The Burdens of Truth

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Arlington, VA

12 November 2010

Ian

THE RINGING OF my cell phone snapped me back to the present.

“Hello,” I said.

“It’s me,” Randy said.

“Hello, Me.”

“Funny man,” he said.

“Where are you?”

“Heading for the Metro station.”

“I haven’t been in the kitchen yet to start our supper.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Can you meet me at Dupont Circle? I’ve got a hankering for Greek food.”

“You don’t want to stop by the house and change?”

“I’m kind of hungry and don’t want to waste that much time,” he said.

“Then I’ll see you there.”

I placed the photo on our flatbed scanner, generated a digital image of it, slipped the photo back into the FedEx envelope, and put the FedEx envelope into a slim briefcase. Carrying the briefcase with me, I carefully locked the safe room door and went upstairs to the bedroom to change. Wearing slacks, a turtleneck shirt, and a leather jacket, I secured the house, got in my car, and headed for the Key Bridge. While I was on the bridge, I made an urgent cell phone call.

Once I was across the bridge, I drove east on M Street, turned north on Wisconsin Avenue, and eventually turned east on the first cross street that would take me straight to Dupont Circle. It took me longer to find a place to park than it had taken me to get to the popular Dupont Circle area. Still, by the time Randy walked through the door of the restaurant, I was sitting in a booth sipping a glass of Greek wine.

“Mind if I join you?” he said when he walked up to the booth.

“Gee, I don’t know. I’m sort of expecting someone, but I guess I can trust a man wearing the uniform of a light bird.”

Full colonels in the US Army wear an insignia on their collars containing the image of an eagle. Lieutenant colonels do not wear this insignia and are often referred to, not always kindly, as ‘light bird colonels’ or just ‘light birds’.

He took a seat, I poured him a glass of wine, and we touched our glasses together before he took a sip. “By the way,” I said, “Rupert will be joining us in a bit.”

“Rupert?” he said. “Why?”

“Long story, and I don’t want to tell it twice, okay?”

He must have caught the seriousness of my tone, because for once, he didn’t argue with me and simply said, “Okay.”

A waiter came to our table and took our orders.

“Did we hear from the kids today?” Randy said.

“Actually, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“For perhaps the first time ever, I didn’t check my e-mail the minute I got home.”

“That’s totally out of character for you,” he said. “Why?”

“I was kind of distracted.”

“Now that you mention it, you sounded kind of distracted on the phone. Want to tell me about it?”

“When Rupert gets here.”

“Now you’re worrying me,” he said.

“Well, your worries are over,” I said. “Rupert just walked through the door.”

Rupert Sylvester, my contact s***h controller at the agency, reminded me very much of Leo G. Carroll portraying the Professor in the Hitchcock film North By Northwest, right down to his tweed jacket. He even sounded sort of like the character. To Randy’s annoyance, Rupert slid into the booth beside him, facing me and, more importantly for Rupert, with his back to the door—which minimized the chances of him being seen through the window of the restaurant.

“Shall I order you a glass, Rupert?” I said.

“Thanks,” he said.

The waiter appeared before I could summon him, and Rupert requested a glass but declined a menu, saying he couldn’t stay that long. The waiter brought an empty glass, poured wine in it for Rupert, and left.

“Okay, Ian,” Rupert said, “you asked for this meeting, and you said that it was important.”

I opened the briefcase, retrieved the FedEx envelope, handed it to him, and said, “This was just inside the storm door of our house when I got home today.”

He pulled the photo out of the envelope, and his eyebrows actually levitated a bit, which was most unusual for the normally unflappable Rupert. Randy saw what Rupert was holding in his hand and said, “Holy shit.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“Is this picture genuine?” Rupert said.

“Yes and no. Randy and I went camping with our wives that summer. It was the summer before my wife died and his wife deserted him. The four of us did a fair amount of skinny-dipping in the creek.”

“Yeah,” Randy said. “Somewhere, I’ve got a number of pictures just like that, only our wives are standing beside us.”

“However did you manage that?” Rupert said. “Surely there wasn’t anyone with you.”

“I’m a bit of a shutterbug,” Randy said, “and I had a camera on a very low tripod beside our tent. Our wives didn’t even know it was taking pictures of our skinny-dipping.”

“Based on the fact that you can just see our two tents in the background,” I said, “whoever took this was in the woods across the stream.”

“Somebody obviously wants something,” Rupert said.

“Yeah,” Randy said, “but what, and from whom?”

“Surely it has something to do with your top-secret work,” I said. “Nobody knows about my part-time work for the agency—at that point I hadn’t even told Catherine about it, not that I kept secrets from her, but because I hadn’t gotten around to telling her. In fact, I was going to use my earnings to buy something nice for her and tell her then.”

“We’ll just have to wait until you’re contacted by a party or parties unknown,” Rupert said. “Meanwhile, may I have this?”

