The Abomination (6 page)

“Thanks.”

She logged on to the computer, a process which involved swiping her CAC card through a reader next to the keyboard. The chip in the smartcard negotiated with the military-specific ActivClient software, checking her authorisation, security clearance and location before giving her access to a screen that was in every other respect identical to that of a normal PC. Unusually for a military computer, this one had been personalised: a photo of a smiling young woman in military-issue skiing gear and sunglasses adorned the background. Presumably this was her predecessor, whose name – she gathered from the numerous postcards still stuck to the wall – was Second Lieutenant Carol Nathans. It seemed Nathans had shipped out in too much of a hurry to tidy up after herself. Holly moved the photo to the trash. Personally, she felt computer screens looked more orderly when they were blank, or bore a simple military insignia.

She'd already checked in at her temporary quarters at the Ederle Inn Hotel, laying out her possessions neatly in the approved army manner, and dealt with the new-arrival paperwork at Inprocessing. Next week she'd join a mandatory Newcomers Orientation Programme covering everything from European driving lessons to basic Italian vocabulary. No parts were optional, even if you already spoke the language and knew the country well. In the meantime, Mike had said, she was to pick up Nathans' schedule and make herself useful.

Scanning the printout her predecessor had left her, it seemed Mike hadn't been exaggerating when he described what they did as unexciting. The army's idea of a “hearts and minds” offensive included interviewing a colonel's wife for the base newsletter about a reading programme she'd set up in a local primary school; inviting a local charity for disabled children to the Bombing Run, the Camp Ederle bowling alley; and organising a regular Pasta Lover's Luncheon at the dining facility. But that was OK. She'd come here in the full knowledge that this kind of thing, not the adrenalin of combat, would be her lot for now. Just being back in Italy was enough.

She'd grown up around bases like this one, eating nachos from the commissary and attending hot dog barbecues where only the children and wives weren't in uniform. While her father was moving from posting to posting she'd attended a new school every eighteen months; like all army brats, she became expert at making friends quickly, or seeming to, and even better at sniffing out the subtle gradations of rank that meant an officer's children didn't accidentally invite a private's to their home.

Then, when she was nine, her father got the PCS to Camp Darby, south of Pisa, and her parents had taken the unusual decision to live off-base, in an ordinary Italian apartment block. Holly had been put into a local school; when the Italian kids had their English classes, she was pulled out for coaching in Italian. Within a term she was fluent, although her brothers always struggled. But even more than school, it was their new neighbours who helped her assimilate, immediately welcoming the Bolands into their homes – occasions at which she often acted as translator for the rest of the family. She found herself acquiring two names: to her Italian friends, who struggled with the H, she was now “Ollie”.

Grandparents, cousins and best friends were people an army brat saw once a year if she was lucky. Even fathers came and went according to the unpredictable rhythms of war. Her new Italian friends, by contrast, lived not only with their parents but often their grandparents too. Their fathers came home for lunch every day; their cousins and in-laws lived just around the corner, and everyone hung out together on the street between the hours of five and seven o'clock, chatting, flirting or playing football. Boys called their fathers
papà
rather than “sir”; fathers called their sons by diminutives and nicknames. Before she knew it, a part of her had become indelibly Italian, and as she grew older her first boyfriends had names like Luca and Giancarlo rather than the Dwights and Lewises she mixed with at military socials.

Her parents worried, briefly – the behaviour of an adolescent was held to reflect absolutely on a father's ability to command: any trouble she got into would be reported first to the base commanding officer and only then to her father, whilst if she were to have gotten pregnant, or been caught with drugs, the entire family would have been sent back home in disgrace – but they trusted her enough to let her make her own mistakes. And, Holly realised many years later, it hadn't just been her they trusted, but their Italian neighbours too. Not that she had ever really been the getting-in-trouble type. Too much of the military had soaked into her psyche for her to ever truly kick over the traces.

