The Death Trust (11 page)

I ate all the doughnuts while we talked. Eventually we came full circle. “So, how do we find this other woman?” asked Masters.

“The missing cell will take us straight to her.”

“Yeah, but how do we find that?”

“I have an idea,” I said.

NINE

I
t was dark by the time we left the Melting Pot. The wind was up and the temperature had dropped to the mid-fifties. I wasn’t dressed for it and the cold sliced through my clothing. I’d had enough for one day. In the silence, Masters said, “A bit of housekeeping. I’ve ordered a couple of extra ACUs for you. They should arrive tomorrow. Your rank is lieutenant, right?”

I didn’t bite. I was too damn tired to spar. Also, the question I wanted to ask Masters was sucking away much of my attention. My cell rang. “Hello.”

“Sir, Flight Lieutenant Bishop here,” said the voice.

Bishop…Bishop…

“I’m working on the general’s computer, sir,” said the flight lieutenant helpfully.

It came back to me. “Right. Sorry, Peter, it has been a hell of a day.”

“That’s okay, sir. Just wanted to tell you. I’ve struck a problem.”

“What kind of problem?” I repeated for Masters’s sake.

“Managed to get past the general’s user code, but he’s running a program called Dungeon.”

“What’s that?”

“Dungeon is what it sounds like—a lockup, only one for your files. It’s a tough nut to crack. Four levels, each one trickier than the last to get through. The general has around one meg of files locked away—not a lot, really.”

“But he probably wouldn’t bother unless those files were important.”

“A reasonable assumption, Special Agent.”

“You going to be able to break into it?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll need a couple days for each level, maybe more. I can’t even guarantee I’m going to be able to crack the innermost levels.”

“Do what you can, Flight Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, ending the call.

“What’s up?” asked Masters.

“The general’s computer. All his files are locked in a kind of prison with no visitors allowed. Bishop’s starting to tunnel in, but he’s going to need time, and a file baked into a cake.” I rubbed my face with both hands. It felt good so I did it again.

“A what?” Masters looked confused.

“Never mind,” I said. “I’m just tired.”

“Yeah, you look dead on your feet, Cooper. Leave your car here and I’ll give you a lift back to K-town.”

“Sure, thanks.” I was hoping she’d offer, but didn’t want to ask. “You live in K-town?”

“Out on the edge where you’re less likely to get hit by a jogger.”

I folded my arms against my body and turned the heater up as we cleared the security post. Warm air funneled from the duct, making me more drowsy.

“So where is it?” she asked.

“Where’s what?”

“Scott’s cell. We recovered his NATO one in his study. I’ve already asked to have the last fifteen months of records pulled and sent over.”

“Let me have a Columbo moment. We’ll both find out tomorrow if I’m right.”

“Fair enough.”

In truth, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure we’d find it, especially if its battery was flat, which could have been the case. The reflective cat’s eyes buried in the road zipped past like slow-motion tracers. Eventually Masters said, “She was flirting with you, you know.”

“Who? Oh, you mean—”

“Yeah.”

“Did I pass the test?”

Masters swung out of the lane and passed a big rig. “Barely.”

The silence closed in like the darkness around the Mercedes’s headlight beams.

That question I was sitting on, waiting to ask Masters…I hoped I was wrong but I already knew the answer. I also hoped it would have no bearing on anything we were working on. I couldn’t hold on to it any longer. “So when were you and von Koeppen seeing each other?” I asked as casually as possible.

Silence.

“We stopped well over a year ago.”

Silence.

Eventually she asked, “How did you know?”

“Just a guess.” Masters was protective about him on the one hand and dismissive on the other. And whenever he came up in conversation, she’d change either color or the subject or both.
Actually, I haven’t had much to do with him. He’s a bit of a ladies’ man, or so I’ve heard—base gossip.
I couldn’t imagine what she saw in him. “It’s not going to get in the way, is it?” I asked.

“No.”

“Good.”

