Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [102]
General Thompson led the way inside, through a formal 1930s dining room, into an even more imposing horary chamber. There was a white birch fireplace screened by a brass curtain with heavy brass andirons. Tall oak bookshelves stood erect on every wall; a double bay window looked onto a backyard with a covered pool and yellow-and-lime-striped cabana.
General Thompson sat in a comfortable wing chair.
“Out of sight in Washington, pretty much out of mind. Since my retirement, I’ve “had very few official visitors down here. Other than my two granddaughters, Who fortunately live up the lane, and who adore their grandmother’s baked goods and double fudge.”
General Thompson shook his head and smiled. He was easing into the interview more than Carroll had expected or hoped.
In Viet Nam, Carroll had heard that Thompson was an extremely rigid disciplinarian. Now, in his retirement, Lucas Thompson seemed like just another grandfather, patiently waiting for the next Kodak snapshot to be taken.
“I’m searching—groping, is the word I think I want— for some useful information about a Colonel David Hudson. Hudson was on your command team in Saigon, right?”
General Thompson nodded in the manner of a practiced good listener. “Yes, Captain Hudson served on my team for about fifteen months. If my recollection is holding up better than the rest of me.”
“Your recollection and my records match exactly,” Carroll said. “What can you tell me about Hudson?”
“Well, I’m not sure where you want me to start. It’s fairly complex. David Hudson was an extremely disciplined and effective soldier. Also a very charismatic leader, once he got his command over there…
“When I first met him, he was ramrodding a, I believe it was a demolition team. He’d also been trained to sanction human targets. He sanctioned trash, Carroll. War profiteers, a couple of high-level infiltrators. Traitors.”
“Why was he chosen to be a military assassin?”
“Oh, I think I have the answer for that one. He was chosen because he didn’t like to kill. Because he wasn’t a psycho. I think Hudson’s philosophy was that once you undertook to fight in a just war, you fought. You balls-out fought with everything you had. I happen to believe that philosophy myself.”
During the next thirty minutes, General Lucas Thompson elaborated on his association with David Hudson. It was an overall laudatory review, an A-plus for Hudson— high marks for conduct, combat team leadership, especially high marks for courage and charisma, that latter a nebulous quality the modern Army seemed to take into account the way a Civil War battalion, say, would have given a man a commendation for his musket aim.
Arch Carroll kept getting the very uncomfortable feeling that he was chasing after a goddamned American war hero. Once again, it didn’t make complete sense.
Carroll leaned way forward in the red leather easy chair he’d taken in the retired officer’s library. General Thompson was beginning to repeat himself slightly. He seemed to be slipping into a genial story-telling mode.
It might have been sad, ordinarily. In a way, it reminded Carroll of his own father, retiring from the New York police force to Sarasota. Dead of heart failure, or maybe it was boredom, within nine months.
Except that Carroll didn’t believe General Lucas Thompson’s act for a minute right now…
Carroll had checked carefully—and General Thompson had been receiving official visitors out in McLean; high-ranking VIPs from the Pentagon, even regular visitors from the White House. General Lucas Thompson was still an influential adviser to the National Security Council.
“There are a couple of things that still bother me, General.”
“Shoot away, then.”
“Just for openers … why can’t anyone tell me where Colonel Hudson is now? … Second point. Why can’t anyone explain the mysterious circumstances under which he left the Army in the mid-70s? Third