“It’s that when you two were dancing last night, I mean, speaking as your friend, it looked pretty close.”
“What did I just tell you?”
“I’m only trying to explain—”
“Your superior officer, Major, gave a direct instruction, and it is for you to shut up.”
“But our unit doesn’t follow instructions.”
I sighed. “Then do it as a favor, Eddie.”
He quieted but the phone began buzzing. I was surprised to see that the call was coming from the cellular phone of Valley Girl, except if it was 8 A.M. in Barrow, then it was 4 A.M. in Washington, when Valley Girl would never, ever be at work. She’d not even be awake. Valley Girl came in at ten, left at nine at night.
“Joe Rush!”
It was her, all right, but she was home, she said, not at the office. She sounded scared, her voice an octave higher than usual. This was the first time in three years of speaking to her that I’d heard her words come out as exclamations, not questions.
“I’m being arrested,” she said. “Men are here from Defense Security. I’m in my bathroom. They’re in the hallway. I need help. It’s because of what you asked me to do.”
SEVEN
They were going to put Valley Girl in handcuffs when she walked out of her bathroom, she said, crying. They’d banged on the door of her townhouse fifty minutes ago, four of them, at 3:10 A.M., shown Pentagon ID, seized her laptop and desktop computers, searched her two-bedroom apartment and warned her that another agent was under the bathroom window, outside, so don’t try to climb out. They’d taken all drugs from her medicine cabinet before letting her shut the door. They’d terrified her cat, Ephraim, who was meowing under a couch.
There’s no way they’d let her go into her bathroom alone normally, no way they wouldn’t have confiscated the cell. So someone is listening to us.
“They think I’m a traitor, like Edward Snowden,” she said, voice quaking.
I asked her, playing to the larger audience that monitored us, “Did you do what I told you to?” I envisioned listeners in a cubicle, or van, vultures who ate sound.
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Do anything extra?”
“No, sir.”
“Explain exactly what you did do?”
“I went to appropriations to see if monies had been allocated for toxics or germ testing in Alaska, going back seventy years. I cross-referenced grants. I checked AEC and Threats Reduction, and PC’s and PU’s (private companies and universities) contracted for this sort of work. I ran all social security numbers of the victims, like you said, for links.”
“Try to break in anywhere?”
“I backed off if I saw ‘Classified.’”
“Which you did, I gather.”
“In 2008. Something called, ‘Enhancing Warfighters.’”
“How did you learn that Enhancing Warfighters existed, so you could make that request?”
“I found a reference in a grant to U Alaska, and another in an Army cognition study downgraded to normal classified two years ago.”
I considered. “You’re saying that you sent in a proper request asking for details of Warfighters?”
She sniffled. “Like we always do.”
“Did you get an answer?”
“It’s that these people showed up.”
I nodded, but of course she could not see me. She was terrified and I was growing angry. I cautioned, “Listen to me. If there’s anything else I need to know, now is the time to say it. If you did something else, forced a back door, tried your way in somewhere, hacking, anything, tell me now. I won’t be able to help after this.”
She was crying openly. I envisioned a shaking female hand cupping a tiny phone. “Are you kidding? I saw the scare movie that the security guys showed us when I joined up. It’s just… just that…”
I felt my breath catch. “Just that what?”
“Well, you said to concentrate on toxics or germs, and Enhancing Warfighters was experiments, all right, on volunteers, but with magnets. Do magnets count?”
“‘Magnets’?” I asked, surprised.
She’d always had a good memory, one reason I used her. “It’s called ‘transcranial magnetic stimulation.’ The Biosciences and Protection Divisions carried it out. Trying to get soldiers to do tasks better, using electrical current, magnetic coils… something about revving up cortical brain tissue. I didn’t exactly understand it, sir.”
“On human subjects, you said?”
“Volunteers, sir. And in military prisons.”
“So you asked for more details?”
“Yes, Colonel. You said to look at any experiments involving people or livestock, so I did.”
If this description was honest, she’d not exceeded instructions. In my three years of dealing with her, I had found her never to exaggerate. I said, “You did right. You used judgment and initiative.”
Which means, if she’s telling the truth, her normal request triggered this raid, not any breach.
I asked, “Was Clay Qaqulik part of this brain study?”
“I never got that far! The security people showed up.”
“Okay. Don’t worry. Sarah, keep the line open and tell the people outside — in a loud voice — that you’ll walk out holding a phone.”
“But why should I say… Oh, my God! OH, MY GOD!”
“Just leave the phone on so I can hear. Calm down. Tell the person in charge that I want to speak to him.”
A minute later I was speaking with a woman identifying herself as Air Force Major T. J. Cobb of the Pentagon’s Office of Defense Security. She had a soft, feminine voice, a hint of southwest twang; Arizona maybe, or New Mexico. But there was no softness in the accusation coming over the line.
“You admit, Colonel, that you ordered Sarah Kemp to try to break in to classified files relating to certain activities that occurred in 2008?”
“Are you a lawyer, Major Cobb?”
A pause. “How do you know that?”
“Because you talk like one. And because only lawyers use the word ‘certain’ that way. They do it when they don’t want to tell you what they mean.”
“Sir, I’m asking the questions,” she responded smoothly. “Yes or no?”
I said, harshly, for emphasis, “I did not order her to break in anywhere, nor did she try to, so don’t suggest she did. She made a legal request through channels. You will not handcuff her. You will give her time to dress properly and then politely escort her to wherever you’ve been told she is to go. You will leave food and water for her cat. You will not mistreat her, am I clear?”
“Colonel, I report directly to General Wayne Homza.”
I sighed. Why am I not surprised?
I snapped, “And he works for someone else, and she works for someone else. Get it? A chain? Am I clear?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, sir!”
Standoff. She wouldn’t tell me more.
In the background, I heard Valley Girl crying, and then the sound grew distant, so I envisioned big men escorting a tiny girl — I always imagined Valley Girl dressed out of a sorority house… she probably looked nothing like that — down carpeted townhouse stairs, into predawn suburban Virginia, toward a couple of big black Chevrolets — the Pentagon seems to be the only loyal customer left for GM’s rattletrap vehicles — with tall antennas on top.
I called the admiral via encrypted sat-Skype to relay what had happened and up swam his secretary, Pauline, a large, pear-shaped fifty-nine-year-old chain-smoking grandmother, who sounded hoarse and showed none of her usual cheeriness. Her mascara had run down her rouged cheeks. Uh-oh, I thought. Pauline was not normally emotional.