The General's Daughter Read online

  RESOUNDING ACCLAIM FOR

  BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  NELSON DEMILLE AND

  THE GENERAL’S

  DAUGHTER

  “A PAGE-TURNER THAT DISTURBS, PROVOKES, AND MAKES YOU THINK LONG AFTER YOU’VE PUT IT DOWN… sophisticated and compassionate…. Pointed dialogue and gritty humor make THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER a fast read.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “A FURIOUSLY FAST READ, GENUINELY PERPLEXING, INVOLVING MYSTERY AND AN IMMENSELY LIKABLE ANTIHERO. THANK YOU, MR. DEMILLE.”

  —New York Daily News

  “DEMILLE IS A MASTER OF THE UNEXPECTED…. With THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER, DeMille continues to prove himself an accomplished and incredibly versatile storyteller.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “DEMILLE’S NARRATIVE ENERGY IS UNFLAGGING.”

  —Boston Globe

  “HIS NOVELS ARE TIMELY, AUTHENTIC, AND FILLED WITH CONVINCING CHARACTERS. Nelson DeMille is one of the few writers who consistently takes chances and consistently succeeds. Each thriller is different in scope and texture.”

  —Baltimore Sun

  “COMPELLING… INTENSE… it’s a pleasure to read a novel that speaks about important issues while holding us in thrall. Nelson DeMille is an intelligent and accomplished storyteller who’s written a good book.”

  —Miami Herald

  “A KNOCKOUT. DeMille’s done it again… immensely skilled… a deductive novel of unwavering excellence.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A SPELLBINDING STORY… a superlative murder mystery that combines the plotting brilliance of a P. D. James whodunit with the disturbing overtones of a Ruth Rendell psychological thriller… The characterizations are splendid.”

  —Buffalo News

  “A FAST-PACED PROCEDURAL MYSTERY…. DeMille is a great storyteller, and this one is filled with intrigue. He also creates very believable characters and has thought up a convincing—and very strange—plot.”

  —The Veteran

  “TERRIFIC… this book is a real page-turner but the style and language elevate it to literature.”

  —Los Angeles Features Syndicate

  “WRITTEN WITH AUTHORITYAND ASSURANCE.”

  —Chattanooga News-Free Press

  “A PAGE-TURNER…. Once again, DeMille jolts readers with a story of murder…. He also creates a fascinating set of characters.”

  —Ocala Star-Banner

  “DEMILLE’S PLOTTING IS SOPHISTICATED, BUT THE PARTICULAR JOY OF THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER IS ITS DIALOGUE. Brenner is a man of honor as well as a cynic’s delight and a reader’s joy. DeMille, who found his fans with The Gold Coast, will keep them happy with this one.”

  —New York Daily News

  “RAISES THE READER’S ADRENALINE LEVEL…. DeMille is a very gifted author who keeps his readers fascinated and guessing until the very end. Even then the conclusion is a shocker.”

  —Riverside Press-Enterprise (CA)

  “GRIPPING… will have you biting your nails down to the quick… you won’t be able to put it down.”

  —The Magazine, Baton Rouge

  “A CAREFULLY CRAFTED NOVEL OF SUSPENSE…. Full of characters with depth and imagination, and the story is a great one.”

  —Wisconsin State-Journal

  “A SUPER OUTSTANDING BOOK… a convincing and impressive novel…. You’re in for a suspense shock.”

  —Macon Beacon

  “HITS THE MARK…. DeMille sustains our interest as he deviously weaves a web of suspicion around the many characters before revealing the killer in the smashing climax.”

  —Florida Times-Union

  Books by Nelson DeMille

  BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON

  CATHEDRAL

  THE TALBOT ODYSSEY

  WORD OF HONOR

  THE CHARM SCHOOL

  THE GOLD COAST

  THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER

  SPENCERVILLE

  PLUM ISLAND

  Published by

  WARNER BOOKS

  Copyright

  THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER. Copyright © 1992 by Nelson DeMille. Foreword copyright © 1999 by Nelson DeMille. Excerpt from The Lion’s Game copyright © 1999 by Nelson DeMille. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Warner Books,

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-2264-0

  A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1992 by Warner Books.

  First eBook Edition: April 2001

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  Contents

  Copyright

  RESOUNDING ACCLAIM FOR BESTSELLING AUTHOR NELSON DEMILLE AND THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER

  Books by Nelson DeMille

  Author’s Foreword

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  A Preview of "The Lion’s Game"

  For Mom and Dad, Dennis

  and Lillian, Lance and Joanie

  Many thanks to my consiglieri,

  Dave Westermann, Mike Tryon,

  Len Ridini, Tom Eschmann,

  Steve Astor, John Betz,

  and Nick Ellison.

