so that
Grace could get a better look, and she put the one arm with her
flashlight and then her whole head into the steam drum.

Dan found another ladder and went down one level to the lower level and
looked around the boiler-front area. The fuel-oil valves, burner
assemblies, and even the deck plates glinted in the light reflected from
above.

He touched a burner assembly and found it smooth, cold, and slightly
oily. Perfectly preserved, like that guy in there. A black man, the NIS
preliminary report had said. Age about twenty-something. A lieutenant
junior grade. No identification in pockets, no rings, no watch, no
wallet. Fingerprints taken but distorted. No signs of injury visible
from the manhole, but an autopsy would tell the tale.

He looked around. The fire room looked like all naval boiler rooms: a
maze of steam piping in the shadows of the overhead and suspended under
the upper-level gratings; the silent, yawning maws of ventilation ducts
pointed into the firing alley; two double-walled, two storied,
stainless-steel boilers sitting side by side. He recognized the M-type,
recalling the design from engineering school, with separately fired
superheaters producing 600 psi main steam. The burner assemblies for the
four registers on the saturated side and the three on the superheated
side stood in shining ranks on stands in front of each boiler, clean,
lightly oiled, ready to go.

The burner registers--large round holes with teethlike vanes fanned
around their circumference to swirl the incoming combustion air with the
fuel--were equally clean and shipshape. The face of the boiler-control
console at one end of the firing alley gleamed in highlights of brass
and stainless steel, its instruments airtight and all pointing to the
far left. Mounted high on steel stanchions were the primary boiler
gauges--main steam, auxiliary steam, fuel-oil pressure, feed-water
pressure.

He checked the expiration dates on the gauge-calibration stickers:
December 1991; Wisconsin had been decommissioned in September 1991,
after Desert Storm.

He admired the cleanliness and order, the solid paint, the absence of
rust and dirt, the clean and oil free lagging on the pumps and
forced-draft blower turbines, and especially the little green notebooks
hanging off the individual pieces of machinery, filled with notations as
to each machine's quirks. Her engineers had laid her up properly, almost
lovingly. One final ladder led below the lower-level deck plates, and
there, in the bilge in front of IB boiler, was the burst bag of
desiccant powder that had attracted the sounding-andsecurity watch's
attention in the first place. A bag moved out of the steam drum to make
room for the body?

How long had this guy been in there? Two years or so?

At least--long enough to have mummified. Or had the ship's atmosphere
not yet been evacuated when he was locked up in the steam drum? They
would have to check the time sequence. He shuddered at the thought of
waking up inside the internals of a ship's boiler, encased in a
soundproof two-inch-thick steel cylinder in absolute darkness. If this
guy had been a surface-ship guy, he would have probably figured out
where he was ... He climbed back up to the upper level just as Grace was
withdrawing her masked face gingerly from the steam drum. Lieutenant
Gravely was giving him a

"Well?" sign with his hands. He then pointed to
his watch and indicated they had about fifteen minutes.

Santini was standing over to one side, arms folded, his body language
expressing total boredom. The other shipyard workers were sitting on the
upper-level railings, waiting, something they seemed to know how to do.

Dan looked over at Grace, who indicated she wanted five more minutes to
look around. He pointed down and then led her to the desiccant bag on
the lower level, which she acknowledged with a nod of her head. She
pointed back up, then led Dan back up the ladder to the upper level and
over to the hatch that gave access to the fire room. She shined her
light all around the hatch coaming. Dan did, too, but did not know what
she was looking for. The lieutenant came over and pointed again to his
watch, and Dan nodded.

They filed out of the fire room, with Santini coming out last, pulling
down the hatch dogs to seal the space.

They retraced their steps up through the silent passageways to the air
lock on the main deck. Once the group exited the air lock on the main
deck and removed their masks, Santini took charge.

"If that's all the sight-seeing you plan to do, Commander, I'm ready to
take a medical team down there to extract the body and wrap up the crime
scene. I've made arrangements with the Philadelphia Police Department's
medical examiner to get an autopsy done."

" 'Sight-seeing,' Mr. Santini?" Dan was rubbing his face where the hard
rubber of the mask had left its mark. He put an edge in his voice.

"Well, I--"

Grace Snow spoke up. "Mr. Santini," she said.

"Commander Collins is in charge of this investigation.

If you have a problem with that, I can make a quick call and probably
get someone from headquarters up here who will be more accommodating."

Santini stared at her with all the hostility field-office people reserve
for interfering Washington headquarters types, but then the Italian in
him took over, and he threw up his hands.

"Okay, Okay, Ms. Snow, whatever you say. We've had enough parades
through this scene--one more or a hundred more won't make a shit, I
guess. So, Commander, what do you want us to do?"

"I want you to complete your examination of the area around number-one
fire room, upper level, and then remove the body for autopsy. You keep
calling it a crime scene. But I have to wonder if the murder, if that's
what we have here, took place in or near the boiler. This whole thing
looks like an effort to put a body where it would almost never be found.

But I assume you're looking for forensic evidence that might identify
who put that guy in there, right? Like maybe fingerprints on that bag of
desiccant on the lower level?"

Santini gave Dan a patronizing look. "Yes, sir, something like that. And
perhaps a few more sophisticated traces of evidence here and there."

"Which are described in your preliminary report?"

"Well ... we're getting to that."

Dan began to fold up the harness on his breathing set. "No doubt, Mr.

Santini. The sounding-and-security inspectors come through, what,
monthly?"

"Supposed to be monthly. But Shop Seventy-two says it works
out to be about every other month, the time they get around to it.

They've got the flooding alarms to warn them if anything big gets
going."

"So any residual dirt from shoes on the deck plates, or ladder
backs--that could be from the watch making his rounds, right? For maybe
as long as two years?"

Santini nodded again. "Absolutely. Anybody."

Dan looked at Grace Snow. "So," he said, "the best we're probably going
to get from Forensics is who this guy is, or was, and how long he's been
dead and down in the nitrogen."

"And how he died," interjected Grace, unstrapping her breathing-rig
harness.

"Right. And how he died. Okay. Have the body removed.

I'll need to see a shipyard functional organization chart--which shops
do what--and get a tally of everybody involved in the baby-sitting of a
sleeping battleship."

He looked at his watch: 12:30 p.m. "That O-club still open?" he asked.

Santini said yes, and Dan signaled Grace to come along. They went back
down the gangway as the ambulance team came up, unfolding the straps of
a Stokes litter. Santini changed his air bottle, as did the riggers, in
preparation for going back in. Sergeant Degiorgio was dozing in the car,
but he woke up quickly enough and ran them over to the NIS offices to
change back into their respective uniforms: blues for Dan and a business
suit for Grace Snow. Fifteen minutes later, they walked into the dining
room of the officers' club.

By the time they were seated, the noon-hour rush had wound down. Dan
ordered a beer and a Reuben; Grace had iced tea and a salad. To Dan's
surprise, the food arrived very quickly. The Reuben was enormous. Her
salad looked like it had been lightly microwaved.

"Eating trim," Dan observed.

Grace eyed the beer and the large sandwich. "How do you manage it?" she
asked.

"I'm a rower, remember? I go out for an hour and a half every afternoon
on the Potomac and work it off. I usually have a doughnut and coffee for
breakfast most days, and a steak and salad at night. But I'm fortunate,
I guess--this stuff doesn't stick."

"You are very fortunate. I'm gaining weight just looking at it."

"Not visibly."

Grace raised her eyebrows at him as if to say, Let's not go down that
road, shall we? Dan put up his hands in mock surrender.

"I guess that wasn't very politically correct of me," he said. "But it
was meant as a compliment."

"Thank you. But I think you and I are going to have to keep our
relations on a strictly business footing. Remember, we're not exactly
allies in this little venture."

Dan worked on his sandwich while he thought about that.

"Well," he said finally, "superficially, I agree about the allies bit,
at least in terms of what our respective masters are up to. But, as we
discussed, that game is beyond your pay grade and mine, I think. However
the bureaucratic rice bowls make out, I do think we're supposed to find
out what happened here."

"I agree. But if I were a man instead of being a woman, you would not be
complimenting my figure."

"Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, but I'm not yet able to treat a woman like a
man."

"You don't have to. But I think we'll get this thing done better and
quicker if we keep it impersonal. Now, what's next?"

Dan finished his sandwich and sipped his beer. He noticed that Grace was
toying manfully with her salad.

Womanfully? He smiled.

"What?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Something my irreverent half thought of," he said.

"So, what's next? We work on identifying this guy, I guess. The autopsy
will reveal how he died. If he's been in that ship for a while, there
should be a missing persons report in the system somewhere.

He's a lieutenant junior grade in working uniform, which would indicate
to me that whatever happened to him happened here in the shipyard."

"Go on."

"Well, if he simply disappeared, the Navy will have a UA report on him."

"UA?"

"Unauthorized absentee. AWOL. He had to have belonged to a command,
either here in the yard or maybe on a ship undergoing overhaul. The
command would have had to file a report when the guy vanished."

"Is UA the same as missing persons?"

"Well, not exactly. UA infers that the guy went over the hill, on his
own steam. Missing persons--well, that means he went missing and that
the command doesn't think it was of his own volition. An officer going
UA is pretty rare, actually."

Grace sat back and pushed away the limp salad.

"What I'm getting at is, if he was reported as a missing person, the NIS
would have a file: the Bureau of Naval Personnel always cuts NIS in when
there's a missing person."

Dan nodded thoughtfully. "So we can start right here, then. I assume the
Philly field office can access your central data banks in D. C.?"

She smiled, and he suddenly realized that she could be really attractive
whenever she shed that deadly serious expression.

"Don't assume, Commander Collins. Actually, it works the other way. The
Washington headquarters can access the field office's computers. But
Santini can give us a look. Although it may be archived."

"Okay, you run that trap, and I'll get on the horn to Bupers and see
what we come up with regarding officers going astray in beautiful
downtown Filthadelphia.

Santini said we could have a desk and a phone."

that afternoon, ensconced in a temporarily empty cubicle of the NIS
office, Dan consulted Santini's DOD phone book and called the Navy's
Bureau of Naval Personnel in Washington. He reached the main operator

and asked for the shop that handled long-term unauthorized absentees and
deserters. A Master Chief Gonzalez answered the phone.

"Master Chief, this is Commander Dan Collins calling.

I'm assigned to OP-Six-fourteen over in Opnav and I'm on TAD doing a
JAGMAN investigation up here in the Philly shipyard. I've got a question
for you."

"Shoot, Commander."

"Right. I want to know if you have any record of a lieutenant junior
grade going UA up here in the yards anytime in the past two, three
years."

"You gotta be shitting me, Commander."

"Yeah, I know. That's sorta broad--"

" 'Sorta broad'?" said the master
chief. "Do you know how many officers and enlisted we have in the Navy
today? Like right now?"

"Nope."

"Nor do we."

"Say what?"

"You heard me, Commander. We couldn't begin to tell you. And that's
because of a thing we call the "float": transients, the sick, UA and
deserters, and prisoners.

We can tell you what the average float is on any given day--say, roughly
speaking, around two thousand personnel, give or take a couple hundred.

But that's as close as we can get. And you wanta find one guy?"

Dan changed the phone from his right ear to his left.

"Not exactly, master chief. We've found the guy. We're trying to find
out who he is--or was. See, he's dead.

And it looks like a homicide."

"Whoa. Hang on a minute while I get a pen. Okay, where'd you say you
worked, Commander?"

"Yeah, I know, it's complicated," Dan said, noting that Santini appeared
to be eavesdropping from his office on the other side of the room. Grace
was at another empty desk, on the phone with NIS in Washington. "But NIS
is in it, too. I'm actually calling from the NIS office in Philly."

"How's about I call you back, Commander."

"Yeah, sure, Master Chief. You want the number?"

"I'll get it. I'll be right back to you."

Dan hung up and waited. The master chief was no dummy--anybody could
call into Bupers and ask a question. He went to get a cup of coffee, and
he heard the phone ring in the secretary's cubicle.

"Yeah," she said through a wad of chewing gum.

"He's here."

Dan picked the phone back up. "Master Chief."

"Right. Okay, Commander. Just playing safe, you know. These days--"

"Right, Master Chief. So the guy I'm trying to ID is a lieutenant junior
grade. And he's black. And that's all I got until we get the results of
an autopsy."

"In the Philly shityard, hunh? Okay, lemme hit the cornpopewter and see
who we got on the run in Philly.

I've got your number."

"Thanks, Master Chief."

Dan hung up at the same time Grace did.

"Any luck in D. C.?" he asked.

"Not yet. I've asked the question, but now I'm in the queue for an
answer. Nobody works in real time in NIS."

"Man, ain't that the truth," volunteered Santini, now standing in his
office doorway. "I'm surprised they gave you the time of day."

"I knew whom to call," smiled Grace.

"Wish I knew who the hell to call. I've got RFIs been down there for six
weeks, some of them."

"RFI?" asked Dan.

"Requests for information. Like I said, NIS is not a real-time data
bank. It's not like the FBI's NCIC. Those guys can come back in fifteen
minutes for an office request, and within two for a cop calling from his
car.

That's an amazing system."

"Can't NIS just copy it? Or join it?"

Grace rubbed her thumb and forefinger together.

"Money. Opnav submits our budget, and Opnav does not love us just now."

Dan sat back in his chair and nodded, then sat back up.

"Oh shit!" he exclaimed.

"What?"

"Where's that ambulance? You suppose they've left the shipyard yet?"

Santini looked at his watch. "Nah. I just got back myself.

They're probably still strapping the body in on the pier. Why?"

Dan called out to the secretary. "Miss.? Can you get the base cops'
dispatcher on the horn? I want to know if they're still down on the
pier. And if they are, I need them to do something."

Grace cocked her head to one side and looked at him. "Are you going to
cut the rest of us in here?"

Dan put up his hand. The secretary had patched back the police
dispatcher, who had one of the cop cars down at the battleship pier on
the radio.

"Yeah, look, this is Commander Collins. I was down there earlier, with
the NIS guys, looking at that body in the ship. Has the ambulance left
yet?"

The dispatcher gave him a wait, then replied that the body was wrapped
for transport and the guys were closing up the meat wagon. Santini was
staring hard at him, obviously wondering what new interference the
amateur was going to cause.

"Okay," Dan said. "Ask one of the ambulance attendants to open the bag
and look at something for me."

The dispatcher consulted with the car on the scene and then came back.

"The NIS guy on the pier says those guys can't open the bag once it's
sealed. Chain of evidence."

"All right. Hang on. Mr. Santini, I need you to tell your guy on the
pier that it's okay to open the bag. I want them to look at something."

"Well, Commander, we did a prelim search of that body, best we could in
that steam drum and everything, and there was no--"

"Yeah, sure. But the dead guy's in uniform. Navy working uniform. If he
was ship's company, his name should be stenciled on the shirt collar and
the waistband of his trousers--for the ship's laundry."

Santini's face began to turn red. "Shit. Gimme that goddamn phone," he
said. Grace Snow busied herself with her notebook, taking care not to
look at anyone in particular.

Five minutes later, they had it. According to his shirt collar, the dead
officer was It. (jg) W. Hardin, and the insignia on his left collar
indicated he was Supply Corps, USN. Dan called back to Bupers and talked
to the master chief. The Bupers computer was down at the moment, but
with the name and designator, the master chief promised a quick
confirmation. Dan hung up.

"Okay," he announced. "Assuming this guy didn't borrow someone's
uniform, now we have a name.

Bupers will be back with a ship or station once their computer is back
up. Mr. Santini, you sure your local files won't have anything on this
guy?"

"With a name, yeah, we can maybe get a hit in the archives. Look,
Commander, about the ID--"

Dan waved him off. "Forget it, Mr. Santini. I should have thought of it
when I saw that the body was in a uniform. That's not something a
civilian does, stencil his clothes."

"Yeah, well, okay, then. I was just, uh, kinda we-- concerned that we'd
get a ration of shit from headquarters for not making the ID right
away." He looked pointedly over at Grace Snow.

Dan nodded his head. "So in other words," he said, "I put in my report
that an identification was made from the dead man's uniform, full stop.

Not how and by whom. Or when."

Santini pursed his lips and nodded slowly. Two other NIS men in the
office were listening while pretending to work.

"Yeah," Santini said. "Something like that. It would be appreciated."

"You got it. Now, assuming we get the command's name, we'll get closer
to a date of the incident. We all agree, I think, that it's been awhile.

And the forensic lab downtown will give us cause of death. After that--"

"After that, we'll probably not know very much," said Grace, leaning
forward in her chair. "I mean motive or any other explanation for what
happened to him."

"Don't be thinking we'll see the autopsy results in just a day or
so--the city morgue is a busy place," said Santini.

Dan closed his notebook. "Even so, I think we'll have to wait for that
autopsy before doing much more here --unless we can talk to some people
in his previous command. But that's going to be tough--ships, assuming
he was in a ship, have a turnover rate of nearly fifty percent a year.

If it's been awhile, we're not likely to find many people who knew this
guy or what he might have been mixed up in that got him killed. And the
ship could be anywhere in the world. Motive will be real tough."

"Hey, Commander," Santini interjected, "this is South Philly you're
talkin' about here; there's a gazil lion things can get you whacked down
here."

"Yeah, but in a shipyard?"

"Two gazillion," offered one of the other detectives.

"We don't know this happened in the shipyard," said Grace. "He could
have been simply stashed in the shipyard."

Dan shook his head. "You're right. What we know is that we don't know
anything."

Santini laughed. "Now you're starting to think like a cop," he said.

"We know that officer is dead and that someone probably killed him and
put him in that boiler," Grace said. The laughter stopped.

santini had booked them two rooms at the Naval Station Philadelphia
Bachelor Officers' Quarters, which was a run-down three-story World War
II tempo building adjacent to the officers' club. The BOQ had been
refurbished several times since its construction in 1942, but nothing
could disguise its age and general decrepitude.

The building was heated sporadically by clanking steam radiators, and
the aging, lead-based paint was peeling in the hallways. The third floor
was blocked off, its rooms having been deemed too far gone to be worth
refurbishment. The rooms themselves were devoid of any decoration, with
mottled ceramic washbasins sticking out of the wall, and a commode and
shower crammed into what had once been a closet. Individual air
conditioners in each room blocked most of the sunlight, and the
industrial grime on the windows blocked the rest.

Dan had apologized to Grace when he realized where they would be
staying. But the alternatives were few: Either stay in the BOQ, on the
base, where they could walk to the NIS office, or stay in an uptown
hotel and face Philadelphia's exciting metropolitan commute across South
Philly twice a day. Grace had taken it in good stride.

"I've always wanted to see how the brass lived," she remarked with a
perfectly straight face.

They agreed to meet at the officers' club at 6:30 p.m. for a drink, and
then they would figure out what to do about dinner. They would have to
leave the base, as the O-club's dining room was open only at lunchtime.

Dan was waiting for her in the side entrance to the club when she came
out of the BOQ. He observed again that she would have been smashing if
she would lighten up a little. But once again, she was wearing a
severely cut, wholly unrevealing midcalf-length suit. She had her purse
slung over her shoulder, and a light raincoat over one arm. He thought
that the total effect--serious, businesslike expression, minimal makeup,
painfully practical hairdo, plain shoes, and her alert, almost defensive
posture--made her look just exactly like what she was: a cop. He
wondered if she carried a gun in that purse.

Dan was dressed in gray slacks, a blue blazer, a plain tie and white
shirt, and highly polished loafers. He carried a London Fog raincoat
over one arm; it was April, but not yet warm in Philadelphia, and the
sunset had promised wet weather before morning. They went into the
gloomy bar of the O-club and took a table in the corner. The bar was
almost empty, with only two crusty looking warrant officers nursing
beers and watching the evening news on the television. Grace ordered a
white wine, Dan a gin and tonic. He noticed that she grimaced when she
saw what the bartender was pouring for wine.

"This isn't exactly a high-rent, front-line operation here," he said.

"This so-called officers' club wouldn't survive one week without the
civilian shipyard clientele at lunch. This whole shipyard is one big
armpit."

"You said that the Navy keeps trying to close it."

"Right. Trying is the operative word. The Pennsylvania congressional
delegation must have some severely compromising photographs of some very
senior Navy people, because the yard keeps going, year after year, no
matter how lousy their work is."

"That's unbelievable." She tasted her wine and then looked at it. "This
is unbelievable."

He laughed. "Don Carlo's finest, no doubt. Aged in the tank car at least
one day. Part of the problem is the locale--this is South Philly, as
Santini, he of the Irish heritage, said this afternoon. I was on a ship
here once for six months; the yard is reportedly a major source of
revenue for various racketeers, big and small. The rumor is that they do
some big-league industrial-materials theft, contract fraud, union scams,
phantom hours, world-class featherbedding, drugs. You name it, there's a
local running it here."

She studied the darkened barroom, with its cheesy fake paneling, cheap
brass light fixtures, the ancient, grainy television, and the
threadbare, stained carpet, as if looking at something genuinely
interesting. He thought he saw her wrinkle her nose in a little sniff.

"Could this killing," she asked finally, "could it have been
mob-related--something to do with an officer, maybe a naive young
officer, who stuck his nose in where it didn't belong?"

Dan had to think about that one. "Maybe, but that's kind of remote. You
mean, like exposing the scams? I don't think so. A lieutenant junior
grade just doesn't draw enough water to worry a shop group
superintendent or a union boss. They might have his tires slashed in the
junior officers' parking lot, but kill him? No, I

don't think so. There were easier, more effective ways to screw a junior
officer up--lose his job orders, lose the materials for the jobs in his
work center, vandalize his stateroom in the ship, that kind of stuff."

She nodded, sipped her wine, and then put the glass down firmly. She
shivered. "That battleship, that was a spooky place. And that
body--mummified. I felt like I was in the depths of an ancient tomb,
with all that steel and that flattened brown--"

"Yeah. I guess, being from NIS, a battleship would make you feel
uncomfortable."

She flared. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

He smiled. "Hey. I didn't mean to pull your chain. I just meant that the
last time the NIS got into a battleship investigation, it turned into
one of the biggest goat f--the biggest Chinese fire drills the Navy's
seen for a few decades."

She studied the tabletop. "Well, I suppose you're talking about the Iowa
thing; that was before my time.

But from what I've heard, most of the old hands in NIS thought their
theory was at least feasible. The problem was that some of the
fieldwork, the interrogations, choice of witnesses, was pretty shoddy."

"Plus, they couldn't prove it."

"No. But I think the NIS has been made something of a whipping boy. Like
in the Tailhook investigation: The main reason the Defense Department
inspector general got into it was because they suspected there was a lot
of command influence being exercised by Opnav."

"Maybe like this little deal," Dan said softly.

"Yes. You've been in the fleet--is NIS useful?"

"They came when I called, and I always thought they did a good job with
our shipboard problems," Dan said.

"But this is Washington we're dealing with. Once an incident or an issue
breaks in Washington, everyone gets lots of management help from their
superiors. Like in the Iowa thing."

"I've read some of the Iowa investigation materials-- that was
apparently a very loose ship, even if I say so."

Dan shook his head. "From what I've heard, she didn't start out that way
when they first brought her back in commission. But I have to admit that
I haven't read the actual investigation, although Captain Sum
merfield--he's my boss in Opnav; you met him at the meeting--recommended
that I read it. He said it would explain why Opnav is gunning for the
NIS."

"And is Opnav gunning for the NIS?"

"Beats me. Sometimes when things get nasty, organizations that report to
Opnav get sacrificed on the altar of public relations. That's what the
Tailhook affair looked like, down at the snuffy level. The admirals
walked; the junior officers got nailed. But hell, I just work here.

There. But you have to admit, the fact that I'm working this incident
instead of the NIS system would indicate that somebody is gunning for
the NIS, don't you think?"

She stared at her wine for a moment, her head down.

He noticed for the first time that she had luxuriant almost blue-black
hair, not brunette as he had first thought, and wide, squared-off
shoulders. He wondered if she worked out. A swimmer perhaps. But then
another voice: why do you care?

"I'm kind of in the same boat as you are," she said, looking up. "I said
after our first meeting that I have several years of field-investigation
experience. That's true, but not in criminal investigations. Remember I
told you I worked for SEC? I did all my investigating for SEC in
Manhattan--securities fraud, mostly."

He was surprised. Securities fraud? What the hell was she doing here?

Reading his question, she continued.

"As I told you in the car coming up, I took a political appointment at
the Justice Department in the last administration, toward the end, as it
turned out. When all the hicks and tics showed up, I ended up in NIS as
a civil servant in the Criminal Investigations Policy directorate.

I guess I'm one of those political appointees they describe as burrowing
in. But it was supposed to be investigative work, and it was criminal
stuff, a change from strictly white-collar crime."

"And this was in Investigations Policy?"

"Yes. But I'm not there anymore. I'm now in the Career Services
division."

Dan took time to stir the ice cubes in his drink. Curioser and curioser.

"I see," he said finally.

"Do you?" She was looking right at him.

"Well, yes, and no. But probably yes. You pissed somebody off, and they
executed what the civil serpents call the 'lateral arabesque.' When it
happens in the Navy, the detailers call you up and tell you that you're
going to get a professionally challenging reassignment."

She smiled. "I think I frustrated them more than made them angry. I
wouldn't let the internal organizational politics interfere with a case.

What I didn't understand, initially at least, was how both internal and
external political considerations colored everything we did, either at
Justice or in the NIS. Let's go find dinner somewhere," she said. "I'll
tell you about it." They asked the bartender for a recommendation for
dinner in the South Philadelphia area. He solemnly advised ordering a
pizza delivered to the club bar instead.

But one of the warrants named a restaurant that was two miles down from
the main gate on Snyder as being truly outstanding. He also advised
taking a taxi, as the locals were sensitive to out-of-town license
plates, especially if they displayed a Washington, D. C., military
decal.

The bartender shook his head but did call them a taxi. Thirty minutes
later, they were ensconced at a corner table at the Trattoria Firenzi
and trying out a bottle of Antinori red Chianti, at Grace's suggestion.

At Dan's suggestion, they ordered a series of dishes from the abundant
appetizer listings instead of a main course.

"The warrant officer knew what he was talking about," observed Grace
after the first of the dishes was presented.

"Warrants usually do; he also knew we were from Washington."

Grace laughed. "That's not a very big base, and one of those guys was
from base security."

"How do you know that?"

"NIS trade secret: He was carrying a police-type beeper."

He smiled. "Well, see, you do know something about police work. Now, if
you're willing, tell me why you think you were eased out of
Investigations Policy and into Career Services at NIS."

She studied him for a moment, as if making up her mind. He looked back
at her over his wineglass. Intelligent eyes, dusky green now. An almost
severe face, faintly classical in bone structure and the fine planes of
her cheeks and brows. Still no visible makeup. Something of a hard case
perhaps. Except from what he had seen of her in coveralls, not that
hard. And yet there had been zero coquettishness: strictly business.

Maybe an undercurrent of insecurity. Why should she tell him anything?

After all, they were working for opposing camps. But then he saw her
decide.

She poured some more wine and then began to tell him about herself--her
home and family in New England, mother and father both doctors, a
comfortable upbringing for an only daughter, an economics degree from
Brown University, a JD from Georgetown Law, and then the job at SEC,
first in Washington, later in New York. She had graduated from law
school in 1984.

The following year, her parents had both died, which had crystallized
her decision to stay put in Washington.

"My father had a heart attack, in the hospital, if you can believe it.

One of the nurses said she looked up and he was suddenly standing there,
right in front of her desk. She had said, 'Yes, Doctor?' And he had told
her that his heart had just stopped, then keeled over. They had him in
the CCU in one minute, but they couldn't ... restart him. That was the
word they used. Like he was a stalled old engine. He just ... got away
from them."

She sipped some wine for a moment, staring at the candle in the
wax-covered fiasco on the table.

"That was in the spring of 1985. My mother willed herself to carry on,
for a while, anyway. But at Christmas time that same year, I think she
turned her head to the wall and just ... died. She actually gave me some
warning. There was one letter, although I didn't pick up on it. I was
their only child, so I assumed the universe

centered on me. I had no idea how close they were--no idea at all. I
think now they felt that they had done a conscientious and loving job
with me, then gone back to being totally involved with each other once I
left the nest."

She paused to drink some wine, put down the glass, and drew her left
palm slowly across her left cheek, reflecting.

"Mother was a psychiatrist in private practice with two other doctors. I
don't think I've ever told anybody this, but I've often thought that she
just took something --you know, being a doctor, they know how to check
out if they want to. But I'm not sure. She was a very strong woman, and
I also believe that she was capable of simply switching off. I think she
just went to find Dad."

Dan saw her eyes mist over briefly, and he wished he had a handkerchief,
but she dabbed her eyes with the corner of her napkin, took a deep
breath, another sip of wine. The waiter came by with the next round of
appetizers.

"Anyhow," she continued, "there was a startling amount of money that
came out of that dreadful year-- life insurance, his investments, their
share of their practices, that sort of thing. It all came to me, and
suddenly I didn't have to work. Not financially, anyway. But personally,
I worked harder than ever. I just put my own head down and let the
office take over my life. It was actually comforting for a while. And
then I met Ren, my husband-to-be. He was testifying before the Senate
Banking Committee on bond trading, and I was assigned to go monitor. I
transferred to New York the following spring and we got married in early
1987."

He sipped his own wine and kept quiet. She seemed to want to talk, and
there were some uncomfortable parallels in the story of their lives.

"The job and the marriage were wonderful, for a while. But then the
go-go years on Wall Street began to unravel, and life got tough out
there in the financial trenches. Rennie didn't handle it well, and then
he got himself involved with cocaine and a couple of girl friends, and a
nasty habit of using me as a punching bag. I broke it off, but by then I
was not a very comfortable person to be around. Which is why that
appointment came along, I think."

"That was at the end of 1990?"

"It was 1991, actually. As I said,
politically I wasn't very astute about it, or I might have waited to see
who or what won the election."

"The 'whats' did."

"I think it was more of a case of the 'whos' losing it, but anyhow, by
December, 1992,1 was among the great Washington wave of the suddenly
redundant. As I said, I didn't have to work, but I did, if you follow.

What my mother did scared the hell out of me, and after my divorce, I
was desperately afraid of being cut off from my life, which by then
meant my work."

"And you've found nobody significant in Washington?" he asked, then
blushed. "Excuse me; forget I asked that."

She smiled. "Why did you ask?"

It was his turn to scramble. "Well, your parents' passing, a divorce. I
just figured that by now, maybe ..."

She gave him an introspective look but appeared to ignore his
embarrassment. "No. After Rennie, I've taken myself off the market, as
it were. You have to remember, in SEC, I dealt professionally with
government litigators and their antagonists--type A's, most of them,
both the good guys and the bad guys. But kind of hard to warm up to,
and, once you'd been through a twelve-hour day in that business, there
wasn't much time or energy left for sex appeal, no matter what they tell
you in the movies. Especially once the home front began to dissolve."

"I hear that."

"So now I live in Georgetown, in my own town house. It even has a
driveway and a garden with nice high brick walls. High-rent solitude,
the perfect refuge for the harried government executive, as the Realtor
explained it. Do you know Georgetown?"

He laughed. "Out of my price range, I'm afraid. I've been a widower
since ... well, since 1988. I think I

told you--my dad bought a listed eighteenth-century house in Old Town
Alexandria twenty years ago as a rental investment and passed it on to
me during my last shore tour here--in Washington, I mean. In theory,
it's worth about ten times what he paid for it, but the remaining
mortgage and the taxes are still pretty hefty."

"Old Town's pretty nice; I think it's what Georgetown used to be like,"

she observed.

"Georgetown looks like Armani country to me these days. Old Town's
convenient to Fort Fumble, but the house itself isn't much. It's an old
factor's building, two stories and an attic, a loading crane still
hanging out one of the attic windows, but it's long and narrow rather
than large, and not much of it is level or square anymore. I have a view
of my neighbor's garden and the back walls of other town houses, and the
river, if I want to step out my front door and stand on tiptoes and if
it's wintertime. But there's no garage. All those damned cobblestones,
and a wooden fence that's defying gravity better than it's defying the
termites. Dad put in central air and heat a few years before I got it,
which makes it bearable. Some of those old places are unlivable. But
Georgetown always seemed to me to be reserved for either assistant
secretaries of state or the serious disco crowd."

"There's a wider range of people than that, although I don't do much of
the Georgetown social scene. I've been an extra at some dinner
parties--neighbors, mostly, who need a fourth to fill out a table. After
New York, though, I've been something of a recluse."

The waiter came back with the final round of appetizers, and Dan was
approaching his limit. His daily workouts on the river or on his home
rowing machine had left him very fit but without much capacity for
restaurant food, especially after his noontime Reuben extravaganza.

Grace seemed to be having the same problem.

"If I'm not intruding, what happened to your wife?" she asked.

Dan put down his wineglass and looked at the table, his eyes suddenly
unfocused. After all these years, it was still surprisingly hard to talk
about it; her question had ambushed him.

"Claire died in childbirth, or almost in childbirth.

Something they called toxemia, came out of nowhere.

We were at the PG school in Monterey--that's the Navy's graduate school.

She'd had some problems with blood pressure on and off in her third
trimester, but labor had been going normally, if you can call anything
about labor normal. I left to go home to put the damn dog out, if you
can believe it. Was back in thirty minutes, and when I got back, she
wasn't there--in the labor room, I mean. A nurse intercepted me and took
me into a doctor's office, and I waited there in a panic until a doctor
came in with the chaplain and told me that Claire had had convulsions
and what appeared to be a massive stroke. Lost her and the baby."

He ran out of breath for a moment, then said, "It happened so god damned
fast."

"I'm so sorry," she said, reaching across the table for his hand. In his
sudden emotional state, her hand felt cool on his and almost strange.

Grace appeared to sense his discomfort and withdrew her hand.

"Yeah, well. I'm kind of like you. Crawled into my cave and pulled the
blankets up. I buried myself in my graduate work, finished a master's in
mechanical engineering, and then asked for sea duty, something haze gray
and under way and going way the hell out of the country. The Navy's
exceptionally good about that, a guy loses his spouse. I was back at sea
in a deployed cruiser in two weeks, and it was a godsend. Overseas,
twenty-hour days, faraway places, as wet a shore liberty as your head
could stand. Came to Washington for the first time in mid-1990. Shore
duty's like civilian life--it goes a little slower."

"I know all about that slower," she said. Dan was getting uncomfortable
with the conversation, and yet he sensed a kindred spirit. She was
saying something about how weekends dragged.

"Oh, yes, weekends," he said. "Well, I've found the cure for them: I've
become a Civil War-history buff. I drive out to the
battlefields--there's a bunch within three hours of D. C.--and I read a
lot of books. Some of those places are amazing, and the countryside is
usually worth the trip." The waiter asked if they wanted doggy bags;
they declined and Dan asked for the check.

"I've begun a predoctoral program in political science at Georgetown,"

she said. "I don't really know what I'm going to do with it, but it
fills those weekends with academic work."

She looked wistful as she said it, and Dan realized that they were
kindred spirits. She was probably harboring some pretty serious
emotional scar tissue, and, like him, she was careful to seek stable and
predictable circumstances within which to make it through the days, and
nights. As if she sensed his thoughts, she excused herself while Dan
waited for the check.

His conversation with Grace made him wonder once again about his own
prospects for a relationship with another woman. For the first few
years, his widower status had protected him, but after his executive
officer tour on John King, he had wondered if he should or even could
start up again with someone new. None of the women he had met over the
past few years had been able to breach that pungent aura of sadness that
circled his vision whenever he thought about Claire and the family he
had lost. He knew he would be better off with someone, but all the
prospective someones had been either mildly desperate divorcees or other
conjugal casualties. No longer knowing what he wanted, he had just let
that part of life slide, focusing inward on his workdays in the
Pentagon, his rowing, his weekend sojourns into the history-drenched
Virginia countryside, the prospects for getting back to sea again, all
the while politely rebuffing the occasional attempts of his professional
contemporaries to set him up with a family friend. He watched Grace
thread her way back through the crowded dining room--attractive, poised,
aloof, not seeming to be aware of herself--and searched his feelings for
some spark of real interest. Physically, she was definitely interesting,
but his heart remained silent. He

sighed. The waiter arrived at that moment with the check, and he
returned to the business of the day, splitting the bill for their
individual travel-expense reports.

at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Master Chief Gonzalez called back
from the Bupers with word that he had some information on the missing
It. (jg) W.

Hardin. Dan called the extension number over to Grace so she could pick
up and listen.

"I can fax up the printout," Gonzalez said, "but it's not as much info
as you might be expecting, 'cause the records all went off to that
federal depository in St. Louis about a year and a half ago, after he
was declared a deserter."

"So he was actually declared," asked Dan.

"Yes, sir. His ship, that's USS Luce, the DDG, she's been decommissioned
since'then. The ship initially filed an incident report when he went UA,
like the manual requires, but then they declared him thirty days later.

That part's all in here. And he was the assistant supply officer, not
the chop. He was the Disbo."

"Uh-oh. Okay, Master Chief. Let me get you the fax number here. Oh, and
can you get me his fitrep file?"

"I doubt it, Commander. Once the records go to St. Louis, we don't keep
anything."

"How about those little old ladies up on the fourth deck--that place
where officers can come in and review their records?"

"The microfiche should have gone out with the records, but, yeah, they
might still have his package. I'll check it out. But I'm going to need
some paper to get that released."

Dan thought about that for a moment. Getting access to another officer's
fitness reports took a flag officer's signature.

"Lemme make a call back to my bosses in Opnav, Master Chief. Meanwhile,
I'll fax you down my ap r'-ix.

pointing letter so you can release the other admin. And I'm going to ask
formally that the records be retrieved from St. Louis on a priority
basis. This isn't a UA case; this is more than likely a homicide."

"No
shit? You told his next of kin?"

Dan felt a wave of embarrassment. A next-of-kin notification should have
been put in motion the moment they had the ID.

"No, I haven't," he replied. "Our ID is based only on laundry markings
on his uniform. We presume that's accurate, but I need the records,
especially the health and dental records, so the forensics guys can
confirm.

But the body is that of a black male, lieutenant junior grade, in
uniform, Supply Corps insignia, and the uniform has his name on it."

"Well, that sure sounds like Hardin, just looking at the printout.

Commander, lemme give you some advice.

A body in a battleship--for journalists, that's going to be some sexy
shit. It's gonna bring the press in pretty quick, somebody in the yard
runs his mouth. Get a message sent down here to the bureau--to the
Casualty Assistance Calls office--from Comnavbase Philly, probably,
reporting what you've found, asking for the records, and asking for a
CACO. That way, the CACO can go see the family--it says here they're
right here in D. C.--and let them know something before they see it on
the TV, okay?"

"Good advice, Master Chief. Message coming at you.

Stand by for the fax number."

Dan switched off the speaker phone and looked at Grace Snow. "Nothing
like a master chief to keep a commander off the rocks," he muttered. "I
should have thought of that yesterday, soon as we had a name."

Grace was shaking her head as she looked at her notes. "I kind of got
lost in the alphabet soup. CACO?

FITREP? DISBO?"

"Right. Hang on a moment." He got up from his borrowed desk and went to
find Santini, whom he asked to get the Commander Naval Base Philadelphia
public affairs officer over to the MS office right away.

"Can I tell her what it's about? The Navbase staffers don't just come
because I call 'em," Santini said.

"Just tell him--her, did you say? Tell her there's a commander from
Opnav in your office asking for the base PAO, and it's really urgent. If
we're lucky, we're going to be just ahead of the curve here. And I need
your fax number here for the guy in Bupers, and a copy of my appointing
order faxed to him."

"You got it."

Santini buzzed the secretary, and Dan went back to explain the acronyms
to Grace.

"A CACO is a casualty assistance calls officer. He's the guy who shows
up in the black car to tell a family-- the parents, or the spouse--that
their service member has been injured or killed."

"Now there's a wonderful assignment."

"Right, but it's not a permanent specialty. Anybody can be tagged to go
do the CACO job, just like I got tagged to do this JAG investigation.

There's a Bupers manual section, procedures, specific instructions, all
of that, on being a CACO. And typically, it's rank for rank: A commander
dies, another commander is appointed CACO. Like that. And these days, if
there's press interest, the CACO's main job is to beat the media to the
prospective bereaved's door. After that, he helps any way he can.

Interfaces with the whole Navy personnel infrastructure to arrange
burial, deal with a mortuary, shipment of remains, notification to
insurance and the VA, obtain a death certificate, all the admin stuff
that a death stirs up. It's a good system."

"And we need one now?"

"Yeah, I think so. It's a judgment call--we don't have a positive ID,
but I think we owe it to the Hardin family at least to alert them that
we may have found their son.

Especially since it was a civilian who read the name off the uniform."

"And FITREP?"

"Fitrep is an officer's fitness report. His ship filed an
unauthorized-absence report when he went missing. Sounds like the
command was assuming that Hardin went on his own steam, which might
indicate a less"&:

ts.

than-terrific officer. The fitness-report file--that's like your
performance-appraisal reports--may reveal why they reacted that way. The
problem is that all his records--service, pay, medical, dental,
fitreps--should have been packaged up and sent to St. Louis to the
federal records depository for microfilming by now.

Getting things out of a federal archive center can take |, six to eight
weeks."

"I can imagine. And this man in Bupers--he's going to try to expedite
the retrieval?"

"Yeah. But I have to get Comnavbase to send a message to start the
process."

Santini appeared. "Commander, the base PAO, Lieutenant Commander
Mcgonagle, is on her way over.

She sounded a little peevish."

"I'll handle that," Dan said. But as Santini withdrew, Grace suggested
that she handle that. Dan thought for a few seconds before agreeing.

"Right. Good idea," he said. "You fill her in. I'm going to call the
Navbase EA. This thing could get real big real quick."

"One thing--what's a PAO, again?"

"Public affairs officer--Navy spokesman, or spokeswoman, in this case.

And Disbo means disbursing officer --Hardin was the paymaster. NIS field
offices specialize in bent paymasters, which is why Santini here ought
to have a record of this."

Dan got on the phone to the Navbase headquarters and asked for the
admiral's executive assistant. While on hold, he tried to remember the
organization. Back before World War II, the Navy's shore establishment
had been divided into geographic districts, with the entire country and
some of the overseas possessions being allocated to sixteen naval
districts. The naval district commander had usually been a two-star rear
admiral serving his swan-song tour just prior to retirement. The naval
districts handled administrative matters within their territories: the
pursuit and apprehension of deserters, trials and court-martials, formal
and informal JAG investigations, the appointment and support of CACOs,
administration of transient barracks and brigs, and the general
personnel and administrative infrastructure support for all the Navy
commands located within the district. In the years of base and flag
officer billet consolidations since the war, the districts had been done
away with and these duties apportioned to the largest base command
located in what had been the respective districts. Dan knew that
Comnavbase Philadelphia, now a one-star rear admiral, had a small staff
of people who tried to cover the catchall functions of the old districts
in addition to their normal duties.

"This is Lieutenant Commander Vansladen speaking," said a voice. Dan
smiled. Even in a backwater like Navbase Philadelphia, the EA sounded
impressed with himself. Dan identified himself and then brought the EA
up to speed on what had happened so far.

"Commander," Vansladen said. "I'm a little distressed to be hearing
about you and your investigation for the first time a day after you've
arrived in our area."

"Well, Mr. Vansladen," Dan said, using the term appropriate to a junior
officer's rank, "Comnavbase Philadelphia is listed as a 'copy to' on my
appointing order from the Navy JAG. If you're surprised, you're not
reading your mail." So much for your distress, bucko.

There was a moment of silence on the phone. Actually, Dan knew that the
appointing order probably had not even physically reached Philadelphia
yet, a fact that Vansladen also very likely recognized. But Vansladen
was a lieutenant commander talking to a commander.

Dan also knew that he should have touched base with the Navbase
commander's office the moment he arrived.

He decided to go smooth.

"Look," he said. "I'm having to move quickly here.

Let me suggest that you call the EA down in OP-Oh six; that's Captain
Manning. Here's the number. Or better yet, maybe the admiral should call
Admiral Carson; he's Oh-six B--the ADCNO Plans and Policy. That would be
the quickest way for your boss to get the political slant on this
situation, and a direct, flag-to-flag explanation for why I'm here
instead of having the local NIS office running it. But more importantly,
I've just sent for your base PAO, because I think there's going to be a
pack of yapping journalists at the front gate, probably today. And I'm
going to need a priority message to go out from Comnavbase requesting
retrieval of some personnel records and assignment of a CACO."

There was a moment of silence, in which Dan thought he could hear
scratching on paper. Then the EA spoke up. "I've got all that,
Commander. What office are you operating out of?"

"I'm working out of the NIS office here; I think we're next door."

"We'll get back to you," the EA said, then hung up.

Dan grinned. EAs always talked like they had a mouse in their pockets.

"We'll" get back to you, indeed.

He quickly dialed up the OP-06 front office number in the Pentagon and
told the yeoman chief to alert Captain Manning that Comnavbase
Philadelphia might be calling 06B with a "what the hell" query. The
chief took it in stride--06B was a senior two-star; Comnavbase
Philadelphia was a one-star. But he did agree to alert the EA. Dan hung
up and found Grace Snow standing in the doorway. Standing next to her
was a tall, very Irish-looking redhead, who was wearing the service
dress blues of a lieutenant commander.

"Commander Collins," Grace said, "this is It.

Comdr. Helen Mcgonagle, the base PAO. I've briefed her on what we have
so far. And here's the fax from that master whatever down at the
bureau."

"That's master chief. Good morning, Miss. Mcgonagle," Dan said, taking
the fax from Grace. He was always somewhat at a loss as to how to
address women officers--by their ranks, or Miss., or Ms. He had
personally settled on using rank for lieutenants and below; Miss. for
lieutenant commanders, because of the two words in the rank; and the
rank again--Commander, Captain--for the higher grades. Inevitably, the
women would correct him. But Mcgonagle was all business, and indeed
peevish.

"Commander Collins, your friendly PAO can be of much better service to
my boss and yours if she gets cut in from the start."

"I agree, and I'm sorry I didn't call you sooner. I didn't expect this
thing to move quite so quickly."

"Well, our dear shipyard commander should have been on to us the moment
they found the body. We weren't even info on their incident-report
message, but that's our little domestic problem, not yours. You're
assigned to Opnav and directing a murder investigation in the field?"

"That's right."

"And not NIS. Why is that?"

Watch it, boyo; here's a staffie with her brain engaged, Dan thought.

"I'll have to duck that one for now, Miss. Mcgonagle."

"The name is Helen, and, no, you can't duck it. Look, think of me as
your lawyer or your accountant--smart line officers always tell the PAO
the whole truth so that their PAO can then efficiently keep the media
jackals from holding a feeding frenzy on their collective haunches.

Sir."

Dan laughed out loud. "Yes, ma'am. Ten thousand gomenesais. Come in and
close that door, will you?"

With Grace listening, Dan reviewed the outlines of the story of the body
in the battleship and also explained that the VCNO had decided to
appoint a line officer to do the investigation to avoid any public
association of the NIS with another battleship.

"Precisely because there might be media interest in the body in the
battleship, and possibly invidious comparisons made with the Iowa flap,"

observed Mcgonagle.

"Um. Yes. Better make that a hundred thousand gomens."

"Accepted. But if that question comes up, we can point to Miss. Snow
here and say that the NIS is indeed involved in the investigation. And
you're operating out of the NIS offices. Okay. That'll wash for the
moment.

Probably won't survive Washington media scrutiny, though."

"And what do
we do then?" asked Grace.

"Washington heat is CHINFO's problem, isn't it?"

muttered Mcgonagle. Dan liked this woman a lot all of a sudden. "Did you
say you had identified the dead man?" she asked.

"Yes. A It. (jg) W. Hardin. He was a pork chop, the assistant chop in
Luce when she was here a few years ago."

"Hardin? Hmmm."

"You recognize the name?"

"Well, yes--but not his. There was a It. Elizabeth Hardin who worked in
CHINFO when I was down there two years ago, got killed in a hit-and-run
accident over in Washington. As I remember, she had a brother in the
Navy. But--" She was interrupted by the chirping of her beeper.

"Ah," she said, looking at the readout. "This is the CBS affiliate. We
begin the beguine."

Using Dan's phone, Lieutenant Commander Mcgonagle called the reporter at
the local CBS affiliate and found out that it was indeed a query about
the body in the battleship. She told the reporter that the Navy would
have a statement by three o'clock, in time for the evening news, and,
no, they could not release a name, because the next of kin had not been
notified.

Yes, there would be more details at three. No comment on any homicide
angle.

"I'll get a quick statement typed up and have the calls shunted over to
my shop at the headquarters. I'm going to go back there and brief my
boss. I propose a meeting at the Navbase headquarters at fourteen
hundred, so we can coordinate what we're going to tell the little
dears."

"Will you fill in the CHINFO?"

"Yes, sir, I will. You let me know when Bupers has a CACO in the loop."

"Will do. And Helen, many thanks. This press stuff is scary to us ship
drivers."

"Right. Just remember, I can't help you if you keep me in the mushroom
mode."

When Mcgonagle had left the office, Dan called a quick meeting with
Grace and Santini in Santini's office.

He briefed Santini on what they had so far and on what was going on in
the media loop.

"What I need now, until I get the records back from Bupers, is anything
local that you--or maybe even the base cops--might have on the
disappearance. I know it's nearly two years back, but surely there must
have been at least routine paper on an officer supposedly going over the
hill like that--especially if he was a disbursing officer."

Santini made notes. "I made a quick check yesterday," he said. "But
lemme look some more. And maybe we ought to call the Navy supply
system--I forget their acronym, but those guys who do audits on
disbursing officers when somebody thinks something isn't kosher.

We work with 'em when a Disbo goes wrong."

"Yeah, shit, I know who you mean. Gobbledygook name."

"How could you
tell?" said Grace. Both men smiled.

"I'll find 'em," Santini said. "Jerry Watkins over there just worked a
disbursing case. He'll know it."

"Grace," Dan said, "can you call downtown and see what's happening with
the autopsy, maybe speed it along, federal case and all that. I'm going
to check in with Oh-six and then with the Navbase EA."

The meeting broke up and Dan returned to his cubicle to call the
Pentagon. Grace went to an empty desk out in the main office to make her
calls. Dan's call was handed over to Captain Manning.

"Admiral Carson told me to call in from time to time, Captain. This case
is going public this afternoon, so I thought now was a good time."

"Indeed. The admiral is down in JCS. Give me a precis of what you have
and I'll relay it to the ADCNO and to the vice's EA."

"The vice chief?"

"Yes, Commander. He's the one who started this little food fight with
NIS, remember?"

Dan glanced over at Grace Snow, who was busy on the phone.

"Yes, sir. Well. Here's what's happening." Dan gave the EA a
three-minute recitation on where the case stood. "And how are your
relations with the NIS?"

"Actually, pretty good. I think. It started out testy up here in the
field office, but now I'm apparently getting cooperation. The critical
path time wise is the autopsy to confirm that this was a homicide, and
the records from Bupers so that we can positively identify Hardin, as
well as some people in Luce who were there when he was there and can
maybe shed some light on why this guy was murdered."

"I see. And the press interest?"

"Body in a battleship. There's at least one TV station that's on it; the
base PAO is going to have a statement for the media at fifteen hundred."

"And you are not going to be part of that, correct?"

"Uh, I hadn't decided. They haven't--"

"I'd tell you to watch my lips, but that would be difficult.

You will not be part of the press conference. The Navbase PAO can
identify you as the officer conducting the investigation, if that's
absolutely necessary, but otherwise we want you to keep a low profile."

"Yes, sir. But may I ask why?"

"You want to be a TV star, do you?"

"No, Captain. But the PAO will have a tough time fielding questions
about the investigation if I'm not there."

"Precisely."

"Oh."

"Yes, oh. If your PAO is a professional, he'll have a lot less trouble
than you think with questions."

"She. The PAO is a woman."

"How wonderful for you."

Dan thought for a moment. There was something else he had wanted to tell
the EA. Then it came to him.

"Sir, one other thing. The PAO, Lieutenant Commander Mcgonagle, said
something that might be relevant, especially if the press begins to
dig."

"And that is?"

"That she knew another Lieutenant Hardin, a woman officer, down in
CHINFO a couple years back. She remembered because the woman was killed
in a traffic accident of some kind over in the District."

"And why is that germane?"

"I'm not sure it is. But if this lieutenant and that one were related,
brother and sister, say, it would mean that the family had lost two
children in the service in two years. If nothing else, the CACO ought to
be told that."

"I see." Manning's voice softened a micron. "Yes.

And it might be more effective for me to transmit that information to
the bureau than for you to."

"Yes, sir, it might. I don't know that it's true, though.

Hardin isn't that unusual a name."

"All right. Anything else?"

"No, sir. When we make some more progress, I'll phone in again."

"Very well." Manning hung up. Dan put the phone down and rubbed his
face. He always felt uncomfortable talking to the EAs. They wore their
bosses' stripes so arrogantly, most of them, and yet they certainly
seemed to be in synch with their flags' way of thinking.

Like the bit about not going to the press conference.

Having not yet had command, Dan had had little direct experience with
the media, but he had heard stories about innocent lamby-pie naval
officers sticking both feet in their mouth under the skillful
questioning of a reporter. The EA was probably entirely correct in
telling him not to go. EA. He had to check in with Navbase. There was a
base telephone list on the blotter at his desk, and he dialed the number
for the Navbase commander's office and asked for the EA.

"Sir, the EA's in with the admiral and the PAO. May I take a message?"

"No, not really. Commander Mcgonagle will be bringing them up to speed
with what's going on with my investigation. I'm Commander Collins. I was
mostly checking in."

"Oh, yes, sir, you're that commander. Hold, please."

He was put on hold for a minute, then switched over to a speaker phone.

The voice that came on identified itself as Rear Admiral Bostick.

"Commander Collins, this is the admiral. I've got my PAO and my EA in
the room with me. Why am I finding out about all this secondhand and a
day late?"

"Yes, sir, I apologize for that, Admiral. I assumed that since the
initial message came out of Philly about the body being found that you
at least knew about that, Admiral, which is why I went straight to the
NIS field office. As to my heading up the investigation--"

"Yeah, what the hell, over? Since when does Opnav handle a murder
investigation in one of the shipyards?

You talked to the shipyard commander yet?"

"Uh, no, sir, I haven't."

"Well, you're a regular Lone Ranger, aren't you? I still don't
understand why you are here instead of the NIS."

Dan was getting a little tired of all the fanging. He could just imagine
the smug look on the Navbase EA's face about now.

"Well, sir, as Oh-six explained it, the Vice CNO wants it done that way.

I guess all I can suggest at this juncture is that you call--"

"Don't be impertinent, Commander. You know damn well I'm not going to
call a four-star and ask him anything of the sort. But if you want to
succeed in this investigation, I suggest you don't come in here like
some Washington hotshot and start throwing your weight around. I can
make life very difficult for you, young man."

"Yes, sir. Aye, aye, sir," Dan intoned dutifully.

"That's better. That's the first correct thing I've heard you say. Now,
I want you at that press conference this afternoon."

"Admiral, I can't do that."

There was a moment of silence, then he heard Mcgonagle's voice in the
background ask why not.

"Because I've been ordered not to by ..." He hesitated for a split
second. Here was an admiral who wanted him at the press conference, but
it was only a captain, the EA, who had told him not to go. But he'd used
that royal we--did the EA speak for 06? 06B?

And if Comnavbase pulled the string, would the EA back him up? "The
DCNO, OP-Oh-six. Vice Admiral Layman," he finished.

There was silence on the other line, which he rushed to fill.

"Apparently under the theory that if I'm identified but not actually
there, the PAO can't tell them any more than the bare facts."

He thought he heard Mcgonagle say, "Thanks a heap, Commander" before the
speakerphone was muted on the other end. Dan waited. Finally, the
admiral came back on, his voice a little less angry.

"Okay. I think I'm beginning to get the picture here, and I guess I do
need to make some calls. What's the EA's name in Oh-six?"

"Captain Manning, Admiral."

"All right. I want you to check in with my office at the end of each day
that you're here. No more surprises."

"Aye, aye, sir," Dan said, and the
connection was broken. Goddamned EAs, he thought. That little lieutenant
commander had gone in there and told his mommy about the not-nice
commander up from Opnav. He wondered if he ought to call Manning and
tell him what he'd said about Admiral Layman ordering him away from the
media. Screw it--he'd see what Manning did with it. Grace came back in.

"Any luck?" he asked.

"Only sort of. The medical examiner's office was underwhelmed with all
my federal-case talk. They say that they work each homicide case in the
order they come in, which probably means they'll get to it when they get
to it. But they also said that the autopsies with a homicide tag are
usually done within a day of receipt, so it won't be that long. The
forensic investigator I talked to said that they had looked at the body
and concluded that it will keep. I think that was a joke, by the way."

"Right, morgue humor. Okay, well, I just got my ass chewed by Comnavbase
himself for operating on his turf without making the appropriate
obesiances. Hopefully, the Oh-six EA will run top cover for me."

Grace pushed the door shut. "My headquarters may have had a hand in
that. Robby Booker said something yesterday that didn't compute until
just now, something about NIS Washington calling the base commander. If
Roscoe Ames did that, your investigation would not have been presented
in the best of lights."

~Vk - /S:'

"Wow. You mean they already knew? Turf uber alles, hunh? Do you get the
feeling that the brass doesn't give a shit about who murdered this guy?"

Grace shrugged. "From what I've seen, the Washington right answer to
that question is that there will always be murders to solve, but when an
organization's power, authority, or budget is threatened, that takes
first precedence. Always."

Dan leaned back in his chair. She was probably absolutely correct. There
was a knock on the door, and Santini stuck his head in.

"Commander, there's some guy from Channel Six news on the horn. Wants to
talk about you know what."

"How in the hell did he get this number?"

"He says Comnavbase public
affairs office gave it to him." Santini was trying hard not to smile.

"Tell him that the Navy will have a statement to make at fifteen hundred
today and that he should contact the base PAO for details. I'm not
talking to any press weenies, period."

"You got it," Santini said, not
bothering to hide his amusement now. He backed out and closed the door.

"Those sons a bitches," Dan began.

"The press?"

"No, the Navbase. They're mad at me for being here, so they sic the
media on me."

"So, turn it around."

"Hunh?"

"Call the Navbase EA and tell him to knock it off or you will talk to
the press and make Navbase look like a bunch of anally oriented
individuals. Say you'll tell the next reporter who calls in the reason
you're here is that Navbase is so screwed up, Washington had to send
somebody in to unscrew it."

Dan looked at her with fresh admiration. "I like the way you think," he
said. "But getting embroiled in turf fights won't do anything for the
investigation--much as I'd love to do that."

"Okay." She sighed. "It was
just a thought. So what do we do now?"

"We wait. Santini is supposedly developing back ground data on the kid's
disappearance, if there is any.

Bupers will have a CACO in motion pretty soon and is trying to dynamite
the guy's records out of the St. Louis depository. The corpse rangers
downtown will get to the autopsy when they get to it, apparently. The
base PAO has a press conference set up for fifteen hundred.

I need to sit down and write up what's gone on so far, but if you can
think of something we ought to be doing --"

"Well, the only thing that's nagging at my mind is the battleship. Who
would have access to the interior of that ship? I mean, not just anybody
can go in there, right? They need access, breathing rigs, somebody who's
aware that they're down inside that thing in a lethal atmosphere, in
case they don't come back on time."

Dan was nodding his head. "Which would indicate that whoever planted the
body knew how to do all that."

"Perhaps. Or a least they had some help from the people who do that on a
regular basis."

"That's the shipyard. I guess we can go talk to someone in the yard, see
how all that works. It'll get us out of here, at any rate."

"Maybe that ship's superintendent, Lieutenant Gravely, can help us out."

It took them an hour and a half to locate the ship's superintendent for
USS Wisconsin. The production shop's administrative staff had informed
them that the lieutenant was ship's supe on three current overhauls in
addition to his duties of supervising the caretaking of the battleship.

They tracked him down finally aboard a wooden-hulled minesweeper in Dry
Dock Four that was being prepared for decommissioning and layup. The
ship's supe was not terribly informative. He told them that Shop 72, the
riggers, had responsibility for monitoring the mothballed ships,
especially the bigger ships on deep-nitrogen layup. Shop 72 had
responsibility for pier-to-hull connections and for providing all
rigging services within the yard--rigging meaning physical lifting,
palletizing, crane service, forklifts, and gas-free engineering. It was
the latter responsibility that was pertinent, in that Shop 72 maintained
the breathing rigs for sounding-and-security personnel going inside the
ships where there was no breathable atmosphere.

"So if you want to know about getting into Wisconsin, it would have to
be the riggers, and I have to tell you, that's a pretty closed gang.

They're like roustabouts or stevedores: They have a tough, physical,
generally low skilled job to do, so the kinds of guys they get tend to
match that description. And you're talking about something that probably
happened a couple of years ago.

Most of the rigger crews have turned over a couple of times in that long
a time."

Dan thanked him but decided to go talk to the Shop 72 foremen, anyway.

If nothing else, he could put in his report that he had followed the
lead as far as it went.

They walked through the industrial area to the offices of Shop 72. When
they arrived, it became obvious that someone had made a call, because
the Shop 72 group superintendent, the boss of bosses, had nothing of
substance to say to them. According to him, the security practices with
respect to the mothballed ships were entirely adequate and there was no
way somebody could just get aboard one of those ships, much less inside.

"But somebody did," Dan pointed out.

"I don't know anything about that, and I'm sure no one here does,
either. It had to be somebody from the outside; my riggers wouldn't do
that kind of thing.

That's all I can tell you, Commander. And if you talk to any of the
riggers, that's all they can tell you, too."

"In other words," Dan said
to Grace as they left the office, "Don't go talking to my people,
because I've told my people not to talk to you."

"That was a pretty good armadillo act," Grace agreed.

They stopped off at one of the shop canteens before going back to the
NIS office. The canteen was squeezed into a questionably clean corner
room of a warehouse.

It had fly-specked screened windows, a single counter, a noisy,
grease-covered exhaust fan, a respectable population of flies and bees
patrolling two overflowing trash cans, and an extremely obese counterman
decked out in catsup-stained whites. It was almost 2:30 p. m., and Dan
was not anxious to return to the office, lest there be another summons
from Navbase to attend the press conference. Figuring that if it came
out of boiling water, it ought not to make them too sick, they both
ordered a hot dog.

They went outside to eat their hot dogs, batting away the swarming
yellow jackets. As they were searching for napkins, a long-haired,
pimply-faced young man sidled up to the canteen door. He was wearing the
yellow hard hat of the rigger force, with a large X-72 stenciled on the
front. He looked Grace over and then went inside and bought a hot dog
with everything and a Coke. He came back out and stood next to an
overflowing trash basket while he stuffed his face, giving Grace another
once-over in the process. She was, as usual, wearing relatively
shapeless clothing: loose wool slacks, a sweater, with a blouse
underneath, and comfortable shoes. Dan had shifted from dress blues to
working blues: black trousers and a long-sleeved black shirt with a
black tie and his commander's silver oak leaves on the collar points.

They both wore white plastic hard hats because they were in the
industrial area.

When the rigger was finished, he crumpled up the debris into the trash
basket and, after looking both ways, said something to Dan.

"What's that?" Dan asked, shaking a mustard-covered bee off his hand.

"I said, 'Yo.' You the guys wanna know something' 'bout the stiff in the
Wo-Wo?"

Wo-Wo, Dan thought. Ah, Wisconsin. "That's right.

I'm Commander Collins."

The boy sidled over to them, again staring at Grace as if trying to
decide whether or not she was a woman who merited further attention. He
looked around again, as if to see who might be watching, then turned
back to Collins, ignoring Grace now.

"You guys need to talk to old Brannie Gutowski. He useta be a head
rigger here, coupla years back. Hangs out over at Mcgurn's gin mill,
over there on Fifteenth <Jfx

\V"/>.

and Porter, near the Diablo Club. He's retired, on ac counta his
drinkin', but he's a guy. Anybody knows what went down with that dead
guy got dug up in the We- We , Ski's your guy; check it out, man."

"I will. Thanks for the tip." Dan wanted to ask the boy some questions,
but the boy again looked around one more time and then sauntered off.

"Feel like an adventure?" Dan asked. Grace grimaced but then nodded.

they came our of the industrial area right at 3:00 p.m. and walked up
toward the main gate along the extension of Philadelphia's Broad Street
on the naval station.

Grace pointed out not. one but two television vans parked in front of
the administration building as they passed by, and they both quickened
their step. Dan thought fleetingly about how Mcgonagle was doing in
there. They found a cab out by the main gate and told the driver the
destination. The driver turned around and looked at both of them, shook
his head, and pulled away from the curb. Dan wondered what they were
getting into but did not share his apprehensions with Grace. After a
ten-block ride, they turned left onto Porter Street for three blocks,
then did a midblock U-turn that elicited a small gasp from Grace. The
cab pulled up in front of a seedy-looking place with a dirty neon sign
proclaiming it as Mcgurn's Bar and Grill. The front window was tinted
black and was so dirty, it did not even reflect the weak red neon sign
above it. Dan paid the cabbie and they got out went into the bar.

The interior was about what Dan expected: one long, narrow room with a
bar and stools on the right and some dilapidated booths on the left.

There was a row of low-wattage yellow light fixtures running down above
the booths, and a single fan in the overhead stirring the stink of old
beer and cigarette smoke. The floor appeared to be some kind of very old
linoleum. Behind the bar were glass shelves containing the heavenly host
of assorted rotguts stacked up against a large mirror.

Mercifully, the place was empty, except for a surly-looking bartender
and a solitary white man sitting on the last stool, closest to a
television that was playing soundlessly above their heads.

"Almost heaven," muttered Grace.

"Bet that's our guy," Dan said, and walked down toward the end of the
bar.

The bartender gave them a quick glance, then turned his back on them,
picking up a glass and wiping it deliberately.

He apparently knew heat when he saw it. Dan was suddenly conscious of
his uniform as he focused on the lumpy man at the end of the bar. The
man was in his sixties, pendulously fat, with a round red face, a fringe
of white hair around an extensive bald spot, a bulbous red nose, and a
vacant expression that he had focused somewhere about a half a mile into
the mirror behind the bar. Dan concluded that he was indeed one of the
fixtures, given his posture on the stool.

"Excuse me, are you Mr. Brannie Gutowski?" Dan asked.

The fat man did not acknowledge the question, except to hunch farther
down on his bar stool, clutching the almost-empty glass of beer in his
hands. When he did not reply, Grace stepped around Dan, flipped open her
NIS credentials, and shoved them into the fat man's face.

"We're federal police officers," she announced. "Are you Brannie
Gutowski?"

The bartender spat dramatically on the floor behind the bar but kept his
back turned. The fat man finally acknowledged them.

"Yeah, so what if I am?"

Dan stepped in. "We'd like to ask you a few questions about something
that happened in the yard a couple years back."

"I'm retired, for Chrissakes," Gutowski complained.

"I don't remember shit about the god damned yard, so whyn't ya jist leave
me the hell alone."

"We will," Dan said. "Just as soon as you answer a K.#

couple of questions for us. This won't be hard or even complicated. I'll
even buy you a beer, how's that?"

There was a glint of interest in the fat man's eyes.

"Let's move over here to a booth; that way, we can keep it all nice and
private. Bartender, give this man a refill."

The bartender turned around and gave them both a sullen look before
taking Gutowski's glass. He refilled it from one of the taps and banged
it down on the bar, slopping some foam. As Gutowski reached for the
glass, Dan had an idea.

"Why don't you sweeten that brew up a little there, bartender. Looks
kind of watery to me."

The bartender stared at him for a second and then reached for a bottle
of gin and a shot glass. He filled the shot glass to the line and pushed
it over toward Gutowski, who grabbed it greedily and slugged it down.

"One more for the road," Dan ordered while Grace picked up the glass of
beer and moved it over to a booth. Gutowski slugged down the second hit,
belched, looked around for the truant beer, and then unlimbered his
sagging body off the stool and squeezed himself onto the bench seat of
the nearest booth. Dan dropped a ten spot on the bar and sat down
opposite the bleary eyed ex-yardbird. Grace stood over Gutowski's
shoulder, between the man and the bartender, who had moved away toward
the other end of the bar. Dan lowered his voice.

"Okay, Mr. Gutowski. Here's the deal. We're conducting an investigation
into the disappearance of an officer, a supply corps officer, in the
shipyard about two years ago. A guy in the yard suggested we come talk
to you."

Gutowski stared up at Dan, taking in the Navy uniform for the first
time.

"What the hell are you?" he asked, "I'm Commander Collins, from the
staff of the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, D.C. Miss. Snow
here is from a federal criminal investigation service, the NIS. We're
conducting an investigation into the discovery of a body aboard the
battleship Wisconsin in the yard."

Dan thought he saw a flicker of recognition in the fat man's eyes. "This
body," Gutowski said. "This the guy gone missin'? The black boy?"

"We think so, yes. He was an officer in the Navy."

"An' you guys think I done something'?"

Dan sat back. "No, we don't. But we understand that the riggers, the
Shop Seventy-two guys, are the only ones who can get into a mothballed
ship--because of the nitrogen atmosphere. You were a rigger boss then;
we're wondering if you heard anything about this incident."

"Nope." Gutowski stared at Dan, and then there was a hint of a
triumphant grin. "But thanks for the booze."

Dan stared back at him. Then Grace spoke up from behind Gutowski.

"Commander, there's an easier way."

Dan didn't know where she was going with it, but he followed her lead.

"Yes?"

"We go downtown, talk to the FBI, get a couple of local Italian names.

We go talk to them, let it drop that Mr. Body Beautiful here said some
things implicating the family in our case." She paused to let it sink
in.

"Why don't you just leave Mr. Gutowski here a card. I think he's going
to need to find us before we'll need to find him."

"Sounds like a plan," Dan said, moving to get up.

"Hey, wait a god damned minute," Gutowski protested.

"You can't do that! I didn't say shit to you guys!"

"But you will," Dan
said, fishing for his business cards. "I'm glad you enjoyed that booze.

Careful of where you walk next couple of days."

"Wait a minute, wait a god damned minute here. Sid down. You guys fuckin'
nuts, or what?"

"Your memory coming back, Mr. Gutowski?"

Gutowski looked around to see how far away the bartender was before
answering. He hunched his shoulders and lowered his head, not looking
directly at Dan anymore.

"I don't know nuthin', okay? I jist heard some shit, here'n there,
around the yard. This is two years ago, awright? Shit's kinda fuzzy."

"I understand. So what was the word?"

"The black guy--the Navy said he was a paymaster.

Word was that he shagged ass with the payroll from the ship."

"Was that the Luce?"

"I dunno. One a the ships in the yard. Whatever.

They was all lookin' for him, but not in the yard. Word was he'd booked,
see?"

"But he hadn't."

"Yeah, well, that's the funny thing, you talkin' about the guineas. A
coupla months after this ni--black guy splits, the word goes around that
the payroll story is all bullshit, that what really happened is that it
was a hit-- the guy got whacked. Reason I remember is that the guy who
told me got his ass kicked by some a the goombahs from the inside
machine shop, runnin' his mouth 'bout shit that didn't concern him, you
know? They beat that guy up pretty good, and then there wasn't no more
said about it, you follow me?"

"Nothing about stashing the guy in the battleship?"

"Hell no. I mean, shit, those god damned battleships are spooky enough
without no dead bodies in 'em.

Word like that ever got out, nobody in the Seventy-two shop would ever
go in one again. Everybody knows them things are haunted-up."

Dan sat back and looked at Grace, who shrugged.

The front door opened and two men came in, both sporting shipyard hard
hats. Grace gave Dan the high sign, and Dan got up out of the booth. He
was about to thank Gutowski, but something in Grace's expression stopped
him. She stepped around Dan and looked down at Gutowski.

"Since you wouldn't cooperate with us, Mr. Gutowski, we're going to go
get a bench warrant and bring you in for formal questioning," she
announced in a loud voice. "So maybe you'd better rethink your story
between now and then. Thanks for nothing. Commander."

They walked past the two staring newcomers and out of the bar. Dan
remembered that Broad Street, the main drag, was back to the right, so
they turned in that direction.

"You think Gutowski figured out you were doing him a favor?" Dan asked.

"I very much doubt it," she said. "His brain is so booze-soaked, he
probably can't figure out his name most of the time. But that was an
interesting story."

Dan nodded as he looked around for a cab. When they reached Broad, there
was a heavy volume of traffic coming from the direction of the shipyard,
but no cabs in sight on their side of the avenue. Some of the locals
were staring curiously at his uniform.

"What the hell, you want to walk it? It's not raining, and I think it
was only about ten blocks."

"I suppose we can," she said. "As long as it's daylight.

That area around the stadium did not look too promising."

"Don't you carry a gun?" he asked as they started walking.

"Not normally, although I am licensed to, or was.

Now that I think about it, being in Career Services, I'm not sure that
the license is still valid. Only the field investigators go armed, and
then not all the time."

"Pity. I'd bet a lot of these guys around here are carrying.

What'd you think of Gutowski's story about this being a mob hit of some
kind."

She concentrated on getting across the next street before replying. Dan
found he had to shorten his stride so that she could walk without
hurrying.

"Kind of far-fetched. I mean, really, if the supply officer had been
embezzling money, then I could see some kind of involvement with the
mob, you know, loan-sharking, gambling, a drug habit. But if that was
true, we would have stumbled across a separate NIS investigation file
about that in connection with his name by now."

"Your guys at NIS were going to look into that, %M

weren't they? We really need to pull the string on that when we get
back."

"I'll do that."

Dan paused at the next corner. "And," he said, "I kind of think we ought
to keep this angle to ourselves for the moment."

The light changed and they crossed. On the other side, Grace walked on
for a few strides before responding.

"Why do you say that?" she asked. "That almost sounds like you don't
trust Santini, the NIS, or the people at Navbase, for that matter."

He stopped on the sidewalk to face her. "I'm not really sure I do trust
Santini or anybody in the Navbase organization right now. They're angry
that we're here, for different reasons, but they are perfectly capable
of making common cause out of it. In their eyes, whatever we turn up is
going to make Navbase and the NISRA look bad, so I'm not really
expecting much help."

She looked at him. "That's going to make my working with you rather
awkward. If you don't trust the NIS, then you implicitly can't trust
me."

"I didn't say that, Grace."

"I work for them, Dan. You work for Opnav. Opnav has initiated a
potentially lethal gambit against NIS by appointing you to head this
investigation. And frankly, I'm not convinced that actually solving this
case is as important to Opnav as torpedoing the NIS."

Dan resumed walking up the street toward the shipyard.

Grace followed, waiting for an answer. He stopped again.

"Okay. I see your point. You may well be right," he said. "I suspect
that, from the Washington perspective, the power struggle between Opnav
and NIS is paramount, and the case incidental. But that's all the more
reason for you and me to keep our findings to ourselves, 'at least for
now. If we get tangled up in the power game, we're both going to get
chewed up--this battle is being fought by people who are way above your
pay grade and mine. I think the only safe thing for us to do is to focus
on the investigation and go where it leads us. I mean, what the hell, a
naval officer has been murdered here." i She resumed walking this time,
while he walked I alongside, waiting for her answer. He wondered if he
had been wrong to assume they could be partners. She might have much
more at stake careerwise than he had in this investigation. He could
write his report and go on with his naval career. She was probably
trying to salvage her career. Then he saw her nodding to herself.

"All right," she said. "That makes sense. But promise me this: We'll
play the investigation absolutely straight, with nothing held back
between us. And when Opnav does or asks something that's driven entirely
by the rice-bowl issue, you have to let me know. And I'll do the same
for you, okay?"

"But aren't you required to relay that kind of information back to NIS?"

"Aren't you required to do the same thing for your bosses at Opnav?"

He remembered Admiral Carson's instructions--"Be like E. T." He had been
instructed to call home when he had something to tell about the NIS, but
not about the investigation. "Of course," he replied.

"Well, then," she said. "If we both do it, we're square with each other
and we maintain the integrity of the investigation. What the rice-bowl
pooh-bah's do with our 'intelligence' is their problem."

He saw the logic of it. Maintaining the integrity of the investigation
was their only protection, he as a line commander conducting a JAG
investigation, she as a career investigator trying to reestablish her
professional reputation.

"You're absolutely right. God, that's scary."

"What's scary?"

"A woman who makes perfectly logical sense."

"Up thine, as the Quakers are wont to say," she said, and he laughed out
loud. She gave him a quick grin.

They could see the main gates to the shipyard about five blocks ahead.

"I presume you're going to check right in with Navbase?" she asked
sweetly. ;,,;,,

Dan groaned above the noise of the traffic. "It's four o'clock," he
said. "So, actually, I was hoping just to knock off ship's work and go
out on liberty. But I suspect there may be a phone call or six waiting
for me from my new friends at Navbase. Mcgonagle is probably really
unhappy with me by now."

Santini was waiting for them when they got back to the NIS office. The
rest of the NIS crew was wrapping up for the day. Santini indeed had a
handful of yellow phone message slips in his hand for Dan, and one for
Grace.

"Commander Popularity," he said, handing Dan the phone messages. "The
Navbase EA especially wants you to check in. Apparently, the press
conference was not such a wonderful time. Lieutenant Commander Mcgonagle
is not a happy camper just now."

"I can just imagine," Dan said. "Grace, why don't you go over what Mr.

Santini here has produced from his local files while I go make some
phone calls."

Dan sat down in his borrowed chair and scanned the messages. The first
one caught his eye immediately: from Captain Manning, the 06 EA. There
was another "call me" message from the Navbase EA, and three from
Mcgonagle. The rest were from journalists. He checked his watch and
decided to take the EAs in order of importance. He tried the 06 EA
first.

"Vice Admiral Layman's office, Senior Chief Preston speaking, sir."

"Senior Chief, this is Commander Collins calling from Philly. Is Captain
Manning available?"

"Let me check, Commander," the chief said, putting
Dan on hold. The chief came back a minute later. "He's attending the JCS
debrief right now, Commander. He asked that you call back in thirty
minutes."

"Right. Know what he called about, Senior Chief?"

"Uh, not exactly, sir. I think the VCNO's EA, Captain Randall, called
him, but I don't know the subject."

"Right. Okay. I'll be back in thirty."

Dan hung up, took a deep breath, called the Navbase headquarters, and
asked the yeoman who answered for the EA.

"He's in conference right now with the admiral and the PAO, Commander.

But he did tell me that the admiral would realty like to see you."

Dan grimaced. "I can just imagine, Yeoman Hardy.

Let me see if I can arrange a root canal first, and then I'll run right
over."

The yeoman laughed. "Between you and me, Commander, the admiral yells a
lot, but he's a pretty good guy, actually."

. "Okay, Hardy. I'm in the NIS field office. You guys are right next
door, correct?"

"Yes, sir. Second deck. Executive offices at the end of the hall nearest
the river."

Dan grabbed his commander's hat and found Grace huddled with Santini in
his office. "Comnavbase requests the pleasure of my company on his very
own scaffold," he told her. "Want to come along?"

"Not particularly, but I will," she said, gathering her purse. "We're
done here. Carl, I guess we'll see you in the morning."

As they went down the stairs, Dan asked her what Santini had produced.

Grace stopped in the lobby to consult her notebook. Dan realized that he
needed a notebook of his own.

"Not much. The local NIS files did have a report of the assistant supply
officer's disappearance, but, according to Carl, no indications of any
other kind of investigation.

The ship did an audit of the disbursing operation and found everything
in order. The file contained the standard form for cross-bureau
notifications after thirty days and a copy of the Bupers declaration of
deserter status for one It. (jg) Wesley Hardin."

"Had NIS interviewed anybody in connection with the disappearance?"

"No, although there was a note taped to the declaration form that a Mrs.

Hardin had called in and that the call had been returned by a Mr. Kent
Friedman of the field office. But no info."

"Damn. Was Hardin married?"

"I don't know. Hope not."

they left the shipyard administration building and walked next door to
the Navbase headquarters, a three story building made of brick that was
almost black from industrial pollution. Dan wanted to ask Grace if she
thought Santini was leveling with her, but he decided against it as they
entered the admin building.

The main lobby was decked out like a ship's quarterdeck, complete with a
large wooden steering wheel next to a brass engine-order telegraph,
flags in wooden stands, pictures of all the previous Navbase commanders,
and an entire picture wall of ships that had been built or overhauled in
the Philadelphia yards.

There was a reception desk to one side, but no one present for duty.

They went up the wide staircase to the second floor and walked down the
dusty linoleum hallway, past a row of silent and darkened offices, to
the admiral's office at the far end. Dan opened the glass paneled door
and stood aside for Grace to precede him into the clerical and reception
area. There was a single yeoman working on an antique Wang word
processor, two other empty desks, and a set of bat-wing wooden doors
behind the yeoman's desk. The yeoman looked up, realizing who the
visitors were.

"Commander Collins? I'm YN Three Hardy."

"This is Miss. Snow from the NIS, Hardy. We're here to see the admiral.

But before we go in, I need you to do me a favor. Call this
number--that's the OP-Oh-six front office in the Pentagon--and leave a
message for the EA that I'll call in right after I've seen Admiral
Bostick."

"Can do, Commander. Let me tell them you're here."

But he did not have to; Lieutenant Commander Van Sladen appeared at the
bat-wing doors and motioned for them to come into the admiral's office.

Dan was pleased to see that Vansladen looked just like he sounded:
prissy, smug, and relatively small. Dan was surprised at how plush the
inner office was--deep red carpet, mahogany desk and furniture, a window
wall that gave an impressive view of the Delaware River, the shipyard,
and the upper reaches of Philadelphia's waterfront.

There was a long library table along one picture-covered wall,
surrounded by conference chairs.

The admiral, dressed in his service dress blues minus his jacket, sat at
the head of the table, with a harassed looking Lieutenant Commander
Mcgonagle in a side chair. A large television was on but muted in the
corner of the room. The admiral, an elderly, short man with white hair
and a razor-thin mustache, peered at Collins and then Snow over
half-lens glasses.

"You the Washington weenies?" he asked. He sounded exasperated.

"Yes, sir," Dan answered, preempting the EA's attempts to introduce
them. "I'm Comdr. Dan Collins from Opnav, and this is Miss. Grace Snow
from NIS headquarters."

The admiral grunted but did not invite them to sit down. The EA resumed
his seat, smirking officiously.

"Commander," the admiral began, taking off his glasses. "Why weren't you
at the press conference as I asked you to be?"

"We were conducting interviews with people for the investigation,
Admiral. By the time we were finished, the conference was over."

The admiral shook his head. "Let me tell you something, young man. As
long as you are operating in my area of responsibility, if I want you to
be somewhere, I expect you to be there or to tell me why not. In
advance, understand?"

Dan had had enough. He thought this issue had been settled. "Admiral,
have you spoken with Admiral Carson or Admiral Layman?"

"Nope. And I don't plan to just because you suggested to my EA here that
I should."

Dan nodded. "Admiral, I'm conducting a JAGMAN investigation into what
appears to be a homicide. I was designated as the investigating officer
by direction of the VCNO. I didn't ask for this assignment. But, sir, if
m ' / '

\'&

//

you propose to schedule my time and activities while I'm here, I will
have to file a message report with the Navy JAG that my investigation is
being manipulated by Comnavbase Philadelphia. I have had specific
instructions from Op-Oh-six regarding command influence on this
investigation."

The room went very quiet. Dan thought he heard Grace inhale sharply. The
EA's jaw dropped and the admiral stared hard at Dan, who stared back. He
knew he was out of line in terms of the respect due a rear admiral from
a commander, but he also knew that if he did not stake out his own turf
right now, the admiral and his staff would run him all over the place
until he left. The admiral blinked first. He opened his mouth as if to
say something but then clamped his jaw shut and looked down at the table
for a moment.

"Okay," he said. "Point taken. The integrity of the investigation must
of course be preserved." Dan felt the

I room relax fractionally. "What I do have to do," the admiral
continued, "is to coordinate the public affairs response with
Washington. With CHINFO. Do you wish to be a part of that coordination
or not?"

Dan was about to say yes when Grace Snow spoke up. "We do not, Admiral.

What we need is as complete a screening from the media as we can get. We
would ask that Lieutenant Commander Vansladen not give out our names or
phone numbers to any more members of the press."

The admiral glanced sideways at his EA and then back at Grace. Dan noted
that the EA appeared to be embarrassed. Score one for Grace.

"And you are, again, Miss.--"

"I'm Grace Ellen Snow, Admiral. I'm a GS-fifteen with the NIS. I'm the
operational liaison between Commander Collins's investigation and the
investigative resources of the NIS."

The admiral leaned back in his chair. "I'm confused," he said. "Is the
NIS conducting this investigation or is Opnav?"

"It's an independent one-officer JAGMAN investigation, Admiral," Dan
interjected. "The NIS is acting in support."

"Can I reveal that angle to
the media?" asked Mcgonagle. "There was a question on that from CBS."

"No," said Dan after getting a confirmatory nod from Grace. "What I
suggest we do here is to have Commander Mcgonagle check with me at
fourteen hundred each day, for as long as we're here, anyway. I'll give
her a fact sheet of what I think are releasable bits of information.

She can coordinate that with CHINFO in D. C., and the Navy public
affairs organization can decide what to release and what to hold. You,
sir," he said, indicating the admiral, "would of course be privy to the
facts proposed for release. And if we turn up anything that could be
classified as, let's say, sensational, we will inform your office right
away--through Commander Mcgonagle."

The admiral nodded, his indignation mollified somewhat by Dan's return
to customary deference. Every officer in the room knew that face was
being saved.

"So where do you stand now?" asked the admiral.

Dan reviewed the facts of the case to date, omitting their little
discussion with Gutowski.

"We're kind of in a holding pattern until we get the official results of
the autopsy from the medical examiner," he concluded. "We also need to
study the victim's personal and professional records. We have what
certainly must be a homicide, but we have nothing whatsoever on motive,
or even means, for that matter. We think that somebody killed the
lieutenant and then dumped his body in a ship with no atmosphere. It was
only a fluke that he was found at all; the last time that ship was
mothballed, it was for nearly forty years."

"So somebody meant not only to kill him but also to hide the body for
goddamn ever."

"Yes, sir, that's what it looks like. But we're a long way from having
our hands on the facts to support that or any other conclusions."

"So what's your plan?"

Before Dan could answer, the yeoman stuck his head in.

"Commander Collins, there's a call from the DCNO for Plans and Policy's
office for you."

Dan excused himself from the inner office and took the call out front.

Grace remained in the inner office; Dan could hear her talking as he
picked up the phone.

"Commander Collins speaking, sir."

"This is Captain Manning. I've had a call from Captain Randall."

"The VCNO's EA?"

