“Could I see you sometime, you know, maybe for dinner? I’m not such a bad guy when I’m not stuck in the middle of a riot, honest.” He tried to smile. Christ, he felt like a high school freshman again. He hadn’t had trouble talking to women for years, so why now?
Anne’s reply was immediate. And uncompromising. “Thanks, but I don’t think so.” She was blushing again. She looked away from his eyes. “I do want to thank you for helping me this afternoon …” The train’s brakes squealed as it shuddered to a stop inside Seoul Station, drowning out her words.
Tony had to go. The car doors opened and he was being half-carried out by the surge of Korean commuters heading for home. He tried Plan B. “Well, how about meeting some afternoon for lunch? Or maybe you could show me the sights.”
He got pushed out of the car before she could reply. The doors slammed shut. Tony tried looking in the windows as the subway train started to pull away, but he couldn’t tell whether she was shaking her head no or yes.
He stood watching the train lights disappear out of sight into the darkness. Shit, he hadn’t even gotten her phone number.
He caught his train back to Kunsan without any further trouble. And that was almost too bad. He would have welcomed the excuse to really blow up. Instead he had to sit quietly in another compartment crowded with Korean commuters and shoppers.
And the trip back to base gave him more than enough time to replay every line of that last disastrous conversation with Anne Larson.
Tony got back the BOQ just before seven and washed up. He had to change all his clothing because of the tear gas smell. It wasn’t strong, but it was noticeable.
He walked across the hall and knocked on Hooter’s door. He heard a muffled, “Come on in, for Christ’s sake. Quit trying to knock my door down.”
His wingman looked up from the latest men’s magazine he’d managed to snag in the PX. Hooter’s face creased into a smile. “Hey, Saint! Back from Seoul so soon? Man, you gotta read this article.” Hooter tapped the magazine in front of him.
Tony looked down. The article was a natural blonde.
“So how was the big day in the big city? Tell Uncle Hooter all. And spare no details.”
Tony weighed the truth with more comfortable fiction and decided on a compromise. “It was okay. I got caught in a riot and struck out with a pretty girl. No big deal.”
The fiction part was the “no big deal.” It was a big deal, to him. It was more than just the challenge of getting a pretty woman to go out with him. Anne had looks, grace, and lot of class. He definitely wanted to see her again, and he’d blown it.
CHAPTER 13
Double Cross
The dry mumble of the clerk’s calling the roll ended, but it took the sharp bang of the Senate president’s gavel to bring Blake Fowler’s eyes back to the TV picture being broadcast on the C-SPAN cable channel.
He squinted up at the screen: 54–45. The conference version of the Korean sanctions bill had been passed by nine lousy votes. Well, that wasn’t much of a surprise. The margin had been the same two days earlier when the Senate passed the bill for the first time. Damn it. He knew for a fact that they could have switched at least six of those votes if the President had declared his opposition to the bill. Instead there’d been nothing but silence from the East Wing of the White House.
Blake knew the kind of pressure that was being exerted to win the President’s consent to the Korean sanctions. Phone calls to the White House switchboard. Telegrams. Weekly visits by the Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader. Barnes and his allies were pulling out all the stops. Naturally. The congressman from Michigan was openly angling to become the next senator from Michigan, and it was no secret that he planned to ride the protectionist, anti-Korea bandwagon all the way into the Senate chamber.
What Blake couldn’t understand was the glacial pace that Putnam had set in orchestrating the administration’s internal opposition to the sanctions bill. He’d had the Working Group’s report in his hands for over a week now. Why hadn’t he briefed the President? With the congressional elections coming up in less than three weeks, there wasn’t much time left to pull the head of state’s mind back from domestic politics to foreign affairs.
He picked up the phone and dialed Putnam’s office.
Putnam’s secretary was apologetic but unhelpful. “I’m sorry, Dr. Fowler, but he’s tied up in a meeting right now. He’ll have to get back to you. Can I take another message?”
Blake knew there were already at least ten pink message slips with his name and number littering her desk. “No, that’s all right, Liz. I’m just trying to find out when he’s planning to meet with the President on this Korea thing.”
Putnam’s secretary lowered her voice. “Korea? I thought you’d heard. He’s briefing the President and the cabinet tomorrow morning. Didn’t he call you?”
Blake kept his voice level. “No. I guess it slipped his mind.”
“Hold on for just a moment. I’ll see if I can pull him away from his congressional guests long enough to ask him about it for you.”
He heard the line go silent as she put him on hold. That son of a bitch. What kind of games was he playing now?
Putnam’s secretary was back in less than a minute. She sounded embarrassed. “I’m sorry. He said the President has asked that this meeting be kept strictly limited. He’s going to do the briefing himself.”
Blake hung up slowly. He’d been shut out by Putnam before. But never on something so crucial. Just what the hell was going on over in the East Wing?
The President looked around the half-empty Cabinet Room while Putnam droned on. It might have been nice for once to have a full complement of his senior advisors present for an important meeting. But the world didn’t want to cooperate. Crises, both domestic and foreign, always seemed to drain people out of Washington at the damnedest times.
So, now that he needed to make a decision on this Korean sanctions bill, half his key people were scattered across the globe. The secretary of commerce was in Japan for high-level trade negotiations. And both the secretary of defense and the CIA director were off flitting around Europe briefing the NATO governments on the latest round of conventional arms talks. Even the vice president was out of town on a swing through Sub-Saharan Africa.
That left a small cadre of foreign and military policy experts to canvass — basically just the secretary of state and Putnam. He’d thought about putting this meeting off, but Putnam had assured him that the views of both Defense and the CIA were included in his Working Group’s report. The man had also managed to deftly remind him that polls showed a growing public impatience with what they saw as his administration’s reluctance to take swift, decisive action on important issues.
The President sighed. He’d campaigned on the promise of “hands-on” leadership and management. Didn’t people realize it took time to assimilate all the detailed knowledge that required? He was beginning to envy his predecessor’s seeming ability to make snap judgments that turned out to be more right than wrong.
“Mr. President? You had a question, sir?” Putnam had stopped in the middle of his briefing, pointer resting on large-scale map of the North Pacific.
“No, George. No questions just yet. Go ahead and finish your presentation.”
Putnam laid the pointer back on the table and stared down at his notes for a couple of moments before continuing. “Let me quickly summarize the Working Group’s findings and recommendations, gentlemen. First, the trade sanctions included in the bill would have a powerful impact on South Korea’s economy. Given that, it seems clear to me that no rational government would risk their full implementation.”
“And,” Putnam continued, “they would have little substantive impact on our own economy in the unlikely
