Official Privilege Page 2

  Yeoman Second Class Jackson stuck his head around the corner of his anteroom by the front door. Jackson was the shop’s admin clerk and general factotum.

  “The element did a Three Mile Island when I plugged it in this morning, Cap’n. We’re sharing with Six-sixteen next door.”

  Summerfield shook his head. “When I have to go to the bubbleheads to get my goddamn coffee, it is a shitty day,” he grumbled.

  Dan grinned as Summerfield, a dedicated surface ship sailor, headed next door to bum some coffee from the submariners who ran the Navy’s nuclear and ocean policy shop. As Dan looked around the cramped office, with its four desks crammed into a space designed in World War II for one officer, the phone started ringing in Jackson’s cubbyhole. The day beginneth, he thought, sitting down to his own in-basket, where a few hundred State Department overnight cables were piled for his personal reading enjoyment. But Jackson was calling his name.

  “Yeah, who?”

  “Front office, Commander. EA says that oh-six B requests the pleasure of your company, along with Six fourteen himself when he gets back with his coffee.”

  “Roger that,” muttered Collins. OP-06B. The Assistant Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans, Pol icy, and Operations. The deputy dog: a senior aviator rear admiral whose main preoccupation seemed to be I the fanging of various officers on the OP-06 staff for incomplete, tardy, or otherwise objectionable staff work. A summons from Rear Admiral Carson at 0735 was not a terrific way to start even a nice day, much less a gray one. As he slipped into his service dress blues jacket with its three gold stripes, he tried to remember which of his staffing packages might have made it up to the deputy presence. He grabbed his staff officer’s notebook and went out the door, then turned right, heading I up the polished tile corridor toward the front office. He f stopped by the OP-616 shop to let his branch head know that he had been summoned by the deputy. Sum merfield was standing in the doorway of Captain Ferring’s office, but he waved him off like a friendly uncle.

  “You’re a big action officer now, Dan,” he said.

  “Give his lordship a tug on your forelock and my sincerest respects. And be forthright: Admit right away that it’s all your fault, whatever it is. It will save you lots of time.”

  “Even if you chopped it, Cap’n?”

  “Especially if I chopped it, Dan. Oh-six B knows full well that the damage is done by the AOs and not us poor, overworked branch heads. The roaches leave any sugar in that box, John?”

  Dan laughed and headed down the E-ring corridor.

  Summerfield had three years to go before mandatory retirement, unless he made flag. In general, though, he didn’t appear to sweat 06B, or anyone else, for that matter. Dan was in a different boat: He had sixteen years in the Navy, which meant he had four to go even to qualify for his government pension. At thirty-seven, Dan Collins was beginning to show the lines and traces of his career as a line officer in the surface-ship Navy.

  He was an even six feet tall, slender of frame and face, with a shock of unruly black hair, bright blue eyes, an almost-too-long, straight nose, and prominent cheekbones.

  He had high, arching eyebrows that gave his face a perpetual expression of mild surprise, and he walked with a slightly stooping gait born of years of ducking through the low overheads in the destroyer force. His slender build was deceptive: His athletic passion was rowing an elderly George Pocock single along the middle reaches of the Potomac River just upstream of the Key Bridge. He could do the Navy’s annual PT test and two-mile run without breaking a sweat.

  The office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans, Policy, and Operations, otherwise known within the headquarters staff as OP-06, was a spacious corner E-ring suite befitting a three-star admiral. It was located on one corner of the five-sided building, of … which the E-ring was the outer wall. The entire outside l| wall of the office was given over to a line of ten-foot high windows that overlooked the Pentagon helipad area and Arlington National Cemetery across the nearby highway. The DCNO and ADCNO’s offices were separated by a central reception area, wherein the executive assistant, Capt. J. Robinson Manning, held sway over a staff of two yeoman chief petty officers, two junior yeoman petty officers, and a lieutenant who was the DCNO’s personal aide. The walls on either side of the reception area were covered with several rows of official Navy portraits of former DCNOs and ADCNOs. Near the front door, there were a large couch and two upholstered chairs, where miscreants summoned into the presence of either 06 or 06B could sit and perspire.

