Without remorse - Tom Clancy [318]
'God have mercy,' Dutch said, seeing the only friendly casualties of Operation boxwood green.
What do I say? Kelly asked himself, driving through the gate. The guard eyeballcd him pretty hard despite his pass, perhaps wondering how badly the Agency paid its field personnel. He did get to park his wreck in the visitors' lot, better placement than people on the payroll, which seemed slightly odd. Walking into the lobby, Kelly was met by a security officer and led upstairs. It seemed more ominous now, walking the drab and ordinary corridors peopled with anonymous people, but only because this building was about to become a confessional of sorts for a soul who had not quite decided if he were a sinner or not. He hadn't visited Ritter's office before. It was on the fourth floor and surprisingly small. Kelly had thought the man important - and though he actually was, his office as yet was not.
'Hello, John,' Admiral Greer said, still reeling from the news he'd received a half hour before from Dutch Maxwell. Greer pointed him to a seat, and the door was closed. Ritter was smoking, to Kelly's annoyance.
'Glad to be back home, Mr Clark?' the field officer asked. There was a copy of the Washington Post on his desk, and Kelly was surprised to see that the Somerset County story had made the first page there, too.
'Yes, sir, I guess you can say that.' Both of the older men caught the ambivalence. 'Why did you want me to come in?'
'I told you on the airplane. It may turn out that your action bringing that Russian out might save our people yet. We need people who can think on their ieet. You can. I'm offering you a job in my part of the house.'
'Doing what?'
'Whatever we fell you to do,' Ritter answered. He already had something in mind.
'I don't even have a college degree.'
Ritter pulled a thick folder from his desk. 'I had this brought in from St Louis.' Kelly recognized the forms. It was his complete Navy personnel-records package. 'You really should have taken the college scholarship. Your intelligence scores are even higher than I thought, and it shows you have language skills that are better than mine. James and I can waive the degree requirements.'
'A Navy Cross goes a long way, John,' Greer explained. 'What you did, helping to plan boxwood green and then later in the field, that sort of thing goes a long way, too.'
Kelly's instinct battled against his reason. The problem was, he wasn't sure which part of him was in favor of what. Then he decided that he had to tell the truth to somebody.
'There's a problem, gentlemen.'
'What's that?' Ritter asked.
Kelly reached across the desk and tapped the article on the front page of the paper. 'You might want to read that.'
'I did. So? Somebody did the world a favor,' the officer said lightly. Then he caught the took in Kelly's eyes, and his voice became instantly wary. 'Keep talking, Mr Clark.'
"That's me, sir.'
'What are you talking about, John?' Greer asked.
"The file's out, sir,' the records clerk said over the phone.
'What do you mean?' Ryan objected. 'I have some copies from it right here.'
'Could you hold for a minute? I'll put my supervisor on.' The phone went on hold, something that the detective cordially hated.
Ryan looked out his window with a grimace. He'd called the military's central records-storage facility, located in St Louis. Every piece of paper relating to every man or woman who had ever served in uniform was there, in a secure and carefully guarded complex, the nature of which was a curiosity, but a useful one, to the detective, who'd more than once gotten data from the facility.
'This is Irma Rohrerbach,' a voice said after some electronic chirping. The detective had the instant mental image of an overweight Caucasian female sitting at a desk cluttered with work that could have been done a week earlier.
'I'm Lieutenant Emmet Ryan, Baltimore City Police. I need information from a personnel file you have -'
'Sir, it's not here. My clerk just showed me the notes.'
'What do you mean? You're not allowed to check files out that way. I