Stafford wrote down the message and hung up. He studied the message on the pad: “Gwinette Warren. Calling from Graniteville, Georgia. Wanted, to talk to Mr. Stafford. Please call this number.”
Graniteville, he thought. Then he remembered. The woman in the airport.
Carson and the girl. He reached for the phone but then thought better of it. This one might be better done from a phone outside of the DRMO phone system. It wasn’t that he suspected anyone of eavesdropping, but this call probably involved Mr. Wendell Carson of the shaky hands. Better to do this at his hotel.
Stafford made it to his room at five after one. He planned to talk to this lady, see what she wanted, and then go out to see Ray Sparks and the DCIS crew in Smyrna. He needed to make his courtesy call, and also to get his hands on a car phone. He called the woman’s number, but she was not there. He left a message that he could be reached at his hotel number. She called back fifteen minutes later.
“This is Owen Warren,” she said. “Thank you for returning my call.”
“No problem, Ms. Warren. I’m just glad you kept the card. Is this about the incident at the airport the other day? And I can put this call on my nickel if you’d like.”
There was a moment of hesitation. “Can you possibly come see me, Mr. Stafford? Up here in Graniteville? This isn’t something I want to discuss over the phone.”
“I suppose I can, Ms. Warren. Can you give me a hint?”
Another hesitation. “It involves the girl who was with me in the airport. You said you were a federal investigator, is that correct?”
“Yes, ma’am, with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.”
“What is that, exactly?”
“A Department of Defense agency. That’s the Pentagon, in media parlance.
We investigate cases of possible fraud against the government.”
“And why are you there in Atlanta?”
Whoa, wait a minute, he thought. That’s my business. “Ms. Warren, maybe you’re right. I think I should drive up to Graniteville, as you suggested. How about tomorrow? How much of a drive is it from Atlanta?”
“It’s two and a half to three hours, depending on how fast you drive and road conditions in the mountains.”
“Okay, that’s doable. I’ll probably wait until after morning rush hour.
How’s about noontime? Is there a motel there?”
“Yes, there is one motel. It’s called the Mountain View. I’ll make you a reservation. They can give you directions to the Willow Grove Home. I’ll expect you around noon?” “Okay, I’ll be there,” he said, writing the information down in his notebook. “And Ms. Warren, you sound somewhat anxious. Please don’t be.
If this involves a minor, let me assure you we can be very discreet and very careful.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Stafford. You’ll need to be both. Until tomorrow then. Goodbye.” He hung up the phone and sat back in his chair.
Dave Stafford, master of discretion and care — now; there was a joke.
Except this didn’t sound like a joke. He thought back to what had happened at the airport. He had thought all along that there had been some interaction between that girl and Carson, and now this Gwen Warren had just confirmed that hunch. But what could it be? Obviously nothing to do with the DRMO. Some man-woman issue between this Warren woman and Carson? Looking at them, he would not have made that connection. She was a woman who appeared to be way beyond the likes of Wendell Carson — and David Stafford, more than likely. He shook his head and looked at his watch. It was time to take his chances with the Atlanta metre traffic and head out to beautiful downtown Smyrna, Georgia!
13
Brigadier General Carrothers returned from the Pentagon Officers Athletic Club feeling somewhat better. His one hour workout had left his cheeks bright red when he walked back into his office. Nothing like a small war with the weights to burn off stress, he thought, and he had had plenty to burn off. Lee Carrothers was six four and extremely fit, having never lost the habits of physical training that had helped maintain the desired lean and mean Army officer image. He was a West Point graduate who had steered himself along the conventional career path from second lieutenant to brigadier in twenty-four fast years. He had a narrow hatchet-shaped face, white-blond, buzz-cut hair, a ruddy complexion, a prominently hooked nose, and bright blue eyes under almost white eyebrows. He’d been fortunate enough to marry a general’s daughter, and thereafter he had alternated between specialty tours in the Chemical Corps and front-office aide and executive assistant jobs. Jealous colleagues who groused about Carrothers’s early promotion said he’d done it all on his hawklike good looks and his wife’s connections, but more than a few of them had discovered, often to their discomfiture, that Lee Carrothers was a great deal smarter than the average bear. His image as a lean and mean ambition machine was just icing on the cake. It was assumed among his contemporaries in the Chemical Corps that he would be the next CG of the Chemical Corps.
The clerk hi the front office handed him a message as he walked through the door. General Waddell was returning early from Europe. He would arrive at Andrews Air Force Base at 2300 tonight.
Incoming! Carrothers shouted mentally as he went into his office. The commanding general of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps had been predictably furious when he found out that precious hours had been wasted out in Utah doing another inventory audit. ‘What part of sight inventory didn’t those idiots understand?’ he had roared over the satellite link. Good fornicating question, Carrothers thought. Waddell had asked about Fort Dietrick’s reaction to the news, but Carrothers, unsure of what operators might be listening to the satellite call, had sidestepped that question. He’s thinking about it, General, just like you told him to.
Waddell caught on immediately and did not press the issue. Carrothers would brief Waddell on the colonel’s advice about clamping the mother of all lids on this little mess when the general was in a better frame of mind. Yeah, like at 2300, after a seven-hour flight back from Germany, Shee-it.
He called Tooele for a status on the sight inventory. Twenty-five percent complete. Estimated tune of completion, twenty-four hours. As the general was aware, these things were not all stored in one pile.
Several underground bunkers had to be opened and safety-tested.
Since the cylinders were no longer in coffins, they had to be individually unstacked, serial numbers verified, end caps safety-checked, etcetera, etcetera. The general, Car rothers had replied, understood results, and he hoped that was abundantly clear to every swinging dick out there who wanted to keep his present rank and commissary privileges.
He called the commanding officer at Anniston. “Is everybody involved sequestered?” he asked. Everybody was, from the base ops officer down to all the clerks involved. “Anything stirring on the troops’ grapevine?”
“Not yet.”
“Keep it that way. If in doubt, clamp harder. And do that audit again.”
“Already doing it.”
Anniston was conducting a sight inventory of their own, looking to see if there was an extra coffin lying around. “Good move,” he said.
He hung up and reflected on the difference between the two commanding officers. Colonel Franklin at Anniston was obviously trying to think ahead of the problem; the CO at Tooele was behind the power curve. He rubbed his eyes. What should you be doing besides waiting for word, oh proactive one? he thought. You should be anticipating Waddell’s questions, that’s what. The general would be sitting on that airplane thinking up a hundred questions that would come rapid-fire as soon as he stepped off the transport. Carrothers called his clerk and asked him to hit the microfilm archives on Wet Eye. It wasn’t what he wanted to do.