Conduct Unbecoming

Kay said nothing.

"Mark doesn't like your husband, by the way," Diane said. "He doesn't like him at all. They were at the same posting as first lieutenants. Graham made moves on another officer's fiancee. Slept with her. He got away with it because his father was still serving - with four stars on his shoulders - and he had conversations with the right people." She looked up. "They weren't married yet, so nothing stuck formally. But Mark remembers. The other guy was... it wasn't good."

"Graham wants to retire as a one-star," Kay said. "Then run for Walter Marsh's Senate seat when he steps down. That's the plan. Has been for years."

And in furtherance of it, her husband had pulled the right strings and parlayed his temporary duty on Capitol Hill to something that had him moving between the National Security Council and the Pentagon.

"Which means a divorce won't just hurt his feelings," Diane said, after a considering moment. "It threatens the plan. Divorces don't look good to voters. Any suggestion of conduct unbecoming on your side - he'll use it."

"I know."

"He'll fight it and he'll fight dirty."

"I know that too."

Diane looked at her. "Does he know? About Miller?"

"No." She saw Diane's eyes narrow. "I'm sure."

Diane remained quiet for a moment. Then: "Mark told me Miller got into Warrant Officer school at Fort Rucker. To be a pilot. You're going to Maxwell because it's close."

Kay said nothing.

"Kay." Diane's voice was severe. "When you get to Alabama - you have to be careful. Once he gets served, Graham, probably Marsh too, will have people watching. They're going to try and manage the optics of a divorce and look for any angle to make you the bad guy."

"I understand."

"I hope you do," Diane said. "Because if he finds out about you and Miller - an enlisted man - there's going to be ego involved. Even if he did start fucking around on you first."

Kay looked at her for a moment, and made a decision. "Do you know who the woman is?"

Diane shook her head. "I asked. You didn't elaborate."

"Her name is Brenda. She's Nathan's wife."

Diane's mouth dropped open. "What?" For a long moment she stared at Kayleigh, mouth slack. Then she leaned back, eyes hard. "So Graham was having an affair with Nathan's wife?"

Kay nodded.

"And now you're with Nathan."

"Yes."

Diane was silent for nearly a full minute. Then she shook her head, picked up her sandwich and took another bite.

"Will you be alright?" Kay asked quietly. "Knowing what you know?"

Diane swallowed and smiled, small and dry. "I'm an Air Force JAG officer falling in love with an Army Lieutenant Colonel who would have been killed in North Africa if a Staff Sergeant hadn't moved fast enough."

"Only to find out that the husband of my best friend is fucking his wife, and said best friend is hopelessly in love with him." Diane shook her head. "There's moral complexity, then there's this... moral spaghetti."

When Kayleigh stood up ten minutes later, Diane stood too. She came around the desk and Kay stepped forward and they held each other for a long tight moment.

"Thank you," Kay said.

"Let's hang out more, okay?" Diane said. "Before you leave. And I want to come say bye to Leftenant."

Kay laughed, and left her.

She walked back through the JAG building and stepped out toward her duty station, her cover on, her pace even, and she thought about Alabama and what was waiting there and what she was leaving behind.

Not for the first time, she wondered at the cost and whether it was worth it.

She already knew the answer to the last one.

She had known it for a while.

________________

Greenville was a picturesque little town halfway between Mobile and Birmingham. It was the county seat of Butler County, Alabama, and was home to just under eight thousand residents and a world class golf course.

It was also halfway between Maxwell Air Force Base and Fort Rucker, and yet wasn't much frequented by military traffic.

Kayleigh drove into the town, through the main street and continued to the far side where the roads became even quieter and the houses had yards. The Magnolia House sat back from the road behind the tree that had given it its name.

She had been driving for just over an hour. The Alabama landscape was flat in a different way than Germany - wider, warmer, the light coming through the windscreen at an angle that she was still not used to after a month. The trees were different. The sky was different.

She was wearing a wig. Auburn this time. She'd worn it after she left Maxwell, at the mall car park where she'd parked and gone into a bathroom to change. She'd come out and entered another car - a rental several other cars away - and driven on to her destination.