  Manning, the EA, was an imperious officer whom many officers on the staff called J.R. behind his back.

  Well behind his back, Dan remembered. Manning sat stiffly erect behind the desk nearest to the office of Vice Admiral Layman, the DCNO. His desk looked like a command console, equipped with a standard multiline telephone, a STU-III encrypted telephone, and the preaddressed telephone system that networked all the other executive assistants on both the Navy headquarters staff and also in the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who happened to be a navy admiral.

  Dan knew the EA network was routinely used to short-circuit the naval bureaucracy at the three-and four-star levels.

  Manning peered briefly over a set of reading glasses as Dan came in.

  “Ah. Commander Collins. Please have a seat.”

  “Morning, sir,” Dan replied, but he remained standing, waiting by one of the chairs. He had discovered that it was too hard to get his lanky frame in and out of the ancient leather chairs. The door to the ADCNO’s office was closed, which was a bad omen. Routine staff business between an action officer and 06B would have involved his knocking once, sticking his head through the open door, getting yelled at, saying, “Yes, sir” a few times, and withdrawing. A closed door meant that some serious thinking was being shared with somebody. That was 06B’s favorite euphemism: Have Commander X come see me—I want to share my thinking with him.

  Dan also knew better than to ask the executive assistant why he had been summoned. Manning had a standard reply to that question: a long, rebuking look framed in silence that made it clear that when the admirals in their power and glory resplendent were ready to enlighten the summonee, they would do so.

  While the clerical staff muttered through their paperwork and morning phone calls and Manning dealt with a crisis involving staff cars, Dan inspected the portrait gallery for the umpteenth time. This was his second tour of duty in Washington on the Navy headquarters, or Opnav, staff, and also his second tour of duty in OP06, the Navy’s political and diplomatic staff directorate.

  There were five divisions in OP-06: Strategy (OP-60), Politico-Military (OP-61), Technology Transfer (OP-62), Foreign Military Sales (OP-63), and Fleet Operations (OP-64). Dan’s first tour as a junior staff officer in OP60, from 1990 to 1991, had been professionally stimulating.

  This one in OP-61 had been less so, and now he was beginning to tire of it as he found himself plowing through some of the same old bureaucratic issues he had worked during his first tour. He was becoming convinced that Captain Summerfield had it right: Just resurrect your old point papers, change the date, and send them forward, because nothing ever really changes on the Opnav staff, especially the Navy’s position on interservice policy issues. Summerfield had tacked up an old cheerleader’s signboard from his Academy days over the entrance to his office. hold that line, it read, neatly summarizing the Navy headquarters’ going-in position on just about any issue affecting Navy policy.

  His two tours in Opnav had been separated by what now seemed an all-too-brief assignment as executive officer in USS John King, a guided-missile destroyer based down in Norfolk. His assignment as second in command of John King had been professionally demanding, often exhausting, and a huge education in just how many problems 285 sailors could get themselves into in the space of eighteen months. But he had been fortunate to have served under two very good commanding officers, and he had ended up his tour with selection to commander, USN, and scre
ening for command on his first look. Sitting in the anteroom of the OP-06 front office on a rainy Monday morning made him yearn for the days when he could end the working day by pitching the wardroom softball team to victory against the engineers.

  The promise of another tour of sea duty was his only lifeline to professional sanity. Screening for surface-ship command at the end of his XO tour was the first, albeit crucial, step. That was the good news.

  But now he was “in the bank” of commanders waiting for a ship to command.

  Since there were more commanders in the bank than there were ships to command, this could be a longish wait, especially with the Navy retiring so many ships.

  The bad news was that he would perforce remain in the Pentagon until his turn came up for command. These factors, coupled with the almost certain knowledge that when he had finished his command at sea tour he would be coming back to OP-06, did not improve his long term attitude. Lately, it seemed that he had spent his professional life getting to the rank of commander, USN, and sea command. Now that a command assignment was glimmering on the horizon, he had begun to peer beyond it, and he was beginning to see himself in the image of Summerfield.

