‘OK,’ he said. He took one more look at the building with the old restaurant at its base and then he crossed the street diagonally through the traffic and turned left on to Madison Avenue. I went the other way, just as far as the Four Seasons’ back door. The Four Seasons’ back door was right there on 58th Street. It was a block-through building. Which meant its front door was on 57th Street. At 57 East 57th, to be precise. I would be inside about four minutes ahead of Springfield. I would know if he had brought a crew. I would see whether anyone came in before him, or with him, or after him. I walked through to the lobby from the rear and took off my hat and my glasses and stood in a quiet corner and waited.
Springfield came in alone, right on time, which was four minutes later. No time for hurried deployment out on the street. No time for conversation. Probably no time even for a cell phone call. Most people slow their walk a little, dialling and talking.
There was a guy in formal morning dress near the door. A black tail coat, and a silver tie. Not a concierge, not a bell captain. Some kind of a greeter, although his title was probably much grander. He started towards Springfield and Springfield glanced at him once and the guy ducked away like he had been slapped. Springfield had that kind of a face.
He paused a moment and got his bearings and headed for the tea room, where I had once met the Hoths. I stayed in my corner and watched the street door. There was no back-up. No plain sedans stopped outside. I gave it ten minutes, and then added two more, just in case. Nothing happened. Just the regular ebb and flow of a high-end city hotel. Rich people came, rich people went. Poor people scurried around and did things for them.
I walked into the tea room and found Springfield in the same chair that Lila Hoth had used. The same dignified old waiter was on duty. He came over. Springfield asked for mineral water. I asked for coffee. The waiter nodded imperceptibly and went away again.
Springfield said, ‘You met the Hoths here, twice.’
I said, ‘Once at this exact table.’
‘Which is technically a problem. Associating with them in any way at all could be classed as a felony.’
‘Because?’
‘Because of the Patriot Act.’
‘Who are the Hoths, exactly?’
‘And running across the subway tracks was also a felony. You could get up to five years in the state pen for that, technically. So they tell me.’
‘I also shot four federal agents with darts.’
‘No one cares about them.’
‘Who are the Hoths?’
‘I can’t volunteer information.’
‘So why are we here?’
‘You help us, we’ll help you.’
‘How can you help me?’
‘We can make all your felonies disappear.’
‘And how can I help you?’
‘You can help us find what we lost.’
‘The memory stick?’
Springfield nodded. The waiter came back with his tray. Mineral water, and coffee. He arranged things carefully on the table and backed away.
I said, ‘I don’t know where the memory stick is.’
‘I’m sure you don’t. But you got as close to Susan Mark as anyone. And she left the Pentagon with it, and it isn’t in her house or her car or anywhere else she ever went. So we’re hoping you saw something. Maybe it didn’t mean anything to you, but it might to us.’
‘I saw her shoot herself. That was about all.’
‘There must have been more.’
‘You had your chief of staff on the train. What did he see?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What was on the memory stick?’
‘I can’t volunteer information.’
‘Then I can’t help you.’
‘Why do you need to know?’
I said, ‘I like to know at least the basic shape of the trouble I’m about to get myself into.’
‘Then you should ask yourself a question.’
‘What question?’
‘The one you haven’t asked yet, and the one you should have, right at the start. The key question, you dumbass.’
‘What is this? A contest? NCOs against officers?’
‘That battle was over long ago.’
So I spooled backward to the beginning, looking for the question I had never asked. The beginning was the 6 train, and passenger number four, on the right side of the car, alone on her eight-person bench, white, in her forties, plain, black hair, black clothes, black bag. Susan Mark, citizen, ex-wife, mother, sister, adoptee, resident of Annandale, Virginia.
Susan Mark, civilian worker at the Pentagon.
I asked, ‘What exactly was her job?’
SIXTY-ONE
Springfield took a long drink of water and then smiled briefly and said, ‘Slow, but you got there in the end.’
‘So what was her job?’
‘She was a systems administrator with responsibility for a certain amount of information technology.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘It means she knew a bunch of master passwords for the computers.’
‘Which computers?’
‘Not the important ones. She couldn’t launch missiles or anything. But obviously she was authorized for HRC records. And some of the archives.’
‘But not the Delta archives, right? They’re in North Carolina. At Fort Bragg. Not the Pentagon.’
‘Computers are networked. Everything is everywhere and nowhere now.’
‘And she had access?’
‘Human error.’
‘What?’
‘There was a measure of human error.’
‘A measure?’
‘There are a lot of systems administrators. They share common problems. They help each other. They have their own chat room, and their own message board. Apparently there was a defective line of code which made individual passwords less opaque than they should have been. So there was some leakage. We think they knew all about it, actually, but they liked it that way. One person could get in and help another person with minimum fuss. Even if the code had been correct, they would probably have deleted it.’
I remembered Jacob Mark saying: She was good with computers.
I said, ‘So she had access to Delta’s archives?’
Springfield just nodded.
I said, ‘But you and Sansom quit five years before I did. Nothing was computerized back then. Certainly not the archives.’