We sat in silence for the rest of the drive. Maybe Masters thought my lack of conversation was some kind of reproach, but I was so tired I was having trouble clearing a path from my brain to my mouth.

We drove like that all the way to the Pensione Freedom. “Oh-eight-hundred in the foyer. Okay?” she said as the Mercedes came to a stop beneath the trees opposite the pensione’s steps.

“Oh-eight-hundred,” I repeated. I felt like I should say something rousing about the progress we’d made thus far, move the mood on from our first meeting. But I’ve never been a big fan of locker-room speeches.

I got out of the car and tapped it lightly on the roof. I watched as Masters drove off slowly. Breaking glass distracted me. A couple of backpackers with Canadian flags sewn to their packs were swaying precariously, either because of the weight of the loads that towered over their heads, or because they were rolling drunk. Canadians. Probably both, I decided, as one bent to pick up the broken bottle they’d dropped. He toppled sideways and lay on the ground like a cockroach sprayed with insect killer, legs and arms flailing, unable to right himself. His buddy burst into fits of laughter and collapsed in the gutter, quivering hysterically.

They were having too much fun. I ignored them and walked up the stairs of the pensione. The foyer was empty, a bell provided for tenants requiring assistance after six
P.M
. The space was lit with brutal fluorescent tubes and the light bounced off the walls and turned the skin on my hands a purple color. My nose told me that bratwurst was no longer on the menu. Tonight, it was either boiled boot or cabbage and potato. Despite this, my stomach growled audibly. Half a dozen doughnuts hadn’t filled the hole for long.

I walked the two blocks to a McDonald’s I’d seen on the way in. Wary that the truce between my toothache and the drugs might be fragile, I bought a couple of cheeseburgers because they were soft and easy to eat. They tasted of clove.

I’m not sure whether codeine is a hallucinogen but I had some pretty freaky dreams, mostly about people with missing heads.

Then the case kept me awake and I went a few rounds wrestling with the sheets. The sheets won and so I got up and paced in the dark. I told myself that this case was no different from any other I’d worked on. What I needed was some distance. I was too close to the individual details and they were meaningless because of that, like those mounds and scratches on the ground in Mexico that become figures or animals or geometric patterns when they’re viewed from altitude. I also wondered how long I, or rather we—OSI—would have on our own before some other agency began sniffing around. Within half an hour I was in a cab to Ramstein. On the way there I left a message on Masters’s cell, telling her not to bother picking me up.

Masters had done a good job securing the OSI block at the base. At the entrance stood a massive French MP who looked like a refrigerator with a two-day growth. He smelled of garlic and Gauloises. My swipe card got me in the front door and I walked up to two other NCMP people armed with M16 carbines covering the door to the windowless bunker that contained the general’s papers. I swiped the door and went in. Boxes were placed on gray Formica tables and there was a fair bit of paper scattered around, in the process of being catalogued. It appeared that the general had been pretty systematic with his filing, only much of his fastidiousness had been undone by our rush to relocate his records.

I didn’t really know where to start, so I just sat down with one of the boxes and began sifting through the contents at random.

Two hours later, Masters walked in with a cappuccino for us both. “Morning,” she said.

“Morgen,”
I replied.

“How’d you sleep?”

“Like a baby—”

“Good.”

“—with colic.”

“Oh…Tooth still bugging you?”

“Among other things.”

The guarded way Masters looked at me when I said that told me she thought one of those other things was her onetime relationship with von Koeppen. Frankly, I hadn’t given it any thought. It was a long time in the past and had no bearing on anything. That’s if I took Masters at her word, and I had no reason to doubt her.

She came over with the coffee and a newspaper. Without the camouflage jacket on, I could see she had a hell of a figure—athletic, but without the roidal gym-junkie shoulders or thighs that can turn a woman’s figure into a parody. She was wearing perfume, too—Issey Miyake, if I was not mistaken. My favorite. Her hair wasn’t tied back and it fell around her face and shoulders like ribbons of dark chocolate silk. “And, anyway, I wanted to get an early start—we’ve got a lot to do,” I said to get my mind off what it would be like burying my nose in her hair. I relieved her of one of the coffees.

