your butt is on a cargo plane out of here. And just to make sure you don’t come snooping back around on your own time, your next assignment will be overseas, starting tomorrow. Got a couple of unsolved murders on two different bases, one in Germany and one in South Korea. Army hasn’t decided yet which one you’ll be assigned to. My vote would be Korea, and my vote will carry great weight.”
Puller took all this in but didn’t immediately respond. They had him boxed in and both he and they knew it. “Why me?” he said finally. “You’ve got lots of resources at your fingertips. CID. Military Intelligence. You don’t need me.”
Rinehart responded, “On the surface a fair and accurate statement, Puller. But you have something none of those resources have.”
Puller thought he knew the answer but waited patiently for the man to deliver it.
Rinehart said, “You’re his brother. You grew up together. You both served together, albeit in different branches. We know of his assisting you on that investigation in West Virginia. We know you visited him frequently at DB. We know you two talk on the phone. You know him better than anyone else. So we think that you have the best shot to bring him in.”
“Alive,” said Puller.
“Absolutely.”
“If I say yes to your offer, when can I start my investigation?”
“Immediately.”
“No strings attached? No conditions?”
“Other than the one stated, that you report to us.”
“And what about the other people investigating this? You can’t stop them from doing their jobs. There’s no way they’ll leave this case to one CID agent.”
“You’ll just have to work around them. We’ll leave it up to you.”
“And no help from you on that point?”
“We’ll see what we can do. But that ball will largely fall in your court, Puller.”
“And my CO?”
Schindler said, “You’ll get a written directive from him confirming this, of course, with all necessary authorizations. We don’t expect you to take it on faith.”
“Okay, I accept. And I’ll begin my investigation by interviewing all of you.”
The three men exchanged glances and then together looked back at Puller.
Schindler said, “We have nothing to do with this case other than the national security interest in bringing Robert Puller back to prison.”
“You said no strings and no conditions other than the one stated. Are you walking that back now?”
“No, but—”
“Because I am a trained investigator and my training and experience have shown that someone may think they have no valuable information to share, but they actually do. But unless I ask the questions and get the answers, that information never comes to light.”
Schindler slowly nodded. “Okay, what do you want to know?”
“You said this was a national security case. Why?”
“You know what your brother was involved in with the Air Force?”
“STRATCOM.”
“That’s right. The United States Strategic Command. It used to be limited to nuclear defense. Now its mission covers space operations, missile defense, cyber and information warfare, WMDs, global command and control, surveillance, reconnaissance, global strike, the list goes on and on. I can’t think of another military command more important to this country. Your brother worked both at the Missile Correlation Center in Cheyenne Mountain and also at STRATCOM’s HQ at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.”
“I knew all that, sir. I’d actually visited my brother when he worked at STRATCOM at Offutt. But then he was assigned to a satellite office here in Leavenworth, right?” said Puller.
Daughtrey nodded. “STRATCOM outgrew its footprint at Offutt. The new facility won’t be completely ready for a few more years. Leavenworth was one of many farm-out locations. But everything was wired back to HQ.”
“I understand,” said Puller.
Daughtrey added, “There was virtually no aspect of Strategic Command that he didn’t have his fingers in. He was one of the most brilliant people they’ve ever had. The sky was the limit for him. Literally. He was being groomed to head up the whole damn thing at some point. He was just getting his next promotion lined up when everything blew up.”
Puller asked, “I know you’re with STRATCOM. Did you work with him?”
Daughtrey shook his head. “I was assigned to STRATCOM after your brother was sent to DB. The assessment I just gave was one based on all who knew and worked with him. To a person, soldier and contractor, he was one of the best.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Puller. “He was at the top of every class. From high school to the Air Force Academy and beyond.”
Schindler said, “Except for the little matter of treason. Let’s not forget that.”
“I haven’t forgotten it,” said Puller, turning his gaze to the suit. “And I’m pretty sure my brother hasn’t. But what does his old job have to do with anything?”
Rinehart said, “Since he’s only been gone for less than three years, Puller, much of the top secret data that rests in his head is still viable and important. The security codes and such have changed, of course. But the underlying technology, strategies, and tactics are the same. You know the military way. We finally get everyone to agree on something and Congress has to allocate the money. Everyone jockeys for their piece, the uniforms for their slice of the command and subsequent promotions, and the contractors for their share of the dollars. Once that is all set, the years-long process of implementation and execution begins. We are many things, but nimble is not one of them. It’s like changing course on a Nimitz-class carrier using a handheld rudder: It takes time. So, many of the projects your brother was connected with are still being implemented or are in operation right now. He has intimate and detailed knowledge of some of this country’s most important security programs that in turn deal with some of the most critical challenges we have.”
