Page 13.

Chapter 7

David Gordon was just starting his second week at the 915th Inspector General Detachment, whose commander, Colonel Lionel Jankowsky, answered to the Inspector General of Composite Force, a Major General. The 915th occupied the long, narrow second floor in a brownstone building in Georgetown.

Life is getting a little better every day, David thought as he drove to work with the top down. I am a free man, hopefully a little wiser, he thought. He had just finished Inspector General Officers’ School and felt enthusiastic about righting wrongs and maybe uncovering shady dealings. He had a brief but bitter marriage and divorce behind him, and was healing.

He lived four blocks from Maxie in Alexandria. In fact, he had Maxie’s number on his fridge, and intended to call Tory Breen soon. It was just a matter of figuring out what to suggest they might like to do together—maybe walk through the Smithsonian, then a cozy dinner?

It was a straight shot in to work, beating traffic if you left before seven a.m. Thank God he wasn’t in the Atlantic Hotel & Convention Center, where CON2 was in progress. There were 20,000 troops in the city—special forces in the hotel’s three towers; National Guard troops in the streets outside the hotel; reservists and regulars camped in Rock Creek Park. By contrast, the 915th I.G. Detachment’s leased offices were on a quiet side street with just the right mixed zoning to have small, quaint shops on the first floor and office space on the upper floors of the buildings. Several officers, ten enlisted persons, and two civilian secretaries worked for the I.G., Colonel Jankowsky. David was a bit puzzled by the nature of this unit, since the Composite had its own large I.G. staff, and the units in the Atlantic Hotel & Convention Center undoubtedly had theirs. Jankowsky ostensibly worked for the general staff of the Composite. Maybe it was detachment they were after, in the true sense of the word, David wondered as he drove slowly down the gravel alley behind the 915th’s offices. Objectivity, he thought, looking for a parking space, physical separation from the objects of inspection. To his right was a long wooden fence with tree crowns overhanging. To his left were the backs of shops fronting Ann Street, and on the second floor was a really pretty row of stained glass windows. He wondered what was in there. Looked like a Shakespearean tavern, almost, with dark cross beams over tan stucco. David parked in a large parking lot at the end of the block, opposite the buildings housing shops and the 915th. The parking lot had belonged to a supermarket that was boarded up and looked as if nobody had used it in several years. Blue paint peeled from the stucco walls along the bottom, with large gray gashes of exposed concrete blocks higher up. The good part, he thought guiltily, was that nobody would ticket him for illegal parking. He walked the 200 feet diagonally across the gravel drive to the back entrance of the 915th’s rented store frontage.

On the first floor were a florist shop and a hat maker’s shop. David climbed the back stairs. His office was last in the back. The uniform of the day for everyone was fatigues and combat boots. For officers, it included a pistol belt and holstered sidearm. David hung up his cap and field jacket, but kept the sidearm on. He walked down a narrow, carpeted corridor toward the front. He passed several open doors, and exchanged greetings with uniformed enlisted men and women. It was a spacious property, and even the privates were not doubled more than two desks to an office. The atmosphere was relaxed and friendly by military standards. Every person here was happy to be here rather than in a tent or crowded into hotel rooms at the Atlantic.

David poured himself a cup of coffee and poked his head into Colonel Jankowsky’s office. Whenever a complaint came in that was judged worthy of further attention by the senior NCO, a junior enlisted person prepared a formal folder that would be saved for two years after resolution. Because David was new, Jankowsky personally reviewed his cases before assigning them. David would find the assigned cases in his in-box, study the pertinent Army Regulations, make calls, and report on the issues. Pretty soon, he expected to have cases requiring him to make field investigations, to see the involved parties. He looked forward to being able to travel around the city. CON2 was making history, and he was curious how the spectacle might unfold. He could understand the opinions of both the doomsayers and the enthusiasts, and personally wished it wasn't happening. Better to leave the Constitution alone.

Colonel Jankowsky was a quiet, thoughtful man, tall and graying with a youthful face. Like all the officers in the Composite, Jankowsky wore fatigues and carried a sidearm. “Hey there! How’s it going?”

“Fine, Sir. Just came by to say good morning.”

“Good morning. Hey, close the door and sit down.”

