THE COUNTERSIGN

Synopsis

Major Ines Rothery reviews closed operations for an inspector general. It is the assignment the Army gives an officer who is too good to remove and too rigid to promote. She has held it three years and does not mind. A 1994 authorization crosses her desk with a countersignature blacked out. She writes four retired officers. Each of them names a different man. Each of them is telling the truth as they remember it, and one of them is wrong. The corridor narrows. Every man she clears sends her one step nearer a filing cabinet in Virginia, and to a summer she spent as a lieutenant signing whatever a colonel she admired put in front of her.

Who this is about

Major Ines Rothery reviews old operations for an inspector general, which is the job they give an officer who is very good and no longer trusted to be flexible.

What goes wrong

One authorization from 1994 has a countersignature under the redaction. Four retired officers each remember somebody else signing it, and each of them is telling the truth as they have it.

What's at stake

The men above her have pensions, reputations and grandchildren. She has a file, a clearance, and a growing certainty that the initials under the block are going to be hers.

Why it keeps going

Every episode one more person is cleared and one more door closes, which narrows the corridor she is standing in and moves the answer nearer to her own desk.

Takeaway

The hardest signature to read is the one you have written a thousand times.

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