'I'll be up to it, but why can't we talk now?'
'Because I wouldn't know what to say… I'm not sure I will later, but at least I'll have learned more. You see, I'm meeting with a man an hour from now, an influential man who's intensely interested in you—has been for the past year.'
Kendrick closed his eyes, feeling weak as he sank back into the pillows. 'He's with a group or a committee that calls itself… Inver Brass.'
'You know?'
'Only that much. I've no idea who they are or what they are, just that they've screwed up my life.'
The tan car, its coded government plates signifying the Central Intelligence Agency, drove through the imposing gates of the estate on Chesapeake Bay and up the circular drive to the smooth stone steps of the entrance. The tall man in an open raincoat that revealed a rumpled suit and shirt—evidence of nearly seventy-two hours' continuous wear—got out of the back seat and walked wearily up the steps towards the large, stately front door. He shivered briefly in the cold morning air of the overcast day that promised snow—snow for Christmas, reflected Payton. It was Christmas Eve, simply another day for the director of Special Projects, yet a day he dreaded, the impending meeting one he would trade several years of his life not to have insisted upon. Throughout his long career he had done many things that caused the bile to erupt in his stomach, but none more so than the destruction of good and moral men. He would destroy such a man this morning and he loathed himself for it, yet there was no alternative. For there was a higher good, a higher morality, and it was found in the reasonable laws of a nation of decent people. To abuse those laws was to deny the decency; accountability was paramount and constant. He rang the bell.
A maid preceded Payton through an enormous sitting room overlooking the bay to another stately door. She opened it and the director walked inside the extraordinary library, trying to absorb everything that struck his eyes. The huge console that took up the entire wall on the left with its panoply of television monitors and dials and projection equipment; the lowered silver screen on the right and the burning stove in the near corner; the cathedral windows directly opposite and the large circular table in front of him. Samuel Winters got up from the chair beneath the wall of sophisticated technology and came forward, his hand extended.
'It's been too long, MJ—may I call you that?' said the world renowned historian. 'As I recall, everyone called you MJ.'
'Certainly, Dr Winters.' They shook hands and the septuagenarian scholar waved his arm, encompassing the room.
'I wanted you to see it all. To know that we have our fingers on the pulse of the world—but not for personal gain, you must understand that.'
'I do. Who are the others?'
'Please sit down,' said Winters, gesturing at the chair facing his own, on the opposite side of the circular table. 'Take off your coat, by all means. When one reaches my age all the rooms are much too warm.'
'If you don't mind, I'll keep it on. This will not be a long conference.'
'You're certain of that?'
'Very,' replied Payton, sitting down.
'Well,' said Winters softly but emphatically as he went to his chair, 'it's the unusual intellect that chooses its position without regard to the parameters of discussion. And you do have an intellect, MJ.'
'Thank you for your generous, if somewhat condescending, compliment.'
That's rather hostile, isn't it?'
'No more so than your deciding for the country who should run and be elected to national office.'
'He's the right man at the right time for all the right reasons.'
'I couldn't agree with you more. It's the way you did it. When one lets loose a rogue force to achieve an objective, one can't know the consequences.'
'Others do it. They're doing it now.'
'That doesn't give you the right. Expose them, if you can, and with your resources I'm sure you can, but don't imitate them.'
'That's sophistry! We live in an animal world, a politically
