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CHAPTER FOUR

Black boots pounded the floor beneath the high beamed ceiling of the big room. A single platoon was drilling in civilian dress on the polished wooden floor as five foot-nine inch Master Sergeant Jesus Rodríguez barked commands through the high-gain amplifier of a megaphone. He stood rigidly on a high platform at the side of the armory gymnasium, steadily increasing the frequency of his commands: “Column left, march! By the right flank, march! To the rear, march, rear, march, left flank, march.…” The platoon was soon hopelessly confused, a few stalwarts still in step, the rest wandering aimlessly.

“Platoon, halt!” screamed Rodríguez.

There were sounds of shuffling feet, and murmuring echoed back and forth in the room.

“Fall in!”

Silence. Rodríguez glared down at his young troops, preparing to pronounce sentence.

“You young people are pathetic,” he said softly. “You think you’re a drill team. You have deluded yourselves into thinking you are ready to represent this battalion and this university with some kind of honor. At this moment, you will bring us only disgrace. Three days, people. Three days. One last review, and if you cannot represent military precision I promise there will be new faces where you are now standing.”

Silence again, a pause for effect. Rodríguez turned to gaze at the young man standing three steps in front of the platoon. “Next Friday, Wilson, at fifteen hundred, I will see a flawless performance here. I hold you personally responsible for that.”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

Rodríguez turned around sharply, stepped back onto the balcony that circled the room. As he walked away, a young voice boomed in the stillness.

“You people have embarrassed me today. More importantly, you have embarrassed yourselves. Do you enjoy that? I thought you were handpicked. Do any of you have physical or mental problems I should know about? No? Then let’s do it right this time. Platoon—attention!”

Rodríguez smiled. Wilson was showing the first signs of leadership. He was learning to pull their strings, their macho strings. Rodríguez knew all about macho. He had been raised with it.

The Man was waiting for him at the end of the room, leaning over the balcony on folded arms and watching the action on the floor below. He remained in that position when Rodríguez approached and stood casually next to him, hands on hips.

“What do you think, Sergeant?”

“Another week. It’s not automatic yet, but when they do it right it’s as good as I’ve ever seen it. Wilson has come along, too. He’s finally asserting himself out there.”

“Another red beret?”

“No, sir. When it comes to dangerous situations, he’ll always be a dedicated wimp. Too much mother in him.”

“Too bad,” sighed The Man. “Good eye for drill. Let’s keep him where he is.”

They went to a small lounge facing out on the balcony. Rodríguez filled two cups with coffee from a metal urn, and dropped some coins in a dish. The room was furnished with a hardwood conference table and chairs, and a cork board covered with announcements filled one wall. The coffee urn was next to a small, metal sink, and at the back of the room someone had placed an old couch and a plain coffee table that was covered with magazines. The two men sat on opposite sides of the table and sipped their strong hot coffee black.

“You’re coming up for rotation, aren’t you?” asked Holleque.

“Yes, sir. In another year.”

“What’re you going to do with it?”

“Overseas, I hope. I’ve applied for Wiesbaden.”

“Then what?” Holleque studied the table top.

“Wish I knew, sir. That’ll be my twenty years, and I’m not going any further if I stay in, but in civvy life I won’t find many jobs for a small arms instructor.”

“Demolitions, too,” said Holleque thoughtfully.

“Yeah, demolitions. Maybe I could work for mining, or forestry, or—”

“Urban renewal,” said the colonel, and both men laughed.

“What about you, sir? Gonna go for General before you get out?”

Holleque smiled the enigmatic smile reserved for times when people asked him personal questions. “It would take a good war for that to happen, Sergeant. No, I think full bird is going to be it for me, and that’s okay. I’ve had a good career, and ending it here in two years sounds fine to me. Not retirement, you understand, but something different, something a little more lively that teaching kids to recognize their left feet, you know what I mean?”

Rodríguez nodded, and sipped coffee.