David closed the door and pulled up a chair.

Jankowsky held two file folders. “Got your coffee? Good. David, I’ve got two new ones for you today. One’s a grim one. The other seems just plain whacky.” He showed David the two file folders. David caught the jacket names: Corcoran, Mary; Shoob, Ibrahim.

“These two cases are important to me, and I know you’ll handle them right. I want to get a feeling for how you work in the field, as I start slipping you more and more important cases.” Jankowsky looked up and boomed. “You ready to go to work?”

David grinned back. “Ready and rarin’.”

“Good.” Jankowsky opened the Corcoran folder and skimmed aloud: “This woman is a 38 year old U.S. Army staff sergeant, E-6, assigned to the Composite, with duty in the enlisted mess in Tower 2. That’s the middle tower at the Atlantic, and they’re using it to house and feed military support personnel. She’s a chief cook slash dietary supervisor, in other words. Plans the day’s meals, supervises the cooks, sticks the thermometer in the turkey, that kind of thing.” David noted a photo of a heavyset woman with dark skin and oriental eyes, a patient face with a slight smile. In another photo, she sat with a tired looking man with kind eyes. They looked like hard-working people who got few breaks in life. In a third photo, three beautiful young children sat smiling confidently on a couch—eloquent tribute to that hard work, David thought. Jankowsky continued: “Two days ago she approached the chaplain and said one of the enlisted men had been bothering her. The chaplain referred her to Colonel Bellamy, the Provost Marshal at the Atlantic, but she preferred to turn to us. That was yesterday, and our duty sergeant spoke with her over the phone. Made an appointment, but she never showed up. This morning, one of our clerks called her commanding officer who told her Mary Corcoran was raped by that enlisted man last night. He’s in custody and she’s in the hospital for observation. It’s become a police matter, but I need you to follow through, see the people.” He enumerated, pressing the thick fingers of one hand against those of the other. “See Corcoran. See her commanding officer. See the Provost Marshal. See the suspect’s commanding officer. See the suspect. Get a copy of the MP report. Get copies of any medical records, at least a summary. Write a memo, wrap it up, and we’re done. We’ve followed through, and it goes to Personnel Actions and JAG.”

“Yessir.”

“Oh, and then there’s this.” Jankowsky flipped open the Shoob file. David glanced through the folder, noting the contactee was a senior Coast Guard enlisted man. “Sounds like a flyin’ saucer case. But this guy Shoob’s got 25 years in, so let’s listen. He’s one of the computer jockeys from the Naval Observatory. They’re a hotshot systems security outfit in the basement there, called NSSO. National Systems Security Office, falls under D.o.D. Shoob said he would only speak with me, in person. Kept refusing to say what it’s about over the phone, but extremely important, something about a file he found. Let’s humor him until there’s a punch line, then let’s hit the gong, flush the guy, and get on with serious work.”

“Chief, what’s troubling you that you called us?”

“When is Colonel Jankowsky coming in?”

“He’s tied up, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t want to speak with anyone else.”

“I’m sorry, Chief. I’ll have to do for now. But I work for Colonel—”

Shoob looked as though he’d been kicked in the gut. Within the sickened, angry look, David read the lightning-quick calculations of a chess player; brilliant, if eccentric. Laser-sharp eyes raked David with irony as he conceded. “You’ll wish you hadn’t heard my story, Captain.”

“I’ll take my chances.” David looked at his watch. He had to be at Walter Reed by noon to interview Mary Corcoran, then go to the convention center to request an interview with the rape victim’s company commander.

“Well Sir,” the NCO began in a slow, burry voice, “you might have noticed in that folder there that I work at NSSO.”

David nodded. “Yes, I looked through the file. Over in the Naval Observatory complex.”

“That’s right. The Government builds computer systems, data bases, logic engines. Our job is to break into them before the bad guys do so we can really make them secure. I’m what they call a head walker. Know what that is?”

David nodded. He had a kind of eerie picture of head walkers, wearing thick lenses like ski goggles that offered complete visual, virtual reality, as though they were in another world. Headphones and a mike let them talk with the core brain, in state of the art systems—no keyboards, glorified TV monitors, recording heads, none of that early DP hardware borrowed from typing and home entertainment media.