State of Siege

one of the organizers of the war effort.

Hood put the plastic box in the cardboard carton and looked at a small, black piece of twisted metal. The shard was stiff and light, the ends bubbled and charred. It was part of the skin of a North Korean Nodong missile. It had melted when Op-Center’s military unit, Striker, destroyed the weapon before it could be launched at Japan. Hood’s second-in-command, General Mike Rodgers, had brought the fragment back for him.

My second-in-command, Hood thought. Technically, Hood would be on vacation for two weeks before his resignation took effect. Mike would be acting director until then. Hood hoped the president would give Mike the job full time after that. It would be a terrible blow to Mike if he didn’t.

Hood picked up the Nodong fragment. It was like holding a piece of his life. Japan was spared an attack, one to two million lives saved. Several lives lost. This memento and others like it were passive, but the memories they triggered were anything but.

He put the fragment back in the carton. The hum of air coming from the overhead vents seemed unusually loud. Or maybe the office was just unusually silent? The night crew was on, and the phone wasn’t ringing. Footsteps weren’t coming to or from his door.

Hood quickly went through the other memories tucked in the top drawer of his desk.

There were postcards from the kids when they vacationed at Grandma’s — not like this last time, when his wife took them there while she decided whether or not to leave him. There were books he’d read on airplanes with notes scribbled in the margins, things he had to remember to do when he got where he was going or when he returned. And there was a brass key from the hotel in Hamburg, Germany, where he bumped into Nancy Jo Bosworth, a woman he’d loved and planned to marry. Nancy had walked out of his life over twenty years before without an explanation.

Hood held the brass key in his palm. He resisted the urge to slip it into his pocket, feel like he was back at the hotel, just for a moment. Instead, Hood placed the key in the box. Returning to the girl, even in memory, who’d walked out of his life, wasn’t going to help save his family.

Hood shut the top drawer. He’d told Sharon that he would take her on one big last-night-of-having-an- expense-account dinner, and there was no excuse to miss it. He’d already said his last good-byes to the office workers, and the senior staff had thrown him a surprise party that afternoon — even though it wasn’t much of a surprise. When intelligence chief Bob Herbert had E-mailed everyone the time and date, he’d forgotten to remove Hood’s E-mail address from his list. Paul had pretended to be surprised when he walked into the conference room. He was just glad that Herbert didn’t make mistakes like that as a rule.

Hood opened the bottom drawer. He took out his personal address book, the crossword puzzle CD-ROM he’d never gotten to use, and the scrapbook of daughter Harleigh’s violin recitals. He’d missed too damn many of those. The four of them would be going to New York at the end of the week so Harleigh could perform with other young Washington virtuosi at a function for United Nations ambassadors. Ironically, they were celebrating a major peace initiative in Spain, where Op-Center had been involved in helping to prevent a civil war. Unfortunately, the public — parents included — were not invited. Hood would have been curious to see how the new secretary-general, Mala Chatterjee, handled her first public affair. She had been chosen after Secretary-General Massimo Marcello Manni had suffered a fatal heart attack. Though the young woman wasn’t as experienced as other candidates, she was committed to the struggle for human rights through peaceful means. Influential nations like the United States, Germany, and Japan — which saw her strong stand as a means to tweak China — helped her get the appointment.

Hood left the government phone directory, a monthly terminology bulletin — the latest names of nations and their leaders — and a thick book of military acronyms. Unlike Herbert and General Rodgers, Hood had never served in the military. He’d always felt self-conscious about never having risked his life in the service, especially when he had to send Striker into the field. But, as Op-Center’s FBI liaison Darrell McCaskey once pointed out, “That’s why we call this a team. Everyone brings different skills to the table.”

Hood paused when he came to a stack of photos in the bottom of the drawer. He removed the rubber band and looked through them. Among the pictures of barbecues and photo-ops with world leaders were snapshots of Striker’s Private Bass Moore, of Striker commander Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Squires, and of Op-Center’s political and economic liaison Martha Mackall. Private Moore died in North Korea, Lieutenant Colonel Squires lost his life on a mission in Russia, and Martha had been assassinated just a few days before on the streets of Madrid, Spain. Hood replaced the rubber band and put the stack of pictures in the carton.

He closed the last drawer. He picked up his well-worn City of Los Angeles mousepad and Camp David coffee mug and placed them in the box. As he did, he noticed someone standing to his left, just outside the open office door.

“Need any help?”

Hood smiled lightly. He ran a hand through his wavy black hair. “No, but you can come in. What are you doing here so late?”

“Checking the Far Eastern newspaper headlines for tomorrow,” she said. “We’ve got some disinformation out there.”

“About?”

“I can’t tell you,” she said. “You don’t work here anymore.”

“Touche,” he replied, smiling.

Ann Farris smiled back as she walked slowly into the office. The Washington Times once described her as one of the twenty-five most eligible young divorcees in the nation’s capital. Nearly six years later, she still was. Op-Center’s five-foot-seven-inch-tall press liaison was wearing a tight black skirt and white blouse. Her dark rust eyes were large and warm, and they softened the anger Hood was feeling.

“I promised myself I wasn’t going to bother you,” the tall, slender woman said.

“But here you are.”

“Here I am.”

“And it’s not a bother,” he added.

Ann stopped beside the desk and looked down at him. Her long, brown hair fell along her face and over the front of her shoulders. Looking at her eyes and smile, Hood was reminded of all the times during the past two and a half years that she’d encouraged him, helped him, made no secret that she cared for him.

“I didn’t want to bother you,” she said, “but I also didn’t want to say good-bye at a party.”

“I understand. I’m glad you’re here.”

Ann sat on the edge of the desk. “What are you going to do, Paul? Do you think you’ll stay in D.C.?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking about going back to the financial world,” he said. “I’ve arranged to see a few people after we get back from New York. If that doesn’t work out, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll settle in some small rural town and open an accounting practice. Taxes, money market, a Range Rover, and raking leaves. It wouldn’t be a bad life.”

“I know. I lived it.”

“And you don’t think I can.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “What are you going to do when the children are gone? My own son’s scratching on teenagerhood and I’m already thinking about what I’ll do when he leaves for college.”

“What will you do?” Hood asked.

“Unless some wonderful, middle-aged guy with black hair and hazel eyes carries me off to Antigua or Tonga?” she asked.

“Yes,” Hood said, flushing. “If that doesn’t happen.”

“I’ll probably buy a house somewhere in the middle of one of those islands and write. Real fiction. Not the stuff I give the Washington Press Corps every day. There are some stories I want to tell.”

The former political reporter and one-time press secretary to Connecticut Senator Bob Kaufmann did indeed have stories to tell. Tales of spin-doctoring, affairs, and back-stabbing in the corridors of power.

Hood sighed. He looked at his depersonalized desk. “I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve got some personal things to work on.”

“With your wife, you mean.”

“With Sharon,” he said softly. “If I succeed, then the future will take care of itself.”

Hood had made a point of saying his wife’s name because it made her seem more real, more present. He did that because Ann was pushing more than usual. This would be her last chance to talk to him here, where the