“I like working with you, Sergeant. You understand the male ego, and how to make it do things it thinks it can’t do.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Not at all. You know how to motivate young people better’n most Sergeants I’ve known. I’ve been kicking around a couple of ideas you might have some interest in. When we have some free time, let’s talk about it.”

“Anytime, sir,” said Rodríguez, suddenly realizing how beautifully his own ego had been stroked. “I’m open to anything.”

“Later,” said Holleque, rinsing out his cup in the sink, then wiping his hands on a paper towel. “Right now I have one more meeting to get through.”

Rodríguez shook his head sympathetically.

Holleque left the room, walked the labyrinth of narrow corridors back to his office, entered through a back door and settled himself comfortably at his desk before punching an intercom button. “Any calls, Margaret?”

“No, sir, but a Mister Ebensack is here to see you.”

“Of course, send him right in.”

The door opened, and it was a middle-aged man who stood there looking dapper in a black wool suit with vest, red-striped tie and highly polished shoes. His grey hair was neatly trimmed, and the way he held himself suggested a military background. The way he dressed made him look like a lawyer. The man extended a hand as he entered the room.

“Colonel Holleque, so nice of you to make time for me.” He flashed an identity card which Holleque barely glanced at. They shook hands as they studied each other for an instant, then the Colonel motioned Ebensack to a chair and sat down again behind his desk.

“What brings the NSA out here? I haven’t seen one of you spooks in years.” Holleque gave him a friendly smile.

“Oh, I assure you we’re around, sir, looking after our interests, and we do have a lot of interests on this campus. There are research grants, you know, in chemistry, physics and psychology.”

“All classified, I suppose. There has been some hoopla about that.”

“Yes, all classified, all work done in controlled areas, so we’re naturally concerned about security, particularly on research hill. That’s why I’m here now, in fact. There seems to have been some kind of breech in security.”

“What’s the problem?” asked Holleque, and raised an eyebrow.

“To the point, Colonel, a faculty member and chemist, Jacob Bauer, was murdered in his lab on the hill last weekend. A student of his is a suspect, but we haven’t found the young man yet.”

Holleque’s eyes widened. “The newspaper said he had a heart attack, and a history of heart problems.”

“True as far as it goes,” said Ebensack, “but the heart attack in this case was induced by a good whiff of SB4, a recent nerve gas development. There were one or more people involved. They forced him inside a fume hood and gassed him there. Sloppy job, definitely not professional. I do hope you will keep this all in the strictest confidence, sir.”

“Of course.”

“Particularly for the sake of Bauer’s wife, left alone. How awful it would be if she knew someone murdered her husband.”

“I understand, but why tell me it was murder? Do you need my help in some way?” Holleque’s eyes were again soul-searching. He looked at Ebensack, and saw years of intelligence experience looking back at him calmly, studying him, watching for reactions.

“Not directly,” said Ebensack, “but perhaps you can provide me with some observations, or opinions. There has been a penetration of security here very early on a Saturday morning, or late in the evening last Friday. Any information on the movements of people on campus during that time would be very useful to me. You operate a group of cadets, I understand, who keep an eye on campus, a sort of patrol. I’ve seen a few of them myself; they wear red berets with regular army uniforms, and jump boots.”

Holleque chuckled at the misunderstanding, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. “You’re talking about Eagle Squad. Those people are the handpicked physical and intellectual elite of the battalion, and I’m proud to work with them. They do not spend assigned time patrolling the campus, and whoever told you that is way off base. On their own initiative they proposed a coed escort service some months ago. It has been used by students and even some faculty members. There have been no sexual assaults on campus since the service began, and there had been some problems before, enough so that women were afraid to walk even in pairs from the library or union back to their dorms at night.”

“So nobody will mess with a red beret.” Ebensack smiled.

“Two red berets. They always work in pairs.”

“Are they armed?”

“Certainly not,” said Holleque, his voice rising. “This is an escort service, Mister Ebensack, not a police action. These people are students.”

