Call to Treason - Tom Clancy [126]
"I would prefer to meet you there," Rodgers said. "There are a few things I have to do first."
"I can wait if you'd like."
"Your steaks will burn," Rodgers said. "I'll catch up with you. Maybe we can have a drink later."
"I would like that," Stone replied.
The convention manager continued down the corridor to his room. As he opened the door, he glanced to his left. Rodgers went to Kat's door and knocked. He did not attempt to conceal it. Was that innocent or meant to inspire concern? Stone could not be sure, and that frustrated him. More than the conversation, Stone did not like the man himself.
Rodgers had launched salvos from his moral high ground. When Link spoke, it was with persuasive author-A ity. This man lectured, as if there was no correct opinion other than his own.
Not that it mattered. He had learned what he needed to learn.
Mike Rodgers was not an ally. And if he was not an ally, then moderate or not, war hero notwithstanding, there was only one thing he could be: an enemy.
* * *
FORTY-FIVE
San Diego, California Wednesday, 1:16 p.m.
When Mike Rodgers was thirteen years old, a local Connecticut YMCA organized chess games against a local grand master. Rodgers got to play one of those games, and won. The reason he won was simple: apart from knowing how to move the pieces, Rodgers had no concept of chess strategy. As his opening move, he developed the pawn that sat in relative anonymity in front of the queen's rook. He liked rooks or castles, as he preferred to call them. That sounded more militaristic.
He liked their sweep, their power. He wanted to get them out of their corner and ready for the fray. The grand master responded with Sokolsky's opening. But Rodgers's unorthodox move, located so far from the center of the board, unbalanced virtually every classic attack pattern for black. The grand master resigned the match after sixteen chaotic moves.
As Rodgers knocked at Kat's door, he had to admit that what Eric Stone had just mounted was the clumsiest, most amateurish psyops probe he had ever experienced. In and of itself, it made Rodgers doubt that these people could be responsible for any kind of conspiracy. Yet, in a way, that was also what made them dangerous. They fit no profiles. They were unpredictable.
Kat answered the door. She was impatient, from her eyes to the cock of her hips. "Yes, General?"
"I need to talk to you," he said. He walked around her and entered the room.
"By all means," she said sarcastically. "Come in."
"Sorry, but I did not want to stand there discussing this with Eric Stone watching and possibly listening."
Kat let the door shut. "Why would Eric be listening? Could it be he is worried that you're a loose cannon, dangerous to have at the convention?"
"No. He thinks I am concealing information. And he's right."
"What information?"
"That Detective Howell is being framed, and Stone may be involved in that," Rodgers said.
"Framed how, and to do what?"
"He was tipped off to be at your apartment," Rodgers said. "As for how about fifteen years ago, he had an affair with a fellow coast guard cadet."
"So he's gay. Who cares?"
"That isn't quite the entirety of it," Rodgers said. "The other young man obviously had second thoughts and claimed he was seduced. Howell took the rap. Because Howell had seniority, the affair was deemed consensual by virtue of force majeure, a mild reprimand, but it went on Howell's psych profile, which was sealed."
"Until someone opened it."
"Yes," Rodgers said. "Someone who had access to military files."
"Meaning Admiral Link."
"Perhaps," Rodgers admitted. "Since I doubt the admiral would tell us whether this is true, there is only one way to find out. We have to ask Detective Howell."
"Why do you need me to do that?" Kat asked.
"I am not convinced he is playing entirely on Op-Center's