The Threat

Dan frowned after him, trying to sort out what had just happened, as Sebold hove into view, smiling like a benevolent lord. He closed the case quickly, a small snap in the party noise, and slipped it inside his shirt. The director’s arm was around the shoulders of the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, a Carter-era retread Blair said made a copperhead look like a model of forthright goodwill.

He looked around for his wife again, but this time saw neither Blair nor the actress. A door was open, letting cool air into the overheated atmosphere. He headed for it, taking his glass along, hoping for a moment alone.

Outside the air was almost frosty. Lights glared on a beautifully manicured putting green. Guests moved slowly across it, talking in low voices. A heavy man mimed a putt for two companions; Dan caught the words “Dan Quayle” and “pool house.” He saw the pool house and strolled toward it.

“Dan? Dan Lenson?”

A man his age, in a dark suit, with a boyish, winning grin. A cowlick behind a haircut so short the guy had to be a marine or Special Forces. When he lifted his glass Dan recognized him. Thirty-fourth Company; they’d played lacrosse together. But he couldn’t recall a name.

“Good to see you, classmate.”

“You too, uh—”

“I left a message for you. You must not have gotten it.”

“It’s been busy as shit. All kinds of incoming.”

“Not a problem.”

Dan tried hard, but nothing was coming. Jake? Jack? Skip? Chip? “What are you doing these days, man? You got out, right?”

“Yeah, decided to make some money instead. Outfit here in D.C. We represent issues over on the Hill.”

“Lobbying?”

“Just trying to get the right message across. How about you? Getting any face time with the poster boy for the gay generation?”

“I’ve seen him exactly twice.”

“Never a day in uniform. Too fucking two-faced to wear one.”

He seemed to assume they shared the same contempt for De Bari that Dan had heard on the talk radio programs that played nonstop in most Pentagon offices. “Did you read the Times article on how his wife got her winery land exempted from taxes? The land-easement scam? And then how convenient, the attorney who actually had the records died in the same fire that destroyed them. Her whole family’s Family. They don’t leave witnesses.”

There’d been a lot of rehashing of the De Baris’ reputed Mob connections and state-lottery manipulations during the campaign. Dan didn’t know how true they were. Like single men in barracks, few politicians seemed to be plaster saints. Truman and the KKK. Kennedy’s bootlegger father. Nixon, in a class of his own. But the shrill chorus of Daily Hate left a bad taste. He said, “He’s probably as slippery as the rest of them. But at least he’s trying to get something done. Considering the zero cooperation he’s getting.”

“Heard this one? Jimmy Carter, Dick Nixon, and Bob De Bari are on the Titanic. They hit the iceberg. Carter yells, ‘Women and children first,’ and gives away his life jacket. Nixon snarls, ‘Fuck the women and children,’ and shoves his way into the lifeboat. De Bari looks at his watch and says, ‘You think we have time?’”

“Funny.”

“He’s driving this country down the highway to hell at eighty miles an hour,” the man told him. “And I love this country. Do you love it, Dan?”

“This some kind of joke?”

“It’s no joke, classmate. Remember a piece of shit named Martin Tallinger?”

Dan stiffened. He’d spat in the journalist’s face when the law gave him no hold on him. Tallinger hadn’t pulled a trigger. But he was still a murderer. “What about him? How do you know him?”

“Keep your eyes open where you work.”

“I haven’t seen Tallinger where I work. Just what the hell do you mean?”

In return he got a contemptuous, pitying grin. Dan was stepping closer when a thrill brushed his skin. His pager. As he reached for his pocket he noticed the same abstracted pursing of lips elsewhere in the crowd.

When he lifted it to the light it was the Sit Room again. Bracketing its number in the little display were the asterisks that meant urgent.

7

KEY WEST, FLORIDA

He peered down on islands green as corroded brass set within infinite turquoise shadings. They reminded him of the reefs and jazirats of the Red Sea, and the memory was tinted dark with remembered danger. He was being jerked from one crisis to another, too fast to really get a solid fix on anything in the murk around him.

Well, Sebold had said it would feel this way. Would he see the big picture someday? He rubbed his mouth, then checked his seat belt as the order to prepare for landing came over the cabin announcing system. Right now, it didn’t seem likely.

He’d boarded at Andrews before first light. It was the first time he’d flown in one of the executive jets high-ranking officers traveled on. Miles Bloom sat beside him, the DEA agent deep in an Alan Furst novel.