The Threat (24 page)

“It needs a verbal introduction.”

“Mr. Holt's in conference. I'll get it to him.” She glanced toward a partition. Dan hesitated. A door opened, and he heard a once familiar voice.

Then he remembered
whose
voice it was, and caught his breath. Holding the folder like a weapon, he pushed past the staffer.

The inner office was bigger than Sebold's or even Clayton's. The polished glass of an enormous desk was covered with knickknacks, golf trophies, stuffed toys, union mugs, souvenirs, presentation globes. The right-hand window framed the south end of the Old Executive, but the one to the left had the long view: down the South Lawn, across the Ellipse, to the white bubble of the Jefferson Memorial against a sky just waiting for an excuse to snow.

Holt, looking startled, was leaning back in a recliner, hands behind his neck. A slim, freckled man sat across from him. Bright red suspenders peeped from beneath a dark blue pinstripe, bracketing a pale lavender silk tie like Donald Trump's. He wasn't as young as he'd been ten years before, but his features still had a pixieish cast. His long hair was still reddish blond, his eyes more sun-crinkled. He looked very much at home in the red leather chair, twiddling a gold fountain pen. They regarded each other for a moment before Dan said, “Tallinger.”

“You know each other?” Holt said. “Dr. Martin W. Tallinger. Dan Lenson, on our staff.”

Tallinger dropped both hands to the chair arms. The pen hit the carpet. Dan, too, could not speak. Then his astonishment was obliterated by the same red rage as when he'd spat mingled blood and saliva in the face of the man who'd sold secrets, betrayed his country, and in the end helped kill, knowingly or not, a woman who'd cared only for peace.

“What's this asshole doing here?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“This guy's a lying influence peddler. And a spy. Still running your ring, Tallinger? Still selling the Chinese our technology?”

“Now just a minute.” Tallinger was still braced, but he was below Dan, looking up at him from the chair. He probably figured that if he got up, Dan would punch him. He glared at the chief of staff. “Tony. Call him off!”

“I'd like to know what's going on,” Holt said.

Dan said, “What you have here's the guy who tried to sell the Tomahawk terminal guidance to the Chinese. Check with the D.C. police. Call the FBI. Mention Operation Snapdragon.”

“Which I cooperated with, and which cleared me one hundred percent,” Tallinger said. “Tony, here's the picture. This … officer holds me responsible for a personal loss, years ago, that I had nothing to do with. I'm surprised to see him here. Surprised to see him still in government service, actually. The last I heard, he'd resigned under a cloud.”

“The cloud's yours, you fucking murderer.” Dan stepped forward. Tallinger shrank back and raised his hands.

Holt knocked over a whittled figurine of a New England sailing captain as he stretched for his intercom. “I want Garner Sebold in here,” he said. “Lenson—outside.”

“I have a report for the president. I'll drop it on your desk. Then I'll leave.” Dan looked at Tallinger again. “But you can't trust this son of a bitch. He works for the other side. The
real
other side.”

“I told you, this guy's a loose cannon. It's well known in his own service, Tony.”

“This isn't about me, sir. Just having him here is wrong.”

Another voice cut in. “I have a lot of confidence in Dan.”

Sebold looked put out, and out of breath. He'd probably heard the last exchange, which had been pretty loud. “But I agree he has strong opinions. And he's seen some things lately no one should have to. Let's go, Dan.”

“The chief of staff needs to know who he's dealing with, General.”

“He knows that before anybody sets foot in his office, Dan. Don't you think? One last time.”

Dan knew the next step was calling in the Secret Service. He couldn't believe it. Tallinger, next door to the Oval Office. And
he
was the one being hustled out. “All right,” he said. “I've warned you.” He stared again at Tallinger, and followed Sebold out.

In the corridor the general said, “What the fuck was that about?”

“He's an agent of influence.”

Sebold said mildly, “If that's true, I'm sure Tony knows it. I heard part of what you were putting out in there. I know tempers get close to the surface in politics. But that was really over the line.”