Ebensack smiled again, and wrote something down in a little notebook. “Nonetheless, there’s a chance that in the course of their rounds last Friday or early Saturday they might have seen something that would help me. If possible, I’d like to speak to them.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” said Holleque quickly. “These are kids, not professional soldiers. If someone from NSA starts questioning them it’s going to be upsetting, and will accomplish nothing I can’t get by asking them to file a report on what they saw up to eleven P.M. Friday, when the escort service ended. If you like, I’ll ask for their individual observations after that time. Coming from me, such questions won’t be threatening or accusative, as they might be with a federal investigator. These kids have grown up in rural communities where people know and trust each other, and honesty is taken for granted. I try to maintain that atmosphere here.”

“Okay,” said Ebensack, “you have them file their reports, but eventually it might still be necessary for me to talk to them. Please understand, Colonel, I have to examine every possibility. A security penetration has been made, and with some skill. There has been a murder, quick, silent and brutal, and a sloppy attempt to cover it up. I see a group of athletic young people with special military training, patrolling the campus at night, and I think I’ve found a group of people who would have both the ability and opportunity to strike a secure area and get away unseen.”

Holleque looked as if he thought Ebensack was a madman. “My God, you suspect a red beret. I just told you Eagle Squad is handpicked; those kids are some of the finest, most respected students on campus, and you suspect them of murder.”

“Try to understand, sir. Everyone on this campus and in town is a suspect. I can’t leave anyone out. If I have to question one of your students we could do it in this office, and in your presence. Would that be acceptable to you?”

Holleque thought for a moment, eyes moving back and forth between his desk and Ebensack. “Yes, if we must have questions, then I suppose it’s best if I be there. A familiar face might help. You understand I’m only trying to protect a group of kids I think highly of.”

“Of course,” said Ebensack gently. “I’ll be as discreet as possible, and questions may not even be necessary. I gather you work very closely with these students.”

“I handle them personally.”

“Do they get extra training the other students don’t receive?” Ebensack was writing in his notebook again.

“Yes. There’s an extra session with small arms each week, a night reconnaissance drill in the hills once a month, three weekends of field exercises a year, and then in the summer they attend a two week jump school at Fort Benning.”

“You do all this by yourself?”

“I have a staff of six to handle the teaching duties. My primary aid is Sergeant Rodríguez; he oversees the weapons training and assists me in the field drills.”

Ebensack was scribbling furiously. “Is he in the building, now?”

“I had coffee with him a few minutes ago.”

“Could I meet him for a moment? I don’t have time for another interview.”

Without replying, Holleque picked up his telephone and punched some numbers.

“Ah, good, you’re still there. I have someone in my office you should meet right away. Could you come down now? Good. See you.” He put down the telephone, looked at his watch and sighed.

“This will just take a minute,” said Ebensack apologetically.

“I’m afraid my mind is wandering a bit,” said Holleque. “I have another class to prepare for.” He looked at his watch again as Ebensack opened his notebook and began doodling in it.

“Go ahead,” said the NSA investigator. “I have some notes of my own to write here.”

Colonel Holleque’s face flushed, but Ebensack wasn’t looking at him. Silently, the Colonel opened a file and began to read, but a moment later there were three sharp raps on his office door.

“Come!” snapped Holleque, startling his guest. Rodríguez entered, brown eyes darting back and forth between both men, feeling for a pulse. Ebensack stood up and introduced himself, quickly went over Bauer’s death and why he was investigating it, and that he would have some questions for Rodríguez in the future. The Sergeant listened carefully, and when Ebensack was finished, said, “I understand, sir. The department secretary will give you my schedule.”

“And now we really have other work to do,” said Holleque.

“Of course,” said Ebensack, closing his little notebook and stowing it in a coat pocket. He started towards the door, then turned around and walked to Holleque’s desk, extending his hand. Holleque arose, taking his hand in a firm, dry grip. Ebensack smiled.

“Thanks so very much for your time. I’ll check back in a week or so to see what your students had to say in their reports, and you can leave any messages for me at the president’s office.”

Holleque escorted him to the door, where he turned back once more before leaving.