  Mille grazie.

  What the dead had no speech for,

  when living,

  They can tell you, being dead: the

  communication

  Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond

  the language of the living.

  T.S. Eliot

  Four Quartets. “Little Gidding”

  Author’s Foreword

  THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER

  The Book & The Movie

  The Book

  This book, on its most basic level, is a murder mystery that happens to be set on an Army post.

  But on another level, it is a story about the unique subculture of the military, about military law, and about women in the military, and how all of these elements come together on a hot, steamy Georgia military base.

  The Uniform Code of Military Justice is the law under which all the branches of the military—Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard—operate. The UCMJ, as it is called, is based on American Constitutional law, but it is tailored to take into account the ironic fact that men and women in uniform, who are sworn to defend the Constitution, do not enjoy all the rights and safeguards they are defending. Militar
y law also addresses military virtues, such as duty, honor, and loyalty—concepts which are rarely or never addressed in civilian law.

  Thus, as we see in this novel, military law is more than law—it is the whole legal, social, professional, and even psychological matrix into which all members of the armed forces fit, or don’t fit, as the case may be.

  The General’s Daughter begins with a murder and apparent rape, and from the beginning, we see that this is not only a crime against an individual or against society; it is also a crime against the institution of the United States Army, a crime against good order and discipline, an affront to the concepts of honor and loyalty, and to the military maxim that “All the brothers are brave and all the sisters are virtuous.” In fact, the murder of a female officer is the trip wire that causes an explosion that rocks the Army to its foundations.

  I wrote this novel partly as a result of the Persian Gulf War of January and February 1991. Specifically, I was impressed by the role that women played in the war, and in the military in general. Like most Vietnam veterans, however, I was a little surprised and a lot annoyed at how the news media reported this war, as opposed to my war. Needless to say, the military came off looking a lot better in the Persian Gulf than they did in Vietnam. The reasons for this are too numerous to go into here, but one reason for this was the visible presence of women in the armed forces.

  The military, consciously or unconsciously, put the media in a quandary; journalists look for dirt, for government bungling, for military incompetence. But here you had a situation where the military was at the forefront of a politically correct movement—equality of women.

  The media personalized the Gulf War with endless interviews of women doing men’s jobs. This hype, I think, helped set the tone for the positive reporting of the war in general.

  Of course, many male soldiers, sailors, and airmen felt a little left out, and certainly veterans of my generation felt totally disenfranchised and retroactively snubbed and unfairly portrayed.

  Be that as it may, the net result was a “good war,” as opposed to a “bad war.”

  Regarding the “bad war,” I served in the United States Army from April 1966 to April 1969. During that time, I took my basic combat training at Fort Gordon, Georgia, my advanced infantry training and leadership school training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and attended Infantry Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. After training troops at Fort Benning, I went to the Jungle Operations Come at Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone, then shipped out to Vietnam and served as an infantry platoon leader with the First Air Cavalry Division.

  My three years in the Army were very much a male/macho experience, as you can imagine, and I did not interact with too many female soldiers. In fact, the number of females serving in the military during the Vietnam conflict was fewer than the number who served in World War II.

  In Vietnam, aside from military nurses, there were virtually no women serving in the war zone, except civilian Red Cross volunteers, known in the sexist jargon of the day as “Donut Dollies.” In any case, the American women in Vietnam were in the traditional roles of caregivers, and they were no threat to the men.

  In 1969, my last year of service back in the States, I began to see female officers assigned to staff jobs that were traditionally male-only postings. This was an experiment that had mixed results. The feminist movement in America was in its early stages, and there was little pressure on the military from any source for gender equality or gender integration.

  But the military was actually in advance of the social and political movements of the day in regard to gender integration, just as it was years ahead of the nation in racial integration when, in 1949, the armed forces ended racial segregation, albeit by presidential order.

  The point is, the armed forces has a mixed, but mostly positive record in all areas of equality. This is partly a result of the nature of the organization. By that I mean, if you’re going to ask a black man to fight and perhaps die, then you can’t treat him as a second-class citizen. If you’re going to ask a woman to serve in a close-combat support group (but not in combat itself), then, again, you have to extend to her all the rights, privileges, and opportunities that accrue to the man serving beside her.

  Some men, of course, would say, “We don’t need women in the military at all.” Others might say, “Women in the military are okay, but only in traditionally female jobs.”

  But I believe we’re past those attitudes, and only two questions remain: Should women serve in direct combat roles? And, Should women be subject to the draft as men are?

  Those are difficult questions, and they are not directly addressed in The General’s Daughter, though there is a sub-text in the book that raises these questions of full equality.

