Unwilling to jump to conclusions, Sara dug deeper into the paperwork. The forms used to ship and receive all personal effects required two signatures on both ends of the process: one to certify the contents, and one to attest to the form’s completeness. On at least eight of the shipments that Carrier had authorized for release to next of kin, the handwriting of the signatures looked decidedly similar.
Sara sent the forms to an army forensic center for handwriting analysis and did a background check on Carrier. A graduate of a southern military institute, he had stayed in the service after Vietnam, rising to the rank of full colonel before retiring. Divorced with two grown daughters, he owned a house free and clear in the Virginia suburbs, had a high-six-figure mutual fund account with a large brokerage firm, drove a midsize SUV, and apparently lived within his means.
For the past five years Carrier had worked as a senior military analyst for a conservative think tank with close ties to the White House. According to a Pentagon insider Sara trusted, he was a close friend of an assistant deputy secretary of defense and had access to a senior national security advisor to the president. The policy papers he’d written for the think tank clearly supported the current administration’s prosecution of the war on terrorism.
It took six months for forensics to get back to her with a report that Carrier had forged signatures on the documents she’d submitted for analysis. Even with that evidence in hand Sara had let the investigation slide. Without corroboration of Carrier’s involvement in the smuggling ring, it would be impossible to prove, and Spalding was nowhere to be found. But all that had changed in the last two weeks.
Before he could be detained, Spalding had left Canada with cash, valuables, and negotiable assets in the high seven figures. After a failed attempt to find him, army CID investigators and the Canadian authorities developed a watch list of a select number of Spalding’s known associates and close friends in the hope that one or another of them might eventually lead them to him. Those on the list had their bank, credit cards, brokerage accounts, and their foreign travel monitored, and their incoming telephone calls and e-mail traced.
Nothing had materialized until two weeks ago, when one of the targeted subjects, a French-Canadian woman named Josephine Paquette, had bought an expensive seaside house on the coast south of Dublin with cash she’d deposited in an Irish bank.
A senior editor of a fashion magazine in Toronto, Paquette had been Spalding’s lover for a time before marrying the scion of a Canadian brewery. When the marriage failed, an ironclad prenuptial agreement kept Paquette from tapping into her ex-husband’s wealth. Although her income as a fashion editor put her in a high tax bracket, she had nowhere near the resources to pay for an expensive Irish property.
Before traveling to Ireland, Paquette had spent three days in France. Asked to backtrack on Paquette, Interpol reported that she’d received one telephone call at her Paris hotel from a number listed under the name of a Georges Bruneau. A records search revealed Bruneau to be a French citizen with a birth date exactly one year, one month, and one day different from that of George Spalding. Further investigation showed Bruneau’s identity papers to be forged.
Spalding had made the classic blunder of adopting an alias but keeping his given name and using a slightly different, but easily remembered, birth date. He had lived safely for years in Canada under his true given name and his wife’s surname, but that was only because no one had been looking for him.
A quick visit by Interpol agents to Bruneau’s residence, a furnished apartment in a working-class Paris neighborhood, showed that he’d moved out the day after Paquette left for Dublin.
A check of train and airline reservations confirmed Bruneau had traveled from Paris to London by rail and then flown from Gatwick Airport to Dublin, arriving the day before Josephine Paquette had closed on the seaside house. Acting on an Interpol priority fugitive alert for Spalding, the Irish national police service, Garda Siochana-the guardians of the peace-started looking for Bruneau, and at the request of Canadian officials, they placed Paquette under surveillance.
Sara had been brought up to speed by a telephone call from Hugh Fitzmaurice, the Garda detective supervising the case. From Fitzmaurice she learned Paquette was in Dublin on a working holiday and writing a cover story for her magazine about Canadians living in Ireland. Spalding had not yet surfaced, nor had he made any attempt to contact Paquette.
