Kat's expression returned to neutral. She looked at her phone and tapped it in her open palm. "It sounded like an attack," she said.
"I'm a soldier. A lot of things I say come out like that."
"Not always." The young woman regarded Rodgers. Neutrality suddenly looked more like exhaustion. "General Mike I really don't know about what Lucy did or did not do. And I do not want to be defensive. It's just this whole thing has been a distraction at the worst possible time. Part of me believes it was designed that way by a person or group that does not want to see the senator become president or even have a voice in this election."
"Do you have any idea who that might be?"
"Sure. Every lobbyist and politician from the center to the left.
Political rivals like Senator Debenport and Governor Jimmy Phyfe of Ohio, both of whom want President Lawrence's job."
"Do you have specific information that either of those men may be involved in the assassination?" Rodgers asked. "If you do, even if it's just a suspicion, this would be the time to tell me."
"There are rumors that Debenport and Lawrence are using the presidency to attract allies for partisan activities, but we have no proof of that," Kat told him. "Anything you can imagine is possible in Washington, but I don't even want to believe that."
Rodgers had always felt like a resistance fighter, risking his life to stop oppression. At the moment he felt like a collaborator, dirty and small. He moved closer. "You just said that anything you can imagine is possible. I have never done a lot of abstract thinking, Kat. I look at maps, at facts, at logistics. Since this thing started, I have been taking one small step at a time, just as I did whenever I led a unit against an enemy position. The difference is, I am accustomed to knowing who my opponent is. This is new ground for me and for Op-Center."
"For all of us," Kat said. "I have never been part of a murder investigation."
"At least your involvement is peripheral at best," Rodgers pointed out.
"For that matter, the spotlight is on Lucy now, not any of your coworkers."
"I still do not believe she had anything to do with it."
"Why? Talk to me."
"Let me ask you something first," she said. "You've killed people.
What does it take to do that?"
"Unless you're a textbook sociopath, all it takes is the first kill to commit the second and third," Rodgers told her.
"I don't understand."
"It's like skydiving or eating snake," Rodgers said. "You've already made the determination that it's something you need to do. What you need then is something to kick you over your gag reflex. One of my Strikers, Corporal Pat Prementine, had to think of a high school bully he hated the first time he lobbed a grenade."
"What did it take for you?"
"Economy."
"What?"
"Two weeks after I arrived, my platoon was doing recon in the southern region of the Central Plateau," Rodgers said. "We bumped into a large "Cong encampment. They tried to surround us, and we knew we would have to punch hard and fast to secure an exit route. I was ordered to hunker down behind a rank-smelling tree trunk and cover a small clearing. I did. My soles were deep in muck, bugs crawled over my boots, and I was hot as hell. I heard gunfire start to crack in sporadic bursts. It was a hollow, distant, lonely noise that shut all the birds and insects up. I never experienced such silence once the shooting started. I knew the guys with guns would be coming my way soon enough, and I had to face the fact that I could die. I was okay with that. I made mental good-byes and said some quiet I-love-yous to my folks. While I was doing that, I saw an opportunistic target. Five "Cong moved into position about two hundred yards away. They did not see me. I remember staring along my M1 thinking it wasn't fair to clock them from hiding, without warning. I even thought, Hell. This is their home. What business do I have shooting them? Then I saw one of them pull a bamboo stick grenade from a pouch. That was highly explosive, very deadly ordnance. I couldn't see our guys, but obviously Charlie could. Otherwise, he would not be going for the grenade. And at that moment it hit me. If I tag him, he "II drop the pestle that's what the grenade looked like, a pharmacist's pestle and it will blow all five of them to snake food. The "Cong were crouching, and this guy stuck his head up for a last look. I had done the math, it worked, and I took the shot. It was clean, through his temple. The other four guys shouted and scrambled, I ducked behind the tree, and the pestle blew. I sat there with my back against the damp trunk as the smoke and the sharp smell of the explosive charge rolled by. I held my breath so I didn't start to cough and reveal my position to any backup they might have had. After about a minute, I swung around to look at the clearing. I saw a couple of "Cong crawling through the smoke to try to find whoever had fired the shot. I picked them off."
"The second group was easier to kill?"
"Not just easier. Easy. Once you cross that line, you're not worried about damnation anymore."
"Like women and sex, I guess," Kat said.
"Killing. The male virginity," Rodgers said.
"Do you regret that experience?"
"How can I?" Rodgers asked. "It allowed me to do my job in Vietnam, in the Persian Gulf, and at Op-Center."
"A job whose legitimacy you questioned the first time you did it," the woman pointed out.
"I was nineteen."
"That did not make you wrong," Kat said.
"Okay," Rodgers said. "Now I'm the one who doesn't understand. Are you justifying what Lucy may have been involved in?"
"No. I'm questioning what appears to be your own convenient morality.
Killing is okay in the first person, if you do it, but not if someone else does it."
Rodgers had opened himself up to Kat, hoping she would do the same. He had not expected that response. He also did not appreciate it.
"You're looking at me like I'm holding a pestle in a clearing," Kat said.
"No. You already lobbed it," he replied.
"Touche," she said. "It was not my intention to attack you. I'm just trying to understand what drives the man who may be the next secretary of defense. But we're obviously getting ahead of ourselves. I do not know about Lucy O'Connor's activities that night, and I do not believe she is capable of what happened at the hotel or at Op-Center. I can only suggest that your people talk to her."
"I am sure they will," Rodgers said.
There was a poorly concealed threat in her comment about "getting ahead of ourselves." If Rodgers did not join the team, he would become a free agent.
"So where does that leave us?" Kat asked as she picked up the phone.
