The Threat

He lay waiting for the drug to work. Or for her to say something else. But she didn’t. He wondered if he ought to apologize again. No, fuck that. He felt angry. Then frightened. He felt things trying to come into his mind. Instead of letting them in he visualized the pistol in the nightstand. Remembered how it fit into his hand. It was loaded. He took a deep, slow breath. Let it out. Then another. Not thinking about Iraq, or the way the flash had lit the faces in Horn’s pilothouse, or anything at all. Not thinking of anything at all.

Without quite meaning to, at last he fell asleep.

3

THE WEST WING

The next morning he filed with others whose names he didn’t know yet down a blue-carpeted corridor narrow as a frigate’s passageway. It ended in a windowless conference room. He’d thought from Dr. Strangelove and The President’s Plane Is Missing that the Situation Room would be far underground, paneled with sophisticated terminals and displays. And much, much bigger.

But it wasn’t belowground, though they called this the “basement” of the West Wing. Their living room in Arlington was bigger than this cramped, damp-smelling space. And as the lead-lined door sucked closed, he didn’t see any screens at all. Just polished cherry paneling. A folding easel. And the table, with eleven leather-upholstered chairs.

He found a seat along one wall, balancing his briefcase on his knees. Not much in it yet. Reports Meilhamer had given him to read. A Brookings book. He shrank back to let more men and women crowd in. The air started to get stuffy.

Sebold noted his presence with a nod and settled in halfway up the table. Dan recognized the deputy national security adviser. Brent Gelzinis wore rimless spectacles. His jet-black hair was slicked back like Robert McNamara’s had been. The rest were the deputy assistants, the regional and functional senior directors, other directors like himself, and a few twenty-somethings he guessed were interns. The room quieted. He glanced toward the door, started to his feet. Then sank back, catching an amused glance from Sebold.

Mrs. Nguyen Clayton was slight, with a close bowl of dark hair. The assistant to the president for national security affairs had been evacuated from Saigon as a child; her native accent was overlaid now with Harvard and New York. Her tailored blue suit had filigreed gold buttons. Heavy bracelets and earrings pushed the envelope of Washington taste. Still young enough to be attractive, she brought with her into the room something most of those there found far sexier: the consciousness of power. She’d made a hundred million dollars in Silicon Valley before meeting Robert De Bari, when he was still governor of one of the emptiest, most crooked states west of the Rockies, and managing his campaign. The deputy adjusted her chair, and she descended among them.

“Let’s get started,” she said.

Gelzinis cleared his throat. His low-key briefing was so packed with acronyms Dan was lost from the first sentence. When he was done the deputy assistants had their turn, then the senior directors. Clayton said little as she listened. Occasionally she asked if they’d checked with State, or Commerce, or the CIA. Once she said sharply, “No, we’re not letting it lie. They have to have access to that technology. I’ll speak to the appropriate people about it.”

When his turn came Sebold said, “We’ve got a new join at counterdrug. Dan?”

He got to his feet. Some looked up; others didn’t. “Commander Dan Lenson. Navy,” he said, trying for terseness. “Glad to be here. I’ll try to get up to speed as fast as—”

“All right, thank you, everyone,” Clayton said, rising. They all got up with her and followed her out. Leaving him looking around the empty room.

* * *

Room 303, in the southern wing, third floor of the Old Executive, was one of the “split-level” suites, so called because to shoehorn more bodies in, the nineteenth-century’s fifteen-foot-ceilinged offices had been divided with a false floor at the seven-and-a-half-foot level. This and gray cubicle partitions made a two-story suite out of what had been several very tall rooms. As an added benefit, the false floor included ductwork for central air. The effect might have been claustrophobic for someone as tall as Dan. But it wasn’t as tight as the cable-overheaded passageways of the typical destroyer.