Man in the Middle (13 page)

This was curious, but I thought I understood the underlying reasons. I recalled that in the mid- to late nineties, the previous administration had ordered the intelligence community to engineer an effort to dethrone Saddam. Unfortunately, my knowledge of the details was somewhat sketchy. And, knowing my CIA friends, everybody now had an onset of amnesia. It must be something in the water at Langley. I mean, these people can’t even remember what color socks they’re wearing.

From news reports around that period, however, I recalled that there had been an effort, sometime in the mid-nineties, to bribe a bunch of high-level Iraqi generals to overthrow Saddam. Saddam somehow got wind of it and the generals were subsequently invited over to his house for a barbecue and swim party—half the generals got put on spits and were barbecued, the other half got to paddle around the pool with Saddam’s pet alligators.

I vaguely recalled reading about other attempts as well, mostly halfassed affairs, employing Kurds or Iraqi expats, all of which came to naught and were swiftly and quietly aborted. Usually Agency people are pretty good at this kind of thing—practice makes perfect as they say—so it was a tribute to Saddam’s paranoia that, this time, good wasn’t good enough. I mentioned some of this to Theresa, then asked, “Was Cliff involved in any of these efforts?”

“I’m sure he was.”

“And Hirschfield and Tigerman? Were they also involved?”

“They helped . . . in the wings, advising him . . . I think helping him plot and putting him in touch with various Iraqis who might be useful.”

“Why? By that I mean why would they become implicated in these affairs? It wasn’t their watch.”

“Ask them.”

“What was Cliff’s motive?” I remembered to add, “I can’t ask him.”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

It was, but I needed to hear her say it. “Tell me.”

After a moment she said to me, “We’re back to ambition, Mr. Drummond.”

Bian asked, “Meaning there was a quid pro quo from Hirschfield and Tigerman, right?”

Theresa nodded. “Put it this way. The moment the new administration took over, Cliff was pulled out of DIA, given a promotion, and was hired to work for them at the Pentagon.”

“What kind of work?”

“We were separated by then. Talking through lawyers. I wouldn’t know.”

We were now edging into hearsay, which was informative and even juicy, though not necessarily accurate. I checked my watch—4:30 p.m. If we hurried, it might be possible to arrange an interview with Hirschfield, or possibly Tigerman, or possibly both. But there remained one nagging question, and I asked Theresa, “Can you think of any reason Cliff would kill himself?”

She mulled this over for a long period. Eventually she said, “You remember I told you that Cliff was already dead?”

I nodded.

“About five, maybe six years ago, he began . . . self-destructing. It wasn’t an overnight thing. Just gradually, he changed.”

“How?”

“I think . . . you have to understand, he was essentially a desk jockey at DIA. The most adventurous thing he did was to drive home on the beltway. I know this sounds . . . maybe crazy, maybe nutty . . . but Cliff began to think he was a character in a movie. Like James Bond.”

She was right, it did sound crazy, and nutty, and I suppose that showed on my face.

She immediately said, “No . . . not literally, Mr. Drummond.”

“Then how about unliterally?”

“The undercover work, the trips, the involvement in espionage, the clandestine meetings in the Kasbah . . . you know what I’m talking about?”

She was staring at me as though I, a male, would have a proprietary chromosonal insight into this cryptic accusation. Actually, I did know and replied, “He was seduced by the adventure and excitement.”

“Seduced? . . . No—consumed. He changed, became moody, sneaky . . . but also short-fused, testy, self-absorbed, full of himself. You asked about that pistol earlier.” She stared into her drink. “When he brought it home and showed it to me . . . I knew then he had lost it.”

“Lost what?”

“Interest in the house. In the kids. In me. He was so proud of that damned gun.” She looked at Bian and confided, “He came back from trips, and I could tell . . . I could just tell . . .”

“He was having an affair?” Bian suggested.

“
An
affair? . . .” She laughed bitterly.

I gave her a moment to get it out of her system, then asked, “Would you happen to know the names of the women he slept with?”

“You’ll need a thicker notebook.” She laughed. “If it couldn’t outrun him, he fucked it.”