"That's correct. CHINFO's EA called the VCNO's office and told him that
your investigation has gone public. He wanted to know what you have
turned up so far."

Dan gave him a status report, again omitting anything about the
ex-rigger's theories.

"The locals cooperating?"

"NIS isn't overtly throwing up obstacles, although their records seem to
be pretty slim on this case. The Navbase tried to stick its nose in, but
I think I have that under control."

"The Navbasel Does someone need to be stepped on?"

"No, sir, I don't think so, at least not right now. The main thing is to
keep the press from getting directly to me or the investigation. I plan
to hand in some facts that I think are releasable each day to Navbase
PAO and let them coordinate with CHINFO so that there's a Navy press
position instead of my getting into it."

"That sounds intelligent. But you're pretty sure this is a homicide
case?"

"Yes, sir. Lieutenant Hardin didn't go into that battleship under his
own power."

"How do you know that?"

"Because there's no air down there. The ship is under a nitrogen blanket
from the main deck and below."

There was a moment of silence. "I see," the EA said.

"Very well. Do you have anything else to tell me?"

"No, sir. Bupers is taking care of getting the records and the
CACO--Hardin's family is there in D.C. We're working on the access issue
and reviewing NIS files here while we wait for the forensics to come
back."

"Very well," Manning said again, and then he simply broke the
connection. Dan looked at the phone for a second. And you have a nice
day, too, Captain Cold Fish. Every EA he'd ever met acted like that. The
hell of it was that most of them at the three- and four-star staff level
went from their EA jobs to flag selection and stars of their own, so
their arrogance was based on credible expectations. His own boss,
Captain Summer field, was a notable exception--he had been EA to the
vice chief who had preceded the current incumbent, Admiral Torrance. The
rumor among the action officers was that Summerfield had not gone on to
flag rank purportedly because of his wife's stroke during the second
year of his assignment, which was also the reason he was now in the less
demanding job of branch head of OP-614.

Dan looked at his watch. It was going on 6:00 p.m. He went back into the
inner office. Everyone was watching the local evening news on the
television, where the body in the battleship was receiving prominent
coverage. Mcgonagle's prepared statement was terse and rigidly factual,
and the station ran the tape through three of her "no comment" responses
to questions before cutting back to the reporter for some breathless
speculation. The admiral muted the set.

"I see we're not going to get just a passing reference to this mess," he
said.

"I suggest that you forward all further inquiries directly to CHINFO in
Washington," Grace said. "That way, you can feed them information but
let them take the heat."

"Count on it," Mcgonagle said with feeling.

"Admiral, if we're done here ..." Dan said.

"Yes, I think so. I don't know what else to say other than to ask that
you keep me as informed as you can.

It's the blind side that I'm trying to avoid, Commander."

"Understood, Admiral. We'll do our best. But we can't control all the
sources of information in a place like this. I suspect it was the
ambulance crew, for instance, who called the news guys in the first
place."

"Right. Believe me, I know that problem better than you ever will,
Commander. Until that time when perhaps you get a command of your own,
that is."

at grace's suggestion, they took Dan's car down South Broad Street to
the nearest Mcdonald's for dinner, deciding not to talk about the case
in that very public place. Dan wanted to go back to the O-club for a
beer afterward; as usual, the club was nearly deserted except for a few
stalwarts at the bar. They took a table in the corner. Dan asked her
about the single message she had received back in the NIS office.

"It was my version of your E.T. message," she said.

"Doug Englehardt wanted an update."

"I had a telephone audience with the Oh-six EA," he replied. "He
apparently was being queried by the VCNO's EA."

"These EAs work the web, don't they?" she observed.

"I'm never sure whether I'm speaking to a Navy captain or a vice
admiral's surrogate when I talk to Manning --he's the Oh-six EA. Guy's
just a real bundle of personality."

Grace rotated her glass between her hands slowly.

She knew another EA who was just like that. "Admiral Keeler--he's
director of the NIS--has an executive assistant," she said. "A Captain
Rennselaer. Not a very approachable sort, one of those people who is
considerably better than thee or me. I think he had a claw in my
internal reassignment. Anyway, Doug Englehardt didn't have anything
special to report. Early days, I think."

Dan nodded. "I'm sure Santini's keeping them fully informed, in case you
become corrupted by close association with an Opnav devil."

"What's more
likely," she said, "is that they'll check what I tell them against what
he tells them. I also talked to Robby Booker today, asking him to
expedite our RFI. He implied that the data center was less than
optimistic when he asked for an expedite on it."

"Booker a buddy of yours?"

"Sort of. Actually, yes. I took his side in a nasty little racial
dispute. He lost, which was at least partly his fault, but that's when I
was first tagged as a troublemaker.

He's a product of the streets of Washington-- very smart, cagey, and
energetic. He spends almost all his time in the headquarters. He told me
once that he couldn't believe he got a job there, and that there wasn't
that much to go home to. When it comes to the workings of the NIS
headquarters, though, he's a regular little ferret."

"And he can give you a sense of how the bigs are reacting to this
investigation?"

"Yes. And that might become very helpful. But remember, I was somewhat
suspect before I came out on this assignment."

"Makes me wonder if the various players on my side are telling me
everything they know. Damn, it gets complicated."

She smiled at him and changed the subject. "Do you remember our talking
about this Hardin incident being connected with the mob? And you said a
junior lieutenant was too low level an officer to attract attention?

Now we have someone saying it was a hit. Any second thoughts?"

Dan thought about her question for a moment. He had noticed that she had
maneuvered the direction of the conversation away from their political
relationship.

"What I said before," he replied, "was in the context of a junior
officer discovering something that might inconvenience the mob, and
jaygee's aren't likely to manage that. Now, an officer being involved
personally in drugs or gambling--something that might take him to a loan
shark--well, that's different. We'll need to explore that angle when we
get confirmation that this is Hardin, and then maybe try to talk to
shipmates who served with him in Luce."

"You said that's going to be
hard to do."

"It might. The ship's been decommissioned, and crews and wardroom
officers scatter in two years' time.

We certainly won't find anybody here from Luce, for instance."

"And the records, the bureau, the Hardin family-- they're all back in
Washington, aren't they?"

"Yes. Ah, I see your point. Once we get the facts about the
circumstances of his death, then the rest of this nut may have to be
cracked back in D. C."

She nodded and then began to gather her things. "I agree that we'll need
to exhume Lieutenant Hardin's character before we can approach motive
and suspects. What happened to Hardin will probably be discoverable.

Finding out why this happened will be the tough part."

She got up. "Now I'm tired. I thank you for the gourmet extravaganza
tonight. I'll see you in the morning at the NIS field office, say eight
o'clock?"

"Fine," he said. "I think I'm going to have another beer. I'm not ready
to let go of all this atmosphere."

Grace smiled as she left the club and walked across the parking lot
between the club and the BOQ to her room.

She undressed and decided to take her chances with the shower. The water
pipes clanked and ran some rust initially, but at least there was hot
water. She had not told Dan the entire truth about their RFI's status at
headquarters.

Robby had informed her that the data center had flat out stonewalled
him. The lady who ran the place had pointed dramatically down the hall
toward the admiral's office and told him that she had her instructions
from Rennselaer himself.

"Oh, for God's sake," Grace had erupted. "If that pill's getting into
it, we'll never get any information."

"It's cool," Robby had replied. "Latonya has the night shift in the data
center. Me'n her, we tight. I'll get it."

As she dried off, she thought about Dan Collins. She was faintly
embarrassed at having been positively voluble the other night about her
personal background.

She had told him more than she needed to, and she wondered why. Perhaps
it was that aura of vulnerability about him. He was smart enough to
recognize the general outlines of the turf battle, but perhaps a bit
naive as to exactly how nasty and even personal it could get.

Maybe it was different for the officer corps. She had met other naval
officers like that; they all seemed to believe that there were certain
thresholds of personal honor and integrity, below which one did not go
for something as trivial as bureaucratic power. She well knew that
government civilians took these things much more seriously, and she
sensed that the NIS headquarters mavens were circling the wagons over
this one.

Even Doug Englehardt, who was as close to a rabbi as she would have in
the NIS organization, was not to be trusted entirely, especially since
he was as interested in her personally as professionally. She had
rebuffed a few subtle advances, and now, much as she needed a friend in
upper management, she sensed that if it came to making a choice between
keeping his job and saving hers, Englehardt would drop her over the
Anacostia River seawall in a heartbeat. Wasn't government fun.

Dan awoke early Thursday morning. Checking out what looked like the
beginnings of a nice day outside, he decided to go for a short run
around the grounds of the base. As he went out the BOQ doors to the
parking lot, he encountered Grace Snow, who apparently had had the same
idea. She was dressed out in a gray jersey tank top, some flimsy running
shorts, and expensive-looking running shoes, and she was performing some
interesting stretching exercises. Definitely a woman. He enjoyed the
view for a minute before she noticed him and straightened back up, her
face slightly flushed.

"Morning," he called. "Didn't figure you for a runner."

"Why, do I look
that soft?" she asked, gathering her hair up into a barrette.

"Not at all. Well, maybe. I mean--" He stopped in some confusion when he
realized she was laughing at him. "Aw hell, you want some company?"

"Sure." He did his own warmup and then they took off at a brisk pace,
jogging down a perimeter road that went out along the abandoned runways
of a now-defunct naval airfield and down to the Delaware River , itself,
where they encountered several other runners out I enjoying the
promising April morning. She kept up with him easily, challenging his
casual assumption that she wouldn't be able to stay up with a man who
ran five miles as easily as most men walked one block. They rounded the
perimeter of the airfield and doubled back, enjoying the sunrise
appearing over the gleaming steel stacks of the refineries across the
river. When they finally got back to the main base area and dropped down
into a walk, he had to work at it to keep from staring at her body,
which in the flush of exertion was stirring some urges he hadn't felt in
several years. He found himself imagining that this was how her face
might look if they were making love. The thought surprised him. If she
was aware of his interest, she gave no sign of it.

They agreed to meet in the NIS field office at 0730.

Once there, Santini told them that the medical examiner's office had
called. They had a preliminary report.

He asked if Dan wanted to go over to the ME's office to talk to them or
whether he should have them just fax it. He added that the ME needed
those medical and dental records from the Navy. Dan had no desire to
visit the city morgue, so he told Santini to get the prelim faxed over
to them. He then called the master chief down in Bupers to get a status
on the records.

"No status is what we've got, Commander. St. Louis says they're working
on it."

"Is it possible to put a priority push on the dental records--we need
them for a positive ID."

"I know, but with that outfit, I'd recommend them pressing ahead for the
whole shebang. Now, you want a positive ID, you do have another
alternative."

"What's that?"

"Get the CACO to get a family member up to Philly."

"Wow," Dan said. "I'd have to think about that. The body is ... well,
it's not mangled or anything, but it is ... well, mummified. Looks like
something out of the British Museum. That might be nightmare territory
for a close relative."

"I don't know, Commander. I've talked to the CACO --she's a Lieutenant
Shea out of Navsea, over in Crystal City. There's only one close
relative, and that's Har din's mother. I get the impression that knowing
what happened to her missing son might be more important than what she's
gonna see. You wanna talk to the CACO?"

"Yeah, I guess I'd better."

The master chief gave him Lieutenant Shea's phone number, and he was
dialing it as Grace came into his cubicle with two coffees. He told her
whom he was calling as the phone was ringing at the other end, then
indicated for her to pick up the extension at another desk. He got
Lieutenant Shea, identified himself, and asked her what she thought
about having the mother come up to Philly to make an ID. To his
surprise, she approved right away.

"I think we ought to do that, Commander. But I have to warn you, she's a
pretty tough lady, and she's displaying a whole lot of animosity toward
the Navy."

"Any idea why?"

"Well, sir, for starters, she had two children, a son and a daughter.

Both went into the Navy."

"Yes, so?"

"And both are dead."

"Say again?" He saw Grace taking notes, and an elusive memory began to
twitch somewhere in his head.

"That's right. The daughter was a lieutenant at CHINFO; she died in a
traffic accident over in the District --a hit-and-run thing. Nobody was
ever picked up for it. Two years ago. And then about two weeks after
that happened, her son, also in the Navy, disappears. A master chief
over in the bureau alerted me to check into this before I called on the
family, and that's the story."

Then Dan remembered: Lieutenant Commander Mcgonagle had mentioned that
she remembered the name. He had even told Manning. He shook his head.

Better start writing this stuff down.

"Right," he said. "The base PAO up here knew something about that. I'd
forgotten."

"Yes, sir. Well, I've visited the mother, Mrs. Hardin, twice. She was
unfriendly, and I initially thought it was a black-white thing, but now
I don't think so. I get the impression--and that's all this is,
Commander, an impression, okay? I have no facts here. But I think she
thinks the Navy somehow had something to do with her daughter's death
and is maybe now covering up--or perhaps never properly
investigated--her son's disappearance."

"Covering up a traffic accident? But why? And what was her reaction to
the news that we might have found her son?"

"Sort of a suspicions-confirmed thing. Some nasty talk about how long
we, the Navy, have been covering this thing up, that sort of thing.

She's very angry and very distrustful."

"You have my sympathy, Lieutenant. Being a CACO is tough enough without
this kind of stuff."

"The manual says that the bereaved react in
different ways, and this is one of them, I suppose. What do you want me
to do, Commander? I'd like to move this little assignment right along,
if you know what I'm saying."

"Yeah, well, we're at the point where we really need a positive ID. Let
me talk to my, uh, people up here. I'll get back to you shortly."

Dan hung up and looked over at Grace. He had almost said "partner," but
then, realizing she was listening, changed his mind at the last second.

When she walked back over to his cubicle, he told her that the
Philadelphia ME's office was faxing out a prelim on the cause of death
but that without the dental records, they could not make a positive
identification.

"Which is why you're proposing the mother come up here?"

"Yes. But you heard the CACO--that's apparently going to be even more
awkward than it would normally be. I'm a little worried about the press
angle--some news ghoul finds out she's here to make the ID, and

then she gets on the air with all sorts of wild accusations about a Navy
cover-up, you know?"

Grace nodded. "But what the investigation needs is a positive ID. The
Navy has a whole press corps to deal with the other problem."

Dan shook his head. "Mcgonagle's gonna really hate us now. Okay, I'll
set it up. I'll call the master chief at Bupers and the CACO back; how
about you getting back to the Philadelphia medical examiner's office and
tell them what we're planning, and see how one does this sort of thing.

It's early; maybe we can get this thing in motion today."

An hour later, the secretary brought Dan the fax of the forensics
report. He asked her to tell Miss. Snow that it was in, and then he
scanned the report.

Preliminary report only; full anatomical and toxicological studies to
follow. Black male, early to mid-twenties. Time of death not capable of
estimation, but the victim had been dead for more than a year. Body
desiccated but reasonably well preserved. Cause of death attributed to
suffocation, preceded by a blow to the back of the head.

Some signs of ligatures on arms and legs. The head injury was adjudged
to have been capable of causing unconsciousness but not death.

Dan frowned when he read that the fingers on both hands were remarkable
in that they were severely abraded, with broken nails and badly torn
skin. Elbows and knees showed signs of contusions before death. The
degree of desiccation was not entirely consistent with immersion in a
nitrogen atmosphere. In the opinion of the pathologist, the body was
emaciated as well as desiccated.

He put the fax down and thought about it, then sat bolt upright when he
realized what that final comment implied. Emaciated? He had starved to
death?

"Jesus H. Christ!" he exclaimed.

"What?" asked Grace as she stepped into his cubicle.

"You read this. But I think the pathologist is saying that Hardin was
alive when he was shut up in that steam drum."

"Alive? Oh my God," Grace
said, her face going white as she sank down into a chair. Dan handed her
the report and picked up the telephone. He called the shipyard operator
and asked for the shipyard Production office. A civilian secretary
answered the phone.

Dan identified himself and then posed his question.

"Can someone there tell me when the Wisconsin was actually deactivated?"

"Hold on."

After a minute's wait, an older man's voice came on the line.

"This is George Warren, Commander. I work for the Production
superintendent. You have a question about the Wisconsin deactivation?"

"Yes, Mr. Warren. Can you tell me precisely when she was deactivated?"

"Sure--it was September of 1991. I remember it because Wisconsin had
been the last one of the battlewagons to be reactivated, and yet it was
the first one to go back into mothballs after Desert Storm. Everybody
thought it was pretty dumb."

"I'm a surface-ship guy, Mr. Warren. You won't get an argument from me
about that," Dan said. "But what I really need to know is when the ship
filled with nitrogen?

Did that happen when she was deactivated?"

"Oh, no, sir, not hardly. Deactivation takes awhile.

They do the ceremony and all that, but that's nothing.

We have to empty, clean, and then gas-free all the tanks and voids in
the ship, and there's several hundred of those on a sixty-thousand-ton
ship. And then we have to seal the systems up all throughout the
engineering spaces and in the sixteen-inch and five-inch gun turrets.

Then we have to install all the space alarms and string some temporary
lighting throughout the ship, and we're talking about a mile's worth of
cables and lights in all those passageways. You must remember, she's
nearly three football fields long an dover thirty yards wide, okay? Then
we button up all the compartments, one by one. Close and seal the
hatches. The whole deal takes nearly six months to actually put her to
sleep. The nitrogen backfill comes last, and that takes about two weeks
to do the atmosphere exchange below the main deck."

"I get the picture,
Mr. Warren," Dan said.

"Say, is this about that body they found?"

"Yes. I'm the investigating officer. And I guess what I really need are
the precise dates for the start and completion of the nitrogen backfill.

Will your records show that?"

"Sure, but I'll have to access some archives. What's your number?"

Dan gave him the NIS office number and hung up.

He looked at Grace. "Well?" he asked.

"I think you're right. We've been assuming that he was put in the ship
after the atmosphere had been removed.

This thing suggests he was alive when they sealed him up in there." She
shivered at the thought.

"Well, we'll know shortly. If Production's records show that the
nitrogen backfill happened after Hardin was declared missing ..."

"How awful. Buried alive!" She shivered again, apparently unable to
dislodge the image of the lieutenant regaining consciousness in the
steely blackness of a boiler steam drum, three decks down in the armored
bowels of a deserted battleship.

Dan spent the rest of the morning bringing his report up to date, while
Grace chased down the details of USS Luce's overhaul to nail down dates
and circumstances around the time of the alleged murder. The CACO called
back at noon to report that she would have Mrs. Hardin in Philadelphia
late that afternoon. They went to lunch at the club, then conferred with
Santini's investigators to transcribe their crime-scene findings into
the investigation report.

by five o'clock, Grace and Dan were waiting in the reception area of the
Philadelphia County Medical Examiner's Office on University Avenue,
which was across the Schuylkill river from downtown Philadelphia.

Because Mrs. Hardin was coming, Dan was dressed in service dress blues,
and Grace was looking almost formal in a dark three-piece suit with a
straight skirt, a four button vest, and a hip-length jacket. The CACO,
Lieutenant Shea, had called in from the airport that they were on their
way, but the receptionist on duty at the desk had suggested that they
not hold their breath, the traffic around the airport being a bear in
the late afternoon.

The receptionist had reviewed the morgue viewing procedure with both of
them, notified the duty examiner that a viewing was in the works, and
then went back to her desk. There was a television set in the corner of
the reception room, and Dan was watching the early-evening news while
Grace reread the ME's report.

Warren at Production had confirmed that the nitrogen backfill had begun
seven days after Hardin's disappearance.

Dan sighed as he thought about that again.

Christ. The poor bastard. And the sleazoid press would have a field day
if this got out. But so far, there had been only a sixty-second spot on
the body in the battleship on the early news. Lieutenant Commander
Mcgonagle arrived a few minutes later, looking worried.

"Somehow, they've found out the mother's coming in," she announced
without preamble--"they" obviously meaning the media. "There's a Channel
Ten press van setting up shop outside, as we speak."

"Wonderful. Somebody here, probably," grunted Dan, eyeing the
receptionist. "I had to tell them all earlier that she was coming,
because it was going to be near closing time."

Mcgonagle nodded, getting out her notebook. "I'll try to give her a
briefing, accompany her through the door when it's time. Maybe keep it
down to a discreet mob scene. If we're lucky, there'll be only the one
station."

Dan stood up and went over to mute the television.

"I don't know about that," he said. "Apparently, she is not too friendly
toward things Navy. She may want to go out there and throw some gasoline
on the fire. And we've got some unsettling feedback from the ME's
office."

Mcgonagle looked at his expression and then opened her notebook
expectantly. Dan could see that the receptionist at the front desk was
trying hard to eavesdrop, so he lowered his voice and back-briefed
Mcgonagle on his conversations with the CACO, then concluded with the
disturbing implications of the ME's report. Mcgonagle swore softly when
she heard the part about the lieutenant being entombed alive. Grace
intervened as he finished up.

"We're not going to tell her that, are we? His mother?"

"No," Dan said.

"I'd like to keep that under wraps for as long as we can. Maybe we can
use the ploy that it's inside information--only the killers would have
known that, so please don't release it."

"Nice try," said Mcgonagle. "But there'll be a Freedom of Information
Act request coming the moment you try to sequester that report. I have
to call CHINFO with this. Right now." Grace said, "Dan, we need to
remember that this is a mother coming to see the remains of her son. I
know we all have to worry about the media angle, but I suggest Commander
Mcgonagle handle that while you and I concentrate on breaking down
whatever barriers she has erected against the Navy. Her cooperation may
be crucial to our investigation."

Dan nodded even as Mcgonagle scowled. But Grace was right--again. Focus
on the investigation.

Mcgonagle went to the window in the reception room and then turned
around hurriedly.

"I suggest you two find an office to hide out in; the lady vampire from
Channel Ten is headed in."

The receptionist reluctantly found them an empty office two doors down
the hall and then went back to call her supervisor in the medical
examiner's office about the press interest. Dan sat on the edge of a
desk; Grace took the chair while they waited. They had argued earlier
about whether or not to introduce themselves to Mrs. Hardin as
investigators right away or to let the CACO take her through the viewing
first. Dan had been against trying to talk to her.

"She's already mad at us, or the Navy, anyway. She's going to be in
shock at seeing her son, assuming this is her son. I think it would be a
lousy time for us to start with the questions," he had argued.

Grace had disagreed. "All of that is true, but I think we must at least
identify ourselves as the Navy's investigation team. I think the right
tack is simply to introduce ourselves and tell her we are trying to find
out what happened. If I understand it, she's mad at the Navy because she
thinks no one cares about what happened--to both of her children."

"Don't you think we'll just poison the well?"

"No. If it's just the CACO with her, she's going to feel like she's
being shepherded but that no one cares.

And because we're in the city morgue, it's even worse-- in the morgue,
no one really does care. This is just another body."

"I guess I'm just not eager to get a tongue-lashing from a bereaved
parent."

"We're going to need this woman if this is indeed Lieutenant Hardin.

Let's just introduce ourselves.

That's all--no questions, nothing about--you know, unless it's
unavoidable. No hassle. Just let her see that someone, someone fairly
senior-looking in the person of a full commander, USN, is working the
case. Later, when we have to ask her questions, at least she will know
who we are."

He had appreciated the sense of it but was still apprehensive.

The fact that the lieutenant had been buried alive was still bothering
him. Maybe a week, a couple hundred hours before the nitrogen had come
seeping in through the boiler tubes to end it. In the end, he had agreed
to let Mcgonagle and the CACO escort Mrs. Hardin through the press,
which, so far, consisted of one TV news team. The receptionist would
then have to keep the hounds at bay, and he and Grace would meet Mrs.

Hardin, explain who they were, and then accompany her to the
identification room. The receptionist was supposed to call them when the
CACO arrived. Dan was fidgeting with his uniform buttons when the phone
rang.

"I think they're here, Commander," the receptionist said. "A female Navy
type and an older woman are getting out of a taxi out front. The other
Navy lady is on her way out front."

Dan thanked her, straightened out his uniform, and cracked open the
office door. A minute later, he and Grace stepped out to intercept Mrs.

Hardin, escorted by Lieutenant Shea, the duty forensics investigator,
and a woman from the Grief Assistance Program in the hallway. The
receptionist had closed off the hallway doors to prevent the TV news
reporter and her cameraman from filming them. Dan introduced himself and
Grace Snow while continuing to walk with her down the hall to the
identification room. The forensics investigator from the morgue led the
way, his face a professionally blank mask. Lieutenant Shea brought up
the rear.

Mrs. Hardin was a short, trim woman in her mid fifties, with gray hair,
an alert round face, mahogany hued skin, and weary, intelligent eyes.

She appeared to be composed, with no outward signs of nervousness or
apprehension. Like she already knows, Dan thought.

"Mrs. Hardin," Dan said, "I'm Comdr. Dan Collins from the Department of
the Navy, and this is Miss. Grace Snow from the Naval Investigative
Service.

We've been assigned by Washington headquarters to investigate the
circumstances surrounding the discovery of a body in the mothballed ship
USS Wisconsin. We have reason to believe that this might be your son,
It.

(jg) Wesley Hardin. We very much appreciate your coming up here to
Philadelphia."

Mrs. Hardin looked up at him. When she spoke, her voice was surprisingly
husky, hinting perhaps of a lifetime of cigarette smoking.

"Lieutenant Shea told me you would be here, Commander Collins. Is this
my son these people have in here?"

As the investigator turned a corner, Dan stopped, now that they were out
of range of the newspeople.

"We think so, Mrs. Hardin," he replied. "But our identification is based
only on two distinguishing features: Your son's name was on the uniform
pants and shirt, and that uniform is that of a lieutenant junior grade
in the Navy Supply Corps. And second, the person is--was --black."

Mrs. Hardin looked at Grace and then back at Dan.

"If this city is anything like Washington, a body in the morgue being
black would hardly be a distinguishing feature," she said.

"Yes, ma'am, that's probably true." Dan tried to think of something
intelligent to say while Mrs. Hardin watched him, waiting. He decided to
move it along.

"I think the procedure here is that we go to the identification room,
where they will take down some information for the death certificate."

"Will I get to see him?" she asked.

"Not in person, Mrs. Hardin," the investigator interjected.

He was a youngish white man dressed in khaki slacks, with a white
medical jacket over his white shirt and tie. "The way it works, we have
a television monitor in the identification room. We'll dim the lights
and then turn on the monitor, which will give you a facial view of the
deceased. We'll ask for your identification at that time."

"I can't touch him, see him up close?"

"No, ma'am. We don't do it that way anymore. If this is your son, your
funeral director can help you with that. It's this way, please, ma'am."

The woman from the Grief Assistance Program took Mrs. Hardin's arm and
spoke quietly to her, finally eliciting a nod. "Let's get it done," Mrs.

Hardin said to the investigator, who nodded and walked ahead to the
identification room.

Dan and Grace followed her down the hall, through two turns into
different hallways, and then into the viewing room itself. The viewing
room was an austere space with four blank white walls, a carpeted floor,
and three chairs set in front of a large, darkened television monitor
mounted on a TV cart. The forensics investigator motioned for Mrs.

Hardin to sit in the center chair, then brought over a clipboard and sat
down next to her to take down the information for the death certificate.

When he was finished, he made a phone call. Dan and Grace Snow stood
behind the chairs, as did the rest of the group.

The young man came back over to Mrs. Hardin. "If you're ready, Mrs.

Hardin," he said.

"All right," she replied.

The man reached up behind the monitor and operated a dimmer switch,
which brought the lights in the room down to low power. He then reached
up to the side of the monitor and turned it on; after a few seconds, an
image appeared, showing the head and face of the body in close-up. Mrs.

Hardin stared for several seconds, sighed, and then seemed to slump in
the chair.

Finally, she nodded and stretched out her right hand as if to touch the
image, but then she dropped it.

"Yes. That's my son, Wesley Hardin. God rest his soul."

The investigator thanked her and turned off the television, nodded at
the woman from Grief Assistance Program, and left the room. They then
retired to the Grief Assistance Program's counseling office next door,
where Mrs. Hardin was asked if she wanted anything, some coffee, or
whatever. She shook her head and sat down carefully on a couch. Grace
sat down on the couch next to her, and Dan sat in one of the chairs.

Lieutenant Shea remained standing in the middle of the room, staring at
the floor. Dan described the general circumstances of the body's
discovery and then his own tasking with regards to the investigation.

Mrs. Hardin sat silently, and Dan could not tell if she was taking it in
or was still in shock from seeing her son.

"Mrs. Hardin," he finished, "we're all very sorry for what you've had to
go through today. I can't promise you that we're going to be able to
find out what happened, but I can promise you that we're going to try
very hard to find out."

Mrs. Hardin finally looked over at him, and then she began shaking her
head slowly, as if to deny what he had just said.

"No, sir," she said quietly. Then louder: "No, sir. You were doing all
right until you said that. I know. I know that isn't true. It wasn't
true when Elizabeth died, and it won't be true now; this I know. My
"Lizbeth, she was a lieutenant in the Navy, too. Did you know that?"

"Yes, ma'am. We just found that out today. I guess your family hasn't
had much luck with the Navy." Even as he said it, he realized how
famous he must sound.

"Mrs. Hardin snorted and tossed her head. She fished around in her purse
for a handkerchief, which she used to dab at her eyes. When Dan saw that
she was crying, he looked over at Grace as if to say, Now what?

"Mrs. Hardin," Grace said, "we are sorry for your loss, for both your
losses. We're new to this case. We know very little at this point. But
Commander Collins here has been appointed by the most senior officers in
the Navy to find out what happened here. And if something happened to
your daughter that hasn't been explained, and if it's related to this
case, we will broaden our investigation if we have to."

Dan was alarmed at Grace's promise to broaden the investigation. The
daughter had died in a traffic accident.

If the D.C. cops hadn't been able to solve that, there was no way in
hell they could do it. But Grace was continuing.

"Mrs. Hardin, your son's body has been in that ship for nearly two
years. We are going to have to reconstruct the last days of his life
here in the shipyard to see if we can find out why he was murdered."

Mrs. Hardin sat up. "Murdered? You say murdered?"

Grace looked up as Dan flushed. He thought someone would have told her.

We just did, dummy.

"Yes, ma'am," Grace said, her voice steady. "The medical examiner's
report indicates he was hit over the head. We're surmising that he was
then put down in the ship so that his body would never be found. But,
yes, someone killed your son. That is why we are not just going to file
this case away as another unexplained disappearance."

Mrs. Hardin stared across the room, her eyes unfocused, her upper body
rocking ever so slightly back and forth. It was obvious to Dan that it
had never occurred to her that her son had been murdered. He leaned
forward in his chair.

"This isn't the time or place for us to ask you questions, Mrs. Hardin.

Lieutenant Shea here will help you make arrangements to take your son's
body home. But later, after you've had some time, we will need to come
see you."

But Mrs. Hardin was shaking her head again. "No," she said. "No. Lord
God knows I've had enough of the Navy. Look what it's done to my
children. Done to me.

No. You want to go play detective, you go do it. But you leave me alone.

I've had enough pain with the Navy."

Grace gave Dan a "let's leave it right there" look, then got up.

"Mrs. Hardin," she said, "we are very sorry for your loss. Lieutenant
Shea and this office will help you with the paperwork. Thank you for
taking the time to talk to us."

Mrs. Hardin would not look at them. Dan rose from his chair and followed
Grace out of the room, pulling the door to close behind him. Lieutenant
Shea, the CACO, came out a moment later.

"What do I do about the reporters, Commander?" she asked.

"Duck 'em if you can. Maybe see if there's another exit you can take.

Have the cab meet you in back or something ... I don't know. Commander
Mcgonagle is up there now. You might contact the receptionist, see if
she can tell you what's going on. Do whatever Command Mcgonagle
recommends. We're going to find a back door."

"Aye, aye, sir," Shea
said, giving him a less-than-respectful look before going back inside.

The investigator was coming back down the hall, bearing a folder.

"If you have a moment, Commander?" he said.

"Yes, what is it?"

"Normally, we have to have two people to make a formal identification. I
understand that this lady is the young man's mother, but is there anyone
else?"

"She flew up from Washington for this," Dan said. "I don't think there's
anyone else, certainly not here in Philadelphia, anyway."

"Can you offer any identification, Commander?"

"Only that he matches the description of an officer who disappeared in
the shipyard two years ago, and the name and rank stenciled into his
uniform matches Wesley Hardin. We'll have medical and dental records
coming up from the federal archives pretty soon. Can you use those?"

"Yes indeed. We'd appreciate it if you'd make sure we get those. But I
think we have enough to release. I'll go tell Grief Assistance and Mrs.

Hardin's escort.

Thanks."

"Is there a way out of the building that avoids the front reception
area? There are reporters up there we don't want to talk to."

"Yes, sir--go that way, down that hall to the end, then turn right out
the door marked fire exit. But call the receptionist up front first so
she doesn't get an alarm on the door. Just dial three-three on any
phone."

They followed his instructions and found themselves in the parking lot
behind the medical examiner's building.

Dan let out a loud exhalation after they were outside.

"Gosh, that was just wonderful," he said.

Grace looked at the ground. "Thank God they have that Grief Assistance
Program; that woman told me Philadelphia is the only city that has one."

"I feel like a rat, running out like that," Dan said.

"But I really wanted out of there."

"That poor woman," Grace said. "I'm not sure I can blame her."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Both of her children, for Christ's sake."

"Do you suppose there's a connection?"

"Grace, c'mon."

"I suppose you're right," she said with a sigh. The high-rise buildings
of downtown Philadelphia were barely visible in the smog haze across the
river. "If we're through here, I think I need a drink."

on friday morning, Dan called a meeting with Grace, Santini, and
Lieutenant Commanders Mcgonagle and Vansladen in the NIS field office
conference room.

"Time to recapitulate, I think," he said. "We now have a reasonably
positive ID on the body in the battleship.

We have a preliminary medical examiner's report that indicates a
homicide, with evidence that the victim was hit on the head and
otherwise beaten up prior to being taken to the boiler room on the
battleship. We also have a forensic opinion that suggests the victim was
alive when bolted into that steam drum. The shipyard records indicate
that the cold nitrogen atmosphere that actually killed him was injected
around seven days after he went missing."

"Jesus Christ," Vansladen
said. He had obviously not known about the time lag.

"Yeah," Dan continued. "We are assuming that the incident happened
around two years ago, when the victim was first reported UA. We know
that the victim was assigned as the disbursing officer in USS Luce.

There is local press interest, and the potential for national media
interest. What we do not have is a motive, or any suspects."

"And a very cold trail," offered Santini.

"Very cold indeed," Dan agreed. "But, to paraphrase John Paul Jones,
we've just begun to look. Miss. Mcgonagle, what's the state of play in
the press?"

"We've had two nights of local news coverage, but no national
coverage--yet. So far, they've played it pretty straight: facts about
the discovery, and today an ID on the body now that next of kin has been
notified. No mention of homicide, and no speculation on the fact that a
Washington Navy headquarters officer is conducting the investigation.

But it's only a matter of time."

Dan nodded and turned to Grace Snow.

"Miss. Snow, I request that you initiate tasking via NIS headquarters to
have the Philadelphia NIS field office explore the issue of access to
the battleship. I want everyone in Shop Seventy-two who could have had
access to that ship interviewed. I want to find out specifically if
anyone still working here in the shipyard also had access in 1992 when
we think this incident took place. In these interviews, I specifically
want their opinions as to how hard it would be for unauthorized
personnel to gain access. Mr. Santini, you're familiar with the
facts-versus-opinion methodology of a JAGMAN investigation?"

"Yes,"

Santini said. He did not appear to be overjoyed to hear that tasking was
inbound, but Dan was pleased to see that he was taking notes.

"I want you to interview all current riggers, and if you develop leads
to former riggers who reasonably can be reached, I want them
interviewed, as well. I'm not optimistic we'll dig up anything, but
these are the guys who should have had access to the ship. Some of them
were either involved or made it possible for others to put that man in
there. The fact that it might have happened before the nitrogen blanket
went on actually widens the possible suspect list--no breathing
apparatus would have been needed."

"Current and former employees?" protested Santini.

"That could go on forever."

"Why don't we limit it to the time frame of the incident, then," Grace
suggested. Dan assented and then continued.

"And I need the written procedures and requirements for the
sounding-and-security watches for the inactive ships--what they are
supposed to do and how often. The written procedures will be facts. I
also want opinions as to how the system really works--whether or not
they do the job, or if they just gun-deck the logs and screw off for a
few hours rather than actually go into those ships."

Santini nodded. "That I can predict--they gun-deck the hell out of it if
they're anything like the rest of the yardbirds here."

"Yeah, but we would like to have some hard evidence of that," Dan said.

"That's a different story," Santini said. "These guys don't believe in
ratting out."

"I understand. What I'm hoping for is that a pattern will emerge after
you've talked to enough of them. For example, it took two years before
anyone noticed that a boiler steam drum was buttoned up when it should
have been opened. But I don't want to direct your inquiries into any
given right answer."

"Got it. Miss. Snow, what's the priority on this tasking visa-vis the
rest of the things we're working up here?"

Grace hesitated. She had no idea of how much backing she would really
get from NIS headquarters. "Make it your first priority, Mr. Santini.

I'll confirm that with Mr. Ames back in Washington."

"What are your near-term intentions for the investigation, Commander?"

Vansladen asked. "The admiral asked me to find out."

" 'Near-term,' Mr. Vansladen? The investigation is moving to
Washington."

Dan began to relax as he finally exited the construction zones around
the airport and pushed the big Suburban southeast along Interstate 95.

To his left, the Delaware River glinted in the midmorning sunlight, the
flat surface cut into chevrons of rippling V's as a big tanker plowed
her way down to the sea from the oil refineries upstream.

"That's better," he said to Grace. "We're relatively safe until we get
down to the big bridge; then it's shields-up time again."

Grace smiled at the Star Trek allusion. "I don't know why, but I was
awfully glad to leave that shipyard," she said. "It was a pretty
depressing place."

Dan nodded. He knew firsthand the dismay that accompanied taking a ship
from the clean ocean to the dismal industrial warrens of South
Philadelphia and then having to be a willing accomplice while a bunch of
union goons happily tore the ship up under the guise of an overhaul. It
was enough to break any sailor's heart.

Going there to investigate a murder had been even more depressing.

"I can't stop thinking about Lieutenant Hardin," she said. "Buried alive
inside all that steel."

"We don't know that," Dan said. "That's still an opinion."

"Right. One of your famous JAGMAN opinions."

Dan set the cruise control for sixty-five before replying, conscious
that the locals were breezing past him on either side.

"Rightly famous, because it keeps all us boy investigators honest. You
can't go riding your favorite hobbyhorse if the facts aren't there. And
given that there are some fairly serious political games going down on
the margins of this investigation, you and I have to be doubly careful
to adhere to JAGMAN rules. Triply careful if this thing really hits the
media."

Grace shook her head. "When, not if. And I'm not sure I understand the
political issue anymore."

"Which one--Opnav versus NIS?"

"Yes. Suppose we do untangle this thing, as unlikely as that sounds
right now. But suppose we actually find the murderer and can indict: How
does that really bear on NIS? Or Opnav? The CNO's Washington
headquarters staff is riot going to go into the business of homicide
investigations, is it?"

"I shouldn't think so," Dan said. "But really
senior, permanent civil serpent guys like Ames who run NIS are going to
see their independence threatened if outside line officers end up being
in charge of high-profile investigations. The civilians in NIS would end
up with lofty-sounding titles but no power, and all the rest of the
civil serpents would know it. And the line officers wouldn't have to
come from Opnav, you know. In the JAGMAN system, any damn line officer
can be put in charge of an investigation. Even me."

"All right, but how does that bear on what we do?"

"Damn! Look at that idiot. Right when I thought we were safe. Because as
we start pulling this onion apart and getting closer to a solution--that
is, the Opnav weenie looks like he's going to pull it off--you might
start getting direction from NIS to put diamond dust in the Vaseline."

Grace was silent for a few minutes. Dan let her think about it. What he
hadn't said was that the same pressures might be laid on him: If they
approached success, he was going to be told to ensure that his report
made the NIS input look insignificant.

"I won't do that," she said finally.

"Do what?"

"Sabotage the investigation. I want to know who did this."

"Hell, so do I. But sabotage is too strong a word.

They wouldn't be that overt. They'll simply start throwing obstacles in
the way. Avenues of exploration will be closed off. Field officers like
Santini will go armadillo on us. Reports will get lost, or sanitized.

Priorities will change--remember what you told Santini, about top
priority? Ames or Englehardt could tell him to forget that. That kind of
stuff."

"I won't allow it."

Dan laughed. "Love your spirit," he said. "But people at our level in
government don't have 'allow it' privileges.

If some guy at the 'assistant secretary of level drops a hint to the
organization, be it NIS, the Navy Department, or even Opnav, to
stonewall, you can believe that the permanent civil serpents and all the
EAs will damn well do it. And be very clever and circumspect about it,
too."

"I'm a OS-fifteen, for Christ's sake! And stop saying serpent."

"Sorry about that. Yes, you're a OS-fifteen--in the career-development
business now, as I recall."

She glared at him for a moment, then turned her head to stare out the
window.

"And," he said more gently, "you're an ex-political appointee who
burrowed in. Grace, the same system that eased you out of SEC and into a
late-term political appointment also allowed you to burrow in when
everyone else was scrambling to find a job. Somebody did somebody a
favor, that's all. When you turned out not to be brain-dead, the
entrenched system quickly got you out of policy and into personnel. In
my experience, when the old-timers go to work on you, it's like getting
a sunburn: It feels nice and warm all day, but by sundown you're dying."

Grace treated him to ten minutes of silence before finally sighing out
loud.

"Shit," she said.

"Shit, aye," he agreed.

"And will Opnav indulge in the same kind of games?"

Knew she was smart, he thought. "Absolutely," he said. "Especially if we
start making sense out of this thing. But I'll tell you what: I'm with
you. The thought of that kid being stuffed into a boiler and left to
starve to death in the dark is sticking in my craw. I'd like to propose
that we stick to our deal back there on Broad Street. You and I play
this thing straight--the investigation and what we tell each other--no
matter what."

She nodded. "Yes, no matter what. Although from what you've been telling
me, I may not appreciate the extent of that 'what.' "

"I may not, either." He sighed. "We've got three hours to go. Let's talk
about where to take it from here."

They reviewed what they knew and what they did not know. Dan thought the
next step was obvious: get Har din's records, see what the fitrep file
told them, and then find people who had served with Hardin in Luce-- his
skipper, his exec, his department head, other officers.

Maybe some chiefs in the Supply Department.

"That's going to be a big telephone drill," he said.

"We need a home."

"I can probably get us an office down in the Washington Navy Yard."

Dan shook his head. "My bosses won't allow that."

"Too close to the enemy, hunh?"

"Yup. NIS subversives would bombard my poor brain with super-secret
Q-waves and turn me into a double agent. Opnav would be betrayed and all
would be lost."

She laughed. "No Q-waves in Opnav?"

"Hell no. Opnav just got electricity a few years back.

Before that, it was whale-oil lamps, hemp rigging, bells, signal flags,
and lots of ship pictures. It's rumored that they have a computer
trapped in a room up on the fifth floor. Most of the admirals feel that
if they don't feed it, maybe it'll just die. No, an Opnav office is
perfect.

We'll hang out in OP-Six-fourteen and you can get to see firsthand how
little NIS or anybody else has to fear from Opnav."

They arrived in the Washington area at 2:30, coming onto the 1-495
Beltway from the north. They were able to travel exactly one mile before
all traffic southbound began to congeal. Dan managed to maneuver to an
off ramp, where he went up an dover, heading back westbound around the
Beltway in the counterclockwise direction toward Virginia. With rush
hour impending, he suggested to Grace that he simply take her home.

"There's no point in your trying to get down to the Navy Yard at this
time of day," he said. "I can drop you off, go by the Pentagon and get
us set up for Monday, and then get down to Old Town before the serious
traffic begins."

They agreed to meet at the south parking entrance to the Pentagon on
Monday morning at 8:30. He drove her into Georgetown, made sure that she
got safely into her house, and then zipped across the Key Bridge to
Rosslyn, from where he took 110 down to the Pentagon and found a parking
place close to the building, in north parking.

grace watched the big Suburban thread its way carefully through the two
lines of parked cars crowded t along P Street and then went to her
study. The brick town house had a fairly simple floor plan: a small
front hall that led to stairs on one side and a living room to the
right. There were four rooms on the ground floor: living room, powder
room, dining room, and a spacious eat-in kitchen. Upstairs were two
bedrooms and two baths, as well as a room the Realtor had quaintly
referred to as a "sewing room," which Grace used for storage. The master
bedroom door was at the top of the stairs, with the second bedroom down
a hall, and a guest bathroom separating the two. The sewing room was on
the street side of the house.

Grace had converted the dining room to her home study, since it had a
beautiful view through a bay window of the back walled garden. The
previous owners had added a small pantry combined with an enclosed back
stoop off the kitchen, which meant that Grace tended to live in the
kitchen and study area, going upstairs at night when she was ready for
bed. The guest bedroom was kept ready for company--which never came.

There was a basement, but it was damp and moldy, with old earth showing
between some of the foundation bricks. The furnace, hot-water heater,
and a central air conditioner were down there, but Grace, suspecting
monsters, avoided going down there, and she even had a small bookshelf
placed in front of the basement door in the kitchen. She had a maid in
every other week, and an ancient gardener who took excellent care of all
the patio gardens in that block, albeit on a somewhat random schedule.

When her parents had died, Grace had selected a few pieces of furniture
from the large house in Beacon Hill to bring down to Georgetown,
including a Queen Anne cherry dining room table that now served as her
desk, not that one could see it under all the clutter. She made some
space in front of one of the armchairs and checked her answering
machine--one indignant message from the maid, whom she'd forgotten to
tell that she would be going to Philadelphia. Who's working for whom?

she wondered absently. Silly question. The second message was from
Englehardt. It was short and of the E.T. variety: "Grace please call my
office in the NIS headquarters downtown in the Washington Navy Yard."

She got up, picked up the phone, and moved to the huge high-backed
leather chair her father had brought back from Harrod's and dialed the
number.

"Mr. Englehardt's office."

"This is Grace Snow. Returning his call."

"He's out of the office, Miss. Snow. I'll tell him you called back. Are
you home?" Grace said yes, thanked her, and hung up, then went upstairs
to take a shower and change into casual clothes. She daydreamed about
Dan Collins while she was in the shower, and then she laughingly
wondered what significance her mother, the shrink, would have made of
that. The phone was ringing by the time she got back downstairs. As per
her habit when she was in the house and the phone rang, she let the
machine pick up and listened to the caller identify himself. It was Doug
Englehardt. She picked up.

"Hi, Doug. I'm back, as you can see."

"Hi, Grace. Ames said you were
returning to D.C.

today. How was Philadelphia?"

"Pretty awful. W.C. Fields was right. But then, of course, we had this
grisly crime to brighten up our stay there."

"So I've heard."

Grace hesitated for a moment. "Santini keeping the home front fully
informed?"

"Of course. Ames has him reporting directly to him.

He's still pretty annoyed over this Opnav gambit. He badgered Admiral
Keeler to go to the Secretary of the Navy with it, but the vice chief
had apparently offered Keeler some friendly advice, and nothing came of
it.

For now, anyway, we've lost that round. Ames said Keeler didn't appear
to have his heart in it, for some odd reason."

"This vice whatever seems to get around."

Englehardt laughed. "Admiral Torrance is going to be the next Chief of
Naval Operations, and he's a very powerful and ambitious flag officer.

The way it works traditionally, the vice chief runs day-to-day Navy
policy, while the Chief of Naval Operations spends most of his energy
with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the national policy level. The vice
has usually been the man with the hammer, around with whom one does not
mess, if I can paraphrase Sir Winston."

"I left tasking for Santini. Is that going to be supported?"

This time, it was Englehardt who seemed to hesitate, and Grace found
herself holding her breath.

"I'm not sure, Grace," he said. "I think Ames knows that I'm kind of
your rabbi here, and he was a little coy about that when I asked the
same question. How vital is what you wanted them to do?"

"It's part of a homicide investigation, Doug. This young officer was not
only murdered; he was also mewed up in the steam drum of a ship's boiler
for something like a week before they flooded the ship with cold
nitrogen gas. Basically, the forensic evidence, such as it is, indicates
he was alive in there for some time."

"Jesus Christ. I hadn't heard that."

"Well, it renders the rice-bowl issues more than a little trivial in my
book," she said. She felt herself getting angry and had to remind
herself that this was supposedly her ally she was talking to.

He must have read her mind. "Calm down, Grace.

I'm one of the good guys, remember?"

"I'm sorry, Doug. You are one of the good guys."

"How's this guy Collins? Present for duty?"

"Yes. Rather self-effacing, actually. Makes mistakes and owns up to
them. Pretends not to be very smart but then says things that prove
otherwise."

"Is he committed to what the Opnav elephants are up to?"

"I think not. I have the sense that if they took the invesitgation and
gave it to someone else, he would take it perfectly in stride. Until
then, he's working it."

"Where is he now?"

"On his way home, I would guess. He was going by the Pentagon to arrange
some office space for us next week. He said it wasn't worth my going
into the office by the time we got back. Why do you ask?"

"He's right. You two getting along all right?"

She hesitated for a second or two, then said, "We've sort of reached an
understanding that he and I will work the investigation aboveboard,
without respect to the NIS-Opnav 'food fight,' as he called it. I think
I can trust him."

"Maybe, maybe not. Trust but verify, as Reagan used to say. And now that
you're back in town, keep in touch. I'll keep my ear to the ground for
you."

Grace laughed, thanked him, and said good-bye. She suspected that Doug
Englehardt was still more than a little smitten with her. He was married
and by all appearances reasonably serious about it, and he had never
really overstepped the bounds of propriety. She wasn't so sure about
what might happen if she encouraged him, however. If she had any chance
of getting back into the policy world, Doug's help was going to be the
key. But his comment about Ames reminded her that he was also a
survivor: If he had to choose between supporting Grace and saving his
own hide, there was little question in Grace's mind as to how that would
come out. Fortunately, she had Robby Booker to fall back on. He couldn't
do anything for her career, but he got around and could keep her
informed. She suddenly realized how few friends she had in this town.

Dan made it up to the fourth floor and OP-614 by 4:45, where he met with
Summerfield. The office was otherwise empty. Having to come in at 0600
to sort the diplomatic traffic for the officers, Yeoman Jackson normally
went home at four, and Snapper was attending a meeting at State on the
Portuguese frigate. Summerfield was having his last cup of coffee for
the day and reading a Wall Street Journal expose on the administration's
most recent pecadillo, a daily ritual he truly relished. He eyed his
watch as Dan came into the office.

"The boy investigator is back," he said. "At sixteen forty-five on a
Friday. I thought I trained you better than that, Daniel."

"Yes, sir,
you did," Dan said, dropping his briefcase on his desk and eyeing his
own bulging in-box. "But I needed to get some stuff set up for Monday.

Grace Snow and I will need to operate out of Six-fourteen for the next
couple of weeks, if that's okay with you. We have the empty desks here,
and the alternative is that I go to the Navy Yard."

" 'Grace Snow and F--that sounds cozy. Okay, no problem. You'll have to
keep Snapper from drooling at the estimable Ms. Snow, but otherwise that
should be workable."

Dan nodded. "We can get a bib for Snapper," he said. "Let me bring you
up to speed on where we are with this thing."

When he had finished, Summerfield rotated in his armchair and stared out
the window for a minute. The windows of the D-ring stared back.

"Wow," he said finally, turning around. "I think you're right to come
back to town. With a two-year-old datum, neither you nor NIS will find
out anything more of any significance in Philly. Those yardbirds can
stonewall better than a tax assessor. Politically, the first thing you
need to do is to get on Oh-six B's calendar Monday and give him a data
dump."

"I've been keeping Manning informed."

"Yeah, good. But remember, you're not allowed to brief the appointing
officer on the investigation, per se, but you can go down there and tell
him how things are going with NIS. But let him ask the questions. Don't
volunteer, and don't tell him as much as you've told me.

I suspect his focus will be on his marching orders from the vice chief,
whatever those are."

"His focus, and the Navy's, may change," Dan said.

"If the national press gets ahold of the buried-alive angle, we're all
going to be fending off offers from Hard Copy around here."

"No, the Navy's Chief of Information will. And that's an important
distinction: the 'Grace and I' team should keep a very low profile. I
think you've got the right plan --talk to people who knew Hardin in
Luce. I also think maybe we'd better do some furniture moving in here:
You and Ms. Snow take the back room and you control the keys and access.

Snapper can have your desk. I can't get you any more phone lines anytime
short of Christmas, but we already have four--you guys can have two
dedicated to your project. Tell me about Ms. Snow."

Dan briefed his boss on Grace's professional background and their
relationship to date in the investigation.

The telephone in the outer office began to ring, but Summerfield shook
his head when Dan reached for it.

"Too late in the week to answer phones. So she's not one of these
bra-burning, politically correct bitch kitties."

"No, sir, I don't think so. She's smart--Brown, Georgetown Law, a Wall
Street financial-crimes investigator.

And she's focused. She seems to be willing to work the investigation in
a straightforward manner and let the mandarins handle the rice-bowl
issues."

Summerfield nodded reflectively. "Where is she now?"

"I dropped her off at her house in Georgetown. It was too late in the
day to try for the Navy Yard."

"Georgetown. How nice for her. So in your opinion, she's playing it
straight for now."

"Yes, sir, I think so."

"That'll change if you guys begin to home in on a solution."

"Yes, sir, that's what I felt. She does, too, actually.

We even talked about it. That's when I expect NIS to start dropping sand
in the reduction gears."

"Yeah, okay. We'll handle that problem when and if it comes on the
screen. You get to tell Snapper he has to move."

"Wonderful," Dan said.

"I've got to leave," Summerfield said. "I've got a meeting of my gun
club."

"Going shooting this weekend?"

"No, just our weekly get-together to look at the new toys. We're
collectors. We like to show off."

"Gun collectors are becoming an endangered species in America."

"All the more reason to be armed, don't you think?" Summerfield asked
with a wicked smile.

at 8:30 on monday morning, Dan met Grace in the small anteroom just
inside the doors of the Pentagon's south parking lot entrance. She was
dressed in a two piece charcoal gray suit with a closed collar and low
heeled shoes. She carried a black leather purse over one shoulder and a
Compaq portable computer in a black fabric carrying case. He shepherded
her through the metal detectors and package scanners, then took her down
to the concourse to get her a temporary building pass. Enroute, he
stopped at a building map to give her a brief explanation of the
Pentagon layout.

"I'll escort you out this evening or whenever you leave," he said.

"Is that really necessary? Now that I have my own pass?"

"Yup. This is still the largest office building in the world, in terms
of miles of corridors. Seventeen miles, to be exact. Five concentric
buildings--or rings, as they're called--five floors above ground, two or
maybe more below ground, depending on the color of your badge, and about
twenty-three thousand inmates during the working day. You have to know
the layout to get around this place."

"It seems logical enough," she said, looking at one of the framed
building diagrams.

"Yeah, but you'll notice that there's one of these diagrams every fifty
feet. Basically, think of the building as a spoked wheel. Each office
has a number, like four-Efoureight-seven.

First number is the floor, the letter is the ring, and the final number
is the number on the door. The quickest way to get to any office is to
go down a spoke to the hub, go up or down stairs to the appropriate
floor, then walk around the hub--that's the A-ring--to the appropriate
corridor--that's another spoke--and' back out that corridor to the ring
where your objective lives and around that segment of the ring to find
it."

"Clear as mud," she observed, looking around at the steady stream of
people walking by, all of whom looked like they knew where they were
going.

"That room number I gave you is OP-Six-fourteen.

Want to try it?" Fifteen minutes later, she admitted defeat, and then
Dan, by now carrying the computer case, snowed her the system.

"It really is pretty logical," he said lightly as they walked down the
E-ring toward OP-614. She gave him a sideways look but said nothing.

In the office, Dan introduced her to the 614 crew.

The resident Marine was a model of decorum and politeness.

Snapper had not reacted well to Summerfield's comments about a bib that
morning, and he had given Dan a meaningful look that foretold
unspeakable acts of retaliation. Dan was rescued when Grace said how
much she admired the Marine Corps. They set to work creating the
investigation's base camp, and by lunchtime they had Snapper moved and
their command cell up and running.

At lunchtime, Dan took her down to the center-court snack bar for a
hamburger. The center court was actually a beautiful botanical garden
planted in the hollow five-sided center of the building, encompassing
about five acres of grounds. He pointed out a quaint tradition held over
from the Cold War, which was that the snack bar in the center of the
courtyard was known to the Pengaton inhabitants as

"Ground Zero."

"Just to remind you that, while the Pentagon is an architecturally
interesting office building, it's also the nerve center for the most
powerful military machine on the planet, for better or for 'worser.' "

"I'm kind of amazed at how dilapidated it is. I mean, this garden is
beautiful, but the offices are--"

"Grungy. Yeah. This building was literally poured into a five-sided mold
in about sixteen months during World War Two. It's built on the remains
of an old airfield, which itself was built on landfill--basically, a
swamp. The building foundations are all on pilings.

Forty-one thousand pilings, if I remember my tour book. In the basement
offices, you can tell the state of the tide in the Potomac--the walls
sweat at high tide.

The flag and general officers' offices are nice, and the major command
centers are pretty high-tech. The rest of it is a dump."

She looked around at the groomed lawns and exotic trees in the center
court, which was filled with a good sized lunchtime crowd enjoying some
sunlight. Recalling the bleak air-shaft view from OP-614, she could
appreciate the sunlight herself. When they returned to the office, Grace
sat down at her desk and began pulling small cables out of the carrying
case for her computer.

Once she had had time to set up her machine, he brought her up to speed
on what he had been doing.

"I've called Bupers, and they tell me Hardin's records will take another
week to get out of St. Louis.

So in the meantime, I'm going to try something else.

I've asked the bureau to give me a printout of the names of the wardroom
officers in Luce at the time Hardin served, starting with the captain.

I've asked for the printout to include present duty stations."

"So we'll be starting a big telephone exercise, then."

"Yeah. I guess we'd better figure out exactly what we'll be asking these
people."

Snapper stuck his head in the door and pointed an imaginary gun at Dan.

"His eminence the EA requests the pleasure of your company in the front
office," he announced.

"Now?"

"Anytime in the next eleven seconds would be entirely satisfactory. Yes,
now would be nice. Excuse us, Miss. Snow. Commander Collins is the
Op-Six-one pet rock, as well as being a well-known subversive. It's always difficult to get his attention, and even then he whines."

Grace smiled as Dan put on his jacket. "I'll work up a list of
questions," she said.

Dan walked up to the 06 front office, greeting some fellow action
officers in the hallway. They congratulated him on his detail to the
investigation; any escape from Opnav, even temporary, was cause for
congratulations.

When he arrived in the front office, he found Captain Manning engaged in
a muted conversation with Capt.

Eldon Randall, senior aide and executive assistant to the Vice Chief of
Naval Operations. Randall was a tall, dark-haired, and impeccably turned
out naval captain, who wore the four gold appellants of his station as
senior aide and executive assistant on his left shoulder like the mantle
of a crown prince, which in a sense he was. He had been selected for
flag rank on the previous December's promotion list and was now
reportedly awaiting an assignment as a cruiser-destroyer group
commander. Randall maintained an aloof, distant expression, even when
talking to other EAs. He had bright black eyes, heavy brows, a wide,
shiny forehead in front of a receding hairline, a dramatically hooked
nose, and thin, almost bloodless lips. He was tall enough to look down
at most officers on the staff. In many respects, Randall looked a lot
like his boss, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations himself, Admiral
William H. Torrance.

Dan had never seen Randall without his coat on, even at his desk, as if
he could not stand to be without those gold loops in full view. As an
action officer, Dan had not had any direct dealings with the vice chiefs
EA: Manning was as high as any of the 06 action officers were allowed to
go. But he knew his reputation: a fiercely protective palace guard,
fully invested with the power of the vice chiefs office, and direct to
the point of being rude to any officer not an admiral. In the
surface-ship community, he had earned a reputation as a commanding
officer who indulged in the time-honored surface Navy tradition of
eating his young. If an officer did not measure up to his own high
standards, Randall would write him the kind of fitness report that would
wilt a budding career to the point where the officer would be advised by
the bureau to try civilian life.

Among the more senior Opnav staff officers at the working level,
Randall's reputation was equally menacing.

He seemed to enjoy taking a staff briefer apart, cleverly provoking
mistakes at the podium and then calling everyone's attention to them.

Dan literally hesitated in the doorway when he saw Randall, but the two
EAs ignored him. Dan gave the high sign to the chief yeoman, who nodded,
indicating that he would get him in to see 06B when the admiral was
available. Dan turned his back on the two EAs and tried to make himself
inconspicuous by once again staring at the picture gallery. A helicopter
droned by the window from the Pentagon heliport outside, suspending all
conversation for a moment.

"You are Commander Collins?" an imperious voice wanted to know. Dan
realized Randall was talking to him, and he turned around but did not
walk over to Manning's desk.

"Yes, sir, I am," he said.

Randall gave him a three-second inspection and then turned his back to
talk to Manning, dismissing Dan without further word. And a pleasure to
meet you, too, Your Friendliness, Dan thought. He turned away again, not
wanting to look as if he was trying to eavesdrop on the EAs. Dan
realized that some of Randall's demeanor arose from the fact that his
admiral, the vice chief, was almost certainly going to be the next Chief
of Naval Operations, the senior officer in the entire Navy.

If visibility was indeed the key to promotion in the Navy, one could not
be better positioned than to be the senior aide and executive assistant
to the next CNO.

But Summerfield had made some interesting observations about Randall
during one of their late-afternoon talks.

According to Summerfield, one of the main reasons Randall and the other
EAs acted the way they did was because they were so visible. They had to
serve in their EA billets for sometimes two or even three years literally without ever making a mistake. Typically, they came in to work at
5:30 a. m., sometimes earlier, six days a week, in order to know
everything that was going on by the time their principal arrived at
seven. Then they stayed in the office until their principal went home at
night, however late that might be. Dan had been astonished one night
when he had the duty to observe Manning performing the EA's final chore
for the night, known as "desk mapping." When Vice Admiral Layman was
through for the day, he would simply get up and walk out of the office
to his official car. Manning was then expected to go into the DCNO's
office, draw a quick map of where every folder, letter, or staff paper
physically lay on the large desk, stack everything away in a safe for
the night, and then reconstitute the desk the next morning, using the
map, putting every paper right back where the great man had left it the
night before.

"Being an EA is kind of a rite of passage," Summer field had observed,
"and the admirals are pretty ruthless about it: You want to be an
admiral like me, see if you can cut it as my EA. And you better be very
damn good at it. If you are, then we'll think about making you one of
us." Some captains wanted no part of it, preferring to stay down on the
naval bases or at shore staffs after their captain sea commands,
avoiding the rarified air of the three- and four-star front offices
throughout the Navy. And since Summerfield had been an EA himself and
was a classmate of admirals, Dan felt that he knew what he was talking
about.

"Commander Collins, the admiral will see you now, sir," announced the
chief yeoman, and Dan headed for 06B's closed door. The two EAs stopped
talking as he walked by, with Randall giving him another studied look.

"Close the door," Admiral Carson said as Dan entered.

"Sit down. I'll be right with you."

Carson was reading a staff paper clipped to a brown manila folder, a red
felt-tip pen in hand. Dan knew all about that red pen. Finally, Carson
put the folder down and looked over his reading glasses at Dan from his
desk.

"You've moved your operations back to Washington.

Why?"

"I felt there was nothing more I could do in Philly, Admiral. I have the
NIS field officer working on extensive interviews with shipyard workers
who could have had access to the battleship, but that's going to take
some time--if in fact they do it. I thought I'd be more productive
trying to develop a possible motive or reason for Lieutenant Hardin's
death."

"And that motive is in Washington?"

"We don't know that, sir. But all the records are or will be here, and
it's a better place to locate Hardin's shipmates from two years ago than
in Philly."

"I see. You said if they do it--is NIS not cooperating?"

"Ostensibly, yes, sir. We'll have a test pretty soon, though. Miss.

Snow, the liaison with NIS Washington, told the Philadelphia field
office guy that these interviews were his first priority. If that
stands, then I've got no complaints."

Carson nodded. "Director NIS is Rear Admiral Keeler. We understood that
his deputy, Mr. Ames, was pushing to take this matter up to the
Secretary of the Navy, but it didn't happen. So I suppose you're still
in business."

"Yes, sir." :

"I'm not going to inquire about the details of what happened up there,
but the CHINFO got up at the CNO's morning briefing today and said that
it had the potential to be rather sensational."

"Yes, sir, I think it does."

"If it does, you may start to get some stick and rudder from all sorts
of helpful Harrys. Remember the JAGMAN rules: You are the investigating
officer, and you call it the way you see it. And if somebody senior
really interferes, then you recuse yourself and hand it over to him and
then it becomes his investigation. Kind of like when the captain walks
out on the bridge and gives a maneuvering order: The captain then has
the conn, right?"

"Yes, sir. But how senior does that advice go, Admiral?"

Admiral Carson's face showed the ghost of a smile.

"You'll probably find that out. That's all, Commander.

You have a wonderful day."

When Dan got back to 614, he was surprised to find a courier package
from Bupers on his desk. Grace told him that it had come over five
minutes ago. Dan opened the package and to his surprise extracted a tan
personnel folder, a white fitrep folder, and two green medical records,
one health, one dental. The records had a transmittal letter from the
federal records depository stating that these records had not yet been
archived and must be returned. He sat down with Grace and showed her
what kinds of records were in each, then asked her to see if the medical
examiner's officer in Philly still wanted the dental records. He began
to study the fitness reports, but he soon found that they were not going
to be of much help.

"Damn," he muttered.

Grace hung up the phone. "Philadelphia does want the dental records;
they're satisfied with the ID, but they took impressions, and the
records will close their files. What's the matter?"

"The fitness reports: They're all plain vanilla--nothing superlative,
nothing adverse. Ranking one of one, because the only other supply corps
officer in the ship was the department head. These are going to tell us
nothing."

"Do they identify who the captain was?"

"Oh, yes. And I've got the wardroom list and locating info coming. But I
was hoping there'd be some indication here, something pointing to a
professional or personal problem, or even a personality trait."

Grace sat back in her chair. "Why do you expect there to be a
problem--just because he was black?"

"No, of course not. Because he was killed. My sense is that these things
don't happen out of the blue: He was involved in something that led to
his being murdered."

"Based on what evidence?"

It was Dan's turn to think for a moment, but Grace pressed him.

"You see what I'm saying? That's the wrong way to approach an
investigation, making assumptions like that. I think it's time for a
case board."

"Case board?"

"Yes, like the British police use. They set up a situation room, like
this one, and then they list all the facts as they become available on a
big white board. Each fact has a date or time associated with it. Then
they list the names of anyone tied to the case in any way, again with
dates of association. Then they set up a master board with a
chronological timeline on it and place the facts and the people on that
line. If there's a pattern or connections, it typically shows up on the
master board.

We should do that now. You've got these three white boards here
already."

They spent the next hour setting up the boards. Both Summerfield and
Snapper looked in occasionally while they worked, but neither man said
anything. When they had finished, Dan sat back down and stared at the
boards.

"If there's a pattern here, it's eluding me," he said with a sigh.

"We've just begun the investigation," Grace said.

"But I see one pattern already."

Dan looked hard but did not see it, but Snapper, who had reappeared in
the doorway, did.

"Two deaths," he said, pointing at the left side of the master
chronology board. "Hardin's sister dies in a traffic accident in D.C. on
the twelfth of April 1992. Her brother gets killed around two weeks
later, only nobody knew it at the time. Brother and sister, both Navy,
both dead in less than a month. What are the chances of that happening
in an unconnected manner?"

Grace was nodding. "And the only reason more wasn't made of it was that,
at the time, it was one death

and one disappearance. We only find out about the second death two years
later."

"The question is, then," mused Dan, "are they in fact related: Is
Hardin's murder related to his sister's accident?

Maybe we should go talk to the D.C. cops."

Captain Summerfield appeared in the doorway next to Snapper. He had
exhumed his pipe and was pretending to puff on it in deference to all
the new antismoking rules.

"Seems to me," he said, "that's pretty unlikely.

You're not going to get much from the D.C. police on a hit-and-run
that's two years cold. I think you need to talk to Lieutenant Hardin's
CO, XO--people like that.

I agree with Dan: Whatever got him into trouble is probably something
they knew about."

"The fitreps are plain vanilla, Captain," Dan said.

"Yeah, but that's not atypical of jaygee reports. He hadn't been in the
Navy long enough to warrant very elaborate fitness reports and all the
promotion board code words. Promotion to full lieutenant isn't
automatic, but damn near so. I recommend you talk to the guy who was CO
of Luce when she was in the yards.

There has to be some reason, something about this guy, that brought this
on his head. And I'll wager, since he was the Disbo, that it had
something to do with money.

Even if the skipper won't really talk about it, that will tell you
something. There's my phone."

Summerfield and Snapper left the back room. Dan looked at Grace, who
shrugged. Dan got up and closed the door.

"Captain Summerfield is probably right," Dan said.

"We have to talk to the senior officers on his ship."

"I've got a better idea," she said. "You talk to them.

They'll be more likely to talk to another naval officer than to a woman
from the NIS."

"Hey," Dan protested. "We're not all that bad."

"I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But you must admit, mention of
the NIS typically brings the shields up pretty quick, to use your
expression. A commander calling from Opnav is likely to produce better
results.

I've got a list of questions ready."

"And you?"

"I think I'm going to give the D.C. police a call."

on tuesday, malachi ward returned to his town house on Capitol Hill and
screened his answering machine.

There was a message from the captain to call in.

He had to consult his Wizard for the number; he hadn't heard from the
captain for nearly two years. His beloved principal must have had an
attack of chastity and learned to keep his zipper shut for a while. It
was nearly 6:00 p. m., but he knew the captain would still be at the
office. The captain was nothing if not dedicated. He dialed the number.

Malachi was tired after the four-hour drive back from Norfolk. He had
accompanied the chief of staff of a House subcommittee down to the
Tidewater area to have a little heart-to-heart with the head of a
maritime trade lobby group. It seemed that the lobbyist had crossed the
subcommittee chairman during hearings in the middle of an important
power play on the Hill, this after promising to support a quota issue of
interest to the chairman. The merits of the bill itself had not been in
question: The political issue had been about the prerogatives of the
chairman to control a bill. Malachi was hired to go along as an
attention-getting device.

They had driven down to the Tidewater area, timed to arrive at the man's
home in the early evening, where the chief of staff had shared his
thinking with the trade rep. Malachi, whose instructions were to say
nothing, simply stood at the side of the patio and looked meaningfully
at the man, his home, and his pretty wife and children visible through
the kitchen windows. The message seemed to have penetrated. The
following morning, the chief of staff met with the lobbyist and his
entire staff to ensure that everyone was properly cali brated. Malachi
had revisited the house in time to catch the lobbyist's wife on her way
to morning tennis, all pert and perky in her little white tennis outfit.

Again he had said and done nothing: He had just pulled up in front of
their house and waited. When she came out the front door and saw him
looking at her, she turned right around and went back in. He had given
her time to get on the phone to her husband before slowly driving away.

When a voice he didn't recognize answered the phone, Malachi left the
code name and number and then went to make a drink. He had been good
last night --traveling with a client. The chief of staff had a dinner
invite somewhere, so Malachi had contented himself with the microwaved
mystery d'jour at the Holiday Inn dining room and one double Harper
before going up to his room. He had taken a quart of bourbon with him
but decided to test his willpower. He had put the bottle out on the
motel room dresser, unopened, and then watched television and smoked
cigarettes until finally falling asleep. The still-unopened bottle
sitting there the next morning was a vivid testimonial'to his
self-control.

But that had been last night. This was tonight. He poured his usual and
went to watch the evening news.

The phone rang as the local broadcaster was reviewing last night's body
count in some of the more socially dynamic neighborhoods of the
District. He picked up the phone.

"Yes?"

"Greetings."

The captain.

"Greetings indeed. You called," Malachi said.

"Yes, I did. Remember the Hardin boy? Went missing a few years ago, up
in Philadelphia? Guess what?"

Malachi didn't answer. He did not like guess-what games.

"He's no longer missing," the captain said.

Malachi sat up straight and muted the television. Not possible, he
thought. But watch what you say.

"Where? And what's he done?" he asked, trying to lodge the impression
that, as far as he knew, the boy might still be alive.

"What he's done is turn up very dead in the boiler room of a mothballed
battleship in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. And now there's going to
be an investigation."

"Dead?"

"Very dead. So dead, he's even mummified. It seems he'd been confined in
one of the battleship Wisconsin's boilers ever since he went missing.

You see, there's no air below the main decks in a mothballed capital
ship-- they replace it with nitrogen gas. It was something of a
shrinking experience. I'm sure you'll be hearing about it pretty soon on
the news."

Malachi sipped some whiskey and tried to think.

"Well," he said, "I guess the operative question is, So what? If he's
dead, he's not going to be telling any interesting tales to anyone. You
can remind your principal of the pirate's first rule."

"It's the investigation that concerns us, not Lieutenant Hardin. But we
are hoping that two years will leave such a cold trail that nothing will
come of it."

"Sounds reasonable to me. Most homicides are solved in the first
seventy-two hours or not at all."

"Is this a homicide, Malachi?" The captain's voice was silky. Malachi
grinned into the phone.

"You tell me, Captain--it's your guys' investigation, right?"

"Yes, exactly. And like all investigations, we'll have to see where it
leads us. There's actually a political dimension to this issue that may
give me the opportunity to influence the course of the investigation. In
a way that can help us all. But--"

"Yeah, I hear that 'but.' What do you want from me?"

"Just wanted you to hear it from us first, Malachi. We may be in touch.

Stay tuned, as it were."

"Okay. You know where to find me. But remember that it's your
investigation. Hold that thought, as it were."

Malachi hung up and stared at the muted television and worked on his
bourbon while the color images of a commercial flickered across the
screen. A sexy young woman in a short flip skirt was bending over a
store shelf, with the camera behind her, while supposedly focusing the
keen minds of the viewers on the decision of which spray cleaner was
best for her and the rest of mankind. Women's liberation at work,
Malachi mused.

The voyeuristic shot of the woman's thighs was undoubtedly supposed to
titillate, but Malachi felt nothing --not now and not since that night
in Frankfurt, when a routine bar roust had gone horribly wrong. Malachi
and an MP sergeant named Terry Eastman had been sent down to the
Sachsenhausen district to pick up an AWOL Air Force warrant officer who
was reportedly holed up in a bar on a three-day toot. Malachi and
Eastman had gone into the bar. It should have been ho hum: "a no big
deal, roust the drunk, pour him into the MP van, and then make the long
drive back to Rhein Main" evolution. Eastman could have done it in his
sleep, but Malachi had gone along with an eye toward maybe doing a
little forty-eight himself in Frankfurt afterward, if things worked out.

Things did not work out. A barfly got into it--Inge.

He hadn't known her name then, just that there was this plumpish hooker
sitting at the bar when they went in after the warrant officer. As
Sergeant Eastman was breaking the news to the warrant, who was so drunk
he couldn't even lift his head, the blowsy barfly with the too-red
lipstick and the big floppy front had swiveled around on her bar stool
and started yelling at Malachi in German. Malachi had been
surprised--there was no big deal going down, no fight, no real problem
at all. He was the officer, not the MP, and he was in uniform. He had
put up a hand to tell her to shut up and stay out of it, the other
customers starting to look up, when Inge had reached behind her, grabbed
a beer bottle, smashed the top off, and in one smooth swinging motion
shoved the jagged edges into Malachi's crotch. The pain had been so
incredible that Malachi couldn't even scream as he sank down into a
crouch by her bar stool, his hands clutching at his sodden trousers, his
mouth open but nothing coming out, and then the bitch had jabbed the
bottle into his throat. Malachi had remembered only one thing after
that, one thing besides the wetness that was flooding his pants and
pumping down his arms, all over his shirt front, and that was Terry, good
ole Sergeant Terry, eyes wide as white dinner plates, unlimbering that
big .45 and opening fire at the whore, emptying that cannon and all the
shelves behind the bar with five thundering blasts, the sounds of the
bullets buzzing by Malachi's head in counterpoint to the red muzzle
flashes, the thunking noises as two slugs hit Inge, one in the chest,
the other tearing her right arm, the bottle-wielding arm, right off at
the elbow, the rest blasting big holes in the wood of the bar and
shattering everything behind it in a noisy cascade of glass and
schnapps. Malachi and Inge had ended up on the floor together, Malachi
bent in half, eye-to-eye with the whore, his eyes seeing, but barely,
her eyes glassy and seeing nothing, the echoes of a glass avalanche
behind them somewhere, and Sergeant Terry screaming his name, and the
smell of blood, gunpowder, and urine.

Malachi had ended up spending four months convalescing in the Army
hospital at Wiesbaden, fighting off a huge infection and then learning
how to form sounds in his mangled voice box again. They hadn't told him
of his castration until the end of the third week.

He stared at the television screen, unseeing, for a long time, reliving
that night for the millionth time, and then came back to the present. He
discovered that his hands were shaking, and his shirt felt too tight.

Shit.

Where the hell had that come from? He took a deep breath, got up, and
went out into the kitchen to get some more whiskey and a cigarette. It
was amazing what brought it all back sometimes--seeing a woman on the
Metro who looked like Inge, seeing something on the TV, like tonight. He
often wondered if he might not be just a little crazy. Her face
sometimes materialized on the faces of women he passed in the street, or
when some woman at a desk gave him a hard time. It always disoriented
him when it happened. Like the morning he had taken out that black
girl--what, two years ago?--her face, her angry, distorted face, had
triggered the image just before he hit her. Which was maybe why he had
hit her.

And living on Capitol Hill didn't help: It seemed like all the little
basement flats around the neighborhood had one or more beautiful young
women living in them, women who came strutting by his windows every
morning, headed for the Hill, dressed like Parisian call girls, every
one of them with a "my shit doesn't stink" expression on her face.

Hundreds of them. For all the good it did him. Malachi had no use for
women.

He came back into the living room and sat down again. So the Hardin kid
had turned up, after all. In the boiler of a battleship, for God's sake.

Nice try, Angelo.

Nothing if not original. He closed his eyes and waited for Mr. Harper's
elixir to infuse his brain with some new capital. He had worked for a
master sergeant once who was full of little homilies about getting by in
the Army. One seemed to apply now: Don't waste your time and energy on
things you cannot do anything about. Killing the girl had been an
accident, a bothersome accident, but there you are. After what a woman
had done to him, he felt that womankind in general owed him a whole
shitpot full of opportunities for-- what? Revenge? Retaliation? Call it
justice. Maybe she hadn't slipped out there on the street. Maybe he had
seen Inge's face and had simply touched the wheel a tad, just enough to
alter the balance, just like that German whore had altered his balance,
and his voice, and his sex life--forever.

Taking her brother off the boards had also been something of an
accident. Like brother, like sister, apparently: They had been a pair of
shit-magnets. Angelo had warned him, and, just like with the girl in
Foggy Bottom that morning, things got away from them. Shit happens in
the big city. But now the body had been found and the Navy was going to
do an investigation.

Can't do anything about the body being found, and Angelo wasn't the kind
of guy to hand him his money back; the paisans were not into warranties.

He considered the implications of an investigation. A Navy homicide
investigation--that would be the Naval Investigative Service. He
snorted. The Navy's lame attempt to emulate the Army's CID, only dumber.

In his Germany days, he had had some experience with an NIS crew up from
their Naples office when he had been setting up a Marine corporal for a
drug fall to protect some friends. He had wired the thing so tight that
all the NIS weenies had to do was be there, but, no, they wanted to dick
around, talk to some people, almost queering the deal. They were just a
bunch of ex-sailors running around in polyester suits from Sears and
trying to use three-syllable words in their reports. He had not been
stunned to read that the NIS had had a heavy hand in the Navy's recent
PR problems with the Tailhook scandal. But none the less, they would
start snooping around and talking to people. And while it was better
having the NIS on it than, say, the FBI, it still meant that a federal
police outfit was going to be poking around. That was going to make the
captain and his principal nervous sooner rather than later. Already had,
in fact.

He went back into the kitchen and refreshed his drink. When he came back
to the living room, an especially homely car dealer was screaming
silently at the screen. Why did car dealers and furniture salesmen
always have to scream? He was convinced that the mute.

switch on TV remote controls had been invented because of car dealers
and furniture salesmen. He sat down again. Even the NIS might eventually
connect the girl and her brother, both dying within a two-week time
frame. But over and above that regrettable coincidence, there was
nothing to connect him to the girl or her brother. Oh, Angelo, maybe,
but Angelo was about as safe as anyone could be. Safer, actually. You
might not admire their business, but the Guidos observed their own rules
and regulations a lot better than most elements of American society.

And the captain. He thought about that. If the NIS weenies did stumble
across something, the weakest spot in Malachi's own personal-security
perimeter was the captain--the guy who had handed him the money to scare
off the girl two years ago, and the guy who had invited him in the
Army-Navy Town Club to see what her brother looked like. "What I really
wish is that the son of a bitch would just disappear," the captain had
said to him. The captain was the only guy in this whole Hardin deal who
could finger him.

Malachi drained his glass, savoring the familiar expanding ball of
comfort in his stomach and the certainty that his brain was computing at
top end. This whole mess had started with an honest, straight-forward
job: to go see some twist, warn her off some great man's very busy, very
important life in the big city. Little scare didn't work, so he'd set up
a medium scare, only the bitch had messed it up for everybody. Any way
you looked at it, that one had been just an accident. Then the
not-such-an-accident to her mouthy younger brother.

How had his master sergeant put it? "If you're gonna get into it, get
into it." Maybe, just maybe, and depending on what the captain decided
to do, he'd have to take one more pass at the Hardin case. The girl had
been a shit-happens deal. Her brother ... well, her brother had run his
mouth in front of the wrong honkies. Now he might have to take one more
guy off the boards to cover his own ass. That would leave the principal,
the great man, out there all alone if the NIS somehow happened to wander
down the right road. Malachi decided he could get his arms around that
picture. He liked it; liked it a lot, in fact. Damn near as much as this
fine bourbon. He also realized that he was thinking in circles, and
perhaps that he was medium drunk. What a surprise.

on tuesday morning, Grace walked into the District Municipal Center on
Indiana Avenue and consulted the directory listing mounted over the
unmanned information desk. The lobby was spacious and rather dark, with
streams of people moving through it. There were citizens coming in to
deal with automobile paperwork, jackbooted motorcycle cops, plainclothes
cops, and many other people milling around whom Grace could not readily
identify. The terrazzo floors amplified the noise of people talking,
asking for directions, or just coming in and out. The sign above the
information desk told her that the Homicide Division was on the third
floor, so she went to the elevator bank and pushed a button, joining a
small crowd of people who were waiting.

Every so often, the request light would go out, and then someone would
push it again, with no visible effect.

Just like the District, she thought.

She fished in her purse for the name of her point of contact: a Captain
Goldsmith. She had called yesterday afternoon for an appointment. She
had called again this morning before taking the Metro over to the
District, and Goldsmith's secretary had confirmed the appointment.

When the elevator finally came, she had to move quickly to get in. At
the third floor, she went left, read a door number, turned around, and
walked all the way to the end of the corridor to the next-to-the-last
office, whose door was open. The room numbers were missing from most of
the doors.

Inside the office were two desks, a secretary standing by a coffee
maker, and a doorway that led into a larger and better-furnished inner
office. A well-dressed black man in a charcoal gray suit was talking to
the secretary when Grace walked in. He immediately asked if he could
help her.

"I have an appointment to see Captain Goldsmith," she said. "Can you
tell me where his office is?"

"I'm Captain Vann," the man said. "Captain Goldsmith is the head of the
Homicide Division; that's next door. Lemme show you."

He took her next door, where there was another secretary guarding the
corner office. Vann stuck his head into the inner office, showed Grace
in, and left. well dell Goldsmith was a white man in his mid-fifties, who
looked more like a prosperous lobbyist than the chief of Homicide in a
city like Washington, D.C. He was florid

faced and showed the beginnings of a double chin, and he filled out his
expensive suit with what looked like the lifetime result of feeding well
and often in the city's finer restaurants. He had the careful eyes of a
long term bureaucrat, and he was polite but reserved in his greeting
when Grace presented her credentials. Goldsmith glanced briefly at her
badge and ID while motioning her to a chair. Grace noticed that he made
sure the door between his office and the secretarial area remained open.

"Well, Miss. Snow, what can I do for the NIS today?"

He had a pleasant voice, devoid of any particular emotion.

Grace wondered if he was a political appointee or if he had ever been a
working police detective.

"Captain Goldsmith, thank you for seeing me on such short notice. As I
told your secretary, I'm working on an investigation for the Navy, and
it involves the apparent homicide two years ago of a lieutenant in the
Philadelphia Naval Shipyard."

He just looked at her, not voicing the obvious question.

"The reason I'm coming to see the D.C. police is that this individual's
sister, who was also in the Navy, was the victim of a fatal hit-and-run
accident here in the District about two weeks before the lieutenant was
murdered. Apparently, the case was never solved."

"Has your investigation established some kind of link between the two
deaths, Miss. Snow?"

"No, not on a factual basis. But it does seem a bit too coincidental to
us: a brother and a sister, both in the Navy, dying within two weeks of
each other."

"I see," Goldsmith said politely. I doubt it, thought Grace, but she
pressed ahead.

"I'd like to be able to sit down with the people who did the
investigation of the hit-and-run incident. The victim's name was
Elizabeth Hardin."

Goldsmith wrote the name down on a pad and appeared to consider it.

"If it was a hit-and-run," he said finally, "or so classified by the
department, it would have gone to the hit and-run division in the
Traffic Bureau. They're actually over on New York Avenue. If the case
was resolved, the case files will be stored here, in central
records--that's down on the ground floor, where you came in."

"And if it was not resolved?"

Goldsmith shrugged. "It would be an open case; they'd have the original
records downstairs, and a duplicate set over in Traffic. The chances of
resolution at this late date ..." He shrugged his shoulders and looked
at his watch.

"I understand, Captain. Can you refer me to someone in the Traffic
Bureau?"

"I can, but we have a standard procedure for letting other
law-enforcement agencies look at police records.

You'll have to go through that drill first. Your agency has to make a
formal request--a fax will do it, though.

Want to make a call?"

She had to wait almost an hour down in the records center before Robby
Booker was able to get a fax sent over from NIS with the approved
records request. Finally, a very thin, elderly black lady produced an
equally thin police file. She had Grace sign an access sheet, then
indicated a combination chair-desk of the type that Grace had not seen
since high school over in one corner of the records area's lobby. Grace
thanked her and squeezed into the chair-desk to review the file.

It was a thin file indeed. The old refrain from the Jack Webb TV show of
the fifties flitted through her mind: "Just the facts, ma'am. Just the
facts."

