Blue Warrior

“I’ll be posting all of my policy positions on my website, but all of my ideas for future legislation and policy initiatives can be summarized in the great words of President Kennedy: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ It’s not an original campaign theme, but it’s the most necessary one I can think of. It applies to every American citizen, but it should apply to our politicians, too. Me most of all.

“Thank you, and God bless America.”

Lane’s mother whooped with pride, and the rest of his family clapped.

“Better go grab that interview,” the camera operator said to the reporter. “He’s leaving.”

The reporter rolled her eyes and whispered, “Boring.”

The camera operator shrugged. “I kinda like what he said. He’s right, though. He hasn’t got a chance in hell.”

U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Hart Senate Office Building, Room 412, Washington, D.C.

Senator Barbara Fiero was neither the chairman nor the highest-ranking majority member of the Senate’s intelligence committee, but she had arranged for this closed-door, classified intelligence briefing on al-Qaeda in Africa. She did it for her own personal benefit, but not her knowledge — she could’ve given the briefing herself to her octogenarian colleagues. What mattered is how she performed during the briefing and the relationships she could further cultivate afterward. How the meeting came to be scheduled, and others canceled or rearranged to accommodate this one, would never be discovered by the chairman or his staff, only that it had magically appeared on the digital calendars that dictated everyone’s schedule both on Capitol Hill and over at Langley these days.

Fiero always had objectives in mind when she attended these briefings. Today she had three.

Fiero always arrived early and left late for the closed-door meetings just for the chitchat. She’d found over the years that it was in those small, human moments that unsuspecting minds were changed and alliances formed. Just this morning she had stood in the soaring sunlit atrium of the Hart Building, exchanging pleasantries with today’s CIA briefing analyst, when she learned that his daughter was struggling to get into NYU’s graduate film school. “My husband is a member of the Dean’s Council for Tisch. I’m certain he can make a call on her behalf.”

“You’d do that for her?”

“It’s nothing, really.” And just like that, she turned a disbelieving smile into another indebted ally. Her life was seemingly filled with such coincidences.

Amazing coincidences. Almost unbelievable.

And those coincidences could always be turned into favors, favors Fiero collected like buffalo-head nickels, never to be spent, but always traded up when something more valuable came along.

Fiero was also funny and personable in a disarming way; the self-deprecating charm and razor-sharp intelligence behind her bright, alluring eyes attracted most men, even ones half her age. Not that her age mattered. She was fifty years old but had the body of a much younger woman, thanks to exercise, nutrition, and cosmetic surgery. Like most beautiful older women, she practiced the simple secrets of looking younger. The first, of course, was having the right parents — DNA went a long way. But perfect, blazingly white teeth (Lumineers), regular professional hair coloring to keep out the gray, and a simple but modern fashion sense made all the difference. At five-eleven she was strikingly tall, but she never used her size for intimidation. She was a master of the comforting touch and the firm but not-too-confident handshake, both equally necessary in the world of fragile male egos.

Fiero also carried an intoxicating aroma about her, the most aphrodisiacal scent of all: money. She was the richest woman in the Senate, with an officially self-disclosed net worth of between $7 and $180 million, thanks largely to her husband’s consortium of international investors. In reality, if one ignored the accounting gimmicks but included the deferred-compensation packages and offshore assets, she and her husband were worth triple the latter figure.

That kind of cash left a scented pheromone trail all over Wall Street and Washington that drew insatiable suitors to the queen’s hive, where deals, votes, and alliances were fervently consummated.

The irony, of course, was that wealthy people like Fiero never had to spend their own money. It was the lesser people desperately seeking their favor who wound up spending their own cash to win her patronage. People all over town were desperate to get into a relationship with Barbara Fiero, who everybody knew would win her party’s presidential nomination the following year.

“AQ in Africa has been relegated to the villages and hinterlands,” the CIA analyst summarized. “Particularly in Mali, where French and ECOWAS troops were able to push back rebel groups, including the MNLA, Ansar Dine, and AQ Sahara last year.”