Dan looked down the hall. He should go back. This time, get his hands on the traitor. But Sebold was gripping his biceps so hard his arm was going numb. Muscling him down the steps, to the ground floor. Passing staffers glanced at them, then away, snapping back to their own concerns. “I want you back in your office. Stay there till you hear from me,” the general said.

“I've got some—”

“In your office.”
They were both in civilian dress, but it was the tone of command.

He said unwillingly, “Right.”

*   *   *

The call came after the windows had turned black and the lights had come on in the quadrangle. The assistant NSA wanted to see him. Dan said to Lynch, to Harlowe, “Ed, Marty, I'm off to see Gelzinis. If I don't come back, carry the torch. Keep Bry focused. And keep pushing the Threat Cell idea.”

“Will do.” They nodded. Looking, he was encouraged to note, worried.

The assistant's office was on the third floor. He went down the cool echoing hallway feeling as if he were going to his execution. He pushed the gloom away. Martin W. Tallinger and his kind didn't belong here. To acquiesce in that … he just wasn't going to do it.

“Dan. Come in.”

Sebold was with Clayton's second in command. Gelzinis shoved aside a pile of folders and laced his fingers. “Commander Lenson. I'd ask you to sit down, but you've seriously embarrassed us today. I just heard about this from Holt. What the hell was that performance about?”

Dan explained whom Tallinger had represented and what he'd done. The two senior staffers exchanged glances. “That was a long time ago,” Gelzinis observed.

“He never paid for it. And I have no doubt in my mind he's still raking the same shit pile.”

“Maybe you ought to remember something. You're military. Not in the inner circles of this administration.”

“I know that. But it's part of my job, if I see a mistake being made, to point it out. Associating with scum like that is not going to make the president look good.”

“So you had his best interests in mind,” Gelzinis said with that dry tone he was the master of. “That's good to hear. Because it so happens Dr. Tallinger ran one of the biggest political action committees supporting his campaign.”

“Representing who?”

“That's not yours to ask. The point is he's a friend of the administration and we treat him as such.”

“You let pricks like him dictate policy? Because they donate money?”

Gelzinis said in a flinty tone, “He dictates
nothing
. I shouldn't have to explain basics. There are a lot of interests who have access, or have to be reassured they have access. Who have to be listened to, but who don't necessarily affect policymaking. That's a given. The point I'm making is, we expect the military staff to stay out of that loop. Force yourself into it and you'll be on the way back to your service before you can log off.”

“What I'm saying, sir, is that any face time you're giving this fucker's direct access for the Chinese government.”

“Let me set you straight on a couple of items, Lenson. We've got the biggest national debt this country has ever had. Thanks mainly to the previous administration, but we've done our part. Who do you think bought our securities? If the Chinese want a word with us, they've paid the going rate. We need to forge linkages, not perpetuate cold war enmities.”

Dan recognized the same weaseling bullshit Tallinger had given him once. “Building trust.” “Profitable linkages, not competing interests.” The rationale he'd used to steal information to pass to China, and through China to North Korea, and Iran, and the other rogue regimes that were metastasizing into a new generation of threats around the world.

“Are we clear here, Commander?”

Dan stood with fists clenched. He saw the military-civilian divide, all right. But dipping yourself in shit for campaign contributions wasn't right. He said in a tight voice, “I guess that's where I belong. Back at sea. Believe me, I'm ready to go.”

“Now, Dan,” Sebold said.

“Don't make the mistake of thinking you get fired out of here, you go back to any kind of decent assignment,” Gelzinis said. “Remember who approves military promotions. The president. Or his responsible staffer.”

“That's exactly the kind of low threat I'd expect from a pandering weasel like you,” Dan told him, and was happy to see the assistant choke and splutter, caught wordless.

Which seemed to be Sebold's cue. “Now, Dan, Brent, let's calm down. We're saying things in the heat of the moment. Things we don't really mean. Okay? Dan's going to apologize. Then we're all going back to work.”

“I'll apologize to Tony,” Dan told them. “But not to the asshole with the suspenders. He should be in prison. They only let him walk because he was the first to turn state's evidence.”

