Black Friday Page 23

  At one point during the morning, Carroll meticulously laid out Xerox copies of every available photo of David Hudson.

  He rearranged the pictures until he liked the pattern of his collage. One photo was stained with coffee or cola. The stain looked recent. Samantha Hawes? Someone else? Or was he just getting squirrely?

  In the photographs, at least, Colonel Hudson looked like the classic, idealized military man of past decades. With his Jimmy Stewart wholesomeness, he looked the way American soldiers had been pictured in the years before Viet Nam. He had short blond hair in almost all the war photographs, a tightly set somewhat heroic jaw, a pinched, slightly uncomfortable smile, that was disarming, anyway. Colonel Hudson was clearly very sure of himself and what he was doing. He was obviously proud, fiercely proud, to be an American soldier.

  Carroll got up from the mess of official papers and wandered around the research library room.

  Okay—what did he have here?

  A leader, a natural soldier, who somewhere along the way had fucked up royally.

  Or maybe Hudson had been royally fucked?

  There were probably hundreds, maybe even thousands of men like David Hudson across the country. Some of them went berserk and had to be removed to the “screaming floors” in VA hospitals. Others sat quietly in dingy, lonely rooms and ticked slowly, like time bombs.

  Colonel David Hudson? … Was he Green Band?

  Samantha Hawes reappeared with a pot of coffee, deli sandwiches and assorted salads on a tray.

  “Getting into it, I see.”

  “Yes, it’s something, all right. Odd, and absolutely mesmerizing. Hard to figure though.”

  Carroll rubbed the palms of his hands in circles over his red-rimmed eyes. “Thanks for the food, especially the coffee. The whole file is extraordinary. Colonel Hudson especially. He’s a very complex, very strange man. He was so perfect. The perfect soldier. Then what? “What happened to him after he returned to the States?”

  Samantha Hawes sat down at the FBI researcher’s desk beside Carroll. She took a healthy bite of an overstuffed sandwich.

  “As I said, there are some really peculiar gaps in his military records. In all of their records. Believe me, I look at enough of them to know.”

  “What sort of peculiar gaps? What should be in there that isn’t?”

  “Well. There were no written reports on his special training at Fort Bragg, for example. There was nothing on his ‘Q,’ or his Ranger training. There was almost nothing on his time as a POW. Those should all be in there. Marked highly confidential if need be, but definitely there in the file.”

  “What else is missing? Would there be photostated copies or originals anywhere else?”

  “There should be more psychological profiles. More reports after he lost his arm in Viet Nam. There’s very little on that. He was tortured by the Viet Cong. He apparently still has flashbacks. All the backup data on his POW experience is conveniently missing. I’ve never seen a 211 file without a complete psych workup, either.”

  Carroll selected a second, thick roast beef sandwich half. “Maybe Hudson took them out himself?”

  “I don’t know how he could get in here, but it makes as much sense as anything else I read yesterday.”

  “Like? Please keep going, Samantha.”

  “Like the way they made him a cipher right after Viet Nam. He had very high level intelligence clearance in Southeast Asia. He was a heavy commander in Viet Nam. Why would they give him such a nothing post back in the States? The arm? Then why not write it up that way?”

  “Maybe that’s why he quit the service,” Carroll suggested. “The second-rate assignments once he got back home.”

  “Maybe. Probably, I guess. But why did they do it to him in the first place?… They were grooming David Hudson before he came home. Believe me, they had serious plans for him. You can see tracks to glory all over those files. In the early years, anyway. Hudson was a real star.”

  Carroll jotted down a few notes to himself. “What would a more predictable assignment have been? Once he was back in the States? If he was still on the fast track?”

  “At the very least, he should have gotten the Pentagon. According to his records, he was on an extremely fast track. Until the disciplinary problems, anyway. He got all these bush-league assignments before he did anything to deserve them.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. Not yet, anyway. Maybe they’ll know something at the Pentagon. That’s my next stop.”

  Samantha Hawes put out her hand to shake. “My sincere condolences. The Pentagon makes this admittedly austere place seem like a hippie commune.”

