Which is exactly what he did at 1700. He'd called Dublowski during the day and arranged to meet him at the Green Beret Club. Dublowski was there waiting for him when Thorpe walked in the door. Thorpe slid in the opposite side of the booth.
"Beer?" Dublowski asked.
"No, soda," Thorpe replied. He noted that Dublowski wasn't drinking either. Maybe they were all getting too old for the business. At the bar, several young NCOs from the school were sharing a couple of pitchers and telling of their day's work in loud voices.
"So what do they have you doing?" Dublowski asked as he came back with the soda. Thorpe quickly explained.
Dublowski snorted. "Watch out for the stapler. I hear some of those people in SOCOM received Purple Hearts during Desert Storm when they got wounded by a stealth Iraqi attack stapler that was planted in the office. They had people fly in from the States with the mail and pick up a combat infantry badge and combat patch. Bunch of bullshit."
"I'm surprised the SOCOM commander thought of having someone check on his people's records," Thorpe said.
Dublowski nodded. "General Markham's good people. He looks after his soldiers. Others…" Dublowski's jaw set. "Others, they don't give a shit about us. We're just tools to be used. Put a Band-Aid of American soldiers on every damn little outbreak around the world. Don't fix it. Just shove us in there and—" Dublowski stopped in midsentence.
"No, go ahead," Thorpe said with a smile. "Tell me how you really feel."
Dublowski didn't smile in return. He averted his gaze toward the bar.
Thorpe glanced at the younger men drinking at the bar. Daylight through the window passed through the mugs of beer on the bar, highlighting the golden glow. He looked back at the older man. Dublowski was now staring out the window. A young girl was at the bank across the street, using the ATM. Her shiny dark hair reflected sunlight as she tossed her head, clearing a stray strand off her forehead.
"I don't want to bring up more bad thoughts," Thorpe began, but Dublowski shifted his attention back into the room and indicated for him to go on. "Our world of covert operations is a small one. You've got to have some contacts in the intelligence community. Did you check with any of them about Terri?"
Dublowski sighed. "Yeah, I called in every favor I could think of. Nothing. I had a buddy of mine in the FBI do a check here stateside just in case she had maybe come back. Nothing." Dublowski leaned forward. "But it was kind of strange, Mike."
When Dublowski didn't elaborate, Thorpe had to ask. "What was strange?"
"I called a guy I knew in the CIA. We aren't exactly buddies, but he owed me one. His son was in the Eighty-second and got in trouble a couple of years back downtown in Fayetteville and I pulled some strings and got the boy out of it. So I figured he'd be a good guy to get to check behind the scenes with the Germans, since the Agency has got to have connections with the German intelligence agencies."
"Anyway, this guy said he would see what he could find out. He was enthusiastic about it when I first asked. You know, like he was glad he could repay the debt. But a week later he called me back and he said he hadn't found out a thing."
"So? Maybe there was nothing," Thorpe said.
"It wasn't what he said," Dublowski said, "but rather how he said it."
"What do you mean?"
"He'd lost his enthusiasm. He didn't want anything to do with the situation. When I pushed him, he cut me off and said he was sorry. When's the last time you heard a CIA dink say he's sorry?"
Thorpe pondered that for a moment. "What do you think?"
"I don't know," Dublowski said. "It bothered me then and it still bothers me now."
There was only one thing Thorpe could come up with and he was loath to say it, but felt he had to. "Maybe he found out she's dead?"
"Maybe, but he would have told me. I was prepared for that and he knew it. He wasn't that much of a nice guy that he would want to spare me the hard news. No, I just got the feeling there was something else bothering him."
"Like what?"
"I've been wondering that myself the past couple of weeks, but I can't think of anything."
"You check with anyone else?" Thorpe asked.
"Everyone I could," Dublowski said. "We get GSG-9 men through here quite a bit," he said, referring to the elite German counterterrorism police force. "I've buddied up to a few of them. I called a couple and asked them to make some inquiries for me in Deutschland."
"And?"
"And nothing. Nada. I tried following them up, but they're dodging me."
"That's strange," Thorpe said.
"That ain’t all of it," Dublowski said. "The Agency has a representative here at Bragg who's supposed to coordinate with SOCOM and Delta. A guy named Ferguson. He showed up one day and told me to keep my professional and personal life separated; that they'd gotten some complaints about me via the State Department from the Germans. That's bullshit." Dublowski pushed his glass around on the table.
"Is there anything I can do?" Thorpe asked.
"No, but thanks for asking." Dublowski was silent awhile. Then he spoke in a tone of voice Thorpe had never heard the sergeant major use before. "Sometimes, Mike… sometimes I question whether I did right."
"You've been checking into things as much as you—" Thorpe began, but Dublowski cut him off.
"I'm not talking about after she was gone, but before. Whether I was a good father. You know I was gone most of the time she grew up. We all were. Defending our country, or so we were told. But did I do enough to protect my family? Hell, I've never fought anyplace — be it Vietnam, El Salvador, Lebanon, Desert Storm — where I felt like I was really fighting for my country."
"None of those places were really threats to us, were they? Political bullshit. Games. That's all they were. And I went to all of those places they ordered me to and left my family alone." Dublowski looked up and Thorpe was disturbed by the confusion in the eyes of the older man. "Which was more important? Hell, even at the end, the last time, I left my family in Germany while I came back here to the States to get up to speed on that operation we ran in the Gulf. Left them alone in a foreign country."
Thorpe leaned forward in the booth. "Dan…" he began, but he found the words weren't there. Finally he spoke the truth, based on what he had learned with his own family. "I don't know."
"What's wrong with you?" Dublowski said. "We've been yacking about me all this time and you haven't said word one about your life. What happened with Lisa and Tommy?"
"They're dead." Thorpe said the two words flatly.
"Goddamn," Dublowski whispered. "What happened?"
"Last year. Just a month after I got off active duty. Car crash." Thorpe swallowed. "A truck driver fell asleep at the wheel. Sideswiped them on the interstate and rolled them eight times before they came to a stop. They were both dead at the scene."
"Jesus," Dublowski whispered. "I didn't hear anything about it. I'm sorry, Mike."
"I was at a job interview." Thorpe looked up. "Can you believe that? I'd put my papers in right after Louisiana. Retired. Finally did what it took for my marriage, my family, to be first. They were coming back from Lisa's mom's. And I was away. Not there for them once again when they needed me.”
"There's nothing you could have done except died too," Dublowski said.
"Maybe that—"
"Don't go there," Dublowski said.
Thorpe spread his hands out on the table. "The thing is, Dan, we don't know. I don't think we control anything. Lisa and Tommy wouldn't have been on that road if I had stayed in service."
"But Lisa would have left you if you had stayed in," Dublowski said.
"I know that, but she and Tommy would be alive. I thought I did the right thing for her and Tommy by getting out. So I don't know, Dan. I can't tell you what's right and wrong, or good and bad." Thorpe stood. "You still have Marge. Go home."