“You start,” he said.
She looked around them. There were no school children, no tourists, no families. The guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier stood at their post some two hundred yards away. The sky and the trees and the graves of countless American heroes were their only witnesses.
“Do you know Kevin Barclay was engaged this past summer?” she asked.
Bruce nodded. He’d seen it in the young man’s file this morning.
“He and his fiancée were picking out china patterns two weekends ago,” she continued. “He was helping her make the guest list for the wedding they have scheduled for next summer. I don’t mean to sound sentimental, but the hijacking of Hartford this morning had to be in the works for awhile. So why bother? Why go through the paces of wedding planning?”
“You’re absolutely right,” Bruce told her. “He doesn’t fit the profile for a member of a conspiracy that, at best, will require that he disappear out of the country. And he’s not the only one.”
She put her back to the wind; the breeze blew her hair into her face. “Who else?”
“I don’t know how a young man like Paul Cavallaro could be part of the conspiracy. The guy comes from three generations of navy officers,” Bruce told her. “He has two uncles and five cousins who are all in service today. His grandfather was a Purple Heart and Bronze Star recipient and his father received the Navy Cross from President Nixon. Their entire family has ‘Property of Navy’ tattooed to the soles of their feet.”
“And yet, you sound like you’re certain he’s in league with the perpetrators,” Sarah said.
“He’s got to be, but I don’t know how he could.” Bruce stopped near a grave of a twenty-two year old who’d died in Vietnam. He looked up at Sarah. “Three days ago, Paul Cavallaro told his wife that some special duty was coming down. He told her it didn’t matter what they told her — everything was fine, and she shouldn’t worry.”
“When did you find this out?”
“About half an hour ago. One of our agents was able to talk to her. The young woman is seven months pregnant, and she’s a total mess, worrying over her husband.”
“They were being deployed. What kind of special duty?”
“She thought he was talking about some kind of promotion.”
Sarah rubbed her arms and rocked back on her heels. “It doesn’t make sense. These are clean, straight, all-American kids. Why, all of a sudden, would they be tempted to flip?”
“Exactly my point,” Bruce said. “With the exception of two crew members, I can give you a similar story about the devotion of every one of the men who were left on Hartford. These aren’t the kind of sailors who threaten to bomb their own people and tear their country apart.”
The breeze was picking up. Bruce saw Sarah rub her arms again. She started walking. He fell into step.
“Which two?” she asked.
“Juan Rivera, a torpedo man, and Michael Dunbar, who works in the galley.”
“And Darius McCann?”
He shook his head. “It’s impossible. Other than the ridiculous ancestry issue that Smith brought up, and that the media is feeding on, there’s nothing in McCann’s records that indicates he would go over.”
Bruce didn’t think Sarah realized it, but her sigh was audible. He gave her a quick side glance. She was watching her step as they walked along the path between fields of white grave markers.
“He’s a lucky man.”
Her blue eyes rounded as she turned to him. “What do you mean?”
“McCann,” he said simply. “You really care about him.”
“I care about his honor,” she said tensely. “I know what he’s stood for all his years in the navy, serving our country. It hurts to think that there’d be the slightest doubt about his allegiance.”
He didn’t say anything.
“If you were in his position and they asked your ex-wife to investigate your involvement in a situation like this, don’t you think she’d defend you if she believed in your innocence?” she asked.
He didn’t know what Claire would do, other than go to her father. Dunn looked down at the tips of his polished shoes. He was being unfair. He and Claire had their differences, but she was as much navy as any military brat. The navy’s code of honor was engrained in her as much as it was in her father or her brother who’d chosen that way of life.
“Yes, she would defend me,” he admitted.
He could see that some of the tension had drained from her face.
“Thank you.”
He grinned.
The wind had picked up. The temperature was dropping. Sarah pushed her hair out of her face and glanced back toward the car.
“By the way,” she said, “I agree with your suspicions about Dunbar. There’s nothing out there on him that’s meaningful. Nothing personal that gives a glimpse of the kind of person he might be. As many pages as I looked through, he’s just as innocuous as a brick in a wall. There’s nothing in his file that distinguishes him. Nothing that draws your eye positively or negatively.”
“Right. Nothing about Dunbar says he’s connected to any community.” He moved to Sarah’s left to block the wind for her as they walked. “In the case of Rivera, it’s the other way around. Too much baggage. He’s gone through some real tough times, this past couple of years.”
“It appears he was seriously affected by the death of his mother.”
“His girlfriend filed assault and battery charges against him but later dropped them. He was into roughing her up. He got busted for a DWI and a number of lesser charges. He’s been on a self-destruct path for a while now, but everyone around him has been trying to be understanding because of his mother.”
Sarah looked around again. Their arms touched as they walked. “We didn’t come out here because of Dunbar and Rivera, did we?”
“No,” Bruce said honestly.
The intensity of her eyes struck him when they turned on him. “Do you feel it, too?”
He didn’t want to tell her exactly what he was feeling.
“You mean that feeling of being snowed under with information?”
“Like they’re using us as puppets to push lots of paper around and pop the right questions every now and then,” she clarified.
“Well put,” Bruce agreed.
“We have a qualified group of investigators and law enforcement agencies and the CIA and everyone else helping us. But where are the top submarine experts?” she asked. “The ones who know that Systems A and B were installed in which submarine and that only Captains X, Y, Z were trained to operate them?”
“That’s a good point. And I don’t bring that level of expertise to the investigation.”
She put a hand on his arm. “I’m not denigrating what you do bring to the investigation, Commander.”
“I didn’t take offense at what you said, at all. And it’s Bruce.” He regretted when Sarah pulled back her hand. “But I’ll tell you the truth. I’m still at a loss for a motive.”
Sarah nodded. She looked back in the direction of the car. “There’s one thing that keeps nagging at me.”
“What’s that?”
“We’ve talked about it before,” she said. “It’s no secret that there are a lot of countries and political groups in the world that hate us right now. But if they’ve hijacked that submarine to do serious damage, then why haven’t they done it already. Why all this song and dance? Why are they playing hide and seek? Why not make the ultimatum for two hours, rather than twenty-four? They’re not dealing with some poor schmuck who has to pry money out of a rich uncle. We’re talking about the United States government, with cash by the ton at the ready.”
“I can’t have any answers to that,” Bruce told her, taking her by the arm and starting toward the car. He could tell she was cold by the way she leaned against him. “But it’s good to get these things out in the open.”