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Page 29.

Chapter 16

In the morning, David met Colonel Bellamy by the Reflecting Pool. Bellamy had commed and requested the meeting and the place.

This was the Mall, the heart of Washington, under the magnificent plan laid out by Pierre L’Enfant and fulfilled by the African-American architect Benjamin Bannecker. The area was laid out like a cross. At the south end was the tallest structure (by law) in the city, the 555-foot needle of Washington’s Monument, looking off to the Potomac. From the monument to the center of the cross, where David sat, was the long, narrow Reflecting Pool. To the east, across a meander in the Potomac, was the rounded roof of the Jefferson Memorial. To the west, across some park land and the ubiquitous monuments, sprawled the White House. The north leg of the cross was the Mall. Along its sides were various cultural institutions, including the Smithsonian and the Hartshorn. At the far end of the Mall was the Capitol, housing Congress. Just behind the Capitol to the left was the Library of Congress. To the right was the Supreme Court.

Bellamy approached, a robust figure in a long Army raincoat despite the sunny weather. People milled here and there, some hurrying from one building to another, as if there were no CON2 stirring up chaos, as if everything were normal. David looked past Bellamy to see if there was a tail. At that, he shook his head and wondered if the conspiracy atmosphere in the capital, tinged with Autumn sadness, were getting to him. Free of the oppressive hotel, Bellamy seemed a big man with a hard smile. And a rough handshake. “David, walk with me. Don’t look behind, because we have to assume we’re being followed.”

“I thought it was just me being paranoid,” David said.

“Far as anyone knows, we’re here to rehash the Mary Corcoran thing,” Bellamy said. He looked at the sky. “Hell of a town. Have you and your boss realized you’re never going to get any information out of those people in the Top Five in the hotel?”

“Corcoran’s a dead issue unless the Pentagon wants to stir it up again. The suspect killed himself.”

Bellamy uttered a short, harsh laugh. “Am I surprised? Sure, call me nuts, like Shoob. But I sit there every day and watch those skinheads going up and down in the elevator carrying boxes of ammo. Even a fool would wonder what is going on.”

“General Montclair is taking no chances.”

“That’s apparent.”

“I hear some delegates want to propose more amendments.”

“Yes, CON2 is about to fall apart. Almost like Murphy’s Law, isn’t it? Plan for the worst. By now, most people with any sense are scared to death and wish they’d never been lulled into voting for it. Beyond that, sure, I lie awake nights worrying. Sometimes, I wake up at three or four in a cold sweat, afraid the loonies’ll hit the hotel with one of those fertilizer bombs they like because they’re so full of crap. I wake up strangling a yell because I think we’re going up and it’s my last two seconds on earth.”

“I don’t envy you being billeted in the hotel, Sir.”

“I have a question, David, and I need you to check it out for me. I know you don’t work for me, and I don’t want to cross your chain of command, but—”

“Sure, I’ll do whatever I can for you. But why me?”

“Because I have nobody else I can go to. I don’t know whom to trust among the senior people. Even from the simple standpoint of not looking like a fool. You’re young, you’re eager, you can’t possibly be in cahoots with anyone, and besides, if you can’t keep a secret, I’ll deny we ever had this conversation.”

“I can keep a secret.”

“Very well, then. I’ve been mightily pissed off, in my own quiet way, about these skinheads crawling all over the place, raping the rest of the army. They hardly even salute officers except their own. It’s scary, David. It's like Special Forces gone mad. Only they’re not part of any bona fide special ops I know of. I’ve checked.”

“You’re talking about those commandos with no hair and wild eyes.”

“Yes. Nominally, they’re part of Montclair’s headquarters. There must be a couple of thousand. They keep coming and going, day and night, lugging ammo boxes, machine guns. The bottom floor of the parking garage is end to end with LXs and deuce-and-a-halfs.” LXs were lightly armored infantry vehicles, shaped like a steel cigar tube on ten big wheels, each carrying a dozen soldiers. Deuce-and-a-halfs were the venerable two-and-a-half-ton trucks used for generations by all U.S. services. Bellamy continued: “Normally, soldiers report to a new command from all over the world, men and women, except in combat arms, from every possible unit. These are all men, all white, and most came here under orders from the same duty station in Texas where our friend was killed.”

