'Not just easier. Easy. Once you cross that line, you're not worried about damnation anymore.'
'Like women and sex, I guess,' Kat said.
'Killing. The male virginity,' Rodgers said.
'Do you regret that experience?'
'How can I?' Rodgers asked. 'It allowed me to do my job in Vietnam, in the Persian Gulf, and at Op- Center.'
'A job whose legitimacy you questioned the first time you did it,' the woman pointed out.
'I was nineteen.'
'That did not make you wrong,' Kat said.
'Okay,' Rodgers said. 'Now I'm the one who doesn't understand. Are you justifying what Lucy may have been involved in?'
'No. I'm questioning what appears to be your own convenient morality.
Killing is okay in the first person, if you do it, but not if someone else does it.'
Rodgers had opened himself up to Kat, hoping she would do the same. He had not expected that response. He also did not appreciate it.
'You're looking at me like I'm holding a pestle in a clearing,' Kat said.
'No. You already lobbed it,' he replied.
'Touche,' she said. 'It was not my intention to attack you. I'm just trying to understand what drives the man who may be the next secretary of defense. But we're obviously getting ahead of ourselves. I do not know about Lucy O'Connor's activities that night, and I do not believe she is capable of what happened at the hotel or at Op- Center. I can only suggest that your people talk to her.'
'I am sure they will,' Rodgers said.
There was a poorly concealed threat in her comment about 'getting ahead of ourselves.' If Rodgers did not join the team, he would become a free agent.
'So where does that leave us?' Kat asked as she picked up the phone.
'I'm not sure,' he admitted. 'I feel like I've crossed a line here, but this is an unusual situation.'
'I agree,' Kat said. She crossed her legs and moved her right foot anxiously. 'Let me make this really simple, because I still have calls to make. I want this relationship to work. You're an exceptional man, and you would be a great asset to the party and to our team. But the core group should be able to watch out for each other. We should not have to watch each other.'
'I can't argue with that,' Rodgers said. 'That's why I said I am not sure where this leaves us.' The way Kat was sitting then reminded him of seeing her on the bar stool at the Equinox in Washington. Her foot bouncing as it did now, Kat wired at the end of a long and stressful day. How much different the world and his own future seemed just a few days ago.
'You should let Admiral Link know,' Kat said. 'That's only fair.'
'Sure. Just one more question, though,' Rodgers said. 'What would you do if you found out someone in the core group was behind this?'
'You're really pushing me, General.'
'Would you watch their back?' he demanded.
'Until they were proven guilty, yeah,' she replied. 'This is America.'
She went back to her cell phone.
Rodgers walked over to a refreshment stand and ordered a black coffee.
Thinking about the Equinox dislodged something in his memory. Something that had not seemed unusual at
