The Artifact Read online

  Andrea had been gazing up at the client booth throughout Duncan’s monologue, after which she thrust her right fist in the air, middle finger extended, grabbed her cane and limped off the set.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Georgetown, DC

  October 2004

  A northeast wind drove the chill rain against the windshields of vehicles crawling along Virginia Avenue, their wipers swatting fat droplets as pedestrians with upturned collars, newspapers or briefcases overhead scurried along sidewalks toward shelter.

  Andrea ignored the pelting cloudburst, her belted trench coat half-buttoned, its belt and tails flapping around her plodding cane, the sudden storm drenching her windswept hair and menacing features. She had given up on the futility of hailing a taxi several blocks back, trudging on among early commuters scampering for subway and buses, her expression dour and purposeful, her lopsided gait parting oncoming government workers as though she was swinging a machete. Her umbrage was not directed at Duncan for a change, but at her own mindless commission of the cardinal sin of broadcasting. In one fell swoop she had given him carte blanche to terminate her contract for cause. She had established an exclusive lead for NNC on the artifact story with her

  initial discovery and dogged persistence. Then she had severed the resource support the network

  had provided. What in blazes had she been thinking?

  No network, not even a college radio station would trust her now, regardless of her reputation and lead on her tenuous story. Her only option for reinstatement was to find the soldiers who stole the artifacts and learn why the army, the entire U.S. government, apparently, was trying to keep it under wraps. It had to be big. Big and deadly. Who, where, what? If she could answer those questions, she could write her ticket at any news org in the country. Could she do it alone? How could she get help? Funding for travel, research, professional investigators to find a wedge she could use to pry this story loose.

  Her Georgetown condo had been furnished with less thought than her office. It often occurred to her that the one-bedroom living space reflected her personality about as much as the hotel rooms she probably slept in more nights than she did here.

  Andrea locked the door behind her, dropped her carry-on bag on the floor and threw the cane in a corner, supporting her weight on the backs of chairs and a sideboard on her way to the kitchen. She twisted the cap off a full quart of Smirnoff, grabbed it by the neck, and slugged down an inch of the transparent liquid straight from the bottle. She stood there clutching the stainless steel rim of the sink, her eyes fixed on the gaping maw of the garbage disposal, waiting for the raw liquor to begin its pleasant work. After several moments, she shrugged out of her coat, tossed it on a chair and filled a tumbler with ice. She clutched both glass and bottle to her breast and limped back to the living room where she slumped down on the couch.

  It was eight forty-five in the evening. Two hours after she had blatantly disobeyed Duncan’s orders. She had stopped at a dingy pub on her way home, calling Dick Nuzzo from her cell phone. Miss Rodgers was polite, but cool this time. Mr. Nuzzo was unavailable. She took Andrea’s home number and would tell him that Andrea had called, but could not promise when he could get back to her.

  “How in hell did I ever get into this?” she wondered. During the past twenty-three years she had earned the grudging respect of her peers as one of the most dynamic investigative correspondents in the country, building a strong following among regular viewers of TV news. Ornery, ambitious, smarter than ninety percent of the largely empty, talking blond heads in the business, she had violated everyone’s trust by making a conscious, unauthorized statement on the air. An announcement expressly forbidden by management. Not only would this egregious utterance make her unreliable, blackballing her forever within the industry, it would undermine the validity of the Arab theft story she had worked so hard to develop. For what? Goaded by that snot-nosed, little creep Duncan, she had done the right thing for the station and the investigation. Not for herself. In retrospect, not for the story, either. She poured more of the clear liquid over the ice in her glass and drank it.

  “If you’re so damned smart,” she chided herself, “why do you act so stupid?” A burgeoning career of sacrifice and dedication snuffed out in less than a minute.

  Andrea Madigan was not the typically gorgeous female newscaster of the early 21st century, nor did she make an effort to maximize her best features, even in her youth. Although she could project a charming and provocative aura when she chose, she was not a head turner. Yet she had always possessed an indefinable quality that set her apart, that attracted men and beguiled women.