She was nervous, anxious - a low hum under the skin, her body alive with want, a low simmering heat low in her abdomen.

She hadn't seen him in six weeks.

Her orders to report to Maxwell had come three months after registering her preference, which was quite fast, which said that Colin Bannatyne had no small amount of influence.

It was not too long after he had left Germany, a week before the five week Warrant Officer program was due to begin.

She'd packed up everything already, methodically, room by room, category by category. Her things. Then Graham's.

She had packed her husband's things with the same care she'd given her own - his clothes folded correctly, his books boxed by subject, his extra dress uniforms in their bags with tissue paper between the layers. She placed a labeled inventory in the top box of each stack. She did not damage or throw away anything of his. She did not keep anything he owned.

She sent him every cent of the money she'd gotten from putting the GLA on the market, the Pawsition tracker and charger removed from where they had been installed so long ago in the rear glove compartment.

She had then arranged for the boxes to be delivered for onward transport to the Arlington address he'd sent her - the day before she was to leave Germany.

He didn't know about that.

He'd still believed she was pursuing a posting in the DC or Virginia area, working her way toward him, the dutiful wife navigating a PCS to serve in the same location as her husband. He believed it was still a month or two away and had even offered to pull strings from his new perch to make it happen faster.

He didn't know about Maxwell. Not yet.

Diane had come to help her pack, bringing coffee, doughnuts and paper bags from Hans und Helga.

They'd sat on one of the packing boxes in the living room the morning before, a Saturday, eaten their sandwiches and talked about Kay teaching at the Air University at Maxwell, a counter-espionage case Diane was working and her relationship with Mark Haskell. They didn't talk about why she was really relocating to Alabama, which was exactly what Kay had needed.

Leftenant had leapt down from the sofa and walked across Diane's lap twice, which was his version of approval.

"He likes you," Kay had said.

"Everyone likes me," Diane had said, archly. "I'm extremely likeable." She'd glanced up. "I'm gonna miss you."

It was what LTC Osmond had said the day before, voice gruff, walking her outside after the end of her last day at the cyber center. "Maxwell's getting something good."

Her eyes had teared up again. "Thank you, sir."

Kenley had shaken her hand with both of his. Dominguez had simply hugged her, regulations notwithstanding, and she had hugged back. The others had stood in a loose formation and she had addressed them briefly and shaken every hand.

Her juniors had all come to attention as she left.

"Don't thank me," Osmond said. "It's an accurate statement." He looked at her sideways. "You're going to do just fine, Major."

She'd come to attention and saluted.

He'd returned it crisply, held it a beat longer than protocol required, and then nodded once and gone back inside.

Diane was there again on Sunday morning when the car came to take her to the airport. Diane had pulled her in and held her for a long moment, tight and wordless. Kay had not cried, which she considered a personal achievement.

"Alabama," Diane had said, pulling back and looking at her.

"Alabama," Kay had confirmed.

"Be careful."

"I know."

"I mean it, Kay."

"I know you do." Kay nodded. "Thank you, Ma'am."

Diane had squeezed her shoulders once, then stepped back and stood straight. Kay had picked up Leftenant's carrier and gone down the stoop without looking back.

Maxwell had been warm when she arrived nearly thirty-six hours later, a warmth that was surprising even though she'd known intellectually that Kaiserslautern ran differently than Southern Alabama.

She was met by a Captain from the Air University staff who'd saluted and shown her to her quarters and walked her through the essentials, advised her on where to secure a vehicle. The billet was smaller than the house in Germany but she didn't mind.

She'd set Leftenant's carrier in the center of the living room and opened the door and he'd emerged, sniffed the perimeter, and chosen the armchair by the window.

"Good choice," she'd told him.

She had sent a text to a number she had memorized before taking a shower. It brought forth a memory, of being thoroughly washed and made clean in a gasthaus bathroom, only to be dirtied once again and she'd touched herself until she cried out under the falling water.

Then she'd padded out to the bedroom and gone to a long peaceful sleep.

She'd been unpacking her second box the morning after when Diane's message came through.

'He's been served. This morning. His office at the Pentagon.'