Sara shut down the computer and stared out the window. Until last week she’d kept her speculations about Carrier to herself. But with Spalding now within range she’d bypassed her boss, who was known to be Carrier’s friend, and taken the information directly to the vice chief of staff, General Henry Powhatan Clarke, a man she trusted and admired.
Clarke had raised an eyebrow when Sara brought up the possible involvement of Colonel Thomas Loring Carrier, USA, Retired, in Spalding’s gemstone-smuggling ring.
“You do know that Tom Carrier is highly regarded by many ranking officers and senior administration officials, don’t you?” Clarke asked.
“Yes, sir,” Sara answered. She knew Clarke to be a tough, no-nonsense officer who didn’t appreciate subordinates who wasted his time, tried to curry favor, or went outside the chain of command as she was now doing. Clarke glared at her for a long moment.
“Sir?” Sara asked, trying to evoke a response.
“All you have here is speculation about Carrier,” Clarke said, tapping the report Sara had presented to him. On his uniform jacket he wore a Good Conduct Ribbon, awarded only to enlisted personnel. He’d earned it, along with a number of medals for valor, as an infantry sergeant in Vietnam before winning an appointment to West Point.
“Except for the forged signatures, that’s true, sir,” Sara said, “which is why I thought it best to ask for your guidance and direction in the matter.”
“Who else knows about this allegation?” Clarke asked.
“No one, sir. But if the Irish authorities find, detain, and interrogate Specialist Spalding, that could quickly change, unless we have someone there to manage it properly.”
Clarke’s eyes narrowed. “Are you suggesting we try to find Specialist Spalding and muzzle him about Carrier before the Irish pick him up?”
“No, sir. I’m not. If Carrier is guilty, he should be held accountable, one way or another.”
“In spite of the consequences that could befall you if you’re correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if you’re wrong about the colonel?”
“Then we’ll still have brought to justice a wartime deserter and thief who smuggled black-market gems in the body bags of soldiers who died in service to their country.”
Clarke turned in his chair and stared out the window. “Do you have a plan?”
“I propose that you place me on special duty and send me to Ireland to aid in the capture of Specialist Spalding.”
Clarke turned in his chair quickly to face her. “Once you have him in custody, what will you do then?”
“Gather the pertinent facts, inform you, and await your orders, sir.”
“What if I ordered you right now to cease all inquires into Carrier?”
Sara stared into the black hole she’d dug for herself and decided to speak frankly. “I would respectfully disagree with your decision, sir, and do as you request.”
Clarke shook his head. “You’re one gutsy officer, Colonel, I’ll give you that. I have half a mind to send you packing with orders never to come to me again outside the chain of command.”
Sara snapped to attention. “Sir.”
“However, in this case, I believe you’ve exercised good judgment. You’ll receive orders in the morning attaching you to my office for a top-secret courier assignment. You will go to Ireland, find Specialist Spalding, and take him into custody. I’ll have my aide deliver the necessary diplomatic credentials, special orders, and travel authorization to you at your quarters.”
“Thank you, sir. How much time do I have?”
“One week. If this plan of yours goes sour, Colonel, be prepared to wear those silver oak leaves on your collar until the day you retire.”
“I understand, General.”
“Report only to me.”
“Yes, sir. Will you give General Thatcher a pretext for my absence?”
“He’ll be told only that you’ve been placed on detached duty to my office. That should suffice.”
The memory of her meeting with General Clarke faded from Sara’s thoughts as she looked out the window at the star-filled night sky. Would finding Spalding and nailing Carrier amount to anything more than an exercise in futility? General Clarke had given her no guarantee that he would take any action against Carrier if she came through with the evidence. If he told her to hush it up for the good of the service, would her conscience allow her to do so?
She bit her lip and toyed with her West Point class ring, a nervous habit she’d yet to break completely. For the first time in history a woman graduate of the U.S. Military Academy had recently been promoted to the rank of brigadier general. Sara had long hoped to reach that rank herself, perhaps go even further. Now she wondered if she’d put herself on a path that would bury her in a career-ending, paper-pushing job with no chance for advancement.
