I stared at my phone, trying to formulate an appropriate response to this Mickey Mouse bullshit. Then I stuffed the phone into my coat pocket and got out of the car. I passed through the glass front doors and into the lobby with its heavy wooden furniture upholstered in a shocking maroon-and-green floral pattern. The desk clerk glanced up at me with a painted-on smile and then went back to her magazine when it was clear I wasn’t there to book a room.
When I found Trip’s room on the second floor, I knocked on the door, and after a moment, Trip opened it. He looked as if he had slept in his clothes, but he was grinning. “Hey,” he said, grasping me by the shoulder and drawing me into the room. “Thanks for coming. Bad drive?”
“Bad enough,” I said. “What’s with all this sneaking-around crap, anyway? We meeting with Deep Throat or something?”
I took a few steps into the room and froze. It was a typical hotel room—two queen-sized beds facing a long dresser with a built-in TV, and two chairs flanking a small table at the far end of the room. What was atypical was the man in a khaki-and-green uniform who stood up from one of the chairs. “Deep Throat, my ass,” he said. It was Diamond.
I stood gaping at him for a few seconds. I hadn’t seen Diamond since graduation. Now he was standing in front of me in a military uniform, rows of multicolored ribbons over his left breast pocket. His cornrows were gone, his hair shorn so close he was nearly bald. “Diamond,” I said. “What the fuck?”
He grinned. “Still haven’t cleaned up your language, have you, Fuckhead?” he said, and the sound of his rich, deep voice suddenly made it true—Daryl Cooper was standing in front of me. I held out my hand, which Diamond took and squeezed, and then he pulled me to him. Startled, I leaned back, resisting for half a second, until I realized he was trying to hug me. I relented, awkwardly clapping him on the back.
“So what the hell, man?” I asked, pulling back. “You’re in the army?”
Diamond punched me in the arm—it was playful punch, but it still felt like someone had whacked me in the arm with a baseball bat. “Marines, fool,” he said. “I’m no army doggie.”
Trip said, “This here is Captain Cooper, Matthias. Marine adjutant at the Pentagon.”
I stared at Trip and then at Diamond. “But . . . you were going to Duke,” I said. “On a football scholarship.”
“Still did,” Diamond said. “Then Nine/Eleven happened, and I talked to a recruiter and joined ROTC by December. When I graduated, the Corps sent me to Iraq.”
“You fought in Iraq?”
Diamond nodded. “Anbar Province, Ramadi, Haditha. Lots of places.”
Trip smiled faintly. “You really ought to read the alumni magazine, Matthias.”
I dimly recalled reading somewhere about Anbar being one of the more difficult areas of Iraq for American troops and their allies—the insurgents had been based there, or something. I’d shaken my head when I’d read in the papers about casualties from suicide bombers and the like in Iraq, but I’d had no idea Diamond was there. It made sense—if Diamond was going to be a marine, he’d want to be right in the thick of it.
“So,” I said, making an effort to be lighthearted, “you got moved stateside to a desk job. How’d you manage that?”
Diamond plucked at his right pant leg and lifted it up to reveal a metallic, skeletal limb. “Lost my leg below the knee from an RPG outside Ramadi,” he said. “Not exactly suitable for running across the desert after al-Qaeda.”
I stared at Diamond’s leg, or what was left of it. The rest of him looked fine—hell, he still looked like a bronzed Perseus come to life—and he’d spoken of losing his leg matter-of-factly, without a hint of regret or self-pity, but I was stunned. I couldn’t wrap my head around all of this. The indelible image I had always had of Diamond was of him running effortlessly on the football field, the ball cradled safely in one arm. Now he stood before me on a prosthetic leg. I had a sudden unpleasant image of Diamond and Pelham Greer, the Blackburne groundskeeper, comparing stumps. Diamond had been my roommate and my friend, and I hadn’t even bothered to try to see him after we graduated.
“Matthias, you okay?” Trip asked.
I nodded. “Just need to sit down,” I said. The room shimmered for a moment, like heat waves off summer-hot asphalt, and then I was sitting on the edge of a bed, blinking dazedly. “Water,” I managed to say. Trip ducked into the bathroom. I heard water running, and then he reemerged with a plastic cup, which he almost spilled in his haste.
Diamond looked at me and gave a short grunt of a laugh. “He’s all right,” he said to Trip. “Just smiled at something. Probably laughing at you running over here like his mother with a glass of water.”
“Drink this,” Trip said to me. “Ignore the marine. Come on, drink it.”
I took the cup and waved Trip off. “I can drink it all by myself, honest,” I said. “I just . . . got dizzy for a second. Lot to take in.” I took a sip of water and concentrated on breathing. “I guess I almost fainted,” I said after a few moments. “Never happened to me before.”
“Well,” Diamond said, “I have been known to have that effect on people. Though typically they look much better than you.”
Trip and Diamond pulled up chairs and sat across from me, perched on the edge of the bed. “So,” I said, feeling on the cusp of something momentous—a feeling that, at the same time, I found ludicrous. “Don’t take this the wrong way, guys, but why the surprise reunion? And why meet in some hotel outside of Culpeper? Why not in D.C.?”
“Because D.C.’s wired six ways to Sunday with surveillance,” Trip said.
I smiled. “What, Big Brother is watching us?”
Diamond’s mouth quirked. “You have no idea,” he said.
Trip said, “I called Diamond and asked if he would help me with a little research.”
“About Fritz?” I asked.
Trip looked at Diamond and then back at me. “About his father’s company, NorthPoint.”
I turned to Diamond, whose face was expressionless. “What do you know about NorthPoint?” I asked. I think I kept my voice relatively calm.
Trip and Diamond glanced at each other. “Just so we’re clear,” Diamond said, “I am saying and doing nothing that compromises national security.”
“Um, okay,” I said. “Do I need to take some kind of oath or something?”
In a low voice, Trip said, “He’s serious, Matthias.”
I raised my hands in mock surrender. “Okay, I get it. I’m not asking anybody to compromise national security, for Christ’s sake. I just want to know what happened to Fritz. Do you know something, Diamond? Trip?”
A few moments passed in taut silence. Then Trip and Diamond both leaned forward to talk, and then stopped, unwilling to interrupt each other. Curiously, it was Diamond who leaned back and gestured to Trip to start.
“Okay,” Trip said, running his hands through his hair as if slicking it back. “NorthPoint’s been contracting with the government for years, ever since Fritz’s father started it back in the eighties. But since Nine/Eleven, it’s mushroomed. More office buildings, more employees, lots of new areas of interest.”