“Uh-huh. For a diploma. She was flunking his course.” I shifted awkwardly in my chair. “Look, Chris, I know that Jennifer was your friend, and I don’t mean to imply that she was in the habit of blackmailing people, but-”
Chris didn’t let me finish. “You wouldn’t be talking to me if you didn’t believe that.”
I felt my face flush. “Well, it did occur to me that if she’d tried it once, she might try it again. And if she tried it on with the wrong person, they might have wanted her dead.”
“Your husband, for example?”
I shook my head vigorously. “If that were the case, Jennifer would have been dead six years ago.”
I took a sip of coffee before moving on. “No, I was thinking that it had to be somebody she was working with recently. Admiral Hart, for example?”
“Look, Mrs. Ives…” She paused, as if deciding how forthcoming she was prepared to be with someone she had just met. “Jennifer and I got reacquainted when we were both working at the Pentagon.” Chris had pinched off a piece of cookie the size of a silver dollar, but instead of eating it, she laid it on her napkin. “She worked for Admiral Hart and I was in Personnel, so we might never have seen one another. But one day I ran into her in the food court.” She paused. “We became very close.”
There was an awkward silence. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.
She stared at me, no trace of emotion on her face. “Thank you.”
“I know you’re very much involved with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network,” I said, pinching off a bit of cookie for myself. Then I took a giant leap. “Was Jennifer involved in the group, too?”
One platinum eyebrow shot up. “Yes, but not actively. It wouldn’t have been particularly career-enhancing, would it?” Chris smiled grimly. “But Jennifer referred midshipmen to us from time to time.”
“I know. That’s how I really got your name, from one of the mids we were sponsoring.” Another fib. I was turning into a career criminal.
We drank our coffee silently for a few moments. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Chris?”
Chris shrugged. “Go ahead.”
“Why did you get out of the Navy?”
“I think that’s obvious, don’t you?”
“You’re gay?”
“Right.”
I leaned across the table and followed that admission to its logical conclusion. “So, you and Jennifer were lovers,” I whispered. “Weren’t you?”
Chris lowered her cup from her lips and nodded. “Until very recently. I issued an ultimatum.” She smiled miserably. “Never do that unless you’re sure you can live with the outcome.”
“An ultimatum? Do you mind telling me what it was?”
“Two of them, really. First, I wanted her to get out and come out. Jen had put in the five years she owed the Navy for her Academy education, so she could have resigned her commission at any time. But she told me she was committed to her Navy career and didn’t want to give it up, not even for me.” She buried her head in her hands, and I thought she might be crying, but when she looked up again, her eyes were dry. “If it weren’t for that ludicrous Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, Jen and I could have made a life together. It was either me or the Navy. She made her choice.”
“You said two reasons. What was the other one?”
“As I said, I didn’t approve of what Jennifer was doing vis-à-vis the admiral.” Chris spread her fingers and swiped them through her hair. “Jen told me she’d uncovered evidence that the admiral’s been running his office like a supermarket for weapons manufacturers, soaking up bribes, divvying up multibillion-dollar contracts and diverting work to firms he secretly controls with his partners. Before I left the Navy, I used to work up in WAM, but that was long before Hart took over. I’ve got enough experience with it, though, to see how easily that sort of thing can happen.”
I stared at her for a few moments, collecting my thoughts. If what Chris was saying were true, the situation was far worse than anything Jack Turley had suggested might be going on, hypothetically or otherwise.
“But how is Hart getting away with it? Isn’t there oversight of government contracts anymore?” I remembered my days working at Whitworth and Sullivan, where we kept an archive of all the “blue cover” reports published by the United States Government Accountability Office, the government agency chartered by Congress to track down instances of waste, fraud, and abuse within the government. Congress commissioned some fifteen hundred GAO reports a year, holding up for ridicule such government expenses as $1,118 spent on plastic caps for stool legs or $2,548 for a pair of duckbill pliers. “GAO even looks into things like standards for bottled water,” I ranted. “Surely they must have some idea of what’s going on with the Raytheons and Halliburtons of the world.”
“You would think,” Chris said. “But when the U.S. is at war, all bets are off.”
“But if Jennifer knew about it and you know about it, surely someone else does, too?”
“Jennifer talked big,” Chris explained, “but she never shared any of her evidence with me.”
“What about watchdog groups and FOIA?” I continued. “Surely contractors are required to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests.”
“They are and they aren’t,” she said. “Contractors can claim that specific financial data falls under the heading of a trade secret and that making it public would give their competitors unfair advantage. There’s often months and months of legal wrangling before a report finally arrives, and when it does, the cost figures have often been redacted.”
“Good grief.”
“Jen hinted that Hart had always been very clever about keeping his activities under the radar, but she claimed she finally had the goods on the guy and was going to blow the whistle. After separating him from a chunk of his money first, I’m afraid. Seeing all those unaccounted-for millions pass over her desk every day, the temptation must have been enormous.”
“But I still don’t understand. Knowing all this, how come you didn’t turn Admiral Hart in?”
“I loved her.”
Three simple, one-syllable words that explained everything.
“I hated her methods,” Chris continued after a moment of silence, “but I couldn’t stop loving her. I thought I’d talked her around at last. Forget the money, I told her, turn the son of a bitch in.”
“But now that Jennifer’s gone?”
“You must think I’m some sort of monster, sitting on information like this, but I’m not. I don’t have a speck of proof, and working in Personnel, there’s really no way I’d have access to it. But just so you don’t think I’m totally beyond redemption, I can tell you that I made a few phone calls to Arianna Huffington’s office, and to the Center for Public Integrity. They have much better connections than I do.”
“I wouldn’t trust Hart any farther than I could throw him,” I snorted, “which, considering his size, isn’t very far!”
Chris started. “How do you know Hart?”
“His son is a midshipman. The kid has a role in the Glee Club musical, and I was working with his wife helping to build sets. Hart came to the Academy several times, to see his son perform in Sweeney Todd, or so I thought. But Jennifer always seemed to be hanging around at the time. Eventually I put two and two together.”
“I see.” Chris sighed. “Do they still do the musicals in Mahan Hall?”
“Yup.”
“I remember Mahan,” she commented wistfully. “Lots of nooks and crannies where a mid can hide out, far from the prying eyes of Mother B.”
Mother B-Mother Bancroft-was the midshipman equivalent of Big Brother.
“Or two mids,” I amended.
She grinned. “That, too.”
“That’s probably why Jennifer arranged to meet Hart there. Anyplace else, even in downtown Annapolis, they were very likely to be noticed.” I paused, staring at the reflection of the overhead light shimmering on the surface of my coffee.