Murder at the Pentagon (36 page)

After receiving Helen’s call confirming the six o’clock meeting, Margit hunkered down and tried to get back into the Project Safekeep files. It was difficult, not only because her thoughts were elsewhere, but because she now knew of the investigation. Would it involve her? Not likely. She hadn’t been on the project long enough to know anything, at least officially.

Each time the phone rang, she thought it might be Jeff. Her thoughts were ambivalent. On the one hand, she wanted him to call and apologize—and mean it. On the other hand, the more pragmatic, and certainly wiser, side of her said that it was over, and that she was better for it.

A number of calls that morning were from media following up on the accident story,
AF CHOPPER CRASH
-
LANDS ON MALL
.
PILOT ALL WET
. She referred them to the I.O. By eleven her earlier thoughts were under control, and she was able to concentrate on the material at hand.

Until the next call. From Bill Monroney.

“I left a message at your BOQ yesterday,” he said.

“I know. Sorry, but I wasn’t in the mood to return calls.”

“I’m glad you’re alive,” he said. “You sure picked an interesting place to set down.”

She couldn’t help but smile. Once the trauma of the near-fatal accident had passed, she was able to appreciate the less serious aspects of the event. Humorous, in retrospect. Certainly not on anybody’s Sunday schedule.

“I meant what I said Saturday night,” he said. “I have to talk to you.”

“About what? Those big toes I supposedly stepped on?”

“And more. I’m not your enemy—I wish you wouldn’t
treat me like one.” An operator asked for additional coins. Why was he calling from a pay phone?

“Have lunch with me. We’ll get away from here, take a drive in the country. If you don’t want to do it because of personal feelings, do it for professional ones. I’m not kidding when I say that, Margit. We need to talk.”

“All right,” she said.

“Take the Metro to Pentagon City. I’ll pick you up in front of the new Ritz.”

She was tempted to ask why the clandestine meeting but didn’t. It added urgency to the invitation.

They’d agreed to meet at twelve-fifteen; Pentagon City was only one stop away from the Pentagon. She left her office at noon, came up into the bustling mall that was Pentagon City, entered the elegant hotel through a rear entrance, crossed the lobby, and stepped outside through the front doors. Monroney, dressed in civilian clothing, was waiting in a blue Chrysler convertible. The top was down.

Margit slid into the passenger seat. Monroney smiled and said, “Ready for a ride?”

“Not too far,” she said. “I have work to do.”

“I thought we’d go to Occoquan. Thirty, forty minutes.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to visit there. Supposed to be pretty.”

“Pretty, quaint, touristy, and enough distance from here to make me comfortable.”

He took Route 395, the infamous Shirley Highway known for its massive traffic jams during rush hours, and headed south toward Richmond. Midday traffic was light; ten minutes later they were out of Alexandria and turning onto 95. Another ten minutes and they’d crossed the Occoquan River into Prince William County, and were in the popular commuter town of Woodbridge, with its commercial strips of gas stations, fast-food outlets, auto dealerships, and minimalls. He took local roads in a northerly direction, doubling back toward the river. Fifteen minutes later they came down a hill into Occoquan, developed as a mill town in the eighteenth century. An annual crafts show was in progress; the narrow
main street that paralleled the river was clogged with cars and pedestrians. They got lucky. A car pulled away from a legal parking space, and Monroney moved into it. He put up the top, and they walked a block to a restaurant on the river called the Sea and Sea. Monroney had taken the day off; Margit envied his civvies.

Their luck continued to run. A window table overlooking the river had opened up.

“It’s good to see you again,” he said after diet soft drinks had been served.

“We saw each other just the other night,” Margit said.

“But I wasn’t alone with you. I hate crowd scenes.”

“Did you have a good time without Celia?” Margit asked.

“No, but it had nothing to do with Celia. You? Did you have a good time with your beau?”

Margit smiled. What a nice, old-fashioned term. “Yes, I did.”

Monroney said, “You’re a great dancer. I didn’t know that about you when we were in Panama.”

“There wasn’t much opportunity to dance there,” she said. “Unless dodging bullets qualifies.”