David felt a rip of fear across his gut. “I had wondered if our nasty private was murdered rather than a suicide.”

“He didn’t hang himself. David, do me a favor. Do me, do us all, a favor—see what you can dig up on a unit called the 3045th Military Intelligence Detachment (Reserve). Go back as far as you can. The skinheads all seem to belong to that unit.”

“How did you find that out?”

“Never mind. The clerk who stumbled on it would be dead if anyone knew. The problem is, I can’t do the research because they’re watching me over there. I know that sounds paranoid—”

“I have a question for you, Colonel Bellamy. Do you know anything about a super computer called CloudMaster?”

Bellamy shrugged. “Not much. Big Navy weather modeling jobbie. The U.S. plans to market them around the world. There’s one in the hotel, another in the White House.”

“That’s odd, Sir. There’s at least one other one in town requisitioned by the Army to support CON2. What I’d like to know is why they need all that computing power. You can tally a thousand votes with a pocket calculator.”

Bellamy frowned. “I kind of wondered, myself; I sorta thought they were keeping track of all the logistics—20,000 troops in the Composite Force, plus whatever Montclair is fielding, not to mention the civilian police services. You’re right. It doesn’t add up.”

They shook hands and parted company.

“Thank you,” David said, slipping a disk into the reader. No head goggles here. The image showed on a flat-screen that hung like a picture on the wall. It was slow, monotonous reading. The only splashes of color were the various unit emblems—shoulder patches, guidons, flags, decorations. He started with the numbers and ran a sort check. Should have known; there was no 3045th. He went to the Regular Army and stepped through the various Military Intelligence agencies and commands. Should have been easy, he thought. The field was narrow enough. The problem was that some units overlapped and others were blanked out for security reasons.

Even though the Cold War had been over for decades. Having scanned the active Army, he switched to the Reserves.

It got tougher.

The MI units sprawled over 48 states. Some outfits overlapped with National Guard units, others with Regular Army units. He traveled up and down alphabetic and numerical listings.

Nothing resembling the mythological unit Bellamy had asked him to search for.

Could the 3045th be a fraud?

It hardly seemed possible, but there it was.

David rose to stretch his legs.

He stepped into a lounge for coffee. As he sipped his coffee, he looked through a window that opened on a large bay office.

He spotted the librarian’s unsmiling face several dividers away. She was speaking with two military officers.

All three were nodding.

He didn’t recognize either of the two joes.

Could be public relations officers, for all he knew, maybe historians; anything was possible.

Then again, could they be following him, checking on what he was doing?

Ridiculous. You’d send plainclothes guys to do that, not guys in uniform visible from a mile away, unless—. In today’s Washington, maybe a military uniform was a good disguise.

David finished his coffee, crumpled the paper cup, and threw the cup into the empty steel waste basket with a slam. He wasn’t going to start looking over his shoulders every five seconds.

Returning to the reader in the small office, he went back over the disks he’d looked at.

There were Active, Reserve, Active Reserve, Inactive Reserve, Ready Reserve, an endless profusion.

As he searched, he discovered more categories. Under Reserve, Temporary Status, Budget Review for 1956, he found the 3045th Military Intelligence Detachment (Reserve) (Military Government).

The 3045th was one of several Reserve components, most associated with one or another major American university, whose mission was to train U.S. Army officers to take over governments in conquered countries. The supreme models were, of course, Germany and Japan, defeated in World War II, and governed directly by the Allied military forces for several years.

Officers and men of the 3045th had served with distinction during the period 1946—1949 in West Germany.

Some of the members had served with OSS during World War II, recruited from Yale, Harvard, and the like.

The unit was disbanded in 1957.

Some members moved on to MI units in related missions, but access to names and units was classified top secret with Joint Chiefs of Staff-level Need-to-Know.

What was going on here?