"On your right," he said.
We went up the stairs and turned right. There was a long corridor with offices on both sides. They had hardwood doors with reeded glass windows. We found the one we wanted and went in. It was an outer chamber with a sergeant in it. It was pretty much identical to the one back at Bird. Same paint, same floor, same furniture, same temperature, same smell. Same coffee, in the same standard-issue machine. The sergeant was like plenty I had seen before too. Calm, efficient, stoic, ready to believe he ran the place all by himself, which he probably did. He was behind his desk and he looked up at us as we came in. Spent half a second deciding who we were and what we wanted.
"I guess you need the major," he said.
I nodded. He picked up his phone and buzzed through to the inner office.
"Go straight through," he said.
We went in through the inner door and I saw a desk with a guy called Swan behind it. I knew Swan pretty well. Last time I had seen him was in the Philippines, three months earlier, when he was starting a tour of duty that was scheduled to last a year.
"Don't tell me," I said. "You got here December twenty-ninth."
"Froze my ass off," he said. "All I had was Pacific gear. Took XII Corps three days to find me a winter uniform."
I wasn't surprised. Swan was short, and wide. Almost cubic. He probably owned a percentile all his own, on the quartermasters' charts.
"Your Provost Marshal here?" I said.
He shook his head. "Temporarily reassigned."
"Garber signed your orders?"
"Allegedly."
"Figured it out yet?"
"Not even close."
"Me either," I said.
He shrugged, like he was saying, Hey, the army, what can you do?
"This is Lieutenant Summer," I said.
"Special unit?" Swan said.
Summer shook her head.
"But she's cool," I said.
Swan stretched a short arm over his desk and they shook hands.
"I need to see a guy called Marshall," I said. "A major. Some kind of a XII Corps staffer."
"Is he in trouble?"
"Someone is. I'm hoping Marshall will help me figure out who. You know him?"
"Never heard of him," Swan said. "I only just got here."
"I know," I said. "December twenty-ninth."
He smiled and gave me the What can you do? shrug again and picked up his phone. I heard him ask his sergeant to find Marshall and tell him I wanted to see him at his convenience. I looked around while we waited for the response. Swan's office looked borrowed and temporary, just like mine did back in North Carolina. It had the same kind of clock on the wall. Electric, no second hand. No tick. It said ten minutes past six.
"Anything happening here?" I said.
"Not much," Swan said. "Some helicopter guy went shopping in Heidelberg and got run over. And Kramer died, of course. That's shaken things up some."
"Who's next in line?"
"Vassell, I guess."
"I met him," I said. "Wasn't impressed."
"It's a poisoned chalice. Things are changing. You should hear these guys talk. They're real gloomy."
"The status quo is not an option," I said. "That's what I'm hearing."
His phone rang. He listened for a minute and put it down.
"Marshall's not on-post," he said. "He's out on a night exercise in the countryside. Back in the morning."
Summer glanced at me. I shrugged.
"Have dinner with me," Swan said. "I'm lonely here with all these cavalry types. The O Club in an hour?"
We carried our bags over to the Visiting Officers' Quarters and found our rooms. Mine looked pretty much the same as the one Kramer had died in, except it was cleaner. It was a standard American motel layout. Presumably some hotel chain had bid for the government contract, way back when. Then they had airfreighted all the fixtures and fittings, right down to the sinks and the towel rails and the toilet bowls.
I shaved and took a shower and dressed in clean BDUs. Knocked on Summer's door fifty-five minutes into Swan's hour. She opened up. She looked clean and fresh. Behind her the room looked the same as mine, except it already smelled like a woman's. There was some kind of nice eau de toilette in the air.
The O Club occupied half of one of the ground floor wings of the main building. It was a grand space, with high ceilings and intricate plaster moldings. There was a lounge, and a bar, and a dining room. We found Swan in the bar. He was with a lieutenant colonel who was wearing Class As with a combat infantryman's badge on the coat. It was an odd thing to see, on an Armored post. His nameplate said: Simon. He introduced himself to us. I got the feeling he was going to join us for dinner. He told us he was a liaison officer, working on behalf of the infantry. He told us there was an Armored guy down in Heidelberg, doing the same job in reverse.
"Been here long?" I asked him.
"Two years," he said, which I was glad about. I needed some background, and Swan didn't have it, any more than I knew anything about Fort Bird. Then I realized it was no accident that Simon was joining the party. Swan must have figured out what I wanted and set about providing it without being asked. Swan was that kind of guy.
"Pleased to meet you, Colonel," I said, and then I nodded to Swan, like I was saying thanks. We drank cold American beers from tall frosted glasses and then we went through to the dining room. Swan had made a reservation. The steward put us at a table in the corner. I sat where I could watch the whole room at once. I didn't see anyone I knew. Vassell wasn't around. Nor was Coomer.
The menu was absolutely standard. We could have been in any O Club in the world. O Clubs aren't there to introduce you to local cuisine. They're there to make you feel at home, somewhere deep inside the army's own interpretation of America. There was a choice of fish or steak. The fish was probably European, but the steak would have been flown in across the Atlantic. Some politician in one of the ranch states would have leveraged a sweet deal with the Pentagon.
We small-talked for a spell. We bitched about pay and benefits. Talked about people we knew. We mentioned Just Cause in Panama. Lieutenant Colonel Simon told us he had been to Berlin two days previously and had gotten himself a chip of concrete from the Wall. Told us he planned to have it encased in a plastic cube. Planned to hand it on down the generations, like an heirloom.
"Do you know Major Marshall?" I asked him.
"Fairly well," he said.
"Who is he exactly?" I asked.
"Is this official?"
"Not really," I said.
"He's a planner. A strategist, basically. Long-term kind of guy. General Kramer seemed to like him. Always kept him close by, made him his intelligence officer."
"Does he have an intelligence background?"
"Not formally. But he'll have done rotations, I'm sure."
"So is he a part of the inner team? I heard Kramer and Vassell and Coomer mentioned all in the same breath, but not Marshall."
"He's on the team," Simon said. "That's for sure. But you know what flag officers are like. They need a guy, but they aren't about to admit it. So they abuse him a little. He fetches and carries and drives them around, but when push comes to shove they ask his opinion."
"Is he going to move up now Kramer's gone? Maybe into Coomer's slot?"
Simon made a face. "He should. He's an Armor fanatic to the core, like the rest of them. But nobody really knows what the hell is going to happen. Kramer dying couldn't have come at a worse time for them."