Forty-Eight X (25 page)

Colonel Link McGraw was just stepping into his trousers when he heard a knock on his door. He looked at his watch. It was six a.m. and his adjutant was right on time. The young captain had been handpicked by General Shell for the job. He had combat experience and had once been a veterinarian. He did a good job, but McGraw had no illusions. He knew his adjutant reported directly back to the general. That never struck him as a problem. After all, they both had loyalty to the same man.

Another day of training was about to begin. It was a short walk from McGraw’s modern, modular beachfront cabana to the bivouac area where several dozen orderly tents housed his troops. It was dawn. A morning mist hung over the ground. He could hear the surf pulsating nearby, but the shore was hidden by incoming fog. He wore well-pressed combat fatigues; his boots had a spit-and-polish shine. His shirt was adjusted to a tight tuck, and the silver eagle of his rank glistened on his garrison cap. In a few months, his command had grown from a few platoons to a company. More than a hundred troops were under his authority now. McGraw also knew how breeding was progressing on the other side of the island. In another few months, he would be commanding a thousand—a regiment-sized force. And soon, an army.

As he walked past each tent, with his adjutant trailing obediently behind, he could hear the murmurs of his troops. They were rising and knew their commander was passing, by the sound of his step and by his smell. Link had studied the ways of war and warriors during his academic years at the Citadel. He knew about the swagger of Patton, the calm demeanor of Eisenhower, and the camaraderie fostered by Napoleon. But of all the great military leaders he’d studied, it was Alexander the Great who most excited his passion.

“Another perfect day,” his adjutant said, making small talk.

“Yes.” McGraw nodded. “It’s time.”

The adjutant waved his hand and a bugler blew assembly, a sound familiar to every soldier, a tune perfectly fit for that lyric: “There’s a soldier in the grass, with a bullet up his ass, take it out, take it out, like a good Boy Scout!”

In less than a minute, nearly two hundred chimpanzee soldiers were standing stolidly in front of their tents, and McGraw slowly began his review. He was surprised each time he saw these creatures, his troops. At first, he had difficulty telling them apart. They had all looked alike. But no longer; he now knew them all, by their character, as well as by their names. Many had already been given names by their earlier handlers. Some names, he found need to change. Their personalities called for it.

“Look thee out for a kingdom equal to and worthy of thyself,” McGraw said aloud.

“What’s that, sir?” his adjutant inquired.

“You know, Captain, I once rode alongside Alexander the Great.”

“I’ve heard those stories, sir,” his captain smiled.

“There are a lot of legends about Alexander,” McGraw began, walking slowly before his troops. “Plutarch, the great Greek historian, created many of them. ‘It was in 344 BC,’ he wrote, ‘when a ten-year-old Alexander watched the most skilled horsemen in his father’s kingdom try and fail to ride a great steed named Bucephalus. The horse was untamable. Alexander begged his father for his chance. Reluctantly, King Phillip agreed. And, with a soothing voice, a kind touch, and some firm urging, Alexander succeeded in riding Bucephalus.’”

“King Phillip,” McGraw went on, “is said to have told his son, ‘Look thee out for a kingdom equal to and worthy of thyself for Macedonia is too little for thee.’ And so, Alexander set out astride Bucephalus to conquer the known world.”

“Do you think of this as your little kingdom, sir?” his adjutant asked, somewhat impolitic.

“Do you know the tale of the Gordian Knot?” McGraw said, ignoring any affront.

“Yes, sir,” the captain replied quickly, from habit. Then he corrected himself. “Not really, sir.”

“Another tale of Alexander was the legend of the Gordian Knot. According to that fable, the ancient land of Phrygia had lapsed into civil war. The elders of the land were unable to decide which faction should lead them until a great oracle came before them and predicted that the next man to enter the kingdom would be riding an oxcart. That man, he declared, would put an end to their bickering and become their king. While the Phrygian high council was discussing the oracle’s prediction, Midas, a peasant farmer, rode into town on his father Gordias’s oxcart. With the prediction having come true, Midas was anointed king. In gratitude, he dedicated Gordias’s oxcart to Zeus, set it in the center of a temple, and tied it to a post with an intricate knot made of bark. The oracle then prophesied that whoever untied that knot would someday rule all of Asia. Years went by and the bark of the knot grew together. Though many tried, no one could untie it. And so, the legend of the Gordian Knot, the unsolvable puzzle, grew. In 333 BC, Alexander came to Phrygia and attempted to untie the knot himself. He could find no end to the knot, and it seemed that he would fail, too. Then, with a single stroke of his sword, Alexander sliced the knot in half, revealing its ends.”

“Sounds like he cheated, sir.”

“Well, maybe,” McGraw conceded. “We could dispute the legend. But what is undisputed is that Alexander the Great did go on to conquer most of Asia. There’s a lesson to be learned here, Captain.”

“Sir?”

“Do whatever needs to be done to accomplish the mission.”

With the events that had unfolded in the last several months, McGraw couldn’t help seeing his own fate replayed in these Greek fables. Like Midas, for no rational reason he had been raised up from his lowly position as a prisoner to become a virtual king over his own army. Just as Alexander had tamed Bucephalus, he, too, was taming the untamable. And when his superiors remained bewildered how he would take his new army into battle, well, he untied the Gordian Knot. The generals were uncomfortable with arming chimpanzees with high-powered automatic weapons. Despite the animals’ dexterity, they were not yet capable of the fine touch required to aim and fire a weapon that could potentially spray death out at six hundred rounds per minute. McGraw remembered the stories of the Alexander battle scythe. Perhaps it was a recollection from his former life. He told the idea to Mack Shell and had no problem giving the general credit for the idea.

