Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 98

‘My sister-in-law died six years ago,’ Margaret said. ‘Felicity sent me my daughter’s paperwork shortly after that. As you might imagine, it was quite a shock. Disbelief, really. My first emotion was anger. No, hatred . A hatred of the people who had denied me my daughter for so many years. And yes, hatred towards myself. For accepting the explanation my aunt had given me. For not questioning it. For not realising that as too-cool-forschool as she was, my aunt always put the family’s name first. That she’d been sucking at the teat for too long to give it up.’

Margaret held her cup towards Koenig. He refilled it. Her cancer diagnosis might have been a lie, but her age wasn’t. She’d been talking for a while and the cabin was pressurised. Her throat would be popcorn dry.

‘My second emotion was joy,’ she said after she’d blown on the coffee and taken a sip. ‘Pure, unadulterated joy. I’d worked in academia my entire life and had assumed maternal instincts were for others. That I was too intellectual to be burdened by the need to procreate.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘Turns out that was horseshit. As soon as I had discovered the truth, I loved my daughter like I’d been in her life since she drew her first breath. I then had a decision to make. To involve myself or not. And let me tell you, that wasn’t as easy as you might think. I didn’t even know if she knew she was adopted. She was an adult by then, of course, but even so, having your family history rewritten would shock anyone. And what about her parents? They deserved my consideration too. In the end I did what I thought best: I wrote her parents a letter and introduced myself. Explained a little of what had happened and why I hadn’t been in touch before.’ She took another sip of her coffee. Traced a circle in a spill on the table. ‘And then I waited for a reply.’

‘How long did you have to wait?’ Draper asked.

‘Do you have access to the US military’s database, dear?’ Margaret asked Draper.

‘Not officially.’

‘I’ll take that as a yes. Be a good girl and look up Lieutenant Braddock. Emily Braddock. US Navy.’ She gave Draper a date of birth and a nine-digit service number. ‘She was a late entrant. Had a career as a teacher before she accepted her commission.’

Draper held Margaret’s gaze a beat, then opened her laptop. Her fingers danced over the keyboard. Touch-typing. She stared at the screen, then used the trackpad to navigate around whatever site she was on. She asked Margaret to repeat the service number. Koenig watched her type it into a boxed-off field on a US Navy personnel website. It was one he hadn’t seen before. Draper obviously had a back door into something that wasn’t in the public domain. A small egg timer appeared on the screen as they waited for the information to appear.

The screen changed, and Draper leaned in to read it. She frowned.

‘It says here that Emily Braddock was court-martialled,’ she said. She read a bit more. ‘She was found guilty of making a false official statement and dishonourably discharged. It doesn’t say what that statement was, which is odd. It looks like it’s been deleted.’

‘She was raped, dear,’ Margaret said. ‘A fellow officer raped her. He went into her bunk and subjected her to an ordeal that should have got him a thirty-year prison sentence. Instead, the navy covered it up. He got thirty days confined to base for not being at his post. He was confined to base, and my daughter was dishonourably discharged. They said she’d made a malicious complaint after being passed over for a promotion. They cover them all up. The systemic rape of women serving their country – and the retaliations they face when they report it – is known as America’s dirty little secret.’

‘Did Emily tell you this? It must have been hard to hear.’

‘No. I found this out independently. People were willing to talk. Statistically, female soldiers are more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by the enemy. There’s even a term for it: “military sexual trauma”. It’s now the leading cause of PTSD among female veterans.’

Carlyle nodded. ‘Sexual-assault-related healthcare now costs the Department of Veterans Affairs almost a billion bucks a year,’ she said. ‘Military culture still sees war as the domain of men. Unfortunately, that means servicewomen can be viewed as little more than camp followers. It’s improving, but not as fast as it should be.’

Margaret took a drink. Wiped her lips with the back of her hand.

‘The man who raped Emily was a fellow lieutenant called Marc Du Pont. He’s the son of a vice admiral, and Emily’s wasn’t the first complaint made against him. The enlisted women in his unit even had laminated cards made up for new arrivals. It warned against accepting drinks from him. If he was in the building, they were to pair up when going to the bathroom. And on no account were they to attend a summons to his office, even if it meant disobeying a direct order.’

‘How did he keep getting away with it?’ Koenig said. ‘Powerful daddy or not, a rapist is a rapist.’

‘That’s what she’d thought,’ Margaret said. ‘When she finally made it to the sick bay, battered and bruised, she was admitted as an emergency. The doctor, a lieutenant commander, was administering a drip to stabilise her blood pressure when he got a phone call. Emily didn’t know who it was he spoke to, or what he was threatened with, but when the call ended, he removed her drip and told her she was faking it. That her injuries were self-inflicted and superficial, and that he wanted nothing to do with her.’

‘The US is one of the few countries that still lets the military conduct its own rape investigations,’ Carlyle said. ‘It means command has an overwhelming say over what happens. If the base CO doesn’t want a rape prosecuted, it isn’t prosecuted. And in most cases, there are no upsides. They lose at least one man from their unit, and it demonstrates there’s a problem with discipline. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that Daddy Du Pont was able to pull strings and protect his son.’

‘You’re going to prison, Margaret,’ Koenig said. ‘There’s nothing I can do about that. But when this is all over, I’m going to talk to your daughter, and I’m shining a big light on what she went through. On what Du Pont did. You have my word.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Benjamin,’ Margaret said. ‘But you won’t be able to talk to Emily, I’m afraid. Eight years ago, she gave up her struggle for justice. She drove to the ocean she’d always loved, watched the sun come up, then blew her own brains out. That’s why America must be punished.’