The Old Man(95)

“What for?” asked Julian.

“Just a little chat,” Mr. Ross said. “Come on in.”

They went into the inner office. Julian looked at the dark wood furniture and paneling, and the full bookcases. All of the books came in identical sets, and no book looked as though it had ever been touched. He sat at the table and waited.

Mr. Prentiss lifted a hard-sided briefcase to the surface of the table, and then worked a combination. He opened the briefcase, took out a thick blue file, and set it on the table in front of Mr. Ross. Then he set the briefcase on the floor.

Mr. Ross tapped his fingers on the thick file. “This,” he said, “is something we had to work very hard to get our hands on. We wanted to give you a chance to take a look.”

“What is it?”

“The old man’s army personnel file. It’s got his service record, from his signed oath to preserve and defend us from all enemies, foreign and domestic, all the way to a copy of his DD-214. It’s also got records of his contract work for military intelligence, including his final mission, the one to Libya.”

Julian kept his face blank. “Why would I want to see that? I’m not working for military intelligence anymore. I don’t care about the old man.”

Mr. Ross stopped drumming his fingers on the file and held it with both hands. “I don’t really claim to understand you, Mr. Carson. You did a good job of finding our man twice. You took a pair of Libyan agents to his house in Chicago. You got him to a meeting in San Francisco. You nearly froze to death taking a special ops rifle squad to his cabin in the mountains. Then you got frustrated and quit. You came back to your hometown and married a pretty girl. That’s not you.”

“What doesn’t fit me?”

“You haven’t forgotten about the old man. You’re still looking for him.”

“No I’m not,” Julian said.

“You’re on your computer every day checking out places where you think he might be hiding. You pick out men on the Internet who are about his age and description. You send fake coded messages to the ones you can’t eliminate by looking at their pictures.”

“Why would I do that? If it’s a fake code, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“You and the old man both know how the game is played. You didn’t think he would tell you where he was. You wanted him to know where you are. You want him to realize it’s you, so he knows how to get in touch and arrange another meeting.”

“I didn’t pretend to quit the government,” Julian said. “I quit. It’s not my job to care where the old man is now.”

Mr. Ross frowned. “Quitting only means you’re not on the payroll. You don’t quit a war and go home to spend your life counting beakers and test tubes. I knew when you handed in your scrambled phone that you were still in. You just didn’t feel like taking orders anymore.”

“So you brought me his file.”

Mr. Ross nodded. “We brought you his file. This is the most highly classified set of documents you’ve ever touched. The file wasn’t in the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. Since the giant screwup thirty-five years ago it’s been archived in a facility in the middle of the Air Force Intelligence installation at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. The building isn’t on any list of buildings or on maps of the base. The base perimeter is patrolled, and the building is guarded by people who don’t know what they’re guarding.”

“And you’re going to just hand it over to me.”

“You know better than that.”

“What, then?”

“The vice chancellor has given us exclusive access to a room on this campus that conforms to the security requirements for storing highly classified technical information. The room has one steel door and no windows,” Mr. Ross said. “The file will be locked in a safe except while you’re alone in there reading it for one hour a day. Then the file gets locked up again until you come back.”

“Why would I want to read it?”

Mr. Ross shrugged. “Because you want to know the truth.”

“And why do you want me to read it?”

“Because I think once you know everything about him, you’ll figure out how to find him. If you do, you’re the one he might talk to.”

Julian looked straight into Ross’s eyes. “I think he was framed.”

“That’s what you think now. Maybe when you know more about him you’ll think something different. But it doesn’t matter what you think. What matters is that you can’t let this alone.”

Julian looked at the other two men. “How much is redacted?”

Mr. Ross said, “This isn’t some copy released under the Freedom of Information Act. This is the real thing. Nothing is redacted.”





36


Julian sat in the single folding chair at the folding table in the small utility room beneath the stands of the football stadium. A row of four-inch pipes that ran floor to ceiling was the only adornment to the windowless concrete walls. Each had a five-inch valve that looked like a little brass wheel. There was an overhead fluorescent light mounted on the concrete ceiling. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a safe. He opened the thick blue folder. It was the standard military personnel format with a thick sheaf of papers speared and held on the left and right by metal pieces folded down and secured. Julian began to read.