Teeth of the Tiger

governmental skeleton crew. They never learned. He himself had talked at infinite length to his colleagues in the World's Most Exclusive Men's Club, but while some listened, others did not, and almost all of the remainder vacillated. They paid too much attention to the editorial pages, often of newspapers not even native to their home states, because that, they foolishly figured, was what the American People thought. Maybe it was this simple: Any newly elected official was seduced into the game the same way Cleopatra had snookered Gaius Julius Caesar. It was the staffs, he knew, the 'professional' political helpers who 'guided' their employers into the right way to be reelected, which had become the Holy Grail of public service. America did not have a hereditary ruling class, but it did have plenty of people happy to lead their employers onto the righteous path of government divinity.

And working inside the system just didn't work.

So, to accomplish anything, you just had to be outside the system.

Way the hell outside the system.

And if anybody noticed, well, he was already disgraced anyway, wasn't he?

He spent his first hour discussing financial matters with some of his staff, because that was how Hendley Associates made its money. As a commodities trader, and as a currency arbitrageur, he'd been ahead of the curve almost from the beginning, sensing the momentary valuation differences — he always called them 'Deltas' — which were generated by psychological factors, by perceptions that might or might not turn out to be real.

He did all his business anonymously through foreign banks, all of which liked having large cash accounts, and none of which were overly fastidious about where the money came from, so long as it was not overtly dirty, which his certainly was not. It was just another way of keeping outside the system.

Not that every one of his dealings was strictly legal. Having Fort Meade's intercepts on his side made the game a lot easier. In fact, it was illegal as hell, and not the least bit ethical. But in truth Hendley Associates did little in the way of damage on the world stage. It could have been otherwise, but Hendley Associates operated on the principle that pigs got fed and hogs got slaughtered, and so they ate only a little out of the international trough. And, besides, there was no real governing authority for crimes of this type and this magnitude. And tucked away in a safe within the company vault was an official Charter signed by the former President of the United States.

Tom Davis came in. The titulary head of bond trading, Davis's background was similar in some ways to Hendley's, and he spent his days glued to his computer. He didn't worry about security. In this building all of the walls had metal sheathing to contain electronic emanations, and all of the computers were tempest-protected.

'What's new?' asked Hendley.

'Well,' Davis answered, 'we have a couple of potential new recruits.'

'Who might they be?'

Davis slid the files across Hendley's desk. The CEO took them and opened both.

'Brothers?'

'Twins. Fraternals. Their mom must have punched out two eggs instead of one that month. Both of them impressed the right people. Brains, mental agility, fitness, and between them a good mix of talents, plus language skills. Spanish, especially.'

'This one speaks Pashtu?' Hendley looked up in surprise.

'Just enough to find the bathroom. He was in country eight weeks or so, took the time to learn the local patois. Acquitted himself pretty well, the report says.'

'Think they're our kind of people?' Hendley asked. Such people did not walk in the front door, which was why Hendley had a small number of very discreet recruiters sprinkled throughout the government.

'We need to check them out a little more,' Davis conceded, 'but they do have the talents we like. On the surface, both appear to be reliable, stable, and smart enough to understand why we're here. So, yeah, I think they're worth a serious look.'

'What's next for them?'

'Dominic is going to transfer to Washington. Gus Werner wants him to join the counterterror office. He'll probably be a desk man to start with. He's a little young for HRT, and he hasn't proven his analytical abilities yet. I think Werner wants to see how smart he is first. Brian will fly to Camp Lejeune, back to working with his company. I'm surprised the Corps hasn't seconded him to intelligence. He's an obvious candidate, but they do like their shooters, and he did pretty well over in camel-land. He'll be fast-tracked to major's rank, if my sources are correct. So, first, I think I'll fly down and have lunch with him, feel him out some, then come back to D.C. And do the same with Dominic. Werner was impressed with him.'

'And Gus is a good judge of men,' the former senator noted.

'That he is, Gerry,' Davis agreed. 'So — anything new shaking?'

'Fort Meade is buried under a mountain, as usual.' The NSA's biggest problem was that they intercepted so much raw material it would take an army to sort through it all. Computer programs helped by homing in on key words and such, but nearly all of it was innocent chatter. Programmers were always trying to improve the catcher program, but it had proven to be virtually impossible to give a computer human instincts, though they were still trying. Unfortunately, the really talented programmers worked for game companies. That was where the money was, and talent usually followed the money path. Hendley couldn't complain about that. After all, he'd spent his twenties and half of his thirties doing the same. So, he often went looking for rich and very successful programmers for whom the money chase had become not so much boring as redundant. It was usually a waste of time. Nerds were often greedy bastards. Just like lawyers, but not quite as cynical. 'I've seen half a dozen interesting intercepts today, though…'

'Such as?' Davis asked. The company's chief recruiter, he was also a skilled analyst.

'This.' Hendley handed the folder across. Davis opened it and scanned down the page.

'Hmm,' was all he said.

'Could be scary, if it turns into anything,' Hendley thought aloud.

'True. But we need more.' That was not earthshaking. They always needed more.

'Who do we have down there right now?' He ought to have known, but Hendley suffered from the usual bureaucratic disease: He had trouble keeping all the information current in his head.

'Right now? Ed Castilanno is in Bogota, looking into the Cartel, but he's in deep cover. Real deep,' Davis reminded his boss.

'You know, Tom, this intelligence business sometimes sucks the big one.'

'Cheer up, Gerry. The pay's a hell of a lot better — at least for us underlings,' he added with a tiny grin. His bronze skin contrasted starkly with the ivory teeth.

'Yeah, must be terrible to be a peasant.'

'At least da massa let me get educated, learn my letters and such. Could have been worse, don' have to chop cotton no more, Mas Gerry.' Hendley rolled his eyes. Davis had, in fact, gotten his degree from Dartmouth, where he took a lot less grief for his dark skin than for his home state. His father grew corn in Nebraska, and voted Republican.

'What's one of those harvesters cost now?' the boss asked.

'You kidding? Far side of two hundred thousand. Dad got a new one last year and he's still bitching about it. 'Course, this one'll last until his grandchildren die rich. Cuts through an acre of corn like a battalion of Rangers going through some bad guys.' Davis had made a good career in CIA as a field spook, becoming a specialist in tracking money across international borders. At Hendley Associates he'd discovered that his talents were also quite useful in a business sense, but, of course, he'd never lost his nose for the real action. 'You know, this FBI guy, Dominic, he did some interesting work in financial crimes in his first field assignment in Newark. One of his cases is developing into a major investigation into an international banking house. He knows how to sniff things out pretty well for a rookie.'

'All that, and he can kill people on his own hook,' Hendley agreed.

'That's why I like his looks, Gerry. He can make decisions in the saddle, like a guy ten years older.'

'Brother act. Interesting,' Hendley observed, eyes on the folders again.

'Maybe breeding tells. Grandfather was a homicide cop, after all.'

'And before that in the 101st Airborne. I see your point, Tom. Okay. Sound them both out soon. We're going to be busy soon.'

'Think so?'