Facts were all that was in the file. The preliminary report stated that,
on April 12, 1992, a citizen had called 911 to report finding a young
woman, apparently deceased, on his front steps on 23rd Street at 6:35
a.m. Emergency services were dispatched at 6:37, and arrived on the
scene at 6:45 a.m. They confirmed that the victim, a black female, had
expired at the scene due to what appeared to be multiple blunt-force
trauma injuries indicative of the subject being hit by a vehicle.

There was evidence in the street (two shoes, blood spots, and a woman's
handbag) of an impact with a vehicle or vehicles unknown. There were no
skid marks or other visible signs of avoidance maneuvers. The distance
between point of impact in the street and the final position of the body
was seventy-three feet, eight inches. No witnesses heard or saw
anything.

Seventy-three feet, she thought. The vehicle had been moving right
along. Figure something big, like a van or a Suburban like Dan's: eight,
nine thousand pounds going forty, fifty miles an hour. What was that old
inertia equation: my = my? Eight thousand pounds times fifty miles an
hour versus 125 pounds going one mile an hour. The difference in the
energy equation had to be absorbed by the smaller participant, hence the
distance.

She shivered.

The poorly typed report of the follow-up investigation, conducted by one
Detective (second grade) William Marshal, was not much more informative.

Appropriate news releases had been filed, including an appeal to the
hypothetical driver and to the public at large for any information, all
without further results.

Bulletins to local area auto-body shops had produced no reports.

Victim's clothes had been sent to Forensics for collection of paint
samples, but none had been found. Interview with the girl's mother had
produced no adverse or incriminating information that would indicate
this had been anything but an accident. Investigating officer's
conclusions: hit-and-run; perpetrators unknown; vehicle type, make, and
color unknown; case status: open. A handwritten note on the bottom in
the

"Contributing Factors" block indicated that the woman had been a
black woman, jaywalking in the early-morning darkness, wearing dark
clothes.

The third page was a report from the medical examiner's office as to
extent of injuries and cause of death, which conformed to the previously
described consequences of the human body going one-on-one with a large
steel mass moving at high speed. There were some notes in a cramped,
difficult-to-read doctor scribble at the bottom of the page, probably
from the ME, which she skipped over. She turned the page. The fourth
page of the report was the report of the examining physician who had
declared the young woman dead on arrival at George Washington University
Hospital emergency room. The litany of blunt-force trauma, multiple
internal injuries, and massive shock was repeated: "High likelihood of
near-instantaneous death, based on extent and severity of injuries. Next
of kin, one Mrs. Angela Hardin, notified in accordance with instructions
in victim's wallet. Body released to the ME."

Grace turned back to the ME's report, scanned the unfamiliar form with
its anatomical and laboratory findings, and then tried to decipher his
handwritten notes.

The ME's handwriting was just about unintelligible, but one word did
leap out. Elizabeth Hardin had been in the very early stages of
pregnancy at the time she died.

Grace closed the file.

Well, now. That might be important. Pregnancy indicated a relationship
with a man, a man who might be able to shed some light on Elizabeth
Hardin the woman, the person, as opposed to Elizabeth Hardin the
hit-and-run victim. Possibly, through Elizabeth, they might learn
something about her brother. Grace was ready to concede that the young
woman's death was just what it looked like: an accident. The cops
usually had a pretty good sense of these things, and the investigation
looked to have been by the book, but no more than that. But she was
still bothered by the coincidence of the two deaths--first the sister,
then the brother, within a two-week time frame. She needed a human
contact to explore that coincidence.

"Excuse me, Miss. Snow?" a voice at her elbow interrupted her thoughts.

Startled, she nearly dropped the file in surprise and looked up.

Standing to her side was the captain who had taken her into Goldsmith's
office.

Vann, that was the name. There was no graceful way to get out of the
chair-desk, so she continued just to stare up at him. Vann was of medium
height, slender build, and had a thin-looking face that Grace found
vaguely familiar.

"Yes," she said. With her neck at an odd angle, there was a squeak in
her voice.

"I'm Moses Vann. I'm the executive assistant to the Deputy Chief of
Police for Criminal Investigations.

Used to be chief of the Homicide Division. I understand you've come in
asking about the Hardin case?"

"You've spoken to Captain Goldsmith?"

He looked away for a second, as if impatient or annoyed with her
answering a question with a question.

"Why are you here, Miss. Snow? Why is the Navy Department suddenly
interested in Elizabeth Hardin's death?"

Grace was becoming uncomfortable looking up at him from the chair. She
slid sideways out of the chair and put the file back on the counter
before replying.

The clerk dutifully signed it back in and disappeared with it.

"I'm conducting an investigation into the death, and apparent homicide,
of her brother, It. Wesley Hardin, in Philadelphia. He was--"

"Yeah, I heard about it. See, I know Angela Hardin.

What's the connection?"

"I--we--that is, I have a partner, actually he's in charge of the
investigation--he's in Opnav, and, uh--"

"What's the connection, Miss. Snow? Is there a basis in fact for your
being here? Or are we Easter-egging here?"

Grace resented the tone and substance of his question.

This man almost seemed to be angry with her.

"I'm a federal investigator," she replied. "I'm with the NIS--that's the
Naval Investigative Service. I represent the federal government, Captain
Vann. Is there some special sensitivity to this case behind your tone of
voice?"

Vann stared at her and then laughed a nasty laugh.

"Naw," he said. "That's just my usual sparkling personality comin'
through, dig? Us local cops jes naturally likes to jone on pretty white
women. Especially when they feds, you know what I'm sayin'? Specially
when they feds."

Grace gave him an arch look. "That was truly special, Captain Vann. Can
you do Bill Cosby, too?"

Vann tried to glare at her but then began to have trouble controlling
his face. He finally grinned. "All right, Miss. Federal Government Snow.

I guess I had that coming. How's about I buy you a cup of coffee and
let's start over."

She hesitated, but then she agreed and began gathering her things. He
led her down the hallway that led to the building's entrance lobby. They
walked out into the bright sunlight of the plaza in front of the Center,
where the same crowd she had seen when she arrived still seemed to be
milling around. There was an ongoing traffic jam as a few cars tried to
creep through all the people, and two harassed-looking women police
officers were in the street, contributing to the disorder as they tried
in vain to direct pedestrians and traffic. Several of the cops greeted
Vann as he shepherded Grace across the crowded street to a corner cafe
called Barista, which was next to the entrance to the Judiciary Square
Metro station. Vann pointed Grace to a table outside, asked her what
kind of coffee she liked, and stepped inside to get their orders. He
returned with two coffees and a prune Danish, which had been cut in
half.

"Prune Danish is my downfall," he said, sitting down.

"But this time it's okay, because I had 'em cut it in half; now you
gotta eat half so's my conscience doesn't hurt."

Grace smiled and obliged. Vann took the other half and consumed it in
two eager bites. She noticed that he was never still, shifting around in
his chair and looking around all the time.

"The coffee's just an excuse to get the Danish," he said, licking his
fingers. His coat had flopped open and she saw a shoulder rig with what
looked like a miniature cannon hanging upside down in it. He saw her
looking.

"That's a Ruger blackhawk forty-four Mag," he said.

"I can't hit anything with it smaller than a building, but when it goes
off, every guilty bastard within a block usually puts his hands up. We
solve a lot of cases that way."

Grace smiled. "They gave me a three fifty-seven Magnum for a side arm at
NIS," she said. "As kind of a new-girl joke, I think. I was afraid to
pull the trigger after I'd fired it once. It hurt my hand."

Vann laughed. "Know what you mean. We got a little lady here on one of
the detective squads--Tamassa

Green, her name is. Little bitty thing. She showed up j on the
qualification range first time with a Colt Woodsman --that's one of
those high-priced twenty-two j semiautos. The mob likes 'em. Instructor
said she wasn't gonna stop anything with that thing. She said yes, she
would, since she favored putting the first round i through an eye and
the second round between the I mutts legs. I remember how it got quiet
when she said that, how all the macho dudes started to ease sideways a
little bit, sorta tryin' to make room without being' caught at it.

That's what she's carryin' to this day, and when she does her quals, she
finishes up with an extra two shots, one high, one low, if you follow.

She's something else. But enough of this. You came over here from the
Pentagon on a hunch, right? You're looking for something, don't know
what it is?"

Grace nodded and then recounted where they were with the investigation.

Vann seemed almost to solidify and settle into place as she talked. His
body stopped jiggling around and he focused his eyes on hers. She got
the impression that every word she said was sticking in his memory like
insects to flypaper.

"You used the term basis in fact a little while ago," she concluded. "We
have precious few facts to go on right now, and a very cold trail. We
only picked up the pattern of the two deaths today using a case board."

He nodded, indicating he knew what a case board was all about. Then he
took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and gave her an inquiring
"do you mind?" look.

"Go ahead," she said. She didn't mind it as long as she was outside.

"Can't smoke damn near anywhere these days," he grumped, lighting up and
taking a deep drag. He was careful to blow the smoke away from her.

"Appreciate it. So what exactly were you looking for over here?"

"I was hoping to come over here and talk to the people who did the
.hit-and-run investigation. Goldsmith felt that the file would tell me
as much as they could, given the time that's gone by."

"And?"

"The report seems open-and-shut. I guess we'll press on with what
Commander Collins is doing--talking to Lieutenant Hardin's
ex-supervisors in that ship to see what they might tell us. We're
operating under the theory that something he did or was doing got him
killed.

My guess is that it was probably something here in Washington."

"So you found nothing of interest in that Traffic file?"

She thought he might be testing her. "Well," she said hesitatingly. "One
thing--Elizabeth Hardin was pregnant."

"Ah," he said, taking a second
enormous drag on the cigarette. "Yes. Why is that significant?"

"It would indicate a boyfriend, a france or a lover-- someone close to
her, someone who might know something about her brother. Again, what,
exactly, I don't know."

He nodded approvingly, mashed the cigarette out, and then sipped some
coffee. She felt a sudden need to keep talking, to fill the silence
between them, but then decided to see what he would do if she shut up.

At length, he spoke.

"I know Angela Hardin--that's Elizabeth and Wesley's mother."

"So you
said. We met her in Philadelphia, when she came up to ID the body."

"I know about that, too. How did she react to you and your partner,
the--what, commander? Yes, Commander Collins. How did she react to you?"

"She seemed hostile. We put it down to grief reaction.

Except--"

"Yes?"

"I had the sense she came up there knowing that it was going to be her
son she saw in that morgue. Like she was resigned to his being dead, and
that the trip to Philadelphia was simply a formality, a confirmation of
something she had known in her heart. Again, we put it down to grief
reaction. To lose both of her children--"

"This is Washington, D. C., Miss. Snow," Vann said grimly. "There are
many, many black families here who have lost more than one child.

Sometimes all their children."

"Yes, I know," Grace said. "But tell me
why you sought me out today. You obviously have a special interest in
the first Hardin case. Is there something you can tell me?"

He hesitated before replying, and he began to move around again in his
chair. He frowned, sighed, looked across the street, down at the floor,
and then back at her. Finally, he spoke.

"No," he said. "I have nothing to tell you that you can put up on a case
board. I just happen to know the family. I knew about Wesley's
disappearance, and I heard on the news about the Navy finding a guy dead
in the shipyard--in that ship. I wondered if it just might be Wesley.

But, no, I have no insights to give you." He paused. "At least not at
this time. But we'd appreciate it very much--very much--if you would let
me know what you find out about Wesley's death."

"We?"

"The department. The chief takes murders in this city very seriously,
despite the image you may have of us from the papers. And if you need
stuff from us, call me first." Grace nodded. "Of course," she said. "And
we'd appreciate it very much if when we do that, you might share with us
any insights that you develop. Here's my card."

Vann went fishing in his pocket for one of his own cards. Grace picked
up her purse and stood up. "As best we can tell, Captain, Wesley was
buried alive in that ship. Bolted into a boiler when he was probably
unconscious after getting beaten up and hit on the head. He would have
awakened in the dark, inside that boiler. Dan Collins says he would have
figured out what he was in. He was probably in there for a week or so.

Then the shipyard filled the ship with nitrogen gas. 'To put her to
sleep,' as the shipyard calls it."

She looked at him for a moment. He was holding one of his own cards in
midair but had gone motionless, the

card suspended over the table, his face registering a sick shock while
he just stared at her. Then he swallowed.

"You get something, you call me," he said in a strangled voice, handing
her his card. "Please."

that same morning, Dan made his first call at 9:30 a.m. to a Capt.

Martin Fletcher, ex-commanding officer of Luce, now serving on the staff
of the Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, in Norfolk, Virginia.

Captain Fletcher was in a meeting; the yeoman asked if he could take a
message.

"Yes. Tell him Commander Collins called from Opnav regarding a JAG
investigation. I need to talk to him about a It. (jg) Wesley Hardin. I
also need you to work up a Freedom of Information form for him to sign
and fax so I can use his Social Security number on an interview form."

Dan gave the yeoman his phone and fax numbers and hung up. He had to
wait until 10:30 a.m. to make a second, similar call to San Diego, this
time in search of a Comdr. William Brownell, formerly the executive
officer in Luce, who was now the skipper of a destroyer in San Diego.

The phone call to the ship's number was shunted over to the base
operator, who said that ship was out at sea. He then called the Naval
Surface Forces Pacific Fleet scheduler on his secure phone and found out
that the ship would be back in port in three weeks.

Dan thanked the scheduler and hung up. Zip for two.

The third name on his list was a It. Francis Baler, Supply Corps, USN,
who had been Hardin's department head, and thus Hardin's direct
supervisor, in Luce. The locator listed Baler as being assigned to the
Shore-Based Intermediate Maintenance Activity, or SIMA, at Mayport,
Florida. After three calls, he got a hit.

"Lieutenant Baler speaking, sir."

"Lieutenant, I'm Comdr. Dan Collins, Division of Politico-Military
Policy, on the CNO's staff in Washington.

I'm conducting a JAG investigation into the disappearance of It. (jg)
Wesley Hardin two years ago. I understand that you were the chop in Luce
prior to your present assignment."

"Yes, sir."

Dan informed him that this was a formal interview and that he would need
some forms signed when they were done. He also told him that he was
taping the interview so that he could keep accurate notes. Baler
understood the drill and they went through the name, rank, and serial
number motions to establish Baler's identity for the tape.

"And Lieutenant Hardin was the disbursing officer and your assistant
when you were the supply officer in Luce, correct?"

"Yes, sir. He was the Disbo and the supply division officer. Has he
finally turned up?"

Dan was struck by the supply officer's choice of words. He had used the
phrase "turned up" in a way that implied that a runaway had finally
returned to the fold.

"Yes, in a manner of speaking, he has, Mr. Baler," Dan said. "It appears
that he didn't go UA back there in 1992. It appears that he was murdered
and his body hidden in one of the main engineering spaces of the
Wisconsin."

"Holy shit! I heard about that. You mean that was Wes Hardin?"

"Yeah. I'm talking to you in hopes of finding out anything about Mr.

Hardin's performance of duty or personality traits that might have a
bearing on why such a thing might have happened. I also have calls in to
your former CO and the XO."

"Holy shit," Baler said again. "Although I
don't know what I can add to the first investigation, Commander."

"What first investigation?"

"Well, we had to do one when he went missing. Standard procedure, you
know, a JAGMAN. I was the designated investigator, but the Philly NIS
office actually ran it because Hardin was the Disbo. But that part of it
was clean. There were no funds missing or anything out of order other
than some admin nits and hits. He didn't book with bucks."

Dan felt a warm flush rising on his neck. There had been an
investigation at the time of Hardin's disappearance, and the NTS knew
about it? Hell, they'd conducted it! Santini had never mentioned this.

He was doubly embarrassed, because, as a prior executive officer
himself, he should have known that there would have been an
investigation done. Hell's bells.

"We've talked to the MS," Dan said. "But they failed to mention that
Luce had done a JAG investigation. Do you remember the NIS guy in Philly
who participated?"

"Yes, sir, a guy named Santini. He was the number two guy at the NISRA,
the field office. I don't remember who the head guy was then."

Santini. Wonderful. "But to your knowledge, there was no obvious,
substantive reason for Hardin to have just disappeared like that."

There was a pause on the other end. "I didn't actually say that,
Commander. Not then, not now. But your question kinda touches a
sensitive nerve."

"This have to do with race?"

"Yes, sir." Another pause. "What the hell, I said this before, so I'll
say it again, although the CO and the XO won't back this up, in all
probability. But it goes to the heart of the problems I had with Hardin.

He did his job, he was a competent disbursing officer--the admin
discrepancies they found after he disappeared consisted of pretty
standard little shit. But as an officer, he did as much harm as good,
because I think he had a real problem dealing with white people. Plain
and simple, I think he was more than a little racist."

"That's usually not a plain and simple attribute, Mr. Baler." Baler
sighed. "Yes, sir. But as far as I'm concerned, it's the truth. Not that
a white guy can say anything like that out loud or in a fitrep.

Especially today. But I figured at the time that Hardin skipped out
because he'd had it up to here with conforming to Mr. Charley's

Navy rules. Look, I have two black officers in my department here at
SIMA, and there's none of that shit.

They're both very damn good at their jobs and in how they get along.

Everybody respects them as officers, and also as mature, black men. But
Hardin had an attitude and he made no effort to keep it a secret."

Dan reflected while he jotted down some notes.

"Did this attitude color everything he did? I mean, was his racial
animosity visible enough that he would have done or said something that
in turn could have gotten him killed?"

"Wow. You really want me to speculate here, Commander."

"Yeah, well, this is an informal JAGMAN. We're not doing rules of
evidence, and you're not a suspect or a prospective party to the
investigation or anything like that. I'm trying to dig out facts and
opinions, and you were not only somebody who knew this guy
professionally but you're apparently willing to talk about it."

"Then the answer to your question, in my opinion, is no. He was smart.

Angry, but smart. But he certainly knew the limits to the racial angle.

He was from the inner city of Washington, D. C., so presumably he knew
the code of the streets, in the sense that he knew where not to go and
what not to say. So if he got himself killed, I doubt very seriously it
was over a black-white racial issue."

"What, then? Was he a big-time womanizer? A gambler?"

"Not that I ever saw, and we kind of watch our disbursing officers for
those traits. Philly's an expensive town for junior officers to go on
liberty in, so most of the bachelors, including Wes, hung around the
base-- the O-club, the base pool, wardroom parties, that sort of thing."

"What, then?" Dan could not tell if Baler was avoiding the question, or
sincerely did not know anything.

"Commander, I think, and this is without knowing what's going on here
... I think ... well, shit, I don't know what to think. I guess I'd have
to say that whatever it was, it probably arose from something in

Washington. Either something in his past, when he was a kid, or
something that he did or said to someone in D.C. that pissed them off
enough to come get him. He used to go down there a lot on weekends. He
had a sister down there--she was killed in a car crash or something, as
I recall. Right before he disappeared, now that I think about it. Like I
said, Wes was street smart, but from what I read, sometimes you can trip
a disrespect mine without even knowing you've done it, you know what I
mean?"

"But bottom line, there was nothing he did or said professionally
or personally in the wardroom social setting that would indicate to you
that he might have had a serious problem in Philadelphia."

"Sir, that's correct. But it's also purely speculative: Nobody really
got that close to Wes in that wardroom."

"No white officers, you mean. Was he the only black officer?"

"Yes, sir."

Dan thought for a moment. He couldn't think of anything else to ask at
the moment. He looked at Grace's questionnaire, but Baler had covered
the ground pretty well.

"Okay, Mr. Baler. Thanks for the input, and double thanks for your
candor. I'm going to write this up as a statement and send it down for
you to sign. I'll use, uh ... discretion in how I write this; I
understand that even talking about race issues these days can get you in
trouble. And triple thanks for telling me about the first
investigation."

"Yes, sir. And I'm sorry to hear about Wes. He could have ... well ..."

He paused. "Well, I don't know if that's true. I didn't have any answers
for a Wes Hardin then and I don't have any now."

Dan thanked him again and hung up. He popped the tape, called in Yeoman
Jackson, and asked him to transcribe it. "But keep the tape intact; I
have to save all the tapes until my witnesses sign their interview
sheets.

And do it in rough draft--I'll want to edit that interview."

Jackson grumbled about having to do JAG stuff in addition to his regular
duties, but he left with the tape.

Dan checked to see if his call to Norfolk had produced a reply, but
there was nothing. He wanted to call Santini in Philadelphia and raise
hell about that prior investigation, but he decided to wait until Grace
came back and let her beat up on NIS.

He reflected on what the supply officer had said. As an executive
officer in a ship, Dan had some experience with racial attitudes of both
complexions, as well as the problems they produced in the close confines
of warships.

The frictions generated were very real and often made people acutely
sensitive. But had that kind of thing led to murder? He walked over to
the case board.

Grace had keyed on the two deaths, brother and sister, so close together
in time. If only statistically, that had to be significant. Baler had
said that whatever it was, it wasn't in Philly, it was in Washington. He
got out a dry erase marker, went to the names board, and wrote Hardin's
name at the top, under which he synthesized Baler's comments about
Hardin's attitude problem and a possible Washington connection to his
death. He put the marker down. He knew what was bothering him: Now they
would have to go back to see Mrs. Hardin. He was sitting there looking
at the board when Grace walked back in just before noon.

"How'd it go with the D.C. cops?" he asked as she shucked her coat and
purse and sat down.

"Nothing on the hit-and-run," she replied. "The case file is still open
and they have nothing in the way of suspects, vehicle ID, or witnesses.

I was all ready to believe that it was what it looked like: a
hit-and-run accident where the driver got clean away."

"Was?"

"Yes. While I was there, a police captain, ex-chief of the Homicide
Division, heard I was there and sought me out." Dan suggested they go
down to the corner snack bar and get a sandwich while she filled him in
on the conversation with Captain Vann and on the undercurrents of that
conversation, including the bit about Elizabeth Hardin being pregnant.

Dan whistled at that news, he was intrigued, but then felt compelled to
ask the pertinent question.

"How much of this can go on the fact board?"

Grace acknowledged his question with a frown. "Just the police incident
report itself," she said. "But the fact that she was pregnant tells me
we are going to have to go back to Mrs. Hardin."

Dan nodded and told her he had come to the same conclusion. They took
their sandwiches back to 614 and he reviewed for her his conversation
with Lieutenant Baler, including the news about the prior joint NIS-USS
Luce investigation in which, by the way, one Mr. Carl Santini had been
involved. Grace's face tightened in anger.

"Damn that man Santini. He walked me through what he said were his
files, but he never mentioned a prior investigation."

"He'd probably counter that you asked about prior NIS investigations but
never asked him for a ship's investigation."

"Robby was right," she said softly.

"It's partly my fault," he said. Her anger seemed genuine, so Dan
elected to ameliorate the issue. "I should have asked the JAG guys
upstairs if there had been a prior investigation," he said. "An officer
disappears, there usually is. Santini told us about the disbursing
audit, but not an actual investigation. I should have thought of that.

I'm going to go upstairs and request an archive copy. But right now, I'm
waiting for a call back from the ex-CO. You need to transcribe your
findings at the police department while it's still fresh in your mind.

Did you bring back a copy of the Traffic Division report?"

"Oh damn! No, I did not. What was I thinking about!"

"Okay, call 'em up and see if you can have a copy of that Hardin file.

When I get back from Navy JAG, I'm going to call the ex-CO again. Navy
meetings don't go on that long."

While Grace made her calls, Dan went upstairs to the JAG corridor and
filled out an archive request for the ship's initial investigation into
It. (jg) Wesley Hardin.

Then he returned to 614 and tried the captain in Nor- .

folk again. The same yeoman said the same thing about j a meeting.

"Same meeting there, yeoman?"

There was a slight hesitation. "Uh, yes, sir, I guess so.

I took him your message earlier, but I think he said he was gonna be in
meetings most of the day, sir."

"Okay, thanks," Dan said, and hung up. He went to see Summerfield and
explained his problem.

"Sounds like a captain who isn't too interested in returning a
commander's call," Dan complained.

"Especially on this subject, I suspect," replied Summerfield.

"Let me go whisper in the EA's ear."

Thirty minutes later, Grace reported that yes, she could have a copy of
the police report, but only if she went over and signed for it in
person.

"So it looks like I'm getting back on the Metro," she said.

"Won't they fax it?"

"They probably would, but Robby sent in a copy request, so that means
someone has to go get it. We haff our rules, you see."

Dan grinned and then Yeoman Jackson reported a Captain Fletcher on the
line for Commander Collins.

Dan was tempted to have Jackson take a message, but then remembered what
the call was about and who had started the telephone tag. He indicated
that Grace should listen in and switched on the recorder before picking
up.

"Captain Fletcher?" he 'said. "Thank you for returning my call, sir."

"Don't be a wiseass, Commander," a gruff voice said.

"You got somebody to call the Cinclantfleet EA, who 'encouraged' me to
return your call. What do you want?"

"I'm investigating--"

"The deserter, Hardin. I know that. And I assume we're on tape. What do
you want?"

"I wanted to ask you if there was anything you could tell me about
Lieutenant Hardin's performance of duty or personal situation that might
shed some light on why he was murdered in the shipyard."

"Murdered? Did you say murdered? He went UA."

"No, actually, he didn't, Captain," Dan said. "You'll probably be seeing
it shortly on the evening news. Now, is there anything you can recall
about him personally or professionally that would lead to murder?

"No, I can't. Anything else?"

Startled, Dan tried again. "Do you have any opinions as to why such a
thing might happen?"

"Nope."

"Was Lieutenant Hardin one of your better officers, Captain?"

"No comment." Dan couldn't believe it. No comment?

"Excuse me, Captain, but I'm not the press here. I have read your two
fitness reports on Mr. Hardin, and they seem to me to say very little of
substance. He did his job; he should be promoted to full lieutenant.

Full stop."

There was a moment of silence. "You a surface guy, Commander?"

"Yes, sir."

"Had your command yet?"

"No, sir. Going from here."

"Well, I haven't done my major command yet, so maybe I'll see you in the
fleet one day. But before you get to command, you'll hopefully learn a
couple of things about fitness reports."

"What's that mean, sir?"

"Fundamentally, it means that if you've read my fitness reports on
Hardin, you shouldn't have to ask any dumb questions, like, Was he one
of my better officers?

What I have to say about him is on the record. Hardin was the perfect
product of his environment. And that's all I'm going to say about Mr.

Hardin. You're doing an informal JAGMAN, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then we're done. End of interview. I'll do a Freedom of Information Act
down here; you send me a transcript of this conversation and I'll sign
it. But I have nothing more to say about Mr. Hardin. Goodbye."

Dan sat there with the dial tone humming in his ear for a few seconds
before replacing the phone. He became aware that Grace was watching him.

He switched off the tape.

"Was that normal?" she asked.

"Stone wall, more like it. That was Hardin's ex-CO.

And as you heard, he had nothing to say. Fully stands behind the
investigation--way behind it. He actually said, 'No comment.' "

"But is that what you would call a normal reaction of a ship's captain
to the news that one of his officers had been murdered?"

"No way," Dan said, standing up. "No way."

Grace got up and walked over to the case board that listed names. She
wrote

"Luce captain" on the board, then looked back at Dan.

"Fletcher," he said. "Capt. Martin Fletcher."

She wrote the name down and then put

"No comment"

below his name. Then she listed the executive officer's and the supply
officer's names, leaving the XO's line blank while annotating the supply
officer's line with Dan's notes. She then erased what Dan had written.

"You list the names you have talked to and what they say, not the
victim's name. You never talked to Har || din."

|i

"Got it. How about that detective?"

Grace wrote his name down on the board and then hesitated. Then she
wrote

"Knows something" below Vann's name as an opinion. She closed the door
to their room and sat down again.

"See a pattern?" she asked.

"The supply officer saying bad things, and the politically more astute
CO being careful to say nothing at all?"

"Yes. By saying nothing, the CO unwittingly is confirming what the
supply officer said. I'm ready to write an opinion about Hardin."

They discussed it for a while before agreeing to list "4&

some short descriptors under Hardin's name on the opinion board:
"competent, a loner in the wardroom, had a racial chip on his shoulder,
visited Washington often."

"It will be interesting to see what the executive officer has to say--or
not say," Grace mused.

"If we get him--they're at sea for the next couple of weeks. I'm seeing
another pattern," Dan said. "The supply officer thinks that whatever was
going on in Hardin's life wasn't happening in Philly, but in Washington.

And the captain's comment--'Hardin was the perfect product of his
environment'--again referring to Washington, D. C."

Grace studied the board. "That's a stone wall, all right. We'll have to
go see his mother."

"How do we do that? The last time we saw her, she made it pretty clear
that she wanted nothing to do with us."

Grace thought for a moment. "I've still got to go over to the District
police headquarters. I think I'll call Captain Vann. He told me he knows
Mrs. Hardin, knew her son and daughter. Let's see if he can get us on at
least neutral ground with that lady."

After Grace left the office to go back into town, Dan began bringing his
notes up to date, filling out some of the checklists provided by the JAG
office. Captain Sum merfield wandered in after an hour or so.

"Where's your ace partner?" he asked.

"She had to go back into D.C. to get a copy of the police report on
Elizabeth Hardin," Dan replied. "She read the thing but then didn't
bring back a copy."

"You two seem to be operating as a team," Summer field observed, sucking
on the cold pipe again. "You still think she's playing it straight?"

"She is, yes, sir." He told Summerfield about the previous investigation
that the ship had conducted and what she had turned up at the Municipal
Center. "On the prior investigation, I really think she was sandbagged,
too--that NIS guy, up in Philly, Santini, acted polite, but I think he
might be taking his marching orders from someone else. Grace has a buddy
in NIS headquarters who kind of confirms that. Anyway, I've asked Navy
JAG for a copy."

Summerfield stood in the doorway, leaning against one side, while he
thought about that.

"Sometime when she's not here," he said at length, "you might want to
pull the string on all that. Tell her to get you a copy of that first
investigation from the NIS archives. See how long it takes. And then you
call this Captain Vann and see what kind of a reading you get from him
as to what he knows or doesn't know. Make sure he understands who's
running this investigation.

And another thing--didn't she give this Santini guy some instructions
before you left Philly?"

"Yes, she did. I wanted the entire Shop Seventy-two rigger force
interviewed. She told him it was a matter of first priority."

"So call the Shop Seventy-two people; see if the NIS has been around.

It's been a couple of days. You can do this right now. See if Santini is
sloughing it off or actually doing it. Let me know what you find, and
maybe we'll go see Oh-six B or the EA, give him a data dump on the
progress of our little alliance with the NIS."

After Summerfield had gone back in his office, Dan hesitated. He really
did not want to go checking on Grace Snow, especially behind her back
like this. He certainly could not call over to the police headquarters
and talk to this Vann guy until she had completed her mission over
there. But if the captain was right ... He decided he would pull the
string on the Shop 72 interviews. He got the shipyard operator on the
phone and asked for the Shop 72 foreman's office. The foreman was not
available. He asked the secretary if the local NIS office had come in
with a request to interview the people in Shop 72 in the matter of the
Hardin case.

"Hardin case?"

"You know, the guy they found in the battleship."

"Oh yeah, I heard about that. The dead guy. The riggers are all freaked
-about it. Ghosts and stuff in the battleship. But there's been nobody
interviewing anybody here."

He thanked her and hung up. He was once again tempted to call Santini
himself, then decided against it.

Grace had to do that. If the NIS headquarters weenies were stonewalling
things, let Grace unearth that fact; then he'd see what she did with it.

She seemed to be too sincere to be part of it, no matter what
Summerfield thought. And, he decided suddenly, he did not want to make
an enemy of Grace Snow, no matter what game the mandarins wanted to
play. Hell, he liked her.

after having to take a number and wait in line for nearly an hour, Grace
finally managed to get a copy of the Hardin file. She had called Vann's
office before leaving 614, but the secretary had said the captain was
not available. But as she was leaving the building with the report, she
ran into Vann as he was headed back into the Municipal Center. He
stopped short when he caught sight of her coming out of the building.

"Miss. Snow," he said. "Back already?"

"I tried to call you, Captain," she said. She indicated the folder under
her arm. "I forgot to take a copy of the Hardin report back to the
Pentagon with me. But I did want to ask you something."

"What's that, Miss. Snow?" he said, looking around at the four o'clock
crowd on the steps. "And should we go inside?"

"I don't think that's necessary, Captain. We need to speak to Mrs.

Hardin, formally. We wondered if you could help us with that?"

"You got a mouse in your pocket, Miss. Snow? Who's this 'we'?"

"I told you. NIS and Opnav--that's the Navy headquarters staff--are
cooperating on this investigation.

"We' means Commander Collins and I."

"Hold it, Miss. Snow. I guess I wasn't paying attention about how this
deal is set up. In my experience, the feds don't usually team up to work
a homicide investigation with another agency. Homicide cops don't share,
Miss. Snow--they either work it or shop it."

Grace thought for a moment. "How about this, then: Let me set up a
meeting with you and Commander Col lins and myself, at the Pentagon.

We'll brief you on the arrangements and what we have so far, which
admittedly isn't much. But I think you'll see why we need to go back to
Mrs. Hardin."

Vann shrugged. "Okay, talk to my secretary." Grace thanked him and then
said she had to hurry to catch the Metro; she walked off before he could
change his mind.

When she looked back toward the Municipal Center, he was nowhere in
sight.

When she arrived back at the 614 office, she nearly ran into Snapper,
who was standing just inside the door, by the yeoman's desk.

"Miss. Snow," he announced. "You're just in time to go up to the front
office. I'll show you where it is. You can leave that folder if you
want. I've gotta double-lock the door--the safes are still open and I'm
the last guy out. The Commies, you know."

He waited for her to step back out of the office, and then he disabled
the cipher lock and key-locked the door. He filled her in on the way up
the hall.

"There's a genuine flap in the making. Apparently, the Hardin case is
going to be featured on the national network news tonight, and the EAs
severally want to know, What's happening' now, comma, baby? Young
Commander Collins, the famous detective and Communist sympathizer,
awaits your presence."

"I can hardly wait," Grace said. She followed
Snapper up the E-ring hallway. He was humming the Marine Corps hymn and
marching to the beat of an inaudible drummer. Grace had to hurry to keep
up. They arrived at the front office to find a cluster of captains in
the reception area. Snapper handed Grace over to Dan, who introduced her
to the executive assistants, Captains Manning and Randall, who greeted
her cooly. Summer field was there, as well as another captain from
CHINFO. She noticed that the two EAs, distinctive in the gold
aiguillettes draped over their left shoulders, stood apart from the
others and indulged in a subdued conversation. Summerfield stood next to
Dan, who was asking her if she had obtained the report.

"Yes, I "did," she replied. "And I saw Captain Vann.

Goodness, so many captains."

"He agreed to help us?" Dan was keeping an eye on Admiral Carson's door.

"Not exactly. He wants a meeting."

"Why?" asked Summerfield, speaking
for the first time.

"He doesn't understand why NIS and Opnav are doing a joint
investigation. And I think he wants to be put into the picture. He knows
the Hardin family personally, and he's probably the only way we're going
to be able to get anywhere near the mother, Angela Hardin."

Dan was about to say something when Admiral Carson's door opened and a
tall, distinguished-looking officer stepped out. He was wearing service
dress blues, with the single broad stripe with two gold stripes above
that of a three-star admiral on each sleeve. Grace had never seen so
much gold on one uniform; the admiral who ran NIS was a one-star. She
detected a sudden squeeze of tension clamp down over the room. All the
clerical staff shot to their feet and the officers went silent in
midsentence as the DCNO looked around, nodded absently to everyone in
general, and went into his office, closing the door behind him. Grace
felt the officers in the room relaxing slightly. They acted as if they
were a bunch of small-town parish priests admitted momentarily to the
presence of a cardinal of the Roman Curia.

"That was Vice Admiral Layman, the DCNO Plans and Policy," Dan
whispered. "Exceedingly large Kahuna."

"Why are we whispering?" Grace asked innocently.

Summerfield chuckled as Dan groped for an answer, but then Admiral
Carson, in his shirtsleeves, appeared in his doorway, waving everyone
into his office. The two EAs went first, followed by Summerfield and the
CHINFO captain. Dan brought Grace in with him and introduced her to
Admiral Carson, who gave her a friendly handshake and then asked
everyone to sit down. The admiral returned to his desk.

"Okay, everybody," he said. "Subject is the escalation of press interest
in the Hardin case. Captain Smythe here from CHINFO will bring us up to
date."

Smythe opened his folder and announced that CBS News was going to
feature the story at the national level this evening. To Smythe's
knowledge, the story had been reported already, but not featured. CHINFO
assumed the other two networks would follow suit.

"What's been released?" interrupted Randall, speaking out loud for the
first time. Grace realized that it was a measure of the EA's power that
he could question peremptorily the CHINFO briefer when an admiral had
established that he was running the meeting. Smythe looked over at
Randall and went into his spokesperson routine.

"The Navy Department is conducting an investigation into the matter; the
Navy Department does not ordinarily comment on investigations in
progress. We can confirm that a body was discovered in the engineering
spaces of USS Wisconsin, that the victim has been identified as It. (jg)
Wesley Hardin, formerly of Washington, D. C., and that the Navy
Department is treating the matter as a homicide. That's it."

"Did you have to say he was from Washington?"

Randall persisted.

"Yes. You have to understand, Captain Randall, our statements at this
level are often determined by what the media already knows. They had
Hardin's name, the fact that he was from Washington, D. C., and even
that his body was found in a mummified state. If they already have it,
we often give it back to them in our own statement; makes us look more
forthcoming."

"Okay," said Admiral Carson. "Commander Collins, any ideas
of where their information is coming from?"

"Several possible sources, Admiral," Dan replied.

"Every bit of what the captain just said could have come from the
ambulance crew, except maybe the bit about his being from Washington."

"Excuse me, Admiral," Randall interrupted again.

"Miss. Snow, you are the appointed operational liaison from NIS?"

Startled, Grace looked over at the EA. "Yes, Captain, I am."

"Admiral, I request that Miss. Snow be excused from the meeting at this
time."

Grace was stunned. Admiral Carson's eyebrows shot up. She could see that
he was perplexed, but this was the vice chiefs EA speaking.

"Miss. Snow," Carson said. "I'm sorry, but if you would be so kind ..."

Grace tried to control the flush on her face. She got up and went to the
door. She paused for a second, trying to think of a way to object, but
then let herself out.

Dan felt acutely embarrassed, and he was on the verge of speaking up
when Randall cut him off.

"Commander Collins, I've been informed that you believe this Miss. Snow
is being fully cooperative in the course of this invesitgation."

Been informed? By whom? he wondered. "Yes, sir, I do believe that," he
said. But the problem of the prior investigation, and what the secretary
at Shop Seventy two had revealed about follow-up interviews, suddenly
intruded on his mind. Randall caught his expression.

"Yes?" he said, his eyebrows raised.

"Well, sir, I'm pretty sure I can vouch for Miss. Snow, but not for the
NIS. I found out today that there had been a prior investigation done on
Hardin's disappearance, by his own command, USS Luce, in cooperation
with NISRA Philadelphia, something the NIS office in Philly did not
choose to share with me. And Miss. Snow had directed NISRA Philadelphia
to interview all the riggers, as a matter of first priority. I called
the riggers shop today--there have been no interviews."

"Surprise,
surprise," Randall said. "Frankly, I'm willing to bet that it's NIS
that's been leaking to CBS."

"Two can play that game," Manning offered. "We can always leak the fact
that Opnav is in it because we want to ensure that NIS doesn't screw it
up."

"That's a two-edged sword," Admiral Carson countered. "We can make NIS
look bad, but that in turn makes the Navy look bad."

"I can fix that,"

Randall said. "My principal can call in NIS himself and share his
thinking with him on the subject of leaks."

"Let's table that for an off-line discussion, shall we," Carson said,
eyeing Dan. "Commander, where are you with the investigation?"

Dan had been expecting this question. If it had been Carson alone asking
for his own information, he might have gone along with it. But it was
obviously the VCNO's EA who had called this meeting, and he owed Randall
nothing. He hesitated, then made up his mind.

"Admiral, as the investigating officer, I can report that my
investigation is not yet completed. I would prefer to withhold my report
until such time as it is completed.

That way, there can be no possibility that anyone can infer that there
was undue command influence on the course of the investigation."

Randall sat up straight in his chair. "Don't be an ass," he snapped.

"This isn't some 'destroyer bumping the pier' case we're talking about
here. This is a very serious matter that has the attention of the Vice
Chief of Naval Operations himself."

"I understand its importance, Captain. But I must insist."

"You must whatl" Randall was almost shouting.

"Captain Randall," the admiral interrupted, giving Dan a wry look.

"Commander Collins, we'll of course respect your position. And excuse
you now, if you please."

"Aye, aye, sir," Dan said stiffly, and left the
room. He closed Carson's door carefully and found Grace sitting in the
outer office in one of the wretched upholstered chairs, looking less
than pleased.

"Well, I've been thrown out of better bars than that," he announced. The
chief yeoman looked up for a moment as Dan dropped into the other chair,
but then he went back to his typing.

"You, too?" Grace asked.

"Yeah. I'm afraid I sassed the VCNO's EA when I invoked the
command-influence rule. They wanted to know what I had found so far.

When Randall started to get really pissed, Oh-sixb invited me to the
egress."

"Well, I'm not sure what I did."

"You didn't do anything. You're one of them."

"Oh. Right. So are we done here?"

Dan grinned. "Not hardly. Or at least I'm not. I was excused, but not
dismissed. Either Randall or Carson is going to come out of there and
fang me before I get to slink back to Six-fourteen. I trampled on some
serious EA toes in there. And I apologize for your being asked to leave
like that. But there is something I need to tell you, relating to the
NIS-Opnav food fight. I called on Shop Seventy-two's foreman this
morning; his secretary confirmed that nobody from Santini's office had
been around. Summerfield asked me to make the call."

"Ah. So these people think NIS is trying to derail the investigation,
and that I'm part of that program."

"Some of them probably do; I can't read Admiral Carson, but I would bet
the EAs feel that way. Randall seems to be the point man on the anti-NIS
crusade."

"And he's the vice chiefs executive assistant?"

"Right. And a powerful guy hereabouts. Already selected for admiral, and
not timid about throwing around Daddy's four stars."

"Have you made me an enemy?"

Dan laughed. "I'm not significant enough to become an enemy of a guy at
that level. He'll probably step on my neck, but that's about it. Tell
you what: If the vice chief wants to assign another boy investigator,
he's more than welcome to it."

Grace was silent for a few minutes. Dan realized that they would have to
have a heart-to-heart talk when they were able to get away from the
front office and all the horse-holders. Then the door to Carson's office
opened, and the parade of captains appeared, in reverse order of their
going in. The CHINFO captain, Summerfield, Manning, and Randall.

Summerfield walked right by Dan, shooting him a surreptitious wink as he
left the office. The chief yeoman told Manning that Vice Admiral Layman
wanted to see him, and Manning grabbed a notebook, knocked on the DCNO's
door, and went in.

Randall strolled over to where Dan, standing now, was waiting. He
glanced at Grace dismissively before focusing on Dan.

"You like to live dangerously, Commander?"

"Did I do something wrong, Captain?"

"You did something worse than wrong; you did something dumb."

"On instructions, Captain."

"Oh, really? Whose, might I ask?"

"Admiral Carson. He specifically directed me to permit no intrusion into
the investigation that could be construed as command influence. Sir."

Randall smiled down at Dan. Dan concluded that Randall smiling was not a
pleasant sight.

"It was Carson who asked you the question, Commander.

Don't play sea lawyer with me. You're out of your league."

Dan felt a flare of anger. "As a sea lawyer, Captain?"

The icy smile disappeared as Randall's face tightened, and then he drew
back and looked down at Dan the way a snake might inspect a frog.

"Dumber and dumber, Commander," he said softly. "You had your command
tour yet?"

Second time today he had been asked that question.

"No, sir."

"Fancy that," Randall said, and then walked around Dan into the E-ring
corridor, turning left to go to the vice chiefs office.

"Sounds like an enemy to me," Grace observed from her chair. "Really
good resemblance, in fact."

They went back down to 614, passing a series of now darkened offices.

For most of the Pentagon, the day was over. The rattling engine sounds
of a propane tractor hauling a wagon train of office trash to the
pulping rooms could be heard echoing through the corridors.

There was no light showing through the opaque windowpane in 614's front
door, but the door was unlocked.

When they went in, they walked into an aromatic cloud of pipe tobacco.

"Aha! Serious crimes and misdemeanors going down here," Dan announced in
a stage whisper.

"Shut the damn door before the tobacco police come around," Summerfield
said. Dan and Grace walked around the cluster of desks in the outer
office and stood in Summerfield's doorway. Summerfield was sitting in
his chair, beneath a layer of blue smoke. The captain had only his desk
light on, and on the desk was one of the captain's many gun catalogs.

Dan saw that he had his windows open just in case.

"Well, Daniel, did you have a nice day?" Summer field asked innocently.

"It was a little rough around the edges, Captain," Dan replied. "Grace
here thinks that possibly I irritated the vice chiefs grand vizier."

"If you're gonna piss somebody off, you might as well do it to a
four-star's EA and flag selectee," Summer field said. "More points that
way."

"Yes, sir. He made an unhappy reference to my command tour."

"The one in Argentia, no doubt. Well, you probably did the right thing
up there. Miss. Snow, I apologize for your getting have out of the
meeting, but it's probably for the best that neither of you were there,
given what they ended up talking about."

"How's that, Captain?" Grace
asked.

But the captain shook his head. "No. You two just proceed. What you
don't know can't hurt you, at least not for a while. It will depend upon
what the press does with this. But Dan, if I were you, I'd do a
memorandum for the record on the meeting today. Miss. Snow, you, too.

Write down your version of what happened, then bury it in your files.

What time is it? Oh, almost eighteen hundred. Now, if you'd close my
door so I can fumigate in peace. Oh, and Dan?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Take the rest of the day off, if you please."

"Aye, aye, sir," Dan replied with a straight face. He closed
Summerfield's office door, and they went over to the back room. Grace
fired up her portable while Dan sat down to one of the PCs to construct
his MFR.

Grace was finished first, having been the first to be ejected from the
meeting. Dan was a bit more verbose.

When he was done, he looked up, to find Grace watching him. He thought
he caught a speculative look in her eyes, and for a moment, he did some
speculating of his own about what she might be like in bed. The thought
surprised him.

"So what do we do now, Mr. Holmes?" she was saying.

"We call it a day, I think, Dr. Watson. The powers that be are gonna
power around for a while, covering their stern sheets and their
principals' position. Tomorrow, I'd suggest you call into NIS and smoke
out their copy of that original investigation, and then call Santini and
get a progress report on his purported interviews with Shop Seventy-two.

After that, we'll meet with your Detective Captain Vann."

"And you?"

"I'm going to start building my final report, getting the paperwork in
order. I have this funny feeling that they, whoever they might be, may
come down here soon and instruct me to turn over all investigation
materials to a new, more politically pliable boy investigator--one who
has the confidence of his executiveship, my lord Captain Randall."

"Can they just do that?"

"Sure. If they really want to mess around, they could, for instance,
write me a set of orders and then, regrettably, due to the exigencies of
my unexpected transfer, appoint a new guy to run the JAGMAN."

She sat back in her chair, being somewhat careless about her skirts.

Well, my goodness, Dan thought, trying to keep his eyes in the boat. If
she saw him looking, she gave no visible sign of it.

"I guess I'm a little naive," she reflected. "If somebody tried that in
NIS, there'd be hell to pay."

"Would there? It wouldn't stun me to find out that the passive
resistance going on at NIS, if that's what's going on, isn't the result
of some fairly high-level guidance --or even collusion with someone high
up in

Opnav. Remember, this thing's gone public, and the Navy hates public."

She slumped a little at that.

"What would you do" she asked, "if they took you off the investigation,
gave you orders?"

"Truth? I'd take those orders, clutch them to my heaving bosom, and run,
not walk, right out the door.

I'm due for sea duty and a command of my own. Throw me in that briar
patch, Br'er detailer."

"And what about the Lieutenants Hardin?"

Dan took his time with that one. "The Lieutenants Hardin are dead. From
what I can see at this juncture, there's not a snowball's chance that
I--that we--can somehow achieve justice for the one who was murdered.

It's been two years. Any trail in Philadelphia is stone-cold. Any trail
here in D.C. probably leads into a part of town where you and I would be
neither welcome nor effective. I'm beginning to think that some
reasonably big bosses would like this thing to go down-scope for a
while. If I had to wager, I'd say that's what Sum merfield's talking
about. They're going to kill it."

"And now?"

"For now, I follow my last legal order: Captain Sum merfield said to
proceed. That's what we'll do: proceed until something changes. But not
tonight. Tonight, I have a date with a rowing machine, since daylight on
the river has long gone. See you tomorrow, Miss. Snow."

malachi eased himself into an upright position in his bed and tried
unsuccessfully to get the room to stop moving. It wasn't exactly
spinning, but there were suspicious indications of movement in his
peripheral vision whenever he cracked open either of his eyes. It was
still dark outside, and his head felt like a lumpy sponge that had
soaked up a few gallons of pulsing pain. His stomach was queasy, and his
mouth gave new meaning to the words whiskey sour. He tried to
concentrate, trying to remember how much he had had to drink last night.

Or was it the past two nights? And maybe a day in between? What the hell
day was this? With his eyes still pretty much closed, he reached for his
cigarettes. He found only one left. He felt both ends of the cigarette,
pinched off the filter, and then lit up, wincing at all the noise the
lighter made. He started to shake his head to clear his mind, but pain
central got wind of it just in time and threatened to take his head
right off. Might be a blessing, he thought as he gingerly swung one leg
at a time over the edge of the bed and tried to get approximately
vertical before staggering into the bathroom. So what happened to all
that self-control, Ward? Was there some reason behind our going through
a couple of quarts of hundred-proof? What little worm is squirming in
your mind, you have to drown it like that?

He sat down heavily on the throne in the darkened bathroom, closed his
eyes, and let his chin settle down on to his chest one degree at a time.

Each degree hurt.

His insides felt as if they were settling, too, perhaps all the way into
the toilet. A tiny flick of hot cigarette ash landed on his chest. He
ignored it and took another drag. The Hardin thing--that's what this
was. He had seen the evening network news--when, last night? Must have
been. Body in the battleship. Officer missing for two years. Government
investigation. "Just wanted you to hear it from us first," the captain
had said. Fucking wonderful. He had wanted to call the captain, ring the
number, say the code name, find out what was really happening, but of
course he couldn't do that. They would think he was getting scared.

And the call from Angelo hadn't helped. Apologizing for the body being
found. Thought a sealed-up, nitrogen-filled, inactivated battleship was
a pretty secure place. Reassurances of what a stand-up guy he was,
nothing to worry about; likewise for the hard hats who had been
involved. No problem whatsoever. Except for maybe one thing. About the
need for Malachi to start watching his own back, because the people who
had hired him might be getting antsy now, and they could, of course,
always hire somebody else. "Way I see it, Malachi, you're the guy who
can finger your client. This federal beef grows some hair and teeth,
your client might be tempted to eliminate the connection between the
'body in the battleship' story and himself, which is namely you, am I
right? Feel like I own a piece of all this shit, so I thought I'd better
call, and say: watch your ass, paisan. You need some help, let me know.

We have some guys in D. C., can arrange some shit, you need it."

Thank you, Angelo. Make my fucking day, Angelo.

He remained perched on the John like a stone gargoyle, listening to his
heart beat and his lungs breathe, waiting until the light coming in from
the bedroom grew stronger and the day became unavoidable. He finally
heaved himself up, washed his face and hands, and then decided to take a
shower, after which he went out to the kitchen to get a Coke to settle
his stomach. With maybe the slightest dollop of Harper to really settle
it.

He looked around inside the icebox, but what little food there was
revolted him. Aspirin, that's what drunks have for breakfast. Aspirin, a
Coke to get some caffeine running, and a little hair of the dog to take
the edges off the Coke. He sat down gingerly in a kitchen chair and
reached for the sugar bowl, which he kept full of aspirin tablets.

Thanks a heap, Angelo, that was just what I needed to think about. Of
course the captain could hire somebody else, although he wasn't too sure
that the captain would know that many guys in the business. On the other
hand, he'd hired him, hadn't he? And there were certainly other
contractors in the business in this town; Malachi even knew a few of
them. Hell, everybody was a contractor of some kind or another in
Washington-- contractor or a consultant. Same difference: talent for
hire. But it was so damn simple: If everybody just kept their damn cool,
sat still, kept their mouths shut, the feds would be stymied. There just
wasn't any trail. It was a no-brainer, as all the modish bureaucrats
liked to say.

He swished the Coca-Cola around in his mouth to get rid of the sour
taste of the aspirin tablets, the noise sounding like a wave breaking in
his ears. Maybe the thing to do was to hit the road, just disappear.

Retire.

He had a nice fat cash stash from the sergeants' Mafia days in Vietnam
and Germany, and another couple of hundred grand in bank accounts and
safe-deposit boxes around town after all these years of shoveling shit
for the bigs. He thought about it as he waited for the caffeine to work.

Go down south somewhere, get a little farm or something, and settle into
the weeds, drinking bourbon under a willow tree somewhere. What damn
near every sergeant he had ever known had talked about doing when the
big three-oh came along. Except that not that many had actually done it.

Health problems, a wife who was settled finally into a good job and
tired of moving, grown kids who were still hanging around, the fear of
being too far away from the almighty exchange and the commissary and the
Army hospital. Basically, the habits of three decades of Army life.

That's probably what would keep him here, too-- habit.

He finished half the Coke, found some bourbon, topped the can back off,
and then deliberately drank it down. Screw these people. He was not
going to get run out of town because of some rinky-dink investigation,
and if the bigs tried to take him out, he just might throw some shit in
the game in reply. Shit, he was in the business, wasn't he?

He left Capitol Hill that morning on the Metro to check on his bolt-hole
apartment in the Randolph Towers and also on the Ford. He came out of
the Ballston Metro, walked through the Ramada Renaissance lobby, across
two streets, and into the Randolph Towers building by way of the deli,
where he topped off his cigarette supply, grousing at the Lebanese
proprietor over his prices. Once in the building proper, he took the
elevator directly down to the third level of the garage and walked to
the corner where his Ford was parked. Finding a small pool of what
looked like power-steering fluid under the car, he decided to run it
down to the nearest Ford dealer, which was on Wilson Boulevard.

As he pulled the sedan out onto Quincy Street and turned right, he
thought he saw a car swing into traffic from a street parking place a
half a block behind him, next to an abandoned car dealership.

He had begun watching his back, just like Angelo had recommended, even
doing a little fancy stuff on the Metro trains, ducking in and out of
newspaper shops and convenience stores to see what might be going on
behind him or even ahead of him, but there had been nothing. Just the
stone-faced commuters and the first of the spring tourist hordes on the
Metro, and all the politicians, bureaucrats, and other great men
whizzing down the avenues in their official cars. But as he bounced
along the potholes by which Arlington County controlled speeding on
Wilson Boulevard, he noticed that the dark-colored car seemed to be
staying with him, three, maybe four cars back. Single driver, but he
couldn't see much in the vibrating mirror, and he didn't want to turn
around and look. So he drove past the dealership and went one more
block, accelerating into a left turn and going through a yellow light
that went red as he made the turn. He circled the block, coming back out
on Wilson, headed back toward the dealership. He drove down the next
three blocks slowly, staying in the right lane as if looking for a
parking place, his turn signal blinking, scanning the ranks of parked
cars and the aprons of two gas stations, looking for a dark sedan.

But there was nothing. He'd either lost the guy or spooked him. Or maybe
there'd never been a guy in the first place.

He turned around in a gas station and drove back on down to the Ford
dealership, where they told him it would be a three-hour wait, he wanted
to wait for it. He told them he'd leave it, be back tomorrow, but then
he stood for a while in the corner of the front showroom, looking out
the big tinted windows on Wilson, waiting to see what might show up.

Nothing did. After thirty minutes, he walked out of the dealership and
headed down the street toward the Clarendon Metro station, stopping
briefly in the entrance of a Vietnamese grocery to scan the street
again, keeping his eyes open. Still nothing. He decided to go back to
Capitol Hill.

He thought about it during the subway ride home. If a guy had been
following him, and thought maybe Mal achi had made him, he'd break it
off, wouldn't he? Just drive on down the line. Your target speeds up and
turns off the main drag, he's made you, right? On the other hand, there
was no way a guy could know where he had been bound that morning,
certainly not in advance, and no way the guy could have had a car
waiting out there on Quincy, because Malachi had taken the subway.

Unless they knew about the apartment in the Randolph Towers. But even
then, the garage had two exits. Two watchers? Shit, he was getting
paranoid. Well, yeah, but even paranoids have enemies.

He stared at the darkened train window as they rolled through the
tunnels under Pennsylvania Avenue.

Jesus Christ, you're working yourself up over jackshit, he told himself.

He hadn't heard from the captain since the last call, and he was
determined not to call in like some panicked teenager. There had been
nothing else in the Washington papers about the case. You're spooking
yourself, man, he thought. But when he got back to the town house, there
was a message on the machine from the captain: "We're taking steps to
neutralize the investigation. Two years is a long time. One of the
principal investigators has been ours all along. You can relax."

That was it, no instructions to call in, get in touch, "we need to meet"

stuff. Malachi quickly saved the message and then replayed it a couple
of times, listening to the captain's voice carefully, trying to strain
any nuances from the mechanical words. "Neutralize the investigation"

--what the hell did that mean? "Two years is a long time." Right, we're
all counting on that. "One of the principal investigators has been ours
all along."

Was he no longer on the case? "You can relax." Yeah, relax. Let down
your guard. Forget about it, so our guy, our new guy, can maybe solve
our new little problem for us.

He left the message on the tape, lit a cigarette, and walked around the
ground floor of the town house as he thought about it. He needed to do
something, not just stay hunkered down inside the perimeter. Anyone
who'd done time in Nam knew that rule. Only targets stayed inside the
wire. Survivors got out there in the weeds in onesies and twosies and
did unto Chuck what Chuck was trying to do unto them. But he needed a
face, some names. Okay, so he'd start by finding out who'd been doing
this investigation that was now going to get "neutralized." He went to
his desk and got out a yellow legal pad, took it back into the kitchen,
and fixed up some coffee. He sat down at his kitchen table.

The news had said the Navy was conducting the investigation.

That meant that bunch of clowns at NIS. So he had to find a way into NIS
to ferret out who had the Hardin case. What was the worst thing the NIS
could find out? That there was a connection between the Hardin sister's
little accident and the Hardin brother's killing.

So where would they start working on that? In the D.C. Metropolitan
Police Department. So he'd call them, maybe dig out who from NIS had
been pulling on that string. He sipped some coffee, thought about maybe
slipping a little whiskey sweetener into it, then shook his head. Mr.

Harper could wait--but not too long.

He walked to his desk in the dining room. So who would he be today? The
lawyer. Cops wouldn't give a journalist the time of day, but a lawyer,
they had to sweat a lawyer just a little bit. But they'd check him out
first. So he wouldn't talk to cops; he'd talk to their clerks. Go after
the paper--that's what the NIS would have to do. He looked up the
number, set up voice program six for Lawyer Greenberg, called the main
police department's number, and asked which division would handle a
hit-and-run. Hit-and-run division, in the Traffic Bureau. Well, no shit.

But how about the records?

The records office at Municipal Center. The sullen operator made him
call back on a different number, but he scored on the first call when a
little-old-lady voice answered the phone. She's old. Be polite, he
thought.

"My name is Farrell Greenberg, ma'am. I'm an attorney at Lyle, Spencer,
Watkins and King, out here in Bladensburg. I have a question, but I'm
not quite sure where to go with it, so I'm taking a wild shot and
calling the records office. Perhaps you can assist me."

"What you lookin' for?"

"Our firm has been retained by the Naval Investigative Service down at
the Navy Yard to do a large-scale records search on hit-and-run
accidents in the District of Columbia. The Navy's had some people
attempting veterans claims fraud based on what the Navy thinks are an
exceptional number of hit-and-run cases here in Washington, D.C. What we
need--"

"Well, why don't you just ax the lady?"

Lady? "I beg your pardon, ma'am, I don't follow."

"That lady, she workin' for the same folks you workin' for, that Navy
investigation service, what's her name, Miss. Snow, yeah, I remember it,
'cause she come over here, lookin' at a file, and then she have to come
on back, get her a copy of it, on account she forgot to get her a copy
the first time. Everybody looks at a file here, they usually takes a
copy, you know what I'm sayin'? She done forgot it, had to come all the
way back from the Pentagon, she said. Nice lady, didn't hassle me about
it none, like mos' folks."

"Do you remember which file that was, ma'am? If I had a name, I can find
out if we're duplicating our efforts here."

"It was some hit-and-run, I remember that. Old one --two years back.

Don't remember no names, though.

Too many names down here."

"Well, thank you, ma'am. I think I better stop right here and go back to
the NIS and talk to Miss. Snow. No point in both of us bothering you, is
there?"

"Yeah, that's true. Maybe they just be checkin' up on you, see if you
get 'em all, you doin' your survey. Folks is always checkin' up on folks
around here."

"Thank you, ma'am. I'm going to go see what's going on here. Appreciate
your help, though."

He hung up. Miss. Snow, from the NIS. Pulling a two year-old hit-and-run
file. Miss. Snow. The captain had said the investigator had been "our
man." No; wait--go listen to the tape again. He got up, went into the
hall, and ran the tape. One of the principal investigators has been ours
all along. So they had two people working it.

One from NIS--Miss. Snow. Another one from--where?

Who was the second guy? He went back to the kitchen, drank some more
coffee. Couldn't just call NIS. They might have little old ladies out
there, every Washington agency had them, but the NIS variety would be
trained not to talk to outsiders. And he couldn't just call some
Pentagon number in the sky. If the captain found out, it might spook him
and his principal.

So where else? Philadelphia. The news story had broken in Philadelphia.

A Navy spokesperson had been quoted. What was Navy up there? Well, that
shipyard, of course.

He called long-distance information and got the main number for the
shipyard. He selected another voice program and an identity as a new
staffer on the House Armed Services Committee. The shipyard operator put
him through to the shipyard commander's office, where he identified
himself and asked to speak to the spokesperson for the shipyard. He was
switched over to another number, then a third before a civilian
secretary told him he had to talk to the Navbase PAO.

"Navbase?"

"Yes, sir, Commander Naval Base Philadelphia.

Comnavbase. They have a CHINFO type on their staff; she's the
spokesperson for all the Navy activities up here. That's probably who
you're looking for."

CHINFO. He remembered that word from his seance with Elizabeth Hardin.

The secretary gave him two numbers: one for the public affairs office at
Navbase, and a second for the commander's office. He chose the PAO,
again using the identity of the committee staffer.

The PAO was not available. "Could she call back?" he was asked. Malachi
hesitated. As a rule, he never left his own phone number for a callback.

He said no, he was out of his office, away from his desk, but it was
urgent, the chairman needed to know something. He asked when the PAO
would be back in. The secretary did not know. Malachi said he would try
again, then hung up.

He sat there, chewing on his lower lip. From his Array days, he knew
that calls from a congressional office had to be reported up the chain
of command-- especially if they came from one of the Armed Services
committees. That could possibly get back to the captain, too, and one
phone call to the HASC might expose him. No. Somewhere else in
Philadelphia. The cops?

The Philadelphia media? Too hard to sustain the cover story. He needed
someone low level, a worker bee. "Always be a snake," Monroney had said,
"stay down in the grass." They had found Hardin's body on the base
--where would they take it? Maybe there was a naval hospital up there; a
naval base usually had a Navy hospital.

He called the base operator again, but she told him the naval hospital
had been closed down two years ago.

Thank you very much. So where would they take the body? They'd want an
autopsy, so maybe the city morgue. It took him four more calls to get a
number for the Philadelphia County Medical Examiner's Office, but there
he ran into a cop, one Officer Wykowski.

Damn. He walked through his House committee staffer routine again.

Wykowski listened politely and asked him for his number--standard
procedure: "We gotta call you back, make sure you are who you say you
are."

Malachi almost did it, but then he hung up. From a pay phone, maybe, but
pay phones didn't come with a voice synthesizer. He could imagine the
cop laughing at him on the other end, and he hoped the guy didn't have
caller ID. But they probably got calls from reporters all the time
trying to disguise who they were. So who you gonna call, there,
Ghostbuster?

The Navy spokesperson had been from the naval base headquarters. Maybe
the congressional angle wasn't such a good idea. How about just a
reporter? He selected another voice program and called back, this time
to the commander's office. He identified himself to the Yeoman Third
Class Hardy who answered as a reporter with the Washington Times. He had
a quick question: What were the names of the Navy investigators working
the Hardin case, the body in the battleship?

"You'll have to call the PAO, sir," Hardy said.

"I called them; they referred me to your office. Look, I know one of the
names. It's a Miss. Snow from the NIS. But my sources indicate that
there are two." He decided to take a long shot. "I need the name of the
other one, that captain they sent up with Miss. Snow."

"He was a commander, sir, but I can't give out their names."

"Okay, Yeoman Hardy, I understand. Thanks."

He now had Miss. Snow and Commander X. Back to the PAO. The newspaper
had said that Hardin's mother had gone up to Philadelphia to ID the
body. Snow and the commander would have been there for that, he was sure
of it. He switched voice programs as the PAO's office picked up, and
this time he was Officer Wykowski from the Philadelphia city morgue,
needing a name to finish his monthly report.

"Those two Navy people who were here on the Har din case, that guy they
found in the battleship? I got two names, one's a Miss. Snow; the
other's a Commander somebody, but some jerk spilled coffee on his name."

"You mean Commander Collins."

"Yeah, okay, that works. It starts with a C. Looked like Cowin or
something. I just couldn't read the rest of it. 'Predate it, lady."

Malachi smiled and hung up. Commander Collins and Miss. Snow. He pulled
out a Department of Defense phone book and went to the back. Collins.

Bunch of them: two on the Navy headquarters staff, one on the Army
staff, one on the Joint Chiefs--two captains, one commander, one
lieutenant commander. The lone commander was Collins, Daniel L., in the
Division of Politico-Military Policy, Office of the Chief of Naval
Operations, office code 6He. He went back to the Navy index, looked up
the NIS, and then tried to find Snow, but there was no listing for her
at NIS. He toyed with the idea of calling there, too, but let it go. He
had two names; now he would go wrap up some other business and then go
scare up some faces to put with those names.

on wednesday morning, Dan asked Grace to call Captain Vann at the
Municipal Center and arrange for Vann to come to the Pentagon at 1100.

In the privacy of the back room, they had kicked around how much or how
little to tell Vann about the bureaucratic warfare dimensions of their
working together. Dan had been leaning toward a fairly restricted data
dump, but Grace argued for full disclosure.

"He'll see through any smoke screen we put up to explain why I'm here,
and why you are not at NIS," she had pointed out. "Cops are some of the
best bureaucrats there are. And he's probably our only hope to get to
Mrs. Hardin."

"I'm just concerned about folding outsiders into this investigation;
it's a Navy deal."

"But it's a homicide, not a collision at sea. We've already established
that Hardin's killing is probably not related to his job as a Navy
paymaster, so whatever's behind the murder is buried in his personal
world, maybe the civilian world of Washington. That's Vann's turf."

And yours, Dan had thought, but he had been persuaded.

Grace was good at that, he noticed; must be that Jesuit training at
Georgetown. As agreed, Dan went to meet Vann, who was waiting on the
sidewalk in front of the south parking entrance, looking somewhat
conspicuous among the stream of uniforms entering and leaving the
building. Dan cleared Vann and his oversized side arm through the guard
station, after much admiring comment about the weapon from the two
Federal Protective Service cops, and then took him up to 614.

"First time in the Pentagon, Captain?" Dan asked as they worked their
way through the maze of rings and corridors.

"Came over here for a shooting in the parking lot few years back," Vann
replied. "Some weird Harold shot a

Navy officer at random. But I've never been inside the building, no."

Dan made introductions when they got to 614, then closed the door to the
back room when they were ready to begin. Grace had been making some
phone calls while Dan had been picking up the detective. She looked
glum.

"Suspicions confirmed on Santini," she reported.

"They've done nothing. A 'change in priorities' is the excuse of the
day. And NIS is 'researching' the USS Luce's previous investigation.

They hope to get me a copy by the end of next week."

"Next week? Yeah, that's definitely in the suspicions confirmed regime.

I've got Navy JAG digging up a copy; we'll see who gets us one first.

Let's fill our guest detective in on what's going on. You want some
coffee, Captain?"

It took an hour. Vann had said he could give them forty-five minutes,
but he sat impassively in an elderly desk chair "as Dan ran over the
time limit. Dan gave him the political background behind the
investigation's organization, replayed what they had seen and heard in
Philadelphia, including their meetings with the retired rigger and Mrs.

Hardin, and then walked him through the case boards. When it was over,
Vann shook his head slowly.

"What you've got," he said, "is jackshit. Two-year old, two-year-cold
jackshit."

Dan nodded, looking at the sparsely populated fact board. "We know."

"Less than jackshit," Vann continued. "If Hardin was killed in Philly
and dumped in that battleship, it was probably done by a squad of
eye-talians who were following orders--like your rummy rigger said. And
you said yourself that only the riggers could get inside that ship. The
chances of finding out who was giving those orders, in South Philly, are
zero. You habeas one corpus, but have no visible motive. You have nobody
who gained, unless there was a big insurance policy out there somewhere.

Was there? Surely you've checked?

"We've done a lot of hypothesizing and speculating about a connection
between the two deaths," Grace said. "The salient feature is that it's
just too coincidental, both of them dying that close together. But
that's all we have--speculation. Which is why we want to talk to Mrs.

Hardin."

"She won't want to talk to you," Vann warned. "Far as she's concerned,
she handed over two pretty good kids to the U.S. Navy and they both
ended up dead."

"I should think she'd be desperate to know why this happened," Dan said.

Vann shook his head. "You should think? Pardon me, but you talkin' like
a Martian. You simply have no idea of what it means to have two out of
two black kids, in one family, coming up from the District, make it out
of the streets and into the white man's professional world.

Black kids in this town, half of 'em are s'posed to end up dead before
they're twenty-one. That's what a lot of parents and their kids have
come to believe these days.

That there's some law of averages working to thin out the black-kid
population. So when it turns out that way, it's just life in the black
lane, see? That woman is beyond anger, but mostly she's resigned to her
fate."

"But how about you, Captain?" Grace asked quietly.

"You resigned to just letting this thing go by? Surely you can see that
there's too much coincidence here."

Vann was silent for a moment, staring at the middle distance between
them, his thin face working. Then he looked down at his watch.

"I gotta boogie," he said. "I saw the Hardin thing on the national news
last night. What's the Navy gonna do?"

"Do?" asked Dan.

"Don't shit a bullshitter, Commander. This thing gets media heat, the
Navy's gonna damp it down, put it on a slow track until the heat goes
elsewhere. Lemme ask you something: Can you assure me that you'll still
be running this investigation by next week?"

Dan looked at Grace before answering. Vann caught the look.

"Uh-huh. I tell you what. You still in business by the beginning of next
week, you call me. But I'm not putting Angela Hardin through the wringer
of a federal investigation unless there's a future in it, you dig?"

"I suppose we could do it without you," Grace said.

"Bet you can't," Vann said, staring at her. "She'll tell you to go away.

And then what you gonna do? Subpoena her? Take her into the back room?"

"Oh c'mon," Dan interjected. "We wouldn't do anything like that,
Captain, and you know that--she's lost both her children, for
Chrissakes. But neither one of us is willing to just let this thing go,
even if the politics do start to get in the way." Vann snorted. "Here's
the thing," he said. "This is the only unsolved homicide you got. Over
there in town, we've got the world's supply of unsolved homicides,
mostly because people won't talk to us, and mosta them 'cause they're
scared of getting whacked themselves. This thing is hopeless."

"Well, will you think about it?" Dan asked. "Just don't shut your mind
to it, until we see what else we can develop. Will you do that?"

"I'll think about it. Now, who's gonna get me out of this place?"

When Dan returned to the office after escorting Vann out of the
building, Grace was on the phone, having an animated discussion with
someone, and there was a message on his desk directing him to go see the
06 EA, Captain Manning. He reread the message while trying not to
eavesdrop on Grace's conversation, but it was difficult.

"What do you mean, 'a coincidence of interests'?" she said, her voice
rising. "What kind of gobbledygook is that? A week ago, you were trying
like hell to get this investigation away from Opnav and back to NIS. And
now you and Opnav are getting in bed at the policy level? What for, to
kill it? A homicide, Doug?"

Grace looked over the phone at Dan and then averted her eyes, but he
could see from the flush around her throat that she was genuinely angry.

Doug.

That had to be Englehardt. She hadn't used his first name at that
initial meeting, so maybe Doug really was her rabbi at NIS. And they're
talking about killing off the investigation? He looked at the yellow
phone message: "See EA." He put the message form down where Grace could
see it, mimed that he was going up to the front office, and left.

Summerfield intercepted him as he came out of the back room.

"Jackson said the EA wants to see you," he said.

"What's up?"

"Don't know, Captain, but it sounds like Grace is in there talking to
her boss at NIS. She mentioned killing off the investigation. Sounds to
me like some serious circling of the wagons has been going on."

Summerfield walked up the hall with him. "You see the Washington Post
this morning?"

"No, sir. I don't usually read the paper until lunchtime."

"There's a little piece in there about the Hardin case, and it makes the
connection with the family here.

There's also a sidebar on how interesting it is that Opnav is running
the investigation instead of NIS. No reasons offered, but there is some
speculation about Tailhook and the USS Iowa case. The usual NIS bashing.

It's in the Metro section."

"Wonderful. That sidebar--somebody up front lift a leg?"

"I wouldn't be surprised."

Dan stopped in the corridor just before they reached the 06 front
office. "But how can they kill it off now?" he asked. "With all this
publicity, 'inquiring minds' will want to know."

"They probably won't kill it off, exactly. But go see the EA. He might
be ready to enlighten you."

Dan walked into the front office and reported to the EA, who was on the
phone. Manning waved him imperiously toward one of the chairs while he
continued his conversation. Dan walked to his familiar waiting position
at the picture gallery. There were three other staff officers waiting to
see one of the flags, and the yeomen were all busy at their word
processors. The DCNO's personal aide, an extremely presentable young
lieutenant, was on the phone making a big deal over room reservations in
London for the DCNO. Dan could hear the drone of a large helicopter
turning up on the helipad outside. Just another normal day at the
office, Dan thought.

A part of him was hoping against hope that the investigation would go
elsewhere, perhaps back to NIS, where it belonged. The Hardin case
itself looked hopeless in terms of finding whoever had killed the
lieutenant, especially if the murder had its roots on the streets of
Washington, D.C. "You talkin' like a Martian," Vann had said. As far as
Dan was concerned, inner-city Washington was another planet. He had been
startled by Vann's almost casual statement about the expectations black
parents in the District had for their children. And, he realized, there
was something else: If the investigation was shelved, Grace Snow would
be leaving.

"Commander Collins." Manning was looking at him.

Dan walked back over to stand in front of the EA's desk.

"There have been some decisions made about the Hardin investigation,"

Manning announced, consulting his notebook.

"Made by whom, may I ask?" Dan said.

"You may ask," Manning replied. "Let's just say that, as far as you are
concerned, they were made by competent authority. You are hereby
directed to suspend your investigatory efforts and to compile your
findings into a summary preliminary report, which you shall transmit
under memorandum to the Assistant Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for
Plans and Policy, Rear Admiral Carson, the convening authority. You are
then to resume your regular duties in Op-Six-fourteen. I will have this
to you in writing as an amendment to your convening order directly, but
Oh-six B will expect that report by the close of business today."

"Copy
to JAG?" Dan asked.

"Copies to no one. This office will handle the distribution of your
preliminary report."

No copy to JAG? That meant that the heavies were going to massage this
one themselves. "So they're just going to drop it?" he asked. "Kill off
the investigation because of the media interest?"

Manning pretended surprise. "Drop it? Kill it off?

Absolutely not. The investigation is being remanded to the NIS with
instructions to bring the person or persons responsible to justice. We
are absolutely not going to drop it. Any further questions, Commander?"

Dan had about a hundred, but he decided that talking to Manning was
futile, a decision visibly encouraged by Manning's expression.

"No, sir," Dan said. "I'll get the paperwork going.

What do I do with Miss. Snow?"

"She should probably call home. I'm fairly sure that NIS will find a
prominent role in the continuing investigation for her, don't you
think?" Manning's smirk made it obvious that he believed no such thing.

"Right, Captain. I'll get on it."

"You do that, Commander. Oh, and Captain Randall sends his regards. He's
apparently looking forward to serving with you in an operational
environment one day. Or so he says."

Dan managed a weak smile and left the front office.

With his luck, he would get a ship in soon-to-be Rear Admiral Randall's
destroyer group, thereby ensuring a positively wonderful command tour.

Summerfield had been half-right, he reflected, as he walked back to the
office. When he got back to 614, he realized it was almost one o'clock
and that he was hungry.

He found Grace busy making notes in her PC when he entered the back
room.

"Want to go grab a sandwich?" he asked. "One last time."

She stopped typing and looked up at him. "It's official?"

"Yup. We're to wrap this thing up and hand over all the paperwork to
Oh-six B, the flag officer who appointed me. From there, it's
purportedly going back to NIS, as are you."

Grace shook her head. "They won," she said.

"They're going to kill it."

"Oh, no, on the contrary, the EA promised me that NIS is going to pursue
the matter most vigorously, until all the bad guys are caught and--get
this--brought to justice--his words. He even forecast a prominent role
for you in the new and improved investigation."

Grace laughed, but it was not a pretty sound. "What they're really going
to do," she said, "is call a press conference, announce that they are
expanding the investigation, adding more resources, and centralizing the
investigation effort at the NIS precisely because of the increased
emphasis being placed on it by the highest levels of the Navy
Department."

"So they're not going to kill it?"

"Oh yes. They'll fragment the whole effort into a dozen different shops,
making sure everybody gets a piece of it, and that way, the bureaucracy
can quietly envelop it. The press will get tired, and life will move on.

That's how it's done."

Dan sat down.

"I've gotta tell you," he said, "I don't know whether to feel bad or
good about that. I haven't really been too comfortable about this game
since it started. I don't have your insider's knowledge about the NIS,
but personally, I felt pretty uneasy about my role as a homicide
investigator, even with you along. A collision, a grounding, a fire at
sea--these are calamities within my professional competence. Murder
belongs to the cops, and for better or for worser, NIS is the cops."

Grace shook her head. "That's not the point," she said. "The point is
that one person has been murdered, and another one has died in
mysterious circumstances.

Brother and sister, both Navy, and the Navy brass is opting to let some
nebulous political and bureaucratic factors drive what it does with the
investigation. I smell a rat."

Dan sat back in his chair. "I guess I can't help you with that, Grace.

The Navy is a bureaucracy, just like every other government agency in
this town. It's a fact of life that bureaucratic factors in Washington
are extraordinarily important. I mean, Six-fourteen is in the political
division of the Navy staff, and bureaucratic factors drive everything we
do. All I can surmise is that the bosses, the flags, have their reasons.

They had their reasons when they first pulled NIS's chain, and now they
have their reasons for patting NIS on the head. I don't know what those
reasons are, but I guarantee they aren't going to tell me. We gave it a
fair shot, and now--"

"And now it's going to atrophy behind a smoke screen of sincere
publicity. Shame on us. Hell, even Vann saw it coming."

Dan didn't know what else to say. "So, how's about lunch?" he said
weakly.

Despite the surrounding beauty of the center-court arboretum on a spring
day, it was a dismal lunch. The heaviest part of the noontime crowd had
thinned out by 1:30, leaving them a wide choice of benches and their
very own flock of mendicant pigeons. Dan tried to put the best face on
what had happened, but Grace was not having any of that. She was visibly
angry. "Shame on us," she had said, and he could understand that
sentiment.

He finally asked if she was going to go back over to NIS headquarters in
the Navy Yard that afternoon.

"I'll have to call them first," she said, folding her unfinished
sandwich into a tight little ball in the wax paper that came with it.

The pigeons looked pffended. "I'm not sure if I should go back over
there today. I think I'd B make something of a scene."

"Grace, you're taking this thing too personally," he replied. "I mean,
you think that they'll tank the investiigation, but you don't know that.

And the flags have every right to direct how this thing goes. It
belonged in NIS in the first place."

I "I know that. It's the admirals and these damned EAs I'm mad at. They
brought the investigation over here to the Pentagon for some awfully
petty reasons, and it looks to me like they're dumping it just because
the press might make a hot potato out of it."

"I guess I'm at a
disadvantage here," Dan said. "On the operational side, we're trained to
follow orders in our business. Our whole system would fall apart if
everybody started questioning orders. And, you never know when your boss
knows something you don't know, something that might explain the whole
thing."

"I think they count on that, some of these glorified file clerks
masquerading as senior military officers," she said. "All that little
admiral up in Philadelphia wanted to hear from you was 'Aye, aye, sir.'
Not because he had some overwhelming reason to exercise a role in the
investigation --he was just mad because you failed to kowtow when you
came on his turf. Honestly."

Dan didn't know what to say to that; she was uncomfortably accurate
about Comnavbase Philadelphia. But he was not as convinced when it came
to what was going on with this investigation. In his mind, what was more
likely was that the Opnav flags and the EAs had realized how hopeless a
case this was and wanted to land it back on NIS's plate before it became
an unequivocal disaster. But he was not quite willing to say that to
Grace Snow, who might yet have to work the case. He looked at his watch.

It was almost two o'clock.

The shutters on the center-court snack bar were being rolled down, and
an old man in a white cook's outfit had begun to hose down the area
around the snack bar.

"I guess we better go back," he said. "I've got some paperwork to hand
in by close of business. And you--"

"Yes. I have to call home, don't I."

grace felt like an interloper when she returned to the OP-614 offices
after lunch. Captain Summerfield and Snapper were both polite, but she
had the distinct impression that she was expected to leave now that the
investigation had been transferred back to NIS. Dan was being
solicitous, acting almost as if she alone had been visited with the bad
news about the investigation.

On the one hand, she was grateful for his concern, but on the other, she
was angry with him for giving up the investigation so easily. The
problem, she decided, was that she was starting to like him. I'm not mad
at him; I'm disappointed in his precious Navy. While he began finalizing
his summary report, she sat down and called Doug Englehardt.

"Mr. Englehardt's in a meeting," his secretary, Brenda, said. "Can I
take a message?"

"This is Grace Snow. No message. I--"

"Oh, he left one for you, in case you called in, Miss. Snow. He said to
report back to headquarters first thing tomorrow morning. Said there was
no point in coming in this afternoon."

"No point?"

"That's what he said."

"I see. Do you know who will be working the Hardin case now?"

"I don't know anything about the case assignments, Miss. Snow. I do know
Mr. Englehardt and Mr. Ames are in a meeting with the admiral and the
EA, Captain Rennselaer. I think it's about the body in the battleship
--is that the Hardin case?"

"Yes, it is. Tell me, Brenda, what's Mr. Englehardt's calendar look like
for first thing in the morning?"

The secretary put her on hold and then came back.

"He's got the policy division staff meeting at eight thirty, then a
teleconference with East Coast NISRAs at nine-thirty."

"How about penciling me in for eight o'clock, would you? I'd like to
talk to him off-line before the staff meeting. I need about fifteen
minutes."

The secretary agreed, with the understanding that there was no
appointment until Englehardt confirmed it. Grace gave her the home
number in Georgetown, then hung up. Dan, who appeared not to have been
listening, was banging away on his keyboard. He looked up when he sensed
that she was looking at him.

"Get through?"

"Yes, and no," she said. "My mentor said not to bother
coming in this afternoon, that tomorrow would be fine. And he's
attending a meeting with the director of the NIS on the Hardin case."

"So they're getting right on it; that doesn't sound like they're going
just to tank it."

Grace looked out the window at the concrete walls of the D-ring across
the air shaft.

"If they were starting to work it," she said, "don't you think they
would include the one person from the NIS organization who has been
intimately involved with it so far? Or be waiting for a copy of your
summary report?

No, I suspect this is a strategy session, one that they very much do not
want me to attend. Englehardt as much as said so: He told the secretary
to tell me that there was no point in my coming in this afternoon."

He put his pen down. "So they're going to freeze you out?"

"I'd guess
so. I suspect I'll be told to get back to my overflowing in-basket down
in Career Services."

It was Dan's turn to hesitate. "I don't know if I should be saying this
to you," he said, "but it sounds to me like there were two messages in
that."

"Oh, yes. I think there were. We'll handle the Hardin case. And when are
you, Miss. Snow, going to take the hint and exit gracefully?"

Dan got up and closed the door.

"Hell," he said, "if that's the game, why not make a deal? Tell them
you'll quit the organization without a fuss as long as they make it look
good on your resume.

They obliterate the record of your being shunted down to the personnel
office. Then they write a departure evaluation that says you were a
valuable member of the policy staff, they sincerely regret your decision
to leave, etcetera, etcetera."

"You've become cynical in your old age, Dan."

He grinned. "Yeah, but practical. You haven't done anything that
constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors, and somebody has to be
whispering in the deputy's ear that you could, if you wanted to, launch
a sexual harassment or equal-opportunity suit that would tie them up in
very public knots. Make a deal: They reinstate you temporarily to the
policy staff, give you a fancy title, wait sixty days, and you'll exit
quietly, no fuss, no muss, with a glowing letter, top evals, maybe even
a nice commendation. That way, you could give them your input on the
Hardin case even if you're not going to work it. Hell, if you've got a
rabbi, use him."

Grace turned to look at the Hardin case boards. Dan was probably right.

She made about twice as much a year from her trust funds as she did from
her GSnfteen government salary: it wasn't as if the collection agencies
would be coming around. She could go full-time on the Ph. D., take a
year or so on sabbatical, and then go back into government ... if she
still felt like it. She was more than a little soured on government
service just now. But the Hardin case still rankled.

"You're right, I suppose," she said. "I'm fortunate in that I have more
alternatives than most people. It just bothers me about this case. I
have no faith that the system is going to press on with it."

Dan shrugged. "We can't know that, as I said before.

But you have to admit, without Mrs. Hardin's cooperation, it's going to
be a bear to get much further with this thing."

"I think Vann was ready to help," she said.

"But conditionally--only if the Navy kept the thing going. Like you
said, he saw the potential for the hot potato treatment. And now--"

"Yes. And now what? There was a pretty heavy-duty subtext in what he had
to say: the official white world dealing with just another black
homicide."

Dan was shaking his head. "I'll grant you that the big guys may be
taking a pass until the media interest cools down, but I don't subscribe
to a racial angle. For one practical reason, if not for an ethical one."