Puller considered all of this and said, “So he would be very valuable to enemies of this country.”
“Without question,” said Rinehart.
Puller looked at each man and said, “So maybe he didn’t break out.”
Schindler looked confused, an expression he shared with his two colleagues. “I don’t quite get what you’re saying, Puller. He did break out. He’s gone.”
“I’m not saying he’s not gone from DB.”
“Then what are you saying?” asked Schindler as he tapped his index finger impatiently against the table.
“That the whole thing at DB was staged, and instead of him breaking out, he might have been kidnapped by enemies of this country.”
CHAPTER
10
QUARTERS.
Even now Robert Puller couldn’t refer to it as a room, or an apartment, or a flat. It was quarters. Military vernacular was drilled into the minds of those in uniform like fingers marking letters in wet concrete that dried to permanency.
His “quarters” was a motel room on the outskirts of Kansas City, Kansas. He had left Leavenworth behind for no other reason than—
I could.
It was a right-angle drive, hands twelve and three on the clock, meaning straight south and then straight east on I-70, the two perfectly equal legs of a right triangle, only awaiting the hypotenuse to complete it, which he might, taking an alternate but no less straight and direct route back to Leavenworth, if necessary. He had always framed things that way, with a reference to math or science or an adjunct of either one, placing them into a perspective that amused some, bewildered others, but was off-putting to most, he had found.
And which bothered him not at all.
There was a bed, a chair, a table, a bureau, and a TV on the bureau with lots of mostly useless channels. The bathroom was barely an afterthought, essentially a niche in the wall with a shower stall so claustrophobic it felt more like a straitjacket than a proper bathing area.
Again, after a prison cell, it bothered hi
m not at all.
His duffel was on the floor and his laptop on the desk. He had purchased a disposable phone along the way, along with a mobile hotspot, set it all up, programmed in some interesting features, and was grinding his way through the military database he’d hacked into back at Starbucks.
It was a special database to which only authorized personnel should have been granted access. Computer security was only as good as the programmer. The one who had firewalled this database had been good—but not great.
Puller had also purchased a small wireless printer and some three-hole paper and three-ring and spiral notebooks along with pens. While his entire professional life had been mostly spent in the digital world, where the language of ones and zeroes dominated, he appreciated the importance of paper, pen, and deliberative thought that working with such old-school items seemed to inspire. And he thought better in cursive. The joined-up writing seemed to spur connective thinking.
He printed his papers, put them in the three-ring, exited the database, and took up his pen and spiral notebooks. He worked methodically for some hours. He didn’t stop to drink or eat or use the bathroom. He was oblivious to whatever else was going on in the world, or at least in Kansas. He was no longer, at least in his mind, the most wanted man in America. He was an analyst, a seer, a prognosticator going over his reams of data, moving their pieces, twisting them, testing them, discounting some, fleshing out others, slowly transforming disjointed intelligence into something that made sense.
After six hours of relentless concentration and the light of day having given over to dark, forcing him to take a moment to turn on a lamp, he put down his pen and sat back, folding his arms over his chest and resting his chin there as well. He closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and counted his heartbeats until they fell short of sixty a minute. He opened his eyes and ran his gaze down one of his tat sleeves, exposed now since he had discarded his jacket.
They were of his creation. They looked like typical tattoos, but if one looked closely enough the eagles and dragons and other creatures resting there were actually composed of tiny geometric images: squares, triangles, rectangles, and their more complex brethren, the dodecahedron for example, which when viewed flat—meaning as a solid—had twelve faces and was an integral part of his dragon’s scales.
Puller knew that other than him no one would notice. But that had been how much of his life had gone—his noticing, others not.
Except for his brother. And his father. They were curious. They observed. They remembered. They figured things out. His father had mastered leading enormous numbers of men, grand corps and divisions at a time, into battle on a scale and dimension that was as complex as anything ever seen on a chessboard, with the added pressure of human lives by the thousands being at stake. His brother tracked down wrongdoers with a sense of justice and an attention to detail that would put most others in the field to shame.
The Puller men, prodigies in their respective fields, but whose skills all shared that core attribute of—
Observing.
He turned to page sixty-six of the printed-out papers, because something had just occurred to him. He studied what was written there and compared it to information contained on page twenty-four. Interestingly enough, they did not tally. They did not tally at all. But they had to if the offered and official result was to make any sense.