  The only child of a philandering, uncommunicative father who had been a successful New York investment broker and a compulsive mother who managed to conceal her alcoholism to become one of the highest paid female advertising executives in Manhattan concurrent with the ascendancy of Mary Wells in the ‘70’s, Andrea Madigan came naturally to the sidelines as a dispassionate witness. How, she had often wondered, had they ever found the time and inclination

  to conceive a child. It was one of the unsolved mysteries of the universe.

  If they were not doting parents, they were conscientious and generous regarding her welfare: the best nannies, the most prestigious pre-school, grade and prep schools, all right in the heart of The City. When Andrea eschewed team sports at an early age, her parents provided tennis, equestrian, and gymnastic lessons in an effort to stimulate her interest in some physical, extracurricular activity to balance her avid devotion to learning. Of all these sports, she became as obsessive to the discipline and rigorous training required for gymnastics as she was to her schoolwork, mastering the complex routines on the single and parallel bars on which she twirled, spiraled and flipped to her extreme gratification. During her mid-teens she developed long, supple limbs, and the sinewy muscles of a dedicated athlete. Even a perverse life-style during the past twenty-five adult years had not thickened the narrow waist, spread the feminine hips or caused her small breasts to sag appreciably.

  Throughout her childhood and well into her teen years, Andrea had been content to drift along with the few friends who could stand or understand her inherent cynicism. She had become a practiced observer of people and events, probing for the reality behind them, seeking causal factors, analyzing, judging what she perceived as truth.

  At the age of twelve, that familial and self-imposed isolation made her prey to her mother’s youngest brother, a twenty-seven year old dilettante/NYU student enlisted as Andrea’s baby-sitter in her family’s East Side co-op. Uncle Jim had displayed a normal, avuncular affection for her since she had been a child, and his eventual sexual overtures were so casual that they not only stimulated her innate curiosity, but filled the void of affection she had seldom acknowledged. After their first awkward months at this new relationship, Andrea achieved her first screaming orgasm when Jim astonished and enlightened her to the incredible ecstasy of cunnilingus. She anticipated his visits with relish thereafter and became an enthusiastic, inventive participant in their couplings.

  When she grew older and his babysitting was no longer required, their weekly assignations moved to Jim’s West Side apartment. In time, he was able to convince her to extend her sexual prowess to several friends and NYU faculty of both genders. Two years before she left for college at the age of seventeen, Andrea became incensed at a chance remark from one of her partners indicating that Uncle Jim was collecting various kinds of compensation for her services. Confronted with his duplicity, the significance of Jim’s retort was so obvious to her that it became her ruling principle: “Hey, Andy Babe, what are friends for?” he said. “Use ‘em!”

  Although her twenty-three year climb to success in the broadcast news industry had brought her a degree of fame and fortune, the pace and tenor of that ascendancy had not been conducive to romantic relationships. Having only distain for any endeavor remotely resembling distaff duties, she claimed that even the thought of bearing and raisi
ng ‘rug rats’ was enough to give her hives. On the several occasions when she had found a man whose combined intellect, status and sexual prowess matched her own, the very attribute of ambition that was part of their attraction for one another eventually forced them apart. Her most recent romantic liaison had occurred over a year ago with the billionaire founder of a Silicon Valley corporation almost a decade her junior. Although compatible on virtually every facet of their personalities, they simply could not find time to be with one another.

  The rain had stopped outside her Georgetown condo. The quart bottle stood almost empty on the low side table, the ceramic ashtray beside it heaped with cigarette butts in the illumination of the streetlight outside her living room window. Andrea stood up, knocking the glass tumbler to the carpet as she lurched toward the bedroom and fell on top of the wide double bed in complete darkness, fully clothed. “All down the sink,” she mumbled into her pillow. Her eyes filled as she turned on her side, brought her knees up to the fetal position, her shoulders heaving to the uncontrollable sobs that racked her body.

  * * * * * *

  The phone rang for several minutes before she was sufficiently awake to grope for the receiver.

  Sammy sounded dejected. “Sorry about yesterday.”

  “Dad always said I was my own worst enemy.”

  “Now what?”

  “The Lone Ranger, I guess.”