"And what's that?"

"If they ever got caught, everyone involved would lose their stars and
bars. And besides, the Navy is a recruit-dependent organization. It
simply can't afford to discriminate against blacks or any other
minorities. We need people to run this outfit, and we have to compete
with all the other services and industry for a shrinking national pool
of physically and mentally qualified talent."

Grace had no answer for that. She had thought before of just giving up
on government service, and Dan's advice about making a deal seemed
eminently practical, if a bit distasteful. But maybe that's why she
wanted out: Working for the government was distasteful.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," she said finally.

"Do you need any help tying off your interim report?"

"No, I'm about done. We don't have that much, really, when you start
trying to reduce it to the almighty facts and opinions. There are some
Privacy Act forms outstanding, but the little we have is all here."

"May I have a copy when you're done?" She surprised herself by asking.

"Sure," he said. "I'll go Xerox what I have now; my instructions are to
make no copies once it's actually completed. The EAs are going to handle
distribution."

He left to go to the Xerox room. She wondered why the EAs were going to
handle distribution. Probably because there wasn't going to be any
distribution. She sat still for a moment, wondering what to do next.

It's time to go, she thought then. Time to go. She got her things
together and was waiting, PC and coat in hand, when Dan came back.

"Here's your copy. I'll escort you down," he said, getting his coat.

"I can probably find my way," she said. Except that she did want him to
walk her to the south parking exit.

She suddenly realized that she wasn't ready just to walk away from Dan
Collins. But he was all business.

"I have to," he said. "We need to turn your badge back in, and you can't
get through security without a pass or an escort. They catch you, they
give you orders to a three-year tour here."

They walked together, saying nothing. He took her the long way around
the E-ring and then down a narrow stairway that miraculously came out
one door away from the south parking exit security area. He walked her
through security, depositing her building pass with the guards, and then
stopped on the steps outside. She didn't know what to say.

"Do you want me to let you know when I find out what they're doing with
this thing?" she asked. She assumed he would want to know.

"If you'd like," he said, implying by the way he said it that he didn't
really expect that she would.

"Very well," she said. "Then I guess this is goodbye."

He seemed to hesitate. "You gave me your home phone number," he said
finally. "Would you mind if I call you sometime?"

For some reason, she felt suddenly a lot better. She looked directly at
him, and he smiled.

"Please do," she said. "I'd like that."

He smiled again, an almost embarrassed, boyish grin, gave her a mock
salute, and went back inside the Pentagon.

Grace went to find her car.

at 7:45 on thursday morning, Grace pulled her car into the 3rd Street
gate at the Washington Navy Yard in Southeast Washington. The Navy Yard,
sometimes also called the Old Gun Factory, was situated on the banks of
the Anacostia River. It was the Navy's oldest shore establishment,
having been authorized in 1799. Many of the industrial buildings dated
from the 1850s, when the yard had begun to specialize in the design and
production of naval ship ordnance, culminating in the production of
sixteen-inch guns for the Navy's battleships, hence the name Gun
Factory. When the Navy stopped making battleship guns in the early
sixties, the huge foundries and gun works were abandoned and fell into
ruin. The largest industrial-works buildings were later stripped of all
their equipment and converted into office buildings in the Defense
Department's eternal search for more office space. New office buildings
were erected within the hollowed-out brick shells of the
nineteenth-century originals. The NIS headquarters was in one of these,
called the Forge Building.

Grace drove into a part of the Navy Yard that had been the final
assembly area for the battleship guns.

She drove through a guard station to get into the military side of the
Navy Yard, drove four blocks down to the Anacostia riverfront, and,
since she would probably not be staying, parked in one of the visitor
spots in front of the Forge Building. Behind her was a small grass park
in which a collection of ship guns were displayed, including a
sixteen-inch battleship gun. On the river side of the gun park was
moored the USS Barry, a destroyer now part of the naval history museum.

The ship was open to public tours after ten in the morning.

She walked into the main entrance, past the Navy Judge Advocate offices
on the ground floor, and up the stairs to the NIS reception lobby.

Showing her pass to the desk guards, she went down a long hallway to
Englehardt's office and sat down to wait. She was scanning the
Washington Post in Englehardt's outer office when he came through the
door at just before eight o'clock.

She had come early in hopes of getting more time to talk than the ten
minutes he had promised her on her answering machine the night before.

She had been flipping through the pages but not really seeing much of
the news, her mind preoccupied with the decision she was close to
making.

"Well, good morning, sunshine," Englehardt said breezily. "Give me a
minute to start the coffee machine and then we can talk inside. Brenda
doesn't get in until eight-fifteen. I assume you want to talk about the
Har din matter."

"Yes, I do. And the future of my illustrious government career."

"The lady wants free advice," he said cheerily as he rigged the coffee
machine and flipped on the lights in his inner office. "I've got the
world's supply of that.

Worth what it'll cost you, too. Okay, we'll let the evil brew perk up.

Come on in."

Englehardt's office was on one corner of the second floor of the Forge
Building. The office was a long rectangle, about twenty feet by twelve,
with high ceilings, in deference to the old building's 1850s
architecture. A long row of exterior windows gave a Spartan view of the
sides of a building called the Quadrangle Building, which was across the
street, and of the ten-story-high blank brick walls of the abandoned
Turret Lathe Building.

Englehardt's cluttered desk was positioned so that he could just see a
small wedge of the river visible around one corner of the Turret Lathe
Building. There was a library table pushed up along the window wall,
covered in even more paperwork and notebooks. The back wall was filled
with bookcases, a television console built into the middle. There were
two armchairs in front of his desk, and a much larger, leather chair
nearer the windows. He pointed Grace to the leather chair, quickly
leafed through a small stack of yellow phone messages, and then took one
of the armchairs for himself.

Grace sat down and arranged her skirts. She was wearing a one-piece dark
green calf-length dress and she had taken some care with makeup for a
change.

The smell of coffee brewing began to fill the air, and she could hear
the sounds of nearby offices coming to life and people walking down the
hallways. Englehardt bounced up and checked the coffee one last time,
then closed the door to the secretary's area.

"I believe it's your nickel," he said, giving her outfit a quick
once-over. "You look terrific, as usual, Miss. Snow."

"Thank you, Doug. But I don't feel terrific about this Hardin case. I
know ... I know that my involvement in the case was meant to be
something of a studied insult to the brass right from the beginning. But
I am a trained investigator, even if not in criminal work, and this is a
nasty business we've uncovered."

"Yes, it is," he agreed. "We've had a fairly good briefing from NISRA
Philadelphia, including the bit about this young man probably being
buried alive in that ship.

And I know what you're thinking, Grace. At least I think I do."

"And what's that, Doug?"

"That because there's media interest, we're going to put this thing on a
back burner and let it wither on the vine for a while, if I can mix my
metaphors. We're not going to do that."

"So who's going to work it from headquarters?" she asked.

The intercom phone buzzed at that moment, and En glehardt got up to take
it. As Grace waited, she could see that the top button on the left of
the intercom console was lighted, which meant that the call was from
Admiral Keeler's EA, Captain Rennselaer. Everyone in NIS who had an
intercom knew that button. Englehardt mostly listened for a minute,
said, "Yes, sir" a few times, and then hung up. He returned to his
chair.

"Button zero-zero; have to take those calls," he said.

"The dreaded EA," she replied.

"He who must be listened to, at any rate. Now, the Hardin case.

Specifically who will take it hasn't been decided yet. The DCIC will be
in charge, of course, and they haven't named an action officer yet. But
it won't be you. You do understand that, don't you?" Somehow she had
known that fact without being told, but hearing it was still
disappointing. "I suppose so," she replied. She had been tossing and
turning over that little fact for most of the night. "I can't say that I
entirely agree, but I would at least expect to be debriefed."

"Of course, although we're supposed to get a summary report out of Opnav
today from the investigating officer. I have to tell you that the
admiral and the deputy are not unhappy with how this turned out."

"I can well imagine. What changed the Opnav admirals' minds; or do we
know?"

Before answering, Englehardt got up and checked on the coffeemaker
again. Grace was quickly gaining the impression that Englehardt was
uncomfortable with this meeting and wishing it was over. She wondered if
the EA's call had anything to do with that. He rattled around in a
cabinet out near Brenda's desk and then returned to the office with two
cups of coffee, handing one to Grace before sitting down again. He
glanced at his watch and then sipped some coffee.

"You want my opinion or the official reason?"

"Your opinion will be closer to the truth; what did they actually say?"

Englehardt put on an official announcer's face and voice. "Their
lordships said," he intoned, "that since this matter was now confirmed
to be a homicide, and since cooperation with external law-enforcement
agencies would probably be required, it had been determined, upon
extensive review at the appropriate levels, that the NTS was the logical
management focus within the Navy Department for the case, after all.

That's what their lordships said."

"And your take on the real reason?"

"They see a bizarre two-year-old homicide case that probably can't be
solved, with media involvement that has a strong tabloid future, with a
probable no-win outcome in the public's eye. So give it to NIS."

"Wow. It's too hard, so let someone else fall on his face."

"Precisely. I mean, it's not like it was hard to put two and two
together--the EA figured it out pretty quick."

"Which EA was that? I've been surrounded by EAs this week," Grace said.

"Our very own Captain Rennselaer. He who was so exercised when this
thing started out in the first place.

He who spun Ames up to go convince the admiral to try to see the
Secretary of the Navy even after the vice chief had sunk a fang or six
in his side."

"And NIS will actually work it?"

"We will work it. Of course we'll work it. Along with all the other
unsolved homicides, fratricides, patricides, and any other kind of
'cides' presently in our backlog."

"Ah."

"Yeah, I know. From your point of view, that's tanking it. But be
practical, Grace. What's the urgency?

This isn't about some slavering serial killer who's working himself into
a lather in his basement lair to go out and slaughter another nun. It's
a two-year-old black male homicide on a federal reservation. We have
damn near an unlimited supply of aging homicides involving black males.

And white males. And Filipino and Hispanic males. Domestic violence and
murder in the armed forces is an equal-opportunity business, and there's
been a lot more of it with all these cutbacks.

Besides, there's no statute of limitations on federal homicide. We find
the perp, he goes to jail. Later rather than sooner, maybe, but he goes
to jail. The wheels of justice grind slowly, etcetera."

Grace nodded and looked out the window, trying to keep the
disappointment from showing on her face. It was promising to be a
beautiful day outside, but the looming nineteenth-century brick walls of
the abandoned Turret Lathe Building across the street cast a pall on her
spirits. She had wondered all along if Lieutenant Hardin's being black
might have a bearing on how the case was eventually disposed. Englehardt
was looking at his watch again.

"And what was your other question, Grace--the one about career?"

She took a deep breath before answering, but the revelation that they
really were going to let the thing subside into the bureaucratic ooze
had just crystallized the decision in her mind.

"I'm aware that the powers that he would not be heartbroken if I was to
leave NIS," she said.

Sensing what was coming, he started to mouth a protest, but she put up a
hand to silence him.

"They've made it pretty obvious without actually saying it," she
continued, "even to the point of making what could be construed in
certain politically correct circles as an improper internal
reassignment."

"Now, Grace--"

"No, Doug. Let me finish. I'm saying this to you because you've been ...

you've been very honest throughout my tenure here at NIS. Now I would
like to ask you to carry a message."

"A message. Which is?"

"I have a deal to offer: In return for a temporary transfer back to
Investigations Policy, say for sixty days, I will tender my resignation
from the civil service for the ostensible purpose of pursuing my Ph. D.

When I leave, it's with a commendatory final evaluation, and a terminal,
nonmonetary award of some kind. In return, I'll agree to go sweetly into
the night, and will further agree not to employ my law degree from
Georgetown in pursuit of a sexual-harassment lawsuit or any other
drawn-out unpleasantness."

Englehardt put his coffee cup down and looked at her for a moment.

"Jesus. Whom have you been talking to?" he asked softly.

"You let me loose in the Pentagon," she said sweetly.

"As you pointed out at the time, they are not unused to political
maneuvering in that building."

"Wow. Okay. And you'd like me to bear these tidings up the chain of
command?"

"As your final rabbinical act, yes, I would very much appreciate it. The
sixty-day number is key, by the way.

That's the limit on temporary appointments within an agency without
having to notify the Civil Service Commission or the GSA. This is
Thursday. I've told the director of Career Services that I need to take
today and tomorrow as regular annual leave. I'll be back Monday morning.

I'll expect a call by close of business tomorrow, Friday, with the
director's decision."

Englehardt nodded, evidently considering it. He finished his coffee and
then got up. "But fundamentally, if we do all this, you will resign?" he
asked.

"Yes."

"Then I don't see a problem, Grace," he said. "None at all,
actually."

She realized then that NIS management had probably been waiting for her
to initiate some kind of proposal along these lines. She got up, feeling
as if a load had been lifted from her shoulders. Dan had been right.

She felt relieved. Even Englehardt looked positively relieved.

"For what it's worth, Doug, I think upper management here is going to
rue the day they dropped the Hardin case into the routine box."

Englehardt escorted her to the door. "Grace, criminal work is different
from the white-collar stuff. There are just too many cases for us to get
excited about any one of them. We've got finite resources, and we have
to apply those to the cases where we stand a chance of getting a
conviction. The Hardin case doesn't qualify.

So, I'll be in touch on that other business. Speaking personally, I'll
hate to see you leave us, but it's probably for the best."

the captain called MALACHi late Thursday afternoon and left a message.

The message had been short, just to inform him that the investigation
had been moved to even more controllable channels, with the original
investigating team broken up. "Just to keep you advised, Malachi." A
couple more weeks and the Hardin case would simply blow over. Malachi
had again saved and replayed the message a few times, but it seemed to
be just what it sounded like: an update. He dialed the number, left the
coded name, and waited. The captain was back to him in an hour.

"You called."

"Yes, I did. I want to know a little bit more about how this Hardin
thing is going to be buried."

"Actually, you don't. Suffice it to say that the less you know, the
better off you are. The investigation was originally being run out of
Opnav, due to a, um, political misunderstanding within the Navy. That's
been straightened out, and now it's back where it belonged in the first
place, at NIS. And, as you may or may not know, my principal has some
influence with NIS."

"And they can just bury it?"

"Not exactly bury it. But it can be added to an existing caseload, and
given a priority commensurate with the likelihood of solution."

"Which hopefully is slim to none."

"Exactly. The media is the wild card, as always, but we've been
proactive on that front, and they seem to be satisfied that the Navy is
indeed working it. It's just going to be really hard to work. But, now
that you've called, we probably ought to cool our relationship for the
time being."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that my principal wants no connections being made between any
contractors and himself. Meaning that I don't call you, and you don't
call here, unless something really urgent comes up, or until we are
positive that the Hardin grass fire has died out."

Malachi laughed. "So I'm being fired?"

"Not exactly, Malachi. You are being unretained--for the moment. You
know this is the smart thing to do, for both of us, right? If no current
connection exists, there's less likelihood that someone will stumble
over any previous connections."

Malachi treated the captain to a silence on the line.

"You disagree, Malachi?"

"No. But I do want to know when and if there's a development in the
Hardin case. I want to hear about it from the inside, not from the Post.

Because you don't want me getting surprised, do you?"

"Absolutely not. But what I've been trying to tell you is that there
won't be any developments in the Hardin case. Believe me, I'm in a very
strong position to make that guarantee. You simply need to do what you
do best: stay low. I've got to go. We probably won't speak again for
some time, Malachi. That's the safe and smart way for us to handle this
now. Agreed?"

Malachi said nothing, and after a few seconds, the captain simply hung
up. Malachi put the phone down and went out to the kitchen and stood by
the sink, looking out the back window.

"Unretained," the man said. Cut loose. On one hand, the captain was
making perfect sense: Malachi was the only connection, and it would be
stupid to keep that connection alive, only to have some NIS stumblebum
trip over it by accident. But suppose they were setting him up? What's
the first thing they would do? Cut off all contact. Isolate him from
what was going on. Lull him into a sense of false security. And then ice
his ass.

So what to do? What the smart soldier would do: keep his eyes and ears
open. Assume the worst: They were lining somebody up to come after him,
maybe even take him off the boards. Okay, run that theory out. What
would he do if he did find some guy on his tail, or some other concrete
indication that he was being hunted?

Well, first he would take out the contractor who was on his ass. Then
he'd go over to the offensive himself, maybe introduce the good captain
to a little terror, or maybe even his sacred principal. It wasn't as if
he didn't know where to find them. He nodded to himself, then wondered
if it was too early for a little pop. He decided it wasn't.

on thursday evening, Dan walked up the uneven sidewalk of Prince Street
from the corner of Union Street, after a better-than-usual dinner at
Landini's, one block over on King. Dinner in one of the King Street
restaurants was a weekly extravagance he usually enjoyed at midweek to
avoid the touristy crowds of the weekends, and Landini's took good care
of their regulars.

The waiter had recommended the fresh mussels steamed in white wine
sauce, and Dan, repeating the experience of the Italian restaurant in
Philadelphia, had settled for two appetizers: the mussels and an order
of the fried calamari, plus an entire bottle of chilled Lacrima Christi
and a basket of their excellent bread.

His leg muscles were aching after his rowing session against the spring
currents on the Potomac that afternoon, but the wine had helped, or at
least his slightly fuzzy brain thought so. The evening twilight was
perfect, a clear, humidity-free April atmosphere gently burnished by the
gaslight street-lamps on Prince. There was a slight breeze out of the
north, into which the big jets descending on National Airport three
miles upriver whooshed as they swept by the 250-year-old waterfront of
Alexandria. A large Mercedes descended the cobble stoned segment of
Prince Street in a red flare of brake lights and teeth-jarring tire
bumping. The driver, a platinum blonde with too much lipstick, gave him
a fleeting once-over as they passed in the night.

As he approached his house at number 128, he thought of Grace Snow, she
of never too much lipstick.

He fished the antique key out of the geranium pot next to the
wrought-iron gate, unlocked the garden gate, went in, relocked it, and
slipped the key through a crack in the fence back into its high-security
pot. He went down the wobbly brick walk along the side of his house to
the garden. Some previous renters had begun an ambitious program of
flowering plants and boxwood, to which Dan was totally indifferent. He
enjoyed the greenery but did not do anything to maintain it, which in
the lush Washington summers had produced a pretty good imitation of a
jungle. The resulting riot of flowering plants, shrubs, weeds, and vines
greatly distressed the judge's wife next door, who was something of a
fanatic gardener. The doctor's wife on the other side called her a bush
Nazi.

There was an octagonal brick patio in the center of the garden just big
enough to contain a small, circular wrought-iron table and four chairs
whose cushions undoubtedly harbored an interesting ecology all of their
own. Two ancient but wonderfully high brick walls running down each side
of the twenty-eight-foot-wide lot provided a sense of real privacy.

There was a back wall that ran parallel to an alley between the row of
houses on Prince Street and the rest of the block. His neighbors on
either side had much larger houses and gardens, complete with some
massive old oaks whose overhanging shade and company Dan could share
without losing any space, at a cost of dealing with cubic yards of
leaves in the fall. His dad had installed two real gaslights in the
corners of the garden area, which Dan used to attract the hordes of
summer bugs on those evenings he wanted to sit outside. But the
Washington springtime was wonderfully free of insects, and the cool,
Lambent air in the garden was conducive to the digestion.

He decided to aid and abet said digestion with a glass of Courvoisier
from a decanter secreted in a stone hibachi on the edge of the patio.

As he sat in the gathering darkness, he thought about Grace Snow. He
conjured up her face, and some fleeting images of expensive-looking
clothes and shoes.

Other than that one night at the restaurant, she had operated behind a
facade of intelligent reserve--strictly business. She was undoubtedly
frustrated with her status at NIS but strangely unaware of how much
resentment her socioeconomic status must have generated in the ranks of
the workaday civil service. A house in Georgetown, a late-model BMW,
those clothes, and degrees from two prestigious private universities
were the attributes of an upper-level political appointee at State, not
a GS-14 or even 15 down in the trenches of the federal bureaucracy. Dan
had been around midlevel civil servants for most of his naval career. He
knew that many of the Washington bureaucrats did not have a college
degree, and that they were more likely to live in Dale City or Herndon
than in Georgetown, along with a working wife and a mountain of debt.

So why the hell did she stay? She did not get along with the ways of the
bureaucracy and was vocally impatient with turf fights and all the other
elements of internecine warfare civil serpents found to be perfectly
normal and even interesting. Given her education, she was theoretically
capable of contributing a lot more to society in civilian life than she
ever could as a government worker.

As he sipped the cognac, he considered an even more interesting
question. Grace Ellen Snow was a very attractive woman. Why was he
reluctant to do what any normal guy would have done by now--that is,
call her for a date? He had been almost ambivalent about his intentions
to call her during yesterday's parting on the Pentagon steps. Could it
be that, after six years, he still had not recovered from the loss of
his wife, Claire?

And did that mean he preferred wallowing in his comfortable pond of
self-pity to engaging an attractive, intelligent, hell, even wealthy
young woman?

Something slithered along the margins of the shrubbery and he smiled
into the darkness. The bush Nazi would be skipping up the brick walk at
the speed of heat over such a sound. But maybe his unkempt garden was a
fitting metaphor for his personal life, his outside the-Navy life: a
ragged, unattended, almost random sprawl of not very interesting
shrubbery, somewhat gone to seed, alive with the seasons, asleep in the
winter, and going nowhere in particular, but nonetheless contented in
its existence. It wasn't as if he was completely dead inside when it
came to women: He still appreciated the passage of an attractive woman
going down the E-ring corridor, and Grace stretching in her running togs
had been cause for a second look. But whenever he contemplated the
effort of going back into the dating-and-mating game, his inner self
immediately said to hell with it.

His marriage to Claire had been entirely joyous. He was beginning to
understand as he looked around at the marriages of many of his
contemporaries in the Navy, that the unalloyed happiness he remembered
with Claire was due at least in part to the fact that it had been
tragically brief, unburdened by the pressures and strains of children,
mediocre Navy pay, and the long separations caused by sea duty. He also
understood that, at his age, the women with whom he would normally
associate were typically focused on a single purpose: collaring a mate.

After what had happened to his wife, Dan was not that anxious to try it
again. And the Navy, with its extended terms of sea duty and soon,
command, offered the perfect excuse to maintain his present course.

Because it guaranteed that every two or three years, just as he was
getting bored with his current assignment, he would move on to the next.

Maybe he was just getting lazy in his old age. Grace Ellen Snow was
perhaps a complication he did not need. And yet, now that the Hardin
thing was subsiding, he might just call her. Was she worth the trouble?

Probably. Was he worth her trouble? Ah, now there was a question. So
call her. / will. But not tonight. Next week.

On that note, he finished his cognac and went inside.

At noon on Friday, Dan was finishing a sandwich at his desk when the
yeoman told him the 06 EA wanted to see him. Dan groaned. Captain
Manning had already called down twice complaining about a staff package
that Snapper had sent up during Dan's absence. Snapper had made the
basic error of writing down the simple, military truth about one of
State's proposals regarding foreign military sales, which truth was at
odds with current Navy policy, as directed by current Defense Department
policy. Since the issue had originally been Dan's before he had gone off
to Philadelphia, Snapper had quietly neglected to change the name at the
top of the staff paper before sending it up the line, and the EA now
wanted to share his thinking with said name.

Dan wolfed down the rest of his sandwich and got his uniform jacket. He
sought some sympathy from Captain Summerfield, but the captain was less
than interested.

He walked up the E-ring to the front office, where Manning treated him
to a three-minute wait while he went through the elaborate drill of
placing a phone call for the DCNO to another admiral. Since it was a
three star calling a two-star, protocol demanded that the three-star's
EA call the two-star's EA, ask if his great man was available to speak
to the other's great man.

The two-star's EA would get the junior admiral on the phone, and then
the three-star's EA would put him on hold, and go in and get the senior
admiral to pick up his phone. After he had orchestrated what seemed to
Dan like an interplanetary connection, Manning listened for a few
seconds on his muted handset to make sure that the great men were indeed
speaking and that there was nothing juicy to record, then hung up and
handed Dan the offending staff package.

"This is unacceptable; you know full well we can't send anything so ...

so declarative up to the CNO.

I've already talked to the CNO's EA and he told me not to bother. So
rework it, and conform it to policy, please. By the way, did you
actually write this?"

"My name's on it."

"So it is, although that's not an answer, is it, Commander?

Oh, well, you're an owner, if not an author.

There's another thing."

"Sir?"

"Rear Admiral-select Randall would like to see you, On the Hardin
matter, I believe."

"I'll go right up."

Dan left the front office, carrying the staffing folder under his arm as
if it were a miscreant child. He would

have a word or three with 614's resident jungle bunny when he got back.

He could just imagine Snapper trembling at the thought. He walked up the
E-ring corridor past OP-04, the office of the DCNO for Logistics on the
left, and the Visiting Flag Officer suites on the right. He waved at
Captain Mccarthy, the OP-04 EA, who was the only friendly executive
assistant up on Elephant's Row. Probably because he was an aviator.

The Vice Chief of Naval Operation's outer office seemed to be actually
smaller than O6's, with much more space being devoted to clerical
operations than visitors. Both Randall and the VCNO's personal aide sat
at their desks like mannequins in full uniform, coats on and buttoned.

The ornate mahogany door to Admiral Torrance's inner office was closed.

Dan noticed that the clerical staff were all women petty officers, and
all very good-looking women at that. He also noticed that no one greeted
him as he came into the front office.

He approached Randall's desk, where the EA sat reading through a
staffing package. Randall ignored him for a full minute, and Dan was
careful not to look over at the aide as if asking for help. The aide was
a supercilious lieutenant well known among Opnav staffers as being
promising raw material for the national penile-implant program. Dan did
not want to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that he was being
treated like a truant schoolboy by the EA. More than one commander on
the staff looked forward to seeing that lieutenant in the fleet one day.

After another full minute, Randall put down the staffing folder and
looked up at Dan.

"Yes, Commander?"

"Captain Manning said you wanted to see me, Captain?"

"Do I? Do you have a name?"

"I'm Commander Dan Collins, Op-Six-fourteen, sir."

Randall stared at him for a few seconds. Dan knew damn well that Randall
knew who he was. This was just part of the game: I'm a terribly
important EA, very busy, couldn't possibly know everyone's name, have to
deal with so-o-o many people, you see. Dan had been about to prompt him,
to mention the Hardin case, but he kept his silence. If his lordship
here couldn't remember, Dan would happily go back to 614 and do
something useful, like jump in Snapper's shit.

"Ah, yes," Randall said finally. "Commander Dan.

You worked on that murder investigation, the what'shis-name case."

Dan noticed that some of the petty officers had stopped their fierce
concentration on their work at the word murder.

"The Hardin case, yes, sir," Dan said. "But I understand that's gone
back over to NIS. I've turned in the summary report to Captain Manning."

"Yes, I know that," Randall said, leaning back in his chair, which was
when Dan saw his investigation folder on Randall's desk. He saw the
barest hint of a smile cross Randall's face, but it was quickly erased.

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. There's not very much real
substance in this report. What do you think actually happened to Hardin,
and why?"

"We didn't get that far, Captain Randall. We suspect that he didn't end
up in the battleship under his own volition, and that he was alive for a
while after he had been bolted into that boiler. Why he was killed, or
by whom? We have no idea."

"And few prospects for finding out, it would seem to me."

"Yes, sir. The incident is two years cold, and there was nothing
immediately visible in his record to indicate a reason for murder. But I
think we barely scratched the surface."

"You keep saying 'we.' "

"Yes, sir, Miss. Snow of the NIS and I. I assume you remember Miss.

Snow? From the meeting--"

"Yes, of course I remember Miss. Snow. And the NIS's objections to
having Opnav involved in the first place. We are fully briefed up here,
despite what the staff might think. I just was wondering if there was
anyone else involved in the investigation effort besides you and this
Miss. Snow."

Dan's mind conjured up the image of Captain Vann, but for some reason he
did not want to bring Vann into this conversation. The yeomen were
listening hard now, but Randall put them back to work with a quick glare
in their direction.

"No, sir, just the people we interviewed," Dan said.

Which was partially true. The notion that Grace might keep on with the
Hardin case was also something Dan instinctively did not want to share
with this man.

"Very well," Randall said. "NIS has an advance copy of this. We will now
forward it formally to them.

They've assured me that they will pursue the matter with all deliberate
speed. You may go."

As Dan started to leave, Randall raised his left hand, index finger
poised in the air. "One more thing, Commander."

"Yes, sir?"

"As far as you are concerned, this matter is concluded, understood?"

Randall lowered his finger, pointing it at Dan like a gun.

"Yes, sir."

"And a matter that deserves the exercise of your complete discretion.

Admiral Torrance is someone who really appreciates discretion, and the
converse is also true, understood?"

"Yes, sir. Understood."

"Very well, Commander. That's all."

Dan got out of there, aware of a dampness around his collar as he headed
back down the corridor to 614 with the staff package under his arm. The
matter is concluded.

Stay away from the Hardin case. The vice chief expects the exercise of
your complete discretion, so keep your frigging mouth shut or we will
severally squash you. Yes, sir, clear as a bell, sir. What the hell do I
tell Grace, sir? And why does this guy want this case under such tight
wraps? He decided he better back brief Summerfield on this conversation.

on friday afternoon, Grace returned to her house from her weekly run to
Neam's, the local posh grocery store over on Wisconsin Avenue. She put
away the groceries and then checked her answering machine, which was
flashing. She looked at her watch: It was just past 4:15. They hadn't
missed close of business by much, she thought. She called up the
message, expecting Doug Englehardt's voice. But it wasn't.

"Miss. Snow, this is Captain Rennselaer, executive assistant to Admiral
Keeler, Director NIS. We've been apprised by Mr. Englehardt of the
Policy Division that you wish to resign from your position with the NIS.

The admiral has authorized me to accept your resignation, effective this
afternoon. Since you are on leave, I have instructed the director of
Career Services to clean out your desk and personal effects. These will
be shipped to you at your home address on Monday morning. We request
that you return your NIS credentials and weapons permit by traceable
means as soon as possible. You do, of course, have the option of seeking
another appointment within the civil service at your current grade, and
you may contact the appropriate civil service office to begin that
process. Your performance records and other administrative data will be
forwarded for disposition.

I've directed Career Services to confirm all of this in writing, of
course, which you should receive at the beginning of next week. We thank
you for your loyal and dedicated service at the Naval Investigative
Service.

Goodbye."

Stunned, Grace sank slowly into her desk chair. What in the hell had
happened? Had Doug not transmitted her offer? Had he really just gone up
there and said Grace Snow was ready to resign? Or had Doug played it
straight and this was Rennselaer playing hardball? By not submitting
anything in writing, and by relying on a back-channel approach through
Englehardt, she may have walked into a trap. And she knew that she was
vulnerable, having burrowed in from a political appointment to a GS
position. But as her emotions tilted from initial shock through
apprehension to bewilderment, she also experienced a growing sense of
anger. Okay, people, you want to play hardball, I'll go to the Merit
Service Board and toss a grenade into the civil service grievance system
and show you some hardball of my own. But as quickly as the anger came,
it melted away as soon as she allowed the cold light of reality to
illuminate her situation. The deal she had offered was not something she
could hold them to, because it would have circumvented civil service
regulations. She had acknowledged that she would resign, albeit in sixty
days.

They had simply pocketed her willingness to leave and advanced the date.

She certainly couldn't claim to be desperately happy there--shunted off
to a nonjob after a series of acrimonious arguments with her boss in
Policy, where she had been dead right on the issue but politically off
base. In the context of Washington bureaucracies, such behavior made one
extremely vulnerable.

And her appointment at NIS had been through the good offices of a friend
at Justice. If someone wanted to get nasty, the case could be made that
her job was the result of improper influence, that the "competition" for
the job in the first place had been a farce. The fact that most civil
service job competes were a farce was beside the point: If someone
wanted to make the case, she would lose. Face it, kiddo: If they want
you out in this town, they can squeeze you out, especially if someone
jiggered the system to get you in in the first place.

She picked up the phone to call Englehardt but then put it down after
only a few rings, realizing that is was after 4:30 on a Friday. No one
in this town would answer a government phone after 4:30 on a Friday,
except maybe those poor fools over at the Pentagon, in their zeal to
demonstrate their dedication to duty. That gave her an idea: Call Dan.

She picked up the phone again.

And tell him what? That you followed his suggestion and walked into a
trap?

That god damned Rennselaer had lived up to his reputation.

She had often visualized the EA sitting like a spider up there outside
the admiral's office, with strands of his web reaching into every nook
and cranny of the NIS headquarters. He must have felt the vibrations of
vulnerability as soon as she made the pitch to Englehardt, then lifted
the essential kernel out of what Englehardt was saying--that she's
willing to go. Discarding all the rest, he told the admiral that the
problematical Ms. Snow has finally seen the light and was willing to
resign. Yes, sir, I'd recommend we pocket this, sir. Today, sir. Fine,
sir. I'll make it happen, sir.

The dial tone erupted into a series of angry beeps in her hand and she
put the phone down again.

She looked out the window. It was a lovely afternoon out there. And it
was positively depressing afternoon in here. She decided that she needed
to get out of the house and go for a walk. Fifteen minutes later, she
found herself at the top of the stone steps that led down to Canal Road
from Prospect. The steep stairway, made famous by the concluding scene
in the movie The Exorcist, descended almost seventy feet. Below was the
smoky grunt and grind of rush-hour traffic headed for Virginia via the
Key Bridge, and below the vehicular tangle were the deceptively placid
waters of the Potomac River. And the boat houses. She wondered, then
decided to go check it out.

She walked carefully down the steps, crossed M Street on the Washington
side of the busy Key bridge intersection, and walked down a small brick
lane to an arched footpath bridge over the historic Chesapeake and Ohio
Canal. After some very careful steps down to the gravel and clay of the
towpath on the other side, she could see further steps leading down to
Water Street, which ran parallel to the river banks underneath the
elevated Whitehurst Freeway. Water Street, with its row of warehouses,
truck-loading zones, and derelict buildings presented an unattractive
prospect for a woman walking alone, but there were students out on the
towpath, and it was still broad daylight. She decided to try it, so she
went down the steps to Water Street, turned right under the steel beams
supporting the freeway overhead, and headed for the Potomac Boat Club
buildings visible about a third of a mile up the street.

The area underneath Key Bridge was littered with broken whiskey bottles,
and smelled of vagrants and the pungent aroma of leaking sewage. An
abandoned off ramp leading down from the Key Bridge was littered with
broken glass, trash, and thick weeds. She hurried along, hoping that the
club would be open. Walking down here had not been a terrific idea,
after all, she decided.

The Potomac Boat Club was a ramshackle wooden building of approximately
three stories that squatted between the extension of Water Street and
the banks of the Potomac. The green-and-white walls of the building
along Water Street bulged and curved as the result of flooding over the
years. A small plaque indicated that the club had been going for almost
130 years, so it probably had been drowned more than once. She pushed
open the front door and looked around, but the place seemed to be
abandoned. The door at the river end of the entrance hallway was open,
and she could see that there were rowers already out on the river. A
sweating young man in shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt came into the
hallway from what looked to Grace to be a boat loft to her right. He was
carrying a set of oars and what seemed to be an outrigger of some kind.

"Excuse me, but has Commander Collins been down today?" she asked.

The young man looked her over for a second, blatantly sizing her up.

"Who's asking?" he replied.

"My name is Grace Snow. I'm just a friend. We did an assignment together
in Philadelphia last week, and he told me he rows a single--a scull, is
it?--that he keeps here."

The man smiled then, and pointed with his chin toward the front door.

"You're in luck, Grace Snow.

That's his Suburban coming in now."

Grace turned around and saw Dan's Suburban bump its way through the
potholes on Water Street and pull into a parking place in front of the
building. She watched as Dan got out, still dressed in his blues. When
he turned around and saw Grace standing in the entrance to the
boathouse, he waved and smiled, and, for some reason, she felt better
than she had during her entire walk down to the river. Out of the
Pentagon, he had a boyish grin that took years off his age. She walked
over to the car as he opened the back of the Suburban to get his gear.

"Well, fancy meeting you here," he said. "I didn't realize you were this
close to the river. Tell me you didn't walk down here."

"Well ... actually, yes; I needed to take a walk and ended up at the
Exorcist steps and decided to--"

She ran out of words, and he rescued her. "I walked back up that way
once on a Saturday morning; you're in for a climb and a half on the way
back. Come on in; let me park you somewhere while I get changed."

He walked her back through the main hallway and straight out to the
sunlit boatyard behind the club building.

"So you've come to see the intrepid rower battling the treacherous
torrents," he said, leading her to a decrepit-looking folding chair
close to the riverbank.

She looked over at the river, which, from this closer vantage point, did
indeed look treacherous, with large silver gray swirls appearing and
disappearing everywhere on the surface under the pressure of the spring
currents. A large gray rock fifty yards offshore had a visible bow wave,
and the river made a soft hissing sound as it scoured the boat ramp and
tugged at the pontoon pier fifty feet away.

"Is that safe? It looks so ... disturbed."

"Yeah, well, we crew types are exceptionally brave; not too bright,
maybe, but certainly brave. But no, that's not especially safe right
now. But if you know the channels and where not to go, it's a pretty
good physical challenge. Most of us row upstream against that current
for the workout, and then it's an exercise in control getting back
downstream without hitting anything and then getting across the current
somewhere near the landing.

It's a perfect antidote for a day at Fort Fumble, though.".

"That I can appreciate. I almost called you this afternoon; I've had
some news."

He put his bag down while she related her conversation with Englehardt
on Thursday and then told him about the EA's nasty little surprise this
afternoon.

"Damn," he said. "They were laying for you. It also sounds like your
rabbi cut you loose. I'm sorry to hear this. Look, daylight is limited.

There's a Coke machine over there. Why don't you grab a Coke and one of
those lawn chairs out by the river. This whole evolution takes a little
less than an hour, and then we can go get a drink somewhere. Those sons
of bitches. Just like that?"

"I'm afraid so. In a way, I'm really angry about it, and yet, in another
way, I feel a bit relieved to be out of it."

"Hold that thought," he said. "And when I get back, don't watch my
landing too closely."

Twenty minutes later, he launched the scull into the river and headed
out across the currents. Grace took his advice and sat in one of the
dilapidated lawn chairs and watched the river go by. Out on the river,
one of the Georgetown eights came sliding upstream, the boat seeming to
move in a jerking motion with each stroke, losing a little way to the
current each time the rowers reached for the next stroke. A small boat
appeared to be chasing the shell, with a man shouting something at them
through a megaphone. A pair of rowers came out of the boathouse carrying
a slick-looking two-man shell and entertained her with their efforts to
drop the boat into the water and board it before the current could take
it downstream. She had never seen one launched before, and it seemed a
miracle that they even managed it. Forty minutes later, Dan came
sculling at what looked like an alarming speed across the currents, did
a pinwheel turn downstream of the dock, and then maneuvered the scull
alongside the pontoon pier. She went down and held on to the side of the
shell while he extricated his feet from the shoe straps, stepped onto
the pier, removed the oars, and then reached down and picked the entire
boat up out of the water. Holding the boat over his head, he walked it
back up the ramp area to the boathouse while Grace went back to her
chair.

He said he would be back in five minutes. Grace watched him go up the
hill, conscious that she was appraising his lithe body, the way the
muscles in his back corded effortlessly as he carried the boat. She
turned away abruptly when she realized that another man was watching her
watch Dan.

He was back in five minutes, as promised, still in his sweaty tank top,
grubby, stringless sneakers, and a pair of khaki shorts.

"What I usually do at this point is drive home like this and then make
myself presentable again. If you can stand it, why don't you ride back
to Old Town with me.

I'll get cleaned up and we can go over to one of the gin mills and have
that drink."

Grace hesitated for just the fraction of a second but then agreed, the
thought of climbing back up to Georgetown from the riverbed facilitating
her decision.

They walked over to the Suburban and he let her in, pitching his gear
bag into the back. She was amused when he rolled down the rear windows
to improve the ventilation, and yet, as they drove out of the boathouse
parking lot, the smell of manly sweat brought back some disturbing
memories of sex with Rennie before her marriage turned sour. Rennie had
also had a good body, maintained by daily sessions at an expensive Wall
Street athletic club. As she stole a glance at Dan, she realized that it
had been a very long time since she had been with a man. For once, she
did not find the speculation discomforting.

Dan had to swerve as he rounded the curve just at the point where Water
Street went under the Key Bridge to avoid a large white Ford pickup
truck that was parked half in, half out in a driveway on their side of
the street. Grace caught a glimpse of a large man inside, who appeared
to be studying a map as they went around him.

malachi fought the urge to look up from the map as the Suburban drove
past on Water Street. He was pretty sure that the woman had noticed him,
but he had had his face partially obscured by the map. Still. He started
up the truck and waited for the Suburban to turn up the hill toward the
city. He had not expected her.

He had followed the Suburban over from the Pentagon's north parking lot.

Locating the vehicle had been a piece of cake: He had looked Collins's
name up in the Virginia suburban phone book and found the address in Old
Town. He had known to look in the Virginia book because these Navy
officers were snooty: They generally considered it beneath them to live
in Maryland or, worse, the District. Then all he had to do was go take a
look. The Prince Street address signified Old Town; the guy either came
from money or had gotten lucky with some real estate. Old Town was for
rich people.

He had taken the metro over to Ballston the previous evening and
retrieved the Ford sedan from the Randolph Towers. He had then driven
down into Old Town at 10:30. He had cruised down through all the
four-way stops on Prince until he reached the block with the
cobblestones, and then had bumped his way past number 128 on the left as
he pointed downhill towards the river.

It being late Thursday night, he had found a parking space on Union
Street, near the old Interarms warehouse, and walked back up the
diamond-patterned brick sidewalks to the block where Collins lived. He
noted that all the curb parking was by District 1 permit only, and it
didn't take him long to find the Suburban with its Naval District
Washington base decal on the bumper and the strange-looking racks on the
roof.

None of the other vehicles on the street had a military sticker. Out of
habit, he memorized the license plate, wrote down the serial number on
the navy decal, and then returned to his car to drive back to the
Randolph Towers. The following noon, as a Colonel Smith, he called into
the Pentagon Parking Control office to complain about a car parked in
his reserved space in south parking, then gave the woman the Suburban's
Navy decal number. She told him that decal belonged in north parking and
asked if he wanted to file a formal complaint.

He said no, the week was nearly over, and he was leaving, anyway; he'd
just leave the guy a nasty note. He then drove the pickup truck, this
time without its Metro decorations, over to the Pentagon, cruised up and
down the north parking lanes until he found the Suburban, and then
parked three rows away and waited. Collins had come out at 5:15, and
Malachi had followed him over to Water Street. When Collins had
continued under the Key Bridge to the boathouse, Malachi had swerved
into an alley next to a deserted building three blocks back, then backed
out once he figured Collins had had time to go inside.

Now as he turned left onto the extension of Wisconsin Avenue that led
back to M Street, he decided not to try to follow Collins back to Old
Town. He was pretty confident that Collins was going back home after his
preppy little outing on the Potomac, with his swell little boat and
undoubtedly admiring little girlfriend. He wondered if the woman might
be Miss. Snow from the NIS. He had tried Snow in the phone book and
found a couple of candidates, but none in Georgetown. Collins had been
alone when he drove to the boathouse, so the girl presumably had walked
there to meet him. He decided to go back to Old Town himself and see
what he could see.

It took him nearly an hour to get back downtown to the Memorial Bridge,
across the river, and onto the GW Parkway southbound. Then he had to sit
through the Friday-afternoon rush-hour creep-and-crawl routine once the
parkway hit Old Town itself, stop and go through all those wonderful
traffic lights on Washington, until he came to Prince Street. He turned
down toward the river again but found that every single parking place in
the entire town seemed to be taken. After some driving around, he
finally spotted a small commercial lot practically on the riverfront, on
Strand Street, and only a half block off of Prince. He pulled in, but
there was a lot full sign already in the entrance. A dark-skinned man
was lazily waving him away from inside a wooden hut. Malachi fished in
his wallet and flashed two twenties out the window, and the man stopped
waving. Two minutes later, Malachi, now afoot, walked back up Prince to
the intersection with Union Street, where he had noticed a small bistro
nested up against the Interarms warehouse buildings.

As a rule, Malachi didn't use commercial lots when he was tracking
someone: Too many things could go wrong, and the process of retrieving a
car in a hurry could be problematical at the damnedest times. But it was
a Friday night in Old Town, at the beginning of tourist season on a
lovely spring evening, so he really had little choice. He turned right
to walk along Union to King, then turned left up the hill into the
chichi shopping district, joining the throngs of people who had begun
the evening promenade on both sides of King.

Malachi was dressed in casual khaki slacks, a short sleeved yellow knit
polo shirt, and a khaki windbreaker.

Even in his flat tennis shoes, he stood a head taller than almost all of
the people around him--all of whom were decked out in a wide variety of
Friday night sport coats, ties, and even cocktail dresses. The smell of
garlic and seafood spread over the street from all the restaurants along
the lower blocks of King, intermingled with exhaust from the line of
creeping cars trying to get through the crowds. Malachi walked slowly,
letting people either get around him or out of his way, depending on
which way they were going. He was of a size that caused the crowd on the
sidewalk to part around him like a stream around a big midchannel rock.

He was careful not to make eye contact: He didn't want anyone
remembering him.

He walked slowly as he circled the block where Col lins lived. The
Suburban was in residence, three doors away from number 128, and there
were lights on in the house. He kept walking, circling the block again,
where he discovered that there were two alleys cutting into the block
containing Collins's house. The first ran behind

the stores and restaurants on King. The next one up gave access to
garages and off-street parking for the houses on Prince. On either side
of the alley was a staggered line of brick walls, some high, some not so
high, some with iron gates, others with wooden gates. There were some
green plastic trash bins behind some of the houses, apparently in
preparation for the Saturday morning pickup. He could see the second
story of most of the town houses behind the walls, but they were
beginning to be obscured by springtime greenery on several large trees.

At the far end of the alley, he could see the furtive shadows of cats
darting in and out of the lights behind what looked like some abandoned
garages.

The sounds of kitchen exhaust fans from the other alley were barely
audible over the middle row of houses. As he was looking into the alley,
there was a flare of headlights at the other end as what looked like a
cop car turned around slowly at the end of the alley, prompting Malachi
to resume his walk toward Prince Street on the uneven brick pavement.

He kept walking, making another large circle along the river that
brought him back to the second alley entrance after fifteen minutes. For
Malachi, there was nothing like actually walking the ground around a
surveillance target; you could pick up things that you would never see
from a car. He looked into the alley again, but this time the car was
gone, so he strolled into the alley and walked downhill until he came to
a green plastic trash bin with the number 128 on it, parked next to a
solid wooden gate set into one of the higher brick walls. There was a
garage wall jutting out three feet into the alley by the gate, and it
provided some shadow.

It was approaching full darkness, but he still looked around the alley
carefully to make sure no one was watching, and then he gently tried the
gate handle. It was locked, but the wood was old and he could see
through the cracks if he put his face right up against it, which he did.

Behind the wall was a garden and a patio, overhung by drooping tree
branches from the yards on either side. He could see Collins and the
woman sitting in some chairs, but they were too far away for him to
overhear their conversation over the general noise of a Friday night in
Old Town. There was a sudden clatter of trash cans behind him and he
drew back into the shadows while a man emptied a bag of garbage into the
Dumpster behind his house, which was about fifty feet away. When the man
went back inside, Malachi returned to his peephole, trying to make out
details of the woman's face in the twilight, but it was too hard.

Feeling that he was pushing it in an area that was probably well
patrolled, he walked back out of the alley an dover to King, then went
down the hill again to Union and the waterfront, turning right along the
river, past the parking lot. His truck sat right up front, pointed at
the street; he had paid the attendant another twenty to keep it
unencumbered and ready to go. He retraced his steps to the bistro at the
intersection of Union and Prince.

The small cafe on the corner had umbrella-covered alfresco tables along
the sidewalk, diagonally across from the intersection of Union and
Prince streets. Malachi walked over and sat down at the end table on the
sidewalk, farthest away from the restaurant's door. The rest of the
sidewalk tables were empty. It was a relatively pleasant evening, but
most of the people having dinner in the cafe were dressed for inside
restaurants; the men in their coats and ties would have been
comfortable, but most of the women would have found it too chilly to be
out on the sidewalk. But it was a perfect place to keep watch on number
128, almost a full block up the hill from the cafe, and that big blue
Suburban.

Malachi wasn't entirely sure why he was keeping a watch on Collins and
the woman, but if the woman was the mysterious Miss. Snow, and if she
went home tonight, he might be able to find out where they both
lived--if that was Snow in there.

After a half hour, a pimply-faced waiter inside the very busy cafe
finally saw him out at the table and came hustling out, trying manfully
to disguise his irritation at finally having to service the sidewalk
tables, and yet obviously prepared to catch hell for taking so long.

"Relax," Malachi said to him. "Bring me a double I.

W. Harper hundred proof on the rocks, water back, and your dinner menu.

And take your time, hey? I'm mostly out here tonight to people-watch."

The waiter nodded and hurried away to get his drink, and Malachi settled
back into the chair. Upon reflection, he doubted very much that the
woman with Col lins was Miss. Snow from the NIS. Probably just one of
those female officers that had sprung up all over the military in the
past few years, although she looked a little expensive for the Pentagon.

He would wait for two, maybe three hours. If it looked like Collins was
going to score, he would give it up for Lent and just go home. If not,
and he took her home, he would follow the Suburban to see if it led him
to where the woman lived. Just in case. In any event, one thing was
perfectly clear: If the captain had hired some new talent to come after
Malachi, this pretty boy with the big car and the little boat was
probably not it.

dan refilled grace's wineglass and his own, then read aloud some of the
wine babble off the back label.

" 'A hint of violets, a soft edge on the palate'--who thinks this drivel
up, do you suppose?" He snorted.

"Short, little, round men who wear bow ties and odd glasses." She
laughed. "I wish they'd just say it's a nice wine. It is a nice wine."

"Yes, I thought so. They have this evil establishment over here in Old
Town called the Sutton Place Gourmet.

Hungry-Yuppie heaven. I go in there once in awhile and do serous damage
to my entire physiology: Everything they have there is first-class, but
a health food store it is not. Got the vino and this pate there."

She nodded and looked around the garden, giving Dan a nudge of momentary
regret about not keeping it up better. He supposed the neighbors would
have had him up on charges if this were Georgetown.

"I like the ... natural look," she said at last, managing an almost
straight face.

Dan laughed out loud. "Yeah, it's natural all right. I call it a Darwin
garden: The fittest species are going to make it. I amputate anything
that encroaches on the patio or the walkway back to the alley;
otherwise, they're all on their own."

She laughed, but then her expression grew more serious.

"Tell me," she said, "do you think the racial aspect has something to do
with what's happened with this case?" she asked.

Dan was almost annoyed that she had come back to the Hardin case. He had
been enjoying her company, and the chance to have a drink with an
attractive woman without having to maneuver through all the quivering
thornbushes of the mating game. But the Hardin case is really why she's
here, right? She didn't come down to the boathouse to watch you row, did
she?

He did not give her a direct answer.

"Did Englehardt say anything to indicate that race was a factor in how
they'd handle the case?" he asked.

She put her glass down. "He didn't mean to, but yes, he did. He said it
was just another unsolved black homicide, one among too many. And then
he tried to cover his tracks by citing the backlog of Hispanic,
Filipino, and even unsolved white homicides. But I think he revealed how
he felt with his first words. The gist was, This is probably some black
thing. Another young black male ending up getting killed over a pair of
tennis shoes. That's hardly front-page news. His sister was also killed,
although that appears to be an accident. Well, that's Washington. We get
three of those a night in this town. Next. Like that."

Dan nodded and stared down at the table. Grace sounded bitter about what
had happened. He didn't know what to say to her. Having seen the body,
the murder of Lieutenant Hardin was a lot more personal than daily
newspaper stories of life and death in the inner city. He could not
trivialize the hideous fact that the lieutenant had been literally
entombed alive in that ship. Grace had seen it, too, which maybe was why
she wouldn't let it go.

"What do you plan to do?" he asked.

"About ... ?"

"Well, first, about getting the shaft from your erstwhile rabbi,
Engle-whatever, and the NIS. And about the Hardin case."

"Ah. You think something should be done about the Hardin case?"

He had surprised himself, and maybe her, as well.

But it was true: Something should be done. "Regrettably, yes, I do."

"Why regrettably?"

He had to think about it for a moment, figure out how to explain his
situation. "Because," he replied, "it's politically risky, careerwise. I
have this instinctive feeling that if I continue to poke around in this,
I'm going to step on a land mine with those EAs."

Grace was surprised. "How could the Hardin case make you professionally
vulnerable?"

"Easy. I'm in a Washington headquarters staff job, and in the bank for
command. I stick my nose where it doesn't belong, piss somebody off,
especially one of these EAs, they can derail all of that if they want
to.

Delay giving me a ship; extend me in the staff job. Or give me a ship
that's being decommissioned: You spend a year and half putting her to
sleep in some armpit like the Philadelphia shipyard. Dismantling the
armed forces seems to be a priority of this administration, you know."

He leaned back in his chair and stared out into the darkness of the
garden. "Or, if somebody like that guy Randall wanted to do some damage,
they can descreen me: He exercises poor judgment; perhaps not in the
Navy's best interests that he go to command. Remember, there are a lot
more commanders than commands available--that's why we have a bank. They
could always tell me to ride my desk to my twenty and get out.

Unless, of course, I got SERBed, and then I could get out right now."

"Serbed?"

"Selective Early Retirement Board. All the services are doing it now, in
celebration of the fact that the Cold War is over and American is
finally safe. They convene a special board to screen the inventory of
oh-fives and oh-sixes each year, the commanders and the captains, the
lieutenant colonels and the colonels, and send about twenty percent of
them a Dear John letter.

Thank you for your x-teen years of loyal service, but we have decided
that we don't need you anymore. Report to the personnel office in ninety
days and they'll make you a civilian."

"I've never heard of this. What exactly happens?"

"Just what I said. It's the civilian equivalent of downsizing, only the
Navy calls it 'right-sizing' ... do you love it? Orwell would have
approved. They convene a formal selection board around Thanksgiving and
then several hundred lucky souls get a very sincere Christmas card from
the Chief of Naval Personnel telling them that the Navy wasn't serious
about that twenty year career stuff, and, regrettably, they will be
civilians in ninety days. Good frigging luck."

She shrugged. "You guys get ninety days. Most civilians get two weeks. I
got one day."

He sighed and refreshed their wineglasses. "I know.

But when I signed up, we were promised at least a twenty-year career.

They promised the twenty years because we were signing up to put our
lives on the line for Uncle Sam. Civilians always lived with the
two-week notice clause in their contract, because civilians were mostly
signing up for just a job--nine to five, home every night, every
weekend. No six-month deployments to the Indian Ocean, no firefights in
the back alleys of Mogadishu, no station-keeping blockades off Haiti."

"But the military is all volunteers, isn't it?"

"Yup. I'm not knocking the cruises, going to sea, or standing up on the
firing line. But part of that deal is a twenty-year run and then a
secure pension for everyone who survives the twenty years. Cops and
firemen are in an analogous situation, which is why most of them get
retirement on twenty if they want it, and if they survive that long.

That's the promise that's being broken."

"Well, it's not all nine to five out there in the civilian world," Grace
observed. "Civil servants, yes, but many civilians in the business world
put in overtime hours without pay just to keep a job."

"I know," he
said, beginning to feel a little bit annoyed.

"But I still can't equate what I do to what a civilian who's in the
business of selling soap does."

"The soap salesman would point out that he pays your salary. I think
maybe you've been a bit insulated in the armed services. Even as a civil
servant, I still got only one day's notice."

"Yeah. Unfortunately, you
told them you would resign."

"At your suggestion."

I That made him suddenly angry. He put his wineglass down on the
glass-topped table with an audible crack. I knew it. Trust your
instincts, he thought. You were right the other night. Suddenly, he
wanted her to go home and to take her little crusade about the Hardin
murder with her. He wanted to recoup the solitude of his garden, to
scuttle back to his pleasantly encapsulated life.

She read his expression.

"I guess I'd better go," she said softly. "And I apologize for saying
that. Your idea should have worked; with anybody but that Rennselaer
snake, it would have. The truth is, I didn't belong there. I never
belonged there. I should have just bowed out when the administrations
changed. Can you call me a cab?"

Now he felt a tinge of embarrassment. How the hell had they run the
evening right off the tracks like this, and so fast? And why do you
care? I don't. I guess.

"I can run you back," he offered. "I did promise--"

"It's no bother. Besides, you don't want to try driving into Georgetown
on a Friday night; it's a real madhouse.

A cab's fine, really."

Once again, he didn't know what to say. Part of him wanted to try to
retrieve the evening, but another part was whispering in his mind, What
are you waiting for?

Go call the goddamn cab.

"I'll go call a cab," he said.

He left her in the garden and went up into the kitchen to use the phone.

"Twenty minutes, buddy," the dispatcher said. "It's Friday night and
everything." He hung up and stood there in the kitchen, looking out the
window into the garden. He could see the pale oval of her face, but not
her features. He didn't really want her to go just yet. He had projected
a nice Friday night with her: a drink in the garden, maybe wander down
to King Street for dinner, walk around after dinner through all the
stores in their eighteenth-century buildings. She was beautiful, smart,
even sexy, and he couldn't pretend that he hadn't noticed. He sensed
that he had somehow screwed the thing up. Or she had, or maybe they both
had. Neither one of us knows how to act anymore. Too late now. He
sighed. He went back out to the garden.

"Twenty minutes," he announced.

"Thank you," was all she said.

They sat there in the darkness for a while. He wanted to say something,
do something, and he wondered if she did, too. Not necessarily to keep
her there, but to end it better.

"What will you do about the way they terminated you?" he asked finally.

She looked away into the garden. "I don't know. The lawyer in me wants
to sue them, to go to war. Another part of me isn't ready for the
ugliness and the hassle of all that. I may make some noises as if I'm
going to sue them, maybe extort some professionally appealing paper out
of them for my resume. But I think, on balance," she said, smiling at
her own use of such a bureaucratic term, "I'm mostly relieved it's
over."

"I guess I'd say that's a sane approach. As you can tell, I'm not as
secure in my own profession as I expected to be at this stage. Being in
the bank for command should protect me from the SERB. But not if
somebody decides to single me out."

"So if I do follow up on the Hardin case, you're not in a position to
help, are you?"

He avoided answering her question. "How would you do that, if you're not
in the NIS anymore? How could you find out what was going on?"

"I think Robby Booker would help me. My guess is that he'll be pretty
upset if the NIS just buries the case.

He'll see the bias angle pretty quickly."

"I see. Well, in today's Navy, the bureau is looking for ways to invite
people at my pay grade to leave the party. You attract the wrong kind of
attention and then some EA hisses to another one, and suddenly you're
out in the cold with all the other middle-aged white males, pounding the
pavement, looking for a job. When I joined the Navy, a commander was
something special --a guy who had made it to scrambled eggs on his cap
and had a shot at being the captain of a ship. Nowadays, a commander in
the Navy is middle management, the new national endangered species in
America."

"Won't you have to face that prospect, anyway? I mean, after your
command tour?" she asked.

He resented the implication, but she had a point.

Look at Summerfield. "Guys who get through their command tour without
running their ship aground go on to make captain," he said. "Your career
gets a new lease on life. Twenty years can become thirty."

"So the career is the objective."

"In a way, I guess it is, yes."

"I guess that's the part I never digested. And probably why I no longer
have one in government."

"That's because you have money, which means security.

Most people who work for the government really do it for the security.

That's why something like, the SERB seems like such a betrayal. And it's
not like the policymakers don't know that."

"But the policymakers aren't career, are they?" she mused. "They're
appointees."

"You got it."

They sat there for a while until a horn honked out front. Dan
reluctantly led her along the garden walk to the front gate. He unlocked
and opened the gate, stepped through, and held it open for her. A Yellow
Cab was double-parked in front of the house; it was facing downhill,
it's interior light on. The driver was a hugely fat man who made no move
to open the door.

Dan opened the left-rear door for her.

"Well," she said, "thanks for the wine. And good luck with your career.

I had no idea life in the Navy had become so precarious."

"I suspect it's life everywhere," he said. "It was a pleasure to see
you. Sorry I wasn't better company."

She smiled--a little sadly, he thought--said good night, and got into
the cab. The cabbie turned off the interior light and drove down the
hill. Dan watched the cab for a few seconds as it rattled down the
cobblestones to Union Street, exhaled aloud, and then went back into the
garden. As he closed and locked the gate, he thought he heard a large
vehicle take a turn much too fast down the block. He walked back to the
table, sat down, and poured himself some more wine. Well, Casanova,
here's to you. You sure impressed that lady all to hell. She'd been
effectively fired with one hour's notice after running a gambit that was
indeed your suggestion, and you spend the evening complaining about how
exposed you are to the current round of reductions in force. Yeah, but
she's got tons of money and doesn't have to work; you do. She's working
for the psychic satisfaction of working; you're working for the chance
of getting your own command at sea one day and, let's face it, for your
twenty and the security of a Navy pension.

Neither of which would be worth sacrificing for the sake of finding out
who iced the lieutenant two years ago in beautiful downtown
Philadelphia. Especially not after the VCNO's EA had taken some pains to
warn him off the case. He could just see Captain Randall's smiling face
if he found out that young Commander Collins had not quite let go of the
Hardin investigation.

Lovely thought, that. Americans had supposedly always been afraid of the
dreaded Man on Horseback; they ought to be taking a real hard look at
the Man's horse holders.

He sighed and corked the wine bottle. If Grace Ellen Snow wants to
pursue the Hardin case, more power to her. She is literally a free agent
now. But he could predict what would happen: The NIS would discover that
she was still playing detective and warn her off in a hell of a hurry.

For the sake of his career, he did not want to be around when that
happened. He decided to go around the corner to Mcdonald's, grab some
grease, and then go home for some cognac. Maybe the cognac would help
him forget about the Hardins and Grace Ellen Snow.

But as he walked down the block toward King Street, he realized that
forgetting about Grace Snow and the Hardin case was not really possible.

Captain Randall had made it clear that the Hardin affair was clearly a
no-go area, but his own sense of right and wrong was sulking in a corner
of his mind and giving him dirty looks. The murder of the young
lieutenant was bad enough, but if the Navy tubed the investigation just
because it might expose some sensitive nerves at high levels, that was
doubling the wrong. Sure, he could let Grace do it, but the fact of the
matter was that she would be on the outside of whatever was going on in
the Navy. He stopped as he reached the crowds and the bright lights on
King Street. He knew that he wasn't going to be able just to turn his
back on the Hardin case. And there was also no way he could just turn
his back on her. Damn it.

malachi nearly lost the cab in the stop-and-go maze of the back streets
of Old Town. The cabbie had elected wisely not to go out onto Washington
Street on a Friday night, and he was shooting through the back streets
between Washington Street and the river until he could merge back into
the GW Parkway up near the power station. Malachi had to run one stop
sign near the public housing projects, then douse his lights to cover
the next two blocks without attracting the cabbie's attention.

Once on the parkway itself, the tail was a lot easier.

He assumed they were headed for town, maybe even for Georgetown, since
that's where the lady had first appeared. As they headed north up the
parkway past the airport, Malachi tried to remember the possible
approaches into Georgetown.

He had spotted the cab about a block away from his vantage point at the
bottom of Prince. It had proceeded slowly down Prince, the driver
obviously reading house numbers. He had relaxed when it passed 128, but
then it had stopped and backed up, causing him to jump up, his dinner
unfinished, drop two twenties on the table, and sprint for the car park.

He started up the F-250 before the attendant even knew he was there and
drove back to the corner of Prince and Union, scattering some tourists
as he came out of the lot. He had stopped at the corner before he
realized that he was pointed the wrong way on a one-way street. Out of
the corner of his eye, he could see the waiter counting his money at the
table and looking around. Up the street, the cab was still there,
waiting. A car honked at him from across the street, but he ignored it.

The car honked again, the driver pointing to the one-way sign, but he
concentrated on watching as Collins and the woman came out of a small
side gate, the woman getting in the cab and Collins going back in
through the gate. Solly, Cholly, he thought; you're in a nooky-free
zone. Boy wonder strikes out. The cabbie had come down Prince, stopping
almost face-to-face with Malachi's truck, and then turned in front of
Malachi to head north on Union toward the airport and the Potomac River
bridges.

After following them up the parkway past the Pentagon, it became clear
that the cabbie had opted for the Key Bridge, which would be direct,
although jammed with traffic on a Friday night. Malachi settled in for
the ride, staying three cars back and making sure he matched the cab's
lane once they got on the Key Bridge. There were two choices at the
Washington end of the bridge. He knew that the tough part would be if
she lived in one of those small blocks between Wisconsin and the
university--it would be impossible to follow the cab into that rabbit
warren without being noticed.

At the end of the bridge, the cab turned right onto M Street, then
really slowed down amid the world-class congestion of a Friday night in
Georgetown. It took them ten minutes to make the two blocks to 33rd
Street, and then another ten to make the left turn onto 33rd, which
Malachi did through a red light, to the accompaniment of a lot of horns.

But he got stuck behind a bus at that juncture and could only watch as
the cab disappeared around the bus. But the cabbie had his left turn
signal on, so they were close. Three minutes later, he took a shot and
made a turn onto N Street off 33rd, but there were no cabs up ahead,
just quiet residential streets packed with parked cars. Cursing, he
drove all the way to 37th Street and the edge of Georgetown University,
looking down into each of the side streets, but there was no cab.

Trapped in the labyrinth of alternating one-way streets of the Cloisters
area, he decided to spend a few minutes driving down each one,
crisscrossing the neighborhood, looking for any sign of the cab. But
after twenty minutes, he realized that she had to be out of the cab and
in her house by now, so he gave it up and turned for home. He still did
not know for sure whether the woman with Collins tonight had been Snow,
but he would have liked to have found out.

Back to the trusty telephone, he thought as he turned off M onto
Pennsylvania Avenue.

The cabbie grunted in appreciation at the tip she gave him. Grace was
used to taking cabs in this city, where they were relatively
inexpensive, and she tipped well as long as the driver did not try to
fiddle the city's curious fare-zone system. The driver turned around as
she was preparing to get out, or at least he turned his head; his body
appeared to be much too big to move without a small crane.

"That guy you was with tonight, over in Old Town-- that dude married?"

Grace held the right-rear door open and looked at him in surprise. "Why,
no," she replied. "He was married once, but his wife died. Why on earth
do you ask?"

" 'Cause we picked up a tail when we was leavin'.

Guy stayed on us all the way to M Street, when I ditched his ass behind
that bus. White guy in a big ole

&\

white pickup. Figured maybe some jealous wife, gone an' hired one a them
private eyes, you know?"

Grace shook her head. "No, it's nothing like that. We worked together on
a ... project, for the past two weeks. Are you sure someone was
following us?"

"Yeah, I am. No fool gonna bring a F-two fifty pickup truck into
Georgetown on a Friday night, less'n he has to. You be careful, now.

That dude was follerin' you, sure enough."

Grace got out of the cab and automatically looked up and down the
street, but there was no traffic, nor any darkened cars parked
suspiciously in alleys or driveways.

The cab took off in a cloud of smelly exhaust, listing visibly to port,
as she went up to her door. Looking through the narrow windows on one
side of the door, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but when she went
inside and closed the door, she did not turn on any more lights; instead
she stood beside the curtained living room window and watched the street
for a few minutes. Two cars came by during her vigil. One she recognized
as a neighbor's, and the other was a cop car, cruising the neighborhood.

That driver must have been dreaming; why would anyone follow her back to
Georgetown? In a pickup truck? Feeling foolish, she went back into the
dining room and checked her answering machine. There were no calls.

She went into the kitchen and poked around in the refrigerator for
something to eat, then decided to have some ice cream and call it a day.

She took her ice cream to the desk, pushed aside some papers, and sat
down.

She had thought that perhaps Dan Collins might have called; she had had
the sense that he was disappointed in the way the evening ended. But
perhaps that was just wishful thinking. He's a very nice man, and I'm
comfortable in his company, she thought. At times, Dan seemed interested
in her as a woman, and yet at other times he seemed to revert back to
his role of widower, more or less permanently detached from life with
women. So why did she care? She didn't know if she really did, and after
the trauma of marriage to Rennie, she had some empathy for Dan's
attitude.

She finished her ice cream, checked all the locks, put out the
downstairs lights, and was about to go upstairs for an evening with a
good book when she heard a vehicle coming slowly up her street. The
engine did not sound like the usual purring motors one would associate
with her neighborhood. Standing in the darkened hallway, she peeked
through the window curtains at the door and saw a very large white
pickup truck moving slowly up the street toward the university campus.

She caught only a glimpse of the shape and color of the driver's face as
the truck passed under a cone of streetlight, barely enough to make out
his features. For just a second, she thought she had seen that face
before. The truck cruised past her house, the driver looking straight
ahead, stopped at the stop sign on 35th Street, and continued on out of
sight into the next block.

Grace stood there wondering. The cabbie had said they were followed by a
white pickup truck, and here was a white pickup truck cruising the
narrow streets of the Cloisters neighborhood in the early evening. Going
slow, so he was looking for--what? Or whom? And where had she seen that
face? Then she remembered: She had seen the truck today, when they had
come out of the boathouse onto Water Street: the pickup truck with the
big, fearsome-looking man in it, parked under Key Bridge, scanning a
map. She remembered that Dan had swerved to avoid it. She walked back to
the study and picked up the phone to call Dan. She got his answering
machine and left a message asking him to call, preferably before 11:00
p.m. Then she checked all the locks again and went upstairs.

Dan called at 10:45, apologizing for the late hour.

"I went down to Mcdonald's for a greaseburger.

What's up? You sounded worried." She told him about the pickup truck.

"And you think this guy followed you from Old Town?"

"I never saw him, but the cabdriver says he did. He even described it as
a white F-two fifty, whatever that is.

You do remember that truck you had to steer around at the boathouse when
we came out?"

"No. Oh, yes, I do. So maybe this guy was on your tail even before Old
Town? I wonder--"

"What?"

"Well, right after you left, and while I was still up by the garden
gate, I heard what sounded like a fairly large vehicle screech through a
turn down the block. But I never actually saw it."

"He could have been parked somewhere, then hurried to catch up with my
cab," she said.

"Yeah, if you admit the possibility you were being followed. Any ideas
as to why?"

"No. That's what kind of scares me. I mean, the cabbie says he lost the
truck behind a Metro bus, and I know there was no one on the street when
I got out of the cab or for some time afterward--I sort of watched.

But then I did see a white pickup truck coming up my street a short
while later, and I think it was the same man that was at the boathouse."

Dan was silent on the other end for a moment. "I just don't know what to
tell you, unless it's connected to NTS in some fashion, and that doesn't
make much sense. They wouldn't be following someone that ... that didn't
even work there anymore."

She smiled at the way he phrased it. "And not in a pickup truck, I
shouldn't think. NIS tends to dark four door sedans with aerials on the
trunk that no one in a million years would suspect are cop cars."

"Yeah, right." He laughed. "I think cops use them to avoid parking
tickets more than anything else. Which brings up the logical next
question: You call the cops?"

"And tell them what, that I think I'm being followed?"

"Well, you do think you're being followed. The tough part will come when
they ask for possible reasons or suspects, and then it comes out that
you've just resigned from NIS. This being Washington, they're
automatically going to assume there's some problem there, and they
probably won't be very helpful."

"I guess you're right," she said with a sigh.

"Just what you want to find out at eleven o'clock at night, isn't it?

Some guy in a pickup is starting to follow you around. By the way, I'm
sorry our evening together ended so abruptly."

That had come out of nowhere, but she felt a flash of --what, relief?

"I am, too," she said carefully. "Perhaps I need to sort this NIS
business out, and then we can try again.

After my divorce in New York, I haven't ... well, dated, or really seen
anyone. I'm afraid I've lost my touch, if I ever had one."

"Well, I know I've lost mine. Since Claire's death, I've lived in a kind
of emotional Thermos bottle for a long time, and I'm afraid I've gotten
used to it. It's more comfortable than people might imagine."

"Cocoons do have some advantages," she said.

"And there are drawbacks: You can't see out of them very well. So when
something valuable comes by, you might miss it."

She was silent for a moment. He apparently felt compelled to fill the
silence.

"Which is why I guess I didn't want just to shake hands and say
good-bye. And despite my concerns about stepping in something over the
Hardin case, I have to admit that I'm not comfortable with just saying
forget about that, either. It's just that I'm a straight stick, tin-can
sailor and I don't know the first thing about how you would proceed."

"I don't know, either. First I'm going to try to get clear of NIS with
my resume intact. But then I think I'll go back and see Detective
Captain Vann. I have the impression that he might have a personal stake
in the Hardin business beyond just knowing the family. Maybe he can
point me somewhere that I can do some good, especially when I tell him
NIS is going to put it in the too-hard basket."

"Okay. And on reflection, you probably should make that call to the
cops. Get this thing on record; that way, if any more pickup trucks show
up, you're not starting from scratch. They have these stalker laws now,
too, so I don't think they can just brush you off."

"I'll think about it."

"Okay. And Fli call you Tuesday evening."

"Good." They said good-bye and Grace put the phone down gently. Better,
she thought. Much better.

on monday, grace talked to her father's attorney in Philadelphia, Robert
Fishbein, about the way she had been terminated at NIS. The lawyer
quickly brought it down to a case of balance: "First, how much pain are
you willing to endure to get back at them, and, second, do you really
want to get that job back?" She knew the answer even before he was
finished. This wasn't about getting the job back; this was about the way
they had gone about it. The way that damned EA, Rennselaer, had gone
about it.

"Let's do this, Bob," she said. "Make a call for me.

Identify yourself as my lawyer and then ask for the full and correct
spelling of three names: an Admiral Keeler, a Mr. Ames, and a Mr.

Englehardt. That's the director, the deputy for Policy, and the
principal assistant deputy for Policy, respectively. They may or may not
give them to you, but I want to smoke out a phone call. At the very
least, I want a decent piece of paper from them."

She gave him Ames's office phone number and hung up. She had called the
District police to report the guy in the pickup. The police had been
politely underwhelmed but did say that they would open a file on it.

Grace had the impression that it would not be a very big file, but the
detective's clerk had taken her name, address, and some of the
particulars. She quickly discovered that the police liked to deal in
facts: description of the man, description of the car, precise times
when she was followed, and the exact route, only parts of which she
could provide with very much accuracy.

And, no, she didn't have any idea of who might have a reason to follow
her: no jealous wives, no ex-boyfriends, no panting coworkers. There had
been no phone calls, no prowlers, no hate mail, or love mail, for that
matter.

And just the one instance. "Right. Okay, call us if it happens again;
we'll keep a file on it. Here's the file number. Good-bye." Grace had
put the phone down with the feeling that she'd been told to take two
aspirin and call the doctor in the morning. But she couldn't really
blame them.

She tackled the mess on her desk until noon, when Doug Englehardt called
in. She picked up as he was identifying himself on the machine.

"Well, Doug. Fancy hearing from you on a Monday morning."

"Don't start, Grace. I only heard about it at the morning staff meeting.

I carried the message just the way you phrased it, and the damned EA
said he would take care of it. I'm calling to apologize for the way
they've behaved, and for failing in what I thought was a no-brainer,
win-win for everyone. That Rennselaer guy is a piece of work."

"And what would you suggest I do now, Doug, or are you out of the advice
business?"

Englehardt paused before replying, but then he came out with it. "I
think maybe you've already done it. I just got a medium-frantic phone
call from Ames's office, saying your lawyers in Philadelphia had called
in asking for the correct spelling of some prominent names here."

"The Post called yet?" she asked sweetly.

"The Post! Jesus Christ, Grace, what are you doing?"

"Just taking a leaf from your clever little EA's book, Doug, and
indulging in a little hardball. It strikes me that a very public
discrimination lawsuit is just what the doctor ordered for the likes of
Captain Rennselaer.

And we both know how much the NIS admires publicity.

I would think that there are some people over in Opnav who might enjoy
it, too, don't you think?"

"Grace, for God's sake--"

"No. For my sake, Doug. NIS has besmirched my record of government
service with a no-notice termination disguised as an acceptance of a
putative resignation. I'm think I'm going to deny I ever talked to you,
in case you want to pursue the logic."

"Grace, Grace, we can fix all that. We can--"

"Don't say 'we,' Doug. You don't speak for anyone in authority at NIS,
as we've both found out, haven't we?

I'll tell you what: I'll entertain one phone call, just one, from the
admiral, and it needs to be really constructive, and made by close of
business tomorrow, okay? And if that Rennselaer reptile so much as
disturbs my answering machine, it's war. 'Bye now."

Grace hung up and then laughed out loud. She could just imagine the
phone call that had come down to En glehardt's office from the choleric
Roscoe Ames. She made a note to be home at around four the next
afternoon, then went to make a sandwich. After lunch, she would call
Captain Vann.

on monday, malachi made some calls to the NIS.

Since he might end up going down there, he used his own voice. The
Defense Department phone book had given him the number of the Criminal
Investigations Division, where he told the lady answering the phone that
he needed to speak to someone about the Hardin case. The woman passed
him off to another woman, who in turn gave him yet another number. He
played this game for twenty minutes before getting an actual NIS agent
on the line. Malachi described himself as a private investigator by the
name of Costas who needed a couple of minutes of face time with the
agent working the Wesley Hardin case. The agent told him that, per NIS
policy, investigating officers did not discuss their cases with outside
civilians. Malachi told him that he understood perfectly, that he was a
retired Army MP, and that he wouldn't dream of asking questions about
the case. He simply needed to get face-to-face with the investigating
officer to confirm that the Hardin who had been in the news was indeed
It. (jg) Wesley Hardin, of Washington, D. C., and that he was indeed
deceased.

"I have to be able to record that with attribution, see --my client is
somebody that Hardin owed money to, and now he wants to confirm that the
guy is no-shit dead. Won't take five minutes, and since I know this
can't be done on the phone, I wanted to come down and talk to the
investigating officer, somebody who could make that statement
authoritatively, to my face and then I'm outta there."

"Well, shit, if
that's all it is," the agent said. "We had a woman on the Hardin case,
but I heard in the hallway this morning that she got canned. But you
could come in and talk to one of the policy people--they've been
involved and can probably solve your problem for you pretty quick."

"Got a name I should ask for?"

"Oh, I don't know. Try Mr. Englehardt."

Malachi went next door to the apartment, turned on the answering
machine, and recorded a voice message for the Costas Detective Agency.

He then connected a caller ID box and activated the monitor feature so
that it would record numbers coming into the answering machine.

Putting on a suit and tie, he took the Metro over to Arlington to get
the Ford sedan.

He made sure the Virginia plates were still in place from his last trip
into D. C., shuffled the registration and driver's license so that
everything matched, and fired it up. He went up two internal ramps and
out onto Randolph Street, then headed for the Navy Yard over in town.

Twenty-five minutes later, he pulled up at the main gate and showed the
guard his retired military ID card. The guard eyed the wheels.

"Workin' for the county now, hunh, Cap?"

"You know how it is," Malachi said. "That retired check don't cover a
whole lotta ground these days."

"Tell me about it," the guard said. "I'm a retired chief, and now lookit
me--a freakin' rent-a-cop. Where ya bound?"

"I gotta find some outfit called NIS. They're supposed to be down here
somewhere."

"Yeah, they're in the old Forge Building, down on the waterfront. You go
down there and take your first left, then take your first right at the
navy museum, and it's the next building. There's a buncha ship guns in a
park in front of the building." The guard waved him through the gates
and went back to his paper.

Malachi patted the Ford's dashboard as if it were an old dog as he
pulled past the gatehouse. Amazing what assumptions people would make
when they thought they were looking at a cop car. He had come over to
the Navy yard a few times when he had been stationed at Fort Mcnair just
before getting out of the Army. The Navy Yard was situated in the
southeastern quadrant of Washington, which was still a sufficiently
rough part of town to warrant the twenty-foot-high brick wall that
surrounded the old industrial area. He remembered the oppressive
one-mile shuttle-bus trip from Fort Mcnair to the Navy Yard, through the
run-down and torn-down shambles of Southwest and Southeast D. C., with
its burned-out buildings abandoned since the 1968 riots and the chain
link-fortified liquor stores surrounded by clumps of glaring men. He
remembered that Mcnair also had a very high brick wall around it.

He drove down the main-entrance avenue and tried to take a left on
Parsons Avenue, but the Navy Yard's diggers and fillers had the street
torn up, which forced him to take a long detour through the looming,
blackened brick facades of the old gun factory buildings. The buildings
were big enough to block out the sunlight as he drove through the
abandoned complex, bumping over old train tracks and even some thinly
asphalted cobblestoned sections. He drove down along the waterfront,
circled a couple of blocks, and then turned right, going by the only
surviving remnant of the actual gun factory, the giant Turret Lathe
building, where the battleship gun barrels had been bored and turned.

Almost by accident, his final turn brought him out on the waterfront,
where five piers pointed slantwise downstream into the Anacostia River,
including one at which an elderly destroyer was tied up for public
visiting.

Across from the ship was the Forge Building. Sure enough, there were no
available parking spaces, except for three vacant slots reserved for
government vehicles right in front of the building. He pulled the old
cop car into one of them, shut it down, and got out. A Federal
Protective Service police truck came by, but the officer inside ignored
the Ford. Malachi smiled to himself and went into the Forge Building.

Inside the 1850s brick shell was a modern office hallway, with glass
doors proclaiming the offices of the Judge Advocate General Appeals
Board on either side. He asked a lady lawyer in Navy whites where NIS
was, and she pointed him up a set of stairs.

The NIS reception area was surprisingly small, a holdover from the
Desert Storm security panic, when hordes of wild-eyed Iraqis had been
expected to charge their way into American government buildings seeking
Muhammadan heaven. There were two female FPS cops leaning on the
counter, and a third security officer was reading a paper in a
glassed-in enclosure behind them that was filled with TV monitors.

Malachi dragged out his PI license for the desk guards.

"I need to see a Mr. Englehardt in Investigations Policy."

"You knowin' his extension?" the larger of the two female cops asked.

"Nope."

The woman wearily looked up Englehardt in the NIS phone roster, gave
Malachi the extension, and pointed him to a wall phone at the end of the
counter. Malachi dialed the number and got a secretary. He could see
office hallways and people going back and forth beyond the glass doors.

"Investigations Policy. This is Brenda," a voice said.

"This is Mr. Costas. I'm down at the front desk. I called in earlier
this morning and was advised I needed to see a Mr. Englehardt. I need
about two minutes of his time."

"Do you have an appointment with Mr. Englehardt?"

"No, I don't." Using the PI cover, he explained what he was looking for,
a certification from someone who could vouch personally for the fact
that one Wesley Hardin was in fact deceased. He asked if he could speak
to Miss. Snow.

"Miss. Snow? I thought you wanted to speak to Mr. Englehardt?" The woman
was starting to sound suspicious.

"The people at the Philadelphia County Medical Examiner's Office said
the NIS agent of record was a Miss. Snow," Malachi replied patiently,
"and that she was from the Washington office. She viewed the remains, is
all. I don't really care--all I need is a live human being that I can
cite as the source. You want to, you can give me Miss. Snow's phone
number. I'll go see her direct if Englehardt is unavailable."

"Just a minute, Mr ..."

"Costas."

"Just a minute," she said again, then put him on hold. The
desk cop looked over at him, and Malachi rolled his eyes. She went back
to her newspaper. Then a new, male voice came on the line.

"Mr. Costas, I understand you have some questions about the Hardin case?

This is Douglas Englehardt."

"No, not really, Mr. Englehardt. I'm a P. I.; I'm also a retired Army
MP. You got a homicide investigation going, you don't answer questions
about it, not if you run it like we did in CID. All I really need is a
face-to-face statement that Wesley Hardin is officially deceased-- from
somebody who actually saw the body. Then I can tell my client that I
know for a fact that Wes Hardin is dead and that he's probably not going
to get his money."

"What money is that, Mr. Costas?"

"My client came to me when the news stories broke.

Apparently, this Hardin guy owed him three thousand dollars, or so he
says. He hired me to confirm that this is the same Hardin and that he is
indeed dead."

"Well, we don't know anything about a money angle, but I can tell you
that Lieutenant Hardin is very much deceased."

"Did you view the body?"

"No, but--"

"Well, here's the thing," Malachi pressed. Another man had arrived and
was waiting to use the desk phone, and the desk cops were starting to
look annoyed. "My client insisted that I talk to someone official who
has seen the body. I know it sounds weird, but there it is. I was told
that a Miss. Snow--"

"Miss. Snow doesn't work here anymore," Englehardt interrupted. This
momentarily threw Malachi for a loop. Then he remembered the other guy
saying she got canned.

"She doesn't? Well, can you give me a number I can--"

"No. That's not possible, Mr. Costas. Listen, as a matter of policy, we
don't--"

"Wait," Malachi before Englehardt could dig his heels in too
deep. The desk cop was pointing at the phone and indicating his time was
up. He ignored her.

"How's about passing her a message, then, okay? All she has to do is
call my office, confirm over the phone that she saw what she saw, and
then I'm done. I mean, I've driven all the way down here and everything.

How about that--can you at least pass on a message to this Miss. Snow?

One lousy phone call solves my problem, okay? I don't need to bother
anyone here. It's nothing that hasn't already been in the papers--I just
need it official like. Clients. You know how it is. Please?"

Englehardt hesitated but then agreed, although he sounded annoyed.

Malachi gave him the number for the safe house on Capitol Hill. Then he
thanked him profusely, relinquished the desk phone, and left the
building.

He knew that Englehardt might just throw the number away and get on with
his Monday; he sounded like a prick. Except that Malachi had made it
pretty clear that he could be persistent. We'll see, he thought; it's
worth a shot. As he came outside, he noted with relief that his car was
still there and not under tow to some federal impound lot. He looked at
his watch. He had time to get over to Mcnair and visit the package
store, refresh his supply of I.W. Harper and cigarettes, get some stuff
at the commissary there. He really did not have to hurry home at all:
The caller ID box would record the number if Snow called him, and with a
phone number, any average asshole could get an address in this city. He
backed out of the parking spot and headed for Fort Mcnair.

grace snow tried Captain Vann's office after lunch, but the secretary
said he was in a meeting. Grace asked for a callback and left her
number. She thought about calling Dan, but he had said he would check in
with her Tuesday evening, and this was just Monday. She called her bank
to check her balances, then decided to go over to the branch office to
arrange some periodic transfers from savings, now that she no longer had
a paycheck coming in. The bank branch was only six blocks away on
Wisconsin and N Street, and it appeared to be a pleasant April day, so
she decided to walk over.

