He drove back to Anniston with the afternoon Alabama sun blazing in his mirror. Now what? he wondered.
24
“Lee, it’s the Pentagon duty officer,” Sue Carrothers said, handing her husband the portable phone.
“General Carrothers,” he said, frowning. Saturday afternoon calls were never good news.
“Sir, this is Major Mason, Chemical Corps duty officer. We’ve had a call from Fort Mcclellan. From the post operations officer. Can we go secure, sir?”
Carrothers handed the portable back to his wife and went into the study, where he initiated the secure link on his desk phone. The phone emitted a tone, and then the digital window indicated the line was secure. “Go ahead,” he said.
“Sir, this is in reference to the Security Working Group. A Defense Criminal Investigative Service agent by the name of David Stafford went to the Mcclellan provost marshal’s office this morning, asking to speak to the CIC rep. The clerk took his name and number and offered to beep the CIC rep, but apparently they’re all out in the woods doing some kind of base cleanup, so they don’t think the CIC guy ever called him back.”
“And why precisely do I care?” Carrothers asked.
“Because he was also asking about the CERT that went to Fort Gillem yesterday.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yes, sir. There’s more. She, the clerk, is an E-Five MP. She had never heard of any CERT, so she sent him over to the depot.”
“Oh shit squared.”
“Yes, sir. We’ve checked with the security people there, and he did in fact show up. He apparently tried, although not very hard, to get into the depot, and then he asked the guard about the response team. The guard blew him off, of course, but he wrote it all down, including Stafford’s badge info, and he called it in to the depot duty officer as an unusual gate event. The duty officer called the CO of the depot, and since they had dispatched the reaction team to Gillem in response to our orders, he called me.”
The chain of command, Carrothers marveled. Some, times it actually works.
“Who is this guy again?”
“A GS-Fifteen investigator named David Stafford, on assignment to Atlanta from DCIS Washington. We’ve checked him out with the DCIS duty officer, and he’s legit — sort of.”
“Sort of, Major?”
“Well, sir, it seems he was a whistle-blower. Bit of an odd duck.
Senior investigator, good, if somewhat unorthodox, professional reputation in DCIS until he dropped a ‘dime on some SES-Two named Bernstein, as well as another senior guy at the FBI.”
“What was going on?”
“Standard Washington dance card, General. The guy I talked to said this Bernstein apparently was selling information to a congressional staffer — something about a sensitive DCIS case involving a big Defense Department contractor. The staffer would then have lunch with the contractor’s lobbyist, who in turn would feed the inside dope to the company, giving their corporate legal team a leg up. The company kept it sweet by making a campaign contribution sent in through the lobbyist to the staffer, who took a piece and also cut Bernstein in for a piece of the contribution as a ‘consultant.’ “
“Lovely. How did Stafford pick up that scheme?”
“Stafford pulled the string on Bernstein’s lifestyle. The word in the DCIS was that Bernstein had jumped in Stafford’s shit over some unorthodox gumshoe work, and Stafford was just getting back. But then this Bernstein apparently panicked and reached out to a buddy who was a senior guy in the FBI with a request to hassle Stafford. Once that shit started, Stafford got pissed and pulled in the IRS. Net result was the discovery of a whole grunch of undeclared income, and then the whole thing unraveled.”
“Bernstein go to jail?”
“No, sir. He was a political appointee. He flipped to the IRS side’against the Defense contractor and the FBI official, in return for a nolo contendere and the opportunity to write the IRS a big check and let bygones be bygones. The administration sent him overseas somewhere to a new assignment. The FBI guy got reprimanded but that was all.”
“That’s usually enough in the Bureau, which means Stafford’s on at least two shit lists. So what’s he doing in Atlanta?”
“Technically, an investigation on possible fraud within the DRMO system, but the DCIS duty officer said he’d heard Stafford had been unofficially shit-canned. He had one other interesting piece of information: Apparently, the DCIS regional supervisor in Smyrna called in looking for Stafford within the past twenty-four hours. Stafford was supposed to have reported to the Smyrna office this morning, but he didn’t show.”
“Because he was snooping around in Anniston. Why did they want him?”
“The duty officer didn’t know, General. Only that if we knew where he was, the local DCIS office sure as hell wanted to know, too.”
Carrothers was silent for a minute while he thought. Something was way off the tracks here, and, of course, it would have to be on a damned Saturday. “Okay,” he said. “I’m really glad you had the duty, Major.
Good work all around. I’d better call General Waddell. I’ll get back to you.”
Carrothers called Waddell’s home in Alexandria, but the general was not in. He left a message requesting the general to call him, then hung up.
His wife was polishing some silver in the kitchen when he walked in.
“Fire somewhere?” she asked.
“In a manner of speaking. This is that matter we talked about this morning. I have this bad feeling it’s not going to stay buried.” “Should it, Lee? Stay buried, that is?” He sighed and looked out the window for a moment. “My gut instinct is to climb into my dress caitvas and get my young ass into the building.”
“Well, you’re always saying you should trust your instincts.”
“Yeah. I’m always saying that.”
“Just make sure you trust all your instincts, Lee. Our second star isn’t worth being a part of something that can’t stand the smell test.”
He stood there, his hands in his pockets. “Waddell as much as told me that my accession to the CG job depended on how well I handled this little tar baby,” he said. “This was my chance to demonstrate that I really knew how to play the game when the stakes got high.”
She put down the polishing rag. “And now?”
“And now I don’t know. think some bastard has stolen a chemical weapon.” fp>
“Wow. And the bigs don’t. want to hear that.”
“Too right.”
She leaned over and put her hand on his cheek and kissed him. Her fingers smelled of silver polish. “I still have my Realtor’s license,” she said. “You go do the right thing, Lone Ranger.” “I hear you, Mrs. Carrothers,” he said, shaking his head. “Sometimes I think we never learn a damned thing in the Army.”
“Your Monday uniform is rigged and ready in the closet.”
He was upstairs changing when General Waddell called back. They went secure on the phones and Carrothers told him what Mason had reported and that he, Carrothers, was on his way in to the Pentagon.
“DCIS, huh?” the general said. “Ambrose Fuller told me there was a DCIS guy at the DRMO when the team went in. Mason think this Stafford knows about the cylinder?’ ‘
“It sounds like he at least suspects something. First he was there at Fort Gillem when the team went in. And now he’s knocking on doors at Mcclellan and the Anniston Depot.”
“We don’t need this shit. The Mcclellan people know where he’s staying there in Anniston?”
“Actually, yes, sir, I think they do.”
Waddell was silent for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “The MP school is there, right? That means there are at least five hundred MPs at Fort Mcclellan. Pick him up. Have them find him, pick him up, and hold him.