She shut down the laptop and stared into the night. There was still no sign of Kerney. She wanted him to come home so she could tell him everything, knowing she could tell him nothing. Frustrated, she left the study, grabbed her travel case from the living room couch, and carried it to the bedroom, trying hard to clear her head.
In the walk-in closet she picked out a few of her more classy-looking skirts, slacks, and dresses to pack for her trip. If she was going to blend in with the crowd Paquette was writing about, she needed to look the part of a well-heeled American on holiday.
She folded and packed the clothes, her mind racing with visions of Kerney stranded on some lonely back road or, worse yet, mangled in some horrible traffic accident. She huffed with anger at the thought of him with another woman. It seemed no matter what passed through her mind tonight, it all felt gloomy or disastrous.
Kerney entered the canyon that led to his house, saw that the exterior lights under the portal were on, and didn’t know what to make of it. Either he was being burglarized or an unknown person had decided to take up residence in his absence. He killed the truck headlights, popped open the glove box, grabbed his off-duty handgun, stuck it in his waistband, and glanced at the useless cell phone. A few miles outside Virden the battery had stopped functioning and wouldn’t hold a charge.
He left the truck at the top of the hill just out of sight of his house and moved toward his police cruiser in a crouch, scanning the living room windows for any sign of activity. He cleared the inside of the sedan parked next to his unit before popping the trunk and removing his department-issued shotgun. With his eyes fixed on the house he quietly unlocked the door to his unit, dropped down for cover, put the key in the ignition, called dispatch, and reported a possible burglary in progress at his location.
“That’s your wife, Chief,” the dispatcher said, repressing a laugh. “She’s been trying to reach you to let you know she’s home.”
“You’re sure of that?” Kerney asked.
“Ten-four, Chief. I took the call from Colonel Brannon myself.” Kerney thanked the dispatcher, locked the shotgun and sidearm in his unit, and took a closer look inside the sedan. On the backseat was Patrick’s dog-eared copy of Pablito the Pony. Inside the house he found Sara in the master bath, dressed in her nightie, brushing her teeth.
“Where have you been?” she asked, her mouth full of toothpaste. She rinsed out and gave him a steely-eyed, exasperated look. “I’ve been trying to call you for hours.”
“My cell phone gave out,” Kerney replied, “and I had a late start coming home.”
Sara shook her head. “Well, if you weren’t so obsessively punctual all the time, I never would have worried about you.”
“You were worried about me?” Kerney asked, stroking her shoulder.
“More than I’d like to admit,” Sara said as she wrapped her arms around Kerney and gave him a kiss. “Did you have fun?”
Kerney nodded. “The world of filmmaking is zany but highly entertaining. What brings you home so unexpectedly?”
“I’m off in the morning on a special assignment. Patrick is yours for the duration.”
Kerney’s expression turned slightly befuddled. “I don’t have a sitter. I’m not prepared for this.”
Sara smiled sweetly. “There really isn’t an alternative, so you’ll have to work it out.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“A week,” Sara replied. “But since I’ll be starting leave so soon after I get back, Patrick might as well stay with you until then.”
“You could have given me some warning,” Kerney said, sounding a bit apprehensive.
Sara slipped past him into the bedroom. “I tried. I called here and called your office Thursday night and again on Friday morning, and I couldn’t get through to you on your cell phone over the weekend to leave a message because the calls kept getting dropped.”
“Cell phone reception in the Bootheel seems to be spotty at best. The film crew were all annoyed about it.”
“Or maybe you had the phone turned off for some reason you’d rather not tell me about.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sara shrugged and set the alarm clock. “Nothing. Chalk it up to my overactive imagination. I’m just glad you’re home and safe. I was worried about you.”
“What kind of special assignment are you on?” Kerney asked.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Not really. It’s more along the lines of challenging.” She fluffed her pillow, pulled back the duvet, and climbed into bed. “I’m up and out of here in five hours. Patrick will need his breakfast. He’s recently become fond of blueberry pancakes.”