“Nice to meet you, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir,” said Rodríguez.

Holleque closed the door gently, strolled back to his desk and sat down, ignoring Rodríguez. He sat there for a moment, chewing a fingernail, and there was a look on his face that Rodríguez had seen before, in a distant desert. It was the look of a man about to go out on night patrol, knowing that before the sun rose again he would likely kill or be killed and the world would not care. It was a dangerous look, and then he heard the Colonel growl something so quietly it was as if he were thinking out loud.

“That motherfucker,” said Holleque, “is going to be a problem.”

* * * * *

Karen went directly to the lab after supper. She hadn’t seen Jack since coffee that morning, and already she missed him. The Eagle Squad drills overshadowed football in Jack’s excitement, and all he ever talked about was the other red berets, weapons, and The Man. They had less time together now, but it was good time, and they were happy with themselves as well as each other. When she looked at her watch it was nearly six. She had promised to meet Jack in the library at seven, and had a thousand things to do before then. She put on a white lab coat and buried herself in a pile of little tasks.

Later, she had locked the lab door and was timing the run of a rat named Morris when the door suddenly rattled with the sound of a key clumsily inserted in the lock. The door knob turned, but the door wouldn’t open. After a moment, there was more rattling, then a soft curse. Karen looked at her stopwatch as Morris neared the end of the labyrinth. “Hold on a second. I’m coming.”

More rattling, more curses, then a pounding on the door. Morris reached the end of his run and gave thought as to which of three levers he could push without getting an electrical shock. His drugged brain didn’t care, so he pushed one at random and nothing happened. Karen clicked off her stopwatch and raced to the door, fumbling it open and stepping back in surprise as Doctor Judith Reimer lurched into the room, quite drunk, and spilled the entire contents of her handbag on the polished laboratory floor.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered, and got down on her hands and knees to clean up the pile of debris. Her heavy overcoat was open, and tears in her pantyhose radiated upwards from her shoes. An unlit cigarette dangled from her lips, flopping up and down as she mumbled to herself. Wind-blown hair hung down over her eyes.

“First the car, then I can’t find my keys, then the door and now this. I think I’ll go back to the bar.” Judith Reimer, Sloan distinguished Professor of Chemistry, groveled around on the floor, picking up cigarettes, lipstick, coins, antacid tablets, bits and pieces of gum and candy wrappers and crumpled Kleenex. She threw everything back into her purse, then paused for a moment on all fours, like some giant frog, breathing deeply. “I think I’m having a panic attack,” she said. “Help me up, please.”

Wordlessly, Karen got her hands under the woman’s arms and hauled her up on shaky feet, depositing her in a chair by the table-top rat labyrinth. Reimer looked at her with rheumy eyes.

“You are a strong kid. Do a lot of wrestling with that jock boyfriend of yours?”

Karen’s eyes narrowed. “Can I get you a glass of water?”

“Sure. And put some bourbon in it.”

Karen filled a glass of water at a sink. Her research advisor teetered a little in her chair, then turned to look at the maze. “Hey, Morris. Look at that little sucker get off on electricity. Go for it, guy.”

“Oh, God, I forgot him,” said Karen. She pushed the water glass at Reimer, then pulled the plug on the labyrinth where Morris, having discovered the electrified lever, was repeatedly shocking himself. She picked up the twitching rat in her hands and deposited him in a small cage while Reimer drank most of the water and splashed the rest of it in her face.

“Oooh, I’ve had just a tad too much tonight. The room is goin’ round and round.” She put a hand to her forehead.

Karen watched Morris staggering around in his little cage, bumping against the wall, body twitching, eyes rolling. “This stuff is bad,” she said. “He’s totally out of it.”

“What’d you give him?”

“The vial marked L5.”

“Well you gave him some good stuff. Right now, if you tell him you want to cut off his paw he’ll hold it out for you. He doesn’t care about anything anymore. Imagine what it would be like if you sprayed an army with that stuff. Hey, I ought to take a shot of it myself.” She laughed, then stared at Karen morosely.