Neither Bian nor I commented on this sordid revelation. Sexual betrayal is, of course, the most ubiquitous cause for divorce, and Theresa had already confided to us that infidelity provided the legal foundation filed by her attorney. There are many reasons husbands cheat on wives, and wives cheat on husbands, nearly all of which boil down to boredom, weak libidos, revenge, or narcissistic lust. Well, unless you’re French; then the whole reason for marriage is to have illicit affairs. But in English-speaking lands, we tend to have a lot more hang-ups about sex.

This, however, sounded like something more, something deeper, more twisted. Also, Tim, the forensics examiner, had mentioned hair traces from two or possibly three different females. Added to the overall feng shui at the crime scene, it all hinted at some kind of sexual shenanigans.

I tuned back in, and Theresa was confiding to Bian, “I knew it was happening. I followed him one night to a local motel. I got pictures of him with some woman. You know what really hurt? She wasn’t even pretty. In fact, she had a big fat butt.”

“I’m sorry,” I told her, and I didn’t mean about the fat butt.

Not to be uncharitable, but as I looked around—at this suffocating house, at Theresa groping her fifth gin, at the unchanging neighborhood—and added to that mixture a stale and frustrated professional life, I thought Cliff Daniels was an accident waiting to happen. I could see a man trapped in this professional and marital quagmire committing suicide. But I could not see a man who had escaped into a new life—who had put this behind him—taking that drastic step.

To a greater or lesser extent, we all lead lives of quiet desperation; metaphysically and, often in reality,we’re all lined up at the convenience store counter, praying for that lucky lottery ticket that will change our lives. Men, of course, will settle for a lovely nymphomaniac who’s a football fanatic and owns her own beer company. We’re pigs.

I asked Mrs. Daniels, “Incidentally, was Cliff left- or right-handed?”

“Right-handed. Why?”

“Just one of those weird statistics we’re required to keep about human proclivities.” I smiled. “You know the federal government— building a great society one statistic at a time.” I added, “Maybe you can help with another statistic. It’s . . . well . . . a little uncomfortable. Did Cliff ever exhibit any tendency toward homosexuality?”

“Haven’t you been listening, Mr. Drummond? The man was a raging heterosexual.”

“Of course.”

I glanced at Bian. She quietly nodded, and clearly she understood why I asked. Were this murder, the suspect pool had just been cut in half.

After a moment, I again asked Theresa, “Why would Cliff kill himself?”

“You’re asking the wrong question.” She put her back against the sink and exhaled. “Why wouldn’t he kill himself?”

CHAPTER NINE

I
went out and started the car while Bian stood by the curb and used her cell phone to call and ask her boss, Oberst Waterbury, to persuade either Hirschfield or Tigerman—or better still, both—to clear a little time on their schedules.

She climbed into the passenger seat and said, “He’ll take care of it.” She looked at me. “What do you think?”

“I need fresh air.”

“Her life needs fresh air.” She suggested, “So let’s start with her.”

“You mean, is she a suspect?”

“She’s not. We both know that, don’t we? But she’ll have happy dreams tonight, imagining she did it. My sense is she wrote him out of her life.” She reconsidered her words and said, “That’s not exactly true. He was her boogeyman, the fount of all her miseries and unhappiness. Now she’ll miss him. You know?”

“I know.”

“But is she credible? Bitter people make poor witnesses.”

“She’s very credible about what counts, and her bitterness is justified.”

“You believe she deserves sympathy?”

“I sure do. She built a life and a family around this guy. He turned into an asshole.”

“There’s a stylish elegy. Can I borrow it for my write-up?”

“You should hear my court summations. Come early. Long lines, and the ticket scalpers make a killing.”

“I’ll bet you’re very . . . entertaining.” She thought for a moment, then observed, “We only heard her side of the tale. Every divorce has two sides.”

“Good point. If you think of a way we can hear his side, be sure to let me know.”

She shook her head. I can be annoying.

I said, “It’s an old story with many titles: the starter wife, the first-wife syndrome, middle-age idiotitis. Cliff wasn’t very complicated or hard to understand. He wanted to be something he wasn’t—dashing, dangerous, mysterious, sexually alluring. Theresa and the kids were part of the old, lesser, disappointing him.”

“You make him sound very shallow.”

“A lot of men harbor secret dreams of being James Bond, but they wake up and see George Smiley staring back from the mirror.” I added, after a moment, “Men have two brains in constant warfare over the body’s blood supply. When one wins, the other shuts down.”

