“Yup. And the true answers are yes, I’ve seen it, and no, I don’t have it, no matter what the Feebies are telling you. But I think I know who does have it. You need to get your hands on the manager of the DRMO, one Wendell Carsont And you probably ought to do that sooner rather than later, General.”
“Very interesting, Mr. Stafford. Will you tell me where you saw it?”
“On a PC monitor in one of your response team’s trucks, General, the first time you had them go to the DRMO. A cylinder. Three feet long or so. About three, four inches in diameter. It looked like a CAD-CAM view, revolving slowly on the screen in three-D. Or am I mistaken here? Maybe that was just a screen saver?”
The general never missed a beat. “That’s exactly what you were looking at, Mr. Stafford. A screen saver. I guess I’m disappointed. I thought you might have something substantial for me. Something real.”
“And I thought you guys were missing a chemical weapon, General.
Something substantial, something real.”
That brought a moment of silence. Then the general asked another question. “Why were you there at that DRMO, Mr. Stafford?”
“I was sent there, General. That’s usually how it works in DCIS. I was there to investigate a possible fraud case. DCIS had uricovered a pattern of evidence that someone was rigging the auctions of surplus military material. We actually picked the Atlanta DRMO at random to test the pattern theory. We don’t really have a case on any person or persons yet.”
“Well, then, Mr. Stafford, I guess we’re still dancing. I think you’re not telling me something. I need more than your say-so to go after this Mr. Carson.”
“I’m protecting a confidential informant,” Stafford said, looking over at Gwen, “who, interestingly enough, saw the same thing I saw. All I can tell you is that somebody really, really needs to go back to that DRMO and get his hands on Carson. Maybe do to him what you did to me. Before this thing that isn’t missing gets any more missing.”
“Where are you now, Mr. Stafford?”
“In Atlanta, General,” Stafford lied. “I’m calling you on a secure comms PC.”
“If I need to talk to you again, where do I call?”
“The DCIS office in Smyrna, General. Leave the message with Mr. Sparks.” He gave Carrothers the number; “Mr. Sparks wouldn’t talk to me this morning. He hurt my feelings.”
- “Mr. Sparks has a good nose for trouble, General. It’s nothing personal, you understand.”
Stafford thought he heard a small chuckle. “Goodbye, Mr. Stafford”
He secured the computer. Gwen was watching him carefully when he turned around. “Now what?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I promised Ray I’d go back to Atlanta. But I don’t really want to go back there.”
She looked momentarily relieved. “Why?” she asked. “Will something happen?”
“It shouldn’t. That fax was just an intelligence spot report — one grade better than rumor. Not even the Bureau arrests people on rumors, or they didn’t used to, anyway. Either way, that spot report’s going to stir up a fire at the DCIS headquarters as soon as the Army talks to them. There are people there willing to believe anything about me.”
“And what would they do?”
“Recall me to Washington, which might be why that spot report was generated. My guess is that Carson has the thing they’re looking for. He may be in the process of selling it to someone, and that someone has connections good enough to start this crap.”
Owen looked down at the floor. “You work in a strange world, Mr. Stafford. Are you telling me that the only way you could convince your bosses, or that general, is to have Jess corroborate your story?”
Stafford shook his head. “I actually don’t think that would do any good.
And it would definitely turn into a circus, as I think you already know.
No. I’ve made the best use of her … faculties that I can. The Army has to be desperate to find that thing. I’ve given them a new target. My guess is they’ll take a shot at it, one way or another.”
She persisted. “But didn’t you say Carson knows that you know? Does he know how you found out?”
“Initially he’s going to think it was one of his own people. But if he goes back and thinks about everything that’s happened since I entered the picture, he might guess. We were all there in the airport, Gwen.
You, Jess, Carson, and me. Carson’s a run-of-the-mill civil servant who’s probably operating way out of his depth right at the moment. But he’s not stupid. I guess it depends on what he saw or experienced when Jessamine saw what she saw.”
“In the two prior cases, they appear to remember nothing.”
“Well, then, that might work in our favor.”
“Do they know where we are? All these people — the Army, the DCIS, the FBI, or even this Carson?”
Stafford stopped to think. Sparks knew that he had come to Graniteville.
The Pentagon could probably trace back the secure phone call he had just made. The FBI probably did not know, but they also weren’t looking yet.
And Carson? Did Carson know about Graniteville? Had he mentioned Graniteville to Carson in the car that day?
“The government agencies can find out,” he said finally. “I don’t know about Carson. But if someone in Washington is helping him, someone with connections, then, yes, he might be able to find out.”
“Then we should tell John Lee about your call this morning, don’t you think?”
“Yes. But unless the Army goes after Carson, he probably won’t do anything. Unless—”
“Unless what?” Her hands were folded in her lap, but he could see the tension in her fingers.
“Unless Carson does recall what happened at the airport. Then he might consider the girl a witness. A stolen chemical weapon would be worth a ton of money in certain quarters, but not if there’s a witness.”
“So now Jess is a witness.” She sighed. “And from what you say, only the bad guy will believe her. That’s rich.” She looked across the room at him, her eyes pleading. “I really wish you could stay here. Until we know.”
He smiled. “I’m definitely thinking about it. My bosses probably won’t see it that way, of course. It’s going to depend upon what the Army does with my phone call.” He rubbed his temples. “I’m getting the mother of all headaches. I need to take a walk or something.”
“Let me make a quick check on how the afternoon’s going. Then I’ll join you.”
36
Carson began his preparations after lunch. First he made a walking tour of the entire DRMO to see that everything was operating normally. He walked through all of the warehouses, the tarmac area, the receiving building, and even the demil assembly and product lines. He did not detect any unusual vibes from the employees; even Corey Dillard gave him a cautious nod of recognition. He looked for any signs that the Army teams had left behind some covert surveillance equipment but found nothing.
He had the man in die security control room walk him through the closed-circuit television surveillance systems that covered the high-value military equipment warehouses, the tarmac, and the entrance to the demil complex. He paid attention to the camera-viewing angles and got a feel for what the displays showed and did not show. This office was manned up during normal working hours, but all the budget cutting had forced them to go to intrusion alarm-activated tape after hours. His plan for the transfer
? included use of the television cameras, so he made sure he H had the current cipher-lock code for the control room.
” He ended his tour in the demil assembly building, where Boss Hisley and his crew were building up the feed run for the Monster. Hisley gave him his usual blank face and kept the crew going despite Carson’s presence. Carson walked around the assembly area, — looking at everything, trying to figure out where and how to set the thing up. The key was going to be the closed-circuit TV system. He did not bother going into the demil building. If this worked, nothing was going to happen there, except for the small matter of a trunk with a million bucks in it. He walked [; casually back to his office across the tarmac, trying hard not to look at his watch. He wondered if Tangent’s team was in Atlanta yet.