She'd never imagined she'd follow her father into the army, particularly after the difficult, bitter years of his illness. But when she went back stateside to attend college, she found herself in a world she didn't recognise. People her own age dressed differently from her – the gang-influenced fashions of American college kids left her Italian friends nonplussed – thought differently from her, and, for all their apparently laid-back mannerisms, their “dudes” and “mans” and “bros”, were more cynical and materialistic than her. Her roommates could never understand why she tidied her room before breakfast each morning, why ten o'clock in the evening was always, indelibly, 2200 hours, or why she sometimes said “roger that” for “yes” or called the bathroom “the latrine”. Just as the Jesuits were supposed to have claimed that if they were given a child until seven, they would give you the man, so Holly discovered that she was now an outsider in the civilian world as well.

As the time for choosing a career neared, she realised that if she was a mongrel, belonging fully to neither the military nor Italy, she might as well be true to one of those bloodlines. She switched to government and military science, but also pursued her talent for languages. At Officer Training College, a mentor with an eye on the long game persuaded her to take Mandarin rather than the more usual Arabic or Farsi. No warrior, she was always better in the classroom than the field: intercept, analysis and intelligence were her skills. But as a newly qualified second lieutenant, the very lowest rung on the officer's ladder, you didn't expect much from your first posting. She'd only applied for Italy on the off-chance. Later, her mentor told her that someone at the Pentagon's Personnel and Postings division had spotted her name on the list and called him up to ask if she was really Ted Boland's daughter.

Unexpectedly her computer chirruped, disturbing her reverie. Looking for the source of the sound, she saw it was signalling an appointment.

REMINDER: 12.00 – 12.30 B
ARBARA
H
OLTON
. WHERE: LNO-3.

There was nothing corresponding in the schedule Mike Breedon had given her. Evidently she was looking at Nathans' own electronic calendar, still active on the computer.

“Mike, who's Barbara Holton?” she called across to where her boss sat preparing a PowerPoint.

“NFI.”

“Whoever she is, Nathans had a 1200 with her.”

Breedon swore under his breath. “She must have forgotten to tell me. I can't do it, I have to be at this briefing.”

“Want me to take care of it?”

“Would you? It's probably just a protestor with another petition. If we cancel now they'll say we messed them around.”

“Roger that.”

“Grab one of the rooms across the way. I'll join later if I can.”

The meeting room, a small anonymous box as bland as any in the world, smelt of old air-con and stale biscuits. Holly hurriedly organised some bottles of water and a notepad, then arranged two chairs around the table. While she was doing that the guardhouse called to say Barbara Holton was being escorted over.

The woman they showed in a few minutes later was about fifty, with short greying hair. She was dressed smartly but conservatively, her only adornment a large plastic necklace. She looked more like a successful businesswoman or a college professor, Holly thought, than a protestor.

As they sat down, Holly said politely, “You were probably expecting to see a Second Lieutenant Nathans today, ma'am, but unfortunately she's unavailable. I'm Second Lieutenant Boland. How may I help?”

Barbara Holton fixed her with steely grey eyes. “Has Nathans told you what it's about?” Her voice was East Coast American. Maybe a touch of something guttural in there, though. German? Austrian?

Holly shook her head. “No, ma'am.”

“Or that it took me eight weeks of hassling to get this appointment with her?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Well,” Barbara Holton said, clearly annoyed. “Moving on.” She took a yellow folder from her case and pulled out some papers. “I have here a Freedom of Information enquiry. And this is an affidavit from an attorney. It states that I am an American citizen affiliated to an accredited media organisation under the definition of the 2007 Open Government amendment, and therefore entitled to make such an enquiry and have you respond to it in a timely manner.” She slid a card and a letter across the table.

Holly picked them up and read them thoroughly. They showed that Barbara Holton was editor-in-chief of Women Under War, which – from the dot com address – appeared to be some kind of online publication.

