was done, Mary Pat said, “The two on the front look like manufacturer’s marks. Driscoll said the base was heavy-duty plywood. Might be able to use the marks to track something down. The other mark, on the back . . . Tell me if I’m wrong, but that looks handwritten.”
“Agreed,” Margolin said. “We’ll turn the translators loose.”
“And what about the million-dollar question?” Cummings said. “Why make the sand table, and where’s it supposed to represent?”
“The Emir’s vacation spot, I hope,” Turnbull said.
They all laughed.
“If wishes were horses ...” Margolin mused. “Mary Pat, I can see the gears cranking in your head. Got an idea?”
“Maybe; lemme get back to you.”
“How about the documents in the ammo box?” Turnbull asked.
“Translators estimate tomorrow afternoon,” Margolin said. He opened the accordion file, withdrew the map from the cave, and unfolded it on the table. Everyone stood up and leaned over it.
“Left behind by the CIA advisers,” Mary Pat said. “They wanted the mujahideen to have maps, just not the best maps.”
Margolin turned the map over, displaying the Baedeker’s Peshawar side.
“Got some markings here,” Mary Pat said, tapping the paper and leaning closer. “Dots. Ballpoint pen.” They scoured the map and in short order found nine marks, each a cluster of either three or four dots.
“Who’s got a knife?” Mary Pat asked. Turnbull handed her a pocketknife, and she slit the masking tape along all four edges, then turned the Baedeker’s over. “There you are. ...” she murmured.
Inscribed in the upper-right-hand corner, no larger than a quarter-inch, was an upward-pointing arrow followed by three dots, and a downward-pointing arrow followed by four dots.
“Legend,” Margolin whispered.
23
IT STARTED in the Department of Justice. Forwarded by the Pentagon, it was First Sergeant Driscoll’s written report of his takedown in the Hindu Kush cave. The report—only three pages long, and simply written—detailed what Driscoll and his men had done. What flagged it for the attorney who reviewed the report was the body count. Driscoll reported having killed nine or so Afghan fighters, four of them with a silenced pistol at zero range. Direct shots to the head, the attorney saw, which made his blood run a little cold. It was the nearest thing he’d ever read to a confession of cold-blooded murder. He’d read his share of such confessions but never written so directly. This Driscoll fellow had violated some rules or laws or something, the attorney thought. It wasn’t a battlefield action, not even a sniper’s account of killing people at a hundred yards or so as they stuck their heads up like ducks at a shooting gallery. He’d taken care of the “bad guys” (so he called them) while they slept. Slept. Totally harmless, the lawyer thought, and he’d killed them without as much as a thought and reported it straightforwardly, like an account of cutting the grass in his front yard.
This was outrageous. He’d had “the drop” on them, as they said in Western movies. They’d been unable to resist. Hadn’t even known their lives were in danger, but this Driscoll guy had taken out his pistol and dispatched them like a kid stomping on insects. But they hadn’t been insects. They’d been human beings, and under international law, they’d been entitled to capture and to be transformed into prisoners of war protected by the Geneva Protocols. But Driscoll had killed them, totally without mercy. Worse still, the knuckle-dragger seemed to have given little thought to whether the men he’d killed could have been milked for information. He’d decided, quite arbitrarily, it seemed, that the nine men were worthless, both as human beings and as sources.
The lawyer was young, not yet thirty years of age. He’d graduated Yale at the top of his class before taking an offer to work in Washington. He’d almost clerked for a Supreme Court justice, but had been knocked out of that slot by a hick from the University of Michigan. He wouldn’t have liked it anyway, he was sure. The new Supreme Court, in place for five or so years now, was full of conservative “strict constructionists” who worshipped the letter of the law as if it were Zeus of ancient times. Like Southern Baptists in their country pulpits or on TV on Sunday mornings, which he saw only in glimpses while surfing the channels for the morning talk shows.
Damn.
He reread the report and was again shocked at the bare facts of the third-grade language. A United States Army soldier