  “Unng. Me Tonto, Keemosabee.”

  Andrea brightened despite her demurral. “I appreciate that, Sam. But think real hard before you throw your career away.”

  “I did. If we blow it and I can’t snap back in the wonderful broadcast biz, I’ll switch to a kinder, gentler industry. If we pull this off, I’ll ride your coattails to fame and riches.”

  The intake of breath and catch in her voice was audible. “Sam, I....”

  “Think I could stay back at NNC working for Duncan while you’re out there alone in the trenches? Like I said, what’s next?”

  “You can’t work on this in the office or they’ll can you, too.”

  “I duped everything we need. Put all your stuff on CD-ROM, left only the original data on the company system, nothing we produced on our own.”

  Andrea laughed.

  “I’ll quit today in ostensible protest at your firing.”

  “My shining knight.”

  “Chivalry lives.”

  “Sammy, I don’t have a job, an organization to carry the story.” Still reclining on her bed, she squeezed her eyes shut, throwing a forearm over them. “It may be dead. Don’t resign.”

  “After spending half the night sifting through a couple a hundred records?”

  “Sam, please....”

  “If you crack this thing,” he persisted, “every news org in the country will crawl on their knees to sign you up.”

  Andrea sat up on the bed, her head pounding, her stomach threatening to regurgitate last night’s booze. “I don’t know what’s next. Sergeant Stubbs, I guess.”

  “I found some interesting stuff on casualties,” Sammy told her.

  “I thought all the 82nd Webs were down.”

  “Brew some coffee. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  Sammy perched on the edge of the couch in a green mock turtleneck and tan wide-whale corduroys next to Andrea, dressed a long-sleeved pink cashmere sweater and jeans.

  “Did you get any closer to the Second Platoon Bravo casualties?” she asked him.

  He reached for the Tyvek envelop on the low cocktail table before them and extracted three sheets of paper that were copies of a newspaper. “Sometimes the most obvious places...like the archives of The Fort Bragg Advocate News.”

  Andrea snatched the copies from his hand. “Stop patting yourself on the back.” She skimmed down the article Sammy had highlighted, reading aloud from the top sheet. “Heavy losses taken by Third Battalion, 367 Regiment in Fallujah in April.” She continued reading the details to herself, then aloud again from the second sheet. “Hey! Name, rank, MOS, platoon!”

  “Notice anything?”

  “What?”

  Sammy extracted a page from the ones in her hand containing the casualties listed alphabetically by name. “The obituaries list four 2nd Platoon KIA’s: Lieutenant Mitchell, a Corporal Bingham, Private Delsisto, and a Sergeant Conté. When I compared the obits to the

  statistical summaries, they didn’t add up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sam turned the sheet of paper to reveal his handwritten table on the back.

  Apr.’03 3rd Batt. ‘B’ Co. 2nd Pltn. All 3rd Batt. Cos.* All US Troops

  KIA 9 (4%) 4 (7%) 1 (2.0%) 4,486 (2.7%)

  Wounded 49 (20%) 12 (21%) 11 (17%) 32,226** (19.5%)

  MIA 4 (2%) 3 (5%) .5 (0.0%) 89 (.05%)

  Unscathed 178 (74%) 38 (67%) 49 (79%) 128,199 (78%)

  TOTALS 240 (100%) 57 (100%) 63 (100%) 165,000 (100%)

  *Average.

  ** Plus 50,000 mental health problems.

  “Compare Second Platoon casualties and parent unit summaries from the Internet and Advocate News. The stats show seven percent Second Platoon killed, compared to 4% for Company ‘B’ they’re part of, 2% for all other 3rd Battalion Companies, and 2.7% for all US troops. The high stats for 2nd Platoon, of course, bump 3rd Battalion and ‘B’ Company numbers that are still significantly lower than their own.”

  “Double men killed in action and ten times the total MIAs.”

  “Three soldiers unaccounted for.” Sammy read aloud the names of Corporal Bogosian, PFC Palagi and Specialist Alvarez.

  “Second Platoon troopers listed as dead or missing in action, maybe the artifact thieves we’re trying to find.”

