The Command

Dan woke on an upper floor of the Omni Hotel to find his wife already up. It was early yet. The windows were still dark, the river beyond a swatch of blackness. The shaded desk lamp was glowing.

Not moving, not letting her know he was awake, he lay watching her.

Blair was tapping busily on the notebook computer her aide carried around for her. The half-moon glasses she wouldn’t wear in public were perched on her nose. She worried at her teeth with a pencil eraser as she stared at the screen. The front of her hotel bathrobe was open.

Blair Titus was as unlike his first wife as it was possible to get. Where Susan had been dark and spare, Blair was tall and pale and blond. Even now, breasts exposed by the unbelted robe, her utter concentration gave her an air of inaccessible professionalism. This, he knew, was a front. She had a passionate, even reckless side. But he’d seen her other persona, too. Fixing a careless witness or pompous general with a pointed query, which every attempt to evade would only widen the wound.

Her relationship with authority was different from his. Where he both envied and suspected it, neither position nor rank intimidated her. She had a doctorate in operations research, a juris doctor degree from George Mason, and a stepfather who owned six thousand acres in Prince Georges County, Maryland. He could see how insecure men found her threatening and reacted with hatred that was really fear.

They’d met on the deck of a tanker in a sandstorm, when he was exec of the foredoomed Turner Van Zandt and she the defense aide for Bankey Talmadge. And again in Bahrain, where one night had interlocked their lives like enzymes recognizing the molecule that might complete them. Agreeing the odds were against them. Until one day, as he stepped out of an isolation ward, she’d persuaded him they had to try.

Blair had started as a presidential management intern. From there she’d gone to the House as a junior staff member, then to the Senate, tracking political favors and working the military beat. Then to the Armed Services Committee staff when Talmadge had taken over as chairman. She’d briefed the candidate on military issues during the campaign, and Les Aspin had asked for her by name for Defense. When the list came through, her job was manpower and personnel. She’d sailed through her hearings, one of which he’d managed to get down from Newport to catch.

Taking over her Pentagon office, she’d told him, was harder. Over a hundred military and civilians and five appointees. She worried about being the first woman in the post. How she felt awkward at parades— everyone watching and she couldn’t screw up. He’d been able to give her a couple of tips; how to put military people at ease, and when to take the reins.

It wasn’t a traditional marriage. They grabbed weekends and holidays together, scheduling meetings around each other’s commitments. Once in a while they had a few days together in the apartment she rented in Alexandria. He honestly didn’t know if it was working. They were just both so damned busy. And now here he was off again.

Then she turned her head and smiled, and he set aside his doubts. Whatever the future brought, he had this moment. This and a few more, moments of fulfillment and love, like jewels set into an iron bracelet of duty.

“No bad dreams?”

“Not tonight.”

“That’s good. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Hell, no. It’s well past 0400. What’re you doing?”

“The staff did a draft of my remarks, but they can’t seem to get them through the hotel’s fax.”

“You can do that kind of stuff off the cuff. What, are you worried about it?”

“I like to have something in my pocket.”

“I thought I was the only one who wasn’t sure what he was doing.”

For that he got a glance over the glasses. “You wanted command, right? You didn’t want the staff job.”

“I wouldn’t be right in legislative affairs, Blair. Sooner or later I’d tell them what I thought of them.”

“Yeah. You tend to do that. So what’s the problem?”

“I guess, this whole assignment.”

“What about it disturbs you?”

“Why I was selected for it, for one thing.”

“Why would the navy possibly select you for Horn? Well, let’s see. Surely not because of your combat record. Or your sea time. Or your Silver Star and Congressional. That couldn’t have had anything to do with it.”

“I’m not sure that’s true.”

She took her glasses off and leaned forward, and her robe fell open even more. “Dan, let me speak from the SecDef perspective. You’re something we don’t have very many of anymore. We’ve got policy wonks, and acquisitions guys, and hardware and systems and logistics types. What we don’t seem to be generating are war fighters. You can argue the reasons for that all you want. I know you’ve got opinions on the issue.”

“I sure do.”