I turned back to his service career, and prepared to read about it carefully. That was my area of expertise, after all. Sansom joined the army in 1975 and left in 1992. A seventeen-year window. four years longer than mine, by virtue of starting nine years earlier and quitting five years earlier. A good era, basically, compared to most. The Vietnam paroxysm was over, and the new professional all-volunteer army was well established and still well funded. It looked like Sansom had enjoyed it. His narrative was coherent. He described basic training accurately; described Officer Candidate School well, was entertaining about his early infantry service. He was open about being ambitious. He picked up every qualification available to him and moved to the Rangers and then the nascent Delta Force. As usual he dramatized Delta's induction process, the hell weeks, the attrition, the endurance, the exhaustion. As usual he didn't criticize its incompleteness. Delta is full of guys who can stay awake for a week and walk a hundred miles and shoot the balls off a tsetse fly, but it's relatively empty of guys who can do all that and then tell you the difference between a Shiite and a trip to the latrine.
But overall I felt Sansom was pretty honest. Truth is, most Delta missions are aborted before they even start, and most that do start fail. Some guys never see action. Sansom didn't dress it up. He was straightforward about the patchy excitement, and frank about the failures. Above all he didn't mention goatherds, not even once. Most Special Forces after-action reports blame mission failures on itinerant goat tenders. Guys are infiltrated into what they claim are inhospitable and virtually uninhabited regions, and are immediately discovered by local peasants with large herds of goats. Statistically unlikely. Nutritionally unlikely, given the barren terrain. Goats have to eat something. Maybe it was true one time, but since then it has become a code. Much more palliative to say We were hunkered down and a goatherd stumbled over us than to say We screwed up. But Sansom never mentioned either the ruminant animals or their attendant agricultural personnel, which was a big point in his favour.
In fact, he didn't mention much of anything. Certainly not a whole lot in the success column. There was what must have been fairly routine stuff in West Africa, plus Panama, plus some SCUD hunting in Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991. Apart from that, nothing. Just a lot or training and standing by, which was always followed by standing down and then more training. His was maybe the first unexaggerated Special Forces memoir that I had ever seen. More than that, even. Not just unexaggerated. It was downplayed. Minimized, and dc-emphasized. Dressed down, not up.
Which was interesting.
EIGHTEEN
I TOOK A LOT OF CARE GETTING BACK TO THE COFFEE SHOP ON Eighth. Our principal brought a whole crew. And by now they all knew roughly what I looked like. The Radio Shack guy had told me how pictures and video could be phoned through from one person to another. For my part I had no idea what the opposition looked like, but if their principal had been forced to hire guys in nice suits as local camouflage, then his own crew probably looked somewhat different themselves. Otherwise, no point. I saw lots of different-looking people. Maybe a couple hundred thousand. You always do, in New York City. But none of them showed any interest in me. None of them stayed with me. Not that I made it easy. I took the 4 train to Grand Central, walked two circuits through the crowds, took the shuttle to Times Square, walked a long and illogical loop from there to Ninth Avenue, and came on the diner from the west, straight past the 14th Precinct.
Jacob Mark was already inside.
He was in a back booth, cleaned up, hair brushed, wearing dark pants and a white shirt and a navy windbreaker. He could have had off duty cop tattooed across his forehead. He looked unhappy but not frightened. I slid in opposite him and sat sideways, so I could watch the street through the windows.
'Did you talk to Peter?' I asked him. He shook his head.
'But?'
'I think he's OK.'
'You think or you know?'
He didn't answer, because the waitress came by. The same woman from the morning. I was too hungry to be sensitive about whether or not Jake was going to eat. I ordered a big platter, tuna salad with eggs and a bunch of other stuff. Plus coffee to drink. Jake followed my lead and got a grilled cheese sandwich and water.
I said, 'Tell me what happened.'
He said, 'The campus cops helped me out. They were happy to. Peter's a football star. He wasn't home. So they rousted his buddies and got the story. Turns out Peter is away somewhere with a woman.'
'Where?'
'We don't know.'
'What woman?'
'A girl from a bar. Peter and the guys were out four nights ago. The girl was in the place. Peter left with her.'
I said nothing.
Jake said, 'What?'
I asked, 'Who picked up who?'
He nodded. 'This is what makes me feel OK. He did all the work. His buddies said it was a four-hour project. He had to put everything into it. Like a championship game, the guys said. So it wasn't Mata Hari or anything.'
'Description?'
'A total babe. And these are jocks talking, so they mean it. A little older, but not much. Maybe twenty-five or six. You're a college senior, that's an irresistible challenge, right there.'
'Name?'
Jake shook his head. 'The others kept their distance. It's an etiquette thing.'
'Their regular place?'
'On their circuit.'
'Hooker? Decoy?'
'No way. These guys get around. They ain't dumb. They can tell. And Peter did all the work, anyway. Four hours, everything he had ever learned.'
'It would have been over in four minutes if she had wanted it to be.'
Jake nodded again. 'Believe me, I've been through it a hundred times. Any funny business, an hour would have been enough to make it look kosher. Two, tops. Nobody would stretch it to four. So it's OK. More than OK, from Peter's point of view. Four days with a total babe? What were you doing when you were twenty- two?'
'I hear you,' I said. When I was twenty-two I had the same kinds of priorities. Although a four-day relationship would have seemed long to me. Practically like engagement, or marriage.
Jake said, 'But?'
'Susan was delayed four hours on the Turnpike. I'm wondering what kind of a deadline could have passed, to make a mother feel like killing herself.'
'Peter's OK. Don't worry about it. He'll be home soon, weak at the knees but happy.'
I said nothing more. The waitress came by with the food. It looked pretty good, and there was a lot of it. Jake asked, 'Did the private guys find you?'
I nodded and told him the story between forkfuls of tuna. He said, 'They knew your name? That's not good.'
'Not ideal, no. And they knew I talked to Susan on the train.'
'How?'
'They're ex-cops. They've still got friends on the job. No other explanation.'
'Lee and Docherty?'
'Maybe. Or maybe some day guy who came in and read the file.'
'And they took your picture? That's not good, either.'
'Not ideal,' I said again.
'Any sign of this other crew they were talking about?' he asked.
I checked the window and said, 'So far, nothing.'
'What else?'
'John Sansom isn't exaggerating about his career. He seems to have done nothing very special. And that kind of a claim isn't really worth refuting.'
'Dead end, then.'
'Maybe not,' I said. 'He was a major. That's one automatic promotion plus two on merit. He must have done something they liked. I was a major too. I know how it works.'
'What did you do that they liked?'
'Something they regretted later, probably.'
'Length of service,' Jake said. 'You stick around, you get promoted.'
I shook my head. 'That's not how it works. Plus this guy won three of the top four medals available to him, one of them twice. So he must have done something special. Four somethings, in fact.'