When she came back, the answering machine was flashing at her. Expecting
Vann, she got Englehardt's voice instead. He gave her a brief background
of what someone called Costas needed, a phone number to call, and
advised her that she could forget about it if she wanted to, Costas
being some itinerant civilian PI. He also passed on the fact that he had
relayed her message to the NIS front office, to Rennselaer himself. He
made no comment on how Rennselaer had reacted. She replayed the message
once to assess his tone of voice, but it all seemed pretty
matter-of-fact. There was no message from Vann.

She decided to dispatch the Costas problem. She pulled the phone over
and dialed the number. She got an answering machine that announced the
offices of the Costas Detective Agency. As Englehardt had suggested, she
left a brief message that she had been the NIS investigating officer in
the Hardin case and had personally viewed the remains of It. Wesley
Hardin, and that he was in fact deceased. She also said that she no
longer worked for the NIS and therefore could provide no further
information on the matter. She did not leave her number.

After hanging up, she sat at the desk, thinking about what to say to
Vann. I've been fired from the NIS, they're going to tube the
investigation, and I want to press on with it on my own. She almost knew
what he would say: You're a civilian now, it's a federal homicide, and
there's nothing we can do about the case as long as the feds are working
it, however slowly. Not like it's a fresh kill. She shuddered at the
image that term conjured up. But Vann, being a cop, would tell her to do
what she already knew: Stay out of it.

Maybe a different approach: I've resigned from the NIS because they are
putting the Hardin case in a too hard box. I'm going to put my thinking
cap on, see if I can come up with some possible ties between the death
of Elizabeth Hardin and her brother's murder. If I can, I'd like to be
able to kick it around with you--informally, of course. Entirely
offline.

Better, much better. He's a bureaucrat. The second approach doesn't ask
him to do anything, and it doesn't imply that I'm actually sticking my
nose where it doesn't belong. Just thinking about it. Much better. She
waited for his call.

when malachi got back to the town house from Fort Mcnair on Monday
afternoon, he found two messages waiting. One was on the answering
machine programmed for Costas, along with Snow's phone number registered
in the caller ID window, which he promptly wrote down. The other was on
his house machine and it surprised him: It was from the captain, asking
for a callback. He called the captain's number first and left the coded
message. He then went to unload groceries and the case of Harper
hundred, carrying everything in from the alley, where he had parked the
Ford crosswise in front of the garage door, and through the garage. He
chided himself for feeling so much better that another dozen
hundred-proof soldiers were securely on watch in the cupboard. First
things first, his old man had always said, except that his old man had
never said any such thing. His old man had been too drunk to say much of
anything. Like father, like son, hey? Well, it sounded good. The phone
rang and he picked it up in the hallway.

He had left the back door open, so he could keep the Ford in sight
through the open garage doors.

"Yes?" he said.

"Greetings. I just wanted to update you on the Har din thing."

"Didn't expect to hear from you so soon. But I'm all ears."

"You'll notice that it hasn't been in the press anymore."

"I've noticed."

"Well, we've put it back in its box, I think. The Opnav element has been
withdrawn from the investigation, and the officer involved returned to
his regular duties with appropriate instructions about keeping his mouth
shut. The whole business is now back in the capable hands of the NIS."

Malachi snorted. "Capable? Last time I saw the NIS in action was when I
was still in the army; it was like six monkeys trying to screw a
football."

"Well, they're part of government: They're supposed to screw something
or someone every day. The point is, whether NIS buries it or actually
works it, I think we're all reasonably safe."

"Most criminals are when NIS is involved."

"Well, NIS sometimes gets lots of high-level advice.

You think we're criminals now, Malachi?"

"Unindicted co-conspirators is the term of art, Captain.

And that's the way we want to keep it. Especially the unindicted part.

You can keep tabs on what NIS is doing with it, correct?"

"To a certain extent, yes."

"I'll keep an ear to the ground on the metropolitan police side,"

Malachi said. "I've got some contacts downtown. As long as the first
Hardin case stays in its box, this other Hardin case ought to go
nowhere."

"Very well. Anything for me?"

Malachi hesitated. What did that mean? Were they aware that he had been
exploring a little bit?

"No," he replied. "Your principal is keeping his wick dry?"

The captain actually laughed. "My principal is mostly trying to keep his
flag-rank billet intact, what with all the budget cuts. Relax, Malachi;
as far as the Navy is concerned, this Hardin thing's back in the weeds,
where it belongs."

"Nasty things sometimes come out of the weeds," Malachi replied. "I
suggest we both keep our eyes open."

"Count on it, Malachi. I know that
I said we would not be in touch for a while. This time, I think I mean
it."

"Except for emergencies, right?"

"Absolutely. Except for emergencies."

The captain hung up, and Malachi did likewise. He sat on the steps,
thinking about what the captain had said. The Opnav element was out, so
Commander Col lins of Old Town and the Potomac Boat Club should now be
out of the game. And Miss. Snow of somewhere in Georgetown no longer
worked for NIS, which should take her out of the game. The captain had
some serious pull: He or his influential friends had managed to get the
investigation moved back into the exclusive hands of NIS and,
apparently, handed off to entirely new people.

"Relax," the man had said. For the third time, he'd told Malachi to
relax, that everything was going to be just fine.

But then that quiet, insistent whisper in his mind: What was the only
loose end the great man and company had remaining? Malachi Ward. Angelo
was no math major, but he had to have pretty damn good street sense to
survive in his line of work. Relax? No fucking way. He decided to finish
putting away the stuff from the commissary and then to make a call to
his little friend in the Billing Department at C&P Tele phone, the one
who could turn a hundred bucks into an address if you had a phone
number. Then he had to get the Ford back over to Arlington before some
Capitol Hill cop car came prowling down the alley--and, more
importantly, before the frigging rush hour started.

moses vann called grace back just before four o'clock on Monday. He
sounded tired.

"Been a damn Monday all day," he said. "I don't recognize this number."

"It's my unlisted home number."

"And why are we at home at four o'clock on a Monday?

Last week, you were stayin' late and being' a big time G-woman. Lemme
guess. The Navy's pulled the plug."

"In a manner of speaking," she said. She told him what had happened with
the investigation, sticking more or less to the version that she had
resigned over the handling of the Hardin case and was now wondering what
to do, saying she didn't want it to just languish in the too-hard
basket.

"You let them do it," he said immediately. "You can't be messin' with a
federal homicide investigation. That's double OJ one. You remember:
obstruction of justice?"

"I didn't intend to interfere," she said. "I
only--"

"You just want to freelance. Nobody likes a freelancer, Miss. Snow. Just
about the time the squad is setting up the collar, along comes the
freelancer and blows the case, every damn time. You gotta remember,
there're three parts to a homicide: there's the killing, there's finding
the perp, and there's building the case that puts the perp away. First
part's always free: The perp hands you the killing. And there's lots of
cases where we know who the perp is. The hard part is building the case,
'cause these DAs aren't gonna waste their time, you can't build the
case. That's the part the free lancers usually screw up. Nobody needs an
extra player."

This wasn't going at all the way she wanted it to. But then she had an
idea.

"I appreciate all that, Captain. I've been in the investigations
business, remember? But I may not have a choice."

"Meaning what?"

She told him about being followed on Friday night from Collins's house,
and also about seeing the same man and vehicle on Water Street near the
boathouse.

"You report this?"

"I did. To the District police."

"Uh-huh. You report it to the NIS?"

"No. I don't know what's behind it, and I have no way to make a
connection--"

"Ah-ha-ha, Miss. Snow. We tryin' to have it both ways, aren't we? First
you're tellin' me that you may already be involved in the Hardin
case--because you think you were followed when you were with this Col-
lins guy. But then you say you didn't tell the NIS because there ain't
no facts connecting the man in the truck with the Hardin case? C'mon,
you want to freelance.

Right?"

Grace was getting angry. "I don't care what it's called, Captain Vann.

The Policy director at NIS said he had been instructed by the admiral's
executive assistant to put the Hardin case in the routine hopper along
with all the other unsolved black homicides. I rather think that stinks.

My other problem is that I saw Wesley Hardin down in that boiler. I'm
having a hard time getting that image to fit nicely in the routine
hopper."

Vann went silent. Grace let him think about it. She could hear his desk
chair protesting as he fidgeted around. When he finally spoke, he
sounded even more tired.

"Damn, I hate Mondays. All the other unsolved black homicides? Man
actually say that?"

"He did. Then he realized what he'd said, so he
tried to muddy the waters. Look, I don't know what, if anything, I can
do, and I know all about helpful outsiders fouling up official
investigations. But first there has to be an investigation. I don't
think there's going to be one, beyond a lot of eye-rolling bureaucrats
going through the motions. But I'm convinced that the key to this case
is the fact that his sister died shortly before he did, and that his
death has something to do with something or someone here in Washington."

"And what do you want from me, Miss. Snow? A papal dispensation?"

"I want to speak to Mrs. Hardin. With a little preliminary softening up
having been done by you. With you there, if at all possible."

"Hmmpf. That's what I was afraid was comin'. Tell me something'. Where's
that Navy guy, Collins, stand in the game?"

"He's been returned to his regular duties in the Pentagon."

"He in the game or out?"

"I have to assume he's out. He told me Friday
that he could get into a lot of trouble if he stuck his nose back into
the Hardin case. He implied that some powerful people had warned him
off."

"Smart boy."

"Well, I've already given up my job, so I have nothing to lose in that
regard, do I? Will you help me? Or even just think about it?"

He was silent again for about thirty seconds. Then he surprised her.

"Miss. Snow," he said in a very official voice, "you're implying that
there is a conspiracy of silence surrounding the Hardin case. That maybe
some high-level executive assistants at NIS and in the Pentagon are
manipulating this case so as to neutralize its effective prosecution.

Have you forgotten something? I'm the executive assistant to the Deputy
Chief of Police for Criminal Investigations. How do you know I'm not
part of it, Miss. Snow?"

It was Grace's turn to be silent for a few seconds. She had not missed
the sudden change in his speech: the precision of his syntax and the
cold, political essence of his question. She thought about it, then saw
through it.

"Because if you were, Captain," she replied evenly, "you would have
agreed to help me right from the beginning of this conversation. That
way you could control or manipulate what I was doing and thus protect
your principals. In my experience, EAs are not singular spiders; they
like to work the web with all the other EAs, and they rarely work just
for their own benefit. Besides, you're still talking like a human." Vann
chuckled. "A human. Ouch," he said. "Okay, I guess you got me, Miss.

Snow. My guile is getting like my nostalgia: It ain't what it used to
be. I'll tell you what: I'll talk to Angela Hardin, sort of feel her
out. I'm not promising anything, hear? There's ... well, there's history
to deal with there. I'm gonna have to ask her to look into her heart,
and that thing's in pieces, you know? And in the meantime, don't you go
doing anything. Thinking is okay. I always admire people who think. But
don't do anything until I say it's okay, understood?"

"All right. I promise."

"Okay. I'll get back to you."

She thanked him and hung up. It was a start.

"C&P telephone customer Service. This is Wanda.

How may I direct your call?"

"I need to speak to Loretta, in Billing,"

Malachi said.

"Loretta's line is busy, sir. She's assisting other customers," the
voice said. "I can put you through to the next available billing
adviser."

"No, let me hold, please. Loretta has been helping me and I don't want
to have to explain the whole deal again."

"Thank you, sir. Please hold, sir."

Malachi waited, the yellow gummy with Snow's phone number in his hand.

After four minutes of breathless telephone company advertising, a new
voice came on the line.

"Billing. Loretta speaking. How may I help you?"

"Loretta, this is Mr. Wizard."

"Hey, Wiz baby. What's happening' in the wonderful world of science? And
what's our number today?"

He gave her the number. "And our name might be Snow, and we may even be
unlisted."

"Oooh. Unlisted. We're important. And expensive, like the address I'm
seem' right here. And, Miss. Grace E. Snow, can we confirm that our
address is two-onethree-five P Street Northwest?"

Malachi wrote down the street address. "Absolutely.

Your computer does good work, Loretta. It's two hundred times better
than mine."

"Aw, baby, you too kind."

"Thanks, Loretta. Keep your bills dry."

He hung up and went into his study, where he fished two hundred-dollar
bills out of the desk safe and folded them into an envelope, which he
addressed to Ms. Loretta Smith, care of C&P Telephone's Washington
offices, Billing Department. He marked personal on the envelope. Loretta
was part of the old Monroney empire.

As part of the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company's Billing
Department, she could call up any customer's account as long as he could
provide the phone number. One hundred for info on a listed number; two
hundred for unlisted. As long as she did no manipulation of the screen
data, the phone company's security systems would not pick up on
it--people called in all the time to ask questions about bills, and the
operators always asked for the phone number, which doubled as the
account number. They also always checked the address to confirm; Loretta
simply asked it out loud.

He went back out to the kitchen and fixed himself the first of the day,
a short one, because he still had to drive back to Virginia. He took his
drink back to the study and sat down. So the lady in the garden had been
Grace E. Snow. He wondered if they called her Gracie. Probably not--she
didn't look like a Gracie. More like a Grace Kelly with dark hair. And
she lived in Georgetown, so there was money there. He tried to remember
how a woman who looked like that--polished, trim, expensively
dressed--used to make him feel, but there was nothing there anymore.

That's because you're a fucking eunuch, Malachi. Since your evening with
Inge, Inge of the broken bottle, Inge of the perfect aim, the only thing
you feel for women is the urge to improve their traffic-safety
consciousness with an F-250.

He closed his eyes and tried to get a hold of himself.

Think rationally, logically. What was it about the Snow woman? She was
not the normal fit for the NIS, that was for damn sure. Then he
remembered what Englehardt had said: "Miss. Snow doesn't work here
anymore."

And she had confirmed that. So why had she been visiting Collins? It
hadn't looked like a date, not with her going home in a taxi early in
the evening. But maybe that was how the Navy boys did it. It used to be
a standing joke among his buddies in the sergeants' mess that an officer
took two weeks to get from a woman what any sergeant could get in thirty
minutes.

Officers had to talk about it beforehand; sergeants talked about it
afterward. Collins the rowboat man, Snow the Yuppie princess from
Georgetown. But had the visit been work or pleasure? And could these two
powder puffs possibly be contractors set in motion by the captain and
his crowd to take care of the one remaining loose end?

He shook his head. He couldn't see it. Not those two.

Snow was a remote possibility; as he knew only too well, women were
capable of any fucking thing at all. He had met a fifty-year-old woman
hitter once who had scared the hell out of him with her ice-cold
intensity. She purportedly did wet work for the Agency, although lots of
people out on the edge in this town claimed to work for the Agency. But
Malachi remembered thinking that if he had known there was some kind of
contract out on him, just the sight of that woman would have had him
diving behind a wall. She looked like a killer. This Grace Snow looked
like nothing of the sort. And the Navy guy. Again, no way, no matter if
James Bond had been a commander. That would imply a degree of deep cover
that the Agency might be capable of, but never the Navy.

He downed the whiskey and sighed. It was time to get the Ford back to
its hidey-hole. If there was somebody in motion in his backfield, it
wasn't these two, which meant that he had to increase his vigilance. He
decided to dismiss Collins and Snow; sometimes it was just as useful to
know who wasn't coming after you.

He closed up the house and set out to drive the Ford back to Arlington,
but then he had an idea. Maybe he'd go by and actually see where the
mysterious Miss. Snow lived. He decided to circle around the Capitol
grounds and take Pennsylvania Avenue all the way over to Georgetown. It
would not be quick, but, it being a Monday night, most of the commuter
traffic would be clearing out by now. He took Pennsylvania all the way
to its junction with M Street, got off M as soon as he could, and
zigzagged his way over to P Street. Once past Wisconsin, he had to go
slowly on P with its cobblestones and old trolley tracks, but he was
able to drive right by 2135 P Street Northwest. There was a 500 series
BMW locked in behind wrought-iron gates; he automatically memorized the
license number. He went around the block one time, noting that there was
an alley off the next street north, Volta Place. The alley actually had
a name, but the street sign was partially obscured by the low branches
of a tree. The alley was almost directly behind Snow's house. He caught
a glimpse of some construction equipment at the end of the alley.

Satisfied that he had seen enough, he headed back down toward the Key
Bridge and Virginia.

dan fought a strong urge to close his eyes as he stroked up the river.

The current was uncompromisingly hard and fast, but there was too much
flotsam sheeting downstream for eyes-closed concentration. He wore one
of those bicycle helmets with a small round mirror on an extension arm
to watch for problems. He was in the burn phase of his workout, his
muscles complaining, but doing so in unison, as he made tiny adjustments
in oar strength to maneuver the scull between branches and other debris
careening down the river.

The water smelled of mud and wet greenery, and the sound of the spring
current was audible, its echoes reflecting off the sheer stone palisades
of the Virginia side as he approached Chain Bridge. The chair had
developed an annoying squeak, which finally broke his concentration, and
he eased off to a bare headway pace. Another single came steaming by,
its occupant shooting Dan a knowing look as Dan eased up and prepared to
come about. There were usually more rowers out, but this current was on
the verge of meanness. The only advantage other than the intensity of
exercise was that the river was deeper, allowing a wider area in which
to row. The big eights and fours from the university had all headed
downstream to the more placid reaches of the river, trading off the
malodorous vapors of the Blue Plains sewage-treatment plant for calm
water.

No, thank you very much, Dan thought. He scanned the upstream water
briefly before beginning a sculling turn, then settled back into a slow,
come-down rhythm that would take him the two miles back down to the
boathouse.

He wondered briefly if Grace would be there again.

He had found himself thinking about her ever since the phone call late
Friday night. And try as he might, it had little to do with the Hardin
case. He backed the starboard oar slightly to avoid a wicked-looking
whirlpool that had surfaced in front of him, but then he relaxed as the
knifelike shell responded, scooting easily around the outer tangents of
the disturbance. He looked on either side and found himself momentarily
in formation with two largish tree branches. Must have been a hell of
thunderstorm up on the Shenandoah to bring all this stuff down.

So why don't you call her tonight? Because it's Monday and you said you
would call her Tuesday. So? You want to see the woman, you don't play by
teenage rules.

Hell, you could call her from the boathouse. It can't be more than ten
minutes to her house. Yeah, but it's rush hour.

He grinned then, recognizing the wiggling of a semihooked fish. He
shipped his oars and just let the current take him. An older man with a
British accent had caught up with him at the river landing one evening
and asked him why he felt compelled to row all the way back downstream.

Returning to the real world that enticing, old boy? The trick is to go
like hell upstream, then soak up some of the serenity of the river on
the way back down. Enjoy it up while you can; pandemonium awaits at the
boathouse driveway. The river was beautiful, even when it was feeling
its oats. And she is, too, he thought. Claire was prettier. Claire is
gone.

Claire was more fun, not so serious, not so damn New Englandish. And
yet, Grace is elegant, quick, even sexy.

Claire was sexy. Claire is gone. A wave of sadness overtook him like one
of those sudden squalls that could dash down the river all the way from
the cataracts at Great Falls. Heretofore, a summons to the ghost of
Claire was all that it took to extinguish any sparks of interest in
another woman. But Claire is gone. Grace is ten minutes from the
boathouse.

Maybe fifteen.

Maybe she's not there.

Maybe she is.

He landed the boat without doing any significant damage and toted it up
to the boathouse. He called her from the lobby after hanging up the
boat, and he got the answering machine. He started to hang up, but then
he said to hell with it and identified himself. She picked up, startling
him.

"Sorry about that," she said. "One of the defenses of women who live
alone, I'm afraid."

"Yeah, well, I was still trying to figure out what to say to your
machine when you picked up. But basically, I'm down here at the
boathouse, and I was wondering, uh ..."

"Would you like to come by, Dan?"

"Uh, yeah, I would, actually. I'll even take a shower."

"That's nice to hear."

Dan felt his face redden. Want to tell her you'll use soap and
everything? Wash behind your ears?

"What's the best route from down here?" he asked quickly.

She gave him succinct instructions, and he said he'd be there in twenty
minutes. It was more like half an hour, what with a fender bender on M
Street and a broken-down Metro bus on 33rd. Dan remembered her house,
but he missed her driveway the first time past.

After much backing and filling, he was able to maneuver the Suburban
into the space across her driveway, which was really only two ribbons of
brick leading into the tiny yard. The Suburban looked like a beached
blue whale against the diminutive front yard. He surveyed his makeshift
outfit: slacks and sport shirt he happened to have in the car from the
cleaners, his uniform shoes, and a black leather Navy-uniform belt. Oh
well, he thought, beats cutoffs, a sleeveless sweatshirt, and a pair of
canvas sneakers that qualified as EPA violations.

The front door of the house opened and Grace stepped out. She was
wearing gray wool slacks, a long- sleeved ivory-colored blouse, and some
flat leather shoes. She wore a slim gold bracelet on her right wrist,
and Dan thought he could detect a hint of makeup. He caught himself
staring when he should have been getting out of the car, and then he
scrambled to get the door open. If she thought his outfit peculiar when
he walked up the steps, she contained it well. She took him through the
living room and the study and then into the kitchen, where she had laid
out some white wine and a tray of crackers and cheese.

"If you'll bring the wine, we can try my garden this time," she said
over her shoulder. "But first we have to put this permit in your car
window. Otherwise, you'll get a ticket for blocking my driveway."

He took the permit back out to the car and then went back through the
house and out to the garden, picking up the wine along the way.

"This is very pretty," he said as they walked down the brick walk to a
patio table and chairs. "Makes my garden look medium scruffy."

"I have a man who comes in periodically and gives it a haircut. Yes, put
that there; that's fine. But I forgot the glasses. I'll be right back."

She went back to the house while Dan looked around. The garden and yard
were not as long as his, but the trees were more stately, the lawn
trimmed, and the flowers identifiable as such. Two whitewashed brick
walls on either side led down to a third wall and gate, probably into an
alley behind. A building visible over the top of the back wall had
scaffolding all the way up to its roof.

Georgetown even felt different from Old Town. Probably the absence of
tourists, he decided. He had read that although it was now the province
of the rich and famous in Washington, much of Georgetown had originally
been a slum, something Old Town had never been.

What tourists there were in Georgetown stayed down around the bars and
restaurants along M Street, while in Old Town, they were everywhere,
often peering right into peoples' living room windows because the house
fronts were often right on the street. He watched Grace come back down
the steps with two wineglasses and an ice bucket. She was appropriately
named, he thought, and her outfit reinforced the notion that she was
indeed a woman--a long-legged one at that. She put an ice bucket and
glasses on the glass-topped wrought-iron table, swept a few acorns off
her chair, and sat down.

"There. You can tell I entertain a lot. But I did get the wine bottle
open. If you would do the honors, kind sir."

Dan poured the wine, gave her a glass, and then tipped a salut. She
responded and their eyes met for a fraction of a second longer than
necessary. She looked down first.

"So, Commander," she said, a hint of a smile on her face.

"So, indeed, Miss. Grace Ellen Snow. This is a nice wine."

She laughed at the allusion to their previous discussion about wine
critics.

"So it is; I wasn't expecting your call until tomorrow night."

Dan nodded. "I was out on the river," he said. "I thought of you and
decided to call."

"Just like that?" Her voice was softer now.

He looked away, recalling the serenity of the river, even when it was up
and running. "No, not just like that," he said. "I usually have a ghost
to wrestle with whenever I consider speaking to a woman who ... who--"

"Who is not your wife."

"Yes. Well, see, my wife is ... gone. That was the funny thing out there
on the river this afternoon, and the reason I decided to go through with
it. Calling you, I mean. My mind kept making comparisons, kept saying
--well, all sorts of things. But there was this refrain that kept
invading: Claire is gone." His throat had become annoyingly dry. "Claire
is gone," he whispered, softer.

"Oh hell."

His eyes suddenly misted over and he put down his glass. He was aware of
his surroundings at the periphery of his vision, but straight ahead he
could see nothing.

He was afraid to look at Grace, afraid even to breathe. He felt like he
had just made 'a cosmic discovery: Claire was gone, gone for good, gone
away, gone so damn far away that even now, as he tried to capture her
face, her figure, to recall anything at all about her, he discovered
that all the loving images had escaped from his mind's eye in one great
rush while he wasn't looking.

He stared, blinking, unseeing, at the green lawn and the blurred pattern
of the brick wall, trying hard to reconstruct her outline in the soft
evening light, but failing. For two or three minutes, he sat there, lost
in this sudden onslaught of emotions, emotions he couldn't define,
except that they were tinged with a little shame. Finally, he took a
deep breath and came back to the garden.

"Sorry about that," he whispered, and then cleared his throat and took a
gulp of wine, nearly choking on it.

"I didn't mean to--I'm not sure what just happened there. Maybe I'd
better go."

But Grace was shaking her head. "I don't think so," she said. "Listen,
I'm glad you called. You should have seen me, Dan, running around the
house like a chicken with its head cut off. Look at me, I even put on
makeup. Look at me."

He finally looked at her, and he saw something soft in her face he
hadn't seen before--luminescent softness in her eyes. Green eyes, he
realized. She has green eyes.

I knew that. He suddenly realized that she understood what had just
happened.

"Sometimes," she said, "sometimes I think life has to turn our heads
before we see clearly. You've been at the back of my mind since last
Friday night." He nodded a silent "me, too," but said nothing, not quite
willing to trust his voice.

"I'm not really sure how to act, Dan. I had all the flirt burned out of
me after the fifth or sixth time Rennie beat me up. And yet, I'm a
middle-aged female who knows damned well that time is short. Oh, shit,
this is hard. What should we do?"

"Well," he said finally, finding his
voice, "we could drink some of this wine, this nice wine."

She laughed again, a clear exhalation of relief and humor and shared
enjoyment. He laughed with her, shaking his head as if to chase back the
treacherous emotional shadows. They spent the next two hours talking
about themselves, working on the wine, and beginning to explore the
edges of a relationship, both of them being very careful to probe
neither too deeply nor too soon. After dark, they walked down Wisconsin
Avenue to one of the few small bistros that was open on a Monday night
for dinner, where they continued the exploration, checking the fit of
their interests, touching tentatively on politics and religion, doing
better on his love of history and her fascination with unraveling
complex crimes, his expectations of what his command tour would be like,
and his recent realization that his time in the Navy after his
long-sought command tour would look a lot like the time leading up to
it.

She tried to explain some of her reasons for going to work for the
government, based in part on her having been handed all the advantages
of money along with a first-class education. He tried to put a better
face on the reasons he had stayed in the Navy. They paced themselves,
becoming surer that the feeling was worth pursuing, but being very
careful to make small moves.

After dinner, they walked back through the quiet streets of the
neighborhood to her house, admiring the rich variety of architecture and
means on display in the genteel rows of mostly brick houses. They walked
the last block to her house in silence, content that they had talked
enough for a while. When they reached her front steps, he felt a tinge
of uncertainty while she unlocked the door, but he then took her hand in
both of his.

"Hey, hand," he said, not looking at her face, "this is the moment when
the boy usually tries to kiss the girl, but the boy's still not sure of
what he's doing, and he desperately doesn't want to make any mistakes,
so he's gonna just say good night and run home to figure out when he can
see you again, okay? Will you pass all that on to your owner for me?"

She smiled in the soft glow of the porch lights and then took hold of
his hand.

"Hey, hand," she said, "make it very soon, all right?"

He grinned at her and walked to his car, waved once as she went inside,
and then addressed himself to the difficult business of getting the
Suburban out of the driveway without hitting any of the densely parked
cars.

As he drove out of Georgetown, he realized that they had spent an entire
evening together without once mentioning the Hardin thing. Maybe the EAs
were right: Maybe that mess was better off in the moldering bureaucratic
backwaters of the Washington Navy Yard.

And--he had her parking permit.

malachi awoke tuesday morning with another world class hangover. Driving
back over to Virginia the night before had turned into a traffic
nightmare when two carloads of Arlington Vietnamese had sideswiped each
other on the Virginia side of the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge and then
proceeded to stage a gunfight. The ensuing Olympic-size traffic jam had
taken ninety minutes to clear out. By the time he returned to Capitol
Hill on the Metro, he was in a decidedly foul humor. Coming out of the
Eastern Market Metro station, he had seen three young men sizing him up
as a possible mark in the early-evening darkness. He had crossed the
street and walked right at them, hands open at his sides, daring them
with a belligerent, flat-eyed stare to start something.

Then he bowled right through them on the sidewalk, eliciting a chorus of
"Hey, man" from the startled men.

He had gone right to the bourbon when he got in and proceeded to drink
himself insensible right there in the kitchen. He woke up on the floor
of the second-story hallway, his head on fire and his stomach tied up in
a bilious knot. He spent the first five minutes wondering how he had
managed those stairs without breaking his neck, and the second five
minutes trying to organize a sufficient number of muscles and nerves to
make it to the bathroom. It was nearly two more hours before he could do
much more than sit up straight, and even then he needed some whiskey in
his coffee to get color vision back. He sat at the kitchen table, his
eyes mostly closed, nursing the coffee, a cigarette smoking in a saucer,
his head resenting the noise the refrigerator made, waiting for the
whiskey to do something. He could feel each heartbeat in his temples.

Curiously, he remembered a lecture on alcoholism he had been forced to
attend by the battalion commander during his last year in the Army. This
surprisingly tough-looking chaplain had given a talk on the stages of
alcoholism, and Malachi, along with the other dozen or so troops in the
audience, had been able to fix himself with quick accuracy on the
slippery slope the chaplain was describing. He also remembered that the
sergeants had all retired to the club for a drink while they talked
about the lecture. Malachi had gone with them. He was an officer, but he
was far closer to the sergeants than he was to the other officers,
especially after Vietnam, where the sergeants had made him very nearly a
rich man. But what he really remembered was what the chaplain had said
about the root causes of alcoholism: The booze is addictive, and it will
eventually overwhelm your life, but there is usually something
profoundly wrong in your life that the addiction for booze itself feeds
on. Well hell, he thought as he sat with his head on his arms on the
kitchen table, we all know what that problem is, don't we? I got
castrated by a German whore, who also threw in a wonderful new voice and
some scars that scare children and make dogs bark at me.

But instinctively he knew it was deeper than that, that his entire life
after falling in with Monroney and An gelo and the other guys in Saigon
had been an increasingly empty experience, despite all the money. By the
time he'd spent his first year in Germany, he had become aware that the
CID had been onto him and some of the scams going down there, and maybe
even before, in Nam. But the sergeants' mafia was slick and wise in the
ways of the Army, and there were just too many insiders at work for the
CID ever to put a case together, especially against a captain in the
Military Police Corps.

His assignment to Mcnair after the incident in Germany had been a
deliberate warehousing job, under the guise of a humane convalescent
assignment. He had been in titular charge of the gate guard details that
protected generals' row and all those bright-faced up-and- corners who
drove through the gates every morning on their way to the National War
College. Yeah, he got some disability retirement, and yeah, he never got
caught. But they knew. During those last months, he had begun to hear
the whispering behind his back:

There's more to that guy than just the horrible incident in the bar.

Where most Vietnam vets got respect when, leather-faced and bedecked
with ribbons, they walked into the club, Malachi got furtive, curious
looks. He had been vastly relieved to get his disability discharge
papers, and he had even opted out of having any sort of traditional
retirement ceremony. The battalion commander had seemed vastly relieved.

Since then, his life in Washington, first working with Monroney and then
for himself, had been profitable and occasionally even interesting.

Living entirely alone, he had absorbed himself in the mechanics of being
a shadow-land contractor, adapting readily to the mechanics of his trade
even as he struggled to fashion a life after hours, increasingly with
the help of I.W.

Harper. But where was the future? He knew in his heart what kind of
future that empty Harper bottle promised: His own father had dissolved
in a bottle, leaving the boy Malachi to finish high school as a teenaged
foster child. Now he had a small retirement pension and enough money
stashed here and there never to have to work again, but what was he
going to do with it? Having shoveled shit for some of the great men of
Washington for almost twenty years, he was still little better than an
enlisted man, the eternal snuffy, paid to take out the garbage, thrown a
couple of bills by the fat cats in their thousand-dollar suits. She was
a great piece of ass, Malachi, but go back up there and see if I left a
rubber on the floor, okay? It's a no-fingerprint sort of thing, Malachi;
you know how it is.

Before the Hardin problem, the quality of his life had been measured in
degrees of emptiness and loneliness; he did what he did because there
was a demand for his services and because that's what he did for a
living. He could appreciate the circular nature of his rut, but it was a
rut that seemed made for him, especially after Germany.

But now, for the first time, he was feeling a sense of threat, a
tingling of unease along the ratlike nerve bundle he had developed since
throwing in with the sergeants in Saigon, that over-the-shoulder sixth
sense

Monroney was always talking about. Up to this point, everything he had
done since leaving the Army had been on instructions. Anyone wanted to
come after him, there was always a principal or a high-priced assistant
to offer up. But this time, with this Hardin thing, he had the sense
that the principal and his horse-holder might be working on offering him
up, maybe before somebody started closing in. It didn't help that this
was murder. Okay, yeah, they said they had the investigation bottled up.

And yeah, there was no direct connection to be made between Malachi and
the Hardin killing in Philadelphia--except for the accident on 23rd
Street. Well, mostly an accident--he hadn't really meant to kill her,
not until she had shown him that glittering, man-hating stare, that
stare Inge had as she drove the broken bottle- into his groin. Always
cutting, these women. He looked down at the puckered, still-red scars
across the back of his right hand.

Try as he might, even the Harper couldn't get An gelo's warning out of
his mind, and he realized that there were going to be some more of these
binges until he took care of it. That little voice was still whispering
in his ear, telling him to get out of it: Get out of town, use your fake
IDs and your contacts in the shadow world to chuck it, get clear of it,
before these god damned officers get their shit together and think of
something. But he knew he wouldn't do it; he'd been doing these
bastards' bidding for his entire life, even when he was supposedly one
of them, but this time he wasn't going to just salute and hop right to
it, backing deferentially out the door, saying, Yes, sir, no, sir, three
bags full, sir. Just once, he wanted to kick their asses, and he wanted
them to know he had kicked their asses.

Then maybe he would beat feet, fold his tents, and steal away into the
desert night.

He got up and went to the refrigerator, got out some ice cubes and
cracked them into bits using a heavy steel mess-hall soup spoon and the
palm of his hand. He filled a glass with cracked ice and then turned it
amber with bourbon from a fresh bottle of Harper. He lit a cigarette and
sat back down again and sipped the icy

liquor. Maybe he ought to preempt the bastards. Maybe put an anonymous
call into the D.C. cops, tell 'em that they needed to go talk to the
great man, because, here's the thing: He had been doing Lieutenant
Hardin's sister.

So what? All right, try this: Lieutenant Hardin was iced because he was
going to blow the whistle, going to embarrass the great man for porking
his sister. What could the captain do about that? He couldn't point to
Malachi without admitting they had hired him. And even if they did that,
there was no evidence. Malachi could simply do the armadillo, deny
everything. And Angelo sure as hell wouldn't talk, even supposing the
cops could walk it back all the way to the Guides in South Philly. But
they couldn't even do that, because nothing had been done directly.

Everything had been done through intermediaries, contractors,
untraceable cash, untraceable phone calls, and discussions over dinner
in a place where retirement-minded cops did not venture--the Washington
way. The cops might eventually put together the whole story, but without
evidence or a confession, they could not indict or convict.

Or maybe do the Washington thing--expose the whole sorry story to the
cold light of day. Give it the Washington Post test. Leak a little.

Malachi had been around Washington long enough to know that if even the
outlines of the story got out in town, the great man wouldn't remain a
great man for very long, because the Navy, embarrassed by the charges
and the inevitable calls for an investigation, would deep-six his ass,
and maybe the captain along with him. And if Malachi could separate them
from their official privilege and federal power, then they would no
longer be in a position to make some calls and maybe line up another
contractor to come take care of their Malachi problem.

They'd he distracted, tainted with a whiff of scandal, retired, but not
so honorably, and definitely not invited to serve on all those fancy
Beltway bandit boards or to become consultants. Then they'd be down on
the rug with him and the other fleas, just another pair of retired
military stiffs in Washington, grasping for whatever crumbs might come
their way from the government's table. Hell, once they were down on his
level, he might even have some fun with them.

Malachi mulled over that engaging prospect but then rejected it. He
could hear Monroney: Even that's too direct, Malachi; that's not how you
do shit in this town.

The better way was to drop a dime all right, only play the real
Washington game, just call the cops and simply ask a rhetorical
question: What was the connection between a certain Washington admiral's
illicit affair with It . Elizabeth Hardin and her brother's getting
snuffed right after the sister died? Don't name any names; let the cops
dig for it. Because once the cops came asking questions, the word would
get out on the EA network pretty quick, and then the great man and his
captain would have other things to think about than sending someone
after Malachi. Yeah, that's how to do it--not once removed, but twice
removed. And now is when to do it. He got up to refresh his glass of
ice. He needed to get his brain in high gear so he could figure out
precisely whom to call. Hell, he was already feeling better.

on tuesday afternoon, Grace was filing her 1993 tax returns in the
upstairs file cabinet when she heard the phone ringing downstairs. Since
her mother had died, she kept only the downstairs telephone ringer
activated, as she had developed something of a dread of phone calls in
the night. She walked to the head of the stairs, where she could hear
the answering machine, and listened.

When she recognized the voice of Moses Vann, she quickly went into the
bedroom and picked up the portable bedside phone.

"Captain Vann, I'm here," she said as the machine made an offensive
noise and clicked off abruptly, as if annoyed.

"Miss. Snow. I'm glad I caught you."

"Coming from a policeman, that sounds ominous, Captain."

"Yeah, well." He laughed. "I say 'got you' and people get really scared,
you know? But something interesting's come up on the Hardin case. The
department got a phone call."

The Hardin case. Grace sat down abruptly on the edge of her bed. She had
not thought about the Hardin case since ... well, since seeing Dan last
night.

"An anonymous tip of some kind?"

"You must be psychic. That's exactly what it was.

Somebody dropped a dime."

"What did they say?"

"Well, it was kind of a thin dime, but basically, the caller asked a
question. I'm calling to find out if you might be interested in coming
in, tomorrow morning, say around eleven o'clock. And maybe bring your
Navy friend with you, that Commander Collins."

"Well, I can make it. I'll have to call Dan to see if he can. As I think
I told you, he doesn't have as much freedom of action as I do right
now."

"You think you can talk him into it?"

"I can try."

"Yeah. Because this call may be doubly interesting to him. How's about
asking him, anyway. He says no, it ain't the end of the world. But make
sure he understands that we'll be off the record, what you feds call a
nonmeeting meeting."

"Ex-feds. But, yes, we had those all the time in SEC.

I'll call him. Please don't misunderstand, Captain Vann: The Hardin case
bothers him as much as it bothers me.

It's just that he can pay a price if some of your captain counterparts
over in the Pentagon find out about it."

"Like I said, that makes the call even more interesting.

Give it a shot, Miss. Snow. But either way, I'll see you in my office at
eleven. Just come on up to the third floor, like you did last time."

Vann hung up and Grace did likewise. She lay back across the bed and
stared up at the ceiling. Damn it, she thought. She didn't want her next
phone call to Dan Collins to be about the Hardin case. She didn't want
him to think her only interest in him was the murder.

She sat up and went downstairs to get her phone book.

It was almost five o'clock. Dan should still be at the Pentagon. As she
was flipping through the book, the phone rang again. Now who could this
be? Maybe Dan.

She listened as the machine went through its spiel, and then she heard a
young man's voice.

"Miss. Snow, this is Lieutenant Garrison calling from Naval
Investigative Service headquarters. As you may remember, I'm the naval
aide to the director. I was calling to see if you were available to
speak with Admiral Keeler. My number--"

Her phone call from NIS--she had forgotten all about that, too. Feeling
a flare of irritation, Grace picked up and hit the machine's record
button as she lifted the handset. "I'm here, Lieutenant Garrison. But
before you put the admiral on, I want to make sure this is a private
conversation. I don't want any EAs or other undersirables hanging on the
extension, is that understood?

Otherwise, there will be no conversation."

She waited while the lieutenant digested this bit of news. She knew that
she had no way to keep Rennselaer off a muted extension phone, but she
also wanted to put these guys on notice that this was not a social call.

"Uh, I'll see what I can do about that, Miss. Snow.

Stand by one, please."

She went on hold. She peered into the little window of the answering
machine to make sure the reel was turning. The machine could record up
to one hour of conversation on its microcassette. It was a holdover from
her days with SEC, when she sometimes took calls after work from
informants or prospective witnesses who were in the perspiration stage.

"Miss. Snow, the admiral's coming on."

Good for him, she thought as she waited. There was a clicking noise and
then the smooth voice of Admiral Keeler filled the earpiece. Grace had
seen the admiral several times, although she had spoken to him only
once. He was a handsome man, in his late forties, and he looked to Grace
as if he would make a good con man or politician. She had seen many men
who looked like him running some very pretty schemes on Wall Street.

"Miss. Snow. I'm sorry we're having to communicate under these awkward
circumstances. I'm afraid we haven't handled the matter of your
departure from our ranks all that well on our end."

"You certainly haven't, Admiral. You had the chance to arrange for my
departure in a much more gracious manner. But, apparently, your
executive assassin decided to put your stripes on and try a little
hardball instead. Or was this your idea, Admiral?"

"No, no, Miss. Snow, it wasn't. I always prefer a discreet maneuver to a
head-on collision. Captain Rennselaer thought he was acting according to
my wishes.

These misunderstandings sometimes happen, you know."

Grace understood full well that the EA was being used in one of his most
important roles, that of lightning rod in case one of the admiral's
decisions went off the rails. The principals would let the EA make or
announce the move; if it began to draw an adverse reaction, the
principal could always step forward, disassociate himself from the
offending idea, and blame the EA. It was a game that principals and EAs
all understood well and used often.

"Well, now you have a final chance to rectify your EA's little misstep,
Admiral," she said. "Let me tell you my terms: I want a fulsome good-bye
letter, signed by you, saying that you accept my resignation from the
NIS and government service with the deepest regret. You will declare in
the purplest prose how much I contributed to the success of the
organization's mission, how much you will miss my services, and how
wonderful our professional association was during my tenure in the
Policy Division at NIS, etcetera, etcetera. Clear so far, Admiral?"

"Exceptionally so, Miss. Snow. And I presume that your final performance
appraisal should be similarly incandescent."

"Yes. I wouldn't want NIS to be inconsistent in its treatment of a
departing and much-valued employee. I

think Captain Rennselaer ought to sign it, too. Maybe one of those
arrangements where he signs it and then you countersign your approval.

And we'll have no mention of Career Services, shall we?"

"Absolutely, Miss. Snow. Investigations Policy Division all the way.

Tell me, do you plan to work in government again, Miss. Snow?"

"If I do, Admiral, it will be as a political appointee, only this time
I'll come in at the beginning of an administration.

Perhaps we'll have the pleasure of crossing paths in the investigations
business again some day."

"That would be interesting, I'm sure, Miss. Snow.

And now, for your part--"

"For my part, Admiral, I await your paperwork.

When I've seen it and deemed it satisfactory, I will then call off my
family's legal staff in Philadelphia."

"I see." There was a pause. "And how will we know that this, um, little
contretemps is actually over, Miss. Snow?"

"When you move on to your next star and your next assignment without
having undergone a very public and personally costly lawsuit, Admiral.

It's what I don't do that you hope and pray for, Admiral. And the people
I don't talk to. But don't worry--we'll have a lock, won't we?"

"A lock, Miss. Snow? I'm not quite--"

"A lock, Admiral. It's an underworld term--from my days when I worked on
real criminal investigations for a real live government agency. There
are probably some people on your staff who know what the term means.

Ask Captain Rennselaer. I'm sure he knows what a lock is. But basically,
once you have signed out all this pretty paper, I would have a fairly
difficult time asserting in court that you terminated me unfairly and
without due process, right?"

"Ah. I see, Miss. Snow."

"I knew you would, Admiral. So, I await the official correspondence.

Which is coming soon, is it not?"

"Very soon, Miss. Snow."

"Good-bye, Admiral. And you, too, Rennselaer."

She hung up and exhaled a deep breath. That had been as nasty as she
could make it. Hopefully, they would see the sense of a paper solution,
because she had little stomach for the other route. And besides, she had
been the odd duck in the NIS pond, not them. But still, she had been
around the government long enough to know that there were civilized ways
to handle these situations. And she also knew that glowing departure
appraisals could become pivotal in the future if she ever did want to go
back into government, especially as an appointee. All those security
checks would certainly involve a look into her civil service files. And
most of all, in her opinion, these executive-whatevers needed to learn
that when they lunged out from under their rocks at someone, there was
always the possibility of being trampled upon. She opened the answering
machine and popped out the microcassette, sealed it into an envelope,
and marked it SD box.

She retrieved the phone number for OP-614 and dialed it, looking at her
watch. It was nearly 5:30. The phone rang several times, but no one
picked up. He's already out on the river, she thought. She hung up,
called Dan's home phone number, and asked his machine to have him call
her at home.

by some miracle, Dan found a parking spot for the Suburban directly in
front of his house. He sat in the car for a moment to survey his
unexpected good fortune.

It was a balmy evening, with most of the large trees lining the street
in full bloom. And full pollen, he noticed. The windshields of adjacent
cars were covered in a light yellow-green dust. He decided to go down to
the little bistro at the foot of Prince Street for a quick dinner. Since
Monday night, he had been packing civvies over to the boat club after
work instead of coming back to the house in malodorous sweats. He got
out, locked up the car, and walked down the hill, crossing Union after
waiting for a parade of tourists to go by.

Thankfully, they kept on going, walking right past the little
restaurant.

There was a positively smashing young blonde sitting at one of the
sidewalk tables--which prompted Dan to take an outside table. She gave
him a brief smile but then looked pointedly at her watch, making it
clear that she was waiting for someone. Dan sat so as to be able to see
her, and immediately he compared her with Grace. The blonde was younger,
much younger, with more color in her face and flashing a lot of leg in
her abbreviated skirt. She was very pretty, he decided, but hot-pretty.

Grace was more of a cool beauty, infinitely more elegant, probably a
hell of a lot smarter, and possessed of a faintly mysterious air. Most
of what he would want to know about the blonde was there for the world
to see, but there was a lot he did not know about Grace Ellen Snow, and
that intrigued him. The fact that she was closer to his own age than the
young beauty across the way also made a difference. Although he had been
out of the market since Claire's death, he had discovered that women
with thirty-five years of life's experience were far easier to talk to
than the ones who were ten years younger. The extra decade of living
allowed an immediate mutual recognition that most of life's little
traumas were not something unique to one's own experience. It also
helped that Grace was not obviously hunting, as most of the middle-aged
women he had met since California were.

The waiter appeared, checked briefly with the blonde, and then came over
to his table with a friendly greeting; Dan was a regular.

"Commander Collins, good evening, sir. A glass of KJ chardonnay? And I
recommend the mussels tonight.

Maybe with a little angel-hair pasta in a fresh tomato and basil sauce."

"Sounds great, Mario. A small side salad with that and I'll be set."

"You got it, sir." The waiter hustled back inside, returned with his
wine, and refilled the blonde's ice water.

When he left, Dan raised his glass in a small salut to the young lady,
who gave him a much better smile this time.

"If he stands you up, he's a Communist," he declared across the tables.

"He's a lawyer," she said lightly. "A junior associate.

I'm getting used to it." Dan almost said that if he was a lawyer, he was
already a Communist, then decided to hold his peace when she turned her
face away. See how mature I'm getting, he thought. Learning to keep my
trap shut.

Make a wiseass remark about lawyers and find out that she's a lawyer,
too. That was more his usual style. Grace is a lawyer. Damn, that's
right. But not one of those jackal ambulance chasers or auto-accident
specialists.

Just that afternoon, he had seen a great bumper sticker that read
support a lawyer: be a doctor. No, Grace was a specialist in
white-collar crimes--a hunter who pursued her prey through drawers of
paper, intricate networks of bank accounts, tax forms, and computer
files. It was a sterile sort of policing, where the bad guys were
primarily guilty of making too much money.

Mario returned, bearing a large bowl of steaming-hot mussels, a side
dish of pasta, and the small salad, all of which he set down with a
flourish. He knew that Dan came for dinner, not for contrived delays
between several courses.

"Here you are, sir. Everything all together, just the way you like it.

I'll get you a plate for those shells. And here's your bill. I apologize
for that, but after Friday night, the manager told me to bring the
sidewalk bills out early."

"That looks great, Mario. What happened Friday night?"

"Some older guy was having dinner here--kind of a strange dude. Big guy,
funny voice, sort of ugly, kind of a mean look to him. He ordered
dinner, and right in the middle of it he jumped up and ran outta here
like his pants were on fire. I was inside and saw him booking out."

"He stiff you?" Dan asked, reaching for his wine.

"No, he left some money--more than enough, actually.

But it was seriously weird."

"Where'd the guy go?"

"Don't know. He disappeared by the time I got out here. I was picking
stuff up here--it was this table, actually --and then this enormous
pickup truck comes around the corner and goes down Union, going like
hell, you know? I didn't get a good look at the driver, though. Don't
know if it was him or not. Weird shit.

Lemme get you that shell plate."

Dan was halfway through the mussels before he made the connection. A
white pickup truck had followed Grace home. And from behind his gate, he
had heard what sounded like a big vehicle making a hard turn onto Union.

He put his fork down and looked up the street. He could see the Suburban
out in front of his house. Through the trees, yeah, that works. Some guy
wants to watch my house, he can do it from here. Can't cover the back
gate, of course, but if he wanted to see me come and go, or someone
who's visiting me come and go, yeah, this works fine. But why? And was
he watching me or Grace?

The missing lawyer finally showed up in a bustle of briefcases, a
portable flip phone, and apologies to the blonde. To Dan's
disappointment, the guy was handsome, well dressed, and, based on the
smile on the blonde's face, worth waiting for. Definitely a Communist,
Dan concluded. He finished dinner, left cash to cover the bill and the
tip, waved through the window at Mario, who waved back, and headed up
Prince Street.

He stopped by the Suburban to retrieve his exercise clothes and his
briefcase, then went into the house, where he found the answering
machine blinking at him.

He listened to the message and immediately called her.

He had to wait for her machine to do its thing. He announced himself and
then paused. She picked up.

"Hi," she said. Her voice sounded bright.

"Hi yourself. Sorry to be delayed in getting back to you. I was
restoring my blood-garlic levels down at one of the local bistros. Keeps
away vampires, you know."

"Got a big problem with vampires in Old Town?" she asked.

"Only at the Tax Board. What's up?"

"It's the Hardin thing," she said.

"Oh."

"Yes, oh. It seems someone has made an anonymous phone call into the
District police department. Captain Vann called me this afternoon. He
wants to meet, and he asked me to convince you to come with me."

Dan thought about it for a second. "When?" he asked, stalling for time.

"Tomorrow at eleven. At the Municipal Center. It's right next to the
Judiciary Square Metro. Dan, I told him that you might not be able to do
this. I explained that people can make life difficult for you if you
stick your nose back in; that I'm a free agent and you're not."

"Did you hear back from the NIS people? The admiral make his manners?"

She laughed. "Yes, he did call, and I was not terribly polite. But I
think they'll give me my piece of paper. He played the stupid EA
gambit."

"I've met some sneaky EAs," Dan said, "but never a stupid one. Let me
see what I can do about this meeting.

I've got a JCS paper due at morning briefing-- that's seven-forty--but
I'll talk to Summerfield. Vann didn't say what the phone call was
about?"

"Only that he needed to talk to both of us--you especially, I think. He
thought the fact that the EAs had warned you off the Hardin case made
the tip doubly interesting."

"Curiouser and curiouser."

She appeared to hesitate. "I didn't want the Hardin case to be the only
reason to call you," she said finally.

"I'm glad you called me yesterday afternoon."

He laughed. "I want you to know I took civvies to the boathouse this
afternoon. I was going to call you again, but I chickened out. How's
about we do lunch tomorrow, after seeing Vann? That would also give me
good cover as to why I'm out of the building in the middle of the day."

"Sounds fine. Although I'll bet you hear about it from Snapper. I'll
wait for your call tomorrow."

Dan groaned as he hung up. He would undoubtedly hear about it from
Snapper, probably for days. The question was what to tell Summerfield.

As it turned out, Summerfield did not seem to care.

Dan told him he needed a couple hours off in the middle of the day to
take a lady to lunch.

"Tell Miss. Snow hello for us," was all he said as Dan stood in the
doorway to Summerfield's private office, with Snapper eavesdropping
dramatically, a hand cupped to his ear.

Snapper's reaction was suspiciously muted: He looked at Dan over the top
of a Marine field manual and gave out a series of hell-hell's, showing a
lot of teeth. Dan knew that the real harassment would come later, when
there was a bigger audience. But he finished his Wednesday-morning staff
drills and then called Grace to let her know he was coming. Summerfield
and Snapper had to go to a meeting at ten o'clock, so Dan was able to
leave the Pentagon and catch the Metro at ten-thirty without attracting
undue attention.

Grace was waiting for him in the lobby of the Municipal Center. Dan was
wearing his service dress blues, and Grace had on another one of those
simple but expensive-looking suits of which she seemed to have an
infinite supply. They took the elevator up to the third floor, and Grace
remembered the way to Vann's office.

Vann himself was waiting in the reception area.

"Miss. Snow. Commander. Thanks for coming in.

Coffee? No? Okay, let's go into my office."

Dan followed Grace as she followed Vann, closing the door behind him.

Vann went behind his desk and Dan and Grace sat down in the chairs.

"First," Vann said, "lemme say that this is an official policy matter
and is not to be discussed with anyone outside of the metropolitan
police department. I trust you both to be discreet, but I'm required to
say that.

And, second, what I'm about to reveal to you is for the purpose of
obtaining unofficial input. In other words, this is a nonmeeting. It
also means I don't know what to do with this little chili pepper, okay?"

Dan grinned and nodded. He ran into at least one of those a day back in
the Pentagon.

"Okay. What we got was an anonymous phone call from a pay phone at Metro
Center; nice private place.

We have this crime-solver's hot line; there're posters with the number
all over town and the Metro cars.

Crime-prevention sort of thing. We caller-ID each call, or course, but
most people've seen enough TV to know that. Like this ... person."

"

"Person'?" Grace asked.

"Yeah, person," Vann replied. "On accounta because I can't tell if it's
a he or a she makin' the call. It almost sounds like someone placed the
call and then turned on a tape recorder to play the actual message.

Anyway, what he says is this, and I'm going to read it to you word for
word:

" This is about the body in the battleship. What's the connection
between a certain very senior naval officer's secret affair with
Elizabeth Hardin and her brother's murder?' "

Dan listened carefully while Vann reread the question.

"That's it?" he asked.

"That's a lot," Grace interjected. "It shows that our theory was
correct--that what's behind his murder had something to do with his
sister's accident."

"Whose theory?" Vann asked.

"Well, mine, actually," Grace said. "We've talked about this, remember?

When we did a case board, we both noticed the seeming coincidence of
Elizabeth Har din's death by accident and then her brother's death by
homicide about two weeks later. Only at the time, no one knew it was a
homicide, he'd just disappeared."

Vann nodded. "So you're thinking that maybe Elizabeth Hardin's death
wasn't an accident?"

"I saw no evidence that it was anything but an accident.

But the sister's death could still be related to the lieutenant's
murder, if there's any truth behind this phone call."

"Uh-huh," Vann
said, looking at Dan. "And how would someone go about finding out who
this certain high-ranking naval officer might be who had something going
with Elizabeth Hardin?"

This case is getting crazier by the minute, Dan thought. "Beats the shit
out of me," he said. "Grace, didn't you tell me that Elizabeth Hardin's
postmortem showed that she was pregnant?"

"Yes, it did," Grace said excitedly. "Which at least would prove that
she was on intimate terms with someone."

Vann was shaking his head. "Prove, hell. Slow down, everybody. It's not
like we got evidence, here. This could be someone just throwing some
shit in the game, or some loony tune makin' a phone call. We get all
kinds of shit on that hot line."

"What will you do with this?" Dan asked.

"I'm probably gonna have to give it to the Navy," Vann replied. "It's
their case, It's just that ..." He paused, looking at Dan, who
understood at once.

"I'd have to assume that very senior naval officer is an admiral. And if
this is an admiral we're talking about here, then giving it to the Navy
might be the same as giving it to the bad guys, whoever they are. And
let me guess. You'd like me to sniff around, see if I can find out who
was having it on with Elizabeth Hardin before she got hit by that car,
right?"

"You were all wrong, Miss. Snow," Vann said with a grin. "This guy is
smart."

But Grace had a worried look on her face. "Dan," she began, "I--"

"It's okay, Grace. I know this wasn't your idea. And I wish I could
help, Captain Vann, but I doubt there's any way in hell I could find
that out. First of all, she worked in CHINFO a couple of years ago.

There's not likely to be anyone there now who was assigned there then.

And if she was having an affair with a flag officer, she would want to
keep it very damned secret. For one thing, it's illegal fraternization.

They would both want to keep it very damn quiet."

"And they'd have another damn good reason to keep it quiet--especially
him," said Vann.

"What's that?" Grace asked.

"If he was a white flag officer."

"Wow," Dan said. "I see what you're saying." And then he felt a bit
embarrassed at having said it. But Vann did not seem to take offense. He
got up and stared out the window behind his desk, thinking. Dan looked
over at Grace, who raised her eyebrows at him as if to say, Now what?

"Suppose we could find out who it was," Vann said, his back still turned
toward them. "Suppose we could find that out--the boyfriend. What would
we have, Miss. Snow?"

Grace tilted her head and looked at Vann's back.

Then she put her hand up in front of her mouth.

"Oh," she said. "My God. Yes. We might have a suspect."

"You mean because Lieutenant Hardin found out that his sister was dating
some senior officer, a white guy?" Dan asked.

"No," Grace said as Vann turned around. "Because Lieutenant Hardin found
out or suspected there was a connection between Elizabeth's death and
her senior officer lover."

"Holy shit!"

"Yeah," Vann said. "A threat to expose the affair might be
grounds for retaliation, but probably not for murder. I knew Wesley
Hardin--he would be upset with the situation, but he would raise hell
with his sister, not the boyfriend, specially if he was some senior
white dude in the Navy. But if he thought 'Lizbeth's accident wasn't an
accident, well that would be something else again. Wesley'd be on that
like a snake on a rat."

"Which would tie in with your suspicions about all the coincidence," Dan
said to Grace.

"That's right." Vann nodded. "Although they're probably not directly
related, in the sense that there probably weren't two murders. But if
Wesley thought her death wasn't accidental, he'd do something, even
something stupid," Vann said.

"So either way, the two deaths are connected."

"Well, they might be. Let's not run too fast down this road," Vann said,
sitting back down. "We got some slick-sounding theories and zero proof
or evidence. But you see, Commander, why I was in no big hurry to hand
this phone call back to the Navy just yet."

Dan nodded. "I surely do. But can you just sit on it?

Eventually, you'll have to give it to them."

Vann grinned. "Oh, I can sit on it. This is the District, remember? We
have no active cases involving either Hardin, just one open but aging
hit-and-run. I guarantee you nobody would be surprised if we sat on it,
or even lost it."

"How did it get to you?" Grace asked.

"The only reason it didn't go into the unknown pending card file was
that the hot-line dispatcher put it on internal E-mail," Vann said,
patting his computer monitor.

"Anything they can't correlate with existing cases, they circulate for a
day or two on the E-mail in what they call the 'jeopardy' file: Here's
an answer--anybody working a related question?"

It was Dan's turn to get up and stretch. These chairs must be for
prisoners and suspects, he thought. "Suppose this does go over to NIS,"

he said. "You realize there might be another problem with that."

"Why's that?" Vann asked.

"Because you're talking about a flag officer involved in at least a
scandalous situation, and maybe in murder," Grace interjected. "I was
there long enough to realize that flag officers receive very special
treatment when it comes to being investigated by the NIS."

"They get very special treatment throughout the whole Navy," Dan said.

"It's part of their official privilege.

Hell, these guys run the Navy. And they protect one another--there's
even a term for it: the 'flag protection' circuit."

"Does that extend to
murder?" Vann asked, his face in a scowl.

"No," Dan said emphatically. "No, I think if there's evidence of a
serious crime on the part of a flag officer, the other flags would
swallow hard but do what they have to do."

"Ah, the E word," Vann said, and they all went silent.

Grace stood up. "Let's think about it," she said.

"Let's all just think about it and see if we can come up with a course
of action. I know I need time to think."

"So do I," Dan said. "I can
still see the poor bastard stuffed into a boiler. And now, well, now I
don't know what to think. But I do want to help. I just don't know how,
right at the moment."

"Okay," Vann said. "Thinking always helps a case.

I want to run this by some of my people, see if we're out to lunch or
what. And I need to talk to some folks in the community."

"Meaning, I hope, Mrs. Hardin," Grace said.

"Let's do a teleconference," Vann said, ignoring Grace's remark. "I'll
call you both when I'm ready.

Commander, you got a card?"

Dan left one of his Opnav business cards, and then he and Grace took the
elevator downstairs. By mutual consent, and since they were already on
the Metro's Red Line, they decided to have lunch at the American Cafe in
Union Station. It being the beginning of tourist season, they had to
wait fifteen minutes for a table. After the waitress had left with their
orders, Dan looked around the crowded court.

"This Hardin thing won't let go, will it?" he said, thinking of what he
had said to Vann.

"I'm sorry," she began. "I--"

"No, it's not you. I'm glad you called me. What I didn't tell Vann up
there was that one of the reasons the EAs might have folded in their
little turf fight with MS was because somehow, somewhere, one of 'em
knows about this boyfriend angle. That might be why they shut us off."

"Wow. Do you know that?"

"Well, no, I can't prove it, if that's what you mean.

But the EAs are a network; that's where that flag protection circuit I
mentioned operates. If they smell a scandal, they work together to
protect the sanctity of all flag officers and thereby the Navy's good
name."

"But not for murder."

"No, of course not, but, you see, they're not thinking of murder;
they're thinking about a white flag officer, probably married, having an
affair with a black woman officer who's also a junior officer. That's a
medium-sensitive nerve these days in the USN. They're thinking Tailhook
and National Enquirer or Hard Copy, and they're thinking damage control,
the good of the Navy, the image of flag officers everywhere. Hell,
that's their job."

Grace toyed with her iced tea. "So if that's going on, what are the
chances of penetrating the smoke screen?"

"For me, slim to none. But I think I need to talk to Captain
Summerfield. He used to be an EA until his wife had her stroke. He knows
the system, and he's good buddies with a lot of flags. He might be able
to sniff out what's going on."

"Vann said we shouldn't talk to anyone about this."

"He also said he wanted my help. He needs somebody inside the flag EA
system for this, and Summer field has at least been there and done that.

I know I can't do it, but somebody like Summerfield might be able to.

What do you suppose Vann's game is, anyway?"

She hesitated. "I still have the impression that it's personal. I would
imagine the D.C. police have their hands entirely full, and no homicide
bureau looks for more cases to work, so he's being cautious. But he's an
ex-chief of detectives, and I think his interest is amplified by
whatever this personal relationship with the Hardin family is."

"And that's probably why he's being so protective of Mrs. Hardin. Yeah,
that computes. Here's lunch."

They spent the next half hour enjoying their lunch and the pleasant
surroundings of the grand gallery of the train station, which had been
elegantly refurbished into a first-class tourist attraction. The
dominant feature was an enormous polished marble central hall, around
which there were dozens of small restaurants, cafe's, shops, and bars.

With Metro access, it was a very popular place for lunch for both
tourists and government workers, while also offering first-class
intercity train station services.

When their table had been cleared away and coffee brought, Grace looked
pensive.

"A penny," Dan said.

"You know, you asked what Vann's game was," she replied. "I've been
wondering a little bit what my game is, staying involved in this Hardin
mess."

"Investigator's instincts, I suppose."

"Well, partly, but this is murder. I've been dealing with intricate
fraud schemes, manipulations of securities rules and procedures,
so-called white-collar crime.

Nice and clean. No wide-eyed, mummified bodies staring at the innards of
a ship's boiler."

Two women at an adjacent table looked away suddenly, and Dan and Grace
smiled as they realized the tourists had been eavesdropping.

"When we would make a case in SEC," Grace continued, "we usually ended
up around a big mahogany table in some executive conference room, making
yet another deal: how big a fine, who would or would not admit
wrongdoing, who would be sanctioned or banned from the trading business,
that sort of thing. Then the so-called criminals would be whisked off in
their big black limo to lunch at the Four Seasons. For an investment
banker or a bond trader, getting caught usually turned out to be just
another business expense."

"You make twenty million a year, a one-million-dollar fine is just
that," Dan offered.

"Exactly. But my point is that those cases were almost an intellectual
exercise: Could the government's lawyers and experts outfox the insider
traders' lawyers and experts. It was about taxes and protecting small
investors, and at least making a pretense about keeping the playing
field level. But I never took a case home with me in the sense that I
lost sleep over it. But this--"

"Yeah. I see where you're going: Are we sticking our noses into this
because we might get some kind of vicarious thrill?"

"Well, partly. Or because it offends us. But maybe we ought to just butt
out, like the EAs, this NIS, and even Vann says."

"Like Vann said. But not anymore. He called you, remember? Look, let me
take a giant step. If I land on your toes, say so."

She smiled. "And what's that?"

"The main reason I came today was because you asked me to. I'll play in
this game, whatever it is, but not if it screws up the chance to ... to
... Hell's bells, I don't know how to say this."

She reached across the table and put her hand on his.

"You mean if we can get something going between us, let's try not do
anything or say anything that messes that up. How's that?"

"Damn lawyer."

She laughed, then grew serious. "I hope that's possible.

I could always hand off a SEC case to another lawyer or investigator. I
sense that a murder case is very different: It's a game that once you're
in, it's not so easy just to up and leave it. I feel like this one's
becoming a threat of some kind, like that guy following me."

"Glad you mentioned that. I talked to a waiter I know down at the corner
bistro. He told me that some guy ran out of the place without finishing
his dinner the night you took the taxi home. And then he saw a big
pickup truck make a wild turn onto Union."

"He see the driver?" she
asked.

"No. But it kind of ties together."

She thought about that for a minute.

"Let's play it this way," he said finally. "You and I do what we can to
help the real detectives; but when it comes down to knocking on doors in
the night, that's for the cops, the real cops. The trick is for us to
stay in deep background, so that the bad guy or guys don't see us--they
only see the real cops. Bad guys don't usually go after the cops."

"Amen to that. So what will you do?"

"I'll have a talk with Summer-field. Let him pulse his contacts in the
EA network and maybe some of his classmates who are already flag
officers. Wait for Vann to call--he said he was taking that hot-line
call up his tape. Figure out where we're going to go to dinner tonight.

You know, important stuff."

dan got in to see Summer-field at five o'clock Wednesday afternoon while
they were waiting for the staff call to the JCS debrief. The Joints
Chiefs of Staff, the four star officers who were the heads of the Army,
Navy, Air Force, and Marines, met every Wednesday afternoon in the JCS
conference room, called the

"Tank," at two o'clock, accompanied by their operations deputies. The
Navy's operations deputy was Vice Admiral Layman, OP-06. He would come
back to the 06 offices in the late afternoon after the Tank session and
debrief the staff officers on all the issues that were discussed and on
any decisions made. Any staff officer who had an issue working hi the
Tank was on call until the JCS meeting broke up and the debrief was
conducted. Many issues fell into what the staff called the kick-the-can
mode: The chiefs would talk about it and then decide nothing, so the JCS
debriefs were rarely about brand-new issues.

But no one could go home until Admiral Layman came back.

Dan closed the door and plopped down on Summer field's couch. The walls
in Summerfield's office were covered in ship pictures and mementos:
Summerfield had been in Opnav for almost four years. The captain was
longingly fondling his pipe, but he knew it was too early.

"So, Daniel. Got a personal problem?"

"Yes, and no, sir," Dan said. He proceeded to debrief Summerfield on
what he and Grace had been up to, what Vann was asking, and what help
he, Dan, needed from Summerfield. When he was done, Summerfield said
nothing; instead he went ahead and loaded his pipe and stoked it up,
filling the room with a pungent blue cloud.

"This is a dangerous game you're playing, Daniel," he said finally.

"Because of the EAs?"

"Yes, although you have to assume that they were # &

indeed speaking for their principals when they wanted this thing handed
back to NIS. Now perhaps we know why. On the other hand, they might just
have wanted to work it back-channel because there was potential for
embarrassment to the flag community, short of murder, of course. But,
either way, they find out that you got out of your box, against orders,
they could find you a new box, somewhere wet and very warm, or dry and
very cold, you follow?"

"Yes, sir. I keep reminding myself that I'm just a mark one, mod zero
tin-can sailor. But in a sense, this cat's already out of the bag, isn't
it?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, first, there's Captain Vann. He's a honcho in the police
department, ex-chief of detectives, now the EA to the deputy chief of
police. If he gets the idea the Navy's covering up a murder, especially
of somebody he knew, a family he knows, wouldn't it be best if the Navy
got to the bad guy first, even if a flag might be involved?"

"Yeah, that computes," Summerfield said. "And there's Miss. Snow, isn't
there?"

Dan shrugged. "Yes, sir. She's fully aware of the implications of the
hot-line call. But she's not in government anymore."

"Meaning?"

"She's a private citizen. A free agent, if you will."

Summerfield nodded. "Free to do any goddamn thing. In other words, a
potential loose cannon."

Dan remained silent. He was suddenly wondering whether Summerfield was
worried or angry, or both.

Perhaps confiding in him had not been such a good idea, because
Summerfield appeared to be viewing this problem from the point of view
of protecting the Navy, not finding a murderer. On the other hand, he
had to admit that, for a Navy captain on the Opnav staff, this would not
be an unreasonable reaction on Summer field's part, especially for an
ex-EA.

"Okay," Summerfield said at last through a cloud of blue smoke. "Let me
ruminate on it. There are lots of points of entry into the EA and flag
officer networks. I can start at the top--go see my classmate, the vice
chief. If there's a flag officer involved in a murder, the vice is just
the guy to flush him out fast. Or I can schmooze some of the EAs." He
put his pipe down for a moment before continuing.

"But you should understand one thing, Daniel: Yes, there is a flag
protection circuit, but that's mostly about saving face after a
bureaucratic or operational bungle.

The flag selection system isn't foolproof, or we wouldn't retire sixty
percent of each year's selectees as one-stars after only two tours of
duty. On the other hand, the flag protection circuit is also about
protecting the Navy from its bureaucratic enemies, like the Air Force or
certain career politicians who hate the Navy. It is not about protecting
incompetent or evil individuals."

He stopped for a moment to draw on his pipe. "Well, maybe incompetence
falls into the sphere of something that might be protected, given some
of the people I've seen get two and three stars. But I can guarantee
that every flag officer would want a murderer nailed. But preferably by
our own investigatory system, see?"

"Yes, sir, I roger that," Dan said.

"My only problem is that if you happened to tell the wrong guy in that
system, you could be telling the bad guy."

"I think I can take that chance, Commander. Because if the network ends
up alerting the bad guy, he'll start to wiggle and squirm. And the flag
network, with all those EAs tuned in, can sense a squirm like a spider
can sense a bug on the web--with about the same results.

But my advice to you is to back out, and to tell your girlfriend to back
out, too. This could get real nasty real fast."

"She's not exactly my girlfriend, Captain."

"Yeah, I hear you. And how was lunch? And have you considered this: If
there's a flag involved in murder, he'll have a guy or three working for
him--principals don't get their hands dirty, remember? That's why they
have EAs. These guys can go in motion if the principal starts to squirm,
sometimes without the principal's knowledge, you follow? Because if the
principal goes down, his EA goes down. Miss. Snow seems like a nice
young woman, but she's not a real cop, is she? And neither are you."

"Yes, sir, but we've only been talking about it, we haven't really done
anything."

"The bad guy might not appreciate that nuance. Tell your Captain Vann
we're working on it, but you and Miss. Snow go play house somewhere and
leave this game to the cops--the real cops."

grace let herself back into the house and locked the front door. It had
been a lovely evening, with dinner at L'Auberge Provencal out in Great
Falls, Virginia--on her nickel; naval officers could not afford that
restaurant.

Then back into town for a leisurely walking tour of the Lincoln Memorial
after dark, which had been surprisingly full of people. From the steps
of the Lincoln, they had been able to enjoy the shimmering reflection of
the entire Washington Monument in the long reflecting pool.

She had been more than a little ready for Dan to come in tonight. The
chemistry between them was ripening well, without artifice or any
apparent effort. But she had sensed his unease as they drove back to
Georgetown, and she had contrived a small excuse to end the evening. She
had kissed him affectionately on the cheek before saying good night, and
he hadn't really known what to say or do. He was such a nice man,
handsome, amusing, unpretentious, and yet emotionally still a bit
fragile; the lady Claire must have been something indeed. She parked her
purse in the hall and went to the answering machine, which was blinking
impatiently at her. She turned on the overhead light and sat down to
listen. It was Captain Vann.

"Miss. Snow, hello. This is Moses Vann. I've talked to a few people
here. I can confirm that this Hardin thing is a bit of a hot potato.

I've been directed by my bosses to turn over the tape and the transcript
to the Navy, like ASAP. In fact, I've already done it--a guy from the
NIS named Englehardt sent someone for it late this afternoon.

Give me a call, please. There's more. Thanks."

Grace replayed the message once, her good mood evaporating. Even Vann
had sounded a little disappointed.

Give it to NIS. Throw it into the Grand Canyon with the rest of the
Navy's investigation. She looked at her watch and thought about calling
Dan's machine; he wouldn't have made it home yet. But she didn't want to
end the evening on the Hardin case. She called it anyway and left a
brief message about how nice the evening had been and that she just
wanted to say good night. Time enough for the Hardins and Moses Vann in
the morning. She rechecked the house locks and went off to bed.

Dan had to circle his neighborhood streets before finding a parking spot
on Lee, one full block away from his house. He locked up, checked his
parking permit, and walked back to the house. It was a lovely night,
cool, almost zero humidity, with the night air appearing to generate a
light of its own in the soft glow of the gas lamps. When he got in, he
listened to Grace's message on the machine and smiled. He had acted like
a damn virgin teenager on the way back from the Lincoln Memorial.

He wondered if she had noticed the sheen of perspiration on his forehead
as he piloted the Suburban down her street. Everything had been so damn
pleasant, without a single false note the whole evening. He had wanted
to go in with her. Hell, he wanted to go to bed with her, and he sensed
she felt the same. But at the last minute, a whirl of nameless emotions
had seized him and he had backed away. From what? he wondered as he went
around securing the house. Grace wasn't some piece of fluff, some
one-night stand. It was understood between them that they were working
on something, maybe even falling in love. He could make her laugh, and
she made him feel like a human again, conscious of needs that had been
too long suppressed.

He knew that someday they would have to talk about Claire, and he was
comforted by the knowledge that

Claire's death was something he could talk about to Grace.

He went out to the kitchen and fixed himself a small cognac. He turned
out the lights and stared out the kitchen windows into the shadows of
the garden. The darkened windows of the houses across the alley looked
like caves in an irregular, moonlit cliff. He had spent a lot of time
doing just this: staring out the kitchen window at everything and
nothing, seeing the familiar, if mundane, details of the garden and the
back wall and the buildings beyond, listening to the sounds and currents
of life passing him by, and suspending himself halfway between
acceptance of that fact and doing something about it.

Grace had rekindled an impetus in his life that had been missing for a
long time: something besides his career, getting to his almighty ship
command, and all the other trappings of his Navy-centered life. Life
after Claire, and before Grace. Since Monterey, all he had had was the
Navy, which offered the advantage of being able to fill up his every
waking hour if he cared to let it.

Meeting Grace had exposed the fact that his personal life was supremely
contrived, designed to minimize time alone, time to think about the
future and face his prospects, time to stare out this kitchen window.

Seeing to it that by Tuesday at the latest he had something lined up for
the weekend, a trip, a stay with friends, a day's domestic project,
anything to fill up those empty weekend hours, when the streets filled
with people bustling about doing all the mundane things people did; when
they had a life. And Sundays. Saturdays could be consumed by errands,
laundry, housecleaning, washing the car.

But Sundays lay in wait; Sundays in an empty house accentuated the noise
of clocks, the sounds of voices outside on the sidewalk, the sense that
living alone could be downright lethal. Meeting Grace had forced him to
rediscover how the quality of a man's life could end up being defined by
the presence or absence of a woman. Above all, he now wanted to be very
careful, because he sensed that, with Grace, he had come into the orbit
of a valuable woman.

He finished his cognac, washed out the glass, and headed upstairs. As he
climbed the narrow stairs, the Hardin case intruded, provoking a flare
of irritation. He hadn't cared for the warning note in Summerfield's
voice during their little seance that afternoon. His boss had focused
almost automatically on protecting the Navy, to the apparent exclusion
of finding out who had done this thing, and why. And what was it that
Sum merfield had said about principals not getting their hands dirty? He
had a nagging sense that he had missed something, something important,
but for the life of him he couldn't remember. The captain was probably
right in one respect: They really ought to let the cops handle this. Let
the NIS get wrapped around the axle with the flags and the EAs--serve
'em both right. Right now, you've got something more valuable to attend
to, don't you? He stopped again at the top of the stairs, a nagging
thought evading him, but then went off to bed.

grace called captain vann's office at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday morning, but
he was once again in a meeting.

The secretary told her that Vann wanted to do a teleconference at 10:30
with Grace and Commander Collins. Could she make that? Grace could, and
the secretary said that Vann would initiate the conference calls. Grace
hung up and wondered if she should call Dan, but he would know by now,
so she let it go and went to attend to household chores. At 10:30, she
was sitting by the phone with a notepad ready. At 10:35, the phone rang
and she picked up. It was Vann, with Dan Collins already on the line.

"Good morning, Miss. Snow, this is Moses Vann. I have Commander Collins
on the line. This connection okay?"

"It's fine, Captain Vann. Hi, Dan."

"Morning, Grace. And, everybody, let me start by saying that I'm in an
empty office for right now, but that can change. If I start talking
about car repairs and shut this off, that's why, okay?"

"Got it, Commander," Vann said. "I'll be quick. We caught another tip on
the Hardin case last night, by fax this time--to the Traffic Division.

Lemme read it to you. Says: 'If you want to know how Elizabeth Hardin
really died, call this number,' and it gives a metro D.C.

phone number."

There was a moment of silence common to conference calls, and then Dan
said, "What in the hell is going on here?"

"Good question, Commander. This message was forwarded into the hot-line
center, and since I'd snatched up the last Hardin-related information,
they flagged it to me. I've had the phone number checked out, and it
belongs to one Captain Malachi Ward, U.S. Army, Retired, in a house up
on Capitol Hill."

"Capitol Hill? That's hardly an Army captain's country," Dan said. "An
army captain is an Oh-three."

"Ain't no tellin' with those places: Lots of 'em were abandoned dumps in
the late sixties; you could pick 'em up for a song if you agreed to fix
'em up. I own three as rental units myself."

"Where did the fax come from?" Dan asked.

"A phone booth in a hotel that had a data plug; somebody probably used a
portable PC. Effectively anonymous."

"Did you call him? Ward?" Grace
asked.

"No, no," Vann said. "That's not how it works. First we check a guy out,
especially when someone else is putting him in for some heat. We've only
done a preliminary screen--nothing in depth. But this guy Ward is
interesting. He's a sort of a contractor, got a business license as a PI
and as a 'security consultant' in the District.

He owns half of a duplex on the Hill outright.

Now we'll have to check around to see what he consults about and who he
works for, but we'll need probable cause, a warrant, all that stuff,
before we can go much farther down that road. But there're a couple of
things that interest me. Like the fact that he has no driver's license
or vehicle in any of the metro-area jurisdictions, and, get this, no
credit history or even a credit rating."

"What's bad credit got to do
with anything?" Dan asked.

"Not bad credit--no credit rating. Not with any of the three major
credit-reporting systems. Nowadays, everybody's got a credit rating. For
a guy not to be in the national credit-rating databases takes some
doing--a lot of doing, in fact. This is a guy who wants to be invisible.

And he damn near is."

"Captain?"

"Yes, Miss. Snow?"

"What is going on here? You've had one anonymous tip alleging that an
unidentified senior naval officer was having an affair with Elizabeth
Hardin and that her love life was somehow connected to her brother's
murder.

Now a second tip involving this Captain Ward in Elizabeth Hardin's
death."

"Yeah, it's getting' a little crazy. But this being Washington, it's
beginning to sound like a conspiracy of some kind starting to unravel:
The players begin leaking information, usually to the press, trying to
put the blame on someone else. Only these guys are leaking to the
cops--who, I gotta tell you, don't have a damn clue as to what this is
really all about, unfortunately. Commander Collins, who've you talked
to?"

"To my boss in Op-Six-fourteen--you met him, Captain Summerfield.

Remember, he's plugged in to the flag officer EA network in the Pentagon
in a way that I am not."

"Okay, that's reasonable. And I was ordered to pass the first tip over
to the NIS. So maybe this second tip makes sense."

"How so?" Grace
asked.

"Because between what you've done and what I've done, we may have lit
two separate fuses in the Navy admirals' network inquiring about a
tie-in between the Hardin murder and a senior officer's love life,
presumably an admiral's."

"Two channels?" Grace asked.

"Yeah--NIS and the commander's boss, Summer field. This second tip might
just be a reaction from said admiral: If this guy Ward is what I think
he is--and we don't know that yet--this second call might be a shot at
putting somebody's hired hand in the shit, in retaliation for the hired
hand putting that somebody in the shit."

There was another pause while Grace and Dan digested this theory.

"Well, if that's true," Grace said, "it means this g_uy Ward made the
first phone call. Why didn't he just give you a name? And how did you
get Ward's name?"

"That's two questions. Question one: That isn't how it's done in this
town. You want to get somebody in trouble in Washington, you launch an
interesting question, not an accusation. You make an accusation, the
accusee denies it, it's over. You ask a question, somebody besides the
accusee gets into the game of answering.

Much more effective. Second question: We backtraced the phone number to
Ward and the address on Capitol Hill. I've also spoken to a friend in
our Frauds Division. He's got a stakeout going on another matter up near
the Capitol building. I've asked him to shift some assets over to Ward's
street, just a couple of hours each night, for the next three nights,
see if we get a reaction. If this guy Ward is a player, he'll tumble to
the stakeout, and then maybe we can spook him into doing something."

"Like what?" Dan asked.

"Shit, I don't know. Something. Way I see it, something's come unglued
among those involved with the Hardin killing. Probably because someone
found the body. But we got what looks like the players starting to snipe
at one another. We got jackshit for evidence that there was even a crime
in Elizabeth's death, and similarly jackshit for leads in her brother's
death. So when you got nothin', you shake the bushes, see what scuttles
out, right? Hell, I'm open to any bright ideas. Anyone?"

Grace didn't know what to say, and Dan was silent on his end.

"Okay, then, that's where I'm at, too. I'm going to target this guy, run
the standard traps, see what else we can come up with. I'm doing that on
my own hook, remember--I was kind of told to drop this thing. Getting
tips in helps, but ..."

"Is there anything you'd like us to do?" asked
Grace.

"Or, actually, me to do? You and Dan are in similar boats."

"No," Vann said emphatically. "Not until I know lots more about this guy
Malachi Ward. Again, if he's what I think he is, he's not somebody you
want to meet; some of these guys play very rough. Commander, you get any
feedback from your end, let me know, okay?"

"You got it, Captain."

"All right. That's it for now. And, folks, I appreciate the help. I
think you've both figured out that this is more personal than official
business for me right now, okay? I just want you to know I really
appreciate it. Be cool. And lock your doors."

on friday noon, Malachi sat in his kitchen, staring down the hallway.

Two days. He had called the captain's contact number Wednesday
afternoon, and there had been no reply. The captain had said they were
going to break off communications unless something important came up.

Malachi had nothing important to report, but he had wanted to see if the
captain would call back.

Two days of silence had confirmed that his little phone call from the
Metro Center had probably had the desired effect. But the question now
was, What were they up to? He got up again and walked around the ground
floor of the house, checking the deserted noonday street through the
curtained windows, looking for anything different. His antennae were
prickling, but that was only natural. He'd thrown some shit in the game,
and now there was a reaction, or at least what looked like one. The
captain wasn't returning his calls. There was probably some heat
building up in the Navy, and the captain didn't want to be in touch with
his hired hand just now. He went back to the kitchen and eyed the
whiskey bottle.

Nope, not now. His head still hurt from what he had done Wednesday
night, and that was thirty-six hours ago. If there was something
stirring, he couldn't afford to be screwed up. Might have to move here;
might have to move fast. He suddenly felt an irresistible, instinctive
urge to get out of the house. He got up and checked the locks all
around, then went out the back door to the garage, carrying his
windbreaker and a pair of dark glasses. Walk or drive? Walk. In a city,
a car was a trap.

On foot, he could disappear into any alley, building, backyard, or, best
yet, into any Metro station. He squeezed between the F-250 and the
garage wall and peered through the line of dirty windowpanes across the
electric garage door. Looked like an alley. Maybe he was being stupid,
panicking over a phone that didn't ring, getting the d. t.'s from too
much Harper. Maybe.

Maybe not. He went back through the garage and around to the gate in the
back fence, slipping on the windbreaker and the glasses. He cracked the
back gate and looked out. Nothing. Still looked like an alley, with its
collection of trash containers and the line of tilting, weed-bordered
wooden fences. Looked perfectly normal.

He could see down two blocks' worth of alley in either direction.

Nothing unusual. The sounds of light traffic from Constitution and East
Capitol Street. A trash truck grinding through its urban delicacies
somewhere nearby. A dog barking.

He stepped out and turned towards A Street, went down one more block
through its alley, and then left when he got to Constitution, which in
his neighborhood was just a two-lane street, albeit one with reversible
lane controls for rush hour. He walked up Constitution Avenue toward
Capitol Hill and then turned left onto Second Street behind the Supreme
Court building. He turned left again onto East Capitol and finally ended
up on his own street. There was little traffic in this neighborhood at
noon; it was not a kids and moms area, with most of the gentrified town
houses being owned or rented by professional associations, independent
lobbyists, and staffers on the Hill or at the Library of Congress.

Only thing moving on Capitol Hill at noon are congressmen and criminals,
he thought, sensing a distinction without a difference. And lovers. As
he neared his own block, he saw a distinguished-looking older man and a
very pretty young woman coming down the other side of the street, so
engrossed in each other that Malachi could have been naked, for all they
would have noticed. A congressman hard at work, or working on getting
hard, he mused as the couple turned down some steps to a basement flat
in a town house.