“It’s that simple?”

“It’s that simple.”

“I see.”

“He thought his ship came in, and she got thrown overboard.” I looked at her. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Cliff secretly dreamed of dumping her for years.”

“Well, whatever the reason, she needs to pull herself together. Put it behind her.”

“Amnesia is not something you call up at will.”

“An old Vietnamese proverb says, ‘When the petals leave the rose, you grow a new rose.’ ”

“They grow roses over there?”

“Well . . . no.” She laughed. “I made that up.” Then she said, “My point is, she’s wallowing in the past. Destroying the marriage may have been his fault—destroying herself is hers.”

“You’re engaged, right?”

“I told you I am.”

“How do you know—what’s this guy’s name?”

“Mark. Mark Kemble.”

“Thank you. How can you be sure Mark Kemble won’t turn into an idiot?”

“He won’t.”

“How do you
know
, Bian? Husbands are unpredictable creatures. Some come with hidden flaws, buried defects. Sometimes a guy wakes up one morning, sees the bald spot, the turkey wattles under the chin, and he turns shallow and stupid. Sometimes a fancy new car cures it, sometimes a fancy new blonde. Do I really need to explain this?”

She made no reply.

“In simple soldier talk—shit happens.”

“It won’t. Not between us.” She looked at me and said, with complete conviction, “There is no past tense to the word love.”

“It’s a verb. Slap a ‘d’ on the end.”

“Look, I’ve known Mark since we were cadets. This might sound trite, but I was in love the moment I first saw him. I . . .” She looked away for a moment, then concluded, “He won’t change—ever. I’m sure.”

“You’ve dated this same guy for ten years? What does that tell you?”

“Well . . . that’s not how it happened. I mooned over him when we were cadets, but he was two years ahead of me. Regulations at West Point forbade dating upperclassmen. He also had a girlfriend he was serious about.”

“What happened to her?”

“Oh . . . well, she died. A suspicious fire . . . arson, actually. Most unfortunate and very mysterious. The arsonist was never found.”

I looked at her, and she smiled. “That was a joke.”

I smiled back.

Bian said, “She was from a wealthy family in a ritzy community in Connecticut. New Caanan, maybe Westport. After Mark graduated she got a look at Army life, instead of cadet life. The idea of scraping by on a lieutenant’s pay in Louisiana or Georgia was a little much for her. So Mark got a Dear John letter and she got a new boyfriend, at Harvard Business School. They ended up married.”

“And you were waiting in the wings?”

“Not really. We didn’t get together until later, about three years ago.”

“Three years. If you’re so confident, why aren’t you married to him now?”

“We . . . we decided to wait until conditions improved.” My question unsettled her and she had to pause and swallow. “Army life— you’re single, you understand how it is.”

I did understand. In the old Army they used to say that if they wanted you to have a wife, they’d issue you one. It now is considered both passé and politically incorrect, and nobody says that anymore. Indeed, today’s soldiers are mostly married. The underlying philosophy hasn’t changed a whit, though. In fact, the Global War on Terror, or whatever buzzword they were calling it these days, was not doing much for military romance, unless your
amore
happens to be a terrorist.

After a moment she added, “During these three years, between Bosnia, Kosovo, 9/11, now Afghanistan, and now Iraq—”

“Whose idea was it to wait?”

“Why did it have to be either of our ideas?”

“These things are never mutual.” She tried looking away, but I caught her eye and asked, more insistently, “Yours or his?”

“All right . . . his. He was in Kosovo, then Afghanistan. I was in Afghanistan, after his tour ended, then Iraq, also at a different time. After he finished a year at the Command and General Staff College at Leavenworth, he was reassigned to the First Armored Division and redeployed to Iraq for another tour. He didn’t want me to become a widow or spend my life caring for a cripple. I couldn’t argue him out of it. Besides, what did it matter? We were going to be apart anyway.”

No doubt, a number of sober and practical reasons passed through Mark Kemble’s head and heart, all of which seemed logical, persuasive, even compelling. But in my view, with a woman like Bian Tran, you observe a different logic. I wouldn’t let this woman ten feet out of my sight without the Rock of Gibraltar on her finger, an unpickable chastity belt around her groin, and a note around her neck—“Touch her and I’ll feed you your own nuts.”