She'd read it twice. Then she'd put her phone - now with an entirely new number - face down on the kitchen counter and kept unpacking.

Two days later, after her orientation and a meeting with the Commandant and other officers and members of faculty, she'd walked into the Air University administration building and registered her name change with HR - Alvarez, not Palmer, effective immediately across all non-classified systems. The clerk had been brisk and entirely incurious.

She'd driven back to her quarters afterward and sat in the car for a moment before going inside.

She'd thought of another rental car that smelled of synthetic lavender and a blue dot going the wrong direction in Germany one ordinary evening.

All that had brought her here.

Then she'd gone inside and fed Leftenant and started planning her first week of classes.

The text arrived a week later - from a new number she had memorized. 'Have liberty. B&B outside Greenville. Saturday.'

She'd looked up the address on the map. Roughly halfway between Maxwell and Rucker, on a state road that didn't see much traffic, a small bed and breakfast called the Magnolia House that had a website with twenty-five photographs and forty-seven Google reviews, most of them from people passing through for a wedding. It was beautiful.

She'd texted back: 'What time?'

'Whenever you get there.'

She was in her new office, in Class As, and she'd smiled at her phone for longer than she intended to.

Her phone announced a final turn, bringing her back to the present.

The Magnolia House appeared on the right side of the road - a white clapboard building set back behind a magnolia tree.

She pulled in and checked herself in the mirror, reapplied lip gloss. She smoothed the wrap sundress over her body - the kind of dress that came off easily - and got out of the car.

The air was warmer than Maxwell, somehow, or maybe she was warm from the inside out despite wearing nothing under her dress. She walked around the side of the building where a row of cabin doors faced a small garden.

Number four.

She knocked.

She heard movement inside, and then the door opened and Nathan Miller stood in the doorway, military bearing unmistakable despite the civilian clothes.

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

Then she stepped forward and he pulled her the rest of the way in and closed the door behind her.

He held her and she pressed herself close for a long while, simply savoring being held in his arms.

Then he kissed her and she savored that for a while too, surrendering her lips as he pursued them every time the kiss broke.

She knew he much preferred her unclothed so she asked him to stand back when they parted so she could unwrap herself from her dress and pull off her wig, and for a while she simply sat on his lap and buried her face again in his neck, breathing him in as he held her.

"Hello, Major," he said, his hand on her belly, stroking down from her breasts with their pointing nipples.

"You're too dressed, WOC Miller," she said, pouting, furling her lip.

There was an automatic power differential between the clothed and the naked. That she enjoyed being the latter, vulnerable - with him - was something she'd learned to simply accept.

But not now.

"With the Major's permission, I can rectify the situation," he said.

"No," she said, fingers already undoing his shirt, forehead on his. "I'll take care of that myself. I'm going to do a very thorough inspection, Mr. Miller."

________________

She was at her desk after her last class when an aide knocked and opened the door.

"Major Alvarez. There's a Lieutenant Colonel Palmer here - Army. Uh... he says he's your husband."

She had been expecting this. Not today specifically, but soon. Graham was always going to come over and have it out in person.

"Send him in," she said. "Then take the rest of the afternoon."

The aide looked at her for a moment, then nodded and stepped back.

Graham came through the door in civilian clothes - jacket, open collar, hair in a soldier's buzz-cut but styled to stand out. He looked good. He always looked good. When he'd approached her at a joint officers' mixer in Miami all those years ago her breath had caught in her throat and all the other female officers had been green with envy.

Now she felt nothing.

He closed the door behind him and stood in the center of her office and looked around it with an expression she recognized as curiosity with a heavy seasoning of contempt.

"Nice office," he said.

"I'm sure your office in the Pentagon is bigger," she said. "Sit down, Graham."

He didn't sit. He put both hands in his pockets and looked at her across the desk. "So," he said. "This is the billet you chose over me. Over us."

She saw no need to sugarcoat it. "Yes."

"Alabama." He smiled without warmth.

She waited.

He chuckled darkly. "'Irreconcilable differences.' I'm sure you thought you were clever. But as soon as I got those papers, as soon as I found out where you were, I had someone following you." His eyes were cold. "Did you know that? I've had someone watching you this whole time."