“The news is out,” she said. “Front page.”

I turned the newspaper over. It was the
Herald Tribune.
The world was the usual insane mess with people happily blowing up themselves and each other all across the globe. I recognized a face. It was Scott, and he was smiling. “Accident Kills Top U.S. General,” said the headline. There were a few paragraphs about why he was a top U.S. general, and nothing about him being assassinated. “That was quick,” I said. “Von Koeppen must have had the
Tribune
over for tea.

“My turn for show-and-tell,” I said as I handed her a small waxy slip of paper.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“A receipt.” It was difficult to read. The print was fine, and fading. “Aurora Aviation, for three thousand eight hundred and forty euros. We might not be able to find out who did the work on Scott’s glider, but at least we know who he bought those new bits and pieces from.”

Masters nodded. “Good find.”

I exchanged it for a yellowing press clipping, also from Scott’s files. “So’s this.”

She frowned as her eyes flicked over the headline: “Death Row.” The picture accompanying it showed a long line of what were either body bags or sleeping sea lions lying on the tarmac behind the ramp of a transport plane. A couple of soldiers were carrying another one between them down the ramp, which narrowed the odds about what they were carrying, given that sea lions weigh half a ton each. I’d read the accompanying article a dozen times and almost knew it by heart. The gist of it was that this row of dead soldiers on the Ramstein tarmac represented one month of our butcher’s bill from the war in Iraq. It was also the first time a press photographer had managed to snap such a scene, Washington fearing the effect such a picture would have on the psyche of the folks back home.

I remembered this photo, this story. When it appeared in newspapers across the country, it rekindled the debates about whether the price in blood America was paying in the Middle East was worth it. So perhaps Washington had been right after all to keep this sort of imagery out of the public domain. But then maybe censoring the reality of the war was worse, denying America the awful truth—of the choices we had made, and the personal consequences that flowed from them. And there was something very real and very brutal about body bags, especially when there were so many of them.

“I remember this,” said Masters, echoing my thoughts. “Caused a real flap.”

I handed her the letter General Scott had received shortly after the photo had been published. It was a very impressive letter headed with a bald eagle clutching a bunch of arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other. The top left corner had a staple in it with a small torn section of newsprint. The article Masters was reading had originally been attached to the letter but had separated at some stage. The author had handwritten the note with a fountain pen; the script was elaborate.

Masters read aloud.

“Dear Abraham,

The President and I were dismayed to see that security could be breached at such an important facility as Ramstein. Photos such as this one recently taken at your facility, images we have been at pains to keep out of the public forum, have a disheartening effect that is incalculable. I strongly recommend that this incident be investigated and that the persons involved in the security breach be officially reprimanded. Do your best to see that it doesn’t happen again.

Sincerely,
Jefferson Cutter
Vice President of the United States of America.”

“Terse,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Was any investigation ever carried out?” I asked.

“No, not to my knowledge.”

“Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“What? That Scott was asked to investigate how a photograph like this could be taken, and didn’t? I’m sure he had his reasons, but he didn’t think to let me in on them.”

“No…I guess not.” I wanted to know why Scott had ignored such a strong recommendation from the VP, his father-in-law.

“Do you think this business with the body bags is important in the scheme of things?” Masters asked.

“You mean in our investigation into Scott’s murder?”

“Yeah.”

I shrugged. “We don’t know what’s important and what’s not. At least, not yet. By the way, I rang the night desk of
The Washington Post
to see if I could get some contact details for the journalist responsible.”

Masters glanced at the clipping. “Alan Cobain.”

“Yeah.”

“You
have
been busy.”

“He’s dead. Killed in Iraq covering the war. About a month after this article appeared. He was abducted. They found his body ten days later. Or what was left of it, anyway—looked like he’d been attacked by sharks.”