At the intersection leading into his own block, he crossed the street
and walked past his own duplex on the opposite side of the street,
looking for anything unusual, strange cars, telephone trucks, vans, any
signs of a surveillance. Nothing. Wall-to-wall cars, of course-- parking
was a constant war up on the Hill. But not a damn thing out of place:
The birds were singing, the trees were blooming, the politicians were in
rut, the streets were empty, and the captain wasn't returning his calls.

He kept walking, down to the end of the block, turned left, then left
again into his alley, where he reentered his house via the back gate. He
was actually sweating a little. Goddamn booze. Summer coming, hateful
summer in Washington, D. C., which was nothing but a damn swamp, anyway.

That little voice intruded again as he unlocked the kitchen door: Get
clear, Malachi; get outta Dodge. This Hardin thing is bad news,
definitely not business as usual, and you're starting to play in a game
that's out of your league.

That last thought made him pause on the back steps: Up to now, he'd been
content to be the hired hand, letting the principals and their EAs call
the shots--if things got screwed up, he simply waited for new
instructions.

But making that phone call had been something new: He had made a move
all on his own, and now the big guys were meeting behind closed doors.

He went inside and checked the machine. Ah, the light was blinking. He
pressed the play button and listened to the machine record the sound of
a telephone being hung up, followed by a dial tone. That was all.

Somebody doesn't like answering machines. Or somebody was checking to
see if he was in the house. A call like that was often the precursor to
a burglary in this city. The difference was that, in Washington, it
wasn't always a crook checking out the house. He canvassed the windows
again, but the streets were still empty. But the phone call had
solidified a decision he had been kicking around all morning: Arlington.

For years, he had kept the essentials prepositioned in the apartment:
money, a couple of weapons, clothes, some elementary first-aid stuff, as
well as two telephone lines. Okay.

He'd spend the afternoon sanitizing his side of the house; the duplex
next door didn't need it. He would load the truck up with some odds and
ends, some bottles of Harpers mostly, and bail out after dark, after
rush hour. He'd have to get an additional parking spot at the Randolph
Towers for the truck, but they were always accommodating.

He began to prowl through the house, examining it from a cop's point of
view, doing a preliminary search.

He gathered up papers, tax records, his phone logs, mail, checkbooks,
laundry slips--all the day-to-day minutiae that would flesh out a police
report if they came in to search the place. The longer he worked, the
more certain he became that going to ground was the right move. Maybe it
was just that he was doing something instead of just sitting around. But
the next trick would be to find out what exactly was going on.

late friday afternoon, Dan was walking down the fifth corridor on his
way back from a two-hour long, tailbone paralyzing, brain-desiccating
action-officer meeting in JCS. He had stayed conscious only by
daydreaming about the pleasure of Grace's company last night. They had
done a movie and pizza, and had enjoyed themselves thoroughly. He was
thinking about her when he ran into Yeoman Jackson bopping down the
passageway. Jackson stopped him.

"Yo. Commander Collins. Captain Summerfield said that the VCNO's EA is
lookin' for you. But he say you gotta talk to him first, before you go
see the man."

"Wonderful," Dan said. He looked at his watch: 4:45.

There went his river time. "How long ago was this?"

"Oh, 'bout half hour, maybe less."

"Okay. You shoving off for the day?"

"Yes, sir. It's Friday, which means it's fly day. I'm gone. Say, it true
what Colonel Snapper been sayin'?

That you going' to Egypt?"

"Egypt?"

"Yeah. Colonel Snapper, he hear about you havin' to go see the VCNO's
main man, he say you getting' orders to east Egypt. We got bases in
Egypt?"

"No, Jackson. What the colonel is implying is that I'm about to be sent
far away for pissing off the VCNO's EA."

Jackson considered this for a few seconds, then shook his head. "He
wasn't implyin' nothin'," he declared.

"He was just flat sayin' it, you know? Well, I gotta split.

I'll see you Monday, you still here."

"Thanks a heap, Jackson," Dan
said, but Jackson was already headed down the hall. Dan threaded his way
through the departing stream of civil servants as he turned left into
the E-ring corridor. After 4:30, it was mostly uniforms left in the
building; civil servants had to be paid overtime if they stayed late. He
got to Op614 and found the door locked. He punched in the cipher code
and went in, where he found the office empty, although not secured for
the day. The sign-out board above Jackson's desk was, as usual, several
days out of date.

He went back to his desk and put the JCS starring papers into his safe.

There was a yellow message impaled on the pen of his desk set: "See
RADM-sel Ran dall when you get back, but talk to 614 first." The message
was initialed by Snapper at time 1620, so this had been written just
twenty-five minutes ago. The captain and Snapper must have been called
out. Without knowing where they had gone or for how long, he had to
decide: Should he wait for Summerfield to get back or answer the summons
from Randall?

The phone rang. He debated answering it. It might be the VCNO's office,
or it might be Summerfield trying to catch him. So what's it gonna be,
Commander, he thought, the lady or the tiger? He picked up the phone.

"OP-Six-fourteen, Commander Collins speaking, sir."

"Commander this is Senior Chief Batzel in the VCNO's office. Did you get
the message that Rear Admiral-select Randall wants to see you, sir?"

Shit. The tiger. "I just walked back into the office from JCS, Chief. I
have the message in my hand."

"Yes, sir. Now might be a real good time to respond, Commander."

"This gonna be one of those horizon-expanding sessions, Senior Chief?"

There was a pause on the other end. "Well, sir," the chief said, as if
he were giving the matter great thought, "expanding is probably a good
word. But maybe not your horizon. Sir."

Dan laughed. "Okay, Senior Chief. I'll go get my asbestos Skivvies. Tell
the EA I'm on my way."

"Aye, aye, Commander."

Dan hung up the phone and locked up his safe. He checked around the
office to make sure there were no egregious security violations in full
view, then left a note for Summerfield that he had zigged when he should
have zagged. He checked to see that the door was locked behind him and
headed up the E-ring. He stopped by the OP-06 front office to see if
Summerfield might be there, but the chiefs there had not seen him.

Captain Manning was not in evidence, and it looked like the DCNO and the
ADCNO were also out of the office. He remembered that the DCNO would
probably be with the CNO down at the JCS meeting in the Tank.

A minute later, he walked into the VCNO's front office.

The aide was there, but Randall was not in evidence.

The VCNO's inner office door was, as usual, closed.

Dan walked over to the aide's desk.

"I'm Commander Collins. I got a message to come see Captain Randall," he
said.

"Rear Admiral-select Randall is in conference with the VCNO," the aide
replied without looking up from the staff paper he was marking up.

"He'll be with you shortly, Commander."

"Thanks a bunch," Dan said. From the other side of the office, the
senior chief rolled his eyes and indicated the lone chair by the front
door. Dan sat down to wait, but he had barely crossed his legs when the
VCNO's inner office door opened and Captains Randall and Manning came
out. Randall saw Dan and stopped.

"About time, Collins. Senior Chief, give me the keys to the visiting
flag office."

The senior chief fished out a set of keys as Dan stood up. Manning was
giving him the fish eye but said nothing.

Randall walked out the front door, across the corridor, and unlocked a
plain glass-fronted door across from the VCNO's office. He went in and
turned on the lights, followed by Manning, who indicated over his
shoulder that Dan should follow. Dan closed the door behind him and
stood in a small vestibule office. Beyond was a much larger office
equipped with a desk, a small conference table, a sofa and some chairs,
and a bank of telephones on the desk. Dan knew that these offices were
used when flag officers were summoned from around the world to come see
the senior admirals in Opnav. Randall sat down behind the desk, while
Manning stood to one side.

"Commander Collins," Randall began in a voice about one decibel below a
controlled shout, "I thought I made myself fairly clear the last time we
talked about the Hardin case. Now I'm finding out that you don't listen
so well."

"Sir?" Dan said. He wanted to see what the beef was before
saying anything, especially with the way Ran dall's face was getting
red.

"Sir, indeed," Randall yelled. "Goddamnit, why are you still involving
yourself in the Hardin investigation?"

"I'm not, Captain." With the shades drawn across the windows, the harsh
fluorescent lighting made the room look like an interrogation room,
despite all the fancy furniture.

"Oh, but we have reason to believe that you are, Commander," Randall
said, leaning back in the armchair.

"Admiral Torrance himself told me so. You wouldn't dispute the word of
the vice chief, now would you?" Summerfield. He said he might go see his
classmate, Dan thought.

"I handed the Hardin investigation over to you, Captain," Dan replied,
trying to keep his own voice calm.

"You purportedly gave it back to NIS. I've not been involved in the
investigation, per se, since that time. I was asked by the Washington
D.C. Police to make a recommendation as to what they should do with a
tip received on the other Hardin case."

"What other Hardin case?" Manning asked, speaking for the first time.

Randall looked annoyed at the interruption but held his tongue.

"The lieutenant's sister," Dan replied. "She was also a Navy lieutenant,
a PAO type. She was killed in a traffic accident in Washington about two
weeks before Lieutenant Hardin disappeared. That was two years ago. To
my knowledge, it was nothing directly to do with the homicide case."

Manning looked at Randall, who was staring at Dan.

"And what did you tell the D.C. police?" asked Randall.

"I told them they had to give it to NIS, who has the investigation now.

Except--"

"Yes? Except what?" Randall leaned forward, concentrating.

Dan felt himself beginning to perspire; this man focused on you like a
snake.

"Well, sir, the nature of the tip. It was an anonymous phone call that
implied that It. Elizabeth Hardin-- that's the sister--was having an
affair or was otherwise involved with an admiral and that their
relationship was connected somehow to Lieutenant Hardin's murder."

"And you don't think that has a bearing on a murder case?" Manning
asked.

"I'm not working on a murder case anymore, Captain," Dan said
innocently. "I have no way of telling if it's related. Before we handed
over the case--"

" 'We'? Who's we?" Randall interrupted.

"Miss. Snow, from NIS, and I. We examined the Traffic Bureau report of
the hit-and-run accident, but there were no indications it was anything
but an accident."

"What else did the police ask you to do?"

"Nothing," Dan lied. "I told them there was nothing else I could do,
that they should hand the tip over to the Navy. I did come back and tell
Captain Summer field."

"Yes, we know about that," Randall said, his voice coming down a notch.

"It's a damned good thing you did, too. Now tell me why you did."

"I guess it's because it sounded like a flag officer might be involved
in a potentially embarrassing situation.

And with all the media interest in the brother's murder, I thought
perhaps it was a good idea to prevent the flag officer or the Navy from
being blindsided."

"And which flag officer might that be, Commander?"

Randall asked softly.

Careful, careful, Dan thought. "I have no idea, sir. I assumed that,
like the Hardin investigation, that issue is above my pay grade."

Randall stared at him for a long moment, then swiveled around in the
armchair to look out the window, where it was getting dark. Manning was
studying the pictures of sailing ships on the wall, waiting to follow
Randall's lead. Dan wondered if either of them had talked to the D.C.

police and knew anything about the second tip. He decided that this was
no time to volunteer anything. Randall swung back around to face him.

"Very well, Commander." Commander, not Collins, Dan thought. Randall
seemed to be a lot less excited.

"If the D.C. police have anything more to say to you, you make sure that
Captain Summerfield is informed.

He will make sure that I am informed. I hereby reiterate my instructions
to you, which are to steer clear of this Hardin matter. By the way, what
role does this Miss. Snow play in all this? I understand from Captain
Rennselaer at NIS that she no longer works there."

"Again, nothing direct, Captain," Dan said. "Captain Vann of the D.C.

police called her when he called me.

She was the one who initially interviewed him about Elizabeth Hardin's
accident."

"This Captain Vann understands that neither of you is officially
empowered anymore in the Hardin case?"

"Yes, sir." Dan said. "He also knows that the NIS has the case for
action. My guess is that we're done with it, now that he has an official
point of contact to deal with."

"See to it that you are, Commander," Randall said.

"If there is some kind of scandal lurking in the background of the
Hardin case that involves a flag officer, the vice chief has sole
jurisdiction. It's his official privilege to take care of problems like
that, assuming they exist. Commanders who stick their noses into an
issue at this level do so at their great personal and professional
peril. I think I've said this before."

"Yes, sir."

"And the fact that you are personally involved with this Miss. Snow,
while none of our business, had better not lead you back into the Hardin
case, assuming that she persists in involving herself."

Dan saw red. "You're absolutely right, sir," he said in a clipped voice.

"I beg your pardon, Commander?"

"My personal relationship with Miss. Snow is none of your business."

Manning let out a theatrical sigh while Randall's face settled into a
blank, cold mask. He stood up.

"If Miss. Snow interferes in an official U.S. Navy homicide
investigation, Commander Collins, you had better be several thousand
yards away from it, or I will see to it that the obstruction of justice
charges brought against her include you. Now get out of here before I
lose my temper."

"Aye, aye, sir," Dan said through tight lips, then headed for the door.

Manning was looking at him as if he were a dog that had made a mess on
the carpet. Dan paused for a fraction of a second as he walked by, and
shot Manning a look that made the EA blink. Dan went on through the door
and closed it forcefully. He stomped down the passageway towards OP-614,
his heart pounding. Those sons of bitches, who the hell do they think
they are? Rear admiral-sefec. A select-grade asshole. Goddamnit, he had
done the right thing in telling Summerfield. And Summerfield had done
the right thing by transmitting a warning to the flag network, and now
they responded by threatening him, and Grace. He could suddenly
understand how Pearl Harbor had happened.

He steamed down the polished E-ring corridor, nearly bowling over two
yeomen who were coming the other way. But at the intersection of the
fifth corridor and the E-ring, he stopped. A sudden, chilling thought
had just struck him. Jesus H. Christ, do you suppose those god damned EAs
already know who it is? He suddenly felt like an ocean swimmer who has
just discovered that the beach, all by itself, is getting farther away.

Snapper, in a serious mode for a change, had even warned him this
morning: "Summerfield is getting concerned about you--you're starting
to- piss off some powerful people." He continued back to OP-614, walking
slower, where he found the office as he had left it. It was now 5:45. He
wondered where the hell Summerfield and Snapper were. These were pretty
late hours for a Friday, even in Opnav. He scribbled a note to
Summerfield on the original telephone message about seeing the VCNO's
EA, left it on the captain's desk, and then went around securing the
office's desks and safes. The duty officer would be making his rounds at
6:00 p. m., and open safes, even behind an alarmed cipher lock, would be
a security violation. Normally, he would have stayed and waited for the
branch head to return, but tonight he was suddenly sick of Opnav and all
its bullshit.

He realized he wanted to talk to Grace, needed to talk to Grace. He
called her number, got the machine, waited for her to pick up, and when
she didn't, he left a message for her to call him at home. Then he
called the OP-61 front office and told the duty officer that he was
wrapping up 614 but leaving the lights on, as Summer field and Snapper
were still out. The duty officer promised not to write them up for
leaving lights on.

Dan drove home in the Friday-evening rush hour with his mind barely
registering the heavily congested traffic. He had long ago learned not
to be in any hurry, and he knew how to avoid all the lights on
Washington Street once he got into Old Town. The light was blinking on
his answering machine when he got in, and he felt a surge of elation.

"Hi, Dan, this is Grace, playing telephone tag. I'm home; call me back."

He picked up the phone and called her. To his surprise, she picked up
without waiting for him to identify himself, and for an instant he
almost didn't know what to say.

"Hey, Grace. You startled me. What are you doing picking up?"

"Thought it might be you. I don't get that many calls these days,
remember?"

"Oh, yeah, telephone woes of the unemployed. I might be joining you in
those ranks."

"Oh my God, what happened?"

"Can you come over? We'll catch a bite somewhere and I'll tell you about
it. It was kind of bizarre, actually."

"Oh dear, the Hardin mess, right? All right, you find me a parking place
and I'll be there in a little bit."

"Take your time. I've got to shovel this place out, and the tourists
will have all the tables for the next hour or so, anyway."

"I'll call you from the car when I'm about five minutes away."

They hung up and Dan scurried around the house, picking up the detritus
of his bachelor existence. He slipped a bottle of wine into the
refrigerator, examined three blocks of cheese and rejected two for
exhibiting excessive hair, and tentatively crunched a cracker.

When Grace called, he went out front and stood by the Suburban. When she
showed up, he pulled it out and waved her into his parking place, then
went around the block until he found a spot for the Suburban.

"The joys of upscale street parking," he said once they were ensconced
in the garden after playing musical cars and trading parking permits.

"And I thought Georgetown was bad," she replied.

"It's still a nice wine."

"I'm almost in the mood for something stronger," he said, then told her
about his session with the EAs. She was shaking her head by the time he
was finished.

"I'm beginning to wonder the same thing you are," she said. "These guys
are awfully worried about this investigation."

"Especially Randall."

"Captain Vann said to give him word about any
feedback either of us might get," she reminded him. "This sounds like
feedback."

"Yup." He looked over at her, saw how pretty she was, and suddenly
didn't want to deal with the Hardin business anymore. She caught his
look and smiled. He had been working up to something, and now he decided
to plunge ahead.

"If you don't have the weekend all booked up, I was sort of thinking
about going to Harpers Ferry tomorrow," he said. "It's really pretty in
the spring, and there's a lot of history there. There's also a great inn
overlooking the river. For lunch."

She grinned. "Sounds delightful, and, no, my weekend is not booked up."

"Super. Let's finish our vino and go find someplace for dinner, and then
I'll tell you about it. Maybe we can swing through Sharpsburg and I can
show you the An tietam battlefield. I'll call the good Captain Vann
Monday about these frigging EAs and their threats. But right now, I want
to concentrate on the Grace and Dan show, if that's okay with you,
ma'am. Besides, I think it's trying to rain."

"I can handle that," she
said, smiling at him again over the rim of her wineglass. "I can
definitely handle that."

by 8:00 p.m. friday night, Malachi was ready to go.

The pickup truck was loaded with two suitcases, all of his telephone
equipment, and four large plastic boxes of papers and records, all
covered with a brown plastic tarp against a light rain that had
developed. He had been through the house several times, executing room
by-room searches, looking in and under the furniture, into every drawer,
in the basement and in the attic, trying to see what a cop would see,
looking especially for any evidence that might tie him to the Hardin
case. He left one unprogrammed telephone in the house but took his
answering machine and the synthesizer. He cleared the memory in the fax
machine and then turned it off. He had thought about disassembling and
taking the computer but then decided that was too hard. He packed his
backup tapes, dumped the data files, and then locked out the hard drive.

He wanted to leave enough stuff in the house to make it look like he
might come back. He did not want them to think he had fled the country,
just that he wasn't there, although the absence of any household
paperwork might give it away.

The doorway connecting his house with the duplex next door was concealed
in the downstairs coat closet, behind what looked like a
floor-to-ceiling ventilation re circulation screen. If they seriously
tossed the house, they would find it, but it wouldn't prove anything:
The duplex was seventy years old. He had stashed ten thousand dollars in
cash in a hidden floor safe next door, along with a Browning .380
automatic. There were no records or papers of any kind next door,
although it was otherwise ready for occupancy. Let them try to figure
out what that was all about, or where the owner was. As a final measure,
he had loaded up two miniature voice activated tape recorders,
concealing one in the living room air-conditioning duct of each house.

Cops searching a supposedly empty house tended to talk about what they
were doing and why; the tapes might reveal how much they knew or
suspected. He would physically have to get back into one or the other of
the houses to lift the tapes, but that was doable, especially if they
didn't realize he had access to both houses.

He locked up the house, turning out all the lights, and headed for the
garage. He got into the truck and then hesitated. Maybe one more
surveillance sweep, just to make sure he wasn't about to drive into
their loving arms with all his stuff in the truck. Right. He got out,
fished behind the seat for a lightweight trench coat and hat, and then
let himself out into the alley. With the dripping overcast, the only
light came from an alley streetlight positioned right in the middle of
the block; each end of the alley was conveniently in the shadows.

The mizzle formed a cone of precipitation around the streetlights. He
walked quickly to East Capitol Street, turned left, away from his own
street, and went around the block, walking rapidly. People who walked
these streets slowly after dark were usually morally challenged
individuals looking for someone to rob; the potential victims tended to
move right along. He ignored the domestic scenes visible through lighted
windows of the houses and kept his eyes open for shapes and figures
among the rows of parked cars. It occurred to him that he should have
brought a piece with him. After walking one more block parallel to his
own street, he started back, taking two left turns and crossing his own
street once again to be on the side opposite his own house. He stopped
on the corner in a shadow of a large tree and stared down his block,
carefully scanning each parked can and van. Van. Well, now. There was a
van, parked on the same side of the street he was on, five doors down
from his house. He smiled in the darkness.

There were no people with vans living on this block.

He moved slightly around the tree so that he had a good look at the
sidewalk side of the van and waited.

The sounds of traffic up on Second were muffled by the wet trees along
the crowded blocks of houses. He saw a couple walking hand in hand
across the street at the other end of the block, two fleeting figures
appearing in a cone of streetlight and then disappearing again.

Someone opened a kitchen door and called in a dog or a cat--he couldn't
tell which. One of the houses had a radio going with a heavy, thumping
rock beat. Over all these sounds of urban domesticity came the whir of
tree frogs and the rustling and cheeping of small birds settling in for
the night in the row of trees. Drops of rain collecting on the new
leaves spatted occasionally onto the sidewalk around him. There. The
flare of a lighter glinted for a second in the rain-streaked, right side
mirror of the van. All right, he thought. All fucking right.

He fought a sudden urge just to walk down there, down the sidewalk,
while the guy was still night-blind from lighting his cigarette, and
yank the damn door open and pull the bastard out onto the sidewalk.

Yeah, and then what? His partner shoots your ass while you're stomping
his buddy? He assumed that there had to be somebody in the driver's
seat; maybe not, but that lighter had looked to be very close to the
right side window. He examined the van again, looking for an aerial or
other signs of police gear, but there was nothing.

D.C. plates, a standard car radio antenna on the right side forward, no
windows except up front and two dirty squares of glass in the back
doors. Could be cops; could be anybody.

He exhaled and stepped back closer to the tree, looking around to make
sure no pedestrians were inbound.

So, somebody was under surveillance. He had to assume it was his house,
although in Washington, it could be anybody's house. For all he knew,
the neighbors three doors down from him could be the Serbian Liberation
Army, plotting to blow up Congress. Go Serbs, he thought.

He looked around to make sure there were no cars coming down his street
or Constitution, and then, keeping the tree between him and the van, he
backed across the intersection to the next corner, turned, and walked
rapidly away into the darkness. He circled the next block and then
slipped back into his alley. He stopped in the shadows at the entrance
to the alley to let his night vision readjust. Depending on how serious
they were, they might have the alley staked out, too. Except no one had
been there when he had come out. No one he'd seen, anyway. He stood
there for ten minutes, getting warm and sweaty in the raincoat,
oblivious to the thin mist falling, absorbing the sounds coming from
kitchen windows and backyards. He nearly jumped out of his skin when a
cat brushed up against his leg, and again he had to fight down a
powerful urge to stomp the cat into the cracked concrete. He realized he
wanted very badly to lash out at something or someone.

He had no way of knowing if the captain's refusal to return his call and
the watchers in the van out front were related, but he had to assume
they were. The game had changed, and it was no longer Malachi's game. As
he had suspected. It had to be about the Hardin case, but why, why would
they finger him? He was the one guy who could finger them! He hadn't
given the cops enough to get a name when he made his call--only a hint
that Elizabeth Hardin had had a boyfriend in the Navy. But that had been
enough to send a tremor up the EAs' web, apparently. But what the hell
was the captain doing--and how had the cops made the connection?

The captain had said that the Hardin investigation was in the someday
box. So unless the captain had called the cops himself and given them
Malachi's name, which would be tantamount to suicide, there had to be
another reason the cops were in on it. But the Navy had no one working
with the cops or even talking to them.

He closed his eyes and concentrated; there was something he was
missing--something from the phone call he had made. Ah, yes they did:
the mysterious Miss. Snow--who supposedly no longer worked for the NIS.

Son of a bitch. Maybe she was an independent. And the captain probably
thought that Malachi would never be watching for a woman. Son of a
bitch!

He scanned the alley again but then concluded that there were no cars or
other signs of surveillance. He was about to move when there was
movement behind the gate right in front of him, and then the gate latch
tripped. The gate opened, throwing a wedge of light into the alley from
a back porch light. A fat man came out, dressed in shapeless Bermudas
and a slack T-shirt and carrying an armload of trash. The man popped the
top off a green plastic trash can with his elbow and dumped the garbage
into it, totally oblivious to the big man standing in the shadows, not
ten feet away, staring at him. Malachi could hear the man's wheezy
breath as he bent down to retrieve the wet lid. The man slapped the lid
back on and then went back in through the gate, latching it forcefully
before tromping back to his kitchen door. Great situational awareness,
man, Malachi thought. Really aware of your surroundings. No wonder so
many people got mugged up here on Capitol Hill--they deserved it. He
moved out of the shadows and walked down to his garage, suddenly
confident that he could get out of there without being seen.

He went through the fence gate and entered the garage through the
backyard door. He cracked open the truck's driver side door, which
turned on the cabin light, and turned the headlight switch to the left,
turning on a small white light over the truck bed. He went around and
climbed up into the bed of the pickup and unscrewed the garage door's
lightbulb so it would not come on when he activated the electric door
opener.

He then lifted the Metro yellow flasher unit down from the rafters of
the garage. He mounted the flasher unit on its magnetic base and draped
the wire down to the opening in the rear window. He reached back up into
the rafters and pulled down the magnetic signs for the doors, the ones
displaying the logo of the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority on
them. He got down again and slapped on the Metro signs, then threaded
the flasher wire through the back window but did not plug it in. He then
turned off the bed light, started the truck, and hit the remote switch
to open the electric door. He backed cautiously out into the alley, took
one last look around, commanded the garage door to shut, and drove down
the alley to East Capitol Street. He crossed East Capitol and went down
to Independence, then turned right. Once on Independence, it was a
straight shot downtown to the Fourteenth Street Bridge approaches and
the safety of Arlington.

An hour later, Malachi stood at the balcony glass doors of the
one-bedroom apartment, sipping on some high octane shaved ice. The
apartment had a truly stupendous view of the darkened office building
across Ninth Street, but that suited him just fine. This place was a
bolt-hole, not a home. Not that he had ever really had a home. The
apartment management had assigned him a two-week temporary parking
permit for the F-250. After that, he would have to figure something else
out, because the duty manager reminded him that in Arlington, apartment
buildings had to report vehicles garaged to the county tax office. But
hell, in two weeks ... He thought about Miss. Snow, his brain running
very smooth with the help of the Harper. He'd seen a movie once where
you knew that someone was trying to kill the good guy, but you never
suspected that it was the beautiful actress that the guy falls in love
with. She was entirely too sweet and too beautiful for the thought to
even cross your mind. Until she pulled out this goddamn .22 automatic
with a long barrel. He remembered the whole audience groaning out loud
when they saw the piece. He was having the same problem getting his
brain around the idea that the captain had maybe hired somebody, and
that the somebody might be this Snow woman. Admittedly, discovering the
surveillance out on his street had helped to concentrate his mind, but
that still didn't necessarily mean that there was a contractor out
there. And yet Malachi had fired a round into the cave to see what might
be stirring in there, and now there were cops, or other people, sitting
in a van across his street. That round could really have spooked the
captain and the great man, so who knows what they might resort to. They
had a lot to lose, both of them.

So go see. Go do a little surveillance of your own, see if this
Snow-woman is a player. And also go see if her boyfriend, the Navy guy,
is in the game. By God, that would be a pretty play, the captain using a
Navy guy and an ex-NIS agent to clean up the trail. Who the hell would
ever suspect that? I would, he thought grimly.

But, yeah, tomorrow he would go see what Miss. Snow and company were up
to. Go on over to Yuppieville tomorrow morning, check things out. No, it
would be Saturday. Tomorrow night, then. First go to Old Town, see if
she was with Collins, then ease over to Georgetown, maybe get into that
alley. For that, he would need the truck. No: For Georgetown, he would
use the telephone company van. Miss. Snow, he thought, as he chewed on a
piece of fiery ice. Miss. Gracie Snow. I know where you live. I wonder
if your phones are working.

after spending saturday touring the historical town of Harpers Ferry and
the haunting grounds of the An tietam battlefield park, Grace and Dan
had driven up the Shenandoah Valley to Berryville and then through the
rolling Virginia countryside to the Ashby Gap, where Route 50 cut
through the Blue Ridge range as it headed east toward Middleburg and,
eventually, Washington.

After topping Ashby Gap, Dan pulled off into the booming metropolis of
Paris, Virginia, population about eighty-six. Paris was a one-street
village whose most famous landmark was the renowned Ashby Inn, located
at the eastern end of the street.

Dan parked the Suburban in the lot behind the inn while Grace went in to
see about their reservations and to use the powder room to change into
something more suitable for dinner than her slacks and sweater outfit.

Dan put a tie on in the car, felt the stubble of an emerging five
o'clock shadow, got out, and slipped on a blue blazer. The day had
been--what were the right words--increasingly exhilarating. Grace had
started out being relatively serious about the sight-seeing, but then,
after lunch, he had detected a change and the beginning of some subtle
flirtation--subliminal looks, several occasions where they ended up
standing well within each other's personal space, and a growing
consciousness on his part that she was acting much differently from the
all-business Ms. Snow of the NIS. He walked around the gravel parking
lot for a few more minutes, kicking absently at small stones, before
going inside. He was beginning to wish that he had tried for a room.

He waited for Grace in the reading room to the right of the front door,
along with four other people waiting for a table. After fifteen minutes,
Grace came in and lit up the room with her smile. Most of the men he had
seen coming in for dinner were dressed in suits, and Dan had begun to
feel somewhat out of place in his corduroy slacks, gray shirt, and plain
blazer. But Grace more than made up for him: She was decked out in a
beautifully tailored cream-colored sand-washed silk crepe de chine suit,
the skirt of which was cut just above her knees. She wore the flowing
jacket over a white silk knit blouse, without jewelry, and she had done
some magic with cosmetics that he was sure rendered him happily
invisible.

The waitress led them downstairs to the lower dining room. The Ashby Inn
was an eighteenth-century restoration that advertised itself as a
bed-and-breakfast, but it was much closer to the French concept of an
auberge than a simple bed-and-breakfast. There were several small suites
upstairs and an outstanding full-service restaurant downstairs. The
lower dining room was done in stone, with low-hanging hand-hewn beams,
and had two fireplaces. There were eight tables in the lower dining
area, which looked like it had originally been part of a bank barn a few
hundred years ago. Dan and Grace were ensconced in a corner table by one
of the fireplaces.

A lone bartender was all flying arms and glasses in the corner. It being
a Saturday night, there was a good crowd, and the staff was bustling
about at high speed.

"I think I've read about this place," Dan said, looking around. Every
man in the place had been stealing surreptitious looks at Grace across
the room since they had been seated.

"It's been voted one of the ten best inns in America," Grace said. "More
than once. I've never eaten here, but the food's supposed to be
exceptional."

"Hopefully not that minced cuisine," Dan muttered, examining the menu
suspiciously. Grace laughed at him.

"I don't think so, and I believe that's cuisine minceur you're worried
about. The great big plates and the little bitty portions laid out as
flowers?" Her green eyes were sparkling, and he was having trouble
concentrating on the details of ordering dinner.

"That's the one. Commie chow," he growled.

"Now you sound like Snapper."

"Snapper eats out of a dog bowl. Mostly, I'm hungry.

I mean, Harpers Ferry, Sharpsburg, the Antietam battlefield all in one
day?"

"You're perhaps forgetting the little snack at the inn in Harpers
Ferry?"

"Details, woman," he replied. "Hey, this looks good.

And smells good. Just like you."

She smiled back at him with another brilliant flash of her green eyes;
the lawyerish-looking man at the next table put his wineglass down in
his butter plate, a move not unnoticed by his wife.

"Wine, innkeeper," Dan commanded in a stage whisper. The bartender, ten
feet away, picked right up on it. "Aye, your worship," he said in his
best tavern accent as he tugged at an imaginary forelock. "Wine 'tis,
an' a plague on yon feckless wenches."

Dan grinned as a mildly red-faced waitress came right over with a wine
list. Dan selected an Australian chardonnay, which was brought to the
table by the bartender in short order. The waitress returned and took
their dinner orders. When she had left, Dan raised his glass in a toast.

"To the first good weekend in a long, long time," he announced.

"Yes, I'll drink to that," she said, looking at him over her glass. "I'd
forgotten how beautiful the Virginia countryside is at this time of
year. Especially up here in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I'd often thought
of getting a country place up here, except--"

"Except that the commute would be horrible, and the Blue Ridge Mountains
are no place to be if you're alone. Too many ghosts up here."

"I felt
them at Antietam," she said

"It reminded me of one of the Brace Catton
Civil War books--the one that had a title with the word stillness in
it."

"Stillness at Appomattox," he prompted.

"Yes. There was such a stillness there. Did you notice how even the
tourists spoke softly?"

"Nearly twenty-five thousand were killed or wounded on that field; I've
always thought their ghosts are sleeping lightly just beneath all that
tall grass. I keep going back, and I can't really tell you why. You
ought to see it on a fall Sunday afternoon; there's a mist that comes
off Antietam Creek that'll raise the hair on your neck."

"I can well
believe it," she said as the waitress brought bread and topped up their
wineglasses. "Still, there's a certain charm to this area of
Virginia--all the history, the Washington scene, this countryside: I
could never go back to Boston. But I don't know what I'm going to do
next."

"Go work for a think tank. Wait for a change in administrations," he
said.

"Where will you go next?"

"I have no idea--literally. We get to submit a preference card, which
allows us to specify which is the most important thing on our wish list:
the kind of ship, the coast, or the job..Since I'm slated for command,
I've chosen the type of ship--a destroyer type--as the priority.

I could end up Atlantic or Pacific, or even overseas."

"And then?"

"Ah. That's the question. I'll be very close to my twenty-year mark.

I've always thought it would just go on forever. But now--"

"What would you want to do if you got out at twenty?"

"You mean when I grow up?" he said. She laughed. The waitress returned
with dinner, and they broke off speculating about the future to enjoy
the Ashby's first class cookery. Dan ordered a second bottle of wine,
and they lingered over crepes suzette after the main course.

Dan was grateful there was no band lined up; the warmth and coziness of
the dining room, the fireplaces, and a congenial crowd all made for a
delightful ambience that did not need, in his opinion, to be spoiled by
some aspiring singer. Besides, just the sight of Grace in war paint and
an extremely alluring dress was distraction enough.

He watched her as the evening subsided into a comfortable buzz amid the
wine and good food. She was almost radiant, her cheeks the slightest bit
flushed, her eyes dancing, her hands animated. The day had been so
pleasant: They had been interested in the same things, admired or
commented on the same aspects of everything they had seen, and laughed
at the same foibles of other people or places. He realized that his
answer to her earlier question about the future had been a bit
disingenuous: He simply could not quite figure out how to put her into
the picture. But he realized that he had become entirely entranced by
this woman, felt like he had known her for a very long time, and wanted
her in any of his possible futures. He put his wineglass down and almost
upset it.

"I guess I better eighty-six on the vino," he said, eyeing the
treacherous glass. "We have a long drive back to town."

She gave him a speculative look across the table, then put her own
wineglass down and took his hand across the table.

"Not necessarily," she said quietly, giving him a very direct look.

"Oh?" he replied, trying not to squeak.

"I may have booked a room here. It is a bed-and- breakfast, or so they
advertise."

He grinned in spite of himself. "When the hell did you manage that?"

"At Harpers Ferry. While you were working on that minceur of apple pie a
la mode. I took a shot, and they had a cancellation--she said they're
normally booked here weeks ahead."

"Wahoo," he said, looking around for
the waitress.

She was not in evidence at the moment, but the bartender, who might have
been watching them, raised his eyebrows at him.

"Innkeeper," Dan declared, "be there cognac?" They went up to the room
an hour later, Dan trying very hard not to grin from ear to ear as he
followed Grace up the stairs from the dining room, fully aware of the
envious stares from the remaining male patrons.

Their room was on the second floor, in the back of the building, and
their bedroom windows overlooked a spectacular panorama of open mountain
meadows interlaced with a series of cattle ponds stretching down the
side of Ashby Gap, seemingly for miles and miles. A full moon was
suspended over the Blue Ridge Mountains, painting each of the ponds a
bright, glimmering silver. By unspoken consent, they did not turn on any
lights, just sat down on the bed, hand in hand, absorbing the view. When
she finally turned to him, the sweetness of her kiss took his breath
away, and then they began the glorious exploration, fingertips, hands,
and lips, the momentary awkwardness of tugging and undoing of clothes,
until they finally stretched out next to each other in the moonlight. He
ran his fingertips over her whole body as she relaxed on the covers,
wondering at the satiny feel of her skin and his own tumbling emotions
as he held back just to look at her. Then he moved, pushing her gently
down onto her back and sliding his body between her legs, suspending his
weight so that he covered her but barely touched her. He kissed her
again and she held his face against her lips, first searching and then
demanding. He kissed her lips and then her face and then her throat as
she guided his head lower, onto her breasts, her hardened nipples, and
then back to her lips again. They both had an enormous reservoir of
pent-up need to control, and they could both experience the luxuriant
sensation of satisfying their hunger, pacing the need, knowing
instinctively that when they eventually lost all that control, it was
going to be sweet and good. He shifted his body to lay one muscular
thigh directly between her legs, and she gripped with her own thighs and
began to move, moaning softly now, hands down at her sides, her head
thrown back. He let her feel his strength and then started all over
again, kissing her throat, her breasts, and then working lower, sliding
his thigh away and replacing it with his mouth, focusing every ounce of
his energy on her until she arched her back and cried aloud. Before she
really had time to come down or even catch her breath, he pushed back up
and entered her, holding her knees up with his hands and going as deep
as he could while she groaned with the feel of it. He held her that way
for almost a minute, until she began to move, and then it went hard and
fast, a rising frenzy of powerful thrusting, her legs slipping behind
his hips, locking him in while they fed their individual needs, so long
deprived. When he came, she didn't stop, but gripped him tighter and
drew a great gasp from him before letting him subside, first on top and
then alongside of her, his head on her breast, her fingers in his hair
and her lips on his forehead with soft murmurs of love, comfort, and the
certain knowledge that the entire night lay before them.

After a few minutes, when he thought she had gone to sleep, she pulled
him up so that they were face-to face. Eyes wide, she looked expectantly
at him. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something. He hesitated
for just a fraction of a second as the name Claire spirited across his
mind, but then he said the words, realizing that as he said them he
wanted to say them, wanted to tell her.

"I've fallen in love with you, Grace Ellen Snow."

She sat up then and gently pushed him back down onto the covers, then
slid her body on top of his. She took his face between her hands, her
eyes lustrous in the moonlight, her perfumed hair framing her face.

"I know how hard that was to say," she whispered.

"No it wasn't. Well, a little. But not because of you."

"If you loved her, you can't just throw away all those memories and
feelings. I guess what I'm saying is that there's time enough to share,
and I don't ever expect you to forget her memory or the love you had.

That's part of you, and that's one of the reasons I've fallen in love
with you." She bent down to kiss him, then melted down on top of him,
her face buried in his shoulder, her breathing softening into sleep. He
lay awake for nearly an hour, reveling in the glorious treasure life had
just handed him, too happy to sleep.

at just before midnight on Saturday, Malachi took one of the last Metro
trains going into the city. He got off one station later at Clarendon.

He was wearing khaki slacks, a short-sleeved shirt, a dark windbreaker,
and a pair of high-topped tan leather boots. The train was practically
empty at this time of night, and Malachi was alone in the car except for
six teenaged girls, who burst into fits of giggling interspersed with
furtive looks in his direction. It would have been fun to produce a
chain saw, he thought. At the Clarendon station, he rode the escalator
up to the concrete island between Wilson and Clarendon boulevards.

Crossing the street, he walked back up along the row of Vietnamese shops
and restaurants and turned right on Hudson Street. He walked down one
block to a small run-down-looking house nestled in an alley next to an
apartment building.

Behind the house was a single-car garage with a sagging roof and a
visible port list, whose door opened onto the alley. A single
streetlight, which was hanging at an odd angle from a heavily wired
telephone pole, left the front of the garage in shadow. He paused to
look down the alley but saw nothing moving in the light. He checked the
street and the sidewalks, but no one was visible.

This neighborhood was not necessarily an area where Caucasian strangers
were welcome after about ten o'clock at night, the Vietnamese having
several interesting operations of their own going. He could hear a I
small dog yapping away somewhere nearby, and the smell of Oriental food
hung in the air. A brave dog, he thought, to bark so long and loud near
an entire block of Vietnamese restaurants.

Checking again to see that there were no lights on in the house, he
walked down the alley to the garage, fished out a set of keys, unlocked
a padlock, and swung back the two graffiti-sprayed wooden doors, whose
windows had been long since painted over. Nearly filling the garage was
the telephone van. Leaving the doors open, he went around to the back of
the van and unlocked the back doors. He extracted a set of coveralls
emblazoned with the logo of the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone
Company, took off the windbreaker, and put the coveralls on over his
street clothes. He fished a white hard hat out of the van, closed the
back doors, and opened up the driver's side.

The side doors of the van were painted with C & P logos, and there were
three radio antennas on the roof.

The interior of the van behind the front seat was filled with cabinets
and shelves, holding nearly all the tools and equipment of a genuine
telephone repair truck. Interspersed among all the legitimate telephone
company equipment were some interesting devices for gaining access to
houses, a long-range video camera, two handguns, a pair of Army FM
radios, a receiving unit and tape recorder for inside bug installations,
and a flasher unit like the one he had for his Metro truck. He set up
the flasher unit on the roof, plugged it in for a quick op test, and
then unplugged it. He started the van, drove out into the alley, and
stopped. He got back out, looked around one more time to make sure he
was not being watched, and closed and locked the garage doors. He then
got back in and headed for Wilson Boulevard, where he turned right and
then did a U-turn back onto Clarendon, which took him back down toward
Rosslyn.

He checked the glove compartment as he drove down Clarendon Boulevard
and found an envelope with about an eighth of an inch of cash wrapped in
a rubber band inside. He smiled. He had acquired the van three years ago
from another security consultant, who said that he had acquired it from
yet another contractor who had been on the Iran-Contra project, working
for persons unspecified. Malachi had paid fifteen thousand dollars cash
for it and all the equipment, with the understanding that, from time to
time, certain parties whose names would remain anonymous might need to
use the van. If these certain parties did use the van, they would leave
a rental fee, in cash, in the glove compartment.

So far, he had collected three envelopes in the past three years.

The van came complete with telephone company registration, which was
good enough to withstand a street side examination. The radio was tuned
to the dispatch frequencies of the C & P Operations Center, so it could
lend some audio credence if a cop was to stop him.

Completing the outfit was a clip-on badge with an expert forgery of a C
& P telephone company identification, complete with picture, which he
attached to his coveralls pocket as he drove. And if all that failed and
the van was ever picked up, there were two four-inch diameter PVC pipes
buried in the shelving structure.

They contained rotary motion fuses and enough thermite to seriously
disrupt a truly intrusive search.

His major vulnerability would be if another C & P crew was to stop when
Malachi was working a project, but so far, that had never happened. He
used the van sparingly, usually at night, and was careful to park it out
of sight and off any main streets. But it had been an invaluable base of
operations for break-ins, surveillance, or monitoring operations, all of
which were services he offered to his retainer clients, especially some
of the larger lobbying firms. It was amazing how many individuals these
people were interested in putting under surveillance, and doubly amazing
what some of those surveillances had produced. He had one videotape of a
State Department official in drag making out in the front seat of a Fiat
with a man from the Hungarian embassy. He had considered sending that
one into the "funniest home video" show on the TV.

Earlier that day, he had made a swing down Prince Street in Old Town and
confirmed that the woman's car was parked out in front of Collins's
house. So he should be clear. He drove down Clarendon Boulevard to the
high-rise district of Rosslyn and then worked his way down to Key
Bridge, crossed the Potomac, and wound his way up through the
still-crowded bar, disco, and pub scene of lower Georgetown to Grace
Snow's street. Two cops parked along M Street actually waved at him as
he went by, and he dutifully waved back. By 12:40, he was cruising by
her house to confirm that her car was not there. Her house was dark,
except for a front porch light. Slowing down, he circled the block and
came to the alley he had noticed before. Now he could read the sign; it
was named Pomander Walk. He slowed way down and turned into the alley,
which was lined with diminutive carriage houses and garages converted to
living quarters and apartments. The alley ended in a turnaround area
right in the middle of the block between P Street and Volta Place, where
there was a garage presently being converted into living quarters.

Keeping the engine quiet, he pulled the van into the turnaround area,
backed it up against the scaffolding on an almost-complete brick wall,
and shut it down. Putting on his hard hat, he turned on the interior
light, rolled down the driver's side window, turned up the dispatch
radio vojume a little, and listened for a couple of minutes while he
pretended to scribble something on a clipboard. All the windows of the
houses along Pomander were dark, although almost every house had a porch
or security light shining into the alley itself. Mala chi sniffed
contemptuously at all the lights: To anyone looking into the alley, all
those lights shining at one another had the effect of throwing the lower
portions of all the houses into deep shadow.

He had a cover story all set: There was a telephone pole at the very
back of the turnaround area, right next to the green wooden gate and the
brick wall that, by his calculations, bounded Miss. Snow's backyard. Her
address was 2135 P Street. The green plastic trash receptacle right next
to the gate had the number 2135 painted on it. For the first ten minutes
or so, he would open the back doors of the truck, turn on the lights in
the back of the van, and lay out some equipment. He would take some test
equipment over to the amplifier box at the base of the pole and pretend
to analyze some kind of a problem. He had to do that long enough to
convince anyone who had gotten up to see who was out there that he was
legitimate and that he was going to be out there for a while. He wanted
any watchers to get bored and go back to bed. There was no sign that
anyone was watching, but Malachi had to assume that there was at least
one little old lady who was even now peeking out her window at him. He
did not want a cop car coming back in here to check him out. If someone
did come out to talk to him, he had some electronics mumbo jumbo ready
about a sector circuit fault, and he would say that he'd eventually have
to climb the pole to find it.

After twenty minutes of pretending to chase down the sector circuit
problem, he put on a climbing harness at the back of the truck, strapped
some side spikes to his boots, clipped a satchel of equipment to the
harness, and went up the pole. He had done this more than once during
surveillance operations, and he knew it was no big deal once you reached
the installed climbing spikes about ten feet off the ground. He clung to
the pole for about five minutes in front of an equipment panel, casually
examining the windows that fronted the turnaround area for faces or
other signs of movement.

From his vantage point, he could also see into the windows of the houses
behind the line of brick walls surrounding the turnaround area.

Everything seemed pretty normal, and there were no dogs, thank God.

Taking one last look around, he descended the pole to the top of the
wall, stepped out onto the wall, and then dropped behind it into the
backyard of 2135 P Street.

He immediately undipped the satchel and dropped it behind the gate, then
opened the alley gate and walked back to the truck. If anyone was
watching, the drop into the yard would have been suspicious, but not if
he came right back out. They'd think the problem must be in that house
or yard. He made two more trips through the gate, reappearing each time
within a minute. On the first trip, he left a second satchel. On the
second trip, a bag of tools went into the yard. He then returned to the
front seat of the van and pretended to talk on the radio before getting
back out and going back through the gate, this time leaving it ajar
behind him.

Now he had to move fast. Clutching the three bags, he trotted up to the
back door and checked for alarm systems, finding none. Leaving the bags
on the porch, he went around to the side of the house and examined the
telephone line where it came down from the overhead wire insulator.

Normal wire, no signs of anti-intrusion cladding; no disturbance pads on
the window glass.

From the back porch, he could see into what looked like the kitchen
pantry, but there were no red LED lights. He opened the equipment bag
and took out a pair of thin leather gloves and a roll of duct tape. The
back door had a window divided into six panes. He bent over the back
door and taped over the small square of glass nearest the lock, then
broke it with his fist. He extracted the sheet of tape with the shards
of glass stuck to it and put it in the bag. Reaching through the broken
window, he opened the dead bolt and let himself into the house. He found
himself in the pantry, with the kitchen three feet away. He paused to
listen, but the house felt empty. He looked back out into the yard, but
all was quiet out there, too.

He figured he had about ten minutes' stay time in the house. Keeping all
the lights off, he made a fast walking tour, using the light from the
streetlights out front. He inspected the front and back, upstairs and
downstairs, noting the layout of the rooms, where the telephones were,
verifying that there were no alarm-system control panels. He moved a
small bookcase aside and opened the door to the basement steps, although
he did not go down. The stairway was cluttered and obviously not used.

He took in the tasteful furniture, the thick rugs, and the polished
floors. Using a tiny black Maglite, he searched the kitchen for the key
rack, finally finding what looked like the spare house key, which he
tested in the front and back door locks. He pocketed this key and what
looked like the key to the back gate.

Retrieving the second equipment bag, he went back upstairs to what
looked like a spare bedroom, which was being used mostly for storage.

Getting down on his hands and knees, he shone the flashlight around the
baseboards until he found a phone jack. From the bag, he extracted a
small white box that had a male telephone connector sticking out of the
center. He snapped the connector into the phone jack, felt with his
fingernail for a dip switch, and moved the switch. Then he placed two
cardboard boxes of what felt like books in front of the wall jack,
retrieved the bag, and left the room.

He stopped in the study area and, again using the tiny flashlight,
scanned the paperwork scattered all over the table, taking care to keep
the light shielded from the windows. There was a picture of a
distinguished looking older man in what looked like a doctor's coat, and
another picture of a very impressive town house.

The answering machine's red light was blinking, but he had learned not
to touch answering machines after one demanded a code and then sent an
alarm signal to a monitoring company when he couldn't produce the code.

He touched none of the papers, but he looked through everything that was
faceup, which is where he found the notepad with his name on it. He
stopped breathing for a moment, but there it was: Malachi Ward, followed
by the abbreviation Capt. and the word Army. There were some mostly
illegible notes and some doodles on the page, and below them was the
word invisible, underlined, followed by the words credit system. But it
was the final line of three words that got his immediate attention:
Captain. Target. Ward.

Son of a bitch! he muttered out loud, then quickly looked around as if
to see if anyone had heard him. He looked at his watch and then snapped
the light off. He went back to the kitchen and checked the backyard
windows, but there was still nothing moving. Time to go.

He went to the pantry and retrieved the third bag, which made a gurgling
noise when he picked it up. He placed it on the basement stairway among
all the clutter.

Then he walked out the back door and all the way to the van, where he
went through the talk-on the-radio drill. Then he returned to the back
door. He knelt down, opened a bag, and took out a measuring tape and a
screwdriver-sized wood pry. He pried off the four segments of molding of
the broken window and quickly measured the broken pane. Then he went
back out to the truck in the alley. He slid into the front seat and
pretended once more to talk on the radio for the benefit of any
spectators, then returned to the back porch, where he opened the bag
containing a taped bundle of windowpanes of various sizes. He fished in
it for a pane of approximately the right size. None of the glass was
new, so there would be no bright shiny pane among all the older ones.

Working by the light of the streetlight from the alley, he found one
that was pretty close, cut it to size with a glass cutter and
wide-mouthed pliers, and installed it with four glass points, using a
rubber-tipped screwdriver to set the points. Then he used a tack hammer
to renail the molding. He rubbed the edges with a swipe of dust from the
pantry shelves so that it would blend right in.

He put the tools back, made sure he still had the keys, and then closed
and locked the back door. He was feeling pretty good now, his breathing
strong and deep, and adrenaline running through him like the whiskey
did, amplified by a slow fuse of fury in his stomach at what he'd found
on that notepad. Captain. Target. Ward. Trust your instincts, Monroney
always said. And his instincts had been right the fuck on. Except that
now he knew about it. Forewarned, Brother Malachi was not going to be
some sitting duck behind the wire. Brother Malachi was going to be out
there, beyond the perimeter, in the weeds, ass in the grass, on the
move. He had the key, he knew the layout, knew where the phone systems
were, and had everything he would need already stashed in the house.

He walked quickly through the garden to the back gate, where he tested
the gate key while still in the shadows of the backyard. It was a latch
lock on the inside and a key lock on the outside. Bingo. He went through
the gate, closed it, and walked casually to the truck: No utility
workmen ever walked fast. He did the talk-on-the-radio drama one last
time and then took his time wrapping things up, pretending to check the
box at the base of the pole one more time with a repairman's handset
cradled on his shoulder before closing up the truck and driving out of
Po-faggoty Walk.

He started feeling really good as he headed down Volta toward Wisconsin
Avenue. He had been right about all that "relax" shit from the captain,
right about the surveillance, and right about their being another
player. So now she's probably on a weekend with her pretty-boy officer
friend, he mused. A little forty-eight before she gets down to business.

She'd be back, probably Sunday night. So would he. Then we'll find out
who's the fucking target, missy. See, I've been down your spider hole,
Miss. Snow. You're good-looking and you've got money, Miss. Snow, but
you sure as shit are no pro, Miss. Snow. Hell, it even had rhythm. He
was actually looking forward to it. He smiled a feral smile in the
darkness.

dan drove grace back to Old Town in midafternoon after a late rising at
the Ashby Inn and an indulgence in the Ashby's lush Sunday brunch. They
had tried to walk off some of the damage by doing an hour's worth of
window-shopping in Middleburg on the way back, but it had still been a
battle to stay awake through the rolling green countryside. From
Middleburg, Dan took Route 50 through Aldie before settling reluctantly
into the traffic of the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington.

Dan opted for the GW Parkway rather than the Beltway to get back to Old
Town, and the scenic Sunday-afternoon descent along the Potomac
palisades provided a perfect cap to a perfect weekend. They did not
speak very much as he drove down along the river; instead, they held
hands across the front seat of the Suburban.

Grace did not come in when they got to his house on Prince Street. She
gave him a quick kiss and then moved the BMW out to make room for the
Suburban before driving away with a wave. Dan went in to change to
casual clothes and do last week's laundry. He was considering a stint
on the river to make amends for the weekend's gluttony when the phone
rang. It was Grace.

"There's a message from Captain Vann."

Dan's heart sank a little. The Hardin case had not even crossed his mind
since Saturday morning. She picked up on his silence.

"I know," she said. "It's like welcome back to the world, isn't it? But
he's set us up to talk to Mrs. Hardin --tonight. Both of us, he said. In
District Heights, wherever that is. I think it's Maryland."

"Well, sort of," Dan said. "It's kind of an extension of Southeast
Washington."

"Oh."

"Yeah, that's Injun country. We better take my Suburban."

"Then you'll go?"

"I think we have to. We asked him to set this up. And you're not going
into District Heights at night by yourself, that's for damn sure. What
time?"

"At seven-thirty. I have the address, and it's in the street-map book.

It doesn't look complicated."

He thought about it for a moment. District Heights.

He realized that he had never even been into the southeastern part of
Washington, that area between the actual District line in Anacostia and
the Capitol Beltway. "And Vann will be there, right?" he asked.

"Yes. Look, after what happened Friday, I can--"

"To hell with them," Dan interrupted. "I'm getting suspicious about
those guys. I sort of understood the political play when this all
started, but now that there's a flag officer involved, there seem to be
an awful lot of drawbridges going up all of a sudden. If Elizabeth
Hardin confided in her mother, we may actually learn something pretty
interesting."

"If she'll really talk to us."

"Yeah. Big if. I'll be over there in an hour."

malachi had queried the line monitor in Snow's house three times that
Sunday afternoon. He had a set routine to query the monitor: As soon as
the phone started to ring, he would press the pound key. This activated
the monitor, which would swallow the ring signal so that the target
phone would remain silent. After the second ring signal went out,
Malachi punched in a three-digit code, at which point the monitor would
respond: one beep for nothing on the tap, two beeps if there was. If the
box had something, Malachi would enter a different three-digit code, at
which time the monitor would play back what it had on the tape. On the
second try, he intercepted Vann's call to her machine.

On his fourth try, he listened to Grace's call to Dan.

Vann's message had revealed that he wanted all three of them to meet
with a Mrs. Hardin in District Heights.

Malachi knew that had to be Lieutenant Hardin's mother, but that wasn't
what interested him. This Captain Vann, whoever he was, had also said he
had more information on Ward for them. The mention of his name confirmed
his suspicions that Snow might be a hitter. He wondered if this Captain
Vann was an EA, some new player in the Navy system. It was also bad luck
that Snow had made a call out after this captain had called in: The
monitor had a callback feature that would dial the last number it had
monitored, but Grace's call had deleted the incoming phone number.

But whoever Vann was, he was passing them information on him, targeting
information no doubt. But it was also clear they were assuming Malachi
didn't know anything about them, which gave him an enormous advantage.

He made his move right after sunset. They would probably allow an hour
to get out to District Heights from Georgetown, which meant a 6:30
departure. District Heights--he doubted that either of those two had
ever set foot in that part of Washington. He almost prayed they would
have a flat tire, so that they might get to enjoy a unique intercultural
experience. Dressing in dark clothes and wearing his black windbreaker,
dark leather gloves, and a dark gray fedora, he took the Metro down to
Rosslyn and then walked down past the Key Bridge Marriott and across the
Key Bridge into Georgetown. It was shaping up to be a dark, moonless
night, and the lights from the ornate streetlamps on the Key Bridge
completely obscured the waters of the Potomac River beneath the high
arches of the bridge.

Everything he would need tonight was already stashed inside Snow's
house, which allowed him to enter the Cloisters neighborhood without any
satchels or otherwise suspicious-looking bags. He walked purposefully,
as if he belonged there, and when he got to Snow's house, he let himself
in through the wrought iron gate, ignored the car parked on the apron,
walked right up to the front door, and let himself in with the key. He
closed the door, pulled the curtains on the front windows, and turned on
a table lamp, then he went into the kitchen to see if she kept any
decent whiskey in the house. He would have to remember to retrieve that
monitor; he wouldn't need it after tonight, and the damn things were
actually hard to get.

dan took pennsylvania Avenue all the way through town until he could see
the Capitol building, at which point he cut down on 7th Street to
Independence Avenue to get around the Capitol. Turning left on
Independence, he was able to rejoin Pennsylvania behind the Library of
Congress and proceed into Southeast Washington.

Neither of them spoke much as he piloted the big Suburban through
increasingly more dangerous- looking neighborhoods, both of them keenly
aware of the openly hostile stares they were getting from the street
corners every time they had to stop for a red

light. This was one of the times Dan wished he had owned a gun, because
a lot of the people out on these streets looked like they did. When they
finally hit the District line, Pennsylvania Avenue widened out into the
four-lanes of Maryland Route 4.

"We're looking for Silver Hill Road now," Grace said. "We'll go left."

With Grace reading from a three-by-five card with Vann's directions, Dan
got them to the Hardin's house ten minutes early. He found a parking
place big enough for the Suburban in front of what looked like an
unmarked cop car. He pulled in and shut down. The address they were
looking for, number 1117, was the third house in a row of four two-story
brownstones joined together. There was a wrought-iron fence running in
front of all four units, with a banked front yard that required two sets
of steps to get to the front porch of each house. There were lights on
in the downstairs of number 1117, and the front porch light was also on.

Only one of the other four had any lights showing.

There-did not seem to be any people or even very much traffic on this
street. They looked at each other and then got out of the car.

Dan had decided to wear his service dress blues.

While it was true he was no longer officially on the case, Mrs. Hardin
would remember him in uniform from Philadelphia. He left his cap in the
car, however.

Grace was wearing a subdued gray wool ankle-length jumper over a deep
V-neckline, long-sleeved white blouse. He almost took her arm as they
went through the squeaky gate and up the steps, but he didn't. She
caught his hesitation and smiled at him, and he suddenly felt a lot
better about being here. When they arrived at the front door, Moses
Vann, dressed in a three piece charcoal gray suit, opened it for them
and invited them in. He took them into the living room, which was to the
right of the front door.

The house was warm and smelled of fresh coffee and flowers, of which
were was a great abundance stationed in vases and glass pitchers all
around the room. The living room was larger than Dan expected, with a
piano in one corner, a couch with end tables, three upholstered chairs,
and a small fireplace with flowers in it at one end. On the mantel above
the fireplace, there were two eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs,
one a full-figure picture of a very pretty young woman in a Navy
ensign's service dress whites. She was standing with a beaming Mrs.

Hardin. The other photo was of a bright-looking young man dressed in
what Dan thought was the shirt, tie, and coat of navy service dress
blues.

He swallowed as he recognized who that was.

Mrs. Hardin was seated in the chair nearest the fireplace, and Vann
showed them to the couch before sitting down in one of the other chairs.

There was a dining room off the living room, and a swinging door led to
what Dan figured was the kitchen. It sounded like there was someone in
the kitchen. Mrs. Hardin gave them each a reserved greeting but did not
get up, and it was obvious that she was looking to Vann to steer the
conversation.

Before he could begin, a very pretty teenaged girl came out of the
kitchen with a small tray that contained three cups of coffee, spoons,
and cream and sugar in silver serving pieces. The girl brought the tray
over to the couch, put it down on the coffee table, and left without a
word or without looking either one of them in the eye. Dan thanked her
retreating back.

"You find it okay?" Vann began, shucking his jacket.

"No problem, Captain," Dan said. "We took Pennsylvania all the way from
Georgetown."

"Ah," Vann said. "The scenic route. Have some coffee.

You probably need it." He helped himself to a cup.

Mrs. Hardin looked into the middle distance, her face set in a
motionless mask, as Dan and Grace leaned forward to fix their coffee.

Grace was closer and took over, then had to ask Dan what he liked in his
coffee, making him realize for an instant that they still had a lot to
learn about each other. Grace passed him a cup as the silence in the
room built, but as soon as she had fixed her own, Vann started.

"Angela here," he said, speaking almost as if Mrs. Hardin was not in the
room, "she's agreed to talk to us tonight. It's not something she wants
to do. But I've told her it's important, that there's a chance that one
or both of you might be able to find out who's responsible for what
happened to her children."

Dan looked at Vann. "Does she understand that both of us are working
unofficially at the moment?" he asked.

Vann nodded. "All three of us are working unofficially.

That's why she agreed to talk to us. I told her about the heat you've
been getting, and the fact that Miss. Snow here lost her job because of
this case." He glanced over at Grace to make sure that she wouldn't
contradict him, but Grace apparently understood the gambit. She nodded
and looked down at the floor. "I've shared with her informally some of
the aspects of the case as we know it so far. So what I'd suggest is
that you go ahead and ask your questions, Commander."

Dan put his coffee cup down and looked directly at Mrs. Hardin for the
first time. She continued to stare straight ahead.

"Mrs. Hardin, again I want to extend my condolences.

I won't sit here and try to tell you that I can appreciate your losses,
because I lost my wife before we ever got the chance to have and raise
some kids."

Mrs. Hardin looked over at him with a flicker of interest.

Dan pressed ahead.

"My questions center on your daughter."

"My 'Lizbeth."

"Yes, ma'am."

"She was a good girl, the best girl," Mrs. Hardin said.

"Yes, ma'am," Dan said. "But did she ever reveal to you that she might
be seeing someone, someone fairly senior, or important, in the Navy?

Dating him even?"

Mrs. Hardin shot a look at Vann but then shook her head.

"No," she said defiantly. "Never did."

Vann leaned forward. "Angela," he said with a hint of exasperation.

Mrs. Hardin looked down at the floor for a long minute and then sighed.

" 'Lizbeth never did," she repeated.

"But Wesley, he told me something'. Right after the funeral, he told me
something'."

"Mrs. Hardin, did he tell you who it was?" Grace asked, speaking for the
first time. "Did he tell you a name?"

Mrs. Hardin shook her head slowly. "Only that he knew who it was and
that he was gonna go see the man, find out some things. He was hot on
it."

"Why was he hot about it?" Dan asked.

Mrs. Hardin looked over at Vann, who nodded. For the first time, she
looked right at Dan.

" 'Cause he was white," she declared. "Wesley thought that was about the
wrongest thing she could do, be seem' some white guy." She paused, took
a deep breath, apparently somewhat embarrassed by her outburst.

"I'm sorry, but that's what it was."

"I can understand that, Mrs. Hardin," Dan said. "But did he suspect or
did he say anything that would make you think he suspected that
Elizabeth's accident might be related to her relationship with this
white man?" Dan asked.

"What do you mean?" she asked, looking first at Dan and then again to
Vann for guidance.

"Did he say anything that would lead you to believe that what happened
to your daughter might not have been an accident?" Grace asked.

Mrs. Hardin's expression changed to one of alarm.

"Moses?" she cried. "Moses, what's this girl sayin'?

What's she sayin' here about 'Lizbeth?"

Vann bit his lip and looked fixedly at the floor. Dan realized that the
two of them must have talked long and hard before they arrived but that
Vann had not raised this possibility.

"Angela," Vann said finally, "the police have no concrete evidence that
what happened to Elizabeth was anything but an accident. But we're
trying to figure out why someone would want to kill Wesley. Because of
some tips we've had, it's possible, just possible, now, that Wesley
thought her death was not an accident and that maybe he braced somebody
up about it. That somebody might have had something to do with what
happened to Wesley."

"The connection is Navy, Mrs. Hardin," Grace said.

"Wesley was probably killed on a Navy installation.

Elizabeth was seeing someone senior in the Navy. Both of them were in
the Navy themselves."

"And what's the Navy doing about all of this?" Mrs. Hardin asked,
looking directly at Dan.

Dan glanced over at Grace before replying. "That's part of it, Mrs.

Hardin. We--and we're on the outside now, remember--we think some people
in the Navy don't want anything done about it. We were the original
investigation team, and now Miss. Snow here is no longer with the NIS,
and I've been told to stay out of it by some pretty powerful people in
the Navy Department.

That's why we need your help, because if there's anything at all you can
tell us that would identify Elizabeth's ... friend, we can give that to
Captain Vann here, and he can come at it from outside the Navy.

Once that happens, I think the rest of the Navy, the people who aren't
involved in this, will do the right thing."

"Do the right thing?" She sniffed. "Tell me something: You get caught
messing around with this thing, you gonna get in trouble?"

"That's what they tell me," Dan said.

"So why you doin' this?"

"Because I want to know who killed your son. Especially if it was
someone in the Navy."

"Seems to me, your Navy isn't doin' too good these days, tellin' right
from wrong."

"Yes, ma'am. But the Navy's a big outfit. A lot of the bad things seem
to have happened here in Washington, but there's a whole hell of a lot
of Navy out there around the world, thousands of men and women serving
their country and doing it honorably. That's the real Navy, not the
Washington Navy, and I guarantee they have a clearer picture of what's
right and what's wrong than a lot of folks in this town seem to."

Mrs. Hardin stared at him and then looked over one more time at Captain
Vann. Then she got up. "I got one thing. Maybe it's something; maybe
it's nothing."

When she had left the room, Dan looked over at Captain Vann. "How much
have you told her?" he asked. Vann shrugged.

"Enough," he said. "She's felt all along that there was a cover-up of
some kind, but there was nothing to go on. The past two years have been
exceedingly ... difficult."

Mrs. Hardin came back into the room, carrying a small white envelope.

She gave it to Dan.

"That was in her things, her personal things. You can see the date--it's
about a week before ... before what happened over there in town."

Grace moved closer as Dan opened the envelope and drew out what appeared
to be a Valentine card. There was a large red heart on the front panel,
with the words Be My Valentine in silver writing across the bottom.

Inside there was a message: "Don't shut me out--I love you too much to
just stop now," it read, written in longhand in the black felt-tip pen.

It was signed with the initials W.T. Dan turned the envelope over and
noted the postmark: Foggy Bottom. The envelope had been mailed in her
own neighborhood. He handed it over to Captain Vann, who studied it
carefully before putting it down on a side table.

"And we have no idea who W.T. is?" Dan asked.

Mrs. Hardin shook her head. "That's the only thing, the only personal
item in her papers. The rest were bills and a bunch of Navy paperwork
about leave, and some forms."

She went back over to her chair and sat down, then seemed to sag. Dan
saw a look of concern in Vann's face, so he nudged Grace.

"Mrs. Hardin, we thank you very much for seeing us.

We're going to keep working it, see if we can find out who this is. I
hope we don't have to bother you again."

The look in Mrs. Hardin's eyes was bleak, but she didn't say anything,
just gave them a small wave and turned in her chair to stare at the
wall. Vann got up as Dan and Grace did and walked with them out the
front door to the porch. He pulled the front door to but did not close
it. Inside, Dan saw Mrs. Hardin walk slowly into the kitchen.

"I told you," Vann said. "Way I see it, she's been trying to erase all
of this stuff from her mind so that she can just get on with what's left
of her life. That's why I didn't want to do this. You saw her."

Dan nodded and Grace pulled her jacket around her shoulders. It was
considerably cooler and there was a hint of rain in the air. Two
teenagers strolled by, slowing to give the Suburban the once-over. Then
they recognized the cop car, looked up at the porch, and sauntered away.

"Had you known about the Valentine card?" Dan asked.

Vann shook his head. "Not until tonight. It wouldn't have meant anything
until now--if it does mean anything."

"It does to me," Dan said. "The one guy in the Pentagon giving me the
most heat about staying away from all this is the VCNO's executive
assistant, one Captain, soon-to-be Rear Admiral, Randall."

"Yeah, so?"

"So his boss, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, a four-star admiral
and the number-two guy in the whole Navy, and soon to be number-one guy,
his name is Tor ranee. William H. Torrance, Admiral, USN." Vann stared
at him. "As in W. T.," he said softly.

"Yeah, as in W. T."

Vann looked out over the front yard, chewing on his lip again as a car
went by. Grace stood there quietly, watching Vann.

"I suggest we do some more thinking," Dan said, turning to go down the
steps, taking Grace's arm this time. Vann came with them. "It's a big
jump from tips about admirals to making some accusations. Oh--your
message said you had some more on this guy Ward?"

Vann nodded and fished a notebook out of his vest pocket. They stopped
next to the Suburban.

"This guy is apparently one of those security consultants or
contractors--take your choice--who specialize in doing trash hauling for
important clients in this town."

"Trash hauling?" asked Grace.

"Yeah, well, a combination of strong-arm, discreet muscle for hire,
surveillance work, bodyguard, some PI stuff, bagman--all the
not-so-polite scut work that goes on behind the thousand-dollar-a-day
guys in the silk suits. I talked to a buddy at the IRS who 'lent' me a
ten ninety-nine printout--shows who wrote him or his PI agency some
checks, those who bothered to file. Then I talked to some of those
people. They all knew him, but they got real vague real fast when I
asked what he did for them. They all said he was a big motherfu--guy, so
if he's the dude was following you, Miss. Snow, you need to take care.

Some of these guys are medium bent."

"Any connection to the Navy?" Dan asked.

"Nope. His clients are mostly political types: committee staffers,
lobbyists, one lawyer whom we love to hate downtown, one company that's
supposedly a front for the CIA, and an import-export licensing
firm--people like that."

"Are these activities legal?" Dan asked.

"What they do is legal; what they have him do probably is a mixture.

These guys operate almost entirely in the shadows; the last time you got
to see lots of them was Watergate."

"I think I was in high school," Dan said with a smile.

Vann grinned. "Sorry to hear it, sonny."

"Thank you for arranging this,
Captain," Grace said.

"That poor woman in there deserves better than having this thing just
fade away."

Vann's face became entirely serious. "For her, none of this is going to
fade away. Or for me." He looked at her steadily. "You've figured it
out, haven't you Miss. Snow? I saw you looking at that picture and then
at me in there."

"He was your son, wasn't he, Captain?" Grace said
softly. Dan was startled. He had never considered that possibility. He
watched Vann's face work its way through several expressions. Finally,
he spoke.

"Yeah. It's a complicated story. Things here ... well, they just didn't
work out. Wesley never forgave me for leaving. When I came to
Elizabeth's funeral--she was Angela's child by her first husband--Wesley
wouldn't speak to me. He was so damn torn up by the whole thing. But I
didn't figure it was anything other than her getting killed that way, so
damn ... wastefully.

Neither one of them told me anything about this.

That's why when you came along--"

"I think I understand," Grace said.

"I doubt it, Miss. Snow," Vann said after a few seconds.

"But thanks for the sympathetic tone of voice.

Commander, you know your way back to town from here? This can be an
interesting neighborhood at night."

"I think so," Dan said, looking around.

Vann nodded and looked as if he was going to say something else, but
then he shook his head. "Let's all talk tomorrow, shall we? I think I
need to go back inside for a while."

"We'll be in touch, Captain," Grace
said.

Vann nodded, shook hands with both of them, and went back up the steps.

Dan took off his uniform coat as Vann went into the house, and then he
unlocked the doors, holding the curb door open for Grace to get in.

He hung his uniform jacket up on the hook above the backseat and walked
around to get in. Neither of them spoke until they were back out on
Pennsylvania Avenue, headed back into the city. The dome of the Capitol
gleamed faintly in the distance through the growing mist.

"How the hell did you glom on to that little secret?" he asked her
finally as they went over the Sousa Bridge.

"Like he said, the pictures. And I've never been able to put a finger on
why he was in the game--if he thought they had a homicide to work, he's
enough of a proto have turned it over to one of the Homicide squads.

But the pictures, and the way she kept looking over to him for
guidance--it had to be something like that."

Dan nodded. The trained investigator at work, he mused. But she had been
right on the mark. He gunned it to get through a yellow light; he was
not comfortable stopping on these streets.

"It will complicate things, I think," he said.

"Why?"

"Because he's freelancing, and he may not be able to confront the people
I think we'll have to confront with this."

"Freelancing? That's funny,"

she said, going on to explain why. He smiled, but it didn't relieve the
problem.

"I've got to talk to Summerfield," he said. "He'll know how to do this.

I'm way the hell out of my league."

As he drove the rest of the way, they talked about the Hardin family and
speculated on what the relationships had been. By the time they reached
Georgetown, it was close to 9:30. It being a Sunday night, even the
Georgetown traffic had thinned out, and there was even a double parking
space in front of Grace's house. Dan pulled in, partially across the
driveway. Her front porch light was on.

"You turn that light on?" he asked.

"No, it has an electric eye. Comes on after dark. Otherwise, I'd forget
the darn thing all the time. Why don't you come in for a little while."

"Yeah, that's a plan."

he locked up the Suburban and walked her through the iron gate. She
stopped to make sure the BMW was locked, then remembered that Dan's car
had to show a parking permit. Finally, they went up to the front door.

She fumbled for keys and then unlocked the door and stepped through,
with Dan right behind her. As he turned to close the door behind him, he
heard her inhale sharply.

"Comdr. Daniel Collins, U.S. Navy?" a harsh voice demanded, practically
in his ear. Dan whirled around from the door and saw a huge man, all in
black, standing right in front of him, a head taller than he was, a
ferocious expression on his face.

"What--" he began, but then the big man pole axed him in the stomach and
his head and chest snapped forward as all the breath whooshed out of his
lungs, his entire middle a blaze of pain. He was unable to straighten
up, to raise his arms, to do anything, and then what felt like a tree
fell on his neck and he pitched over into a black roaring canyon.

after dropping dan, the man turned to face Grace Snow, who was frozen in
her tracks, her mouth open but nothing coming out, her eyes wide. Before
she could move, he stepped in very close to her, grabbed the front of
her blouse with one enormous, gloved paw, and lifted her up on her toes.

His face was something out of a nightmare, big, rawboned, with terrible
scars all over his throat. There was a strong smell of whiskey on his
breath.

"And you, you must be Miss. Snow of the NIS, right?"

the man growled in her face. His breath really stank.

"Formerly of the NIS, I think is more accurate, right, Miss. Snow?"

Grace, flailing, raised her right hand and tried to push him away, but
he caught her wrist in his left hand and squeezed; he was so strong that
it felt like a car was running over her wrist, and she cried out
reflexively, her left side turning to him as if in some grotesque
jitterbug move. Desperate now, she tried to knee him in the groin,
achieving a solid hit with her left knee. To her horror, he just laughed
at her again, then kneed her in the groin. She yelled and crumpled
forward with the lancing pain, wrenching her neck as he held her up, now
completely off the floor, like a rag doll. Then he dropped her, letting
her hit the wooden floor on her hands and knees, and kicked her arms out
from under her before kneeling down with one rock-hard knee into her
back. As she fell, she knocked over a card table by the front door,
shattering the small glass lamp in the process. He ignored the broken
glass and pinned her arms behind her hard enough to make her cry out
again. The pain from her groin was awful; she thought she would be sick.

Then she heard a ripping noise and felt some kind of tape being wrapped
around her wrists.

When her arms were bound behind her, he lifted her head, again wrenching
her neck. He was looking into her terrified eyes, his own eyes blazing
with hate, and then out of nowhere he slapped her so hard, she literally
saw stars and fainted.

Malachi stood up and surveyed the scene. Navy was rolled up in a fetal
ball, his head almost between his knees, his head twisted sideways, out
cold. Yo, Navy boy. Now you know what Pearl Harbor felt like. The woman
was bent in the middle like a hairpin, the left side of her face bright
red from where he'd slapped her, and her arms secured behind her with
duct tape. Her dress had rucked up in their struggle, and her left leg
was exposed all the way up to her white panties. He looked at her for a
moment and then lifted the rest of her dress with the tip of his shoe,
staring at her nakedness.

But there was nothing in it for him. She was just meat. He prodded her
breast with his foot and she moaned. Welcome to the NFL, honey bunch, he
thought.

He turned away and bent down over Collins. He took the roll of duct tape
and began pulling off a continuous strip of tape and wrapping it around
Collins's head, from his hairline all the way down to under his jaw,
leaving only the barest slit in front of his nose. Using his elbow, he
hit Collins on the left side of his nose, starting an immediate
nosebleed. There, he thought. Now he'll have to be real careful with his
breathing when he wakes up. He took some more duct tape and wrapped it
around Collins's left wrist, then pulled his left arm and wrist between
his legs, forced his right arm under his right buttock, and then taped
the two together, forearm to forearm, leaving Collins totally
immobilized. The final step was to tape Collins's fingers together so he
couldn't get a hold on anything when he came to. He considered taping
his feet together but then decided to leave them free. If he struggled
when he came to, he'd soon find out that he had to choose between
drowning from that nosebleed or staying perfectly still.

He took a quick look around. He had rigged the house in case he had to
get out quickly: The back door was unlocked and partially open, as was
the back gate.

The phone line was cut. The gasoline was also ready.

He looked out the front windows, listened for a moment, and then nodded
with satisfaction. It had been a perfect surprise attack. He had
especially loved the expression on her face, just like the country song
said, that "deer in the high beams" look, when she saw what happened to
her boyfriend. Standard procedure: Hit the woman first, you have an
enraged guy on your hands; take out the guy first, the woman will stand
there in shock every time. He turned back to the woman, got behind her,
grabbed her under her armpits, and pulled her up the stairs, her heels
thumping up each step, and toward the bedroom, which was all prepared
for her coming interview.

Back downstairs, Dan came to in a haze of pain, almost totally
disoriented. He could neither see nor hear, and it felt as if he was
trying to breathe through a wet cotton plug stuffed into his nose. He
tried to open his eyes, but they were literally stuck together. Then he
realized that his head was wrapped in something sticky, his whole face,
ears, mouth, eyes, most of his nose, lips, all covered up and seemingly
solidified, like a mummy. An image of Wesley Hardin flooded his
forebrain, and for a moment he panicked, his heart racing out of
control, until he remembered what had happened. Grace. What had the
bastard done with Grace! He tried to call out for her, but suddenly he
could not breathe anymore, his nose filling with a warm, sticky fluid,
causing him to swallow and then sneeze violently. With his mouth taped
shut, the sneeze made things a lot worse, and he ended up gargling
uncontrollably, a drowning sensation sweeping over him before he fought
it back and regained control of himself. He took a painfully slow
breath, inhaling in little tiny bites of air past the obstruction in his
nose, then exhaled forcefully, feeling the spray on his shirt front, but
he could breathe now, and he did, twice, three times, getting a grip on
himself, repeating the process, and then discovering that part of the
problem was that he could not straighten out.

His forearms were taped together between his legs, and his hands felt
like big sticky paws. His first effort to pull his forearms apart sent a
spear of pain into his groin, so he gave that up right away. Worse, his
neck felt all mushy from the bottom of his head to the top of his spine,
especially on the left side, and there was a core of pain in his stomach
where that guy had hit him in the first place. He tried to think of who
this guy could be and what this was all about, but there was a red haze
in front of his taped-shut eyes. He knew he had to move, get out of all
this tape before that guy came back, or he was dead meat. The front
door.

Maybe he could get to the front door, attract some attention from the
street. How? Where is the front door?

he thought. I don't know, but gotta move, gotta move.

Scrunching like an inchworm on its side, he started across the floor,
not knowing if he was headed for the door or the kitchen or the bottom
of the stairs or into a wall. No sight, no sound, not even any feel from
the skin on his face. He could move a couple of inches, snort his nose
clear, move again, snort again. This is hopeless, he thought. I could be
going in a circle down here. He forgot to snort, and a small river of
blood welled into his throat, almost causing him to lose it again.

He tried to move his hands and his arms; maybe he could pull that leg
through--he was pretty limber from all the rowing, but there was simply
no room. He inched again, then one more time. Snort, clear that nose.

Inch. Snort. Carpet's gonna be a mess; they'll never let us in that rug
store again. And then something sharp pricked the balls of two fingers
on his right hand.

He froze, his fingers stinging with pain. Glass. Broken glass. Broken
glass can cut the tape. But not without fingers. Nothing to hold the
glass with. Shit! The bastard really had him. He almost cried in
frustration, except that his eyes were taped shut. And then he realized
that the tips of his fingers were bleeding. And moving.

Moving! The damn blood was dissolving the tape mastic. That's right--if
this is duct tape, water turns it into a sticky, soggy mass. Blood.

Gotta have more blood.

He wiggled around on the floor, searching for more glass, finally
finding it when a shard punctured his knee and then the back of his
right arm. Focusing furiously, he tracked the shard of glass with his
skin, positioning it and himself so that he could touch it with the tips
of his fingers, then jabbing at it, exulting in the sharp little stings
and then the greasy, sticky feel of blood. He rolled sideways, trying to
force his bound hands into the air so that the blood would flow back
into the tape, then straining with his fingers and his hands, pulling
his hands back and forth until finally, after what seemed like forever,
he could feel the tape moving slightly along his fingers.

Malachi had dragged Grace up the stairs and into her bedroom at the back
of the house. He pitched her up on the bed, her hands still bound behind
her back, and then closed the door. He turned on her bedside lamps and
then picked up a large, sharp kitchen knife and cut the tape on her
wrists. He rolled her onto her back, pulled her arms up to the
headboard, and retaped her wrists to the bedposts; then he pulled her
legs apart and taped her ankles with several straplike segments of tape
to the foot board. She whimpered, her eyes still shut, as he pulled her
body into a spread-eagled position. He took another short hank of duct
tape and smacked it down over her mouth. He would let her see and let
her breathe. It didn't matter if she saw him, he thought, because if
these two were what he thought they were, neither one of them was going
to survive the night. She whimpered again and turned her head, keeping
her eyes closed tight.

While she was coming around, he pulled her makeup table over to the side
of the bed, where she would be able to see it. He pulled a large black
bundle out of his equipment bag and opened the Velcro straps that held
it rolled up. Inside were several surgical instruments, a
stainless-steel handsaw, a cranium drill, a mixed set of scalpels,
forceps, hemostats, rib spreaders, and a variety of clamps, their
stainless- and chromium-steel surfaces gleaming in the light of the
bedside-table lamps. He positioned the implements on the table so that
she would be able to see all of them clearly. He reached into the bag
and brought out a small mason jar of alcohol, which he opened and set
next to the implements.

She coughed once and then groaned, but she still did not open her eyes.

He went into the bathroom and found a pitcher she used to water the
house plants that were set under the bedroom windows. He filled it with
cold water, came back into the bedroom, walked over to the head of the
bed, and poured the entire contents into her face. She jumped, straining
at the tape, coughed, spluttered through her nose, and opened her eyes.

"Reveille, reveille, reveille," he intoned. "Welcome back to the world,
Miss. Snow. At least for a little while."

She looked frantically around the room, refusing to meet his gaze, and
he laughed at her.

"Looking for Navy? Navy's downstairs. He's a bit wrapped up at the
moment, but he's doing fine, as long as he doesn't try to move. Or
breathe very much."

He sat down on the edge of the bed and ran his hand over her face to
check the tape. She flinched at the feel of his hand.

"What's the matter, Miss. Snow? Don't care for a man's hands on you? Or
is it just on your face? Is that it? How about here--is that better? Or
here, yeah, that's better, isn't it? No?"

He touched every part of her, gently and then harder, massaging her
breasts and then her belly and then between her legs with his gloved
hand, watching her face all the while. So much meat, that's all it was.

Too bad, she was very pretty. Maybe a little thin for his taste, but
what the hell. Once upon a time, he would have had a hard-on by now, but
now there was nothing left down there. Thanks to a woman. Which was why
when she kicked him, he had laughed at her. He laughed at her now,
sliding his hand up under that long dress, between her legs, his gloved
thumb probing the softness of her sex. She was starting to cry.

"This game is called hearts and minds, Miss. Snow," he said. "When we
were in Vietnam, we were supposed to be fighting'for the slopes' hearts
and minds. Mcnamara's counterinsurgency bullshit. What the sergeants all
knew was that if you grabbed them by the balls, their hearts and minds
would follow you anywhere. And that's what I want from you Miss. Snow--I
want your heart and mind to follow me through some questions here, okay?

Okay?"

She jumped when he raised his voice with the second "okay?" and then she
nodded.

"Very good, Miss. Snow." He withdrew his hand from under her dress.

"That's much better. Hearts and minds, yes, ma'am, that's how we did it
in Nam, hearts and minds, and then maybe some of these little numbers,
over here, Miss. Snow, yeah, over here, what do you think?"

He watched her face as she focused on the surgical implements, watched
her eyes widen, that "deer in the bright lights" look appearing again.

Shit, this was no pro. She was too soft, too easily frightened. A pro
would have shown fear but would have been looking around, calculating
how to get out of this fix. But what the hell--she was the bird in hand,
so to speak. He started picking up the implements, one by one, naming
them, telling her what they were for, embellishing the details of how
they worked. When he was finished, she was visibly trembling, and he
leaned forward and placed the bone saw on her chest, just under her
chin. He jostled the bottle of alcohol, spilling a little, filling the
room with the smell. He patted her cheek, laughing when she flinched
behind the duct tape again, and he then got off the bed.

"Scrub time," he announced over his shoulder, heading for the bathroom.

"Cleanliness is next to godliness, I always say. How about you, Miss.

Snow? Don't go away."

He went into the bathroom and turned on the faucets.

Give her time to let her imagination run a little bit. He had no
intention of really using any of that stuff except maybe the scissors,
but a guy who had been fired from the CIA had taught him that nothing
you could do or say was as scary as what they could think up using their
own fervid imaginations. Properly stimulated, of course. He took off the
black leather gloves and then looked at his face in the mirror. Should
probably go down and check on Navy. Fuck it, he wasn't going anywhere.

