The Devil's bed

Her hair was a premature but absolutely beautiful silver. She’d shortened it since he last saw her. She worked her jaw as she read, an old habit. When she looked up, her eyes showed her surprise. Then she laughed.

“Bo. Jesus, you scared me.”

“Hello, Robin.”

She got up and hugged him. “What a nice surprise. I hadn’t heard you were coming.”

“I didn’t know myself until a couple of days ago.”

“Business?”

“Sort of.”

“I thought you were on medical leave after the Wildwood incident.”

“I was. Am.”

“Good work, by the way. I always knew you were hero material. I understand Chris is doing fine, too. I’m glad.”

Manning. A lot of years ago they’d gone through some strange permutations, the three of them. Manning and Bo had stayed single afterward. Robin wore a wedding ring.

“Did you have any trouble with him?” she asked.

“Nothing either of us couldn’t handle. You ever run into him out here?”

“Not often. It’s awkward whenever we do. I think he still has issues, even after all these years.”

“How about you?” Bo said. “You doing okay?”

“I married the right man. Not Secret Service.” She smiled. “So what’s up?”

“I came to beg a favor.”

“Anything.”

“Could I use your computer?”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“All the way from Minnesota just to use my computer?”

“All right, how about your computer and you let me buy you dinner?”

“Oh, Bo, I’d love to. But I have to pick up little Gus at day care. And then Jamie and I have an early meeting at church tonight. You wouldn’t care to baby-sit, would you?”

“No thanks. I did enough of that on Dignitary Duty. Sounds like a good life, Robin.”

“The best.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, shoot. I’m late for my workout. Let me log off.” She sat down at her computer and ended her connection with the system. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. Will that be enough time?”

“Should be.” Bo smiled. “You look good, Robin.”

“So do you, Bo. So do you.” She kissed his cheek.“Ciao.”And she left.

Bo logged on and accessed the Internet. He did a search for NOMan and came up with 427 hits. He scrolled until he found the home page for National Operations Management. He went there, then clicked on a side bar notation that read “History.”

The precursor to NOMan, he learned, was an agency within the Department of Defense called the Office of Branch Communications. Created following World War II, it was responsible for coordinating communications among all the branches of the military. Headed by Marine Colonel Woodrow (Woody) Gass, the office proved so effective that it came to the notice of Congress. On March 10, 1963, it was made a part of the General Accounting Office, its name was changed to National Operations Management, and the scope of its authority was broadened to include all areas of government service. Every division of every department was required to have an employee whose responsibility, in part, was as a liaison with NOMan.

Although the agency was officially under the aegis of GAO, the director of NOMan didn’t report to GAO’s comptroller general but was responsible instead to Congress directly. The term of appointment was the same as that for the comptroller general, fifteen years, which made the position less vulnerable to shifting political whims. Woody Gass was the first director of National Operations Management. He served in that capacity for thirty years, or two terms. When he stepped down, he was replaced by the current director, a NOMan veteran named Arlo Grieg.

In its capacity as watchdog for effective, interdepartmental communications, NOMan had been credited with saving the government billions of dollars through consistent monitoring and upgrading of communication channels. It had effected a network that, within one of the largest and most complex bureaucracies in the world, had become a model of efficiency.

This was the official line, anyway.

Bo clicked around some more, looking for anything that might shed a more unofficial light. On a Web site that called itself Big Brother Buster, he found a discussion of the budgets for several government offices, NOMan among them. According to the information presented there, NOMan didn’t operate in exactly the way its official budget indicated. Much of the operating expense of NOMan was picked up by the offices it served. Not only did each office pay a fee for service (that indispensable help with efficient communication that Bo, as an agent of the federal government for nearly two decades, had yet to see), but it also picked up the entire salary cost for the mandatory employee who served as a liaison with NOMan, employees like Donna Plante of the USDA. Therefore, any dollar amount appearing officially in the federal budget as allocated to NOMan to cover operating costs in fact represented only a small percentage of the actual money NOMan had available for its use.