  When I set out to write this post–Gulf War novel, the first thing I decided was that this novel was not going to be a polemic. It was going to be as fair as possible to the men and women who serve in our military, it was going to be fair to the Army, and fair to the concept of a gender-mixed military. But it was not going to be a politically correct paean where all the sisters are terrific and all the brothers are male chauvinist pigs.

  At about the time this novel appeared in the fall of 1992, the Tailhook scandal was rocking the nation. This was good for the book, but it wasn’t good for a sane, impartial dialogue on the complex subject of a gender-integrated military. Most of the news and entertainment media who interviewed me for this book wanted me to make some connection between The General’s Daughter, a novel, and the ongoing Tailhook scandal, which was turning into an hysterical witch-hunt.

  The incident in question—a party that got out of hand—was all of a sudden offered as proof that the entire military culture was corrupt and sexist. The fact that some men acted badly was never in doubt. But lost in the uproar was the fact that some men acted honorably, and some women acted badly. The same military that was idolized by the media in the Gulf War was now being pilloried.

  The Tailhook incident was not typical, and the Navy brass should have made that clear and should have stood up for the Navy and prevented the good name and reputation of its entire corps of fighter pilots from being dragged through the mud because of one bad night that involved a relatively small number of individuals.

  But the political climate in Washington, and the social climate in America, precluded any thought of fairness or truth or rational discourse. Instead, heads rolled, careers were ruined, and the male-female divide got about ten miles wider.

  But long before Tailhook, I set out to write a novel that addressed the questions and problems of men and women serving together in the new Army. It was my hope not to pander to or exploit these headline issues; I wanted a novel that would deal with the more universal and timeless issues of men and women: jealousy, sex, honor, truth, and the human capability to love and hate, often at the same time. I’ve set all of this on an Army post, just to make things more complex and interesting.

  This story could happen anywhere, anytime—in fact, you may find some similarities in this story to a Greek tragedy. But what happens in The General’s Daughter couldn’t happen quite like this, except on a modern American military base.

  The Movie

  The movie rights for The General’s Daughter were bought by Paramount Motion Pictures before the book was published in 1992. Sherry Lansing, the studio head, liked the novel and saw it as a story that dealt with important issues in modern American society. At the same time, the story line, plot, and characters in the novel were easily adaptable to the screen.

  The screenplay went through several rewrites, as seems to be the case in Hollywood, and eventually morphed into a highly competent draft by Christopher Bertolini, with some smart doctoring by the always brilliant William Goldman, and a final excellent polish by Scott Rosenberg.

  I’m often asked if I have any input into movie scripts adapted from my novels. The answer is, no. Screenwriting is not at all like novel writing, and a screenwriter has to
work with a novel that takes ten to sixteen hours to read, and turn it into a screenplay for a movie of about two hours’ length. Obviously, something will be lost in the adaptation, and it’s difficult for a novelist to cut this much from his or her own magnum opus.

  I do, however, read the screenplays that have been written of all my novels, in their many drafts, and I offer suggestions. In the case of The General’s Daughter, the final drafts stayed true and close to the substance and intent of my novel.

  The first part of the movie was shot in and around Savannah, Georgia, which acted as the setting for the fictional Midland, Georgia, in the novel. My fictional Fort Hadley somehow became Fort McCallum, and Ann Campbell, who is the general’s daughter in the novel, became Elisabeth (Lizzie) Campbell in the movie. It’s not worth wondering about these small changes, and the author is grateful that the movie didn’t become a musical comedy titled Lizzie!

  When a film adaptation of a novel gets off to a bad start, it usually stays on that path and ends up as an instant video rental or a video-club giveaway. The General’s Daughter, however, started strong with good support and good ideas from Sherry Lansing, and from Karen Rosenfelt who is an executive vice president of production at Paramount. Next, a producer was chosen—Mace Neufeld. Mace, with his partner, Bob Rehme, have adapted Tom Clancy’s novels to the screen, and Mace himself has many successful films to his credit.

  Ironically, Mace Neufeld had read The General’s Daughter when it first came out and made a bid to option it, but was outbid by Paramount. But now Mace and The General’s Daughter have been reunited, so to speak, through Paramount.

  The next step was the screenplay, which I’ve mentioned, then came casting, and finding a director. The director chosen, Simon West, made the hit movie, Con Air. He was not considered a natural choice for this kind of movie, but like most creative people, he wanted to do something different. He said, “I really wanted to find a project that was a bit more serious. When The General’s Daughter popped up, I read the book, loved it, and jumped on board.” Simon shared everyone’s enthusiasm for the project, and the results show.