He reached into his jacket and produced his phone and set it on the desk facing her. He had the video app cued up and he pressed play.

She looked at the screen.

The footage was from outside the Magnolia House, through the cabin window, shot at an angle through a parting in the curtains that left nothing unclear. Her on all fours, her on top, him on top of her as she wrapped herself around him.

She watched the spliced clips for the full minute it ran and then looked up at him. Strangely, she felt no shame, just slightly violated and somewhat amused. The investigator had focused so closely on her naked body that he - it had to be a he - had missed the man with her. Nathan Miller's face never really showed.

"He got really close," Graham said, a cruel smile on his lips. "I gave him a tip."

He sat then and leaned forward, looking intently across the desk at her. "The wig and rental car thing was good. Clever. But he clocked you because you came out with the same bag."

She winced. It was a stupid mistake.

His expression was triumphant, a man holding the only weapon in the room.

"Your career is finished," he said. "Adultery. Conduct unbecoming. I have a JAG who will make sure every person in your reporting chain, up to your damn Chief of Staff sees this before the week is out." He picked the phone up. "Who is he? Some local? Some civilian you picked up?"

She said nothing.

"Does he know you're married? Does he know who I am?" His voice was rising slightly, the control beginning to cost him something because of her lack of reaction. "You think I won't do this? You think I won't burn you down completely?"

She let him finish, until the last word had landed and the room had gone quiet and he was sitting there with his phone in his hand, his eyes full of wounded pride and the satisfaction of having all the leverage.

Then she reached into her desk drawer and took out a tablet, set it on the desk and turned it to face him.

The first photograph was the one of Brenda Miller smiling up lustfully after the kiss in Bernkastel-Kues, her hand at his nape, his face turned away from the camera.

The second was some weeks later, after Romania. After she had permanently hooked up the cat tracker in the GLA's glove compartment.

It had made a noticeable dent in her savings, her investigator a former airman who had elected to remain in Germany after his enlistment.

He didn't need to 'investigate' much. She sent him the coordinates of the blue dot. He went there, took pictures and made notes.

She swiped. More photographs. Dates, times, locations - the multiple unoccupied furnished apartments in the KMC with Brenda's office car out front, the gasthaus and motels in and out of Kaiserslautern, a hotel in Babelsberg during the Berlin trip that was supposed to be only NATO business. Them together, her clothing thin, short and brief, his married hands where they shouldn't be on another man's wife.

Then he'd gone to DC and she'd had to hire someone there, which cost more, but the former cop - a woman - had come through with dozens of shots in the last two months.

The last photograph was from eight days ago, a street in Arlington, Graham and a blonde woman walking hand in hand toward a building she knew to be the address that she had sent the boxes from Germany.

She had been thorough. She had been patient. It had been the plan she had been operating since shortly after Romania and the blue dot kept moving where it wasn't supposed to.

Nathan had insisted on contributing. It was the week after their seventh encounter, timed to coincide with their spouses - nearly two months after Romania - when they'd had dinner together.

The dinner had not been by plan. She had been in the commissary after work and she had turned a corner and he had been there with a basket, in civilian clothes, and they had looked at each other for a moment.

"Captain," he said.

"Staff Sergeant," she said.

They had shopped separately for fifteen minutes and ended up at adjacent checkout lanes and when they walked out to the parking lot he had said, without particular inflection, "There's a place in Landstuhl that does good currywurst."

She had looked at him. "Is there?"

"If you're interested," he said, "in currywurst."

She had thought about it for approximately two seconds. "I'll follow you."

It was not a clandestine dinner. They sat at a corner table in a German restaurant in Landstuhl and ate currywurst and drank one drink each and talked for two hours. She told him about growing up in San Diego, about her father's hardware store, about the sequence of events that had led a girl who wanted to study something useful to a cyberwarfare commission in the United States Air Force.

He told her about West Virginia and his father's carpentry shop, the apprenticeship in a mechanic's shop, then enlisting and then a Ranger battalion and the agony tinged moment in a medevac helicopter when his career as an infantryman had been very much in doubt, which had launched his career as an aviator by proxy.