“I trust this will be the last time I will see you, Agent Knox.”
“I can guarantee it,” said Knox as the doors closed.
Jericho put the gun back in her pocket, turned, and went back into the apartment.
Thus she did not see the pair of hands emerge in the crevice of the elevator’s outer doors. The fingers gripped and pushed and the doors came open.
Paul Rogers climbed up into the vestibule. When Knox had gone up to the apartment he had ridden on top of the elevator car after getting into the shaft through an air duct opening. When the car had descended Rogers had already climbed onto one of the metal beams supporting the shaft and waited there.
He slipped across the vestibule and saw Jericho at her desk, her back to him. She was working on her laptop, some complicated bit of science that held her full attention.
She only looked up when the hands closed around her neck.
Down on the street Knox stood on the pavement looking up at the top floor of the building. The wind was picking up. As it whipped her hair she drew her coat collar up some more and put her hands in her pockets. Though it wasn’t possible, Knox thought she heard the snap of a spine eight stories up.
I told you I had friends in high places.
Like your apartment.
Her phone buzzed. She took it out and looked at the text.
Then Knox punched in the numbers and made the call.
“It’s done,” she said quietly.
“John can never know about this,” said the voice. “He’s not wired that way.”
“He will never know about this,” Knox said. “I can keep a secret.”
Knox put her phone away, turned, and walked off into the darkness.
On the other end of the finished call Robert Puller put the phone down on his desk.
He thought about the death of Claire Jericho, but only for a few moments.
Then he put it out of his mind and turned to work of importance.
75
THE PULLER BROTHERS walked down the hall of one of the world’s great labyrinths. The Pentagon was a place well known to the brothers. They were both in uniform and marched along confident in where they were going.
They had been summoned, by a four-star no less.
Johnny Coleman, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Though he had no operational command in the position, he was outranked only by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And because the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was with the Air Force, Coleman outranked all the other Army four-stars. Coleman had been one of Fighting John Puller’s junior officers, before going on to carve out a legendary career of his own.
“What do you think he wants?” asked Puller as they walked along.
“It’s either going to be really good news or really bad news,” replied his older brother.
“You heard what happened to Jericho?” asked Puller.
“I heard,” said his brother.
“They never found Rogers.”
“Heard that too.”
“If it was him, how did he find out where she lived? That was classified.”
“No idea,” said Robert.
They reached Coleman’s offices. The flag of the Vice Chair was the American bald eagle with its wings spread horizontally. Its talons gripped three arrows, and thirteen red and white stripes representing the original colonies on a shield. It was a regal and intimidating image, and Coleman presented the same figure.
He was a big man, six-four and north of two-fifty, with a broad, thick chest and a grip of iron. His gray hair was cut very short and his voice was a bullhorn that had been used to lead men for nearly four decades now.
He was in his dress blues, with shelves of medals and ribbons. As he told the brothers as he led them into his interior office, he had a formal event to attend after their meeting.
They sat down in Coleman’s office, the Vice Chair behind his battleship-big desk and the brothers on the other side.
Coleman plunged right in.
“Helluva time for you both and General Puller. Your mother was one of the finest human beings I have ever had the honor to know. It’s a tragedy all around.” He paused and fiddled with a pencil. “I have been briefed on all this. In fact, I inserted myself into this situation chiefly because it was the Puller family. As you know, I served under your father. He taught me more in the two years I was with his command than in the rest of the time I’ve been in the Army. In my mind there has been no better pure fighting officer than your father. At least in my experience.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Robert.
“Now let me get down to it.” He looked at Puller. “Your Army failed you, Chief Puller. You served it faithfully and we did not return the favor. I have been informed what happened three decades ago. I mean what really happened. And I am appalled. And I don’t simply speak for myself. Chairman Halverson has been made aware of this situation and fully supports my position.” He paused again. “In a perfect world, the research project undertaken by Chris Ballard and Claire Jericho three decades ago should never have happened. The murders of those women should not have been covered up. And what happened to your mother…?” He broke the pencil in half. “I know that Jericho has been found dead. Officially, she committed suicide. Now, the whole truth of the matter can still come out. The Army will take its lumps and it should. The deaths of the women, your mother, Jericho, everything. You say the word and all of this comes out. I’m not putting any pressure on you one way or another. I mean that. The Army royally fucked up.”
He sat back and looked at the pair.
Robert and Puller exchanged a single glance, but a lot was communicated during those few moments.
Puller said, “I think the appropriate parties have been punished adequately, sir. And I think the Army has learned a valuable lesson. So, no, it need not be made public.”
Coleman nodded, his face not revealing whether he agreed with this decision or not. He opened his desk drawer and took out a file. He slid on wire-rimmed glasses and looked at the pages.
“As I understand it, your father was not considered a suspect in your mother’s disappearance because he was out of the country. Recently, though, this was found to be incorrect. And then he became a suspect thirty years later.”
“He came back a day early,” noted Puller.
“And this is the reason why.” Coleman slid the file across.
Both brothers looked stunned. Puller turned the file around and the two began to read down the pages. When they were done they both looked up.
Puller said, “He came back to confront Ballard and Jericho?”
Coleman nodded. “This super-soldier program was highly classified but not entirely a secret. Your father was a one-star stationed at Fort Monroe where this program was operational. Now, he was not the commandant of the fort, but that didn’t matter to a man like Fighting John Puller. Wherever he was stationed was his turf and he would defend it with his life if need be.”
Puller said, “So he found out about the program? Jericho told me that she knew my father. And they didn’t exactly see eye to eye on things.”
Coleman said, “Oh they knew each other all right. And eye to eye? Let me put it a little more bluntly. Your father personally thought her work was horseshit, using his term. He told me that war needed to be fought by real men. Real men had to bleed and die. Only then would we not want to fight wars. If we could create robots to do our fighting, he thought, we’d be at war all the time.”
“There’s a lot of wisdom in that philosophy,” noted Robert.
“Your father had seen more combat than just about anyone I knew. He knew how terrible it was. He thought Jericho was a cancer that the Army should just cut out of itself.”