The Threat

“It’s driven by each region’s needs. Like, see this table? It lists where and for what we wrote checks the second quarter. The Drug Squads Initiative in Houston. A Black Ice Task Force in L.A. Tactical monitoring system for the Border Patrol.”

“Who decides who gets what?”

“I chair a round table twice a year. The appropriate-level administrators. We hash it out, try to keep a geographic balance, and generally that gets approved pretty much the way we send it in. We try to keep the Hill out of it. Keep it responsive to what the agencies need instead of just porking.”

Dan flipped through the binder. He’d have to know it almost cold before the hearing, but his guys would be sitting behind him; they could pass notes if anything tough came up. He wondered if there was enough slack in it to fund something like the Threat Cell.

Meilhamer said, peeling open a Kit Kat, “So how was Leningrad?” Using the old name for the city. And that reminded him all over again. He was back in the corridor looking at the Secret Service agents.

He put the binder down, muttered something, and went out to the hallway. The high corridor echoed. The black stone slabs were cracked. He rubbed his shoe over a tiny misshapen thing that had wiggled in ooze and died a billion years before man had walked the earth. He wasn’t ready for this. Not two marriages in a row. But could he really blame her?

What mere mortal could compete with the most powerful man on the planet?

* * *

He thought about calling her at work, having it out over the phone. But it seemed better to do it face-to-face. So he kept at it until after rush hour, then took the Metro home. Stood watching the other riders as they huddled, each in his or her shell of loneliness.

But when he let himself in, the house was quiet. The oak floors shimmered. He found the note anchored on the kitchen island by a bottle of cumin.

Dan,

I’m headed to the Philippines this afternoon. We need to talk when I get back. It’s not something we can do long-distance. There’s frozen stuff from Schwan’s in the fridge, the turkey mignon and other things you like. Gloria will be in on Tuesday. Her check’s on the hall tree.

You need to take better care of yourself. Remember how this was supposed to be a time for you to unwind and get your bearings? But you just seem more and more stressed.

Take care of yourself. We’ll talk when I get back.

Yours,

Blair

He stood holding the note, looking out into the little yard. A black bird hopped around on the bare parched winter ground. Checking it over, inch by inch. It saw him at the window and cocked its head, evaluating him as a possible threat, before going on with whatever it was doing. He stood watching it for quite a while before he went up for a shower.

11

SARAJEVO, BOSNIA

Another plane, but this one a noisy, unheated transport, high-winged and strut-legged, lurching down through bursts of rain into a mist-shrouded valley. Dan sat strapped in beside a whey-faced Dutch major from Amsterdam. Probably, he figured, on the same kind of mission he was.

He was even more exhausted than he’d been back in D.C. three days ago. But getting shot at had a way of jolting you into alertness. Tracers had just come up for the second time, looking like hot wires reaching up for them. The compartment was crammed with troops in light blue helmets. Folded litters were stacked by the rear ramp.

“So who’s firing?” he shouted.

The major shouted back, “Who knows? They see a plane, they shoot at it. Just saying, ‘Welcome to the former Yugoslavia.’”

It was hard to believe how fast you could go from the Old Executive to a beaten-up, bullet-holed Spanish Army “Aviocar,” letting down through a rainstorm toward what might be the site of the worst massacre on European soil since World War II.

Or so some sources said. Others, that it was the biggest hoax since the Man Who Never Was.

Finding out which was going to be his job.

* * *

He’d gotten his orders from Mrs. Clayton, in her office on the main floor of the West Wing. The ceilings were higher there, the decor more impressive, than in the worker-bee cells beneath. Sebold and Gelzinis had been there when the secretary brought him in. “Mr. Lenson,” the national security adviser had said, with barely a glance at him. “Ready to do some traveling?”

“Ma’am?”