Her heart sank. This clearly wasn't going to be as simple as receiving a petition. It was highly unlikely she'd be able to deal with it herself. But equally, she didn't want to have to go and drag Mike out of his briefing unless she absolutely had to.

“Very well,” she said, stalling for time. “And the nature of the enquiry?”

Barbara Holton took another document out of her folder. “My questions relate to the period 1993 to 1995—”

“Ma'am, I very much doubt that anyone here—”

“I'm talking about the archives, obviously,” Barbara Holton continued as if Holly hadn't spoken. “Which are administrative documents under Chapter 5 of Law Number 241.”

“If there is documentation, it may well be classified.”

“Second Lieutenant, you have almost two miles of document archives in the tunnels here and at Aviano. Along with the forty-eight nuclear warheads, of course. I very much doubt that even a tenth of them are classified.”

Holly sighed. “May I see the questions?”

Barbara Holton slid the papers across the table, the pages fluttering with static on the polished wood. Peeling them off, Holly read:

As an accredited American media representative I formally request:

       
1. Any information held at Camp Ederle relating to visits by General Dragan Korovik, commander of the Croatian Militia, to Camp Ederle to receive training, advice or intelligence in 1993–5.

       
2. Any information or minutes relating to meetings at Camp Ederle between General Dragan Korovik and US intelligence officers in 1993–5.

       
3. Any photographs, including but not limited to aerial reconnaissance, provided to General Dragan Korovik in advance of Operation Storm in 1995.

       
4. Any notes or discussions relating to atrocities against civilians in the former Yugoslavia.

       
5. Any notes, documents or other records discussing the use of systematic rape of females as a weapon of war.

       
6. Any minutes from February to May 1995 relating to the subsequent decision by the Italian government to authorise an expansion of the US Military base at Camp Ederle.

Holly read the document twice. Few of the references meant anything to her. Operation Storm – she vaguely recalled the name from her father's time. From what she recollected, after the fall of communism the country then known as Yugoslavia had descended into a brutal civil war that only ended when NATO organised airstrikes against Kosovo and sent in huge armies of peacekeepers. Storm had been a counter-offensive by the Croats against the Serbs, just another episode in the long and brutal struggle between rival ethnic groups jostling for power and territory. Barbara Holton seemed to believe the US Military had been involved in some way. But how that could possibly relate to the decision to expand Camp Ederle, she had no idea.

Moreover, she knew better than to ask. Over the years she had from time to time come across conspiracy theorists – often reasonable and intelligent people, college graduates or friends of friends – who as soon as they heard she was in line for a minor division of Military Intelligence would tell her with absolute conviction that 9/11 was a CIA plot, that the Apollo moon landings were faked, that President Obama worked for Al Qaeda or that the Chinese were behind the collapse of Lehman Brothers. There was no point in trying to have rational conversations with these people. Because there was no definitive proof their theories weren't true, such evidence as there was would always be dismissed as inconclusive. The fact that there wasn't a shred of proof they
were
true, on the other hand, was simply taken as evidence that those trying to keep the real truth from the public had done their job well.

She said, “Ma'am, I'm going to have to consult as to whether we even have this information.”

“You'll see from my correspondence with Nathans why I have good reason to believe it's here.”

“That may be so, ma'am, but Second Lieutenant Nathans is no longer based at this location, and I haven't been able to review that correspondence.”

Barbara Holton eyes narrowed. “How long have you been doing this job, Second Lieutenant Boland?”

“It's my first day, ma'am,” Holly admitted.

The other woman stared at her. Then she laughed. “Oh, that's terrific. That is just
outstanding
. Your first day. You've got to hand it to the military, haven't you? When they want to stall you, they really stall you.”

“Ma'am,” Holly said wearily, “I can assure you there is no significance whatsoever attached to the fact that I am new to this post. The army redeploys personnel all the time. I promise you that I will expedite this request just as thoroughly, and just as speedily, as Lieutenant Nathans would have done.”