“Okay, great. Thanks for your input, Mr. Carson.”
Carson thought fast. “If you have any further questions, Major, feel free to call. Oh, and may I have your number, please?”
“Sure,” Mason replied, and gave him a phone number.
Carson recognized the Virginia area code. He hung up and studied the number, which looked to him like a Pentagon exchange. HQDA, Mason had said. Headquarters, Department of the Army. Asking about the demil process and containers for chemical weapons. A tendril of apprehension coiled in 1us belly. If the Army had discovered that a cylinder of CW was missing, how would they go about tracking it down?
Carson knew his Army. They’d be extremely surreptitious about it. The Security Working Group. That could mean anything, or nothing. Then another thought whacked him between the eyes: Was this perhaps the real reason Stafford had shown up on his doorstep, apropos of absolutely nothing? Without warning from JDLA, other than that single “look out, here he comes” phone call? With some fanciful cover story about his being shit-canned out of headquarters? Jesus H. Christl Did they suspect him already?
He pushed aside his stack of paperwork and sat there in his office, mulling over the possibilities for almost an hour before finally picking up the phone and calling back the number Mason had given him. No one answered. He studied the number, then called it again, subtracting one from the final number to see if it had been an extension. The phone rang, but still no one answered. It was five thirty, so most of the Pentagon inmates would have escaped for the day. Then he had an idea. He got out his Department of Defense phone book and looked up the number of the Pentagon information operator. He gave her the number and told her it didn’t appear to be a working number. She tried it, and came up with a ring but no answer. He asked if he might have transposed a digit. She did some checking and then came back on the line.
“That number is a working number. It’s an extension in the office of the commanding general of the Army Chemical Corps,” she said. “Do you want to try the base number in the general’s office?” “No,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure I had the number right. I’ll try them again in the morning.”
He hung up the phone gingerly, as if not wanting to provoke a return call. Son of a bitch, he thought. The Army Chemical Corps. Mason had been lying.
So they knew the cylinder was missing.
And they knew where to start looking. They we’re tracking the shipment of environmental containers.
He got up and paced around his office. The bad news was that they had found out the thing had gone missing. The good news was that the only other person who had known that the cylinder was here had been “processed” out of the picture. Which left two loose ends: whatever investigation was going on about Bud’s house fire, and, possibly, but only possibly, Investigator Stafford, who was out of town for the day.
He went down the darkened hall to Stafford’s temporary office, which was unlocked. He switched on a light. All the DRMO reference binders were still piled on the desk. The blotter was covered with doodles and scribblings, a couple of phone numbers Carson didn’t recognize, and the names Lambry and Graniteville.
Graniteville? Why did that name ring a bell? He studied the blotter.
Then he remembered. The weird girl in the airport. Had Stafford gone to Graniteville? Was that why he had wanted a state map? He sat down in Stafford’s chair, thinking hard. If the Army knows, the Army is going to come here, sure as shit. I’ve got to warn Tangent. The deal has to go on hold for the moment. The thought of maybe losing his shot at a million dollars almost made him physically sick. But, he thought, this still might work out. If I can convince the Army that all the containers went straight through to demil, then they might take the easy way out — claim that the cylinder was destroyed, declare victory, and go home. That would leave the cylinder even easier to sell. Then the only loose end would be Stafford and whatever the hell he was doing up in Graniteville, and with whom. He went back to his office to retrieve the current 800 number for Tangent.
17
Mrs. Hadley had proved to be more than a competent cook, and Stafford was comfortably replete as he sat down in one of the rocking chairs out on Owen’s private porch. There was a three-quarter moon rising over Howell Mountain, and he thought he could still see the spring colors in the willows and fields around the house. Gwen brought out a tray of coffee and sat down in the other rocker. She had changed clothes for dinner, wearing now a much more flattering dress. The kids had been fed.early and sent upstairs. She had been more animated during their own quiet dinner in the kitchen, telling him more about Willow Grove, how the state programs for orphaned children worked, and of the constant battle for funding. He told her about his own work with kids in the Boys Club program up in Washington, and how funding had become pretty difficult for that operation, too.
After dinner, she told him about the children and their origins. Crash, a four-year-old fast neutron who never quite seemed to make it arourtd corners and fixed objects without a collision, had been orphaned by a trailer fire. Hollywood was the oldest boy; his nickname arose from his fascination with video movies. His father had killed his mother in a drunken argument, packed his three children into the pickup truck, and then had driven jt into a mountain river at fifty miles an hour.
Hollywood, the only swimmer, got out and made it to the shore, where he was found curled up on a tree stump two days later by a deputy sheriff.
No-No came from less violent circumstances: He had been found hiding in a Dumpster up along the Tennessee border as a two-year-old — parents or relatives entirely unknown. For the first six months at Willow Grove, the only word he spoke was no-no.
Of the little girls, Too had been handed to the Department of Family and Children Services by her mother when her heroin addiction had closed in and she sensed she was dying. The child had been on the brink of death by starvation by the time the state intervened. Her nickname also arose from sorhething she said, which was most often heard at mealtimes, where she would hold out her hand and say, “Too,” meaning, they finally realized, “Me, too,” whenever food was handed out. It had taken her a year to understand that she wasn’t going to be starved anymore. Last, and saddest, was Annie. Annie was a crack baby, a bright, energetic, loud child who could learn anything — for two minutes. Then it was as if she had never even seen the person who had just taught her to tie her shoelaces. Annie was bound for special placement as soon as she was five, or as soon as there was an opening, whichever came first. Courtesy of her mother’s crack habit, Annie would never be able to learn and retain anything, although she would probably live as a ward of the state well into old age.
Stafford had wondered aloud if the children would make it into normal, mainstream life in America. “That’s our job here,” she replied. “I should say, That’s our objective. We have to bring them up from some deep negative number, get past zero, and into a positive mental and physical environment where they finally believe that what happened to them wasn’t their fault. Then we can proceed. Success after that is based — a lot on their native talent.”
“And the care they get here.”
“That, too. But the truth is, if their parents were dullards, and their parents were dullards, genius is not likely to manifest itself. There is no escaping one’s mental heredity.”