“I guess I don’t feel too good about myself tonight. The booze doesn’t seem to work very well anymore.”

Karen remained silent. Her face felt hot, and her fingers played nervously with a button on her lab coat. Reimer took off her glasses, rubbing both eyes with the heel of her hand.

“Don’t look so stunned, Karen. The old prof drinks too much, that’s all. It’s nothing you’ve said or done. I’m just sick of my work, and this place, and the people who run it, and.… You know, I got to thinking about Jacob again tonight, and he never hurt anyone in his life, and he’s dead, and I’m alive. He has a wife, and I have nobody, and he’s the one who gets killed. No warning. All his yelling in the senate, and for what? Nothing will happen, and if it did the university would fall down, and we’d all be out of a job.”

“I don’t understand any of this, Doctor Reimer.”

“Of course you don’t, and I don’t want you to understand it. Take my advice and find a good job in industry where they don’t change the rules every other week and allow you to follow a code of ethics. Everything here is money, money, money, and education be damned.”

“Then why don’t you quit, and go somewhere else?”

Reimer chuckled. “I was wrong. You should go into academe, and become an administrator.”

“Really, Doctor Reimer, why stay here if it makes you so unhappy?”

The professor let out a long sigh. “Do you know how many job openings there are for an old gal like me? Industry thinks I’m too theoretical, and academe thinks I should be a department chairperson. I refuse to do that. Pushing paper and wiping faculty noses is not my way of life. If I abandon research I’m stuck here, unless I push paper. That’s the trick they pull if you make money for them. They give you good raises, promote you fast, and before you know it you’re too expensive to go anywhere else. Clever, these administrators.”

“I’m sorry,” said Karen.

“Ah, youth,” said Reimer dramatically. “The world is a giant oyster, and you’re going for the pearl. Trouble is, you get to the pearl and find out it’s a black one, covered with blood, and all the great ideas you had about helping humanity have been twisted and perverted by the ones who control the money, so you spend your time developing and testing chemicals that blow minds in new and interesting ways, like Morris here.” She pointed at the rat in his little cage. He sat quietly, now, staring at both of them, an occasional shudder running through his body as if he had hiccups. Reimer leaned over and snapped her fingers sharply in front of his face. No response, not even the blinking of an eye.

“Gone, gone, gone,” said Reimer tearfully. She fumbled in her purse for a tissue and blew her nose loudly. “Oh, God, I’m a mess. I should go home and sleep, but I’m afraid to.” Another blow, daintily this time.

Karen pulled herself up to her full five feet-ten. “What are you afraid of?” she asked indignantly. “Has somebody threatened you?”

“Me and my mouth again. Not your concern, Karen. Just do your experiments, write your thesis, and stay out of campus politics. Your time will come soon enough.” She chuckled, and seemed to suddenly calm down. “What I need is a cigarette, and a good night’s sleep, and maybe a roll in the hay to make it all worthwhile again.” She wiggled one eyebrow seductively, but Karen stared at her coolly, arms crossed in front, unmoved by the sudden bravado.

“You’re in trouble, and you won’t tell me about it because I’ll be in danger if you do. That’s what I think, Doctor Reimer.”

Reimer looked up at the statuesque girl with the sharp cheekbones and piercing auburn eyes and thought to herself, Oh, honey, I can see what he sees in you, and you are a darlin’, and right now I’d like to run my hands all over you, but I don’t dare because you are as straight as an arrow.

What she said was, “I have some personal things to work out, Karen, and the less you know about that the better off you’ll be, but if the time comes when I really need your help I’ll scream loud and long. Okay?”

Karen looked so serious, arms folded, back straight and tensed. Oh, you are gorgeous, thought Reimer.

“I don’t suppose I have any choice,” said Karen.

“No, you don’t.”

“If something happened, and I thought I could have helped, I—”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve been around the horn a lot of times, and I know what to do. Well, most of the time I do. Why get people involved if they’re not involved, know what I mean?”