This was not a smoking gun. But it was something. And something, as his brother often said, usually led to something else.
Brilliant in its elegant simplicity, and he knew exactly what his brother meant. He carried it out to its logical conclusion.
In fact, something always leads to something else.
He drew out a blank piece of paper and conjured the image of the man in his head. It was not easy, because it had been dark. But there had been a light source. The man’s own flashlight.
Puller put his pen to the paper and refocused, transferring the image in his head to the cotton fibers, letting the ink bleed into them, fill out what he was trying to achieve. This was not simply important; it was paramount. Because it was something.
And something always leads to something else.
He was an accomplished artist, a fact not many knew about him. He had taken it up years ago to relax from a job whose stakes and pressures were so enormous.
Hence the sketches, lines connecting and intersecting and bisecting other lines to form something that had not previously existed. It was math yet again, geometry transformed into art, a confluence that had made painters like Picasso icons forever enshrined in history. It was cubism building to masterpieces born of another realm of thought and experience.
He had fits and starts and crumpled-up paper, and endured starting over multiple times. Finally the image gained traction, the root system set in, and the features began to grow, like a plant rising, seeking the light. Plants could not survive without sunlight; indeed, photosynthesis was the key to their survival.
Well, Puller would not be living much longer without this image coming to full fruition.
He worked away for another half hour and then reached the point where the heavy lifting was finished. Now he was simply filling in the edges.
He sat back, put down his pen, and held the paper up to eye level.
Staring back at him was a man. A man Puller had not seen until very recently. A man he still did not know.
That man now lay, he was fairly certain, in a morgue at Fort Leavenworth, as investigators attempted to figure out who he was. And what he was doing at the DB the night Robert Puller escaped. And why he was now dead. These were good, pertinent queries.
Puller was fairly certain that he knew what the man was doing there. He clearly knew exactly how the man had died.
Yet he didn’t know anything beyond that. And he had to know. He had to know all of it. This puzzle could not remain unfinished. Not if he wanted to survive.
And because something always leads to something else.
CHAPTER
11
JOHN PULLER HAD his marching orders. He had asked Daughtrey, Schindler, and Rinehart a few more questions and gotten a few more answers that might or might not lead to something. But at least he had the authority to operate out in the open. An email had come through from his CO empowering him to work on this investigation with the accompanying and necessary electronic trail of higher signatories. The suit and the stars definitely had the juice they claimed to have. He felt like he had just been rebadged.
He didn’t like slinking around trying not to be noticed. He wanted people to know he was on the case. He wanted to intimidate. Intimidated people with a guilty conscience often made mistakes. The only difference here was that the target of his investigation was his brother. Robert Puller was brilliant. Was he going to make mistakes? Didn’t he know John Puller Jr. better than anyone?
He knows how I think. How I tick.
But then I know the same about him.
However, these thoughts didn’t make him feel good. They made him feel sick.
He cleared security at the DB and walked up a flight of steps to the visitors’ room. He asked to see the officer in charge, displaying his credentials and relaying his purpose for being here.
The woman met Puller in her office. She was Captain Lenora H. Macri, in her thirties, short, trim, with salt-and-pepper hair worn in a bun. She looked wound as tight as a coil of wire and her expression did not appear cooperative in the least. This was not particularly good for him, because she was now the DB’s acting commander.
“What can I do for you, Chief Puller?” she began curtly.
“I’m investigating the escape of Robert Puller.”
“Right. Your brother.” She left the statement there, with all its inherent complications and insinuations. Then she added, “I find it extraordinary that you’re involved in this case in any way at all. I have duly noted my misgivings with the appropriate channels.”
“Which you have every right to do.”
“And w
hich I don’t need you to tell me,” she retorted. “Blood is thicker than water, and what we need is objectivity. I fail to see how you can bring an unbiased perspective to this investigation.”
Puller shifted in his seat. “I’m a CID agent. My mission is clear, Captain Macri. Bring him back, brother or not. I’ve been authorized to do this. If you have a problem cooperating with me, I need to hear it now.”
She held his gaze. “I have no problems, Mr. Puller. I think any potential problems will rest largely with you. Now, how can I help?”
She had done that rather neatly, thought Puller. Not only covered her ass with the “appropriate channels” but also put the onus on him to disprove her opinion of his being involved at all while at the same time appearing cooperative. Only a captain now, but she must be bucking hard for her next promotion.
Aren’t they all?
Puller went over the facts as he understood them and asked for her confirmation of them.