“Sir, yes, sir,” Chapel said.
“When Angel relayed to you my direct order that you were not to come to the Catskills, but to instead proceed directly to Denver, was your equipment functional? Your telephone and your — your — hands-free unit, I believe it is called?”
“Sir, yes—”
“Just yes or no, please.”
Chapel bit his lip. “Yes,” he said.
“So you did hear her correctly? The order was received without transmission errors? You understood the order and acknowledged it?”
“Yes.”
Hollingshead nodded. “All right. Let’s try another question. Were you at any time under the impression that Julia Taggart had a security clearance that would allow her to know — oh, anything — about your current mission?”
“No, sir, but—”
“Just yes or no, Captain.”
“No.”
Hollingshead sighed. “So when you interrogated Jeremy Funt, say, or when you spoke with Ellie Pechowski — oh, I heard everything she told you, I’ll be having words with her as well. Oh, my, yes. And let us not forget, when you infiltrated a Department of Defense secure facility with Julia at your side, were you in any way operating under the delusion that Julia had a need to know what you found?”
Chapel supposed he deserved that. What he didn’t deserve was to be spoken to like a child. But he held his tongue. “No,” he said.
“No. No, I don’t suppose you would have been that foolish. You were recommended to me as a man who actually understood secrecy and the importance of national security. I might ask you many more questions, son. I might sit here all day asking them. I might also have you brought up on charges of espionage and treason, which — while perhaps not the best descriptions for the very, very foolish things you’ve done — are the best words I have to describe them. You—”
“Sir. Permission to speak candidly,” Chapel said. Interrupting Hollingshead was insubordination, but compared to espionage and treason it wasn’t much of a crime.
“Oh, but of course, son, I’d never dream of anything else. I so very much want to hear your explanation for what you’ve done.”
Chapel inhaled sharply. “She had no need to know, as we define that term in the intelligence community. But if anyone on earth had a right to know, it was her.”
Hollingshead waited, a patient expression on his face, as if he expected Chapel to say more. Chapel chose not to do so.
“Let’s put her aside for a moment,” the admiral eventually said. “We’ll also put aside the utter naiveté and silliness of your last statement.”
Chapel bit his lip to keep from responding. The shame he felt had kept his anger under wraps until then. It had kept him from even feeling it. But there was a time to just accept that you were being chewed out, that you deserved to be called a fool. And there was a time when that stopped.
He was getting pretty close to that moment.
Hollingshead sighed and continued. “Let’s instead talk about how I failed you. How I made an utter mess of this thing.”
“Sir?”
“I said something to you just before you left the Pentagon. I told you to follow the clues. To figure out what was really going on here.”
“Yes, sir, you did, which is exactly what I’ve been—”
Hollingshead lifted one hand.
Chapel fell silent.
“I meant, you see, and — now this is where it becomes my fault — I meant that you should figure out what the CIA wanted out of all this. Why, say, they were so anxious to handle it themselves. I don’t believe you’ve done much in that regard, other than shooting the toes off a special agent. Instead of the investigation I wished you to complete, you took it upon yourself to dig up the secrets of a very old, very moribund project that it behooves no one — no one at all, son — to know about. About which you certainly have no need to know.”
“My orders were to catch or kill the chimeras, sir. To know how to do that I needed to know what they were,” Chapel said.
Hollingshead’s eyes sparkled.
Which made Chapel think he’d made a mistake.
“Ah! Finally! We have some insight, a little window into the soul of James Chapel and why he chose to do all this. But that doesn’t make it all better. Or does it?”
“No. Sir,” Chapel said, though it made his teeth grind.
“No, no, because you found nothing in the camp. Because, of course, there was nothing to be found but some very old, very sad secrets. You wasted all that time, son. You wasted it for nothing.”
Chapel opened his mouth, but then he closed it again quickly.
Hollingshead didn’t know about Samuel. He didn’t know Samuel was still alive.
It was probably best for Samuel that it remain that way.
But after what Chapel had seen in Camp Putnam — after what he’d learned — he could not remain silent. He had taken a vow to serve his country. To obey his superior officers. But there were times when even that vow had to be broken.
“You’re wrong, sir. I did find something there.”
It was gratifying to see Hollingshead look surprised for once. The man who knew everything, the spider at the center of the web of secrets, looked like he’d been punched in the face. His eyes were very wide as he waited to hear what Chapel said next.
“I found evil,” Chapel said. “What happened in that camp was nothing short of criminal. What was done there — what happened to those boys—”
“Boys who grew up to be killers,” Hollingshead interjected.
But Chapel wouldn’t be derailed. Justice was at stake. “Maybe. Maybe we made them that way. We talk about the chimeras as if they’re monsters. And I won’t deny that they do monstrous things. But they’re still ninety-nine percent human. And I figure that means they should have had the same rights as you and me. But they weren’t given those rights. They were tortured in there, starved, neglected, and abandoned.”
“I won’t speak to this,” Hollingshead sputtered. “And if you’re wise, you’ll—”
“No, sir, I won’t shut up. They were children. And they were tortured. That’s not something that can just stand. Someone’s going to have to pay.”
NAVAL SUPPORT UNIT SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+50:31
Hollingshead was quiet for a very long time. He took off his glasses and folded them carefully. Put them in a pocket of his vest. Chapel couldn’t read anything in his face or his body language. He couldn’t tell what Hollingshead was about to do.
Not that it mattered. Chapel knew his career was already over. That he’d be lucky not to be arrested and thrown in prison for the rest of his life, after what he’d done.
He didn’t regret a single word he’d said.
“I… see,” Hollingshead said, finally. “Have you… well. I suppose I should ask what you think you’re going to do now. How you intend to attain this hypothetical justice. Are you going to go to the media? Reveal classified information to the public? Write a book about what you’ve seen and go on Larry King to talk about it?”
Chapel frowned. That was one thing he hadn’t considered. Something had to be done. But what? “No, sir, I don’t suppose I will,” he admitted. “I did take an oath not to do that sort of thing.”
“Then… perhaps you’ll try to get justice from within the DIA? File reports with some oversight committee or other, make a nuisance of yourself? Will you write a carefully composed e-mail to the president?”
Chapel felt the wind go right out of him. That was more in line with what he could do. But he also knew that it would achieve exactly nothing. There were people out there who were responsible for Camp Putnam, but they were people in positions of influence, and people like that didn’t respond well to being called out. They would go into damage control mode. Shift blame. Implicate Chapel in the whole thing and make sure he took the fall for what they’d done. It was how any bureaucracy worked.