“But I am involved. I work in this lab, and I work with you, and look what I just did to Morris. Is that what this is all about? Some sort of secret projects you’re working on? You told me to make these tests, and you didn’t seem surprised by what happened to the animal.”

“Partly true. There was a vial marked neuter. He was supposed to get that before the L5, and then the timed run. I assumed you—”

“Yes. I followed your instructions exactly, with the shots five minutes apart, and ten minutes before the run. There were no negative symptoms until he got near the end of it.”

“Shit,” mumbled Reimer softly. “The block is still breaking down too fast; I thought we’d used enough chelator this time, but stuff is still precipitating out.”

“Who’s we? Doctor Bauer?”

“Drop it, Karen. Please. I’ve already said too much to you.”

Reimer lit a cigarette, the flame of a match wavering in her trembling hand. She inhaled deeply, leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. “We went through the synthesis together twice, and I have the procedure written down, but it’ll have to be trial and error because I don’t have any feeling yet for the quantities involved. Right now we’re looking for an order of magnitude effect anyway. I’ll make up a new sample tomorrow, and we’ll try it with the same L5 batch you gave to Morris. I’d like to have another run with the new neuter tomorrow afternoon. Will you run it?”

“Yes,” said Karen, watching the little rat staring vacantly out of his cage. “What should I do with Morris?”

“No good for further tests, so might as well sacrifice him. Don’t bother to do an autopsy; I know what’s wrong with him. Use the guillotine.” The death sentence was given absently, as Reimer’s mind surveyed a problem in chemistry.

“I’ll take care of it,” said Karen, coldly. In her work she had sacrificed several rats in the miniature guillotine, fastening their little bodies in the tight lattice of metal and slamming down the razor-sharp blade to snip off their heads. Autopsy was a routine part of data analysis, a necessary part of research, but with Morris there would be no autopsy, and no justification for his death other than removal of an animal whose mind had been blown away for the advancement of science. It wasn’t fair.

“Can you be here again at six? I’ll have you out of here by seven, but if you want to stay and run your thesis tests that’s fine too.”

“I’ll stay and do my other runs. I’m getting behind.”

“And I’m getting tired,” said Reimer, slouching in her chair. “Fortunately, or unfortunately, I am now sober enough to walk, and having gone through my evening in a hurry I’m going to go straight home to bed.” She arose somewhat unsteadily, and without looking in a mirror made a feeble attempt at repairing the tangled remains of her hairdo. She stubbed out the remains of a cigarette in a Petri dish, then lit another and pointed it dramatically at Karen. “Lead me to the door,” she commanded grandly.

Karen smiled, put an arm around Reimer’s shoulders and guided her on wobbly legs towards the door. Her advisor’s arm snaked around her waist, hand wandering aimlessly up across her breast, then down to the inside of her thigh, finally settling on a grip at her hip and squeezing gently, but firmly not once, but twice. At the door, Reimer’s voice was husky in her ear. “Beddy-bye, dear,” she said, and when Karen turned slightly to look at her she received a firm kiss that fell half on cheek, half on mouth. She stared incredulously as Reimer released her and staggered out the open door, cackling.

She went back to the bench where Morris sat motionless in his cage. He didn’t look at her when she picked him up, holding him in her hands for a moment to think. When she put him back on the bench he didn’t move, or watch her as she put on her heavy coat. She picked him up gently again and put him into the bottom of a coat pocket, leaving the flap open so he could breathe.

“Not this time,” she said out loud to the drugged and confused rat. “I’ll find a place for you at home.” She turned out the lights, locked the laboratory and made the short walk to the library. There, she told Jack about her conversation with Reimer.

“A pretty strange lady,” he said. “Sounds like she takes lousy care of herself. Probably why she isn’t married.”

“I don’t think so,” said Karen. “Drunk or not, that woman made a pass at me tonight.”

“Oh, oh,” said Jack. “I’ve got competition.”

“Don’t go there, Jack,” said Karen, and Morris seemed to suddenly come to life in her pocket.

He was hungry, she decided.