Between Here and the Horizon(89)

Linneman smoothed down his suit, politely declining a tray of hors d’oeuvres from Aunt Simone. “It wasn’t my place. I can only legally discuss the matter with you now because Sully has asked me to.”

God, what a mess. It was all such a mess. In times like these I would normally have turned to my father for guidance, but that wasn’t possible anymore. “How much trouble is he in?” I asked.

“A considerable amount,” Linneman said. “It seems he triggered some sort of red flag when his ID was entered into the airline’s systems back in Maine. The army has been trying to hunt him down for some time. It seems a number of sensitive files were leaked during the time that Sully was deployed under Colonel Whitlock. A specialist named Crowe was arrested for selling military secrets to outside parties. He’d somehow figured out Sully was pretending to be Ronan back then, and he told the police Sully was the one selling the information. That he had taken a number of files when he left the army, and since Crowe didn’t have any files on him when he was arrested, it looked like Sully was at least complicit in hiding evidence if not directly involved in the crimes that were committed.”

“Espionage? I’ve never heard anything so stupid in my whole life.”

“I know. Sully insists he doesn’t have any secret files, but the military aren’t likely to believe him since he lied about who he was for so long. Basically, it’s not looking good, Miss Lang. It’s not looking good at all.”

“Haven’t they searched his place back on the island?”

“They’ve torn the place apart. Not a thing was found, but now they’re saying he could easily have hidden the files somewhere else. Buried them. Secured them in a safe place. Given them to someone else, perhaps.”

This was outrageous. There was just no way Sully would be involved with selling top secret military information to anyone. No way whatsoever. And no way he was involved with this Crowe guy, either. The name was familiar to me, Sully had mentioned him once or twice, but if they were aligned with each other in any illegal activities, surely he wouldn’t have mentioned him at all?

Then…

My blood ran cold as I remembered something. Sully, sick with a fever after the Sea King went down, tossing and turning on his couch, yelling out a name. Yelling at a man to help him. He had been yelling at Crowe. When I’d asked him about Crowe later, I recalled the sour look on Sully’s face as he’d said he wasn’t a friend.

There was another time, too. Another time Sully had mentioned Crowe. I wracked my brain, trying to bring the memory to the surface of my mind, scouring every single moment Sully and I had spent together, trying to scan through conversations and interactions until I came across it.

“Miss Lang? Ophelia, are you quite all right?” Linneman touched my shoulder, a deep frown of concern on his face, but I held up one hand, burying myself deeper in my thoughts.

When? When had it been? God, I had to remember. I had to. And then, just as I was about to give up, it came to me in a sudden rush, a revelation that made my head spin. “Shit,” I hissed.

“What is it, Ophelia?”

“I know what the files are,” I told him, shaking my head. “I know exactly what they are, and I know where to find them, too.”

Linneman looked alarmed. “If they can help clear Sully’s name, then we need to get them to the police immediately,” he said.

“I know. You should call them and tell them they need to go back to the island. The files are a set of USB drives. They’re in my underwear drawer. And…well.” I cleared my throat. “They’re full of porn.”





******





The USB drives Sully gave me for Christmas were actually full of tactical operations intel and Taliban profiles. Each and every one of the files was apparently corrupt and the drives had been overwritten with porn, but the information was still there, lurking beneath the surface, waiting for someone to come and find it. Crowe’s digital military ID was stamped on the files, showing the times and dates when he had downloaded them from the army’s protected servers. Sully’s digital military ID was nowhere to be found. A week after the drives were handed over to the military police, Sully was unexpectedly released from Camp Haan. Linneman called me to relay the good news.

“I think you should be the one to go get him,” he told me. “He’s been pretty wild over the fact that they haven’t let him call you. I’m sure he’d appreciate a pick up from his girl over a dusty old man like me.”

I drove out to Camp Haan in Mom’s 4Runner, the whole way dreading having to face another arrogant man dressed in uniform, but when I got there, a tall, handsome guy dressed in civvies greeted me instead. He came to get me at the gate and walked me inside the building, introducing himself as Sam. He was pretty young, still in his mid twenties, but he walked with an air of importance, and when we passed other soldiers in the hallways of the administration building Sam took me through, they all stopped and saluted him without exception.

He led me to a small, windowless room and gestured for me to sit down at a low table—the only item of furniture inside the room. “Sully will be with you in a second, Miss Lang. If you’d please wait here, I’ll be back in a moment too with Sully’s release papers.” He left, and I sat down at the desk as he’d instructed, trying not to bite my fingernails.