‘Times change,’ Springfield said. ‘The U.S. Army as we know it is about ninety years old. We’ve got ninety years’ worth of crap all built up. Rusty old weapons that somebody’s grandfather brought back as souvenirs, captured flags and uniforms all mouldering away, you name it. Plus literally thousands and thousands of tons of paper. Maybe millions of tons. It’s a practical problem. Fire risk, mice, real estate.’
‘So?’
‘So they’ve been cleaning house for the last ten years. The artefacts are either sent to museums or trashed, and the documents are scanned and preserved on computers.’
I nodded. ‘And Susan Mark got in and copied one.’
‘More than copied one,’ Springfield said. ‘She extracted one. Transferred it to an external drive, and then deleted the original.’
‘The external drive being the memory stick?’
Springfield nodded. ‘And we don’t know where it is.’
‘Why her?’
‘Because she fit the bill. The relevant part of the archive was traced through the medal award. HRC people keep the medal records. Like you said. She was the systems administrator. And she was vulnerable through her son.’
‘Why did she delete the original?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It must have increased the risk.’
‘Significantly.’
‘What was the document?’
‘I can’t volunteer information.’
‘When was it dug out of the box room and scanned?’
‘A little over three m
onths ago. It’s a slow process. Ten years into the programme and they’re only up to the early 1980s.’
‘Who does the work?’
‘There’s a specialist staff.’
‘With a leak. The Hoths were over here more or less immediately.’
‘Evidently.’
‘Do you know who it was?’
‘Steps are being taken.’
‘What was the document?’
‘I can’t volunteer information.’
‘But it was a big file.’
‘Big enough.’
‘And the Hoths want it.’
‘I think that’s clear.’
‘Why do they want it?’
‘I can’t volunteer information.’
‘You say that a lot.’
‘I mean it a lot.’
‘Who are the Hoths?’
He just smiled and made a circular once again gesture with his hand. I can’t volunteer information. A great NCO’s answer. Four words, the third of which was perhaps the most significant.
I said, ‘You could ask me questions. I could volunteer guesses. You could comment on them.’
He said, ‘Who do you think the Hoths are?’
‘I think they’re native Afghans.’
He said, ‘Go on.’
‘That’s not much of a comment.’
‘Go on.’
‘Probably Taliban or al-Qaeda sympathizers, or operatives, or flunkies.’
No reaction.
‘Al-Qaeda,’ I said. ‘The Taliban mostly stay home.’
‘Go on.’
‘Operatives,’ I said.
No reaction.
‘Leaders?’
‘Go on.’
‘Al-Qaeda is using women leaders?’
‘They’re using whatever works.’
‘Doesn’t seem plausible.’
‘That’s what they want us to think. They want us searching for men that don’t exist.’
I said nothing.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘OK, the one who calls herself Svetlana fought with the mujahideen and knew you captured the VAL rifle from Grigori Hoth. They used Hoth’s name and his story to get sympathy over here.’
‘Because?’
‘Because now al-Qaeda wants documentary proof of whatever else it was that you guys were doing that night.’
‘Go on.’
‘Which Sansom got a big medal for. So it must have looked pretty good, once upon a time, way back when. But now you’re worried about exposure. So I’m assuming it wouldn’t look so good any more.’
‘Go on.’
‘Sansom is miserable, but the government has got its panties in a wad, too. So it’s both personal and political.’
‘Go on.’
‘Did you get a medal that night?’
‘The Superior Service Medal.’
‘Which comes directly from the Secretary of Defense.’
Springfield nodded. ‘A nice little bauble, for a lowly sergeant.’
‘So the trip was more political than military.’
‘Obviously. We weren’t officially at war with anyone at the time.’
‘You know the Hoths killed four people, and probably Susan Mark’s son too, right?’
‘We don’t know it. But we suspect it.’
‘So why haven’t you busted them?’
‘I work security for a congressman. I can’t bust anyone.’
‘Those feds could.’
‘Those feds work in mysterious ways. Apparently they consider the Hoths to be A-grade enemy combatants, and a very significant target, and extremely dangerous, but not currently operational.’
‘Which means what?’
‘Which means that right now there’s more to be gained by leaving them in place.’
‘Which actually means they can’t find them.’
‘Of course.’
‘You happy about that?’
‘The Hoths don’t have the memory stick, or they wouldn’t still be looking for it. So I don’t really care either way.’
‘I think you should,’ I said.
‘You think that’s their place? Where you were?’
‘This block or the next.’
‘I think this one,’ he said. ‘Those feds searched their hotel suite. While they were out.’
‘Lila told me.’
‘They had shopping bags. Like window dressing. To make the place look right.’
‘I saw them.’
‘Two from Bergdorf Goodman, and two from Tiffany. Those stores are close together, about a block from those old buildings. If their base was on the block east of Park, they’d have gone to Bloomingdales instead. Because they weren’t really shopping. They just wanted accessories in their suite, to fool people.’
‘Good point,’ I said.
‘Don’t go looking for the Hoths,’ Springfield said.
‘You worried about me now?’
‘You could lose two ways around. They’re going to think the same as us, that even if you don’t have the stick, then somehow you know where it went. And they might be even more vicious and persuasive than we are.’
‘And?’