Donner took the offered glass and downed it.

    Jensen looked at him appraisingly and then refilled the glass. "Tell me, Mr. Donner, just what is it you expect to find?"

    "Nothing of importance," Donner said.

    "Come now. The government wouldn't send a man across half the country to itemize seventy-six-year-old sales records strictly for laughs."

    "The government often handles its secrets in a funny way."

    "A classified secret that goes back to 1911?" Jensen shook his head in wonder. "Truly amazing."

    "Let's just say we're trying to solve an ancient crime whose perpetrator purchased your great-grandfather's services."

    Jensen smiled and courteously accepted the lie.

    A black-haired girl in long skirt and boots swiveled into the room, threw Jensen a seductive look, laid a Xerox paper on his desk, and retreated.

    Jensen picked up the paper and examined it. "June to November must have been a recession year for my ancestor. Sales for those months were slim. Any particular entry you're interested in, Mr. Donner?"

    "Mining equipment."

    "Yes, this must be it . . . drilling tools. Ordered August tenth and picked up by the buyer on November first." Jensen's lips broke into a wide grin. "It would seem, sir, the laugh is on you."

    "I don't follow."

    "The buyer, or as you've informed me, the criminal . . ." Jensen paused for effect ". . . was the U.S. government."

12

    The Meta Section headquarters was buried in a nondescript old cinder block building beside the Washington Navy Yard. A large sign, its painted letters peeling under the double onslaught of the summer's heat and humidity, humbly advertised the premises as the Smith Van & Storage Company.

    The loading docks appeared normal enough. Packing crates and boxes were piled in strategic locations, and to passing traffic on the Suitland Parkway, the trucks parked around the yard behind a fifteen-foot-high chain-link fence looked exactly as moving vans should look. Only a closer inspection would have revealed old derelicts with missing engines and dusty, unused interiors. It was a scene that would have warmed the soul of a motion-picture set designer.

    Gene Seagram read over the reports on the real-estate purchases for the Sicilian Project's installations. There were forty-six in all. The northern Canadian border numbered the most, followed closely by the Atlantic seaboard. The Pacific Coast had eight designated areas, while only four were plotted for the border above Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. The transactions had gone off smoothly; the buyer in each case had gone under the guise of the Department of Energy Studies. There would be no cause for suspicion. The installations were designed, to all outward appearances, to resemble small relay power stations. To even the most wary of minds, there was nothing to suspect on the surface.

    He was going over the construction estimates when his private phone rang. Out of habit, he carefully put the reports back in their folder and slipped it in a desk drawer, then picked up the phone. "This is Seagram."

    "Hello, Mr. Seagram."

    "Who's this?"

    "Major McPatrick, Army Records Bureau. You asked me to call you at this number if I came up with anything on a miner by the name of Jake Hobart."

    "Yes, of course. I'm sorry, my mind was elsewhere." Seagram could almost envision the man on the other end of the line. A West Pointer, under thirty-that much was betrayed by the clipped verbs and the youngish voice. Probably make general by the time he was forty-five, providing he made the right contacts while commanding a desk at the Pentagon.

    "What do you have, Major?"

    "I've got your man. His full name was Jason Cleveland Hobert. Born January 23, 1874, in Vinton, Iowa."

    "At least the year checks."

    "Occupation, too he was a miner."

    "What else?"

    "He enlisted in the Army in May of 1898 and served with the First Colorado Volunteer Regiment in the Philippines."

    "You did say Colorado?"

    "Correct, sir." McPatrick paused and Seagram could hear the riffling of papers over the line. "Hobart had an excellent war record. Got promoted to sergeant. He suffered serious wounds fighting the Philippine insurrectionists and was decorated twice for meritorious conduct under fire."

    "When was he discharged?"

    "They called it 'mustering out' in those days," McPatrick said knowledgeably. "Hobart left the Army in October of 1901."

    "Is that your last record of him?"

    "No, his widow is still drawing a pension-"

    "Hold on," Seagram interrupted. "Hobart's widow is still living?"

    "She cashes her fifty dollars and forty cents' pension check every month, like clockwork."

    "She must be over ninety years old. Isn't that a little unusual, paying a pension to the widow of a Spanish American War veteran? You'd think most of them would be pushing up tombstones by now."

    "Oh hell no, we still carry nearly a hundred Civil War widows on the pension rolls. None were even born when Grant took Richmond. May and December marriages between sweet young things and old toothless Grand Army of the Republic vets were quite ordinary in those days."

    "I thought a widow was eligible for pension only if she was living at the time her husband was killed in battle."

    "Not necessarily," McPatrick said. "The government pays widows' pensions under two categories. One is for service-oriented death. That, of course, includes death in battle, or fatal sickness or injury inflicted while serving between certain required dates as set by Congress. The second is non-service death. Take yourself, for example. You served with the Navy during the Vietnam war between the required dates set for that particular conflict. That makes your wife, or any future wife, eligible for a small pension should you be run over by a truck forty years from now."

    "I'll make a note of that in my will," Seagram said, uneasy in the knowledge that his service record was where any desk jockey in the Pentagon could lay his hands on it. "Getting back to Hobart."

    "Now we come to an odd oversight on the part of Army records."

    "Oversight?"

    "Hobart's service forms fail to mention re-enlistment, yet he is recorded as `died in the service of his country'. No mention of the cause, only the date . . . November 17, 1911."

    Seagram suddenly straightened in his chair. "I have it on good authority that Jake Hobart died a civilian on February 10, 1912."

    "Like I said, there's no mention of cause of death. But I assure you, Hobart died a soldier, not a civilian, on November 17. I have a letter in his file dated July 25, 1912, from Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War under President Taft, ordering the Army to award Sergeant Jason Hobart's wife full widow's pension for the rest of her natural life. How Hobart rated the personal interest of the Secretary of War is a mystery, but it leaves little doubt of our man's status. Only a soldier in high standing would have received that kind of preferential treatment, certainly not a coal miner."

    "He wasn't a coal miner," Seagram snapped.

    "Well, whatever."

    "Do you have an address for Mrs. Hobart?"