EXFIL by Anthony Patton (best books to read non fiction TXT) 📗

on the operation. I’m off to brief the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”

I checked my watch. Crap. I was running late for my rendezvous with Anna and Judy. In the Pentagon parking lot, I hustled to my car and unlocked the door with the key fob. I found odd satisfaction in the double flash of the lights and chirp of the alarm system. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Donna Howard step out of her car and approach me.

“Colonel Reed,” she asked, “can we talk?”

I checked my watch and shrugged like a man with a plan, as if I had someplace to go urgently. I was curious about how she’d tracked me down. “Could we talk tomorrow?”

“I wanted to ask you about Club Ecstasy,” she said and removed a mauve matchbook from her purse.

Goddammit, I thought. “There’s a coffee shop down the road.”

EIGHTEEN

During the drive, the reflection of Donna’s headlights, too close for comfort in my rearview mirror, was a burning indicator that she might unleash hell. I could only assume that she had heard about Club Ecstasy from the rumor mill in Bangkok and wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

I rehearsed as I drove, refining a response about how Tom and I had gone there a few times for business, no big deal, but that I had no reason to believe he might have slept with a dancer. We weren’t supposed to use the tools of the trade on family or friends, but Lewis’s ominous tone had already suggested this was a problem that would fester.

It was evening, so we opted for decaf, my treat. The good folk of Crystal City were used to seeing uniforms, so no one looked our way.

Her eyes shifted as she sipped her coffee. Women will stop at nothing to protect their families, but military wives understood that rank still mattered. The best strategy was to put her as ease and show her that I was eager to talk.

“How are you holding up?”

She shrugged with less tension than I had anticipated. “One day at a time. It’s been hard on the kids, you know. How are Beth and the boys?”

“Good,” I said with a sincere nod. “I saw them the other day for Beth’s book-signing event. You’re still at your parents’ house, right?”

She set her cup down, reached into her purse, and set the mauve matchbook on the table. She never did answer the question.

“I wanted to ask you about Club Ecstasy,” she said quietly.

I picked up the matchbook, inspected it like a foreign artifact, and gently set it down. She was smart to begin with an open-ended question, to see how I would react or what I would offer on my own. I projected nothing but idle curiosity in the object I knew all too well.

“I found it in Tom’s personal items.” She returned it to her purse. “It was clear from his letter that he was with another woman.”

I nodded ambiguously, to neither confirm nor deny.

“I guess what I’m asking,” she continued with more confidence, “is whether you know what he was talking about? When we met, he wasn’t a strip club kind of guy.”

As far as you knew.

Her implicit accusation was that I was a strip club kind of guy, something Tom might have told her during our visits to Club Ecstasy. I assumed the professorial role.

“Club Ecstasy was one of the more popular clubs. The nature of our work sometimes required us to bring contacts to those places.”

She nodded calmly and sipped her coffee as she looked outside. It never ceased to amaze me how wives had such a knack for the business. “Did the two of you ever go to this particular club, you know, for work?”

I feigned memory recollection and nodded. “We had two promising targets we were pursuing together. I seem to recall going there a few times.”

“I don’t know whether you knew,” she said with more confidence, playing one of her cards, “but CID went to Bangkok for the investigation. For the three days they suspect Tom went to Club Ecstasy, each time with you, the security tapes were missing, only for those three days. That seems like an odd coincidence, don’t you think?”

Holy shit—more than you can imagine. “Odd indeed,” I said to convey that we were on the same page. This revelation was disturbing on many levels because it suggested the Chinese had a source in the club who was monitoring our activities and holding the evidence.

This was why I never touched the girls in the club, except for the one time with Jewel.

“I know this isn’t easy to discuss,” she said after folding her hands with a deep breath, “but did you ever see Tom with another woman?”

Time to don my colonel’s hat. “Donna, I was his supervisor. We maintained a professional relationship. If he was misbehaving, he wouldn’t have told me—UCMJ and all.” I had no idea what Tom had told her about my behavior.

She looked at her coffee, set it aside, and stood.

“Thanks for your time, Colonel Reed. Please let me know if you hear anything else.”

“Of course,” I said. Perhaps she didn’t suspect anything after all, but if I had learned anything over the years, it was that an Intelligence Officer was never not an Intelligence Officer. Many times in life, what appeared to be the walls closing in around you was nothing more than random noise that passed with time, but it required iron discipline to weather the storm.

◆◆◆

It probably wasn’t a good idea to meet Anna at a nightclub wearing my Class A uniform, but there was nothing I could do at this point. I started the car and sent her a text saying I was running late and wearing my uniform, so she wouldn’t be surprised. To my relief, she responded immediately with “np” and a kiss emoji.

During the drive, I missed a series of traffic lights, always at the last second, mostly because the other drivers were