“I’d be happy to have them sent to you.”
“That’s okay. I’ll pass on it. But I’m sure the folks back home would be interested in knowing why Senator Dixon’s presence is consistently recorded at these meetings if, as I’ve been told, he often slips away.”
“That’s not an issue I can address.”
“I see. Would you mind if I asked you a personal question?”
“About my face,” Gaines said, as if that was always the question.
“Vietnam. Napalm burns.”
“I thought it was our side who dropped napalm.”
“Friendly fire, as they say. A mistake that wiped out most of my platoon. Is there anything else, Mr. Lingenfelter?”
“That wasn’t actually what I was going to ask about.”
“No? I’m sorry. What would you like to know?”
“What do you think of our senator?”
“In my opinion, a great man.”
“The folks back home will certainly be glad to hear that.”
“Please give my best to those folks. In Pueblo, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“Right.” Gaines smiled broadly but unconvincingly. “Good day, Mr. Lingenfelter.”
Outside, Bo stood on the sidewalk pondering questions that lay on him even more oppressively than did the heat of the afternoon sun. What was Hamilton Gaines doing at the hospital in Stillwater? And was there a connection between Tom Jorgenson and NOMan?
He looked back at the Old Post Office. NOMan is an island, Robert Lee had noted on his chalkboard. Lee had purposely distorted the quote to fit the truth. NOMan had done its best to secure a place in the vast, bureaucratic ocean, a place isolated from general knowledge and public scrutiny. Bo sensed something dark and creepy beneath the organization’s mundane exterior. Whatever that darkness was, it spread out far beyond the agency’s office, beyond even the capital itself. In a hospital room a thousand miles away was a man Bo had always admired greatly. Now he wondered if Tom Jorgenson lay in the shadow of that darkness, too.
He had to hit three used bookstores before he found what he wanted, a copy of Jorgenson’s autobiography, The Testament of Time. Several years had passed since he’d read it. This time around he’d be looking at it with a different eye.
Bo knew of a cyber cafe near Dupont Circle. He grabbed a taxi and in fifteen minutes was on the Internet again, calling up the Web sites he’d found earlier using Robin’s computer. He printed out the information he felt might be useful, then did a search with the termsThomas JorgensonandNOMan. He got no hits. He tried various combinations but came up with nothing pertinent. Next he searched usingWilliam DixonandPhilippines. He got the whole story. Bataan. The Death March. Cabanatuan. The escape and sea journey in a stolen boat. He got something else, too. The names of all the men who’d escaped with Dixon and Gass. One by one he searched them on the computer.
Four of them had served very long terms in Congress. Two of them were still there. One of the men had been an assistant director of the CIA before establishing a consulting firm. One had been an assistant for national security to a previous president. One had died in the war. The final man was someone named Herbert Constable. He’d been a cryptographer for the army, stationed in Manila at the outbreak of the war. He claimed to have broken the Japanese code prior to Pearl Harbor and to have notified his superiors of the impending attack. He died in a mental institution in 1950.
Bo printed out all this information as well, gathered up everything, and left. Back in his hotel room, he grabbed a Heineken from the room refrigerator, lay all the material out on the table, and looked things over carefully. It was on his third pass that he caught two small, but important, details he’d missed earlier.
One: The man who’d been an assistant director for the CIA was named James J. Hammerkill. The company he’d established after leaving the government was Hammerkill, Inc., a security consulting firm that now employed Jonetta Jackson, the only eyewitness to Robert Lee’s death. Bo thought about Jackson, a strong woman, trained to be capable of killing. It wasn’t a huge leap of logic to speculate that she might have been more involved in Robert Lee’s death than as a mere witness. On that isolated inlet, a small army could have been involved, and no one would have been the wiser.
Two: Senator William Dixon had been one of the two sponsors of the bill that created NOMan. His cosponsor had been the then freshman senator from Minnesota, the Honorable Thomas Jorgenson.
Bo lay down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. Jonetta Jackson. Hamilton Gaines. William Dixon. These were people who, in the service of their country, had placed their lives in jeopardy. They deserved to be honored. Yet they were involved in an organization that was not at all what it seemed and that may have been responsible for the murder of Robert Lee. To what end did they betray their honor, if indeed betrayal it was?
That was a question Bo couldn’t answer, but he was pretty certain he knew who could. He used the hotel phone, called Northwest Airlines, and made a reservation on a flight the next morning that would take him back to Minnesota. Then he picked upThe Testament of Timeand began to read.
chapter
thirty-seven
As the 747 dropped low over the Minnesota River valley and Bo saw the wetlands sliding beneath him, he was, as always, happy to be home. He took a shuttle to the remote lot where he’d parked his car and from there drove directly to the St. Croix Regional Medical Center in Stillwater. It was late morning when he arrived. Tom Jorgenson was awake. The stroke had left him weakened, particularly on the right side of his body, but no permanent damage had been done. He greeted Bo with a smile, albeit a lopsided one. The black around his eyes that the E.R. doctor had called battle signs had faded to the point where the shadows simply made him look exhausted.
“Invitation to the White House,” Jorgenson said. He spoke slowly.
Bo sat down beside the bed. “I’ve been there a lot of times, but never as a guest.”
“How’s Clay?”
“I’d say he’s having a tough time right now.”
Jorgenson nodded gravely.
Bo held up the copy of Jorgenson’s autobiography that he’d purchased in D.C. “A fine book, Tom. Just finished rereading most of it.”
“Nothing better to do?”
“I was especially intrigued with the section in which you discuss your experience on the U.S.S. Indianapolisduring World War Two. When it was torpedoed and sank, nearly a thousand men went into the ocean, is that correct?”
“Nine hundred.”
“Without lifeboats, food, or water. After four days, after countless shark attacks, after the effects of exposure, only what, three hundred survived? It must have been a nightmare.”
“It was hell.”
“In the book, you blame the military command. A Japanese submarine was in the area, but that information was never communicated to the ship’s captain. After the torpedoes hit, the ship’s distress signal was ignored. And nobody seemed to notice or to care that theIndianapoliswas long overdue for docking.”
Jorgenson shook his head. “Criminal neglect.”
“You were bitter.”
“A waste of fine men.”
“Still bitter?”
Jorgenson seemed surprised by the question. “What are you getting at?”
“Do you know a man named Hamilton Gaines?”
Jorgenson’s eyes, only tired before, grew wary.
“Now there’s a man with plenty of reason to be bitter,” Bo said.
“Senator William Dixon, too. What do you suppose men like that do to deal with all that bitterness? Do they maybe find ways to get even?”
Jorgenson waited. “Some of them,” he finally replied.
“Not all?”
Jorgenson shook his head. “Not all.”
Bo leaned over the edge of the bed. “Tell me about NOMan.”
Jorgenson didn’t reply.
“Did you know that while you were in a coma, Hamilton Gaines was here, asking questions about you?”