He said, “I love you.”

She sat back and looked around the restaurant, not in search of anything but to avoid visual contact with him. Finally, she squared herself in her chair. “Is this the reason you wanted to have lunch today?” she asked. “If so, you’ve done it under dishonest circumstances. Your comment to me Saturday night about stepping on toes, and the tone you took today on the phone, said something different than what’s happening here.”

“I suppose it looks that way, but you’re wrong. Actually, what I’m about to say will seem even less genuine. The fact that it happens to coincide with my feelings for you can’t be helped. Ready?”

She looked at him.

“They’ve got you targeted, Margit. You’re in their sights.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“The brass.”

She began to respond, but a waitress asked for their order. They opened menus and made quick choices—a seafood salad for her, club sandwich for him.

“You were saying,” she said.

“I was saying that Margit Falk is walking in harm’s way.”

“Because I’m being followed?”

“Followed? Are you?”

“You know nothing about that?”

“No. Why should I?”

“Because you seem to know a lot about what’s happening to me—or
could
happen to me.”

“I know nothing about you being followed. I do know, though, that there are heavy hitters who aren’t happy with Margit Falk.”

“Including you?”

“I’m no heavy hitter, and you know it. Hey, I started off by telling you I wasn’t your enemy. I’m not. I want to help you.”

“Who sent you to deliver a message?”

His laughter was of exasperation. “Look, I don’t fault you for being suspicious, but don’t extend it to me. Nobody has sent me to tell you anything. If they’d tried, I would have told them to go to hell. I’m like anybody else at the Pentagon. Unless you’re deaf and blind, you can’t help but pick up on rumors that fly around the building. Besides being the seat of national defense, it’s the most efficient gossip mill in history.”

Monroney came back to his reason for asking her to lunch. “Nothing spooks the military mind more than seeing its own hang out with the wrong people.” He paused for her reaction. She didn’t have one, because she didn’t know what he was talking about. “I don’t know anything about your boyfriend, Foxboro,” he said, “except that he’s a key member of the Wishengrad staff. I said to you Saturday night that it was like breaking bread with the enemy. I wasn’t kidding.”

Could it be this simple? This mundane? That her superiors at the Pentagon were upset because she dated a staff member
of a liberal senator who’d devoted most of his elected life to chipping away at the military budget? She expressed this.

Monroney sipped his black coffee, then said, “As I told you, what I had to say to you works in my favor. I would love to see you break it off with Foxboro because, frankly, I’d like to try to make something out of you and me. But that isn’t my motive. Believe me when I say that.”

“I’m trying.”

“Keep trying. I don’t know how much you know about Project Safekeep. You’ve certainly heard that Wishengrad is launching a full-scale investigation into it. That has a lot of meaning to me. T and E is in a tough position. We’ve had people in our department who’ve been verifying test results all along. The question has to be asked whether they were paid off.”

“Like Joycelen,” she said.

His expression said that he didn’t know.

“The Wishengrad committee paid Joycelen for providing information about Safekeep.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Monroney. “No altruism involved?”

“None whatsoever.”

Monroney laughed. “Looks like the rumors are hotter and heavier in your end of the building than in mine. What other nuggets can you give me?”

“I think I’ve already given you too much. Your turn.”

“Simple. Back off.”

“Back off from what?”

“From this crusade you’re on about the Joycelen murder, and Cobol. It’s over and done with. Joycelen and Cobol are buried.”

She wondered whether he was mouthing the words and thoughts of someone else. She asked; he assured her it wasn’t the case.

“I’m concerned about this lovely creature sitting across from me,” he said. “You and I, and everyone else like us in the Pentagon, are not supposed to know more than we need to know to perform our jobs. People who try to know more
than that make other people nervous. Trust me, Margit. I’m giving it to you straight. I’m putting my own neck on the line by sitting here with you and telling you these things.”

