Langley’s voice faded as Bogner slipped into still another of his brief withdrawals, then returned moments later.
“… by the time Burgaz was able to put us down on the tarmac, half of the damn base was on fire.
One of Rogers’ men saw the whole thing at switch yards..”
Langley’s voice again deteriorated, something Bogner would identify as little more than an unpleasant hum before he caught on again.
“There — there — was a — was another man?”
Bogner managed to ask. He had finally been able to string some semi-coherent words together. It was a hollow victory — but it was a victory.
“Man?” Langley repeated.
“What man?”
Bogner struggled, finally pushing himself into a sitting position before momentarily closing his eyes. For that brief moment he was lucid.
“There was an — an Iraqi in the cab — in the cab of that engine with me…” His voice trailed off and he came to another fork in the road. Even under the heavy influence of the painkillers he knew he had to find a way to stay with it. He had to know. Finally he managed, “He — he helped me.”
Langley’s smile was involuntary. It was like talking to a drunk.
“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about, T. C.”
“The — the man who — who jumped from the train…”
Suddenly Langley thought he understood what Bogner was asking him.
“Are you talking about the two bodies we found along the tracks? If that’s what you’re talking about, sure, we found them; or at least what was left of them. Rogers and I started putting the pieces together. We figured you threw them off to get control of that switch engine. Right?”
Bogner shook his head.
Langley sagged back in his chair.
“Yeah, if that’s what you’re talking about, they were both dead when we found them. One of them had a broken neck.”
For Robert Miller it was something of a biweekly ritual. As far as he was concerned, Ryan’s Bar and Grill on Runyon Street had a lot going for it; it was less than two blocks from his apartment and on Wednesday nights. Pat and Carrie Ryan served the best corn beef and cabbage in town.
He shouldered his way to the bar, gave Carrie his order, and found a table close enough to the television that he could hear over the din. It was a different network and a different channel but in content, what he was hearing was much the same as the earlier newscasts he and Clancy had watched in Pack’s office while they were waiting for rush hour traffic to thin. At the table next to him two men were engrossed in conversation, and in a nearby booth, a man and woman were equally engrossed, all four obviously oblivious to what was going on in the world around them.
When Carrie appeared with his beer, he asked her to turn up the volume, and settled back in his chair.
“… unconfirmed reports out of Baghdad tonight claim that the Republican Guards of Anwar Abbasin have attacked and destroyed the Northern Iraqi Military Force complex headquartered in Ammash…”
Carrie Ryan cocked her head to one side.
“Hey, Robert, isn’t that the same place where they were saying that some American was supposed to have been sent to assassinate some general or something?”
“I think so,” Miller said.
“They aren’t saying anything about him, though,” Carrie added.
“Last I heard he had escaped or something like that. Makes a body wonder what happened to him, don’t it?”
Robert Miller shrugged, took a sip of beer, cut into his corn beef, and took a bite. It had been a good day. No harangues out of Lattimere Spitz.
In fact, Miller hadn’t heard from him since noon the day before when Spitz called to inform them that Bogner was banged up but safe in Pasabachi and that the Republican Guards in Baghdad were claiming they had wiped out the NIMF installation in Ammash. Yes, sir, all in all, it had been a pretty good day.