babble— but at least he was pretending to listen to them now. When he first came to Op-Center, Paul and staff psychologist Liz Gordon got along like Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan.
'I hope you're right,' Hood said, 'but if Op-Center is called in on anything over a Code Blue, I want to be the one who signs off on our activities.'
Rodgers's leg stopped moving. The light brown eyes that usually seemed golden appeared dark. 'I can handle it, Paul.'
'Never said you couldn't. You showed everyone what you could do when you stopped those missiles in North Korea.'
'So what's the problem?'
'None,' said Hood. 'This isn't about ability, Mike. It's about accountability.'
'I understand,' Rodgers insisted in his courtly way. 'But the regulations allow for this. The Deputy Director is allowed to okay operations when the Director is away.'
'The word is 'indisposed,' not 'away,'' Hood pointed out. 'I won't be indisposed, and you know how Congress gets about foreign adventures. If anything goes wrong, I'm the one who'll be hauled in front of a Senate committee and asked to explain why. I want to be able to tell them because I was there, not because I read about it in your report.'
Rodgers's high-ridged nose, broken four times in college basketball, dropped slightly. 'I understand.'
'But you still don't agree,' said Hood.
'No. Frankly, I'd welcome the chance to take on Congress. I'd give those seat-warmers a lesson in government by action, not consensus.'
Hood said, 'That's why I'd like to be the one to handle them, Mike. They still pay the bills around here.'
'Which is the reason men like Ollie North do what they do,' Rodgers said. 'To get around all the Deputy Directors' Coordinating Committees. The milksops who take proposals under advisement and sit on them for months and finally give them back too diluted and too late to matter worth a damn.'
Hood looked like he wanted to say something and Rodgers looked like he wanted to hear it and lob it right back. Instead, both men regarded each other in silence.
'Well,' Ann said jauntily, 'that gives us control over those tense, single-hostage Code Greens and multiple- domestic-hostage Blues, and puts the easy, overseas-hostage Yellows, and state-of-war Reds on your shoulders.' She closed the lid of her powerbook, looked at her watch, and rose. 'Paul, you'll send your schedule to our computers?'
Hood looked at the computer. He touched Alt/F6 on his keyboard, then hit PB/Enter and MR/Enter. 'Done,' he said.
'Great. Will you try to have a wonderful and relaxing trip?'
Hood nodded. Then he regarded Rodgers again. 'Thanks for your help,' he said, rising and shaking Rodgers's hand across the desk. 'If I knew how to make this better for you, Mike, I would.'
'See you in a week,' Rodgers said, then turned and walked past Ann.
'I'll see you too,' Ann said to Hood, giving him a little goodbye wave and an encouraging smile. 'Don't forget to write? and relax.'
'I'll send you a postcard from Bloopers,' he said.
Ann shut the door and followed Rodgers down the hall. She elbowed around coworkers and hurried past the open office doors and the closed doors of Op-Center's intelligence-gathering departments.
'Are you all right?' she asked when she fell in beside him.
Rodgers nodded.
'You don't look all right.'
'I still can't strike the right note with him.'
'I know,' Ann said. 'Sometimes you think he's really got a handle on some kind of larger worldview. The rest of the time you feel like he's trying to keep you in line, like a smarty-pants school monitor.'
Rodgers looked at her. 'That's a fair assessment, Ann. You've obviously given this— him— a lot of thought.'
She flushed. 'I tend to reduce everybody to sound bites. It's a bad habit.'
To change the course of the conversation, Ann made a point of emphasizing the 'everybody.' She knew at once that that had been a mistake.
'What's my sound bite?' Rodgers asked.
Ann looked at him squarely. 'You're a frank, decisive man in a world that has grown too complex for those qualities.'
They stopped beside his office. 'And is that good or bad?' he asked.
'It's troublesome,' Ann replied. 'With a little bit of give, you could probably get a lot more.'
Without taking his eyes off Ann, Rodgers entered his code in the keypad on the jamb. 'But if something isn't what you want, is it worth having?' he asked.
'I've always felt that half is better than none,' she replied.
'I see. I just don't agree.' Rodgers smiled now. 'And Ann? Next time, if you mean to say I'm stubborn, just come out and say it.'
Rodgers flipped her a little salute, walked into his office, and shut the door behind him.
Ann stood there for a moment before turning and walking slowly toward her office. She felt bad for Mike. He was a good man, and a bright one. But he was fatally flawed by his desire for action over diplomacy, even when that action disregarded little things like national sovereignty and congressional approval. It was his reputation as a fire-eater that had caused him to be passed over as Assistant Secretary of Defense, landing him here as a consolation prize. He accepted the post because he was first and foremost a good soldier, but he was never happy about it? or about reporting to a nonmilitary superior.
But then, she thought, everyone's got problems of some kind. Like her, for example. The problem to which Rodgers had indiscreetly alluded.
She was going to miss Paul, her good and honorable cavalier, the knight who wouldn't leave his wife however much she took him for granted. Worse than that, Ann couldn't help but fantasize about how she would make Paul relax if it were she and her son going with him to Southern California instead of Sharon and the kids
CHAPTER FOUR
Since being smuggled in from Russia to America in 1989, handsome, dark-haired Herman Josef had worked at the Bestonia Bagel Shop in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. Here, he was responsible for covering the still- warm dough with salt, sesame seeds, garlic, onions, poppy seeds, and various combinations thereof. Working near the ovens was miserable in the summer, delightful in the winter, and pleasantly unchallenging throughout the year. Most of the time, working here was nothing like working in Moscow.
Owner Arnold Belnick buzzed him on the intercom. 'Herman, come to the office,' he said. 'I have a special order.'
Whenever he heard that, the slender, thirty-seven-year-old Muscovite was no longer unchallenged. Old instincts and feelings came to life. The need to survive, to succeed, to serve his country. They were skills honed in ten years of working for the KGB before it was transformed.
Throwing his apron on the counter and turning the bagel-finishing process over to Belnick's young son, Herman ran up the groaning old stairs two at a time. He walked right into the office, which was lit by a fluorescent desk lamp and the light coming through a dirty skylight. He shut the door, locked it, then stood beside the old man at the desk.
Belnick looked back at him through a cloud of cigarette smoke. 'Here,' he said, handing Herman a paper.
Herman looked at it, then gave the paper back to Belnick. The round, balding man put it in the ashtray, touched the glowing tip of his cigarette to it, and set the note afire. Then he dumped the ashes on the floor and ground them to powder.
'Any questions?'