  Living alone was also getting to be a depressing business, despite the tony surroundings of his town house in Old Town. It had taken him two tours of duty to recover, if that was the word, emotionally and spiritually from the death of his wife. But even after that long a time, he still could not muster the interest to return to the dating-and-mating game. His mind told him that living alone was probably the wrong thing to do, but the energy and effort to change his personal circumstances was simply not yet in him. It was still a pleasure to look at a beautiful woman from a distance, but, since Claire’s death, his pleasure was directly proportional to the distance.

  The intercom on Captain Manning’s desk buzzed, and the EA picked up the handset, listened for a moment, and then looked over at Dan.

  “Yes, sir. Very good, sir,” Manning purred, pointing wordlessly at Dan and then to 06B’s door. Dan walked over to the large white door, took a quiet breath, ‘ knocked twice, and went in.

  The ADCNO’s office was twenty feet square, with its own window wall, two couches and two upholstered chairs, a library table pushed up against the corridor side wall, and a large mahogany desk centered against the back wall. The front wall was covered by pictures of Navy airplanes. Two curio cabinets filled with mementos from the admiral’s own career rounded out the decor.

  1 Rear Adm. Walter Carson sat behind the desk, a pair ‘ of bifocals pushed down on his scowling face. Carson was a florid-faced man whose portly figure and sometimes pettifogging manner belied a brilliant wartime record achieved during Vietnam as an A-6 pilot. His job as 06B was faintly analogous to that of the executive officer aboard ship—the final checkpoint for the quality and correctness of all the headquarters policy staff work headed up to 06 and on the Chief of Naval Operations himself. Carson was probably not going to advance to three stars, a fact that sometimes tended to color his attitude. He was the antithesis of the traditional naval aviator in that he was very formal, all business all the time, and a serious nitpicker—in short, a perfect deputy.

  Dan saw that there was one other person in the room, a heavyset civilian who appeared to be in his fifties, dressed in a rumpled gray suit. The man was visibly upset; he shot Dan an angry look when he came into the office. But Dan was paying attention to the admiral, who was pointing wordlessly to the single empty chair in the room. The admiral remained at his desk.

  “Okay,” the admiral began brusquely, addressing the civilian. “Mr. Ames, this is Commander Collins. Commander, this is Mr. Roscoe Ames, who is a deputy director of the Naval Investigative Service.”

  Dan shook hands with Ames before sitting down, but Ames barely glanced at him. Dan felt a tingle of apprehension at Ames’s palpable hostility.

  The NIS? Was he being investigated for something?

  “Okay,” the admiral said again. “Commander Collins, this is a verbal appointing letter. Hard copy to follow.

  You are hereby appointed to conduct a JAGMAN investigation into an incident that has taken place in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. The incident involves a death, which may be homicide. With me so far?”

  “Uh, yes, sir, but—”

  “But why is a politico-military specialist on the CNO’s staff being tasked to investigate an incident that normally would be in NIS’s bailiwick? First, because we say so, and that ‘we’ includes Admiral Torrance, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations. Second, I need a senior line officer to conduct a by-the-book, right-now, informal JAGMAN investigation, and since the NATO Europe shop in OP-Sixty-one is not exactly a hotbed of diplomatic activity at the moment, you’ve been nominated.

  Mr. Ames here is going to appoint someone from the NIS to be your—what shall we call it, deputy?

  Yes, deputy … in the conduct of this investigation.

  But you are going to be in charge of it. Your ‘deputy’ will be there to marshal the investigative assets of the NIS as you require. Mr. Ames, are we clear on the relationships here?”

  Ames did not speak for a moment. Dan now saw that the civilian was not just upset; he was furious. His mouth was drawn into a flat line and he was practically glaring at the admiral. Brave man, Dan thought.