But Sebold's intercession seemed to have given the assistant national security adviser a chance to regain his composure. “An apology would be a start. What were you doing in with Holt in the first place?”

Dan explained about the report. Sebold and Gelzinis exchanged glances. “Dan, that should have gone through me,” the general said.

“The president asked me for it.”

“Again, you're not in the loop,” Gelzinis told him. “You think you see what you think you see and that's all there is. But it's not.”

“I saw people being killed.”

“And you think due to inaction on our part.”

“Damn right.”

“While what you're actually perceiving is the Pentagon fighting us tooth and nail to avoid having to commit troops. And a certain lack of … traction on our part vis-à-vis the Joint Chiefs and others.”

“De Bari's the commander in chief. All he has to do is give an order.”

The two men exchanged the looks of adults dealing with an unreasonable three-year-old. “It's
not
just a matter of giving an order. Especially with Stahl as chairman. That's not how things work at the higher levels. More of a—a collaborative process—”

“Last time I looked, we still had civilian control.”

“I'm afraid in practice that control's situational. A directive they don't care for can be modified. Circumvented. Even ignored, if the Chiefs and the combatant commanders don't agree.”

“Then fire them! Lincoln and Truman did it. You mean he's afraid to play hardball.”

“‘Afraid' is too strong a word. We've got our problems with the Pentagon, sure.”

Dan thought that had to rank as the understatement of the century, given the open ridicule from senior officers, the open disobedience, the way midgrade people were hemorrhaging out of services that couldn't seem to make up their mind either to move ahead or stand pat, that instead whipsawed back and forth, bewildering the rank and file. But he didn't interrupt as Gelzinis went on. “But there are other ways to address the issue.… What's actually happening is, we're giving certain parties the green light to ship arms into the region. To redress the balance, so to speak. We have to do it quietly because our European allies, that's contrary to their policy. But it's the only way we'll get the combatants to a state of exhaustion, where we can step in and broker a peace.”

Dan felt as if he'd stepped through the looking glass. Hadn't De Bari told him in the Oval Office debriefing that he wouldn't permit arms shipments? “A state of exhaustion …
Who
is shipping in these arms?”

“That's not important,” Gelzinis said, at the same moment Sebold said, “The Iranians.”

“We're letting the
Iranians
ship arms into Bosnia?” Dan clutched his temples, unable to comprehend the piling up of ever more catastrophic idiocies. “And who's training them? The Iranians, are they
training
them too?”

“That's classified and you won't discuss it,” Gelzinis said. “You don't know what you're doing, and you'd better shut your mouth. Garner, we need to talk about this—”

“No need,” Sebold said equably. “I'll tell you exactly what's happening here, Brent, and don't get all huffy on me, okay? You're talking past each other. Because each of you thinks the other guy's like he is. Okay? But you're not.

“Dan, you're talking to a guy who's been throwing elbows in politics a lot of years. He knows that most of the time, if you take the high road, you end up going over the cliff. And maybe because of that, he tends to expect the worst out of the people he deals with.

“Brent, you're talking to professional military. A guy who still has a functioning sense of honor. He doesn't like what he's seeing. Like they say, politics and making sausage, right? He's telling you that, up front, but that's as far as it's going to go with him. Because he
does
believe in the Constitution, and taking civilian direction. He's not going to leak a word about arms shipments. Or Tallinger. Or about anything else that takes place inside the fence. This may strike you as quaint, but he'll keep his word. It's not going to be like dealing with the rats over at State, or the Hill.”

A pause. Finally Gelzinis sighed. Turned away.

“Dismissed,” the general said in Dan's direction.

*   *   *

He stopped in the corridor. Above his head the nineteenth-century light-globes glowed. Staffers were leaving. Brushing by him, carrying briefcases and rolled-up newspapers. He leaned against antique plaster and rubbed his eyes till stars burst. The enemies were gathering. Like buzzards above some wounded thing trailing its guts on the asphalt. Didn't anyone care about the country? About anything beyond his own interest?