  “I’ve heard they’re a party group.” Carroll smiled back at Agent Hawes.

  “Listen,” she said. “There is something else you should know. One other person went through the 211 files. At least one other person in the past two weeks. On December fifth, actually.”

  Carroll stopped packing up and stared at Samantha Hawes. “Who?” he asked.

  “On the fifth of December, certain 211 files were ordered over to the White House. Vice-president Elliot wanted to see them. He kept the files for over six hours.”

  Chapter 71

  THE YOUNG CARROLL BOY had his marching orders, really strict orders, too.

  Six-year-old Mickey Kevin Carroll had been allowed to walk the three blocks home from CYO basketball practice since the second month of the school year.

  He had very precise orders for the walk, which his Aunt Mary K. actually made him write out inside his salt-and-pepper composition note pad. Mickey’s orders were:

  Look both ways at Churchill Avenue.

  Look both ways at Grand Street.

  Don’t talk to strangers for any reason at all.

  Don’t stop at the Fieldstone store before supper.

  If you do, it’s instant death by torture.

  Mickey Kevin was pondering the confusing mechanics of the basketball layup as he covered the long double block between Riverdale Avenue and Churchill Street. Brother Alexander Joseph had made it look kind of easy—the’ layup. Except when Mickey tried it himself, there were just too many things to remember to do, all practically at the same time. Somehow your leg, and your same arm, had to come up; then you had to throw the ball perfectly into the high, high hoop. All at the same time.

  As he rehearsed the confusing sport’s primary action, Mickey Kevin gradually became aware of footsteps growing loudly behind him.

  He finally turned and saw a man. The man was walking his way. Walking pretty fast.

  Mickey Kevin’s body tightened. TV movies and stuff like that made you scared when you were alone by yourself. Somebody was always out to get the little kid, or the baby-sitter all alone at home. It was a pretty creepy world. Some of the people out there were unbelievably creepy.

  The man walking behind him looked pretty normal, Mickey guessed, but he decided to hurry it up a little, anyway.

  Without looking too obvious, he started to take longer steps, faster steps. He walked the way he always did when he was trying to keep up with his dad.

  There weren’t any cars or anything at the corner of Grand Street. Mickey stopped according to his rules anyway. He looked both ways.

  He looked back then—and the man was really close. Really, really close.

  Mickey Kevin ran across Grand Street, and Aunt Mary K. would have killed him on the spot. His heart was pounding a little now. Really thumping out loud. Right down into his shoes, he could feel his heartbeat.

  Then Mickey Kevin did the really, really dumb thing.

  He knew it the second he did it. The instant!

  He suddenly cut through the empty lot at the Riverdale Day School.

  There were all these tricky bushes and stuff back there Everybody left empty beer cans and broken wine and liquor bottles. Mary K. had forgotten to put that on the list: don’t cut through the Riverdale Day School lot. It was too obvious for words.

  Mickey pushed the prickly bushes out of his way, and he
thought he heard the man coming through the lot behind him. Crashing through the lot.

  He wasn’t completely sure. He’d have to stop walking, to listen close enough to tell. He decided to just keep running, to run like hell.

  Full speed ahead running now. As fast as he could run with all the dark, thorny bushes, the hidden rocks and roots trying to trip him up.

  Mickey Kevin stumbled forward, his feet seeming to catch in dirt holes. He glided over slippery leaves.

  He nicked a rock and almost went over, head first. He was panting now, his breath was too loud in his own ears, his footsteps were echoing like gunshots.

  The back of his house suddenly appeared: the glowing, amber porch lights, the familiar gray outline against the much darker blackness of the night.

  He had never been so glad to see home.

  Fingers touched the side of his cheek and Mickey loudly yelled out. “Hey!”

  A stupid tree branch!

  He almost had a heart attack. Mickey then ran like a midget halfback bound for seven across the last icy patch of back lawn.

  Halfway there, his metal lunchbox popped open. It just about exploded as an orange, rolled-up papers, a thermos tumbled out.

  Mickey Kevin dropped the lunchbox.

  He crashed up the back steps and got his hand on the cold metal stormdoor.