  “Yes, Admiral,” he said finally. “We are clear on the relationships. But we—”

  The admiral raised his hand. “Yes, I understand. The NIS protests most vigorously, which protests have been carefully noted. But this is coming directly from the office of the vice chief, as your boss, Admiral Keeler, is probably finding out this very moment through other channels, by the way. So let’s not fart around anymore, okay? I have noted your objections, and I presume you have noted my instructions. Thank you for coming over at such short notice. That is all, Mr. Ames.”

  Ames rose from his chair. Dan could see that his hands were actually trembling as he took one last shot.

  “Sir, I will advise Admiral Keeler to take this entire matter all the way up to the Secnav. This whole thing is out—”

  “Fine, Mr. Ames,” interrupted Carson, no longer looking at him. “That’s fine. I’m sure that the director of NIS, who, as I recall, is a one-star, will listen very carefully to your advice, just like he’ll probably attend to the good counsel of the vice chief, who, in case you’ve forgotten, is a four-star. Good day, sir.”

  Ames snapped his day-planner notebook shut and stalked out of the room, closing the door forcefully behind him. Dan was surprised to see that Carson was almost smiling as he got up and came over to the couch.

  “I hate those NIS weenies,” he muttered as he lowered himself onto the couch. “Ever since the Iowa turret explosion business, they’ve brought nothing but shit storms upon the Navy. Now let me tell you what this is all about—no, we don’t want notes. Just listen.”

  The admiral sat down and leaned back in the couch, took off his glasses, closed his eyes, and rubbed the bridge of his nose for a moment before beginning. Dan closed his notebook. No notes, the admiral had said.

  “What we’ve got here are two things: an investigation and a political power play. We’ve received a message from the shipyard in Philadelphia that a body has been discovered in one of the mothballed ships, the battleship Wisconsin. There’s more in the report, but basically, they’re treating it initially as a homicide. And since it’s on a naval reservation, the local Philadelphia cops won’t work it; it’s a federal beef.”

  “Meaning the NIS.”

  “Yeah, normally that would be true. Except that since I the Iowa mess, and more recently, the Tailhook debacle, the NIS is not entirely in good repute around the flag “

  ranks in Opnav. Or in DOD, for that matter. I’ve heard the vice chief categorize them as a bunch of incompetent goons, but that’s probably overkill, and flavored somewhat by OSD accusations that there was a lot of command influence imposed on the NIS by Opnav during Tailhook.”

  “They were pretty
useful to me when I was an exec in Norfolk,” Dan offered.

  “I’m sure that, in the main, the majority of NIS people do a creditable job. But this is an incident involving a battleship. You will recall the last time NIS got involved in an incident on a battleship?”

  “Ah, yes, sir. The Iowa turret explosion. All those conspiracy theories.”

  “Right.” The admiral nodded. “You might want to read the official investigation report of that someday, especially the transcripts of the NIS interviews. You’d see what the problem is, and why the vice chief would probably disband the present NIS and start over if he had the chance. Which might also explain why one of the vice’s crown princes, Rear Adm. Walker T. Keeler, is director of the NIS right now.”

  “Yes, sir. I guess we’ve all heard some NIS stories. I But still, the Navy has homicides from time to time.” I

  “Yeah, but this one is going to stir up the press. It ] sounds like a pretty bizarre case, but since you’re going to investigate it, and since I’m the officer appointing I you, I can’t say any more about it. Command influence ‘ and all that.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Dan said. The investigating officer I was required to discover the facts for himself, with no

  overtones of command influence to taint his findings.

  “But Mr. Ames did seem to be really pissed off.”

  “To put it mildly.” The admiral snorted. “But there’s precedent—before there even was an NIS, incident investigations were always conducted by a line officer, although these were usually operational incidents. And we’re not cutting NIS out—they’ve been tagged to cough up a deputy dog and give your investigation technical support—crime-scene work, forensics, and, best of all, I’m going to make them pay the travel and logistics costs for your investigation.”

  “A high-level lesson being administered. The sound of hammers on rice bowls. We can do without you.”