Zero History

“Not quite. He becomes a hookup artist. He’s hooking up deals with contacts in the
United States, people who work for companies that build tactical vehicles, UAVs, EOD
robots, mine detection and removal equipment …” She sat back, picking up her spoon
again. “And uniforms.”
“Uniforms?”
“What did your Blue Ant guys think they’d picked up on in South Carolina?”
“An Army contract?”
“Right, but the wrong army. At this point, anyway. And at this point, the man I’ve just
described to you regards your employers as direct and aggressive competitors. Those
pants are his first shot at contracting equipment himself. He won’t just be the hookup.”
“I don’t like the way this sounds,” Milgrim said.
“Good. What you need to remember, with these guys, is that they don’t know they’re
con men. They’re wildly overconfident. Omnipotence, omniscience—that’s part of the
mythology that surrounds the Special Forces. I had those guys hitting on me every last
day in Baghdad.” She held up her fist, showing Milgrim her plain gold wedding band.
“Your guy can walk in the door and promise training in something he personally doesn’t
know how to do, and not even realize he’s bullshitting about his own capabilities. It’s a
special kind of gullibility, a kind of psychic tactical equipment, that he had installed
during training. The Army put him through schools that promised to teach him how to do
everything, everything that matters. And he believed them. And that’s who your Mr.
Bigend has interested in his ass today, if not seriously after it.”
Milgrim swallowed. “So who’s Foley?
“The designer. You can’t make uniforms without a designer. He was at Parsons, the
New School for Design.”
“In New York?”
“Kind of doubt he fit in. But never mind him. Michael Preston Gracie’s who I’m after.”
“The major? I don’t understand what it is he’s done.”
“Crimes that involve lots of official acronyms. Crimes that would take me all night to
explain accurately. I hunt in an underbrush of regulations. But the good thing about these
guys, for me, is that the smaller the transgression, the sloppier they’ll handle it. I watch
the underbrush for twigs they’ve broken. That was Dermo, in this case.”
“Dermo?”
“D-R-M-O. Defense Reutilization and Marketing Offices. They sell off old equipment.
He manipulates old Army buddies. Illegally. Equipment’s sold on to foreign entities, be
they companies or governments. ICE notices a shipment, all curiously shiny-new. No
ITAR violations but they note the shiny, the new. I look into it, turns out those radios
were never meant to be sent to DRMO at all. Look a little closer and the DRMO buy
wasn’t right either. See he’s involved in lots of these purchases, lots of contracts. Nothing
huge, but the money seriously adds up. Those pants of yours look to me like the start of a
legitimization phase. Like he’s started listening to lawyers. Might even be a money-