be called the Office Where All the Bad Shit Gets Dumped, but the spooks are really into smoke and mirrors, so nothing is what it seems, which is how they like it.
Anyway, this office works directly for the Director of Central Intelligence, which has advantages, because we don't have a lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through, and a big disadvantage, since there's nobody else to pin the screwups on, so it's a bit of a high-wire act.
Also, there are large and significant cultural differences between the clandestine service and the Army, and I was experiencing a few adjustment difficulties. I've been warned, in fact, that if I remove my shoe and speak into the heel again, I can look forward to a long overseas trip someplace that really sucks. These people need to lighten up.
Nor is it unusual for Army officers to be loaned, or, in military parlance, seconded to other government agencies. The idea, as it was explained to me, is we each bring something different to the table-- different specialties, different mind-sets, different wardrobes--and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. In an organization, the term for this is synergy, and in an individual it's called multiple personality disorder. I'm not really sure about the difference, but there it is.
But for reasons I have yet to understand, the Agency requested me, and for reasons I fully understood, my former Army boss was happy to shove me out the door, so you might say it seemed to work out for everybody; except perhaps me.
But Phyllis Carney, my boss, likes to say she looks for "misfits, mavericks, and oddballs," for their "willingness to apply unorthodox solutions to ordinary problems." It's an interesting management theory, and I think she's started looking into a new one since my arrival.
Ms. Tran now was poking her head inside the victim's closet. I approached her from behind and asked, "Anything interesting?"
She turned around and faced me. "There are three cops, a forensics expert, and four detectives here. Why me?"
"Update me, and I'll get out of your life."
For the first time she looked interested in what I had to say. "Is this because I'm an attractive woman?"
"Absolutely not." Definitely. I said, "You look smart and you take notes. Like the girl I sat beside in second grade."
"When was that? Last year?" She smiled at her own joke.
Which brings me to the here and now: 10:30 a.m., Monday, October 25, Apartment 1209 in a mammoth complex of rental units, mostly cramped efficiencies and one- and two-bedrooms, on South Glebe Road. There was no sign in front of the building that advertised, "Cribs for Swinging Singles," though I was aware it had that reputation.
The apartment was small, essentially one bedroom, an efficiency-style kitchen, closet-size living room, and an adjoining dining room. A Realtor's brochure would characterize it as cozy and intimate, which is code for cramped and uninhabitable. The furniture was sparse and looked new, and also cheap, the sort of crap you rent by the month or pick up at a discount furniture warehouse. I observed few personal, and no permanent touches; no books, no artwork, few of the usual trinkets or junk people sprinkle around to individualize their living environment.
You can usually tell a lot about a person from their home. Especially women who tend to think that how they dress, and how they decorate, are reflections of their inner selves. More often it reveals who they'd like to be, though that contrast can also be telling. Men aren't that complicated or interesting--they're usually anal or pigs; usually shallow pigs. Anyway, I judged the inhabitant here to be fairly neat, not showy, highly organized, and thrifty. Or, alternatively, broke, with the personality and interior complexity of an empty milk carton.
I knew the victim's name was Clifford Daniels, a career civil servant, and I knew that he was assigned to the Pentagon's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, or USDP, part of the Secretary of Defense's civilian staff.
I also knew this to be a singularly important office in the vast labyrinth of the Pentagon, the equivalent of the military's own State Department, where strategies for world domination are hatched and war plans are submitted for civilian approval, among other dark and nefarious activities.
Also I knew Clifford was a GS-12, a civilian rank roughly equivalent to an Army colonel, and that he had a Top Secret security clearance. Regarding those facts, I considered it noteworthy that a late-middleaged man in a