The Enemy

There was nothing else in the briefcase. Just a few furred paper shreds trapped in the seams. It looked like Kramer was the sort of guy who emptied his case and turned it upside down and shook it every time he packed for a trip. I put everything back inside and buckled the little straps and laid the case on the floor by my feet.

“Speak to the dining room guy,” I said. “When we get back. Find out who was at the table with Vassell and Coomer.”

“OK,” Summer said. She drove on.

We got back to Bird in time for dinner. We ate in the O Club bar with a bunch of fellow MPs. If Willard had spies among them, they would have seen nothing except a couple of tired people doing not very much of anything. But Summer slipped away between courses and came back with news in her eyes. I ate my dessert and drank my coffee slowly enough that nobody could think I had urgent business anywhere. Then I stood up and wandered out. Waited in the cold on the sidewalk. Summer came out five minutes later. I smiled. It felt like we were conducting a clandestine affair.

“Only one woman ate with Vassell and Coomer,” she said.

“Who?” I asked.

“Lieutenant Colonel Andrea Norton.”

“The Psy-Ops person?”

“The very same.”

“She was at a party on New Year’s Eve?”

Summer made a face. “You know what those parties are like. A bar in town, hundreds of people, in and out all the time, noise, confusion, drinks, people disappearing two by two. She could have slipped away.”

“Where was the bar?”

“Thirty minutes from the motel.”

“Then she would have been gone an hour, absolute minimum.”

“That’s possible.”

“Was she in the bar at midnight? Holding hands and singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’? Whoever was standing next to her should be able to say for sure.”

“People say she was there. But she could have made it back by then anyway. The kid said the Humvee left at eleven twenty-five. She’d have been back with five minutes to spare. It could have looked natural. You know, everybody comes out of the woodwork, ready for the ball to drop. The party kind of starts over.”

I said nothing.

“She would have taken the case to sanitize it. Maybe her phone number was in there, or her name or her picture. Or a diary. She didn’t want the scandal. But once she was through with it, she didn’t need the rest of the stuff anymore. She’d have been happy to hand it back when asked.”

“How would Vassell and Coomer know who to ask?”

“Hard to hide a long-standing affair in this fishbowl.”

“Not logical,” I said. “If people knew about Kramer and Norton, why would someone go to the house in Virginia?”

“OK, maybe they didn’t know. Maybe it was just there on the list of possibilities. Maybe way down the list. Maybe it was something that people thought was over.”

I nodded. “What can we get from her?”

“We can get confirmation that Vassell and Coomer arranged to take possession of the briefcase last night. That would prove they were looking for it, which puts them in the frame for Mrs. Kramer.”

“They made no calls from the hotel, and they didn’t have time to get down there themselves. So I don’t see how we can put them in the frame. What else can we get?”

“We can be certain about what happened to the agenda. We can know that Vassell and Coomer got it back. Then at least the army can relax because we’ll know for sure it isn’t going to wind up on some public trash pile for a journalist to find.”

I nodded. Said nothing.

“And maybe Norton saw it,” Summer said. “Maybe she read it. Maybe she could tell us what all this fuss is about.”

“That’s tempting.”

“It sure is.”

“Can we just walk in and ask her?”

“You’re from the 110th. You can ask anyone anything.”

“I have to stay under Willard’s radar.”

“She doesn’t know he warned you off.”

“She does. He spoke to her after the Carbone thing.”

“I think we have to talk to her.”

“Difficult kind of a talk to have,” I said. “She’s likely to get offended.”

“Only if we do it wrong.”

“What are the chances of doing it right?”

“We might be able to manipulate the situation. There’ll be an embarrassment factor. She won’t want it broadcast.”

“We can’t push her to the point where she calls Willard.”

“You scared of him?”

“I’m scared of what he can do to us bureaucratically. Doesn’t help anyone if we both get transferred to Alaska.”

“Your call.”

I was quiet for a long moment. Thought back to Kramer’s hardcover book. This was like July thirteenth, 1943, the pivotal day of the Battle of Kursk. We were like Alexander Vasilevsky, the Soviet general. If we attacked now, this minute, we had to keep on and on attacking until the enemy was run off his feet and the war was won. If we bogged down or paused for breath even for a second, we would be overrun again.

“OK,” I said. “Let’s do it.”