Loudoun County had taken on most of the growth in the area and the little town of Middleburg was bursting at the seams. Art galleries, boutiques, quaint restaurants and historic inns lined the town’s few streets, and on weekends when city-dwellers drove out Highway 50 from Washington to see what it was all about, the merchants couldn’t keep the smiles off their faces.
“So what world are you in, Warfield?” Fleming asked after a mile of silence.
“Horses. Land. All the things you natives do around here.”
“I’m not exactly considered a blue-blood since I was raised in Charlottesville. I blend in okay, though, don’t you think?”
“You sit a saddle the right way.”
“Western. I just never got into the hunts.”
“All they do is chase the fox. They don’t even want to catch it. Back home we’d consider that a waste of a bunch of good dogs and horses.”
Fleming shook her head and laughed. “No couth, War Man.”
Fleming had called ahead and reserved their favorite table at Ticcio’s, a small Italian place at the edge of town that got most of its business from locals. Fleming and Warfield went there a couple of times a month for a few laid-back minutes and some pretty good food. Fleming once told Warfield that if she ever left him it would be for Ticcio, the restaurant’s owner. His resonant voice and European accent put her in the mood to remove her clothes. Ticcio led them past the bar to a corner table overlooking a courtyard outside the window and took their drink order. A family of ducks played Follow Me in a fountain pool in the garden.
Warfield settled into his drink. Fleming’s charm and beauty, the open-air ride through the country and the serenity outside the window had mellowed him. It was rare. Every second of his life was crammed full and he wouldn’t change it if he could, but he knew he needed to stop for a breather once in a while. Fleming had not been too far off with the couth bit. He’d grown up in Texas on a dairy farm. In time, he came to the realization his family was poor, but poor was a relative thing and no one he knew then was any different. Besides, his family had had what they needed: Clean clothes, a warm house and plenty to eat. Dairy farming wasn’t easy but he never thought much about that either. Milk cows knew no holiday and every day started at four-thirty in the morning. Put feed in the stalls, hook up the milking machines to the cows, save the milk, clean the floor, and do it over and over again until every cow was cycled through. Then he’d prepare the milk for pickup and get ready for school. Repeat the whole thing that evening. Summers meant working in the fields, putting up the hay that would be needed for winter.
Warfield’s father Raymond was a hard driver with no patience for extracurricular diversions that took Warfield away from the farm, but young Cam bargained with him so he could play football and basebalclass="underline" He would take over the entire milking responsibilities all to himself in return for the time he wanted for sports and the library, which meant he had to get up even earlier for the morning milking, and do the afternoon chores after practice or games.
Warfield’s love for the military began in the ninth grade. After learning in a World War II history class about the Enigma cipher machine used by the German U-boats to communicate with Berlin, and the allies’ successes that came from breaking the code, he was hooked. For the next three years he spent any time not required by the farm or sports at the library. By the end of his senior year he’d read everything there was in the school and county libraries about cryptography and the role of codes and code-breaking from the first world war to the present. His interest expanded to war in general. He memorized the conditions for the use of spies written by a Chinese philosopher named Sun Tzu in a book titled The Art of War two centuries earlier. Every life decision Warfield made after that was in pursuit of a career in military intelligence.
Warfield went to the army recruiting center the day he graduated from high school and told the recruitment officer what he wanted to do: Sign up for as long as the army would allow on the condition that he could go to OCS and be assigned to military intelligence. “Forget it, son,” the officer said, when he stopped laughing. Only a few qualified for officer candidate school, and the folks in military intelligence do the inviting — not the other way around. “Besides, why would you want to, boy? Those people out there in Fort Huachuca are a little creepy.”
Armed with the name Fort Huachuca, Warfield went to the library in Wichita Falls and found out what else he needed to know. He went home and typed up a letter to Major General Thomas K. Feranzo, Chief, Military Intelligence, Fort Huachuca, Arizona, specifying what he wished to do. He also typed and enclosed his own nineteen-page analysis of Sun Tzu’s principles of spying, a copy of his high school transcript that showed he graduated with honors, and letters from his principal and his football coach that said he worked hard and was a boy of good character.
Eleven days after he mailed the package off to General Feranzo he received a large tan envelope from Feranzo’s office. All the documents he’d sent, including his original letter to the general, were inside. A list of army recruiting stations was enclosed. That was it.
Later that day, Warfield told his father he was leaving home. He had prepared his parents for this day so it was no surprise. He loaded everything he owned into his nine-year-old Ford pickup, and Raymond and Cam talked for a few minutes and hugged each other. As Cam was about to drive off, Raymond pulled a Ka Bar pocket knife out of his jeans and handed it to him. He wanted Cam to have it.
Two days later Cam pulled up to the gate at Fort Huachuca. When the MP at the gate required documentation before he could enter the base, an apprehensive Cameron Warfield fumbled through his papers and found the envelope that had General Feranzo’s name and return address on it.
“It’s all in here,” he told the military police officer and flashed the envelope in front of him. Bluffing wasn’t much different than faking, and he had learned how to fake in football. Sun Tzu would approve of it too. The MP glanced at the return address and instead of examining the contents as he should have, nodded and gave Warfield directions to the military intelligence command center. Warfield finally breathed again as he drove away from the guard station.
The MI headquarters building was a one-story cream-colored building that was built out of wood — a long time ago, Warfield decided. “Here to see General Feranzo,” he said when he got inside.
The corporal sitting at the wood desk looked up at him. Warfield thought he seemed not more than two or three years older than he. “You want to see the general?”
“Yes sir.”
“You in the army?”
“No sir.”
“Didn’t think so. You don’t say sir to a corporal, buddy.”
Warfield knew that. “Can I see him now?”
The corporal suppressed a smile. “No way. You can’t just walk in and see a general! Gotta go through people and you need an appointment to do that around here. Where you from anyway?”
“Rawlings, Texas.”
“What do you want to see Feranzo about?”
“Nothing that concerns you. How do I get to see him?”
The corporal looked Warfield over, chewed on his lip for a moment, glanced around the room and got up from behind the desk. “Come with me.”
He led Warfield out the door he had entered and they stood on the porch. The corporal pulled out a pack of Camels, tapped the top against his finger until a tight-wrapped cylinder popped out, and offered it to Warfield.