“Certainly, and Randy can get you a copy of one or two of the pictures he took.”

“A negative with a date would be even better,” Rupert said.

“I can do that,” Randy said. “They’re in a locked drawer in our safe room.”

“Should we try to defuse things by talking to our superiors at work?” I said.

Washington, DC

12 November 2010

Ian

“LET’S HOLD OFF on that for a bit,” Rupert said. “On second thought, a preemptive strike may be just the ticket. Why don’t you mention receiving the photo and make it clear that it’s not only doctored, but you can prove it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Georgetown is run by Jesuits, and when dealing with Jesuits, preemptive strikes are definitely called for, and the same often holds true with the military.”

“If somebody wants something from one of us that badly,” Randy said, “should we take any precautions?”

“What kind of precautions?” I said.

“I was thinking of our boys,” he said.

“They should be safe enough at The Citadel,” I said.

“Yeah, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a word with somebody down there.”

“Rupert, what do you think?” I said.

“It would probably be a good idea,” he said. “When would that photo have been taken?”

“In June, five years ago,” I said.

“As you said, you’d only just started working with us at that time. Were you already involved in secret matters that long ago, Colonel?”

“Yes, Sir, I was, but I don’t know how many people knew about it.”

“Rupert,” I said, “are our telephone and Internet connections at home still secure?”

“We check them daily, and they’re clean at your end. What we can’t guarantee, however, is safety at the other end of the line, unless, of course, you’re calling us.”

“When was the last time our house was swept for bugs by your people?” I said.

“A couple of Saturdays ago—you were there, remember?” Rupert said.

“Yeah,” I said, “I guess I’d forgotten.”

“Don’t forget to use that little gadget I gave you,” Rupert said.

“Thanks for reminding me,” I said. “I’ll give it a shot the minute we get home.”

Rupert polished off his glass of wine and retrieved a cell phone from a breast pocket. He dialed a number, waited a second, and said, “I’ll be at the backdoor in five minutes.” Three minutes later, he stood and headed for the restaurant’s kitchen.

“Your Rupert is a careful guy,” Randy said a moment or two later.

“Yeah, in his line of work, he has to be just that.”

We finished our meal in a somewhat somber state of silence, walked to the car, and went home. While the garage door was still closing, I went through the basement, down to the safe room, and retrieved the gadget Rupert had reminded me about. I carried it all through the house, carefully watching the readout on the little screen, and I paid special attention to the master bedroom and bathroom. Finally satisfied that the house was free of listening devices, I took the little device back downstairs and put it away.

When I returned to the master suite, Randy was in the shower, so naturally I joined him. Later, as we stood in front of the vanity toweling ourselves dry, I carefully inspected our images in the mirror and said, “We’re not in bad shape for a couple of middle-aged men.”

“Speak for yourself,” he said. “I’m still young, and I refuse to admit to middle age.”

“Oops, did I strike a nerve?”

“Not really,” he said, “but I resent being referred to as middle-aged. Look at us—we’re both somewhat over six feet tall and we tip the scales at under one-ninety. We may no longer be the scrawny kids we once were, but we’re in damn fine shape.”

“Yeah, for a couple of forty-year-olds, hence middle-aged.”

“I’ll get you for that,” he said.

“Promises, promises.”

Later, as I turned the lights out in our bedroom, I said, “s**t, I never got around to checking the e-mail.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, reaching for me. “This is more important.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“You guess!” he said. “You guess this is more important?”

“Shut up, and prove it.”

Arlington, VA

13 November 2010

Ian

SATURDAY MORNING, WE carried coffee and bagels down to the safe room and settled down at our desks. We checked our e-mail accounts and found nothing but junk mail. After that, we called The Citadel and gave their security guy a heads-up concerning our potential problem. Then, while I worked on my latest piece of analysis for the agency, Randy rummaged through his files for the negatives from that summer. “Here they are,” he said, holding a packet of negatives up to the light.

“Geez, Randy, that’s a fat envelope. How many pictures did you take that day?”

“I had the camera set to shoot a half frame every thirty seconds,” he said, “which allowed me to accumulate seventy-two photographs in a little over half an hour. I also had a wide angle lens on the camera, and it was focused on that little natural pool because I knew that was where we would be.”

“Now what?”

“I’m gonna use that nifty little device you gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago,” he said, “and transfer these negatives to digital images. Then it’s time for Photoshop.”

“Have at it,” I said, and went back to work.

I took a break around midmorning, but Randy was still hard at it. “I’m going up to the kitchen,” I said. “Bring you anything?”

“Something cold, wet, and non-alcoholic,” he said.

“Will do.”

When I returned to the safe room carrying two cans of Sprite, he was waiting for me with a triumphant look in his eyes. “What’s up?”

“I have the answer to at least one question,” he said.

“Which question is that?”

“The most important one, doofus—who took that photo.”

“Yeah, I guess that would be the most important one. So?”

