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“All right. I don't think you can imagine it, unless you actually went through it… Up at two-thirty in the morning. Physical abuse. Drug-induced nightmares. Interrogation by the best in the army. Pushed like a dirt-farm tractor until you dropped at eight. Up again at two-thirty-I mean pushed, drained. Each day was one hundred percent harder than the last. Physically and emotionally, and psychologically… The men chosen to go to Bragg were all considered top rank. Hudson had West Point and extensive combat behind him. He'd been a successful commander in ' Nam… Uh, Colonel Hudson was also a military assassin in Vietnam. He was very heavy. With a good rep.”
Carroll, hearing the word assassin, felt that he had taken still another step into the endless Green Band maze. The farther he moved, the more confusing it became. The all-American soldier had an even darker side: assassin. He brought Hudson 's clean-cut image in the photographs back to mind: the sunshine face of determination, the crew cut, the honesty in the eyes.
“Meaning what, Colonel? What does a good rep mean in that context? As a military assassin.”
“It means he wasn't a thrill killer-which most of the top hitters were… A very real problem is what to do with some of those guys once they leave the army. If the generals had decided to take out Ho Chi Minh, someone very big, very delicate, Hudson most likely would have been considered. I'm telling you, he was one of the fair-haired boys.”
“You seem a little awed by Hudson yourself.”
Williamson smiled absently; he finally chuckled softly into his chest full of medals. “I don't know about awe. Awe isn't the right word. Definitely respect, though.”
“Why?”
“He was one of the best soldiers I've ever trained. He had physical endurance and all the technical skills. He had strength and tremendous smarts. A martial-arts background. He also had something else. Dignity.”
“So what went wrong? What happened to Hudson after the war? Why did he finally leave the army in 1976?”
Colonel Williamson rubbed his hard-boned, clean-shaven jaw. “As I said, the one potential problem was his attitude. He could be extremely judgmental… He also thought he had answers to some controversial army problems. Some career officers might not have appreciated Hudson 's judgment of them and their actions. The other thing was the loss of his arm. David Hudson had big, big plans for himself. How many one-armed generals are you aware of?”
Arch Carroll thought before he spoke again. For all the apparent cooperation, he had a sneaking feeling that Colonel Williamson was still holding something back. It was the army way, he remembered from extensive past dealings with the Pentagon. Everything had to be a huge “need to know” secret, shared only inside the sacred fraternity of army blood brothers, shared only with the other warriors.
“Colonel Williamson, I've got to ask the next few questions with the authority of the commander in chief. That means I need complete answers.”
“That's what you've been getting, Mr. Carroll.”
“Colonel Williamson, did you know the official purpose of David Hudson's Special Forces training at Fort Bragg? Why was he at the JFK school? If that information was in any of your orders, if you heard it anywhere on the base I need to know it.”
Colonel Duriel Williamson stared back hard at Arch Carroll, then at Captain Hawkins. When he spoke, his voice was softer, deeper than it had been. “Nothing was ever written down in any of the orders… As I said, I don't remember who actually issued our daily orders. I do know why he was supposed to be there, though…”
“Go on. Please, Colonel Williamson.”
“It was something we were told at the very first briefing on David Hudson. Verbally told. The first briefing sounded like total CIA bullshit, by the way. Until we actually met Hudson… You see… they told us Colonel David Hudson had been specially chosen to be our version of the Third World superterrorist. David Hudson was selected and trained to be our version of the terrorist Juan Carlos.”
Arch Carroll became very tense now. He leaned forward on his chair. “That's why he was at the Bragg school? Why he was pushed ahead, beyond all the others?”
“That's what we helped teach him to be… And Mr. Carroll, Hudson was frightening. He is still frightening, I'm sure. From potentially pla
Carroll didn't speak-because right at that moment he couldn't. The realization that the United States Army had secretly trained its own Carlos, and that he had now quite possibly turned, was unbelievable. Colonel Williamson's words rang in his ears: From potentially pla
“Colonel Williamson, in your opinion, could David Hudson have been involved with Green Band? Could he have technically masterminded an operation like that?”
“I don't doubt it, Mr. Carroll. He has all the technical skills.”
Williamson sighed. “One more fact about Colonel David Hudson, though. When I knew him, at least, and I think I knew the man fairly well, he loved the United States very much. He loved America. Make no mistake, David Hudson was a patriot.”
When Arch Carroll drove out of the vast, nearly empty Pentagon parking area at a little past ten that night, his mind was rapidly turning over all kinds of possibilities. Finally, something had co
As he drove, weary and stone-faced, to the Washington Hotel, he tried to review the long day. His eyes were red and they burned. But he felt legitimately close to something for the first time since Green Band had begun.
Colonel David Hudson was trained to be our version of Carlos… our version of Monserrat.
David Hudson was a patriot.
Was David Hudson also a traitor? Perhaps the most significant traitor since Benedict Arnold?
A blue sedan unobtrusively followed Arch Carroll as he drove through the suburban fringes of Washington. Both cars slipped and curled around icy George Washington Parkway. When Carroll turned onto Constitution Avenue at a sedate thirty-five miles an hour, so did the blue sedan.
A team of eight professionals then alternated through the night both in and outside Georgetown 's Washington Hotel. They watched to see if Arch Carroll went out, if he met anyone else at the hotel, if he tried to reach Colonel Duriel Williamson or Samantha Hawes.
Carroll's room and telephone were expertly bugged. There was a single incoming call, which was recorded by the surveillance team.
“Hello. This is Carroll speaking.”
“Archer, it's Walter. I just spoke with Mike Caruso. He said you were in Washington.”
“It's as weird as ever down here, Walter. Maybe even a little weirder right now.”
“Mike told me about your latest theory. I think it's a good one. One thing bothers me a lot. I wonder why Phil Berger warned you off the track of Viet veterans earlier?”
“I wondered about that, too. Maybe he thought he had it covered. At any rate, I'm definitely touching exposed nerves down here.”
“Well, be careful about that. Philip Berger and the CIA aren't easy to fool, or to underestimate, either. And Archer-”
“Yeah, I know, I'll try to keep you involved.”
“If you don't, you could wind up all alone on this. And I mean all alone. I'm serious, Archer. Be careful as hell in Washington.”
Carroll made one call home to Riverdale and a second to Caitlin Dillon in Manhattan. He made a late call to Samantha Hawes at her home in Arlington. Then he slept.