The Threat

Blair had found it while he was in the hospital. The tan brick colonial was surrounded by flagstone walks and the yellow poplars the locals called tulip trees. Three bedrooms and a family room in the basement with floor-to-ceiling shelves he planned to fill with the hundreds of books he’d accumulated and had never been able to winnow down. Oak floors, and a kitchen where two could sit for breakfast. Blair had brought her furniture from her apartment in Crystal City, pieces from the country antique stores she made him stop at when they drove out to visit her parents. Azaleas burned like sunset under the front windows. There were tulips and peonies too, and butterfly bushes and lavender. There wasn’t a lot of yard, which was good. He could polish it off in half an hour with the Snapper. At the end of the street was an assortment of shops, including a German delicatessen. One of Virginia’s oldest churches was a mile away. George Washington had served there as a warden, and the gravestones had been used as targets by Union cavalry.

It was enormously more comfortable and spacious than the house, the town, the life he’d grown up in. He felt like an intruder. That didn’t mean he wasn’t happy things had turned out this way. Just that he didn’t always feel he belonged.

He figured some of that was posttraumatic. The same reason he couldn’t sleep without a weapon within reach. But knowing why didn’t change the feeling.

When he swung up the walk it was almost dark, but the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Brawridge, was still out. They exchanged waves and smiles. She was in the yard every day, trimming plantings or tending a decorative fish pond in shorts so abbreviated he could see the bottoms of her cheeks. Which were on the decorative side too … The garage doors were closed, so he couldn’t see if Blair’s car was there. She had a government sedan and driver, but drove herself in and back. When she wasn’t on travel. But the lights were on in their bedroom and the paper wasn’t on the lawn. They should probably cancel it: They both got the Early Bird at work and read the Post and Times there. When he threw his briefcase on the couch he could smell dinner.

“I’m home,” he said, wondering how it could sound so commonplace and yet so nice.

She came out of the kitchen for a garlic-flavored kiss. “I figured you’d want something good after your first day at work. Then we can go look at beds for the guest room. How’d it go?”

Blair Titus was almost as tall as he was, with shining blond hair and the rangy relaxed way of moving so many people had who’d grown up with horses. He’d met her in the Persian Gulf, back when his career was in the tank and she’d been adviser to the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Blair had been asked to brief De Bari, elected but not yet in office, before he addressed the annual meeting of the National Guard Association. He’d invited her to serve on his transition team, then appointed her undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. This was the first time they’d actually lived together, and he was still getting used to it. Even in his first marriage, he’d never spent more than a couple of weeks home at a time.

“All right, I guess … but they switched me from threat reduction to drug interdiction.”

A metallic crash from the kitchen, and a curse. He went in to offer help. His skills were limited to casseroles, chili, burgers. Guy cooking. She tended to attempt dishes that were beyond her actual level of skill. Usually they turned out okay. When they didn’t, you saw her temper. Blair looked passionless but wasn’t. She intimidated a lot of men. Not with anger, but with a probing intellect. She did the same thing with him. Forcing him to examine his motives. Confront his self-questioning.

“You can peel those. But I thought they promised you TR.”

“Not exactly promised.” The frustration he’d felt in Sebold’s office came back; he bit his lip as he scrimshawed a potato. “He said he’d try to get me on a working group, though.”

“That’s where things get done. How’s your neck doing?”

“Okay.” Actually he was feeling some pain again, but he didn’t want to get dependent on the pills.

She slid a pan into the oven and sighed, pushing back damp hair. “Boy, I hope this comes out the way it’s supposed to. Anything else I ought to know about?”

“Ran into the president.” He told her about their meeting.

“He zeroes in on you, doesn’t he?”

“The charisma thing. He’s got it, all right.”

“We were prepping him before the debate. Midnight session. We figured he’d get zinged on the conscientious-objector issue. Like, how could he send men to war if he wasn’t willing to go himself? He said he’d answer it when the time came. Then the mike failed, remember that? And he made that quip that made everybody just sort of laugh and shake their heads.