The Threat

The first thing he noticed was how much quieter it was. No tourists, no journalists, no camera crews shouting and trailing cables and pointing lights. There wasn’t much going on in the hallways. The doors stayed closed. The carpet was the same dark blue, the walls the same marigold cream, but it seemed like the far side of the moon after the West Wing. He hesitated at a double door of polished mahogany, then pushed through.

To a small front office, a desk, but no one at it. In a back room, neither large nor very well appointed, two uniformed men sat on a sofa that was obviously a retread from some other part of the White House. One, hunched forward till his uniform jacket hooded over his bull neck, was a buzz-cut, broad-shouldered Marine lieutenant colonel. His large yet startlingly delicate fingers held pages from a loose-leaf binder. The other was Mike Jazak, the Army officer Dan had met jogging with De Bari. They exchanged nods.

“They tell me I’m going to be working over here,” he said, extending his hand as the light colonel got to his feet.

The buzz cut grunted. “I just wish not as the Wusso’s replacement.”

Dan nodded. Moncure “Wusso” Pusser had been the president’s Navy aide until two days ago, when a hit-and-run driver had connected in the lower level of the Pentagon City Mall parking garage. Now he had a broken hip and might not, Bethesda said, ever fly F-18s again.

If not for that, Dan thought, he might be off the Eighteen Acres entirely. First the Nuñez and Tejeiro affairs. Then Srebrenica, news the administration hadn’t wanted to hear. Last, but not least, the way he’d gone through the guardrails about what was already being called the Louisville Incident, the subject of intense attention in Congress and the media. He figured pigeonholing him in the East Wing was part of Holt’s spin. Stopping the terrorists had been a last-minute save by the intelligence agencies and the Guard, protecting America at a discount under the inspired leadership of Robert L. De Bari.

“I’m Chick Gunning,” the marine said. “Senior mil aide. Let’s go on down to the PEOC, and we’ll start your briefing-in.”

* * *

“The fact that the potentially disastrous consequences of your glory hunting did not occur can’t excuse operating outside normal procedures,” Gelzinis had said coldly at the termination interview. They were in the assistant’s eight-by-ten office adjoining Mrs. Clayton’s. “We’ve had our differences, you and I, but this is beyond personal. Procedures are there for a reason. They reflect statutory limits on the executive side and, most particularly, on the executive staff. General Sebold briefed you, first day you were here, on our standards. Did he not?”

“I was warned,” Dan said.

“Well, when a member violates those — the reason, good, bad, or indifferent, that’s beside the point — he’s violated the trust Congress and the people placed in us. You’ve been cautioned before. Failed to exercise restraint. Therefore—” He finished with a symbolic handwashing.

Dan was thinking that if he’d exercised restraint, they’d all be glowing in the dark right now. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t expect a sea command anymore. A training billet, recruiting duty in the Midwest — he didn’t care. As long as he was out of this cesspool.

“Well, he has the Yankee White clearance. He’s the right rank,” said a man beside Gelzinis’s desk. One Dan hadn’t been introduced to, though he’d seen him before in the hallways, usually deep in low-voiced conversations. A short, fiftyish guy with a gnomelike head a couple sizes larger than it ought to be. Thin hair the color of wet sand. Khaki pants and a Navajo-style bolo tie with a clasp the shape of a thunderbird. Just now he was slouching in the chair with one hand-tooled western boot propped on a knee. The stick of a lollipop protruded from his jaw. He was examining Dan, but not talking to him, as if Lenson were livestock he wasn’t sure he wanted to buy. “The congressional, at photo ops — that could offset some of the criticism about the military relationship.”

Dan turned to squint at the little guy. What was this? The gnome winked at him, but didn’t say who he was or what he wanted.

“The president’s relations with the military are excellent,” Gelzinis said, with utter and outraged conviction.

Dan wondered what universe the deputy adviser was living in. He sat back, trying to relax. He’d tried, maybe too hard, and it hadn’t worked. Well, he’d already lasted longer here than he’d thought he would.

They were both studying him now. “I’m not sure what we’re talking about here,” he told them.

Gelzinis frowned. “Garner hasn’t told you?”

“I came up here as soon as I got your note, sir. Should I have seen General Sebold first?”

“Of course, he’s … oh, never mind. There’s a requirement over in the East Wing.”

The little guy said around the lollipop, “Garner’s the one who said you might be the square peg. And since I took over the military side…”