  And then…

  Then Mickey Kevin turned. He had to look back.

  His chest was pounding nonstop now. Ka-chunk, ka-chunk, like a huge machine was inside there. Making ice or something equally noisy to hear. He had to look back.

  Nobody was there!

  Nobody was following him at all.

  Oh brother! Oh boy, oh boy.

  Nobody was behind him.

  Nobody!

  It was completely quiet in the backyard. Nothing moved. His lunchbox lay overturned in the middle of the snow. It glowed a little in the dark.

  Mickey squinted real hard.

  He was feeling pretty stupid now. He’d made it all up; he was almost sure of it… Except he still wasn’t going to go back and pick up his fallen lunchbox. Maybe in the morning. Maybe in the spring some time.

  What a little baby! Afraid of the dark! He finally disappeared inside the house.

  Mary K. was dicing vegetables with a big knife on the butcher block in the kitchen. The TV was turned on to Mary Tyler Moore.

  “How, was practice, Mickey Mouse? You look beat up. Wash, huh. Dinner’s almost ready. I said—how was your basketball practice, fella?”

  “Oh, uh … I don’t know how to do a stupid layup. It was okay.”

  Then Mickey Kevin smoothly disappeared, slid like a shadow into the downstairs bathroom.

  He didn’t wash his hands and face inside, though. He left the overhead light switched off.

  Mickey Kevin very slowly rifted a handful of lace bathroom curtain. He stared out into the dark, very creepola backyard, squinting his eyes tightly again.

  He still couldn’t see anybody.

  The stupid cat, their stupid cat Mortimer, was playing with his lunchbox. There was nobody else. Nobody had really chased him, he was suddenly sure. He couldn’t see anybody…

  He couldn’t see the real-life bogeyman watching the Carroll house from the darkened back lot.

  Chapter 72

  IT WAS JUST AFTER FTVE O’CLOCK when an Army colonel named Duriel Williamson emphatically strode into a windowless office hidden away inside the thirty-four-acre Pentagon complex.

  Carroll was already waiting in the Spartan, bureaucratic green room.

  So was a Captain Pete Hawkins, who had formally escorted Carroll from the visitor’s pickup desk, back through the dizzying grid of tightly interlocking Pentagon corridors.

  Colonel Williamson was outfitted in the full dress uniform of the U.S. Special Forces—including a blood-red beret, cocked jauntily. Colonel Williamson’s hair was short and bristling, a salt-and-pepper crew which looked appropriately stern. His voice was starched as well, but showed heavy hints of irony.

  Everything about Duriel Williamson said: no bullshit permitted here. State your business, mister.

  Captain Hawkins made the introductions in a polite if strictly formal military fashion. Hawkins was clearly a career bureaucrat, a survivor.

  “Mr. Carroll from the Defense Intelligence Agency, on special assignment by order of the President… Colonel Duriel Williamson from Special Forces. Colonel Williamson is stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Colonel Williamson was David Hudson’s immediate superior during both phases of his Special Forces training. Colonel, Mr. Carroll is here to ask you some questions.”

  The Special Forces officer put out his hand to Arch Carroll. He smiled amicably, and most of the preliminary nervousness and formalities dissolved. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Carroll. May I sit down?”

  “Please, Colonel,” Carroll said. Both men sat, followed by Captain Hawkins, who would remain in the room for the interview, a matter of protocol.

  “What is it you need to know about David?”

  Carroll’s eyes widened and rose from a short, written list of questions he’d prepared for the interview. “The two of you were on a first-name basis?” he asked Colonel Williamson.

  “Yes, I knew David Hudson fairly well. I should amend that, to be as accurate as possible. I spent some time with David Hudson. Not at or because of the Special Forces school. This was after the war. I bumped into ‘him a few times. At different veterans’ affairs, mostly. We were both active. We had a couple of beers together, a couple of times.”

  ‘Tell me about it Colonel Williamson. What was Hudson like? What was he like to have a beer with?”

  Carroll controlled his eagerness to ask more probing questions. His mind was still clouded from the long morning at the FBI, but he knew better than to pressure a Special Forces Colonel.