He was right. Still, she didn’t trust him. Was that what happened to people after going through what she had for the past few weeks? Trust no person? View everyone with whom you come in contact as having a hidden agenda? If so—if she’d reached that stage in her own life—she didn’t like it. She was raised to give people the benefit of the doubt, and to believe in them until they proved themselves to be unworthy of trust. This was the antithesis of that. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—live and work that way. She had to believe in those with whom she shared common goals, professional or personal.

She wanted to believe Monroney. She needed a friend. He was someone with whom she’d shared intimate moments years ago, and who now seemed eager to reenter her life. But he was a colonel. He worked in the Pentagon. That combination, as unlikely as it would have been for her a scant few months ago, now represented something ominous.

“Let me ask you a simple question, Bill. Are you saying that the scrutiny I’ve come under from my superiors has solely to do with the fact that Jeff and I went together?”

He raised his eyebrows. “You put it in the past tense.”

“No comment. But if it is, it’s not because someone in authority told me it had to be.”

He thought about what she’d said. “It isn’t just Foxboro,” he said. “It’s the Cobol thing.”

“What about the ‘Cobol thing’? I’ve been taken off the ‘Cobol thing.’ ”

“Let’s take a walk.”

They left the restaurant and strolled the riverbank. When they’d reached a secluded spot, Monroney said, “Believe me when I say I don’t know specifically what importance Cobol had regarding Safekeep. I do know that he must have had some significance. He’s dead, and they prefer it that way. You’re trying to keep him alive. That goes against policy.”

“Policy? What policy?”

“Whatever policy the elephants have concocted. The problem is, you never know where this kind of policy directive originates. There are no memos. There are Pentagons within Pentagons. The Company seems to be pulling more strings these days. They’ve got moles in every office in the Pentagon, including mine.”

“Oh?”

“Tony Mucci. I just found out he’s CIA. Not on the books, but everything that happens in T and E gets fed back to the Company, compliments of Major Mucci.”

“How do you know?”

“Doesn’t matter. The point is, Margit, make damn sure you know the person you’re talking to.
Really
know him.” He frowned. “Maybe you can help me understand something. Why are you pursuing the Cobol case?”

“Because an innocent man died accused of murdering another person. He didn’t. I think it’s only fair and decent and human that somebody rectify that. People shouldn’t go to their graves like that.”

He said quietly, “Your father?”

“Yes.” She’d told him about her father when they were in Panama.

“It’s that important to you?”

“What happened to my father? Of course it is, but nothing can ever be done about that. But here’s a young and dedicated officer who’s gone to his grave as an accused murderer. Leaving a legacy that he murdered a top U.S. scientist is something his family shouldn’t have to bear for the rest of their lives.”

“Is it important enough to put your career—maybe your life—on the line?”

No one had asked it so directly, but she’d thought about it. She had no trouble saying, “Yes.”

They walked farther, stopping under a tree whose long, graceful branches beckoned at the river. “You won’t back off,” Monroney said.

“Absolutely not.”

“I respect you,” he said.

“Thank you.”

He looked across the river. It flowed slowly and was brown—not especially pretty but pleasantly tranquil. “How can I help you?” he asked.

“Bill, I’m not asking anyone in the service to help me, at least not someone with something to lose.”

He faced her. “I told you I’m not looking for stars on my shoulders any longer. Am I looking to make waves? Hell, no. I have two years to the pension, and have big plans for that money. Classic case. Retire at colonel’s pay, and young enough to start a second career. Appealing, and I won’t do anything crazy to screw it up. At the same time, what I said at the table stands. I love you, and have since Panama. You hated me—no, that isn’t in your nature. You had no respect for me when you found out that I was married and had kids. I can’t blame you, but I didn’t use you. I was sincere. If you hadn’t ducked out so fast, things might have turned out different. I think—I know—I would have divorced Celia and married you. Things weren’t good even back then. I want to be your friend—and more than that. Whether that develops is your choice. All I ask is that you give it a chance. In terms of the trouble you’re facing, I’m here to lean on, to talk to, maybe even to come up with some advice, some perspectives that you haven’t considered. Will you remember that?”

She was touched by his words. The pervasive feelings of distrust she’d felt earlier had faded. Not completely, but enough. “Yes,” she said, “I will.”