Might even have choked to death by now. That was okay, too. But still
... He left the water running and came back out of the bathroom.

Ignoring the woman tethered on the bed, he went to the bedroom door and
opened it up and listened.

There were no sounds from downstairs. He closed the door again. Nothing
happening downstairs.

He went back into the bathroom and started washing his hands.

He stared at his face in the mirror. You've really done it now, Malachi,
he thought. Kidnap appetizer, murder for two coming up. The Hardin girl
was murder, dummy. No it wasn't--that was manslaughter.

Woman-slaughter, to be politically correct. The bitch went the wrong
damn way, just like most of them did when they were driving. And her
brother? Well, that wasn't supposed to have happened either. The Guidos
screwed that one up. Neither of them supposed to be whacked. Screwups,
both of them. Not deliberate. But the whole thing had come apart, just
like so many things in this goddamn town. How many really big messes in
this town had begun over nothing more than a series of screwups? He took
a deep breath through his nose, filling his chest while he watched his
face in the mirror. He had found her liquor supply while prepping the
house, and the bourbon hadn't been half bad --a little weak, not like
the Harper hundred, but good enough. He could feel that familiar core of
warmth in his stomach, all his nerve ends nicely pacified and his mind
running at top end. Amazing what a little jolt or six could do for you.

But this here business tonight, this was going to be clear-cut. He was
going to confirm that the captain had sent them, and then he was going
to immobilize them both and set the house afire. Two quarts of high-test
gasoline were waiting on the kitchen table. Keeping it indirect, of
course. He wouldn't kill them--but the fire might. Yeah, might. And then
he was going to seek out his former employer, the good captain, and
break his back. That one, he would do directly. And if the captain's
almighty principal came over the horizon, showed up at the right place
at the wrong time, he'd ice him, too. About time one of the great men
paid the piper, instead of just all the snuffles. Then he was going to
disappear right out of this town. The only thing he couldn't change
about his appearance was his size and his voice, but he had enough
vehicles and papers and money to disappear with ease. He searched his
conscience, but, like his sexual drive, it was long gone. So, hey, let's
get to it.

The water from the sink had begun to steam up the mirror, so he shut it
off and dried his hands. He pulled the automatic from his right-front
waistband and stuffed it into his pants at the middle of his back. In
the sudden silence, he fished out the pair of rubber gloves from his
pocket and snapped them on, making lots of noise for the benefit of the
"patient" in the bedroom.

He had thought about wearing a mask but then had discarded the idea. His
face probably lent a certain something to the proceedings. Holding his
gloved hands dramatically up in the air in front of him, he went back
into the bedroom.

By wedging his right hand between the hard floor and his left forearm,
Dan had managed to start the wad of blood-soaked tape moving. After
several tugs, he got two fingers of his right hand free. Now, where's
that shard of glass? Gone. He felt all around the floor for it, but it
was gone. Gotta move around, find another piece of glass. He bumped his
head against something and grunted, and then he thought he heard a door
open somewhere. He froze. Upstairs. The sound was coming from the second
floor. Don't make noise. Don't make that bastard come back down here and
kick your head in. Grace's only chance is if you get out of this. He
heard the door close again, definitely upstairs, and started his blind
inchworm act again. Find it. Find it.

Find it. Don't think about what's happening up there, just get free. His
nose started bleeding in earnest again, and he had to snort it clear
several times while he did his blind crawl. Finally, the back of his
right hand landed on something sharp. He froze, then carefully,
carefully rotated his hand, having to twist his whole body because of
all the tape, until he got the piece of glass between his thumb and
forefinger. Twisting his hand, he started sawing on the band of tape
that bound his wrist to his other forearm. It was very hard to do.

The same blood that had dissolved the mastic now made it almost
impossible to hold on to the glass. He dropped it several times,
freezing each time so that he could find it again. After an eternity of
effort, he was able to twist his right wrist and feel the wonderful
sound of tape tearing. The more the tape tore, the more he could move
his hands, and the more he could cut. Within a minute, he had freed his
arms; he could finally sprawl on the floor in something besides the
fetal position, the shard of glass gripped tightly in his right hand.

He recovered his breathing for a moment and then went to work on the
face tape, cutting straight up from the nose slip, slicing his cheek in
the process but not stopping, cutting until he reached his hairline. He
took a deep breath and then ripped the tape off his face in both
directions, gulping great drafts of air through his mouth now that he
was free. Free. Using his teeth, he tore the rest of the tape off his
hands. Gotta get up there, get Grace out of there.

But how? The guy was a monster. He needed a weapon. Dumb shit, What you
need is help. Call the cops. Call 911. Then go after the bastard. He
rolled over onto his hands and knees, then made the mistake of trying to
stand up. There was a loud buzzing noise in his ears as he raised his
head to get up, and then a great sheet of purple pain flowed from the
back of his neck and across his eyes. He collapsed onto the floor, his
neck on fire.

He lay there for a minute, trying to get his bearings and swallow down
the waves of nausea roaring through his body. The guy had rabbit-punched
him, and now his neck didn't work. Tough to walk with no neck. How the
hell did those guys in the movies manage it? His neck felt like it was
broken. Okay, so crawl. But get to a phone. He crawled like a baby,
elbows down, hips scrunching forward, elbows moving, then hips again. He
was unable to really lift his head, his chin bumping along the carpet in
the living room and on through to the dining room. He could see the
white phone cord coming out of the wall. But how to reach the phone. It
was way the hell up there, on the table. Pull it down.

It'll make noise. He'll hear it. He rolled over on his back and began
pulling on the cord. Slowly. You're gonna catch it when it falls. No
noise. No noise. His nose had started bleeding again. Won't wear this
shirt again, will we? Flat on his back now, he kept pulling, his eyes
locked on the edge of the dining room table until the phone appeared.

Now. Sit up. Maybe you can reach it. But his head was buzzing again, and
his vision was fading in and out. Lots of pretty colors, though.

The buzzing grew louder.

Malachi walked over to the bed. The woman was all eyes, staring at him,
her mouth trying to work under the tape; she was making a sort of mewing
sound. He stood over her for a minute, picked up the bone saw and
examined it before putting it back down on the table, and then began to
rearrange the surgical implements on the table, as if trying to decide.

He sloshed a little more alcohol out onto the table to heighten the
atmosphere.

"What I've got to know, Miss. Snow," he began, "is why you have my name
down there on that pad of paper.

My name and two little words with it: Captain and Target"

He looked over at her to see if she was watching. She was. Good girl. He
picked through the instruments while he talked to her, picking each one
up, turning each of them over an dover. Letting her watch. Letting the
light make them gleam.

"See," he continued, "when I was here the other night, I sort of read
your mail. Yeah, that's right, I've been here before. And that's when I
knew that you and I were destined to meet. Here's my theory, okay? I
think the captain has hired you to come after me because of the Hardin
problem. You remember the Har din problem, don't you? Just nod your
head. That's right. Okay. So that's what I need to know."

He stopped and looked down at her.

"You know, you don't look very comfortable. Why don't we make you a
little more comfortable, okay?

Let's start with all these clothes."

He picked up the large pair of surgical scissors and, starting at the
hem of her dress, began cutting straight up, right alongside the line of
buttons, cutting the slip and the dress together, all the way up to the
shirttails of her blouse, and then cutting that, too, until he reached
the V of her blouse. He pulled all the fabric aside and then he cut down
either arm, baring her shoulders as he flattened the remains of the
dress and the blouse and the slip. Her bra and panties were bright white
in the light of the table lamp as he cut them off, snipping all the
elastic and straps until he was able to brush everything aside. He put
the scissors back on the table and then folded the cut clothing away
from her body, pulling it out from under her and leaving her totally
exposed on the bed. He sat back and admired his handiwork. Damn the
German whore again for the thousandth time. What a waste.

She was crying again, her eyes squeezing shut, her mouth working under
the gray duct tape. She didn't know it, but there was nothing sexual
about this part: Naked and pinioned on her back, she was totally,
inescapably helpless. He reached up and ripped the tape off her lips in
a single pull. She cried out but then went silent, tears welling in her
eyes.

"Don't cry," he said. "You think I'm going to rape you. I'm not going to
rape you. You kicked me, remember?

I mean, after all, what kind of a guy can do a good rape after a kick in
the balls, hunh? Have to be a really special guy, don't you think? But
you know what? I am special. Look at me, bitch!"

She jumped when he yelled at her, her eyes getting wide again. She
mumbled something, her voice unintelligible.

"That's right, Miss. Snow, I'm a really special guy," he said, getting
up off the bed and moving up to stand next to her head. "Really special.

Here, take a look. / said: take a look!"

He undid his belt and pulled his trousers down over his hips. The gun
dropped out on the carpet with a clunk, but he ignored it. He wanted her
to look. He wanted her to understand that she was going to be a part of
paying off an old debt. Standing no more than two feet from her face, he
pulled down his underwear.

She gasped at the sight of his mutilated groin, at the web of pale white
belt-sized scars crisscrossing where his sex should have been.

"See, Miss. Snow?" he hissed, leaning over her. "I can't fuck anybody. I
can't even piss like a guy anymore.

I have to squat, just like you girls, Miss. Snow." He continued, his
voice rising, the fury returning as he yanked his clothes back together.

"A god damned woman did this to me, Miss. Snow. And I swore that I would
never, never, ever let another woman hurt me again. So when I found my
name and that word Target on your little notepad down there, Miss. Snow,
I decided to come back here and take care of business. So that's why I'm
here and why you're there, and now you're going to answer my questions.

Because if you don't, I'm going to select one of these little toys and
maybe do unto you what that woman did unto me. I'm not a doctor, of
course, but I can make a stab at it, so to speak.

Understand? Understand?"

She swallowed hard, nodded her head mutely, and finally got a single
word out. "Yes."

He smiled then, an unlovely smile, and shook his head in mock
wonderment. "God love a woman with no clothes on who says yes, Miss.

Snow."

dan came back around after a minute or so, to find himself facedown on
the floor, his head throbbing, breathing rapidly, and sweating like a
pig. He tried to figure out where he was, and then the realization of
precisely where he was and why jolted him fully awake.

The phone. He turned over very slowly, careful not to invoke that
buzzing noise again. He had to be very careful; he must have a
concussion. He started tugging on the phone line again, until the
instrument was teetering on the edge of the table, and then down it came
in a cascade of instrument and handset, the phone hitting him in the
stomach and the handset bouncing off his cheekbone--but noiselessly.

Grab it, grab it and make the call. 911--three easy numbers. Just wait
for the dial tone--there was no dial tone. The phone was stone dead. He
put it down on the floor. The bastard must have killed the phones while
he was waiting for them.

Of course he would have.

Upstairs. The sounds of the door opening and closing had come from
upstairs. Gotta get up there. Right fucking now.

He rolled over again, tried to collect himself on his hands and knees,
and it was okay, not terrific, but okay, the buzzing noise coiling at
the edges of the room, the room not moving around too much. The kitchen.

Get a weapon of some sort out of the kitchen and get up there before ...

before ... He didn't want to think about what was going on up there. He
crawled into the kitchen, still on his hands and knees. The door. The
back door was open. Fuck the back door. Go out the front door, get to
the street, and maybe crawl next door. Get help. And leave Grace? No
way. He pulled a drawer open. Towels. He pulled another one out.

Knives. Maybe he should get a knife. No way. Guy was too big; he would
have to get real close to use a knife, and he could barely move. The
next drawer came out and emptied itself on the floor. Baking equipment:
sifters, cake pans. Wait. There was one of those straight rolling pins,
the ones without the handles. A club. Shit.

But a club, a club he could throw. He'd have one chance, surprise the
fucker, step through the door with it in his hands, and when the guy
came at him, he'd try to throw it underhand and hit him between the
eyes.

You're a pitcher. This would be the ultimate slow pitch.

David and Goliath. Right. Move your ass.

Clutching the rolling pin in his left hand, still on his hands and
knees, he scuttled across the linoleum floor to the dining room and then
back into the living room --which was when he heard Grace scream.

Malachi had slapped her when she screamed. He'd asked her a simple
question--"Did the captain send you after me? Yes or no?"--and she had
tried to lie.

She'd said no, no one had sent her, asked which captain he was talking
about, there were so many, and then he'd picked up a hemostat and
clamped it onto her right nipple, and the bitch had screamed. His slap
shut her right up, though. She wasn't entirely stupid.

"Don't lie to me, bitch. I've taped your phones. I know all about
Captain Vann. The one you met with tonight. With Mrs. Hardin. Don't tell
me you're not working for him, because when he calls, you go. And you
got Navy down there to go with you. On the Hardin case. So I know what
this is about, okay? But here's what I have to know: Is this Captain
Vann working for the vice-chiefs flunky, Captain--"

At that instant, the bedroom door burst open, and Malachi whirled
around. He was stunned to see Dan in the doorway, but then he almost
laughed. Navy was in the doorway all right, Navy with his swollen face,
blood all over his face and shirt, patches of hair missing from his
forehead, Navy wobbling around in the doorway as if his head wasn't
screwed on right, and holding a fucking rolling pin!

"Oh shit, oh dear," Malachi said, straightening up.

He felt for the gun but then remembered it had fallen on the floor. Not
a problem, he thought, looking at

Dan. Not a problem at all. Look at this bozo. Check it out, friends and
neighbors.

"Well, if it isn't Julia Child," he sneered. "Is she gonna bop me with
that big bad rolling pin? Gonna run me right outta her kitchen?"

He laughed again, and then, hunching his shoulders, he lunged across the
room, but Navy did something with his arm--he couldn't follow it,
really--a whirl of motion, like a softball pitch, and then something hit
him directly in his right eye, like a cannonball. He screamed and
grabbed his face, unable to stop his forward momentum, dimly aware that
Navy had fallen down in the doorway. Get you, you motherfucker, get you.

Bending forward to get--but then he was hit in the right shin by another
cannonball, and his leg gave way, pitching him right over the flailing
figure on the floor and out into the hallway, to the top of the stairs,
where he just stopped himself from going over by grabbing the
balustrade. Jesus Christ, his leg was broken; he'd heard it crack. And
his eye, his fucking eye--but then the crazy bastard was on him,
screaming at him, hitting him with something. Have to get away. Let go.

And then he was sliding down the stairs, the guy screaming something
about knowing who he was, saying they were going to get him, that they
knew everything. And then he went crashing onto the first-floor landing,
by the front door, knocking a leg on the overturned card table and
picking up a handful of broken glass as he tried to break his fall.

There was an instant of silence when the lunatic stopped screaming at
him from the top of the stairs. He rolled over and got up on his hands
and knees, the movement almost making him throw up, his leg hurt so bad.

His right eyeball felt like red-hot jelly, and then there was a noise.

He looked up the stairs and damn near fainted: Navy had his gun and was
firing at him.

The 9-mm was bucking in the guy's bloody hands with that unmistakable
Hamming sound; he could hear the bullets blasting holes in the front
door and the floor and the window and the wall, just like goddamn
Frankfurt again, except that that wasn't Terry Eastman and he wasn't
Inge. He rolled once, twice, out of the line of fire, not sure he'd been
hit, but scrambling to get clear, his leg and his eye screaming at him,
a hot gush of nausea surging up his throat.

He picked himself up in the sudden silence, holding on to the sofa to
steady himself, his right leg dangling underneath him. Mother fucker! How
the hell had he gotten loose? Go get your other goddamn gun and go back
up there and waste both of them. Right now. But he knew he couldn't: His
eye felt like mush and he was afraid even to touch it. He was having
trouble seeing out of the other eye now, and the pain in his leg was so
intense that he was seeing stars every time he moved.

He checked himself over but found no bullet holes.

Five rounds, missed every damn one of them. Typical fucking amateur.

Get out. Get out now while you can. She may have a gun stashed somewhere
up there that you didn't find.

Get out. You can't see for shit, and that leg is really going to slow
you down. No. Do what you were going to do originally: Salt the place
with gas, torch it, and then roll. He staggered back into the kitchen,
where the two mason jars were waiting.

Limping awkwardly, he brought one back out into the front hall, opened
it, and slopped a quart of high-test up the carpeted stairs, smashing
the bottle against the stairway wall when it was almost empty. Then he
took the other one and stumbled through the living room and study,
slopping gasoline on the furniture and the drapery, maintaining a trail
back to the front hall and the stairs. He had to keep taking deep
breaths to keep from vomiting, his leg and eye pulsing with bright
spears of pain every time he moved. He smashed the second jar against
the kitchen wall in a fury and then fully opened the back doors to the
pantry and the garden.

He limped back in to light it and saw the gas stove.

Even better, he thought. He lurched over to the stove, grabbed the
cook top with both hands, pulled it off the stove body, and dumped it
onto the kitchen floor in a crash, exposing the corrugated
natural-gas-supply pigtail.

He grabbed a big kitchen knife from an open drawer and chopped through
the thin metal, releasing a steady hiss of natural gas into the kitchen.

Then he got out his cigarette lighter and went back to the gasoline
trail in the study and lit it. There was a satisfying whoomping noise,
and the fire trail streaked around the downstairs like some malevolent
spirit. He watched for a few seconds and then dragged himself out the
back door and down to the garden gate, propping open the back door as he
went. When he got to the garden gate, he looked back. He could see the
flickering patterns of the flames beginning to grow in the downstairs
area of the house. He took a moment to collect himself and then lurched
through the gate, closing it behind him.

When the guy landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, Dan staggered
back into the bedroom and saw the gun on the floor. He grabbed it and
careened back out the bedroom door. He was wildly unsteady, his balance
shot to hell, but he had done it: He had nailed the bastard--a direct
hit with the rolling pin. Now he stood at the top of the steps, pointing
the gun at the scrambling figure below, trying to get his eyes focused,
pulling the trigger. But nothing was happening. The slide. Pull back the
god damned slide. He did and then pointed again, and this time there was
a satisfying explosion and a kick that raised his hand. He kept the
trigger held back and emptied the gun down the stairs, only dimly aware
that the guy was rolling out of the line of fire.

When the gun stopped firing, he backed into the bedroom, slammed the
door, and slid down to the floor with a jolt to his neck that made his
head swim. He was having trouble seeing.

He was pretty sure he had actually blacked out for a moment when the guy
had tripped over the top of him and fallen on the floor at the top of
the stairs. He'd been aiming for the man's forehead and missed, but the
underhanded shot to the eye had done the trick, even though the effort
of the throw had caused Dan to collapse like a stringless puppet. But
the big man had been stunned long enough for Dan to grab the rolling pin
again as Ward tripped over him, and the fact that he was down on the
floor had enabled him to hit the bastard a second time, this time in the
shin.

He heard a sound from the bed. Grace. He turned around and stared. Her
eyes were wide with terror, her body was stretched obscenely across the
bed, a glinting surgical clamp of some kind clipped to her breast like
Cleopatra's asp.

"Oh Jesus," he said, getting up, wanting to avert his eyes. He heard
what sounded like a bottle breaking out in the stairwell. He froze in
place. Bastard's coming back. Block the door. Block the door. He turned
around and tried to lift her dresser bureau in front of the door, but he
lacked the strength and almost collapsed again. His neck felt like it
was connected to his spine by a tube of soft, hot sand. He tried a
second time. Slide it; don't lift it. He got the damn thing to move
sideways a little, and then a little more, until it partially blocked
the door. Then he staggered over to the bed, telling her it was okay, it
was going to be okay, removed the clamp, and used one of the scalpels to
cut her loose, rolling her into the bedspread to cover her, then holding
her from behind when she started into a heaving, sobbing fit. He was
comforting her, cupping his hands in front of her face as she began to
hyperventilate, when he felt rather than heard the compression wave of
the gasoline igniting in the stairwell.

He stopped breathing. He knew what that sound was: He'd felt that
thumping pressure wave before, in Navy fire-fighting school, at the
moment when the instructor tossed gasoline on the pool of diesel fuel
and then followed it with an ignition torch.

He rolled off the bed and looked around for the phone. No good--the
phone was dead. Grace, wrapped up in the bedspread, called his name when
he rolled off the bed. Then there was a crackling noise outside the
bedroom door, and the house felt like it was beginning to vibrate.

"What--" she said.

"He's set the house on fire. We've gotta get out of here. Are you hurt?"

"N-no," she said. "He was going to ... going to--"

"It's okay now. I hurt him. But my neck isn't working.

I can barely stand up. You're going to have to help me.

He's cut the phones. Which side is closest to the ground?"

She was trying to sit up, struggling with the bedspread, disoriented,
trying to understand his question.

"I don't ... I don't know," she mumbled, looking uncertainly at the
windows.

He lurched over to the window on the right side of the house, looked two
stories down, to some bushes and a brick wall. He thought he could see
an orange glow reflecting on the brick wall from the downstairs windows,
but the wall was too far away from the side of the house to get to. He
went to the other side, conscious that there was smoke coming in under
the bureau in front of the door.

"Grace," he said, "you have to get up. Get some clothes stuffed under
that door."

She stared at the bureau and the first tendrils of smoke coiling up into
the room for a moment before finally comprehending, and then she moved,
rolling out of the bed covers and scrambling naked across the room to the
bureau.

He looked out the other side window. Same deal. If the wall had been
only about three feet closer to the house, they could make it, but there
was a good eight feet between the house wall and the brick wall. Grace
was stuffing some clothes under the bureau, stopping some of the smoke,
and then she was hurriedly pulling on some clothes. Good, he thought,
she's back in battery.

He went to the back window of the bedroom, saw immediately that they
could get onto the roof of the back porch.

"Okay!" he shouted. "Here's our way out."

He tried to open the window, but it was stuck, probably painted shut. He
tried again, but the effort sent his head spinning. He slumped down for
a moment to cradle his head in his hands--which is when he found out the
carpet was warm, very warm.

"Grace," he yelled, "we gotta move--the whole downstairs is going. Help
me open this window!"

Grace ran back over to the window, barefoot, but with shorts and a
sweater on. She grunted and heaved against the window, and Dan tried to
help, but they couldn't budge it. While they were trying, Grace stepped
on the hardwood floor and yelled when it burned her feet. The floor was
clearly vibrating now as the fire in the kitchen, amplified by an
unlimited supply of natural gas and fresh air, was turning the
downstairs into a combustion chamber. There was an arcing noise from the
wall and the lights flickered out. The air in the room was suddenly
getting very hot. He realized that they had only seconds.

"Throw something through it!" he yelled, realizing that he was having to
yell because of the rumbling noise that was filling the house. There was
a loud crash from the front of the house, and the rumbling noise got
heavier, really shaking the floor now. Grace picked up the bench from
her makeup table and attacked the window until she had knocked most of
the glass out. Dan dragged the bedspread over and padded the bottom of
the window, conscious of the sounds of exploding windows downstairs and
then the shouting outside. He pushed Grace through the window, helping
her to turn around so that she was able to hang on to the edge of the
windowsill and the bedspread for a moment before dropping down onto the
porch roof and then sliding all the way off the roof into the shrubbery
below. Behind him, the bedroom door began to rattle in its frame as if a
banshee from hell was on the other side, howling to get in. As he looked
over his shoulder, all the paint on the door suddenly bubbled up into
large and viscous black blisters. The door started to warp outward,
revealing a bright yellow rectangle of firelight. He could hear air
being sucked out into the hallway as the drapes on either side of the
window billowed in toward the disintegrating door. He had planned to tie
the spread off and let himself down on it, but he knew that there was no
more time. He threw the spread through the window and onto the porch
roof and climbed through the window, his neck almost failing him when he
turned around and tried to hang for a moment, his hands stinging from
glass cuts.

"Drop, Dan, drop," Grace was screaming from the backyard. There was a
noise like a giant jet engine intake practically under his feet, coming
from the back door to the house. He let go and dropped in a heap onto
the slanting roof of the back porch, landing mostly on the bedspread,
skinning knees and elbows, and then tumbling off the roof into the same
clump of boxwood Grace had landed in. Grace was there in an instant,
dragging him and the bedspread away from the house just as a vicious
gout of flame howled out through the upstairs bedroom window, as if
searching for them.

Then there were people around him and the sounds of sirens. Safe from
the fire, he surrendered himself to the irresistibly cool comfort of the
damp grass.

malachi, his lungs bursting, had to stop when he reached the shadows at
the top of the Exorcist steps.

His leg was killing him, and his right eye had closed up entirely. He
had grabbed a rake on the way out of Snow's backyard, snapped off the
tines in the doorjamb of the gate, and used the handle as a makeshift
crutch in his escape through the back streets of the Cloisters. His leg
was obviously not broken, or he would not have been able to get this
far, but his shin felt like a bundle of twigs and the pain was
incredible. Instinctively, he knew the eye was more serious. He no
longer had stereo vision, and the socket was so puffy and swollen that
every involuntary blink sent a shot of white-hot pain jabbing back into
his skull. Even worse, the eye was leaking what felt like a clear fluid
down his cheek; if that was what he thought it was, he would have almost
preferred that it be bleeding.

He stood at the top of the steps, catching his breath, trying to will
the pain in his eye to subside. His view down the steep steps to M
Street was disturbing, the lack of one eye making it look even steeper
than it already was. Better down than up, he thought gamely, and forced
himself to start down the steps, having to turn sideways for each one,
leaning on the stick and putting his left leg down, then pivoting to
drag his right leg over the next step. The real bitch was that he hadn't
gotten his question answered. But maybe he had. He'd seen the look in
her eyes when he told her he knew all about Captain Vann. She had seemed
to wilt a little, as if she realized what was going to happen now that
he knew she'd been hired to take him out.

But it bothered him that she had been such a pushover.

He had found no weapons in the house or on her person. Nothing hidden in
her clothes, which had been the main reason he had taken her clothes
off--God knew, her naked body couldn't do anything for him.

The hitter woman who had frightened him several years ago had told him
she carried two guns on her body and another in her purse, as well as
having some razor blades sewn into the panels of her bra and a six-inch
surgical-steel hatpin in her hair. Snow should have mobilized her fear
into anger, screamed at him, fought back when he had her tied up on the
bed, but she had been thoroughly cowed, almost in shock. That bothered
him. Something not fitting together here. He stumbled on a step and very
nearly lost his balance, crying out in pain when he had to land on his
injured leg. He had to stop for a full minute to get his breath back and
to control the nausea.

And the hell of it was that now he didn't know if they survived the
fire. He had heard the sirens, and Navy had been upstairs, so he could
have untied her and gotten her out. But Navy had been fucked up, that
was clear--his rabbit punch had been expertly delivered; people tended
to forget that its name came from the blow designed to kill a rabbit.

But he nailed you, didn't he? He got lucky, that's all. He winced as he
remembered laughing at the ridiculous rolling pin. Thank God the guy
couldn't shoot for shit.

Reaching the bottom of the steps, he hobbled over to the closed gas
station on M Street and sat down heavily on a bench outside the men's
room. Damn, he needed a drink right about now. He looked across the busy
street at Key Bridge, at the steady flow of cars passing through the
orange glow of the streetlights. He was going to have to get across M
Street, then cross the bridge, make it up the hill to the Rosslyn Metro
station before it closed for the night, and get back up to Ball ston and
the Randolph Towers. No cabs. No rides.

And hopefully, no cops. With any luck, Navy and his girlfriend would
have their hands full with the fire long enough for him to get out of
the neighborhood. The bridge would present the greatest exposure if the
cops were out looking. So, hump time, Malachi. He took a deep breath and
launched himself off the bench and back onto his feet. His eye felt as
if it was going to fall out when he stood up, and he had to grit his
teeth against the searing pain in his leg. Tomorrow. Concentrate on
tomorrow. Time enough then to figure out what to do. But it was clearly
going to involve the captain.

dan woke up in a corner of the emergency room at Georgetown University
Hospital. Blinking his eyes, he was able to recognize where he was
because the fabric curtains were stenciled with the hospital's name and
the initials ER in several places. Must be popular curtains, he thought.

His neck was in some kind of brace, his stomach hurt, and there were
bandages on his cheek, fingers, and left elbow. There were some people
standing right outside the curtains, talking softly. He tentatively
called Grace's name.

Grace came around the curtain and took his left hand in hers. She was
still wearing the ridiculous-looking shorts and a torn sweater, and she
had grass stains on her knees. Her face was pale on one side and red on
the other but the look in her eyes made him feel considerably better.

"Welcome back," she said as Captain Vann came into view behind her left
shoulder.

"Hey, man, what'd I tell you guys about freelancin', hunh?" he said with
a grin.

"Damn, Officer, all I did was take the girl home.

Early, even. But there was this bad dream waiting for us in the house."

Vann's face sobered. "Yeah, we're figuring that was Mr. Malachi Ward,
lately of Capitol Hill."

"Lately?"

"Yeah, he's booked. But Grace here, she says you dinged him
pretty good."

Dan tried to shake his head, but the brace had him confined. "I don't
know--I threw a god damned rolling pin at him, trying to knock him out,
but I got his eye instead. And I got him once in the leg, I think. Then
I emptied a nine-millimeter at him."

"You hit him?"

"Probably not. Mostly made a lot of noise, but it moved him along. It
happened kinda fast, and I didn't feel up to hot pursuit."

Vann looked at the neck brace. "He gave you a karate chop of some kind
on the neck. Doc says you're lucky he didn't break it."

"Feels like he did," Dan said with a sigh. "And the house?"

"All gone," Vann said. "Sucker used some gasoline, and then the city gas
company got into it. Nasty, hot, quick fire. You two were extremely
lucky."

Dan tried to massage the back of his neck. The brace felt awkward and
ugly, but it definitely helped--as long as he kept very still. Grace
squeezed his hand. "Severe sprain," she announced. "They've x-rayed it
and braced it. The doctor said it'll heal fairly fast but hurt for a
long time. They want to keep you here for the night."

He tried to shake his head, forgetting once again about the brace. "I
can't afford Georgetown--they need to get me to the Bethesda Naval
Hospital," he said.

She smiled at him and told him she had already taken care of the
hospital's paperwork witch. He focused on

her face then, especially the side that was all red. He could almost see
fingerprints--and that hemostat.

"How--" he began, but she shushed him.

"I'm fine. He slapped me around, but that was all."

Her eyes were telling him not to bring up the rest in front of Vann.

There was still a hint of panic in her face.

"We need to get a statement," Vann said. "And sooner is better than
later. We've gotta find this guy. I don't think it was in his plan that
you two were gonna get away."

"The cops check around the neighborhood?"

"Yeah, but he vanished. He may have gone over the Key Bridge to
Virginia. By the time our guys talked to their guys ..." He shrugged.

"I'll bet," Dan said. "Let's do this. They've got my neck braced. At
these prices, I'd sleep better in my own tree. Can you maybe give us a
ride over to my house in Alexandria? Grace is going to need somewhere to
stay, and I can talk to your guys there as well as here. Or even in the
car."

Vann pursed his lips. "You'd be safer here than at home; remember, Ward
also got away."

"My guess is we're okay, at least for tonight. He wasn't in any shape to
mount another attack," Dan replied, watching Grace's face. Her mouth was
working, and her eyes jumped every time there was a loud noise outside
the curtains.

Vann finally nodded. "Yeah, okay. The docs are gonna hassle you some;
man said he wanted to check you in, get some more pictures on that neck
tomorrow.

But what the hell. I hate hospitals, too."

It took a full hour to get discharged, but finally they were on their
way back to Old Town in Vann's cop car.

Another unmarked car was behind them, with two Homicide detectives from
the District on board. Dan was able to salvage his uniform trousers and
shoes and socks, but he had to wear a hospital pajama shirt when he left
the ER. His bloody shirt had been cut away when he had been brought into
the ER, in the mistaken belief that he had been shot. Grace had had to
acquire a pair of hospital slippers, having climbed out of the window
barefoot.

After they arrived at Dan's house, the two cops debriefed both of them
for an hour on tape, and then Vann, seeing that they were starting to
droop, shut it off. It was close to midnight when the Homicide cops
gathered up their taping equipment and went out front.

Vann, Grace, and Dan remained behind in the kitchen for a few minutes.

Dan's neck hurt with a steady, throbbing pain, but he was running on
caffeine for the moment, and some industrial-strength painkillers.

"We'll talk some more tomorrow," Vann said, taking his cup to the sink.

"Now that this has happened, we have an active case. Kidnap and
attempted homicide, not to mention a little first-grade arson. I've had
people tossing Ward's house on Capitol Hill tonight. We'll see what we
get. But we mostly have to figure out why he came after you two."

Grace shook her head. Dan could see that her face was gray around the
edges, and she sounded exhausted.

She had refused coffee, and now she was slumping in her chair. "I told
you," she said wearily. "He was trying to find out if we'd been hired by
someone, someone he thinks is you. There's something else going on, but
I don't know what it is."

"But hired to do what?"

"Come after him. That's what he said ... Dan, I
think I better go lie down now."

"Right," Vann said, getting up quickly,
looking over at Dan. "Gimme a call in the morning, okay? And we'll ask
the Arlington County cops to cruise by tonight.

Can't hurt."

Dan thanked him and Vann let himself out. Dan put his mug in the sink
and pulled Grace close.

"Nifty date, Miss. Snow. But I don't think your old man likes me."

But she didn't smile. She was shaking, and her breathing was getting
ragged. He hurried her upstairs to his bedroom, but she recoiled when
she saw the bed, starting to cry and holding on to him, her face buried
awkwardly between the neck brace and his shoulder.

He sat her down on the edge of the bed, stroked her hair, and tried to
calm her, but she was keening, speaking incoherently, shaking almost
uncontrollably, and then suddenly she sat up straight.

"Bathroom," she gulped, her face ashen.

He steered her into the bathroom, where she became violently ill,
vomiting into the toilet bowl with great retching heaves, crying the
whole time, and finally hyperventilating again. Dan could only kneel at
her side and hold her, awkwardly because of the neck brace.

When her convulsive heaves had stopped, he got a wet towel to clean her
face, making a mask out of it to stop her roaring inhalations as she
fought to recover her breath. When she finally subsided onto the floor,
it became obvious that she had lost control at both ends, and when she
realized that, she began crying again, but this time with less hysteria
and more anguish at what had just happened. Dan reached over and turned
on the shower, adjusting the temperature until it was just past the warm
stage, and then he took her clothes off and eased her into the shower.

He slowly raised the temperature while he held her, standing at the side
of the tub, letting the water wash away the horrors of the night. He
used a hand towel and soap to scrub her body. At first, she recoiled
again when he touched her, but he kept murmuring, "It's me, Grace. It's
just me.

It's all right. We're safe now; we're safe." Then she started to calm
down. The nipple of her right breast was swollen and bruised. She stood
in the shower until the house's elderly hot-water heater began to lose
the fight, and then he shut the water off, sat her down on the toilet
seat, and went to fetch towels from the linen closet across the hallway,
his neck brace dripping all over the floor.

After drying her off, he gave her one of his ancient flannel nightshirts
and a pair of wool socks, after she complained in a small voice that her
feet were cold, then put her in bed. Ever since the shower, she had kept
her eyes closed, as if she could keep the night at bay as long as she
did not open her eyes. He pulled the covers up to her neck and pushed
her damp hair away from her face. He undressed and found a second
nightshirt for himself, then went downstairs with the soiled clothes and
threw everything in the trash. He saw his Courvoisier bottle on the
sideboard, and he went to find two snifters. He double-checked the door
locks and then turned on every light on the ground floor before going
back upstairs with the two glasses of cognac. He left the hall light and
bathroom light on, with both the bedroom and bathroom doors cracked to
let some light into the bedroom. He turned off the bedroom light and
carefully sat down beside her in the bed, staying on top of the covers.

She was almost completely under the covers, nothing but the top of her
head showing. He gently touched her hair.

"I've got some cognac," he said softly, in case she was sleeping. He got
a definite

"Unh-unh" from somewhere down in the covers. Okay, be that way. He tried
some of the cognac and found that it tasted wrong. Probably the pills,
he thought. He decided to get rid of the neck brace for the night,
putting it over on the night table, from which it promptly rolled onto
the floor. He wondered fleetingly about his car, and what the hell he
would tell Summerfield in the morning about all this.

Then he noticed Grace's arm was out of the covers, tugging on the edge
of the blanket and the top sheet up by the pillow.

"What?" he asked.

"Get in here," she said, her voice still muffled by the covers. "Hurry.

I'm freezing."

at midnight, malachi lay on his back on the couch in the darkness of the
Randolph Towers apartment. His right leg was propped up on a chair in
front of the couch, with an ice pack covering the golf ball-sized knot
on his shin. His head was thrown back on the arm of the couch, with
another ice pack covering the whole right side of his face. He held the
bottle of Harper between his legs, his right hand clamped onto the neck
of the bottle, his functioning left eye closed, and his brain focused on
getting the next breath in and out of his chest. He could hear the
sounds of a television laugh track coming from the next apartment;
another insomniac in his box. A faint smell of cumin invaded the night
breeze that was blowing gently through the curtains covering the
partially opened balcony door.

The trek across the Key Bridge and up the hill to the Metro station had
been hell on wheels--defective wheels, at that. There had been a moment
out on the bridge when the cold black waters of the Potomac had
beckoned. He had been furious at his body's incapacity to handle pain
from what should have been two fairly low-level hits: a crack on the
shin and a smack in the eye. And, although he sensed that the eye injury
was serious, the pain from his shin had been incredible. The diciest
part had come when the Rosslyn Metro station manager had come down onto
the lower platform to see if he was all right after one of the people
waiting for a train had said something.

"Jesus, mister, you get mugged? You want a cop or a paramedic?"

Malachi, sitting on one of the concrete benches in a fog of pain, had
had to think fast when he heard the word cop, despite his throbbing
shin.

"My boyfriend caught me with another guy," he said.

"I'd just like to be left alone right now, if that's all right."

The station manager, an elderly black man, had retreated with a peculiar
look on his face. Malachi, thankful that prejudice against gays was
alive and well in America, was counting on the probability that a spat
between homosexuals was not worth a call to the cops.

The deskman at the Randolph Towers, an elderly Pakistani gentleman, had
also reacted to his appearance, but Malachi told him he'd been mugged
and had been down at the police station for hours and just wanted to get
to bed. The deskman was appropriately sympathetic, then went back to his
television.

He had taken a handful of aspirin when he got in, washed down by two
quick jolts of the Harper. He had had to cut part of his trousers leg
off his right shin-- there had been bleeding and swelling down there
that he hadn't known about, and the fabric had matted into the cut. The
eye was a more serious problem. He had tried to examine it in the
bathroom mirror with his good eye, and the image staring back at him
almost made him ill. He had been very lucky the Metro station manager
had not called 911. Where his eye had been, there was this puffy black,
red, and blue mass the size and texture of a large ripe plum. The eye
was still leaking a clear fluid out of both sides. There was a
sympathetic black-and-blue ring starting around his other eye, as well.

When he went to doctor his eye, he discovered that his hand was stinging
from several small glass cuts, and he had to spend twenty minutes
picking out bits of glass before building an ice pack for his eye and
getting a cigarette. Now he wanted a shower--his clothes stank and he
stank, and he was a god damned mess. He would have to remember to bundle
up everything he had worn tonight into a plastic bag and put it in the
garbage chute down the hall. Although that wouldn't matter much if those
two had made it out of the fire. The papers would tell him, or,
actually, the early-morning TV news.

He took another hit of the bourbon and sighed out loud as the cacophony
of the nearby Arlington fire engine squad echoed through the high-rise
canyons behind the building, probably on their way to a problem out on
1-66. It was amazing how loud they were. He had heard fire engines on
their way into Georgetown when he was about three blocks away from her
house, but there would have been nothing left for them to do, not with
both gasoline and natural gas in the game.

He'd done only one house fire before, that one with the connivance of
the owner, a married lawyer who had fallen in lust and wanted to
disappear. The lawyer's girlfriend worked at the D.C. General Hospital,
and she . had smuggled body parts out of the labs for six months, 11,
with the lawyer storing them in his basement freezer.

With the wife out of town, they had put together the greater part of a
corpus for the night of the fire, arranging the parts in the lawyer's
bedroom. Malachi had rigged a hose made out of the cylindrical cardboard
cores of paper towel rolls to pipe natural gas from a stove burner in
the kitchen up to the second floor. It being Christmas time, he had set a
yule candle burning on the mantelpiece downstairs, cracked open three
windows for good oxygen flow, and then everyone had cleared out. The
resulting gas explosion had dismantled the house and incinerated
everything in it, leaving only some charred bits of bone and human
tissue burned into the frame of the mattress to lead the investigators
to the conclusion that another esquire had gone to his just reward.

If the two of them had made it out of that little deal tonight, they
could tell their tale, but usable corroborative forensic evidence was
going to be really tough to come by--except maybe those medical
instruments.

Well, screw it, he thought, sipping some more whiskey.

He was pretty close to end game here.

So now what? The time line depended on whether or not they had gotten
out and talked to the cops. If they'd become toasts, he would have time
to develop a pretty clear shot at the captain and then blow town. But
for practical purposes, he had to assume Collins and Snow had survived,
and that the captain would be alerted that Malachi was now an active
threat. Navy was going to have to watch how quickly he turned his head
for a while. And the woman ... well, she wasn't going to be anxious to
tangle with Malachi anytime soon. Not after being treated to hearts and
minds.

So, options. First, get gone, right now. Get down the road. The cops
know who you are, and you talked about Hardin in front of the woman, so
they're gonna put it together. There will be federal records on you from
the Army, and probably even some old CID stuff to complete the picture.

Anonymity was what you've had to offer all these years, big hands and a
face with no name.

That cover's blown. So the smart thing to do is to get yourself gone.

You could do it. You could leave tonight.

The cop car was excellent cover, and in two hours you could be into West
Virginia, a state filled with people who understood all about anonymity.

The pickup truck would be even better.

He took another hit from the bottle, thinking exceptionally well now,
the pain beginning to retreat to the margins of his consciousness. He
acknowledged the logic of making his creep and forgetting about the
captain.

So his employers had cut him adrift at the first sign of real heat--big
deal: It's what anyone in Washington would do. The captain was just
playing by the rules. But something about this Hardin thing had begun to
really piss him off. Both of the Hardins would still be alive and
kicking if His Eminence there had been able to keep his pecker in his
pants. None of this shit had been Malachi's fault. And now these pretty
boys were trying to put him in the shit, after he had clearly taken care
of business for them--twice. If the captain had dumped him like Nixon's
aides had dumped the Watergate boys, that would be one thing. He
remembered reading that unlovely metaphor in the Washington Post:
"twisting"-- "twisting in the wind." But to send someone in, even an
inept like Snow ... well, that made it personal.

He took another hit of Harper and coughed violently when some of the
hundred proof went down the wrong way. His right eye felt like it was
sloshing around in its socket when he coughed. Terrific. He wondered
what he would do if it fell out. Probably feel better. He lit up another
cigarette. He sat up to take the ice pack off his face, which felt like
it was beginning to freeze. The towel on his leg, mostly water now, slid
off onto the floor. He took another hit of whiskey, corked the bottle,
put it down on the floor, and lay back again to think some more.

Was it really necessary to chuck the whole thing?

What did the cops or the NIS really know? All they'd have would be some
hysterical noise from the woman and some trembling, whiny stuff from
rowboat man. He had not been face-to-face with the Navy guy for more
than three seconds all night, and even Navy would have to admit that he
had been preoccupied at the time. The woman had probably memorized his
face, but he'd provided some distractions for her, too. Hearts and
minds.

He closed his eyes. Had the cops been to his house on Capitol Hill yet?

Probably, if the woman had survived the fire and talked. They'd have
probable cause after the fireworks in Georgetown.

Hell, let's go see, he thought. Wait until it's two, three in the
morning, then drive over there. Scope it out. Nobody there, get into the
house and pull those tapes. He could get in and out of the garage from
the alley, and he could use the cop car to get into the
neighborhood--there were always lots of cop cars prowling D.C. at that
hour of the morning.

So, option two. Go see what the cops were up to, and then, he decided,
what he really wanted to do was have one last little seance with his
dear friend and client the captain. Then he would bail out, get himself
down the road and gone. Meantime, let the ice do its thing. He put the
remains of the ice pack back on his throbbing face. The ice and the
Harper, his old friends in need.

He set the alarm on his watch for 0200, squinting hard with his one good
eye to see it, stabbed his cigarette out on an ice cube, and dozed.

at around two in the morning, Grace awoke with a shout and started a
frantic bout of kicking at the covers, startling Dan out of a deep sleep
and causing him to wrench his neck again as he sat up in the bed. When
he realized what was happening, he grabbed her, trying to pin her
flailing arms, shouting at her to wake up. At first, she struggled
harder, babbling incoherently, but then she did wake up. She sat up in
one violent motion, nearly knocking Dan back out of the bed. When she
realized where she was and recalled the dream, she started crying again,
filling the bedroom with great heaving walls that nearly broke his
heart. He held her and comforted her as best he could, his neck on fire
again, a fact she finally recognized when her own misery subsided. She
turned in the bed, saw the mask of pain on his face, and reached to
comfort him. They lay entwined in each other's arms, making small noises
and holding each other until they both fell asleep again.

at 3:30 monday morning, Malachi slid back into the driver's side of the
sedan and locked all the doors, puffing from the exertion but buoyed by
the excitement of getting in and out of the house without being caught.

The car's windows were covered with enough condensation to prevent
anyone from seeing that the car was even occupied. He took a deep breath
and then laughed. He'd made it into the duplex from the alley in two
minutes, after spending nearly forty minutes watching the alley from the
next block to see if there was anyone waiting for him near the darkened
house. He had originally parked one block away on his own street and
phoned both phones in the houses to see what would happen, but there had
been no reaction--no lights, no machines, no nothing. There had been no
strange vehicles parked out on the street, either.

Once he decided to make his move, he had not wasted time; after
retrieving the one tape, he hit the safe and removed his money stash and
the extra gun, and then he'd gone from the duplex apartment into his own
via the door in the closet, which did not appear to have been
discovered. But the cops had definitely been there. There were signs of
a search in every room. He'd retrieved the second tape and backed right
out, going out the kitchen door and into the alley, getting back to the
car as quickly as his throbbing leg would allow. As he sat there now,
fondling the two cassettes, he smelled a peculiar smell. From his feet;
something on the car's carpet. He looked down. There was a grayish
powder on the rubber mat. Those sons a bitches--they'd left some Carpet
Fresh on the rugs in his house. Shit, he'd forgotten that old trick. Now
there would be footprints in the powder--which would tell them he'd been
back.

He realized now that he had smelled it in the house but hadn't paid any
attention. Well, what the hell. So they'd know he was still around. They
would want to know what he had been after. Too late, suckers, he
thought. If you ran your mouths, I'm gonna be ahead of you, and I only
need one day to get done what I need to get done.

He cranked up the car and mashed the defrost button for the windshield.

He waited for a minute for the windshield to clear, then drove out of
the alley and took Pennsylvania down into town, wanting to merge into
the anonymity of the city's wide boulevards as quickly as possible.

Below the Capitol, the streetlights along the majestic concourse of
government buildings cast a dignified roseate glow on all the ornate
facades, barely illuminating the shadowy lumps of the homeless littering
the Metro system's exhaust grates. A District cop car passed him on
Pennsylvania, and he dutifully exchanged waves. He worked his way over
to Constitution, and from there, he drove across the Teddy Roosevelt
Bridge into Virginia. The whiskey and the aspirin were wearing off, and
the throbbing in his eye was beginning to overtake the pain in his leg
and occasionally make all the streetlights blur together. The right side
of his face felt leaden, as if it were starting to sag off the bones
like the makeup in some horror movie. The pain in his leg was throbbing
in perfect time to the beat of his heart. Careful, he thought as he
swerved out of his lane going up Wilson. Can't get picked up on a stupid
DUI at this stage. He turned off the main drag as soon as he was out of
Rosslyn, then worked his way back toward Ball ston by using the side
streets; the Randolph Towers was tall enough to be seen above the trees
and houses along the sleeping residential streets, giving him a
landmark.

He did not relax until back in the apartment, where he had to lie down
right away to get the pain back under control. The eye in particular was
generating waves of pain that became pulses of red light in his brain,
and his left eye was not operating very well, either. He turned off all
the lights. Gonna be a blind son of a bitch pretty quick, this keeps up,
he thought, flopping on the couch, his head thrown back and his right
leg elevated.

He looked at his watch. It was almost five o'clock. Daylight pretty
soon.

He forced himself to get up off the couch and stagger into the kitchen.

The ice maker in the small refrigerator was nearly empty, exhausted by
his earlier demands. He opened another bottle of Harper, took a small
shot, and lit a cigarette. The deli would be open in an hour or so;
they'd have ice. But he would need a patch over that eye before he went
back out in public. Assuming the worst, that one or both of them had
made it out of the fire, he also had to assume the cops would be looking
for someone with an injured eye. But maybe not by the morning news--he
might have a day of grace before his description made it to the
television. Doesn't matter, 'cause once the composite gets out on TV,
people will remember seeing you--the Metro guy, the desk people.

So make a patch. He lay down again on the couch, with the whiskey bottle
on the floor. Maybe get an hour of shut-eye. Shut-eye, right. He started
to laugh, but it hurt too much. Something he had to do, to listen to.

The tapes. Right. In just a minute.

dan looked at his watch and almost bolted from the bed--it was 7:30 on a
Monday morning, the time at which he was normally at his desk and
sorting through his weekend message traffic in 614. But then the events
of the night flooded back into his mind, and he lay back and turned to
find Grace, who was still submerged in the covers. Her hair was inches
from his face, and he could hear her breathing slowly. His neck did not
hurt quite so much, but he moved very slowly as he explored its limits
of motion. After a few minutes, he disentangled himself from Grace,
eliciting a small noise from under the covers. He stroked her head until
she went back to sleep. Then he got out of the bed--and very nearly fell
down. He had to sink to his knees to regain his balance, and he remained
in the duckwalk position, one hand grabbing a handful of covers, for
almost a minute before the room stopped spinning. He tried again, much
slower, and this time succeeded in staggering into the bathroom.

He sat on the throne and fought down a thin wave of nausea and
dizziness. His neck bones felt like a series of overlapping plates, each
one protesting when he tried to move his head. The nausea must be from
that damn painkiller they'd given him. He did not want to consider what
the hell his neck would feel like if he had not taken the painkiller.

Gotta call Summerfield, tell him why I'm not there, tell him what's
happened, he thought. Have to get my car back, assuming it survived the
fire. When he closed his eyes, he could still hear that jet-engine roar
of the fire and see that monster standing over Grace, her defenseless
body spread eagled obscenely across the bed with all those shiny-- He
shook the image out of his mind, trading it for a wave of pain for his
efforts. Better put that goddamn brace back on.

After using the bathroom and checking on Grace again, he put on some
shorts and a rugby T-shirt and mounted the brace around his neck.

Leaving his bathrobe on the foot of the bed for Grace, he went
downstairs and then began looking out each of the windows on the ground
floor, bending awkwardly because of the brace. But everything outside
appeared to be normal.

He went to the kitchen and fixed a pot of coffee, preceding that with a
glass of milk and a piece of bread to overcome the metallic medicinal
taste in his throat.

Once he had a mug of coffee safely in hand, he sat down and called the
office, reaching Yeoman Jackson.

"Jackson, let me talk to the captain," he said.

"Hey, Commander. They been talkin' 'bout you," Jackson said. "Colonel
Snapper, he sayin' you takin' this hot romance--"

"The captain, please, Jackson."

Jackson sniffed and put him on hold for a minute, and then Summerfield
picked up.

"Well, Daniel, are you two all right?"

"You've heard about it?"

"It was on the six a.m. news--house fire in Georgetown, house belonging
to a Miss. Grace Ellen Snow.

Miss. Snow and a friend surprised an intruder in the house; the intruder
threw gasoline, burned the place down. They said you both got out but
that the intruder got away."

Dan paused for a few seconds. "Where in the hell did they get all that?"

he asked.

"Officials reported. Snapper says you're taking the concept of a hot
date to extremes, even for a sailor."

Dan smiled. "Tell Snapper that at least I date girls.

His sheep are still safe."

"You tell him; Snapper takes his barnyard seriously. I assume you need a
couple of days' leave to help Miss. Snow get her life put back
together?"

"Well," Dan said, pausing, trying to think fast. How much
could he tell Summerfield? He understood now that anything he told
Summerfield would get to the EAs. He had to talk to Vann before he said
anything more. "Yes, sir, I'd appreciate that. My Suburban's over there,
and Grace is over here. I'm assuming we won't be able to salvage much
out of the house."

"House? There is no house. There's nothing there but a hole. She drive a
sedan?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, that's gone, too. I didn't see your Suburban, but there were
still fire engines there this morning."

"Damn. I'm going to have to get her some clothes, and she's going to
have to get to her bank and her insurance company. A couple of days
would be very useful.

And I've injured my neck--getting out of the house.

They've got me in a brace, and I've gotta tell you, I'm definitely
operating on one shaft right now."

Summerfield's voice lost its bantering tone. "Okay.

From the looks of that house, you've been through a bad night. I'll open
a leave chit for you for the rest of the week; you can come in whenever
you're up to it.

Take care of your lady friend and be religious about that damned brace.

If you need wheels today, I can have Jackson meet you in the parking lot
with my keys and you can borrow my car. Anything else we can do for you
here, make sure you call me. And Dan--does this fire have anything to do
with the Hardin case?"

Got me, the old fox, Dan thought. He couldn't lie to Summerfield. But he
did not have to tell him everything he suspected.

"Yes, sir, I think it does."

There was a pregnant pause, as if Summerfield was waiting for more.

"Okay, Dan, I think I understand," Summerfield said finally. "But
promise you'll tell me what's going on when you get Miss. Snow sorted
out."

"Yes, sir. It's just that right now, there are some things you may not
want to know."

Summerfield laughed softly. "Call us if you need help," he said before
hanging up.

Dan thanked him and hung up. When he turned around, Grace was standing
in the kitchen doorway.

She was wearing his bathrobe, and one side of her pale face was still
somewhat red and puffy where the guy had slapped her. Her hair was
mussed and she was having trouble keeping her eyes open, but she was
still beautiful. Dan felt a sudden wave of affection sweep through him,
and he went over to her and took her in his arms. She bumped her face on
the neck brace and they both laughed. But she did not let go.

"Sorry about last night," she said in a soft voice.

"A date with you is nothing if not interesting, Miss. Snow," he said.

"I meant--"

"Yeah, yeah. You'd think I'd learn. I ply my wenches with demon rum, and
do they get all hot and ready for romance? They do not. They get sick in
my car, is what they do. Happens time after time. Like I said, you'd
think I'd learn."

She hugged him tighter, and they stood that way in the middle of the
kitchen for a few minutes while he rubbed her back and felt her trying
to control her breathing. Finally, he moved her over to a chair and
poured her a cup of coffee. He partially refilled his own mug and sat
down across the kitchen table from her.

"This is going to be an all-day, never-ending, no-shit, original-bitch
Monday," he said, and she smiled finally, stirring some sugar into her
coffee.

"Has it been on the news?"

"Yes. Summerfield saw it this morning. Grace, the house is totaled, and
I'm afraid the Beamer is gone, too."

She slumped a little in her chair. He took her hand across the table
before continuing.

"And while I'm making your day, we have some other problems. I called
Summerfield to get some leave so I can help you with this disaster. I
suspect we'll spend the whole week getting you off the reef and back
into the channel again."

"I can hardly wait. But--"

"The problem is that Summerfield asked if this was connected to the
Hardin case. And I told him yes, but I didn't tell him any more than
that, because I think everything I've been telling him has been piped
straight into the headquarters EA system."

"Dan, they can hardly blame you for what happened last night."

He got up to dump and wash out his coffee mug. The coffee was not
sitting well. "Yeah, well, maybe they can and maybe they can't, but
that's not my real concern.

What I'm worried about is that Vann obviously believes that the bad
dream we ran into last night was a hired hand. He wasn't some itinerant
burglar--that badass was sent. Grace, I don't think either one of us was
supposed to survive his little interrogation last night. Someone sent
that guy in to kill us."

She put her coffee down as the color drained out of her face and he came
around the table quickly to take her hands. She leaned her head into his
stomach as he stood next to her.

"I might be wrong, but obviously that guy was waiting for us. And you
said he said he'd been in the house before. He obviously believed that
you and I were involved in the Hardin investigation. I think he was sent
to find out what we knew and then to eliminate us, in a house fire. He
brought gasoline, remember?"

She moved her head against his stomach in a nodded yes.

"And based on what he said last night, this might be the guy who did the
Hardin killing--but not on his own.

There's somebody paying this guy, and I've got this terrible feeling
that the somebody is a Navy flag officer."

She pulled her head back and looked up at him. "Except ..." she said.

"Except what?" he had trouble looking down at her because of the brace.

"He kept asking me if 'the captain' had sent me. He was acting as if /
was somebody hired to get him. If he had been hired to get us, why would
he care?"

Dan stared out the kitchen window. Why indeed.

Why the interrogation scene with Grace, not with him, but with Grace? If
he had been hired to kill them, he could have knocked them both over the
head, put them in a bedroom upstairs, and torched the house. Grace had a
valid point, but he was still convinced that the guy had meant to kill
them--but only after he found something out.

"Dan," she said, putting a hand to her mouth, "I just remembered
something."

"What?"

"He was about to say a name last night ... when you came through the
door. He wanted to know about Captain Vann. He wanted to know if Captain
Vann was working for Captain somebody. He didn't say the name, just
called him the 'vice-chiefs flunky.' "

Dan stared down at her in horror. "The vice-chiefs 'flunky'? He said
that?"

"Yes. Something like that. And I think that's what he was really after.

He assumed that I was working for Captain Vann and that Captain Vann was
working for this other captain."

Dan pulled a chair under him and sank into it.

"Jesus H. Christ. The vice-chiefs flunky. Captain Randall. Now it all
makes sense. That's why Randall has been so all fired up about the
Hardin case. Hell, this explains why Opnav took the investigation away
from NIS in the first place. At the vice chiefs orders, remember? Son of
a bitch! Don't you see it? Elizabeth Hardin was having an affair with
the Vice Chief of Naval Operations! No goddamn wonder he needed to cover
it up. Son of a bitch!"

Grace was staring at him. "And you've been briefing Summerfield," she
said.

"Yes. And he's been feeding it all back to his dear friend and
classmate, the vice chief."

"Do you suppose Summerfield knows?"

Dan shook his head. "I can't believe he does. He was just keeping the
vice chief informed to keep the Navy from getting blindsided.

Summerfield, the ex-EA. No, Summerfield wouldn't be a party to murder.

But he might as well have been. Grace, this is awful. After all the
scandals in the Navy these past few years, this is going to kill us."

She got up, and this time she came to hold his head against her body.

"Poor Dan," she said softly. "Some bastard tries to kill us both, he's
probably killed one if not two other people already, you think the
second most-senior admiral in the Navy hired him to do it, and you're
worried about what this will do to the Navy?" Her voice was rising
hysterically at the end.

"The Navy is my life," he said, his voice muffled. He tried to look up
at her, but the brace was in the way.

"Especially after I lost Claire. And before I found you.

The Navy is special to us, Grace. The ships, the crews, going to sea,
all the history and tradition. You understand after a while that you are
allowed to be a part of it, a part of something bigger and more
important than any individual. And you're supposed to do an honorable
job of it."

He stood up. "And this son of a bitch has dishonored his uniform, not to
mention instigating a murder and almost getting away with two more. No
wonder Mrs. Hardin didn't want to talk. Especially if she knew whom her
daughter was seeing. She'd think it's hopeless."

"You don't suppose Wesley Hardin went to see him, do you? A lieutenant
confronting a four-star admiral?"

"You heard Vann. He said Wesley would
jump on it, whether or not it was the smart thing to do. We've gotta
talk to Vann. Right now."

"Can we get me some clothes first?" she asked in a small voice.

He smiled at her, but then the smile disappeared.

"Yes, but then we've gotta move. As soon as the hired gun watches the
news and finds out we got away, we're targets again--high-priority
targets. Right now, Vann is our only protection, but only if he knows
what we know."

Dan went back upstairs to retrieve his wallet. He felt like a freak in
the brace, but to his dismay, the brace helped a lot. His neck still
hurt, but the brace kept him from adding to the problem with sudden
moves of his head. He found his wallet, retrieved Vann's card, and went
back downstairs. Grace was stirring some sugar into a second mug of
coffee and staring out the back window. Almost automatically, he went to
her.

"You'll stay here, won't you?" he said, putting his hands on her
shoulders.

"And what will the bush Nazi next door have to say about that
arrangement?" she asked.

"Probably that it's about time," he replied. "But I don't want you out
of my sight until we know these people have been taken off the boards.

Depending on what Vann can do, we may be going up against some seriously
big guns."

"What can Vann do? He can't just arrest them."

"I know that, Grace. The Hardin case is a federal matter, remember?

Vann's bosses told him to turn loose of it. He can get something going
after the fire last night, but he has to find the bad guy before he can
possibly move on the flags. Right now, the people with jurisdiction are
the NIS, and, as we know, the vice chief can make them do whatever he
wants."

"It was a federal case, until last night," she snapped.

"Vann can make that into attempted murder and arson, to name just a
couple of charges. Making the case and proving it might be tougher, but
Vann can surely get their attention."

"Let's find out."

He called Vann's number, but, as usual, the captain was in a meeting.

Dan left his home number and asked the secretary to have Vann get back
to them as soon as possible. He hung up and told Grace to start making a
list.

"A list?"

"Of what you need for a set of clothes--sizes, brands.

There are some shops around the corner where I think we can put at least
one outfit together. After that, if we still haven't heard from Vann, I
think we have to go to Georgetown."

Two hours later they were in a cab heading for Georgetown.

Dan had taken Grace's list and done his duty, even the part where he had
to stand somewhat red faced at the lingerie counter giving monosyllabic
answers to the salesgirl's helpful questions about what style of panties
he was interested in, much to the amusement of two women waiting behind
him. Grace had looked into the packages, given him an arch look, and
gone upstairs without comment. Dan had changed into some wash khaki
trousers, a long-sleeved white uniform shirt that had been retired from
naval service, and a khaki windbreaker. Grace was wearing a mid length
gray skirt, a white blouse, and a dark red jacket.

A brand-new lightweight London Fog raincoat was on her lap.

They talked in the cab about how she would get into her safe-deposit box
at the bank without keys--both sets of keys had been, of course, in the
house. The local television news had given them a glimpse of what they
were going to see when they arrived, but even that did not prepare them
for the absolute devastation they found when the cab pulled up on P
Street. A single fire truck was still there, its two-man crew probing
through a blackened mound of debris with occasional shots from a hose. A
small crowd of students from the university stood around gawking at the
smoldering hole where the house had been. Half the street and the entire
perimeter of her property was circled by fluttering bands of yellow
police tape. Of the house, only the bricks of the side walls were
recognizable. The heat from the blaze had been intense enough to burn
all the leaves off the nearby trees and blacken the paint on both
adjoining houses. They could see all the way to the back garden gate
from the street; the garden looked somehow indecently exposed without
the house. Grace's car was squatting on its tire rims in a bed of broken
glass. The body had been burned down to its metal shell, parts of which
were already showing a rusty brown patina after being drowned in
fire-fighting water. Dan's Suburban was still parked across her
driveway, and they could see that some of the paint on its hood had been
blistered.

Grace stared at the steaming mound that had been her home and fought
back tears as Dan paid the taxi bill.

A uniformed cop got out of an unmarked car across the street and came
over as they got out.

"You the owners?" he asked.

"I am," Grace said, her voice not entirely in control.

"Okay, lady. The arson squad's on the way out. I've got some forms we
gotta get filled out."

"Have you spoken with Captain Vann?" Grace asked.

Dan had walked over to his car and was now on hands and knees, checking
out the Suburban.

"Vann? No. What's Captain Vann got to do with a house fire?" The cop, a
pudgy Hispanic-looking individual who needed a shave, looked faintly
annoyed. The brass tag on his shirt said his name was Lopez.

"There's some background to what happened here, Officer Lopez," Grace
said patiently. "The arson people should talk to Captain Vann before
they start here."

"Okay, I'll tell 'em. But I still hafta get this paperwork done. You
wanna come over to my car or what?"

Grace accompanied the officer to the cop car and they sat together in
the front seat. The stink of burned insulation, water-soaked, charred
wood, and melted plastics permeated the entire street. Some of her
neighbors were out on their front porches, and two of them waved
tentatively to her as she got into the cop car.

After twenty minutes of filling out police report forms, Grace saw what
she presumed to be the arson squad pulling up in a police van. Four men
dressed in dark blue overalls got out of the van and began to assemble
their equipment. A middle-aged white man with sandy red hair and an
enormous handlebar mustache came over to the cop car and introduced
himself as Detective Sergeant Cowans. It turned out that he had already
been contacted by Vann and knew what had started the fire. He had a
message from Vann for Grace.

"He said he'd like to see you and Commander Col lins downtown around
three-thirty, four o'clock."

"We tried to call him this morning," Grace
said.

"Yeah, well," the sergeant said, looking faintly embarrassed, "he's got
a whole day of department-wide sexual-harrassment seminars to go to, and
they're not letting anybody skip out, not even the captains. It's been
scheduled for weeks."

Life goes on, Grace thought, looking over at the small knot of college
students. "We'll be there," she said. "I've got a lot to do this
morning. That's four o'clock at the Municipal Center, right?"

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry about your house. Was there anything of especially
high value in there? Like jewelry, and particularly diamonds? Sometimes
we find them."

Grace held up her hand, where she still wore Ren me's engagement ring
as a buffer against single men on the prowl. "This is the only diamond,
Sergeant Cowans.

The rest of my jewelry was gold, and I suppose that's all melted."

"We'll keep an eye out, Miss. Snow. Sometimes we get lucky. But
usually--"

"I understand, Sergeant. Thank you." The sergeant asked her a few more
questions about the layout of the house and whether or not there had
been any guns or ammunition in it and then he went back to the van. The
uniformed cop tagged along, leaving Grace sitting in the passenger seat
of his car, trying to take stock. The house and furnishings had been
insured, but she had lost every one of her possessions in the fire:
furniture and heirlooms from her parents' house in Boston, the only
pictures she had of them, all of her clothes, her favorite books,
childhood mementos.

It was as if her past had simply disappeared. She looked around for her
purse to get a tissue, but of course her purse had gone, too--wallet,
checkbook, credit cards, driver's license, everything. She wiped her
eyes with the back of her hand as a wave of dread seized her then, as
the image of that horrible man bent over her in the bedroom came back,
the total helplessness she had felt when he had cut her clothes off, the
nightmare sight of his maimed body. That man was still out there. Maybe
not that far away, maybe out there watching them even now. She knew that
Dan had been lucky to have even made it up the stairs after that karate
chop in the front hallway, and even more fortunate to have been able to
drive the man off. Dan was right: That man had planned to kill them
both. She began to tremble again, her mouth working, her vision blurring
as her eyes concentrated on Dan, who was only twenty feet away, half in,
half out of his car, rooting around for the hidden spare ignition key,
his movements made clumsy because of the neck brace. She called his
name, but no sound came out. And yet he turned around, as if he had
heard her anyway, from all the way across the street. He closed his car
door and came over to her, opening the door of the cop car and taking
her hands. She sagged against him, trying not to cry.

"Hey," he said. "Hey, it's gonna be all right. The Suburban's okay.

Let's get out of here. Let's go back to my place. You can contact the
insurance company and everyone else by phone. Come on."

He helped her out of the car and into the Suburban, both of them
stepping through a slushy mat of burned leaves and standing water at the
curb. Dan checked out with Officer Lopez, who seemed indifferent, and
then drove back to Old Town. The paint of the Suburban's right side had
been blistered, and the air in the car had a faint smell of char to it.

Dan ran the air conditioner to try to get the smell out of the car.

Grace concentrated on looking at the familiar scenery along the GW
Parkway to keep her mind on an even keel. Then she remembered what the
sergeant had said.

"Vann wants to see us this afternoon," she said.

"Four o'clock at the Municipal Center."

"Not until then?" Dan said. He
seemed to be annoyed.

Grace realized then that, in her misery over the house, she had shut the
Hardin case out of her mind.

She sat up straight in her seat. Pull yourself together, she thought. We
both got out with our skins intact. Her mind shied from the thought of
what it would have been like if she had survived and Dan had not. But
then her Yankee practicality asserted itself. You can't do anything
about the house. But you better start thinking about the possibility
that Malachi Ward might try again.

"Are you going to tell him what you suspect?" she asked as they drove
into Old Town.

"Hell yes," Dan replied. "Vann's the only outside guy who can confront
the Navy on this. But he'll need my help. And your testimony--that
bastard didn't seem to want to talk to me last night. But it will take
both of us, because the NIS sure as hell isn't going to do anything.

That's why I'm worried about time--if the vice chief and his ace EA,
Captain Randall, put two and two together, they can move against me.

They could probably stiff the District police if they could neutralize
me."

"If they did that, could Vann do it with my help?"

He laughed, then recited: " 'Disgruntled former employee of the NIS
levels accusations against the number-two officer in the Navy. Charges
two-year-old hit and-run accident linked to admiral's love life. Accuser
resigned under pressure from NIS top management.

Questions surface about how she got the appointment in the first place.'
No, I think they could taint any testimony you gave claiming it was the
result of a grudge.

I'm the one who can testify about being pressured to stay out of the
Hardin case after they gave it back to NIS. But if they send me to a
weather station in Patagonia, working the case gets real tough."

"They wouldn't be that stupid," Grace said.

"Wouldn't they? You'd think that really senior officers wouldn't be
caught within a hundred miles of a three-day flyboy orgy in Las Vegas,
where junior officers traditionally tear the clothes off of young women
in public hotel hallways, all in the name of a professional seminar,
mind you. And it looks like this guy, who's married by the way, was dumb
enough to have a sexual relationship with an Oh-three right there on the
Navy staff. If they thought they could keep this under wraps by shipping
me out, you better believe they'll put my ass on Antarctic ice in a
heartbeat. The only way we can stop it is to confront them
first--Randall and his boss. But we need Vann for that."

When they returned to Dan's house, there were two messages waiting. The
first was from Vann's office, confirming what Sergeant Cowans had told
them. The second was from Summerfield.

"Dan, this is Ron Summerfield. I think we have a serious problem
here--the vice chiefs office wants a meeting with you and me at
seventeen-thirty in the vice's office. I told them you were on leave
because of the fire, but Randall was, shall we say, less than
sympathetic.

So I'd recommend you come back to the building, say around seventeen
hundred. I'm afraid some shit's about to hit a fairly large fan."

Dan sat down in a chair as the machine beeped off and rewound itself.

"Well, oh shit, oh dear," he said.

"Looks like my dance card is filling up, Miss. Grace Ellen Snow."

"Fortunately, we'll see Vann before you have to go do this. You will let
me go with you, yes?"

Dan thought for a moment. "That's not going to be a very friendly
session, Grace. On the other hand--"

"Screw that," Grace swore. "That was my house that was destroyed last
night, and, if you're right about Randall, by his hired hand, who, by
the way, was probably going to kill us in the process. I think we need
to ask Vann if we shouldn't be seeking police protection instead of
attending meetings with these people."

Dan got up and began to pace around the living room. "These people," he
said slowly, "are my legal superiors. It's not as if I have some
open-and-shut case against the vice chief or even his EA. Vann's
probably going to remind us of that in no uncertain terms. So until we
do have a clear case, I have to follow orders.

When an Oh-ten says, 'Come see me,' an Oh-five doesn't ask, 'Gee, do I
have to?'" He stopped in front of a window.

Grace could see that Dan was having a hard time believing his own
theory, because it meant that a system and a profession he believed in
utterly was very rotten at the very top. She went over to him.

"Look," she said. "One thing at a time. Let's go talk to Vann, see what
his take is on all this. Maybe he can find a hole in it. Maybe there's
another explanation for what happened last night. His people should have
finished with their search of that guy Ward's house by now, so maybe he
has new data. But if it all hangs together, even circumstantially, then
we all three go to the Pentagon this afternoon and confront these
people."

Dan sat back down and put his head in his hands, the brace sticking out
like an Elizabethan ruff collar under his arms. Grace sat down beside
him.

"If nothing else," she said, "the Washington system will begin to work.

You know what the Navy does when there's a major scandal brewing-- they
isolate the major players. This vice chief can't tell the NIS to bury
this once there's been a public confrontation with the District police
present."

"You're right. // Vann will play."

malachi awoke with a start on his couch. He could sense but not clearly
see waning daylight streaming in through the balcony windows, and there
were sounds of traffic out in front of the apartment building. For a
moment, he could not figure out why he couldn't see, but then it all
came back. He felt his face. His right eye was puffy and hot. The clear
liquid that had been leaking from each corner had dried into a sugarlike
crust on his cheek. There were striations of pain running along the side
of his head from his right eye back toward his right ear. He had to rub
his left eye to get it open, but then at least he could see. He looked
at his watch and swore.

Four-thirty in the afternoon. Damn it! He had lost the entire day.

He swung his legs off the couch and his right shin reminded him that all
was not well down there, either.

He tried to stand, but he could not put weight on his right leg. He
hobbled into the bathroom to relieve himself, then turned on the mirror
light to survey the damage.

The right eye looked about as bad as it felt. A rolling pin. The son a
bitch had done him with a rolling pin. His left eye was operational, but
the panda-bear circle was even more pronounced. He sat down on the
toilet seat and examined his shin. The knot was still there, and there
was extensive blood bruising up and down his leg. He felt the bone area
around the hit and winced, but it did not actually seem to be broken. He
could still recall that blinding, nauseating pain when Navy had whacked
him in the leg. It had actually hurt more than the eye--a lot more.

He gingerly washed his face and then went into the bedroom to find the
makings for an eye patch, which he ended up fashioning out of two
shoelaces and an oval shaped swatch of fabric from his black
windbreaker. He cut a four-inch-square patch out of a towel and used it
for padding, then tied it on. The entire rig immediately fell right off.

He needed some elastic. He cut the elastic waistband from a pair of
undershorts and joined the two ends of the shoestrings together on the
back of his head with a section of the white elastic. This time, the
patch stayed in place. He took some more aspirin and then limped out to
the kitchen to see if there was some ice available. He was suddenly very
thirsty. He finished the half container of orange juice that was in the
refrigerator, adding a dollop of Harper to the last inch of juice to get
his heart going again. He made up an ice pack, using a kitchen towel and
the meager pile of ice cubes in the freezer, and went back into the
living room. He flopped down on the couch again, lit up a cigarette, and
pulled the tape recorder over, putting the ice pack back on his leg. The
patch over his eye had for some strange reason lessened the pain. Maybe
it was the pressure. He had no medicine for an eye injury, nor any idea
of what to buy for it. After tonight, he would head for West Virginia,
maybe find some country doctor out there to work on his eye. But first,
the tapes.

He examined the two tiny tape cassettes. One was still showing its clear
plastic leader. The other had run all the way out. He stuck the second
tape into the machine, plugged in earphones, and put it on his chest. He
listened for almost thirty minutes to the sounds of what seemed like
three men walking around his house, opening drawers, shifting furniture,
and talking to each other about the house and the basketball
championships and the new lieutenant's promotion list. There was nothing
about why they were there until almost the very end of the tape, when
one of the men asked about the duplex next door. It sounded as if he was
speaking from the next room.

"Hey, Sarge, we gotta hit the twin next door?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Well, what's the warrant say?"

"Ain't no warrant."

There was a pause in the conversation, then the sounds of the first man
coming into the room that had the microphone.

"You say there isn't a warrant here?"

"That's right, sunshine. This is a favor for Vann."

"Oh man ..."

"Don't get your tits in a flutter, Williams. Vann looks out for people,
people need to return the favor. The word around the Homicide dicks is
that this is personal, off the books. He's doing it for some Navy guy.

He's gonna meet with the Navy guy Monday. Needs the place tossed, see
what we see. Let's just get it done and get outta here, all right?"

Williams protested some more, until the sergeant began to speculate on
the joys of Anacostia patrol duty.

But it was enough for Malachi. He listened to the rest of the tape, but
there was nothing significant, other than that they had not appeared to
find anything worthy of exclamation. The tape ran out while they were
talking about the District's latest round of personnel cuts.

Malachi took off the earphones and dropped the recorder on the floor. He
pulled the phone over to his lap and thought about what he was going to
do. So Vann was a cop, and he was working for some Navy guy-- probably
moonlighting. The bastards were pulling the strings, all right. And
moving right along--his house getting an unauthorized search even before
the fire, and a meeting with the Navy guy, which of course meant the
captain, sometime today. He looked at his watch. Probably like right
now.

He shifted his body on the couch, trying to ease the pain in his leg. It
was just like he'd figured--the captain was operating off the books,
behind the scenes, manipulating contractors and moonlighting cops,
moving in on him. Well, that would make it almost easy.

The captain was still the only guy who can directly finger him for the
Hardin shit. Time to tie that bleeder off.

He would call the captain, tell him he was going to fold his tents and
steal away into the desert night, and then propose a final meeting. Let
the captain pick a place.

Then pack out the barest essentials in the truck: the money, both
guns--one to use, one to have after he disposed of the first--some
clothes.

He knew that, after the fire, the captain might be too spooked to meet
with him. But Malachi was counting on something--the captain might see
opportunity in such a meeting. He had to be just about in a panic about
now, even though he was getting some unofficial help. The cops would
have to investigate the fire in Georgetown, and it was only a matter of
time before they figured out that the guy who torched Snow's house might
have a relationship to the captain, which would put an end to the
moonlighting. So, from the captain's point of view, the chance to get
Malachi alone, in some remote spot of his own choosing, should be
enticing.

Especially since Malachi intended to ask for the meet under the pretext
of getting some money in return for a promise to disappear. He figured
the captain would meet him, either because he would be grateful that
Malachi was going to take some money and run or because he was going to
try to take Malachi out and end his problem. Malachi would be able to
tell a lot from the meeting place the captain proposed, but either way,
he was going to ice that supercilious bastard. That would take care of
his problem, and then he could slip away into wild and wonderful West by
God Virginia.

He would make the call around 5:00 p.m. and leave the duplex phone
number, which would silently forward the return call here to the
apartment. He dropped the soggy towel on the rug and hobbled back out
into the kitchen to get the bottle of Harper. The leg was actually a
little better. He had to take it easy on the sauce, because he might
have a long drive ahead of him tonight.

He dismissed the notion that the captain might be waiting for him with a
gun or even some help. The captain was an executive assistant, not a
player. Guy like that could set a dozen ambushes for Malachi, and even
with one eye and one leg, Malachi would have his ass. He should have
saved some of that ice.

dan, grace, and Captain Vann were silent as they rode the long escalator
up from the Pentagon Metro station to the concourse entrance. At five in
the evening, the three of them were in lonely contrast to the steady
stream of people riding the down escalator, as the Pentagon's 23,000
employees emptied the building.

Grace was dressed as she had been in the morning. Dan had kept the neck
brace but had changed into service dress blues, and Vann was wearing a
dark suit. Dan was keeping an eye on Grace, who was looking very tired,
having spent a good part of the day on the telephone with her bank,
credit-card companies, and her insurance company, which had not lived up
very well to its advertising. And the meeting with Vann had been
difficult, as well.

Since they had to be back at the Pentagon by five o'clock, Dan had
driven up to the Pentagon from Old Town and parked the car in north
parking. They then took a Metro to Judiciary Square for their meeting
with Vann. The trip from Vann's office to the Pentagon by car at rush
hour would have taken them at least forty minutes; the Metro did it in
fifteen. Vann had been late and was in a foul humor after his day of
sensitivity training, and he had come into the office muttering
imprecations about every variant of hyphenated Americans.

He debriefed the two of them on the results of the preliminary search
through Ward's town house, which had turned up nothing of particular
interest.

"He's got a hidey-hole somewhere; the place was cleaned out of anything
interesting, but not abandoned.

My people had another look early this A. M., right after the fire, but
there was no sign he'd been back. I'll have someone go back in to see if
he's been back today. But I have a feeling he's still in town."

"Which means we're not out of the woods yet," Dan had said.

"That's right. What's happening on your end?"

Dan recounted his theory about who the players really were, then told
Vann about the summons to see the vice chiefs EA at five o'clock. Vann
whistled when he heard what Malachi had said, but then he made the
obvious comment about lack of evidence.

"I know," Dan said. "But you have to admit it fits together pretty well.

Remember the valentine with W.T.

on it? And it's why I need you to be at this meeting this afternoon--if
they're getting ready to move on me, the fact that the District police
are in it can block any funny business."

Vann had shuffled some papers on his desk. "The District police are only
sort of in it," he said. "Technically, the Hardin case is still federal.

The fire last night and what happened to you two--well, we have no
evidence that any of that is tied to the Hardin case, except for what he
said to Miss. Snow here. But, see, this is shaping up as a conspiracy
rap--and the feds will probably retain overall jurisdiction."

"But the feds who have the jurisdiction are under the thumb of the guy
we think is behind it," Grace interjected. "That's been true from the
start, when this same admiral took the investigation away from the NIS."

Vann acknowledged that problem. "I can go with you, but we're gonna be
on thin ice. Look, I want to get these guys as badly as you do, but I
know enough about the system to realize that we can also end up dropping
our case into that crack between feds and locals. I've already done
something I shouldn't have."

"What?" Dan asked.

"The search of his house was done without a warrant.

Sunday night, actually, probably while he was waiting in your house. I
made some calls after we talked to Angela, and some guys did me a
favor."

"But after what he did last night, surely you have probable cause."

"Miss. Snow, I don't think the courts recognize after the-fact probable
cause."

"Okay," Dan said. "But you said they didn't find anything, so
there's been no evidence compromised, right?

I need you at this meeting for your deterrent effect: You don't have to
say anything. Just your presence ought to be enough to make them realize
they can't just order me out to Alaska tonight."

"They can do that?"

"The vice chief can call up the CNO's personal airplane at Andrews and
have me airborne in an hour, he wants to. Or he could greet me at his
office with a squad of Marines and have me disappear into the brig at
Quantico. One phone call can do that."

"Shit," Vann said. "I wish I
could do that."

So Vann had agreed to come along, but Dan knew that it was going to be
shaky. If the vice chief was the eminence behind all of this, he had
tremendous power at his disposal. He could indeed have Marine guards
waiting in his office to arrest Dan and then have him detained in a
military brig anywhere in the country, at least for a while, because
Dan, as an active-duty military officer, was subject to military
discipline under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the UCMJ. The
code also had preferential jurisdiction over any civil court for
whatever military offense they might decide to throw at him. After all,
he had disobeyed direct orders to stay out of the Hardin case.

They reached the top of the escalator and went through the double glass
doors into the concourse entrance, where the familiar Federal Protective
Service cops, the walk-through metal detectors, and the luggage scanners
were in operation, along with four very large Army military policemen in
camouflage utilities. Dan swallowed hard as he walked up to the security
checkpoint.

Since he had a building pass, he did not have to go through the metal
detectors, but the other two did.

Vann identified himself to the guards as a D.C. cop, and they waved him
through, but Grace had to go through the whole check. The MP's just
stood there, trying not to stare too hard at Grace, but to Dan's great
relief, they did not appear to be looking for him or anyone else in
particular.

He escorted Grace and Vann up the ramps to the fourth floor and took
them to Op-614. It was 5:20 by the time they reached the office, and
Captain Summer field was alone waiting for them. Snapper and Yeoman
Jackson had secured for the day. Summerfield invited Grace and Captain
Vann to sit on the couch, and Dan stood in the doorway.

"Well, boys and girls," Summerfield said, fiddling with his unlit pipe.

"We are 'on call' with Captain Ran dall. Their lordships do not appear
to be amused."

"Wonderful," Dan said. "Why did I know that already?

Any idea why there are MP's at the checkpoints?"

"Bomb scare today; I think they use it as an excuse to exercise the
troops."

"What exactly does the EA want to meet about?"

Grace asked. Dan smiled in spite of the pit in his stomach.

Grace was right on point again.

"Captain Randall remembered the name Snow when he saw the television
news about the fire," Summerfield replied. "He made an educated guess
about the 'friend' and called me. Asked me if Dan here was involved in
the fire in Georgetown and if it had anything to do with the Hardin
case. I had to say yes to both, but that that was all I knew. Hour
later, I was told to get you in here this evening. Now, Dan, you want to
tell me what's going down here?"

Dan hesitated. "I'm not sure if I should, Captain.

How much of what I've told you already has gone straight up the chain of
command here?"

Summerfield stopped fiddling with the pipe and gave Dan a studied look.

"Whatever I thought was pertinent," he said. "You have a problem with
that?"

"I do if the guy responsible for one murder, possibly two, and perhaps
for what happened to Grace and me last night, happens to be at the upper
end of that chain."

Summerfield took a deep breath but held his temper.

"Okay, you better explain that."

Dan ran through the details of what had happened last night, and then
the gist of his theory about the identity of the flag officer behind the
Hardin killings.

Summerfield listened intently, putting his pipe down with a frown when
Dan told him what he suspected about the vice chief. He began shaking
his head as Dan finished.

"Admiral Torrance is a powerful, politically astute, ruthless when he
has to be, highly ambitious, and very smart four-star admiral," he
declared. "If I reach real, real hard, I could maybe entertain the
notion of his having a girlfriend, although I think he's much too
intelligent, given what he's in line for, to do something that stupid.

And besides, I know his wife, and she's a treasure. But more
importantly, I cannot for the life of me get my mind around the notion
that he, or any other flag officer, for that matter, would orchestrate a
murder, let alone two murders."

"Four if you'd like to count us," Grace suggested.

"That reinforces my point," Summerfield said.

"I don't necessarily think he did--I think his EA did," Dan said,
fingering his neck brace. "At best, the admiral might very well not know
anything about it. He might suspect that someone has been operating on
his

behalf, but he can maintain his deniability. At worst, he's orchestrated
the whole thing."

Summerfield thought about that as he picked up his pipe and began to
load it with tobacco. Then he put it down and swung around in his chair,
looking at his watch.

"Now that is possible," he said, finally, swinging back around. "Randall
is as smart, ambitious, and as ruthless as his boss. He's also, in my
opinion, a heartless cold fish--a purely political flag selectee if
there ever was one."

"If this vice chief fella was in danger of going down in flames, would
this Randall guy be affected?" Vann asked, speaking for the first time.

Summerfield looked at him. "Yes, he would. He's a captain who's been
selected for rear admiral, but he's not yet officially been promoted.

Sometimes that can take two years."

"So?"

"So some EAs do their job without becoming identified body and soul with
their flag officer. But Randall is the other kind--the new vice,
Torrance, made him his EA when I had to withdraw from the job, and he
also got him selected for flag. Eldon Randall has never been bashful
about wearing, hell, flaunting, his sugar daddy's four stars. Yeah, he'd
be affected. You think this theory has legs, Captain?"