  “David Hudson was stiff at first. Though he tried like the devil not to be. Then he was just fine. He knew a lot about a lot of things. He was a thoughtful man, extremely bright.”

  “Colonel Hudson’s Army career seemed to disintegrate after Viet Nam. Do you have any guess why?”

  Duriel Williamson shrugged his shoulders. He appeared mildly puzzled over the question. “That’s something that’s always troubled me. All I can say is that David Hudson was a very outspoken man.”

  “Meaning, Colonel?” Carroll continued to probe carefully.

  “Meaning he was capable of making important enemies inside the Army…. He was also extremely disappointed. Bitter, I guess is the better word.”

  Bitter, Carroll thought Exactly how bitter? Carroll studied the Army colonel in silence.

  “The treatment our men got after Viet Nam made David Hudson a very angry person. I think it disillusioned him more man most of us. He considered it a national disgrace. He blamed President Nixon at first. He wrote personal letters to the President also to the Chief of Staff.”

  “Just letters? Was that the extent of his protests for the veterans?” I need somebody, Carroll thought, with the kind of bitterness that would go well beyond letters. Hell, anybody could sit down and write a crank letter—

  “Actually, no. He was involved in several of the more vocal protests.”

  “Colonel, any answers you can elaborate on would be helpful. I’ve got all night to listen.”

  “He called attention to Washington’s long string of broken promises to our veterans. All the betrayals. ‘The disposable GT was a phrase he liked to use…. Let me tell you, Mr. Carroll, that kind of high-profile activity can earn you a fast assignment to Timbuktu or to some Podunk reserve unit someplace. That would put him in the Pentagon computers too. Hudson was very active with radical veterans.”

  “What about his training at the Special Forces school? At Fort Bragg?” Carroll then asked. “Colonel, these answers of yours, as I said, please try to be thorough.”

  “Some of this was quite a while ago. It didn’t seem so important at the time. I’ll try.”

  For almost an hour, Col
onel Williamson was painstakingly thorough. He elaborately described a brilliant young Army officer, with seemingly boundless energy, with small-town American enthusiasm and talent—a model soldier. Many of the epithets Carroll had read earlier in the 211 files, he heard again from Colonel Williamson.

  “What I remember most, though,” Williamson said, “what stands out to this day about Hudson is the time at Fort Bragg. We were instructed to push and drive him. Push him to his physical and emotional limits. We redlined David Hudson at Bragg.”

  “More than other officers who were assigned to the Bragg program?”

  “Oh, absolutely. Without any doubt we pushed him more. No punches were pulled. His POW experience was used to pump up his hatred for ‘our enemies.’ Hudson was programmed to seek revenge, to hate.”

  “Who instructed you to do that, Colonel? Who told you to push Captain Hudson? Somebody obviously must have singled him out for special attention.”

  Colonel Williamson paused in his answers. His dark eyes didn’t leave Carroll’s eyes, but there was a perceptible change in his broad, severe face. Carroll couldn’t quite read the change at first.

  “I suppose you’re right. At this point, uh, after all these years…. I’m not sure I can tell you who though…. I remember we were unusually tough on him. Also that Hudson was pretty much up to it. He definitely had character to spare.”

  “But his training wasn’t typical, not the regular course? His was different somehow?”

  “Yes. David Hudson’s training at Fort Bragg was beyond the established norm, which was demanding in itself.”

  “Give me some idea, Colonel. Put me at the training camp. Can you make it come alive for me? What was the actual training like?”

  “All right, I don’t think you can imagine it, unless you actually went through it…. Up at two-thirty in the morning. Physical abuse. Drug-induced nightmares. Interrogation by the best in the Army. Pushed like a dirt farm tractor until you dropped at eight Up again at two-thirty—I mean pushed, drained. Each day was one hundred percent harder than the last. Physically and emotionally, psychologically…. The men chosen to go to Bragg were all considered top rank. Hudson had West Point and extensive combat behind him. He’d been a successful commander in Nam…. Uh, Captain Hudson was also a military assassin in Viet Nam. He was very heavy. With a good rep.”