Chapter 16

A short, heavy-set balding man walked down the hallway. He wasn’t smiling, because he’d been summoned to the office of his superior. He knocked on the door and waited. A male secretary answered and gestured across the outer office to the door into the colonel’s office.

Major André Kotcheff took a deep breath, tugged at the hem of his coat, then went in and stood in front of the desk. He waited while the colonel studied the paper before him. This gave the major a few moments to study the colonel. Too much good food, too much vodka, not enough exercise, he thought. I need to get out more, maybe work out or at least get in some running. I don’t want to end up like this fat fool.

“You failed, Major. This is your failure. All that money, wasted, because you got nothing. Nothing!”

“Sir, I wasn’t there. I was here in New York the entire time. The people I hired were competent, but who could have expected...”

The colonel interrupted him. “I was here in New York too, but then I didn’t spend scarce money for nothing! You’re supposed to anticipate what people will do, Major! This report ... it doesn’t say enough, not nearly enough. I allowed you an operating budget, but you managed to blow all of it, every last dollar, and you have nothing to show for it! What were you thinking?”

“Sir, I saw an opportunity. As you know, we’re observing what those others are doing, but we can’t get inside the new plant where they make those devices. Our satellites pass over the factory four times a day, so we know nothing important has happened yet.

“They have a factory, but it’s not in full production. They’re not buying enough supplies, for one thing, and they’re not shipping anything; we know that because we’re watching the trucking companies. The only way they can get supplies in or move the devices out is by truck, and that’s not happening.

“What they do have is a few workers, and maybe enough material on hand to make a few of the devices. We don’t know, because we don’t have nearly as much background information as I would like. For that matter, we only recently became aware of their new facility.

“I knew they had people working in Chicago, but they weren’t involved with manufacturing. I have contacts among the dockworkers, so I’d have known if that was going on. All they were doing was working on a barge. They rented welders and air compressors, things like that, and on Wednesday they returned them, so I knew they were finished with whatever they were doing. But all they’d done was do some welding and cutting on the barge, not manufacturing some sort of secret device. That was the situation until last Tuesday.

But my people reported that they used a rented crane to emplace a large generator Wednesday afternoon, after they’d returned the tools they’d rented, so I judged they were moving into a new phase of whatever they were doing. I suspected that they were going to move the device across the lake to a new location. It had to be something very heavy, otherwise they wouldn’t have needed the barge.

“I have a report from my agent in Chicago, Colonel. Would you like to see it?”

“No, Major. I have your report, and you were in charge. You made the decisions. You chose to spend money trying to capture this barge.

“A barge? What were you thinking? Or were you even thinking at all? Did the fact that I was out of my office somehow make you confident that you could go ahead without consulting me?”