  “How can we use this?” Sammy wondered. “The KIAs will be in caskets, delivered to next of kin, guys are supposed to be missing in action, captured or dead.”

  “Congress,” she said. “The Senate Armed Forces Committee. A TV net or major daily; The

  Washington Post.”

  “I don’t think we’re ready yet. A news outlet could dismiss or run with it, and we’d lose control. If we go public now, the army might be able to prove statistical error, or just verify the data we couldn’t dispute.”

  A frowned puckered Andrea’s forehead as she squinted at the sheets of paper spread out on the table. “Troopers listed as deceased or missing were excluded from the MI artifact theft inquiry, certainly not suspects, nobody looking for them.”

  “The only way we’re going to find these guys is tag every man on the Second Platoon roster, confirm who’s alive or dead, and circumstances for guys gone missing. Then blow the whistle.”

  “Track and interview what, sixty, seventy soldiers in and associated with the Second? I’d be in my box before I interviewed half those guys.”

  “Your scheduled for surgery this Thursday, right?”

  “Oh, Sam, this neck surgery seems like such a shot in the dark.”

  “What are your options?”

  “There’s so much to do. I can’t afford to laze around on this forever. Read story and finances.”

  “After your surgery and Lawton gives you the green light.”

  “Don’t complicate my life, pal.”

  Sammy’s compressed lips reflected his determination. “I’ll take you in to get prepped on Wednesday. Ten a.m. Thursday you’re on the table. No argument.”

  Andrea sighed in resignation with the knowledge that Sammy was right.

  “Narrow it down to what, thirty soldiers in one of those aviation platoons,” she mused. “That’s a lot of guys to stay in agreement on a couple of hundred million, billion dollar treasure.”

  “Could mean serious dissention. Especially if Mitchell was killed during Dark Dawn, the

  entire platoon on their own until his replacement showed up.”

  “Which wasn’t until they regrouped at Fallujah, according to Brooks.”

  “Makes Mitchell’s demise pretty convenient,” Sammy said.

  Andrea turned on the couch t
o face him. “Fragging?”

  “Killing Mitchell, some other soldier because they wouldn’t go along with the theft?”

  Sammy shook his head. “I’d hate to think it.”

  “Maybe that’s the reason for the cover-up. The public would go bonkers if something like that came out.”

  “Like the Pentagon covered up the friendly fire that killed pro football player Pat Tillman in Afghanistan.”

  Andrea leaned back, crossing her arms across her chest. “Why do I have the unequivocal feeling that Callaghan is in this up to his steely blue eyes? Who is he covering for? The government? The thieves? Why?”

  “Risking everything, his entire army career, promotion to general officer--to cover up for half a dozen grunts doesn’t make sense.”

  “Unless he was in on the theft,” Andrea persisted. “We know his buddy Geoff flew him all over the area.”

  “If he’s shielding this for some higher-ups,” Sammy said, “that could account for his fast-track promotion from bird colonel to general.”

  “A reward for covering up for the government, some agency in it.”

  “To what end?” Andrea asked. “The government wouldn’t hide the treasure, they’d return it. We’re the bad guys to half the world as it is.”

  “Maybe. Or some administration clique is keeping it under wraps to cash in on it.”

  * * * * * *

  The sixth-floor newsrooms and studios were brightly lit and bustling as usual, but the executive offices and staff cubicles on the eighth floor of Watergate Towers occupied by NNC on Massachusetts Avenue in downtown Washington had been vacated hours ago; the cleaning crew had come and gone; and with the exception of dimly lit hallways and a single suite, the entire floor was suffused in darkness.

  Rand Duncan sat on the edge of the circular couch, behind the locked door of his corner office, the cuffs of his shirtsleeves buttoned, necktie snug to the collar, a nearby table lamp casting the only light on the lines of white powder neatly arranged on the glass top of the low table before him. He inserted the crisp, tightly-rolled hundred dollar bill into a nostril, bent forward, sniffed up all three lines in rapid succession, then leaned back into the soft pillows behind him, eyes closed, his brow damp with perspiration.