In the fourth century BC, Alexander the Great molded a great army by creating a persona of invincibility. He made himself a legend, and then a god. McGraw knew that to command soldiers to fight and die, a leader, even a modern one, had to generate that same godlike aura—engendering awe, fear, and a prideful worship. As he trekked through the campgrounds and his troops stepped out, as Alexander did to Bucephalus, he gave one after another a gentle touch, but his voice was firm, decisive, and demanding of obedience.

In a former life, Link McGraw knew he had been Ptolemy—not Alexander. But Ptolemy, the childhood friend of Alexander the Great, went on to become his greatest general. And, with Alexander’s death, Ptolemy himself became a king, the pharaoh of Egypt and the first of his own dynasty, which lasted three hundred years. McGraw, too, knew he had more noble things to accomplish in his life. But he would never speak of such imaginings. He was sure General Shell would laugh at his arrogance.

“You see,” he would remind Link, “I told you no one imagines themselves reincarnated as a ‘nobody.’ And why imagine being a general, when you can be a king?”

T
he black 1995 Mercedes 600 SL coupe had seen better days. It had been bought new, but like its owner, was older, world worn, and in need of a lot of refurbishing. It was parked across from Dr. Julius Wagner’s house on a cul-de-sac street in Palo Alto. For over a week it had been parked there every night and often during the day. Maggie Wagner knew it was there and ignored it. The neighbors were not so magnanimous. They had called the local police several times. After all, the stranger who sat all day and slept in the car night after night was suspicious and made them uncomfortable.

“What are you doing here, sir?” the police asked. Stumpf efficiently and coldly passed over his driver’s license, his insurance certificate, and his photo ID as a licensed private detective.

“Working,” he’d answer curtly.

And the police would depart after taking time to explain to anxious neighbors that the interloper was not a thief or a pedophile but a private detective. Learning that Stumpf was “on the job” actually made many of these upright citizens even more nervous as they contemplated which of their indiscretions was the subject of his attentions.

Maggie felt she had no more need of the man. Clearly she was meddling in a business where she could get hurt. She had been hurt. Someone had drugged her and clearly wanted to defame her. And while she believed Stumpf when he denied responsibility, she also believed he was incompetent and a little strange. While the video demonstrated that he hadn’t raped her, he couldn’t hide his lascivious glare and a subtle fondling as he put her to bed. So, she ignored his presence outside her front door. She would continue her pursuit of the truth about her father in a more mundane manner. She made telephone calls and sent lots of e-mails. None bore fruit.

Stumpf, on the other hand, believed he still had a job, or wanted to believe that. And anyway, for the time being he had no other gigs. Finding out what BIOT was, was the key to this case. As at other times in his career, he expected the heavens to part and good fortune to suddenly shine upon him. Like the time he found a ten-thousand-dollar Rolex sitting on the bedside table of a hotel room quickly vacated by the wife of a client who had hired him to catch her in flagrante delicto. While he had missed “catching” her with the philanderer, he was able to provide his client with a “name” by tracking the registration number of the watch. And he kept the watch. So, Stumpf, a bit of a manic-depressive with an optimistic bent, expected to become suddenly enlightened or have good fortune stumble upon him again. Either that, or Maggie Wagner would solve the clue of BIOT and he would latch onto her to follow it. He did have a contract after all, and if he had any part in proving that her father did not commit suicide, well, it would be a big payday.

Stumpf left his “stakeout” one evening, driving off for dinner to get his usual drive-thru burger and Coke. When he returned, he was a bit put off to find another car parked in his usual spot in front of the Wagner home. It was a car he had not seen before. After scarfing down his dinner, he decided to forgo his usual after-dinner smoke and take a closer look. The sedan, he quickly noted, was a rental. Was this a friend visiting? He didn’t like snooping so close to homes in broad daylight, but he was working for half-a-mil. He went back to his own car to retrieve two tools of his trade. He decided to leave one, the camera, behind.

From a side window, he had a good view of the living room. No one was there.
Damn
, he thought,
I
hope they’re not upstairs in the bedroom doing tummy slaps
. He had climbed trees and patio trellises before to get a view of a second story, but he hadn’t expected to do any second-story work on this job, and anyway he was wearing his good shoes, not sneakers. Nate Stumpf slipped through the side gate to see if he could spy anyone in the kitchen. And there they were. A swarthy-looking man with a military crew cut was standing over Maggie, who sat in a kitchen chair. He had his hand on her shoulder as if he were keeping her in place. Stumpf crunched down and crawled snake-like to put his ear to a small crack at the base of rear door. He could hear just snippets of conversation—the context was unclear, but one thing he knew for sure, this visitor had an accent and it sounded Middle Eastern.
Shit
, he thought,
are Arab terrorists involved in this?

Stumpf knew that whatever edge he lacked in size, he could always make up for in decisiveness. At least that’s the way he succeeded most of the time. Maggie bolted up from her chair when her kitchen door flew open as Stumpf kicked through it. He cracked the wood and tore the door off one of the hinges. It was a karate kick, he told himself. It had come in handy for him before—although he had never bothered to actually learn karate. He held a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver in hand and pointed it at Colonel Joshua Krantz.

“Back off, motherfucker!” Stumpf bellowed at him. “And put ’em up. Hands on your head. Come on! Hands on your head!”

Krantz complied.

“You all right, babe?” Stumpf said with a wink to Maggie.

“I thought you said you didn’t have a gun?” Maggie replied, still startled.

“I never give away all my secrets.”

“She was not in any danger from me,” Krantz interrupted.

“Shut up.”

“I’m okay,” Maggie confirmed.

Krantz looked closer, eyeing Nate Stumpf up and down. And then he put his hands down.