With a final shout, he jumped into a two-handed position, arms and knees bent, legs spread, the stick held vertically in front of him and his eyes focused directly on it. Then, eyes closing, he began some breathing exercises, after which he extended his arms straight out and lowered the point of the stick. With arms fully extended now, he began a turn, the point of the heavy, thick staff describing . a menacing eye-level cirrle through the crowd. Karen’s shoulders ached in sympathetic pain as he did it, because he was no longer gripping the stick with his fingers, but, rather, holding the butt end extended between his flat palms, which were pressed together, a position that obviously took great strength. At the end of the circle, and with his eyes still closed, he growled and then did something with his hands that made the stick jump, spinning first around one forearm and then the other, like a drum majorette’s baton.
Moving ever faster, Train flicked it around his shoulders, along his forearms, behind his head, the thick staff making a wicked hissing sound in the still air, his massive hands a blur as he spun it, stopped it, balanced it, and then chopped it into a different motion or direction with almost casual flat-handed strikes. This exercise went on for almost sixty seconds, to the utter fascination of the crowd, and then ended abruptly with the stick held once again motionless, vertically in front of him. He raised his right leg and stomped the ground like a pile driver and shouted out a single word. Then he bowed to his imaginary opponent, put the stick down on a rectangular piece of canvas on the ground, and, still ignoring the people watching, reached for his towel as if he had been doing nothing more unusual than a few casual jumping jacks on the lawn.
Karen sensed that the people around her didn’t know whether to applaud or simply to exhale. As people drifted away, Karen pushed her way forward.
“Morning, Counselor,” he said through his towel.
“Didn’t know you worked out so early.”
“Every day,” she said. “And what, pray tell, was all that?”
“Just a stick drill,” he replied. “I use it to unwind after working the weights.”
“That’s some stick. May I see it?”
“‘Help yourself,” he said, reaching down and picking it up. He offered it to her butt-first. She. was surprised to feel how heavy it was. “It’s heavier than it looks,” she said.
“Why the sword shape? I thought kendo used a plain staff?”
He grinned as he began to gather up his gear. “That’s not kendo. Kendo is stick drill. This is just my version of kenjutsu, which is sword drill. Nothing mystical-just exercise. And the stick is shaped like a sword because of this.”
He took the heavy stick back from her hands, held one end, twisted it slightly, and withdrew a glistening full-sized Japanese fighting sword.
She blinked in surprise. A Marine standing nearby exclaimed when he saw the sword.
“Would you hold this, please?” he said, handing it to her. She grasped the handle with both hands. The sword was beautifully balanced, and the steel surface of the blade appeared to be marbled in various colors.
Train fished an oily rag out of his gear bag, took the sword from her hands, and proceeded to wipe down the entire weapon.
“How’d you finish it up with Sherman?” he asked. “He reveal any more about this Galantz problem?”
“We went down to a local restaurant and had dinner. He told me some of his personal background. Look, I’m going to cramp up if we just stand here. And-“
“Right,” he said, understanding. There were too many people around, some still gawking at his unusual athletic getup. H gathered his gear and the sword, then indicated they should walk toward the small tidal channel on the other side of North Parking.
Karen told him about the syringe. That got his attention.
“In your car? In your locked car? And then the patrol car just shows up as you’re standing there?”
“I know,” she said. “It means we were being watched.”
“And tracked. From his house down to the restaurant.
Damn, Karen, this changes everything, I think.”
“You think?”
“Well, technically speaking, Sherman could still be making this all up.
I mean, the logical explanation of how that thing got in your car without a breakin was that somebody with recent access put it there-namely, him. Was there some interval of time during which he could have called in that patrol car? Some time between the end of dinner and going out to the car?”
“No,” she said. Then she hesitated. “Wait. Yes.
He said he was going to use the bathroom. I waited out by the front door. But-“
“But what, Karen? That’s as plausible an explanation as some mysterious stalker.”
She shook her head in exasperation. “Why are you so anxious to pin this stuff on him?” she demanded.
“Why are you so ready to believe everything he says?”
Train retorted. “Just because he’s an admiral?”
“No, damn it!” she said, glaring at him. But then she frowned. “Oh, I don’t know. I just wish you could have heard him tell the story of what happened to his marriage.
I just can’t find any motivation on his part to make all this up, or to do something to Elizabeth Walsh. I’m beginning to think he’s being set up somehow.”
Train didn’t answer, just turned around, steering them back toward the POAC building. He stopped when they were about to go through the door, stepping aside to let people go by.
“I’m going to pull the string on this Galantz guy with some contacts at the FBI. And elsewhere,” he said. “I have a bad feeling about a guy who’s supposedly an MIA but who isn’t missing. That syringe was a nasty touch. I’ll see you up in the office.”
He left before she had time to answer. He seemed either angry or concerned, and she couldn’t tell which.
Train fumed at himself as he tied his tie for the second time in front of the foggy mirror of the locker room. He should not have said that out there, that bit where he asked her why she was so anxious to defend this guy. Besides, he knew the answer. She was Navy, he was an admiral, and a Studly Dudley one at that. Plus, she was not a trained investigator.
He was willing to bet that she was simply failing under this charmer’s spell. As o posed to your charming personality? -P It has nothing to do with that. Not at all. Hahi It didn’t help that she looked positively ravishing in that damp tank top.
But after this syringe business, the SEAL story had some more legs, and he had not been kidding about a bad feeling.
He gathered up his gear bag and the sword case, closed the temporary locker, and headed downstairs. Suppose what Sherman was saying was the truth, that some badass had come back from the grave to get revenge. Was the syringe a warning? Or the next step? Have to talk to Mchale Johnson at the FBI, he reminded himself as he crossed the wide pedestrian overpass between North Parking and the Pentagon building.