'I'd kiss you right now except that you mentioned something kind of counterproductive, like “up to a point”. What the hell does that mean?'
'It means that in the House I'll vote to my conscience, and if I'm challenged on the floor I'll give my reasons as dispassionately as I can. But that's in the House; off the Hill I'm not available for comment.'
'We get most of our PR flak off the Hill, not on it,' said the White House chief of staff reflectively. 'The Congressional Record and Cable's C-Span cameras don't put a dent in the Daily News and Dallas. Under the circumstances, thanks to that smooth son of a bitch Sam Winters, your offer is so irresistible I wonder what the price is. You have a price, I assume.'
'I want to know who blew the whistle on me. Who leaked the Oman story so very, very professionally.'
'You think I don't?' erupted Dennison, bouncing forward. 'I'd have the bastards deep-sixed fifty miles off Newport News in torpedo cans!'
'Then help me find out. That's my price, take it or take me replaying the Foxley show all over the country, calling you and your crowd exactly what I honestly think you are. A
bunch of bumbling Neanderthals faced with a complicated world you can't understand.'
'You're the fucking expert?'
'Hell, no. I just know that you're not. I watch and I listen and see you cutting off so many people who could help you because there's a zig or a zag in their stripes that doesn't conform to your preconceived pattern. And I learned something this afternoon; I saw it, heard it. The President of the United States talked to Samuel Winters, a man you disapprove of, but when you explained why you didn't like him, that he withheld endorsements that could help you with Congress, Langford Jennings said something that impressed the hell out of me. He said to you that if this Sam Winters disagreed with some policy or other, it did not make him an enemy.'
'The President frequently doesn't understand who his enemies are. He spots ideological allies quickly and sticks by them—sometimes too long, frankly—but often he's too generous to detect those who would erode what he stands for.'
'That's about the weakest and most presumptuous argument I've ever heard, Herbie. What are you shielding your man from? Diverse opinions?'
'Let's go back to your big surprise, Congressman. I like the topic better.'
'I'm sure you do.'
'What do you know that we don't that can help us find out who leaked the Oman story.'
'Essentially what I learned from Frank Swann. As head of the OHIO-Four-Zero unit, he was the liaison to the secretaries of Defense and State as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, all of whom knew about me. He told me to rule them out as possible leaks, however—'
'Far out,' interrupted Dennison. 'They've got soft-boiled eggs all over their faces. They can't answer the simplest questions, which makes them look like prime idiots. Incidentally, they're not idiots and they've been around long enough to know what maximum-classified is and why it's there. What else?'
'Then apart from you, and frankly I rule you out only because my surfacing is about as “counterproductive” as your fractured grey cells could conjure, that leaves three other people.'
'Who are they?'
'The first is a man named Lester Crawford at the Central Intelligence Agency; the second the station chief in Bahrain, James Grayson. The last is a woman, Adrienne Rashad, who's apparently special property and operates out of Cairo.'
'What about them?'
'According to Swann they're the only ones who knew my identity when I was flown over to Masqat.'
'That's our personnel,' said Dennison pointedly. 'What about your people over there?'
'I can't say it's impossible, but I think it's remote. The few I reached, except for the young sultan, are so removed from any contact with Washington that I'd have to consider them last, if at all. Ahmat, whom I've known for years, certainly wouldn't for a lot of reasons, starting with his throne and, equally important, his