"I'm not sure," he admitted. "I feel like I've crossed a line here, but this is an unusual situation."
"I agree," Kat said. She crossed her legs and moved her right foot anxiously. "Let me make this really simple, because I still have calls to make. I want this relationship to work. You're an exceptional man, and you would be a great asset to the party and to our team. But the core group should be able to watch out for each other. We should not have to watch each other."
"I can't argue with that," Rodgers said. "That's why I said I am not sure where this leaves us." The way Kat was sitting then reminded him of seeing her on the bar stool at the Equinox in Washington. Her foot bouncing as it did now, Kat wired at the end of a long and stressful day. How much different the world and his own future seemed just a few days ago.
"You should let Admiral Link know," Kat said. "That's only fair."
"Sure. Just one more question, though," Rodgers said. "What would you do if you found out someone in the core group was behind this?"
"You're really pushing me, General."
"Would you watch their back?" he demanded.
"Until they were proven guilty, yeah," she replied. "This is America."
She went back to her cell phone.
Rodgers walked over to a refreshment stand and ordered a black coffee.
Thinking about the Equinox dislodged something in his memory. Something that had not seemed unusual at the time but did now. Rodgers took his black coffee and went back to the corner of the empty gate. He sat down, sipped the coffee for a moment, then took out his own cell phone.
He called Darrell.
There was something Rodgers needed him to check.
Fast.
FORTY-ONE
Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 1:29 p.m.
Darrell McCaskey was in the car with his wife. They were about to get onto 395 when McCaskey's phone beeped. It was Mike Rodgers. The general asked if anything was new.
"Maria and I just did a UPS on the reporter," McCaskey told him. "Her apartment, her car, and the radio station were clean." A UPS was an unsanctioned prescreen, meaning the two Op-Center agents had a look around without the benefit of a search warrant. That was necessary when law enforcement did not want an individual or group to know that new evidence had surfaced. Op-Center wanted time to get agents on her trail. Until then they wanted to make sure she continued talking to the same people as before. "We've got the Metro cops picking through the dump right now, looking for signs of the dress. We were about to join them."
"I don't think they'll find it," Rodgers said.
"Talk to me," McCaskey said.
"The night after the murder, I had dinner with my traveling companion,"
Rodgers told him. He was being nonspecific because of the un secure line. "When I got there, she was talking with your target. My companion had a shopping bag. She told me it contained comfortable shoes, Nikes, which she never put on. She is wearing high heels now as well. I'm thinking "
"She may have given her the dress for disposal after I exposed the crime," McCaskey said.
"Correct."
"That was the night of the second crime," McCaskey said.
"Also right."
"Got a name on that shopping bag?" McCaskey asked.
"Groveburn" Rodgers said. "Yellow plastic, red rope handles."
"We'll look into it at once," McCaskey said. "Maybe we'll get lucky and find the hypodermic there as well." He turned the car around and headed toward Kat's apartment on the corner of New Hampshire and N Street. "One more thing. What is her attitude about all of this, Mike?"
"She is acting more offended than guilty," Rodgers said. "If she is worried, she's being very cool about it."
"An operation like this would not hitch its wagon to a bunch of Jittery Janes," McCaskey said. "Mike, thanks for this. I'll leave a message if we find anything. Meanwhile, watch your back."
"Never been good at that, Darrell," Rodgers said. "Good or bad, the future's in front of you."
Rodgers hung up, and McCaskey handed the phone to Maria. "Mike is getting philosophical," McCaskey said. "That means he's worried."
"Mike is always worried," Maria said.
"True," her husband replied. "But most of that is usually on the surface. This is coming from inside."
McCaskey briefed his wife, who asked what he thought Rodgers might be worried about.
"That Kat could be guilty," McCaskey told her.
"Of what? Does he think she could have masterminded it?"
"I don't know if he believes that," McCaskey said. "My own feeling is that someone like Link had to be involved.
Not only because of the sophistication and coordination of the kills, but because it would be difficult to execute without someone covering for them inside Orr's office."
"Which brings me back to why," Maria said. "Could this really be all about money, about Wilson's plans for boosting European investments?"
"It could," her husband replied. "We'll know that when we talk to the people who did it."
"Assuming we get them," Maria said.
"We will," McCaskey said confidently.
"At Interpol Madrid, our success rate solving homicides was a little over sixty percent."
"We did a little better than that at the Bureau, but not enough,"
McCaskey said. "That was one reason I joined Op-Center. Results change when people like you, Mike, and Bob Herbert are added to the process."
"Your tactics also have changed," Maria pointed out. "We just did a break and enter."
"That is true, though I look at it as exploratory surgery. It sounds more benevolent than criminal."
"Sweetheart, there is nothing criminal about what we are planning,"
Maria said with absolute confidence. "We have a clear objective and will limit ourselves to that. Ms. Lockley will never know, unless we find something, in which case we will be in a position to step back and build a stronger case."
"We are still invading her privacy," he said. "We are still ignoring the Bill of Rights."
"What we are planning is less of a crime than those committed against Mr. Wilson and Mr. Lawless," Maria replied. "If we can stop a third homicide, then it is a risk worth taking."
"Obviously, I agree, or I would not be doing it," McCaskey said as he turned onto N Street. "But I am not going to pretend it is legal."
"To me, legal is less important than moral," Maria said.
"My conscience is not going to bother me tonight, whatever we find."
There was no explaining to Maria the American idea of personal rights.
That was as pointless as arguing against Maria's logic. One was an absolute, the foundation of a national philosophy, the other was airtight. The only way to sidestep either was by embracing the other.