“Look at this display,” he said.

He pointed to the large flat-screen monitor in front of him and said, “Starting with frame number ten, you can see someone moving through the woods on the other side of the stream. See?” He pointed to a blown-up image and traced it from frame to frame.

“Yeah, I can see that. But I can’t see a face.”

“Patience, patience,” he said. He replaced the displayed images with a few more. “Look at the second picture. He’s lying flat on the ground, about to aim a camera at us. You can see his face as plain as day.”

“s**t. You’re right. Do you know him?”

“You’re damn right I do,” he said. “That’s the Basset Hound.”

“Excuse me?”

“I call him that because his last name is Basset and he has large and somewhat floppy ears,” he said.

“And his actual name is?”

“Larry Basset,” he said. “He was an alleged friend of Mary Jane’s, and he’s the guy with whom she ran off. I’ll bet he’d been f*****g her all along and followed us to the campground.”

“Why is that name familiar?”

“Because I named him correspondent in the divorce,” he said, “and you saw the paperwork.”

“Okay, Sherlock. Now that we know who he is, what does it mean?”

“Damned if I know,” he said.

“Could it mean that someone has been looking into our backgrounds for a weak link?”

“Possibly,” he said. “The divorce file is a matter of public record—anybody could go to the courthouse and read it.”

“We need to meet with Rupert again. Today or tomorrow, if possible.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“You did good, my boy. Follow me up to the bedroom, and I’ll give you an appropriate reward.”

“Why not here?” he said.

“The floor’s too hard, and we’re too old for that.”

“There you go with that old s**t again. Speak for yourself.”

We spent the rest of the day doing our usual Saturday stuff—laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping—all the while waiting in vain for the other shoe to drop. Rupert was tied up Saturday, but when we arrived at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on K Street Sunday morning, he was sitting in a pew at the rear of the church. We took seats on either side of him and had a whispered conversation, after which he slipped out through a side door of the church with a thumb drive full of images and a few of the original negatives in his pocket.

Our conversation had been somber, but my mood brightened when the service began—both the high church service and the music at St. Paul’s always put me in a good mood, and this Sunday was no exception.

As we walked toward the car, Randy said, “Lunch?”

“Sure.”

“Where?” he said.

“Are you in the mood for plain or fancy?”

“How about the Hole in the Wall?” he said.

“You’re on.”

‘The Hole in the Wall’ was our name for a little restaurant on M Street. Actually, it wasn’t really that little. We’d nicknamed it the ‘Hole in the Wall’ because it was very narrow in front. It did, however, run back some distance before expanding into a large room that wrapped around an adjacent shop. As we sat, sipping a glass of wine and waiting for our orders to arrive, I found myself reflecting on the past.

Blue Ridge Mountains, VA

June 2007

Ian

AT THE END OF our first full school year as a family of four, Randy and I had taken the boys camping again. That first year of all of us being together had, not unsurprisingly, produced no problems whatsoever. Randy and I had been roommates through four years of school, and we slipped right back into our old pattern of togetherness almost as though we’d never been apart. The fact that there was now a s****l element to the relationship was merely frosting on the cake.

As for Sean and Paul, they’d practically been raised together, even though we hadn’t always lived in the same city. And during the five years that Randy had worked at the Pentagon, the two boys had become virtually inseparable. As far as we could tell, the two of them had no difficulty getting used to sharing a room on a permanent basis. Paul had totally written his mother off as a lost cause, given that she’d made it clear when she left that her new life contained no place in it for a son, and he’d adjusted to that fact.

During that two-week period, we had a great time. We went for long hikes several times and even spent half a day following the Appalachian Trail, which passed through the area near our campsite. At an age when many teenage boys were beginning to drift apart from their parents as a sort of rite of passage, Sean and Paul were becoming closer than ever to us.

That was also the summer we found the cabin. At the end of our first week, we went back to the car and drove to the nearest motel in order to have access to hot water. After a week of roughing it, a hot shower was a delicious treat, and Randy and I were able to enjoy the luxury of a decent shave.

Over lunch in a local café, Sean had said, “Dad, camping is fun, but we ought to look for a cabin up here somewhere.”

“A cabin?” I said.

“Sure, why not? A nice little A-frame cabin by a stream. We’ve seen a bunch of them up here, and some of them had For Sale signs on them.”

“That’s a splendid idea,” Randy said.

“Yeah,” I said, “let’s do it.”

So we spent our second week in the mountains cabin hunting, and by the time we headed for the interstate and home, Randy and I had made an offer and signed a contract to purchase a modified A-frame cabin nestled in a stand of trees beside a very noisy stream. We closed on the cabin a few weeks later and juggled our schedules so that we could spend an occasional three-day weekend there, acquiring furniture and generally getting it fixed up to suit us. It became our place to go every summer the minute school was out, and even when Randy had to return to DC, the boys and I would stay at the cabin, sometimes for most of the summer.