Vann shrugged. "It may, but evidence is in kinda short supply, and our
system feeds on evidence. Lemme ask the reverse question: If the EA was
guilty of all this, would his admiral go down, too?"

Summerfield nodded again. "You mean if it turned out that his EA was
behind a couple of murders to protect the vice chiefs personal
reputation? Yes. Even if the vice maintained that he knew nothing about
it, the scandal would at the very least end his chances to become the
Chief of Naval Operations."

"Uh-huh," Vann said. "So in a way, they
might both have a motive to muzzle Commander Collins here."

"Which is a pretty fair description of what they've been trying to do
all along, ever since we brought the investigation back to Washington,"

Grace pointed out.

Summerfield nodded slowly and frowned. "Shit," he said as the phone
began to ring in the outer office.

Summerfield indicated for Dan to pick it up. It was one of the chief
yeomen in the vice chiefs office, informing him that their meeting with
Rear Admiral-select Ran dall would be at 1745. Dan acknowledged and hung
up.

"It's show time," he said, looking at his watch.

"Since this may go late, I've got to make a quick call home,"

Summerfield said to Dan. "You start securing the office."

Dan closed up the office while Vann and Grace waited out in the E-ring
corridor and then he joined them while Summerfield finished his call. A
minute later, Summerfield came out and they walked up the empty corridor
toward the vice chiefs office. They passed the OP-06 front office, where
the EA did not appear to be in residence. When they reached the vice
chiefs front office, Summerfield led the way in, followed by Dan, Grace,
and Captain Vann. To Dan's surprise, they found Captains Manning, the
OP-06 EA, and Randall, as well as Rear Admiral Carson, OP-06B, waiting
for them. The clerical staff appeared to have gone for the night, which
left the administrative office suite partially darkened. The door to the
admiral's inner office was closed, but light was shining through the
opaque glass window. Nobody looked particularly happy to be there.

Randall went right on the attack.

"Captain Summerfield," he said, pointedly ignoring Dan, "who are these
people?"

Summerfield was unruffled. "This is Miss. Snow, who was on the original
Hardin investigation from NIS, and this is Captain Vann, from the D.C.

Police Department.

And of course you know Commander Collins."

Randall looked at Vann and then back at Summer field, continuing to
ignore Dan. "The D.C. police department?" he asked, going behind his
desk. "This meeting was supposed to include you and Commander Collins.

Why are these other two here?"

Dan was relieved to see that Summerfield was his usual unflappable self,
and holding steady as Randall pressed him.

"You said this meeting was inspired by the fact that Miss. Snow's house
was burned down last night; if we're going to talk about that, I thought
it best to hear from the people who were present when it happened,
especially since it appears to involve the Hardin case."

"And this police officer?"

"This is a police captain. The fire last night took place in Washington,
and one of the Hardins also died in Washington. There are now
indications that it was not an accident, as originally believed, which
is why Captain Vann is here."

"I see. Well, your first assumption is unwarranted, Captain," Randall
replied, tapping a pencil impatiently on the top of his desk. "This
meeting concerns Commander Collins and his direct disobedience of orders
regarding the Hardin case. This is essentially going to be a preliminary
hearing to determine if Commander Collins ought not go to Admiral's
Mast."

"Mast!" exclaimed Dan. "You want to take me to mast? That's really
funny, Captain. I think Captain Vann here ought to arrest you for
complicity in a murder."

The ensuing silence was absolute, with only the distant sound of one of
the trash train tractors penetrating the office. Rear Admiral Carson
appeared to be stunned as he looked first at Collins and then at
Randall.

Randall's face had gone white.

"What did you say?" he asked in a tight voice.

Dan took a deep breath. "I think you and your boss have been covering up
the real reason why both of the Hardin kids died. I think the reason you
wanted the Hardin investigation handled by Opnav instead of the NIS was
because you needed to control it. And when Miss. Snow and I brought it
back to Washington to continue the probe, I think you had us taken off
the investigation so that you could hand it back to NIS, with orders to
kill it, and I think that's why you have been so god damned hell-bent for
leather on making sure I didn't pursue the matter any further. Well, let
me tell you something: The 'matter' pursued both Grace Snow and me last
night, Captain, and while I can't prove any of this, yet, I think
Captain Vann here is willing to open his own murder investigation to see
if I'm right. You try to take me to mast and I'll take this little tale
to the Washington Post. Tonight."

"What little tale is that, Commander?" a deep voice said from behind the
group. Everyone turned, to find Admiral Torrance, the Vice Chief of
Naval Operations, standing in the doorway to his private office.

Torrance was well over six feet tall, with a massive head, wide black
eyebrows over a Roman nose, weathered, ruddy skin, and a thin-lipped
mouth presiding over a prominent, rugged chin. The unblinking expression
of command was firmly stamped on his face, and his eyes were a piercing
shade of light blue. In full uniform, he filled the doorway with his
imposing presence, the mass of gold on his sleeves glittering in the
semidarkened office as if imbued with its own light.

Carson, Manning, and Randall straightened automatically into positions
of attention, and Dan felt his mouth go dry. Randall for once appeared
to be at a total loss for words. Torrance gave each person in the room a
direct look, pausing fractionally when he got to Sum merfield, before
ordering Randall to bring everyone into his office. They followed him
into the inner office in a silent file, Summerfield bringing up the
rear, with Grace just in front of him. Dan turned around once to make
sure she was all right, wanting to be near her, but she seemed to be
composed under Summerfield's wing.

The vice chiefs inner office was thirty feet square and resembled a
library study more than an office.

There were two leather couches and several large upholstered chairs.

Deep, plush carpeting, paneled walls, several brass lamps and other
items of nautical decor, and four large walnut bookcases provided a
quiet, studious atmosphere that contrasted with the four piles of
three-ring binders heaped on the large mahogany desk.

Dan realized that those binders were filled with hundreds of staff
action papers awaiting the vice chiefs perusal, and very often,
decision. Dan had never been in the vice chiefs office, Vice Admiral
Layman's office being as high up in the chain as OP-06 action officers
went.

Admiral Torrance walked behind his own desk and motioned for the rest of
them to sit down. The chairs and both couches were positioned so that
anyone sitting in them faced the desk. Rear Admiral Carson, the senior
officer among the group called before the vice chief, cleared his
throat. He looked as if he was still trying to overcome a serious shock.

"Admiral Torrance, I'm not sure how much of that you heard, but--"

Torrance put his hand up and Carson went silent. "I heard the words
murder investigation and the Washington Post," he said. "Who was
speaking?"

Dan stood up. "I was, Admiral. I'm Commander Col lins. I work for
Captain Summer-field in OP-Six-four teen."

"You did the Hardin investigation," Torrance said. It was not a
question.

Dan had the feeling he was being deliberately impaled by Torrance's
direct stare. The admiral's eyes were trained on him like a battleship's
optical range finder, bright, unblinking, impersonal, and with the
perfect parallax of a raptor. Then the admiral shifted his attention to
Grace Snow and Captain Vann.

"And you are?" he asked.

"I'm Grace Snow, formerly of the NIS," Grace said.

"I assisted Commander Collins in the Opnav investigation of the Hardin
incident--until it was terminated."

"And I'm Captain Moses Vann, executive assistant to the Deputy Chief of
Police for Criminal Investigations, District police."

Torrance nodded slowly. Dan, still standing, was beginning to feel
terribly exposed. Then Randall stood up.

"Admiral," he said, "This officer has expressed some very serious
accusations concerning the Hardin case.

He has also directly disobeyed my orders, conveyed to him more than
once, to leave the Hardin case alone. I recommend that you do not
entertain his preposterous story. Permit me to get someone from JAG down
here

and take this matter into appropriate disciplinary channels."

Dan could hear the phone ringing in the outer office, but apparently
there was no one out there to pick it up.

The other officers in the room were ignoring it. He did not know what to
do. If the admiral did what his EA was recommending--and he sensed that
it was the sensible thing for the four-star to do at the moment--they
could bury him alive in judicial proceedings. But Tor ranee had his hand
up again.

"I hear you, El, but I gather that I'm somehow wrapped into the
commander's accusatios, so think I need to hear this. Commander?"

Dan took a deep breath and started at the beginning, when he was first
tagged with the investigation. He laid out the sequence of events, the
false starts, the realization that the brother and sister's deaths might
be linked, and then the summary and unexplained termination of the Opnav
investigation. He admitted that he and Grace had continued their
explorations when asked to help by Captain Vann, adding that they had
finally decided to let the NIS and the District cops work it until the
phone tips came in and Vann pulled them back into it. He reminded the
admiral that he had kept Sum merfield informed and that he was under the
impression that Summerfield was keeping the vice chiefs office informed.

The admiral listened, neither contradicting nor acknowledging what Dan
was saying. Dan concluded with the events of Sunday night, which
provoked a few quiet exclamations from both Carson and Manning, and then
got to the heart of the matter.

"I feel that someone fairly high up in the Navy is manipulating the
NIS's conduct of the Hardin investigation, and is doing so to protect a
flag officer from the revelation that he was having an affair with
Elizabeth Hardin, whose silence may have been achieved by a murder
disguised as a hit-and-run. I think that her brother, It. Wesley Hardin,
the officer found in the battleship, had discovered who and what, and
was himself killed in Philadelphia to ensure his silence."

"And you think I am this flag officer?" Torrance's face was impassive,
and his voice was calm, almost reasonable.

But Dan thought there was a hint of fury in it.

Dan swallowed hard again. "Based on the fact that your EA has been the
principal force in pressuring me to stay away from the Hardin case, yes,
sir, I do. It's either you, Captain Randall here, or someone you're both
protecting."

The admiral leaned back in his chair and tented his hands under his
chin. His pose obscured his lower face, leaving only those blue eyes
gleaming across the room.

Randall was shaking his head in a dramatic

"I can't believe he's saying
this" gesture. Rear Admiral Carson was looking at Summerfield in total
disbelief. Grace sat upright in her chair, watching the vice chief.

The admiral stared at Dan for a few seconds and then turned his
attention to Captain Vann.

"Captain Vann, have you begun a formal inquiry into this matter?"

"No, sir, we have not. Yet."

"Do you intend to?"

"We might. This guy who did Miss. Snow's house Sunday night, he's not a
guy who does this kind of thing on his own. We make him as one of these
cleanup contractors we have here in D.C. who specialize in taking care
of dirty work for the big guns in town. He's working for somebody, and
it's looking to me like it's somebody high up in the Navy, like the
commander here is suggesting."

"Do you have firm evidence for that theory?"

"Not yet, Admiral. But,
like I said, I think we're going to start working on it."

Admiral Torrance nodded his head slowly, looking down at the desk now.

"All right, Captain Vann," he said. "Let me say this.

The commander's basic premise is wrong. I had the Hardin investigation
moved to Opnav for bureaucratic reasons, mostly for public-relations
reasons. I did not want the NIS associated with another incident
involving a battleship. When it became definite that we had a homicide,
however, I changed my mind. Homicide is too important to be handled in
public-relations channels.

I then ordered it turned back over to the NIS, and the Opnav
investigation terminated, so that we would not have two agencies getting
in each other's way. You can understand that, can't you, Captain Vann?"

Dan could see what the admiral was doing even as Vann nodded. Vann was
the one outsider, the one person in the room with the power to bring
real trouble. If the admiral could convince Vann to back off, he could
deal with Dan at his leisure. Divide and conquer. And he was powerless
to do anything about it. Grace was starting to look worried; she had
figured it out, too.

"And that's where it is now, Captain Vann. I think you should look into
this matter. I suggest you go see the NIS. I can guarantee their full
and enthusiastic cooperation.

There is little question that Lieutenant Har din was killed--the officer
in the battleship, that is. I don't know anything about the other
Lieutenant Har din. I can state that I have never known her, done
business with her, or even laid eyes on her. And I have not had an
affair with her or any other woman other than my wife of thirty-six
years. I am not stupid, Captain Vann, and the surest way for me to
jeopardize my own reputation and my future in the Navy would be to have
an affair with a junior officer in the Navy, especially in today's
political climate. Would you not agree? The nomination of the officer
who was supposed to have my job now was derailed over a
sexual-harassment incident, one in which he was absolutely blameless.

The merest association cost him the nomination."

Torrance then turned back to Dan. "And as for you, young man, I want you
to assist Captain Vann in his inquiries. You will be his escort officer,
get him into the Navy system wherever he needs to go, help him in any
way you can until this matter is resolved. If you meet resistance,
Captain Randall here will run interference for you. I'm doing this
because you obviously and sincerely believe that I am masterminding some
conspiracy here. So I want you fully involved in taking this case to its
conclusion, I know that I'm not guilty of anything. I want you to
convince yourself that I'm not guilty of any

thing. Now, I do think it only fair to ask that you do not make any more
accusations until you can prove them.

And nobody here"--his glance swept the room--"will interfere in this
matter until it is concluded. Is that satisfactory, Commander? Captain
Vann?"

Dan couldn't believe it, but all he could do was say, "Yes, sir." The
admiral had mousetrapped him. Instead of yelling and shouting and hiding
behind a phalanx of EAs and a military-discipline action, he had
effectively cut Dan loose to prove his charges. If the admiral was
guilty of something, Dan would have his chance to prove it, which he
knew was an almost-impossible task.

And if he couldn't, there was no way Dan could ever charge that there
had been a cover-up. Torrance was brilliant.

"Gentlemen, and lady, it's late," Torrance concluded.

"We will excuse you now."

Dan looked around. Grace, Summerfield, and Captain Vann stood up, but
Rear Admiral Carson and Captains Manning and Randall remained in their
places.

Carson was giving Summerfield a sideways look that implied some serious
heat, but Summerfield was already leading the way to the door. They
filed through it, Dan leaving last, almost afraid to look behind him at
the powerful men remaining behind with the vice chief. He particularly
did not want to see Randall's expression, and he closed the door firmly
behind him. They stood there, clustered around the EA's desk in the
now-deserted front office.

"Now you know why he's a four-star," Summerfield said softly, giving
them a grim smile. But Vann shrugged.

"Seems like we got a fair shot at it," he said, also keeping his voice
down. "That may all be smoke-and mirrors bullshit, but it sounds to me
like we can follow the trail wherever it goes."

"What damn trail?" Dan said glumly.

"But what happens if it leads back here?" Grace asked.

"If he's the man, he's bought some time," Summer field said. "And your
reception at NIS will give you a pretty strong clue."

Dan shook his head. "I'm uneasy about the god damned EAs; I can see
Admiral Torrance keeping above the fray, but Randall--"

At that moment, a single white light flashed on at the EA's telephone
console. All four of them looked at it and then back at the closed door.

There were no sounds coming from the inner office. Dan looked over at
Summerfield, who started to shake his head. But Grace was giving him a
look that said, do it. Dan looked down at the phone. It was an EA's
phone; it had a muted handset.

Who are they calling? JAG? Dan reached down and put his hand over the
black handset.

"Dan," Summerfield said.

Dan ignored him, giving the phone time to ring at its destination, once,
twice, then the pickup. He lifted the handset and listened.

"Investigative Service, Rear Admiral Keeler's office, Captain Rennselaer
speaking, sir?"

There was a sound from the inner office, and Dan hurriedly put the phone
down and motioned for everyone to get out into the corridor. He closed
the front office door quietly behind him and they quickly walked away
down the E-ring corridor. As if by mutual agreement, no one said
anything until they reached OP-614's front door.

"Well?" said Summerfield, eyeing Dan.

"Someone was calling Admiral Keeler at NIS," Dan said. "A Captain
Rennselaer answered the phone."

"Rennselaer is EA to Director NIS," murmured Summerfield.

"Somebody want to tell me what's happening' here?" Vann said.

"They put a call through to the head of the Naval Investigative
Service," Grace explained. "The question is, for what reason? To warn
them, or to clear the way for you to continue the investigation?"

"Probably a little of both," Summerfield said. But then he saw the
expression on Dan's face. "What's the matter?"

Dan fumbled with the cipher lock to 614. A chilling thought had just
struck him, and he suddenly wanted to get out of the Pentagon.

"Dan, what is it?" Grace asked.

He opened the door and then turned around to face them.

"It just occurred to me that we may have been focusing on the wrong guy.

Suppose, just suppose, that the flag involved is not the vice chief, but
his protege, the director of the MS? That the captain the goon mentioned
was not Randall but Rennselaer?"

"Jesus, Dan, another theory?" said Summerfield.

"Now you've got Randall running top cover here for a one-star instead of
the vice chief?"

"Now wait a freakin' minute, Commander," Vann chimed in. "You enjoy
getting' your ass handed to you by these admirals? Now you want to go
after another one?

I think it's time to count me out for a while. I'm way the hell ahead of
my procedures here."

"Let me make a phone call," Grace said. "If there's
something going on over at NIS, Robby Booker will know about it."

Dan looked at Summerfield, who was shaking his head in evident
exasperation. They went into the office, all except Vann.

"I'm serious, people," he said from the doorway.

"I've gotta get this thing into regulation channels before it gets any
more outta hand. You all are going much too fast, based on very damn
little hard evidence."

Grace turned around to look at him. "If Dan is right about the NIS
connection, and it's Rennselaer we're looking for, what's the only thing
this guy Ward has to do to be disconnected from the Hardin killings?"

Vann blinked, then shook his head. "You're still going too fast," he
said again. "You're bouncing around like some damn rubber ball here. Let
me get with my people tomorrow morning and we'll get this thing set up
right. I can get you protection. This murder is two years old--it ain't
going anywhere. Now, who can get me out of this place?"

Dan was elected, and he left to take Captain Vann to one of the exits.

Grace turned away and headed over to Snapper's desk to use the phone.

Fifteen minutes later, Dan returned and went over to stand in the
doorway of Captain Summerfield's office, where Summerfield was sitting
on his couch for a change, his head in his hands.

Across the bleak space between the E-ring and the D ring, Dan could see
a single office light shining.

"It's a good thing you're out on leave," Summerfield muttered. "Tomorrow
is going to be a bad day around here. Did you see Carson's expression?"

"Yes, sir, I did. Hopefully, it will only get better after tonight."

Grace came in from using the phone as Summerfield looked up at Dan.

"Don't count on it," he was saying.

"The costs in face-saving and flag officer dignity repair are going to
be significant. You may want to make some preparations for a move."

"A move?"

"You don't think you're going to remain on the Opnav staff after
tonight's little scene with the vice chief, do you?" Summerfield asked,
looking up through his fingers. "You are going to get orders; what kind
of orders, I don't know, but you are definitely going to be hurtling
down the PCS pipe within about two weeks. I may be hurtling right behind
you."

"And what about my being Vann's escort?"

"Like I said, two weeks. You
don't come up with something really dramatic in that time, you'll--what
is it, Miss. Snow?"

"There's something going on at NIS. I just talked to my source over
there, and he says there's been a flap on all day in the front office,
with the admiral talking to some of the JAG lawyers downstairs and the
EA cutting everyone off at the knees who dares even to speak to him.

Robby said the admiral had left for the day, but the security guards say
he's on the way back in."

"Where's Rennselaer?" Summerfield asked.

"I guess he's still there," Grace replied. "Robby said he was meeting
someone."

Summerfield stood up. "Maybe the call to NIS from the vice's office has
started some kind of fire," he said.

"I have visions of the Japanese embassy burning their papers on the
night of December sixth," Dan said.

"Grace, maybe you and I should go over there. My car's right here."

"Is that wise?" Summerfield asked. "You heard Captain Vann--he's right
about getting this thing back in proper channels, and your only mandate
to play is through him."

"If that bastard Rennselaer had my house burned down, with me supposedly
in it, / don't need anybody's mandate," Grace said. "Dan, let's go."

"But there isn't a damn thing they can do tonight, except stew,"

Summerfield argued. "Let them panic, and then you take Vann over there
in the morning after they've been sweating all night. There's another
thing: Both of you ought to get off the streets until they pick up that
guy Malachi Ward. Vann said they think he's still in the city."

Grace shook her head. "No. The District police might take a week to get
going on this, especially after Vann reports the meeting tonight with
the vice chief. I wouldn't be stunned if his bosses tell him to back
off.

No. I want to talk to Rennselaer, and now would be nice."

it was full dark when Malachi parked the pickup truck, rigged once again
with the Metro logo and flasher, in front of the large abandoned factory
building that occupied the two blocks across the street from the Forge
Building in the Navy Yard. The bored guard at the front gate had bought
his story of a Metro bus stranded in the Navy Yard with a casual wave,
and Malachi had sailed through. He backed the truck into a space between
two loading docks at the front of the deserted building. The docks were
to one side of two large steel doors, which were partially opened,
revealing the cavernous interior of the building. He would have put it
in the building except for the fact that there was a huge pile of metal
scrap blocking the entrance.

He checked his watch: 6:45. He stayed in the truck for a few minutes and
looked around. The building was big.

It appeared to be about ten stories high, two hundred feet wide, and
nearly twice that long, its other end extending all the way to the
river. A sign whose letters were carved into the stone lintel above the
loading dock said turret lathe building. There was no light in the
building except for what was reflecting through a row of skylights from
the floodlights on the power station next door. There appeared to be
some very large machinery inside, but he could not make out any details.

Surprisingly, the captain had called back right away and hurriedly
agreed to a meeting. He had designated the Navy Yard as the meeting
place. They would meet on board the museum ship, the retired destroyer
USS Barry, which was moored to the pier across the gun park from river
end of the Forge Building. "There's no one on board at night," the
captain had said, "and the main-deck hatches are all secured. There's a
sliding chain-link fence and gate at the head of the pier, but you can
get around it at one end. Come up the after gangway to the main deck and
walk around. There's lots going on here right now, so come between seven
and seven-thirty. I'll find you."

Malachi smiled in the darkness. Yeah, I'll just bet you will. Meet me on
a deserted ship parked on the Anacostia River after dark. Right. Well
actually, that suited Malachi just fine. He was dressed in khaki
trousers, a dark red shirt, and his black windbreaker, the one with the
hole in it from when he had cut out some material for his eye patch. The
patch had helped; his eye, although still very sore, had stopped its
broadband transmission of pain back into his brain, helped perhaps by
the Harper. Malachi checked that the Browning .380 in his waistband
holster was chambered, patted the Bernardelli .25 auto in his right
sock, and then slipped on some black leather gloves. He was about to get
out when he detected oncoming headlights. He ducked down in the front
seat of the truck as a gray Navy Yard security truck cruised by. The cop
driving paid no attention to him. Very good, he thought. The flasher
unit makes it invisible.

He waited until the truck was out of sight before getting out. He left
the keys in the ignition and shut the door quickly to stop the warning
chimes. It was a cool evening, but the night air was heavy with the
promise of fog from the river. He was about to set out for the gun park
when the security truck came back by, so he stepped through the doors of
the Turret Lathe Building.

After the truck went by, he looked around. There were huge dark lumps of
machinery dotting the football field-sized floor: metal presses, giant
milling machines, vertical drill presses, and, in the center, the
largest metal lathe he had ever seen. Suspended between its two turrets
was a cylindrical gray steel mass that appeared to be more than fifty
feet long from end to end.

High in the overhead was a gantry crane track, with one large and one
smaller crane parked in the middle of the building, their diamond-shaped
hook heads positioned over the central turret lathe. In the rose quartz
light reflecting through the skylights a hundred feet above his head, he
could make out the larger pieces of machinery, but the floor was
littered with piles of junk, scrap metal, rusting barrels, and heaps of
electrical cable, all clumped indistinctly in the shadows. The entire
place stank of rust, ancient oil and grease, and rotting electrical
insulation. There was a blast of steam from the power plant next door
that startled him back . i into motion."

He checked the street once more and then walked down along the side of
the abandoned factory, staying in the shadows in case there were any
foot patrols, although this part of the Navy Yard seemed to be deserted.

He walked as quickly as his injured leg would allow, going down the
length of the Turret Lathe Building, until he was even with the end of
the Forge Building, its lighted windows visible across the street to his
left. The entrance to the Forge Building was obscured

by a small brick building whose sign identified it as the Navy Yard
chapel. Beyond, he could see the slant piers along the Anacostia River
and the masts of the museum ship rising over the nearest building. He
slipped into a darkened doorway and watched for a few minutes, getting
his one good eye night-adapted and checking again for sentries or
pedestrians, but there was no one moving along the shadowy industrial
street. He went one more short block and then crossed the street into
the end of the gun park.

The gun park was part of the museum complex. It consisted of about two
acres of ground wedged between the Forge Building and the waterfront,
with one of every kind of naval gun ever manufactured in the Navy Yard
on display--from a single sixty-two-foot-long six teen-inch battleship
gun to a collection of chunky black iron Civil War mortars. There was
even a World War I railroad gun, a twelve-inch naval rifle mounted on a
locomotive frame, sitting on a section of track alongside a twin-armed
guided-missile launcher. Across the street from the park was the
destroyer, its four-hundred-foot length blocking out the lights on
Boiling Air Force Base on the opposite shore of the Anacostia.

Malachi entered the park at the southwestern end, creeping silently
through the shadows, moving from gun to gun, stopping and listening, and
then moving again.

The captain might very well be waiting here, knowing that this was the
only protected approach to the ship.

Finally, he reached the German U-boat conning-tower display, and he
crouched down in its shadow to examine the ship across the street.

There was a single wide street running down along the entire waterfront,
and it was well lighted. Directly across the street was the public
entrance to the ship, which was moored to a wide concrete pier that had
a tall chain-link fence mounted all the way across the foot of the pier.

There was a darkened guard shack standing by a sliding gate in the
fence. Malachi remembered seeing the ship museum when it was opened;
there was normally a sailor in the guard shack who directed visitors
down the pier to the aftermost gangway, which went up to the
superstructure. Departing visitors were routed down from the forecastle
area on a second gangway, past the guard shack, and back out to the
street.

But now the ship was darkened. Its main decks were well lighted by the
streetlights along the pier, but its upper decks, being higher than the
streetlights, were in shadow.

Malachi realized that there was no way he could cross that street and
get to the ship without being seen by someone hiding up high in the
ship. There was also no way he could get to the back of the ship and
sneak aboard that way, because the piers slanted out into the river,
leaving the stern of the ship sixty feet away from the waterfront
bulkhead. Now if he were James Bond, he thought, he would go back down
the waterfront, drop into the river, swim back to the ship, and then
climb aboard over the propeller guards, although he doubted even James
Bond would want to stick even a finger in the heavily polluted Anacostia
River. But with only one eye and a gimp leg, he was definitely not up to
Mr. Bond tonight.

He looked down the waterfront street for signs of parked cars or other
surveillance, but the street and the visitors' parking lot were empty.

The only signs of life were coming from the steady stream of traffic
bumping over the Welsh Memorial Bridge at the near end of the Navy Yard
and a row of lighted windows behind him in the Forge Building. NIS must
be working late tonight.

Well, this was supposed to be a final, friendly business meeting between
the contractor and his employer.

Maybe not all that friendly, but it was certainly not supposed to be a
shoot-out at the O.K. Corral, either. He had told the captain that he
was going to leave town and disappear but that he needed five thousand.

in cash to pay off the people who were going to get him out of town. The
captain had hesitated only for a moment, then agreed to the meeting. He
said he would need to know some things before he would pay, and
specifically, he needed to know what evidence a certain Miss. Snow had
relating to the truth behind the Hardin murders.

Malachi had replied that she had one interesting bit, which he was sure
the captain would find well worth the money.

So, just a final little business meeting. The thing to do was to stand
up and walk across the street, slip around the end of that sliding gate,
and walk up the brow of the ship, easy as you please, like he had every
right to be there. Once on the ship, and assuming there hadn't been a
hail of gunfire from the ship's top hampers, he would see what was
possible. He figured the captain did indeed want to know what had
happened in Georgetown and whether or not the people in Opnav had
figured out who the great man was, so the most likely scenario was
probably a "stick 'em up, don't turn around, walk straight ahead and do
what I tell you"

drill. Which would be fine with Malachi. The only trick would be to
convince the captain to stick the gun right in his back. After that, it
would be simple, a piece of cake even.

He took one last look up and down the street, then stood up and walked
nonchalantly over to the fence, trying hard to minimize his limp. He did
not hurry, and he kept his hands visible. And while he was counting on
the captain's being the amateur that he probably was, the thought of a
silenced .22 long rifle Colt Woodsman with a laser scope did cross his
mind, raising fine beads of sweat on his forehead, despite the cool of
the evening.

He reached the end of the fence nearest the water and looked around
again, but he did not look up at the ship. The ship's towering
overhanging bow reflected little lapping sounds from under the pier, and
something splashed in the trash-filled water. He grabbed the chain link
and swung his body around the end, hanging briefly out over the black
waters of the Anacostia. He dropped lightly back onto the pier on the
other side, stumbling a little because of his leg and his one-eyed lack
of depth perception. He exhaled quietly when he landed on the concrete;
that would have been the place for the captain to have taken his shot.

So this was going to be a "talk first, shoot second" deal. Works for me,
Malachi thought as he headed for the after gangway.

dan banged his hands impatiently on the steering wheel as they inched
along in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Southeast Freeway. They could
see the tall, lighted stacks of the Navy Yard power plant several blocks
in the distance off to their right, but they were getting nowhere due to
an accident about a mile up ahead. His chin bumped on the neck brace
when he had to jam on the brakes. He tugged angrily at the Velcro straps
and took the brace off in frustration, pitching it into the backseat.

"Damn it!" he exclaimed. "It's seven-fifteen. Why is there all this damn
traffic still out here?"

"Maybe Summerfield was right," Grace said. "The closer I get to a
face-to-face confrontation with Rennselaer, the better waiting a day
looks."

"No," Dan said. "I think your intuition is right about Vann and
the D.C. police. His bosses are going to want to go slowly before they
go tangling with someone in the Pentagon at the VCNO level. And if our
man is the director of the NIS, that will complicate it even more-- NIS
is another police organization. If we confront Rennselaer tonight, it
will increase the pressure on both of them."

"You think he's the guy?"

"I do now. The vice chief had one really strong point: He has too much
to lose. Shit, you know what? We should have taken the Metro--it goes
right to the Navy Yard--three stops from the Pentagon."

malachi stepped off the after brow leading up to the 01 level on the
Barry, then passed under a large canvas awning covering the entire
antisubmarine rocket launcher deck. The tour guide's podium was secured
for the night next to a closed hatch. There was an interior
communications panel of some kind next to the door, with a row of small
white lights across the top, but no sign of people. He could feel a
faint breeze coming off the river up here now that he was out from under
the windbreak created by the ship. He half-expected the ship to be
creaking and moving in the current, but it was dead-silent and
motionless, a testament to its four thousand-ton displacement. He walked
over to the base of the ASROC missile launcher and looked aft. There was
a single steep ladder leading down to the fantail area, where the after
gun mount loomed in the darkness.

With the hatch into the superstructure closed up, he would have to go
down to the main deck and then work his way forward. He started over
toward the ladder but stopped in the shadows when he saw the Navy Yard
security truck coming down the waterfront. The truck cruised by slowly,
the guard's face a white blob in the driver's side window. But then it
turned the corner behind the Forge Building and was gone.

Malachi knew nothing about ships, but he figured the captain would be
somewhere forward and up, away from all those lights on the pier. He
stepped carefully down the ladder, favoring his leg, his depth
perception badly skewed by the eye patch. Long John Silver, ready to
poop the mizzen-whatever, he thought as he reached the fantail area of
the main deck. He stopped and looked around, but there was no sign of
the captain or anyone else. The gun mount was much bigger than it looked
from the pier, its rounded steel sides glinting in the streetlight. The
destroyer's deck was surprisingly uneven, and it seemed to have sand
painted on its surface.

He walked over to the starboard side and looked up the long, narrow
expanse of steel leading forward along the main deck. The port side was
in full view of the pier lights, but the starboard side was entirely
dark, with only the Boiling Field hangar lights a half mile across the
river providing any illumination.

He realized that he was profoundly tired--tired of this stupid game,
tired of all these people he had to work for, picking up after them as
they scurried through their precious little tin-soldier careers. You can
still walk away, Malachi. The world is probably going to fall in on
these two sooner rather than later. Walk away. Go back and get in the
truck and drive out of here and straight west out of town into the Blue
Ridge Mountains.

Even as part of his mind thought about it, the other part compelled him
to start walking forward up the starboard side, trying to adjust his one
good eye to the sudden darkness.

The walkway up the main deck was only three feet wide, with a
five-strand bronze wire lifeline on the outboard side and the ship's
deck house superstructure on the inboard side. He could hear the wash of
the river's current against the ship's steel sides ten feet below. The
river stank of mud, rotting tree branches, oil, and sewage in about
equal proportions. He thought he could see things floating by in the
current, but he did not want to know what they were. He walked two
hundred feet forward, past the after deck house hatches, under the boat
davits, past a ladder amidships going back up to the 01 level, until he
came to a tunnel-like structure, just forward of a hatch leading into
the ship directly below the bridge. It appeared that the tunnel, which
was the same width as the main-deck walkway and about eight feet high,
led out onto the forecastle area through a heavy steel door, which was
closed.

Malachi stopped. The tunnel was pitch-black. He thought he could see the
shapes of industrial gas bottles mounted against the river side of the
tunnel. To his immediate left was a hatch marked forward athwartship
passageway, and under those words was a painted label enumerating the
compartments accessible through that hatch: the officers' wardroom, the
forward radar-equipment room, and the forward fire room. Malachi
examined the hatch and saw that it was not locked. He wondered if the
captain might be somewhere inside the ship. That would make it tough.

But, no, he had said he would meet him--what was the word? Yeah,
topside.

That sounded like outside. He peered again into the darkened tunnel.

Even with two good eyes, he would not have been able to see anything.

Were the shapes along the exterior wall all gas bottles, or was someone
there? He should have brought a light of some kind. He had his butane
lighter, but he knew he would be night blind the instant he fired it.

Should he go inside the ship? Or forward? He put his hand on the hatch's
steel actuating handle. It was cold and slightly wet to the touch. He
looked up at the bridge wing two decks above him, half-expecting to see
a figure up there, but there was nothing.

He took a breath and decided to go forward. Putting his right hand on
the .380 in his waistband, he started forward. As the shapes on the
outboard wall became visible, he saw that they were gas bottles, five
feet high, and marked with white labels reading nitrogen, argon,
acetylene. He stopped just inside the tunnel, trying to night-adapt his
good eye. The tunnel seemed to go on another fifteen or twenty feet. He
looked behind him, where he could see down the entire length of the main
deck, which appeared to be bathed in daylight compared with the tunnel.

He turned around again and took another step, then another. Stop. Was
that someone ahead? He blinked his left eye rapidly and drew the gun.

There was a figure up ahead, standing motionless against the inboard
bulkhead. But there was something funny about it. The head, something
funny about the head.

"That's Oscar," a familiar voice said from behind.

Malachi jumped. "Don't turn around, Malachi. We're all armed here
tonight. So lose the gun. Just put it down on the deck and kick it
through the breaks into the river. Slowly. That's good."

Malachi knelt slightly, and with a twinge of regret, he put the Browning
down on the steel deck. He was tempted to palm the .25 auto out of his
sock, then decided not to. It was the captain's gun he was after, and
besides, his hands were better than any gun--and quieter.

He stood back up and nudged the automatic with his foot, then nudged it
again until it went out a scupper hole and fell into the river with a
chunky splash.

"Very good, Oscar, in case you're wondering, is a dummy. We use Oscar to
practice man-overboard recoveries.

He's made of kapok, so he floats. We throw him over the side and then
drive the ship back to find him and pick him up. He lives up here in the
weather breaks. It's a good place for dummies."

Malachi heard what sounded like the hatch opening wide behind him, and
then there was a clank, as if the hatch was being latched open against
the inboard superstructure bulkhead. Son of a bitch had been just inside
that hatch. Waiting for him to go past, up into that tunnel. Had
probably heard him stop.

"So now what?" Malachi asked.

"So now I tie off a loose end, Malachi," the captain said.

"You mean you don't really want to know how much Ms. Snow knows? You
think you're going to get away with just shooting me and putting me in
the river, do you? You think I haven't left some insurance out there?

I mean, I know who we're all protecting here."

The captain laughed. "No you don't. Keep your hands out where I can see
them, Malachi. That's good.

And what I think is that you never expected me to get the drop on a pro
like you. That there is no 'open this if I don't come back' letter,
because you don't know anyone to leave such a letter with. You're the
original lone wolf, Malachi; you've told me that a hundred times. But
you've outlived your usefulness. I guess you'd outlived your usefulness
when you ran that girl down two years ago. Did you mean to do that,
Malachi?"

Malachi was thinking hard. He had to get the captain to come closer. Get
that gun within striking range.

"She cut me," Malachi said. "When I went to warn her away from your
great man. Last woman who cut me cost me my manhood. It was the least I
uld do."

"It was just a simple contract, Malachi. Convincingly tell the skirt to
get lost. And look what happened."

The captain's voice sounded a little louder, maybe a little closer.

Good. He was counting on the captain not wanting to shoot him out here,
because a shot would bring the cops. Inside would be different. Had to
nail that gun before he was forced inside the ship. Malachi began to
take the weight off his bad leg to position his body for a turning
strike. Closer, please.

"And the boy, Malachi--what really happened there?

I can't see you going to Philly and doing that little job."

"I have some connections. It wasn't all that hard.

They were just supposed to talk to him, too. But he got self-righteous,
noisy. Didn't want to listen. Neither of them was a good listener."

Closer. Definitely closer now.

"That's kind of what I imagined. Take your coat off, Malachi."

What? My coat? Oh hell yes! Take it off, left arm first, hold the right
arm, bunch it a little, then use it as a flail. Whip it around and nail
the gun. The coat would give him a three-foot reach. He began to unzip
the windbreaker, easing his body to the left ever so slightly to give
himself room to swing it, then shifting his weight back to the injured
leg. No way around it.

"You getting cold, Captain?" he asked, saying anything to distract the
man behind him as he pulled the zipper down and then started to pull his
left arm clear.

"Like cold feet? I think the cops are onto this little shandy, by the
way. They've been through my place.

Who knows what they found, hunh?"

"Who indeed, Malachi."

Malachi heard a metallic noise behind him as he began to cock his right
arm, the jacket hanging free now, his left hand closing over his right
hand to propel the snap properly. One chance now. Take a deep breath.

Go low and whip--

And then he was down on the deck, his head ringing, his breath arrested
in his chest, and his legs jerking around beneath him as if they
belonged to someone else. What the hell had happened? Can't breathe.

Take a breath. Chest doesn't work. Breathe, man. He hadn't heard a shot.

Breathe, goddamn it. Never hear the one that gets you. What the hell--he
could sense that the captain was standing practically on top of him,
bending down to look at him. Something in his hand. Not a gun.

"This is a stun gun, Malachi. Shoots a little dart, trails a little
titanium wire, and delivers fifteen-thousand volts. No amps, just volts.

That's why I needed the jacket off, Malachi. But it does work, doesn't
it? Having a little trouble catching your breath, Malachi? Give it time.

And that's a terrific-looking eye you have there. A lady hit you with
her purse, did she?"

The captain straightened up as Malachi strained to focus on getting that
breath, getting some air, and it was coming, but just barely coming.

God, it was hard, and his damn legs were still in spasm, his right shin
screaming again, and the patch had come off his eye when he fell. He
could feel the cool night air against his battered skin. Breathe, damn
it, breathe. He felt his diaphragm move, then heard a croak escape his
lips. He started to gather himself.

"Was that a little bitty breath, Malachi? I guess we're not quite there,
are we?"

And then another buzzing blast hit him, knocking him back down on the
steel deck as if he were a feather, his own muscles bouncing his body
around, the vision in his left eye closing down to a red-rimmed circle
as he fought to cling to consciousness. His ears were roaring and his
right eye was suddenly blazing with pain again.

His face smashed up against one of the gas bottles.

Then he became dimly aware that the captain had him by his feet and was
dragging him across the steel deck, and when his eye bumped on something
on the deck, he slipped into a black fog, not quite fully out, but
absolutely, totally helpless, the jacket dropping out of his right hand
as he went over the edge into unconsciousness.

He awoke with his face pressed into what felt like oily steel, and there
was a smell of fuel oil in his nostrils.

His body felt like one big bruise, and there was a salty taste of blood
in his mouth. The skin on his face felt raw and scraped. He tried to
open his left eye, but it was not obeying. His brain dimly perceived
that he was inside, inside the ship. His arms were bound behind his
back, and it felt as if his feet were tied together, too, but he
couldn't move them, anyway. His whole left side felt bruised and
battered. And then he was moving again, being moved, sliding up what
felt like planks of wood against his face, strong hands grabbing him by
his belt and sliding him up an incline and then off the end of the board
onto smooth steel, which had a powdery feel to it, and the smell of oil
was replaced by the smell of something else. He desperately tried to
open his eye, but none of his muscles would respond, and his optical
nerves were jammed with whorls of red and orange and bright green. He
tried to cry out, but he could manage only a long groan as more of his
body slid off the end of the plank onto this strange surface. Into this
strange surface: The sound around him had changed, and he became aware
that he was inside something, something long, and curved. Then he felt
his shoes coming off and his socks being yanked roughly down his legs
and off his feet, the .25 clattering down onto a steel deck. He tried to
raise his head and get that one eye open, and barely succeeded. There
was light behind his head, back by his feet, his bare feet, but he could
not understand what he was seeing, the round, smooth, curving surface,
covered with holes, some kind of cylinder, and then another lightning
bolt, this time applied to his bare feet, galvanizing his entire body
into a giant convulsive leap, the top of his head hitting something very
hard, tears in his eyes, both eyes. The now terribly familiar problem of
breathing, the excruciatingly hard effort to make the diaphragm work, to
draw even a piece of a breath.

Then a moment of silence, followed by the probing beam of a flashlight,
shockingly white in his left eye, which was now opened. He tried to turn
his head away from the dazzling light, but his neck was made of rubber.

"Know where you are, Malachi?"

The captain's voice. But distant, as if he was speaking down a tunnel.

Wrong. This whole thing had gone very wrong. He was supposed to be
headed for West Virginia now, a vision of blue-green hills and an
inviting open road tantalizing his feverish brain.

"I'm not going to kill you, Malachi. But I am going to leave you. Right
where you left Wesley Hardin. You're in a steam drum, Malachi. In a
boiler. In a ship. In an empty ship. Nobody ever comes down here
anymore, Malachi. I'm going to bolt up the cover, and I'm going to
remount the lagging pad, and you are going to com template your sins for
a week or so until you dry up and turn to dust."

And then there was darkenss as something big and heavy shut out the
light back by his feet. Only this time, his muscles did work, and
Malachi began to scream.

dan pulled the Suburban up in front of the Forge Building and parked in
one of the spots reserved for senior officers. There were thin patches
of fog drifting through the gun park out in front of the building. The
downstairs windows of the building were all dark, except for the
ground-floor entrance hall and a single office suite at the far-left
end. Grace could see that there were many more lights on up on the
second floor.

"Somebody's working late," Dan said, peering through the windshield.

"The Navy JAG Appeals Division is on the ground floor," she said. "They
never work late. NIS has the entire second floor on this end and a piece
of the ground floor at that end, where the lights are. That's the
admiral's conference room." Robby was right, she thought.

Something's going on.

Dan reached for his hat in the backseat.

"You going to put that brace back on?" Grace asked.

"Hell with it," he replied. "Neck's feeling a little better now."

Probably because of the brace, she thought, but she held her tongue. As
they got out of the car, an elderly Federal Protective Service security
guard with a familiar face came through the glass doors of the reception
area, carrying a lunch pail and his jacket. He saw Dan's three stripes
and saluted almost automatically.

"Evening, Commander," he said. "Miss. Snow.

Haven't seen you for a while."

"Lots of lights on tonight, Mr. Jansen," Grace said, remembering the
man's name at the last moment.

"What's going on?"

"Don't rightly know, Miss. The admiral just came back in and he looked
kinda flustered."

At that moment, Grace saw Robby Booker appear in the reception area,
coming toward them. He was in his shirtsleeves as he came through the
glass doors.

"Hey, Miss. Snow. They doin' some serious flappin' around in there.

What's going' down, anyway?"

"Hi, Robby, you'll--" Grace began, but she stopped when Dan yelled out a
loud

"Hey!" As she turned around, she thought she saw a figure sprinting
across the end of the gun park and disappearing behind the chapel
building. Dan had whirled around and was running down the steps, headed
for the street.

"Son of a bitch!" he was yelling. "Grace, I'm going after him. Get the
cops. Tell 'em to find us. And call Vann. Get him down here!" And then
he was gone, running down the street in the direction of the industrial
area, his hat flying off his head.

"Miss.!" the guard said. "What's going' on?"

"I don't know," she said,
thoroughly confused.

Whom had Dan seen? Why would he run after him like that? Oh hell, was it
Rennselaer? Having been warned by the VCNO's office, the EA was running
for it. My God, Dan had been right. She turned to the security guard.

"Can you call Yard Security? That man he's chasing is probably armed and
is definitely dangerous."

"I can, but we gotta go upstairs. But what--Who--"

"I don't have time to explain. Let's get upstairs.

Robby, I have to make a call."

The three of them bolted through the entrance doors and then
double-timed it upstairs to the NIS reception area, the old man bringing
up the rear, his lunch pail clanking against the railing. The lone desk
guard, a very large woman, rose out of her chair when they burst into
the NIS reception area.

"Hey," she began.

"Call Central," shouted the old man from the top of the stairs. "Get
some units down to the industrial area.

Armed intruder, Navy officer in pursuit. Go!"

Grace grabbed the extension phone as the desk guard got on the radio.

She pushed 81 to get an outside line while fishing in her purse for
Vann's card. She found it and dialed the number. C'mon, c'mon, be there.

Booker stood there, obviously dying to know what the hell was going on.

The phone rang over in Washington, but no one answered. She hung up
after ten rings and banged the phone down in frustration. Now what?

The desk guard had made the emergency call but was now obviously trying
to answer the dispatcher's question about what was going on. She looked
up at Grace, but Grace wasn't seeing her, because there, in the flesh,
coming down the hall, was the executive assistant to the director of the
NIS, Capt. Rennselaer. She backed away from the desk in shock. Then who
the hell was Dan chasing? Oh God, it had to be that man Ward, Malachi
Ward. The bastard who had tortured her and burned her house down. What
the hell was he doing down here in the Navy Yard? Robby had said the EA
had been meeting someone. Ward had been meeting with Rennselaer!

And Dan was running after him, unarmed. She whirled around and grabbed
the old man's gun out of his holster and, bolting through the glass
doors, ran back down the stairs, the guard's protests ringing in her
ears.

dan ran down the block, ducking between the chapel and the Forge
Building. Each time his feet touched the ground, a jolt of pain whipped
through his neck, but otherwise, running came naturally enough. He
unbuttoned his jacket as he slid around the corner of the Forge Building
and stopped. The street was poorly lighted, with only a single
streetlight positioned ten feet from where he was standing. On one side
of the street, to his right, was the end of the Forge Building, and one
block down was the darkened end facade of the Quadrangle Building. On
his left was the looming brick wall of the abandoned gun factory, the
Turret Lathe

Building. He eased out into the middle of the street, waiting to see if
his quarry would move. Him, of all god damned people. Then there was a
wink of red light down at the corner of the Turret Lathe Building,
followed by a cracking sound and something lethal slashing the air near
his head. He jumped across the street and flattened himself against the
Turret Lathe Building's wall. There was another red wink, and this time,
the bullet tugged at his pants leg before ricocheting off the brick wall
and shattering a window in the chapel.

Shit! The streetlight! He was perfectly illuminated.

He scrambled back across the street, looking for a place to hide, but
there was nowhere to go. He saw what looked like an arm move down at the
corner of the Turret Lathe Building, and he hit the deck as another
round cracked the night air, followed by more ricocheting sounds.

Small-caliber weapon. His neck blazed in pain again. Then he heard a
siren in the distance.

The arm was gone as Dan looked up from his sprawled position in the
street. He got up and headed down the street, zigzagging like a broken
field runner, getting away from the damned streetlight. He kept his eyes
focused on the corner of the Turret Lathe Building, but there was no
further movement. He wished to hell he had a gun. The siren was getting
louder; now it sounded like two sirens.

He stopped twenty feet from the corner and crouched down beside the
minimal shelter of a fire hydrant.

He felt as if he was in a concrete canyon, with the massive wall of the
gun factory on one side and the blank brick expanse of the Quadrangle
Building on the other. Around the corner, he could just see the nose of
a white pickup truck juttting out from behind a loading dock. White
pickup. Why was that important? He couldn't remember. He wanted to get
around that corner, but what would be waiting for him when he did?

He decided he had to--he was too exposed out here in the street, and his
quarry could be getting clean away down the street that met the one he
was on in a T junction.

He got up and sprinted across the street to the corner of the Turret
Lathe Building, where he flattened himself against the brick wall. He
listened for a minute, trying to hear over the sound of his own
breathing, and then he threw himself around the corner and flattened
himself against the side of a loading dock. He listened for the sounds
of someone above him on the dock, but there was nothing, just the two
sirens that were getting a lot closer. He thought he could see flashing
blue lights reflecting off the skylight windows of the building across
the street. His own breathing sounded very loud in his ears. Maybe's
he's gone inside. He would have heard the sirens, too, and known that
anyone running down the streets of the Navy Yard would be seen.

Dan crept around to the face of the loading dock and moved to the
right-front fender of the pickup truck, which he now could see was
parked in a notch between two loading docks. He peered under the truck,
looking for feet. Nothing. But he could see that the doors to the
factory building were open. Bet my ass he's in there.

You'll bet your ass big time, you go in there, a voice in his head
whispered. He's got the gun, remember? At that instant, a cop car
squealed into the intersection, its lights on high beam and its blue
lights flashing, but as he was about to stand up and wave, the car made
a screeching turn to the left and careened back up the street he had
just been on. He could hear the other car somewhere in the maze of
industrial buildings but couldn't see it. Shit! He made his decision.

Keeping low, he went around the front of the truck, which appeared to be
a Metro truck, of all things, and sidled up to the entrance of the
factory. He stood flattened against the left-side sliding door, which
appeared to be made of steel panels that were thirty feet high and
mounted on tracks. There was a large mound of debris and scrap metal
piled in the open doorway, but there was a walk space of sorts on one
side that he could get around. He chose the other side, figuring the
walk space might be targeted. He crept, bent over, across the front of
the pile of debris and then bolted up over the right side of the scrap
heap, tripping on something and losing his footing at the top, then
sprawling down the other side into the darkness of the huge building
just as another shot cracked into the pile. He rolled quickly across the
floor in the darkness until he came up against a piece of machinery;
then he flattened himself on the entrance side of it. He waited,
listening, trying to dampen down his own breathing. Outside, the sirens
were getting louder again, and this time a cop car came blasting right
by the entrance to the factory and hurtled on down the street. Dan could
only hope they would figure it out and start looking in the buildings
soon.

Starting with this one, please.

He thought he heard something move, maybe twenty feet away, and slowly
turned his head. There was some light in the building, but it was all up
high, and the shadows down here on the factory floor were pretty solid.

Conscious of that gun, he decided not to stay in any one place for very
long. He crawled on his bare hands and the tips of his toes to stay as
quiet as possible.

He came around the edge of the block of machinery, stopped for an
instant, and then began to make his way toward the next large dark
shadow about twenty feet farther into the building. He became extremely
conscious of sounds then--his own breathing, the little rustling noises
of rats skittering through the piles of scrap littering the floor, the
deep-throated hum of the power plant fans next door, the crazy, distant
siren circus going on outside, and the low sounds of the night breeze
off the river whistling in the maze of girders way above his head. He
reached the next machine, which appeared to be a giant drill press of
some kind, and folded himself down against its base. He could see better
now, and he was dismayed to realize how clear a target he had been
coming through that door. The feel of the cold steel foundation of the
drill press was comforting against his neck--until he felt it move.

"That's good, Daniel," a voice said above his head.

Dan froze, and then he looked up. Captain Summer field, in his dress
blues, his jacket open, the gun in his right hand, and what looked like
a black box of some kind in his left hand, sat above him on the
operator's chair, the four gold stripes on his sleeve glinting
dangerously in the gloom, his face pale but recognizable.

"I was right," Dan said. "It was you. Running."

"Running, yes. I suppose I'll have to get used to that now. That wasn't
too bright, your running out in the open against a man with a gun like
that."

"How the hell did you get here? We left you in the Pentagon and drove
right over."

Summerfield smiled. "I took your beloved Metro. Fifteen minutes."

"Are you going to kill me, too?" Dan asked, trying to keep the fear out
of his voice.

"Only if I have to. I really haven't killed anyone-- that was all that
idiot Malachi, your night visitor."

"But you instigated it."

"I guess in a way I did. Although like too many things in this town,
what happened was not at all what was intended. Believe it or not, the
killings were screwups-- both of them."

Dan started to crawl out from under the machine to get a better look at
Summerfield, but he stopped moving when the little gun came up like a
snake's head.

Outside, it sounded as if there were more cop cars getting into the act.

"And it wasn't the vice, was it?" Dan said. "It was NIS. Keeler. Walker
T. Keeler. W.T. But the vice, Ran dall, Rennselaer--they were all in it,
weren't they?" Summerfield sighed and began to climb down from the
operator's chair. "Rennselaer went to Randall with it, once the girl
started to become a problem. That was two years ago, right after I had
to leave my EA job with the previous vice chief. Randall was new, and he
came to me because I had some assets left over from my OLA days that
could take care of problems like that He didn't tell the vice; Admiral
Torrance would have sent Keeler home if he'd found out about the affair.

Retired him in thirty days flat. But Keeler was his protege, so the EA
did what EAs do: He tried to protect both his own boss and the flag
officer with the short circuit between his brain and his crank."

"By killing her?"

They both stopped as the sirens got closer again.

Then the sirens began to wind down, leaving a galaxy of blue strobe
lights flickering through the skylight windows.

"No. Ward was a contractor I had used from time to time to take care of
problems when I was up in legislative liaison. He'd been recommended by
a Hill staffer I knew. Keeler thought the girl was about to make a rude
noise, so Ward was supposed to drop around and scare her off. That was
all. Instead, she got mad and pulled a knife and apparently cut him up.

He ran her over with a truck the next morning--the one parked out front,
I imagine."

"Lovely. And her brother?"

"Almost the same thing, really." Summerfield
sighed.

He appeared to be listening for the sounds of cops out front. "The
brother somehow found out about the affair, unfortunately right before
the girl met her ... accident. Came down from Philly and demanded a
meeting with Rear Admiral Keeler. Rennselaer panicked and asked me to
handle the meeting. The girl's death was being reported as an accident,
but Rennselaer suspected that somehow it might not have been.

Since my man had been sent to hush her up, it fell on me to see if we
could shut the boy up, or at least divert him. We stalled him at a
meeting in the Army Navy Town Club, and, once again, Ward was told to
intimidate him into silence. He turned it over to some people in Philly.

They mishandled it, and the boy ended up getting killed."

"Jesus. All this to protect one officer from the scandal of a senior
officer-junior officer love affair?"

"A comedy of errors--or tragedy. But then there was nothing to be done,
and for two years, we thought the whole thing had blown over--that is,
until the kid's body was found in the Wisconsin. Keeler had to have
known that two deaths were beyond coincidence, but there was nothing he
could do about it. It was Rennselaer and Randall who cooked up the
gambit of Opnav taking the investigation."

"So that part was all a prearranged little dance."

"To begin with. But once you and Miss. Snow brought it back to town, the
vice chief began asking questions.

And once it looked to Randall that the vice might actually find out what
had happened, it fell to me to eliminate the one guy who could pin this
tail on all us donkeys, Malachi Ward. I took certain measures to expose
him to the police, trying to make him run for it. It would have worked,
too, except that you and the indomitable Miss. Snow wouldn't leave it
alone."

"But he implicated the vice the night he came after us! He talked about
the vice's flunky."

"When it all started, I was the vice's EA, wasn't I?

He just assumed I still was. Which brings me to business, Daniel. I
can't be here when the Keystone Kops out there finally figure out which
building to look in.

But I need some insurance, so you're going with me.

Get up."

Dan became aware that there were sounds of people outside now, the
chunking of car doors, and more blue lights flickering across the
ceiling--except that they were not at the front entrance. Summerfield
looked over at the doors and laughed harshly.

"Rent-a-cops. They're surrounding the wrong damn building. I love it.

Start walking--that way."

grace had snatched the old guard's gun without a second thought and run
down the stairs before any of them could even start yelling. She raced
through the front door of the Forge Building, turned right, in the
direction that Dan had disappeared, ran down in front of the Forge
Building until she came to the chapel, and then stopped. Her heart was
pounding from the sudden exertion. Who the hell was Dan chasing? It had
to be that Ward character. She had been stunned to see Rennselaer coming
down the hall: Robby said he had gone to a late meeting, and they both
had assumed-- except, at the edges of her mind, she thought the man
running through the gun park had been in a Navy uniform.

A crack of gunfire echoed up the street a block in front of her, and she
flinched when the bullet made a spanging noise off a brick wall. She
hefted the pistol in her right hand and examined it for the first time.

It was huge. She would need two hands just to point it. She walked
rapidly down the remaining part of the block to the corner of the Forge
Building, then stopped. Now what? Stick her head around the corner?

Suddenly, that seemed an unattractive idea. Except that Dan was down
there, somewhere, and Dan did not have a gun, and the person he was
chasing obviously did. Her decision was made for her when the front
doors to the Forge Building burst open a block behind her and the two
security guards ran down the steps. The large woman saw Grace and yelled
at her to stop. Grace turned and looked back, which allowed the guards
to see the pistol. The large woman hauled her weapon out and yelled for
Grace to drop it. Grace hesitated, then stepped around the corner into
the streetlight.

The light. She was standing under a streetlight. She had to move. She
started running again, down the street, away from the Forge Building and
the cops, and across the street parallel to the Turret Lathe Building.

She slipped sideways into the next street, which separated the Forge and
the Quadrangle buildings. She never thought she would appreciate the
absence of streetlights, but she exhaled forcefully when she reached the
shadows between the two buildings and flattened herself against a wall.

The Turret Lathe Building loomed in front of her, its ten-story-high
windowless brick walls rising into a penumbra of river mist backlit by
the power plant's floodlights behind it. Where the hell were they?

Now she could hear sirens in the distance. She wanted to call out to Dan
but was afraid to. She was still holding the big pistol in both hands,
and suddenly her arms were getting tired. Great. Can't even hold the
damn gun up, she thought. She tried to remember her NIS indoctrination.

Don't stand still when the other guy has a gun. She started moving
again, trying to make herself small, proceeding down the block along the
back end of the Quadrangle Building until she reached the T-intersection
between the street she was on and the one that ran in front of the
Turret Lathe Building-- which is where she saw the white pickup truck.

It was Ward. He had followed her in a white pickup truck.

Except this one had a yellow flasher unit on the roof.

She edged down a few more yards until she could see the front of the
Turret Lathe Building; she spotted the open doors. They're in there, she
thought. The sirens were getting louder. Wait for the cops; point them
in the right direction.

A cop car came down the street between the Forge Building and the
Quadrangle Building, its lights blazing and the siren going full blast.

It slowed as it reached the intersection, and Grace started waving at
them, but then the idiots turned left, away from her. Goddamn it, this
way, she almost yelled, but she held back, not wanting to expose her
presence, in case Ward was just inside that darkened doorway across the
street. With Dan. At gunpoint? Oh God, did he have Dan? A second cop car
came down the street on the other side of the Quadrangle Building,
sound-and-light show going full blast, screeched through the
intersection, and went right on past the open doors of the Turret Lathe
Building. Jesus Christ, she thought, cops everywhere, and here she was,
standing on the sidewalk with a gun in her hand, waving at them, and
they didn't see her?

She ran across the street and crouched down by the right door of the
pickup truck, which was stuck between the two loading docks. The open
doors were only | twenty feet away. They were big doors, rising three
stories into the entrance frames. She stood up slowly and looked into
the pickup truck. The keys were in it, along with some small duffel
bags; the butt of an automatic pistol sticking out of a side pocket of
one of the bags.

Ward. He had had a pistol like that in Georgetown. She was sure of it.

Crouching, she crept around the front of the truck, running her left
hand over the heavy steel grating, and walked very slowly over to the
left side of the Turret Lathe Building entrance, the guard's cannon held
out in front of her, her hands trembling with its weight. The entrance
was pitch-black, with only a pile of scrap iron and cables fully
illuminated in the streetlight.

She nearly screamed when a dark furry shape scuttled across the loading
dock, right in front of her.

Then she heard more cop cars, which sounded as if they were converging
on the Quadrangle Building across the street. Had they found them? Was
this a false trail? She edged closer to the door, crouched down, and
peered around the corner into the cavernous darkness inside.

Were they in there? There was a lot of activity going on one block over.

She flattened herself against the damp steel door and decided to call
out Dan's name.

dan straightened up, turned around, and started walking, trying to see
back over his shoulder, but his neck was too stiff. "You can't get clear
of this, Captain," he said. "Even if you get out of the Navy Yard,
there're gonna be cops all over Keeler and Rennselaer.

And there's Ward."

"Ward has been, shall we say, neutralized. Without him, everyone can
speculate, but if Randall and Rennselaer can hold their tongues, there
will be no evidence.

Now, I think this thing has about two rounds in it. It's a
twenty-five-caliber Italian number. Zero stopping power. So if you get
cute, I'll put one in your brain, because I don't have ammunition to
throw away. I don't want to shoot you. When I'm clear, you'll be free to
go.

But right now, I may need you to get through those clowns out there."

Dan tripped over some debris on the floor but regained his balance. He
could not tell exactly where Summerfield was, but he knew that the
captain was probably not making idle threats. Summerfield, the gun
collector, the expert shot, who could probably have hit him out there on
the street, even with a small-caliber pistol. He tried again to reason
with the captain.

"You think if you let me go, I won't talk?" he said.

"I don't care if you do. I might be wrong, but after your little
grandstand tonight in the vice's office, who'll believe you when you
lash out at yet another flag officer with some preposterous, unprovable
accusations? And don't count on the District cops: They're going to be
behind you all the way--way behind you. You heard Vann. Go that
way--toward the power plant side. Vann was freelancing, I take it. Why?"

"Wesley Hardin was his son."

Summerfield grunted but did not reply. He marched Dan carefully through
the piles of debris, toward the long wall on the right side, deeper into
the building, farther into the shadows. Dan started looking for a door
along the shadowy wall, but there wasn't one. A chilling realization hit
him: Maybe Summerfield was going to shoot him. Then Grace's voice called
from up in the front of the building.

"Dan? Dan, are you in here? Dan, answer me!"

Dan turned toward her voice, saw her figure clearly silhoutted in the
doorway seventy-five feet away, but then Summerfield moved to stand
between him and the front door, the gun held in his right hand, his
right hand cupped in his left hand, his body in professional shooter's
stance. Dan could not see his face, but he was shaking his head from
side to side, as if to warn Dan to keep silent.

"Dan!" she called again. "The police are here. Captain Vann's on his
way. The security people heard shooting. Answer me!"

Two bullets left, Dan thought frantically. If he yelled now and dropped,
Summerfield might fire and miss.

Then he would have one round. Grace was a long way away, and one round
was better than two.

"Grace, get down!" Dan yelled. As he dropped and rolled, then kept
rolling, the searing heat of a .25-caliber bullet grazed his left ear as
Summerfield whirled and fired. Dan rolled and scrambled, his neckbones
screaming, hoping to all hell that Grace had heeded his warning. When he
collided in the darkness with the base of a large machine, he froze, and
listened. Now there was another cop car speeding down a street outside,
then the sounds of a tire-screeching turn and brakes out front, and
suddenly the car's headlights were pointed into the factory, sending a
dusty beam of bright light right down the middle of the shop floor,
transfixing Dan. He sat up, momentarily blinded, but then he froze, when
he saw Summerfield standing to one side, not ten feet away, backlighted
by the headlights. Dan started to roll, but then something hit him with
the power of a locomotive and flung him back against the machine's
pedestal. The hell that thing doesn't have stopping power, he thought
wonderingly as his mind went over the edge of a wide, smooth black
waterfall, the diminishing sound of gunfire echoing in the distance.

grace dropped down on one knee when Dan yelled; she heard the shot, then
realized she was probably silhouetted in the doorway. She scuttled
sideways, tripping over all the junk piled around the entrance. She
regained her balance as she heard a cop car coming down the side street.

There were thirty seconds of rising j noise from the cop car, and then
it came around the corner and screeched to a halt when the driver apparently saw Grace through the doorway, its front end I slewing around so
that its headlights pointed directly down the center of the gun
factory's floor. In the sudden blaze of white light, she saw Dan on the
floor first.

His face--was that blood? And then she caught sight of the tall figure
standing to one side, stripes, lots of stripes--a naval officer. Who the
hell was that? Then the tall figure pointed something at Dan, and Grace,
galvanized by his move, stood up and began firing the pistol as fast as
she could. The big gun bucked and roared in her hands, the muzzle flash
momentarily blinding her. There was an amazing amount of gun smoke, and
she could hear heavy bullets ricocheting off the machinery. The silence
when she had emptied it was almost painful to her ringing ears, and she
realized her eyes were closed. When she opened them, the tall figure was
gone. Then there were two cops scrambling into the building behind her,
guns drawn, faces white.

"What the hell's going down here, lady?" one yelled at her. They looked
as if they didn't know whom to point their weapons at.

She dropped the empty gun and headed into the building. "Snow, NIS!" she
shouted over her shoulder.

"Get an ambulance." The cop was yelling something back at her, but she
ignored him and ran over to where Dan was lying in a crumpled heap. And
then she saw all the blood: His face was covered in blood, and there was
blood all over the floor. Head shot. Oh my dear God, a head shot. He was
very still. She heard a noise farther down the building and caught a
glimpse of a running figure all the way at the other end of the factory
floor.

He was headed for the far corner. One of the cops saw him, too, and
yelled for him to stop.

"That's him," Grace yelled. "That's the shooter. Stop him. He's getting
out the back of the building! He's killed Commander Collins!"

The cop yelled again and assumed a firing stance, but now there was
nothing to shoot at. He lowered his weapon as Grace came running past
him.

"Hey, lady, I need to see some ID," the cop shouted.

His partner was back in the car, which was sitting in the opened
doorway, calling for an ambulance. Grace never stopped; she ran right to
the pickup truck. She clawed open the door, jumped in it, her mind
galvanized by a white fury, started the truck in a roar, and jammed it
down into gear. The big F-250 bolted out of the loading dock, laying
rubber and nearly colliding with another cop car that was pulling up.

Grace cranked the wheel and turned back down the street that ran along
the side of the Turret Lathe Building, lights out, accelerating past a
bevy of cop cars, scattering cops in every direction and knocking the
taillights off one car. She reached blindly for the bag with the gun in
it, never taking her eyes off the street, finding the butt with her
right hand

"v/vn,:/ v.

and extracting it from the bag. She had the truck halfway down the
building when she saw him climbing out of a window over a door at the
far corner, struggling for a moment, then dropping to the pavement in a
heap, getting up, starting to run along the street, his jacket with
those four stripes flying. As she veered over to his side of the street,
still accelerating, she grappled with the automatic, trying to point it.

Bastard had killed Dan. She took her left hand off the wheel for an
instant to turn on the lights and nearly lost control of the truck.

The fleeing man kept running, but then suddenly he skidded to a stop at
the side of the road as if he had finally noticed the oncoming pickup
truck. He raised his gun hand as Grace floored it, the engine winding
flat out, the vision of Dan's bloody, lifeless face superimposed on the
windshield as she focused on the motionless figure at the side of the
street, the figure in the full uniform of a captain, USN. Then she
recognized him: Summerfield!

She took her foot off the accelerator, hunting for the brake pedal, her
brain not wanting to register the fact that Summerfield had stepped off
the sidewalk and was calmly walking out into the path of the truck, that
he had lowered his arm and was looking right at her when the truck hit
him and blasted his body seventy-five feet through the air, to crash
through a lighted window in the first floor of the Forge Building. Grace
slammed on the brakes, skidding the truck for over a hundred feet until
it finally spun around in the street in a shriek of tires and nearly
turned over before rocking back on to all four tires and stalling out.

She collapsed over the steering wheel, screaming Dan's name and pounding
on the wheel rim with the gun until she became aware that there were
cops standing all around her. A sergeant started to approach the door on
the driver's side, when another cop called out.

"Careful, Danny. Jesus Christ, don't piss her off. She knocked that
fucker clear into that building!"

Grace realized she was still holding on to the gun with her right hand.

She took a deep breath, lowered the window, reversed the grip, and
handed the gun to the sergeant, then sat back against the seat. Everyone
seemed to relax when she handed the gun out, and then the sergeant was
gingerly opening the door. She got out, weak-kneed, and he took her by
the arm and walked her over to one of the cop cars. She reached for her
identification, then realized she didn't have a purse.

"I'm Grace Ellen Snow," she said. "Formerly of the NIS. My--Commander
Collins--is he ... is he--?"

"The guy in the gun factory? The commander is gonna be okay, miss," the
sergeant said. "Guy winged him in the ear, and we found a stun gun on
the floor."

"In the ear? There was all that blood--"

"Yeah, well, you know ears. They're taking him to Bethesda. Now look,
Miss. Snow, I gotta read you your rights and all, okay? I mean, that bit
with the truck, that guy stepping out in front of you that way, that may
have been righteous and everything, but right now--"

"I understand. When can I see Commander Collins?

I--"

"Well, first, I think we ought to go back to the NIS offices. I mean,
this is gonna be complicated. Did you say formerly of the NIS?"

Grace slumped against the side of the cop car. There were a great number
of cars and people milling around in the street now. She could tell that
some of them were still unsure of who the good guys were. Then she saw a
familiar face in the crowd.

"That's Capt. Moses Vann, of the P.C. police," she said, pointing.

"Homicide. Please, let him through. He can help clarify this."

"Okay, but we gotta take you back to the NIS offices."

They let Vann through and he joined Grace in the cop car after
identifying himself to the Navy Yard police.

The sergeant drove Grace around the block to the entrance of the Forge
Building, where there was a small crowd of NIS staffers and security
people at the entrance.

Vann didn't say anything during the short trip, but he did
surreptitiously take her hand. She didn't realize how badly she was
trembling. When they rounded the corner, she was surprised to see an
ambulance out in front. Did they have Dan in there? They pulled nose-to-nose
with the ambulance. Vann got out and gave her a hand out of the car. As
she was escorted up the front steps, she saw Robby Booker and the
elderly security guard on the steps. Then two other familiar figures
appeared: Rear Admiral Keeler and Captain Rennselaer. Both looked as if
they were in shock. The admiral had a medical orderly at his elbow, and
he appeared to have some cuts on his face. Keeler paused for a moment
when he caught sight of Grace, but then he walked by, stone-faced,
toward a waiting staff car with Rennselaer, whose face was white with
shock. They were followed out the door by Doug Englehardt, who stopped
in his tracks when he saw Grace and the policemen.

"Grace, what are you doing here? Good God, are you all right? What the
hell's--"

"I'm all right, Doug. Why is there an ambulance here?"

"You don't know? Of course not, how could you. But ... well, there's
been some kind of shoot-out down the block, and then, and then--" He
took a deep breath. "We were all--Ames, the admiral, the EA, myself --we
were all meeting in Admiral Keeler's office, about the Hardin case,
when, Jesus, I don't know how to say this."

"What, for God's sakes?" She could see the cops were getting impatient.

"Well, we'd been looking out the windows at all the cop cars and had
just sat back down again. Roscoe Ames and I heard what sounded like a
vehicle coming up the street at high speed. The admiral was impatient to
get on with the meeting, so neither of us got up to look, and then this
body came flying through the windows.

I mean just that: flying through the god damned window like a rag doll.

Right through the window, the Venetian blinds, glass every goddamn
where--the admiral even got cut. And the body--the guy was Navy. A
four-striper."

"Oh," she said. "Well."

"Well? Well! Jesus Christ, Grace. Look, they've made a tentative
identification. Rennselaer said he recognized the guy, although it was
kinda, uh, difficult." Englehardt swallowed. "But like I said; he was a
naval officer.

A captain--"

"Summerfield," she finished for him. "Ronald Sum merfield. I have to go
inside now, Doug." Leaving En glehardt standing there with his mouth
open, Grace went up the steps and into the building.

four days later, at just after five in the afternoon, Dan and Grace were
sitting in the Potomac Boat Club lawn chairs, waiting for Moses Vann.

They were watching several rowers milling about the boat landing, all of
them anxious to get out on the river for the last hour of daylight. Dan
was wearing his rowing togs, and Grace was wearing slacks and an old
Georgetown sweatshirt.

Dan's left ear and cheek were still bandaged. They sat in comfortable
silence, worn out after days of testifying before the Navy's Article 32
hearing in the Pentagon and giving seemingly endless statements to
various kinds of police.

Dan reflected on the past three days. The Chief of Naval Operation's
office had moved swiftly to convene the pre-court-martial investigation
and hearings after the events of Monday night in the Navy Yard. Dan's
and Grace's testimony had been pivotal to untangling the conspiracy
surrounding the two Hardin murders, especially with Summerfield dead and
Ward in the city mental hospital. It had become clear after three days
of Article 32 hearings before a military judge that Summerfield,
Randall, and Rennselaer had been the key players in the conspiracy to
protect Rear Admiral Keeler, although, absent any testimony to the
contrary from the three captains, Keeler could not be tied directly to
either of the Hardin murders. Randall, loyal EA to the last, had
steadfastly maintained that he had kept everything from the vice chief,
concocting the diversion of the original investigation from NIS to
Opnav under the pretext of public-relations concerns strictly on his own
volition.

Dan was still worried about Grace's emotional battery levels. She had
gone through three days of hearings stoically, but the nights had been
stormy, with sieges of crying and one more nightmarish episode of being
almost hysterically ill in the middle of the night on Wednesday. Her
doctor had told Dan that she was suffering from an assault of delayed
stress anxiety but that with his support and presence, she should come
out of it in a few weeks. The coroner's finding that Summer field had,
in effect, committed suicide in front of the truck had helped. But they
both knew that it would take some time to get themselves back on an even
keel.

Dan finally spotted the policeman coming through the boat shed and waved
him over, indicating that he should bring one of the folding chairs.

Vann walked down the lawn, shucking his suit coat as he came; it was
almost hot in the gleaming late-afternoon sunlight along the river. He
looked incongruous in his white shirt and tie among all the seminaked
men toting shells and sculls down to the pontoon landing. The immense
pistol hanging out of its shoulder rig raised some eyebrows as he came
down the hill, but no one was prompted to say anything.

"So what happened to spring? This feels like summer down here," he said
as he plopped down in the chair, draping his suit coat over his knees
and putting his briefcase on the ground.

"You're just out of uniform," Dan replied. "Compared with July and
August, this is heaven. You ought to give it a try sometime."

Vann looked around at the rowers, taking in the glossy,
expensive-looking boats and then casting a dubious eye at the ramshackle
club building.

"I'm too old for this vigorous exercise stuff," Vann muttered, quickly
looking somewhere else when a trim and fit-looking man of at least
seventy came out of the boathouse, a shiny fiberglass single balanced
easily on his head. Grace and Dan grinned.

"So what did you think of the Navy's Article Thirty two hearing
process?" Dan asked.

Vann shook his head in wonderment. "I've never had a double homicide
case come to closure as fast as this one," he said. "When the Navy wants
to put something to bed in a hurry, they can flat ass move." He fished
in his briefcase and then handed Dan a large manila envelope.

"Here's your copy of my disposition report. That JAG captain said the
Navy paperwork would take a couple of weeks."

"So it will stay in military jurisdiction, then?" Dan asked.

"Yup. And there ain't no volunteers downtown who want it any other way.

Seems like your CNO can organize a court-martial hearing at the speed of
heat, he gets him some guilty bastards in his sights."

"Randall and Rennselaer both pleading guilty?"

Grace asked.

"And Keeler," Vann said.

"But not to murder?"

"No. See, the only guys directly tied to the murders were Malachi Ward
and your Captain Summerfield.

The captain ... well, he's in the ground. And as for Ward, the docs up
at St. Elizabeth's figure he isn't gonna come back among the mentally
competent anytime soon, if ever. He's been screaming since that security
watch found him in that museum ship Wednesday morning, and now they got
him in diapers and twenty four-hour restraint, with Thorazine cocktails
twice a day."

"How did they find Ward?"

"Security guard found his windbreaker on the main deck, with what looked
like bloodstains. He eventually organized a search of the ship, and they
found him the next morning."

"I wish they'd never found him," Dan said, his face suddenly grim.

"There was justice in where he ended up ... in that ship."

Vann snorted. "Justice? Since when does justice enter into it? I'm a
cop, remember? You don't talk about justice to a cop. But Ward's been
useful, in his own twisted way."

"How so?" Grace asked.

"Neither of those EAs nor that Admiral Keeler fella knew what kind of
shape Ward was really in after he was found in that boiler."

"And the government didn't exactly clarify it for them, did it?" Dan
said.

"That JAG captain, he's a pretty fair prosecutor.

What do you guys call him, trial counsel? Well, anyway, as long as Ward
is alive, they all figured they'd be better off copping federal
conspiracy pleas to a military judge than going to a civilian court and
having that Ward guy testify under some grant of immunity. So the two
EAs are both going down on conspiracy-to-murder charges and double OJ
one. They'll go in for fifteen to life. The admiral has himself a
civilian attorney, so we'll have to see what he does." He consulted his
folder for a moment.

"And the Navy threw in a charge I really love against the admiral." He
snorted. "Conduct unbecoming an officer. That's rich."

Dan shook his head. "I'll bet the vice chief instigated that. It's more
serious than it sounds. Conduct unbecoming is grounds for a ruling of
moral turpitude.

And moral turpitude is the one charge under Title Ten U.S. Code for
which the admiral can be administratively stripped of his
commission--which is to say, his pension, medical benefits, and all
future veterans' benefits."

"I didn't know that," Vann said. "I thought
it was just ceremonial, sort of walking the plank or something.

What's gonna happen to NIS?"

"NIS? NIS is a collection of working stiffs trying to get a job done.

Their boss and his EA went bad, not the troops. They'll get a new boss,
and the Navy will probably change the organization's name."

"And Admiral Torrance walks free?" Grace asked.

"Not quite," Dan said. "Three days of news coverage on this whole mess
means he'll never even go up for a confirmation hearing as the next CNO.

It was his EA obstructing justice, and, at least administratively, his
own orders to move the investigation around between NIS and Opnav. And
all the flags know that Keeler was one of his crown princes. So,
basically, he'll pay the price of being indistinguishable from his EA."

"Do you think he was part of it?" Grace asked Vann.

"Who the hell knows," Vann said with a sigh. "That's the old Washington
question, isn't it? What did he know, and when did he know it? But a guy
like that is pretty wily. Personally, I think he might have known more
than he's letting on, but when he ordered you to help me get back into
the investigation, he went a long way toward neutralizing any attack we
could make on his personal credibility. And from what both of you have
said in your statements, it looks like the EAs were the real players.

But with Summerfield gone and Ward in a rubber room ..." He shrugged.

Grace shuddered at the mention of Summerfield's name again. Dan took her
hand.

"I still don't understand Summerfield's motives in all this," she said.

There was a moment of silence while they watched a two-man shell make a
less-than-graceful landing alongside one of the pontoons, accompanied by
a great deal of rude and raucous commentary from other club members.

"I think it was the EA mentality that got him," Dan said finally. "You
know, that total dedication to the promotion and preservation of their
admiral, or whoever their principal is. Summerfield explained part of it
to me awhile ago, the fact that there can be no mistakes, no ripples
around the great man. This thing probably started as relatively minor
damage control--you know, the old-hand EA showing the new guy how it's
done in the big city. My guess is that the EAs were never going to let
the vice chief find out that Keeler had even screwed up."

"You said in
your statement that he had been an EA himself," Vann said.

"Yeah. That's why I think he reacted the way he did.

Because of his wife's stroke, he had to take himself out of contention
for flag and give up the EA job. I think he missed the action and the
intensity; OP-Six-fourteen is not exactly a career-enhancing assignment
for a flag contender captain. But once the hired hand dropped them all
in the septic tank, they just did what Washington horse-holders do: They
hung on and hoped like hell no one would make waves; that somehow it
would just go away."

"Murder never just goes away," Vann said, a bleak
expression on his face.

"You lost a son," Grace said.

"A son I never really had," Vann said after a moment of reflection. "I
should have done more than just talk when he said he was going to look
into something about Elizabeth's death."

"You couldn't possibly have known what that was all about," Grace
protested.

"That's the amazing part about it. Somebody says something like what
Wesley said, and it's like that TV show I saw on PBS the other night,
the one about volcanoes.

These scientists are standing out on this solidified lava field, a
supposedly dead one, and then they walk over to this hole in the lava,
and you can look down there and see this goddamn river of fire flowing
under their feet, going like all hell. You'd never know it was even
there."

They were silent for a while, watching the Potomac and the rowers and
listening to the sounds of the traffic high up on the bridge above them.

Vann finally turned to Dan.

"You said you're gonna be leaving town?"

"Yeah. Summerfield was right. My continued presence on the Opnav staff
is apparently unsettling to some influential people up the E-ring.

They're sending me to command, though, so I can't bitch."

Vann nodded, then, glancing at Grace, asked Dan if he was going by
himself.

"Never again," Dan said, squeezing Grace's hand.

"Good," Vann said. "That was my other screw up in life--walking away from
Angela. I've got to do something about that, but I'm damned if I know
how, or even what."

"Does she know how this all came out?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't bring her kids back, does it? But maybe she can
see the road clear to being at peace about it. Maybe this time I can
even help. But lemme ask you something, Commander. After all this, you
gonna stay in, past your twenty, if you make captain?"

Dan paused before answering. He and Grace had spent a considerable
amount of time since Monday night talking about this exact issue.

"I think I'm going to have to see what kind of Navy it is when I get
back from sea duty," he said slowly. "You see, there're really two
Navies: There's the fleet, and then there's the so-called Washington
establishment.

The fleet is mostly about taking ships to sea and keeping them and your
people safe as you can while you go do what warships do. There's
politics, of course, but when the sea rises up, everybody understands
that politics goes overboard. Washington is mostly about the game of
getting promoted. I can't answer your question right now, I guess is my
real answer."

Vann nodded again, remaining silent when he realized Dan wasn't
finished.

"See, the hell of it is," Dan continued, "you have to be good ashore in
order to get up the ladder so that you can go back to the ships in
increasingly responsible jobs --department head, executive officer, and
finally command.

And that's always made sense to me, because the net result of playing
the political game well is that captain's chair on the bridge. After
command, though, you're a relatively old man, and there are very, very
few slots for admirals at sea. That's where I think the system has
fallen down. We ended up World War Two with ten thousand ships and maybe
five hundred admirals.

Now we have fewer than four hundred ships, an dover two hundred
admirals. And it's not just the Navy; the other services have the same
problem. Getting to stars has become such a high-stakes game in itself
that people will do almost anything to get a shot, like these EAs did. I
guess I'm going to keep going for as long as I can see a reasonable
opportunity to be a naval officer. But after that ..."

Vann smiled as he gathered up his briefcase and jacket. "After that,
you'll probably hang in there till they throw you out," he said. "Just
like we all do. I gotta split, guys. It's been a trip, you know that?"

"We'll let you know what the orders look like."

"Yeah, you do that."

Dan stood up and shook hands with the policeman.

Grace reclaimed Dan's hand as the captain walked up toward the
clubhouse.

"I wonder if he'll ever get out from under that Wesley cloud," she
mused.

"If he does, it'll be because he tries to help Angela Hardin. That 'if
only I had' game is a bitch when you try to play it one-handed. You are
still going to marry me, right?"

She smiled and squeezed his hand. Her smile almost made the shadows
under her eyes disappear. "I believe I've answered that question,
Commander. About three dozen times, I think."

"Just checking," Dan said, looking back out over the glinting gray river
and rubbing his bandaged ear absently.

"Just checking," he said again, squeezing her hand. "Things get loose
sometimes."

in a dimly lit, windowless room, Malachi sat on the floor, his one good
eye fixed on the green steel door across the room. He was wearing a
loosely fitting restraint web over hospital pajamas, but he was not in
diapers. The room had a steel bed and a commode, and even a chair that
was bolted to the floor. But he preferred the floor for right now. He
could think better-- think about getting out, think about the captain.

The dreams were better now; that was good medicine they brought him. Not
as good as the Harper, but life was full of little compromises. Time
enough to get back to the Harper when he got out. He had actually joked
about whiskey with the orderly who brought him his two meals a day.

After three weeks in here, he had started really working on making
friends with the orderly. Making little deals with him: Since that
first day, I've given nobody any problems, so maybe loosen the
restraints one notch--just one. And yesterday, or maybe the day
before--he wasn't sure--the orderly had brought a helper in and they had
loosened things up a little.

The medicine made him sleep a lot, but that was all right, too. The
sleep was like passing out after an all nighter with the Harper, but
without the hangover. Although that might be because they kept him on
the medicine round the clock. You don't ever leave the bar, there's
never a hangover. Every drunk knew that. But his victory on the
restraints had been important. That first day, when they'd found him in
the boiler, he'd been just a little hysterical. And then he had really
lost it when they restrained him again at the hospital. They just didn't
understand. But it was okay now. He knew he was safe. And he knew some
other things, too, things that he would never tell the doctors or the
police or anyone else who came to talk to him. Malachi had a plan.

He would just wait them out--weeks, months, years even. He would
reinforce their preliminary conclusions: that he remembered nothing
about the Hardin case, that being bolted into the boiler had seared
every memory from his previous life right out of his brain. Hell, it
damn near had. But he was tougher than they knew. He would be a model
prisoner--excuse me, patient. No violence.

Absolutely no displays of bad temper. No lunging for the momentarily
unguarded door. No mashing any of the other residents into the drains at
shower time. No snapping the neck bones of the younger orderlies who
looked sideways at his face and whispered about the state of affairs
below his belt.

None of that. He would be entirely docile. A disastrous past, a little
mental trauma there, locked up in that boiler, but an entirely tranquil
present. Eventually, and we'll take our time here, he would be able to
converse normally. Participate in therapy, group discussions.

And over time, no longer present a threat to anyone.

Eventually, they would stop worrying about him. Turn their attentions to
newer, noisier casualties. He would become just another damaged box in
the warehouse.

Detached, peaceful, cooperative. Even friendly. Hell, maybe even a
trusty. This was a public institution, and Malachi knew his civil
servants. They would get lax about him, and then he would make his move.

And find the captain, and his precious principal.

There were sounds of people out in the corridor.

Malachi hunkered down on the floor, composed a bemused expression on his
battered, one-eyed face, tested the straps again, and carefully watched
the door.