Fires of War

“I’m OK, Ferg. I can do it.”

“Slap me.”

“Huh?”

“Slap me, because I just told you how desperately I want to take you to bed.”

“I—“

“’I only have eyes, for you…’”

“I won’t,” said Thera loudly. She took a step back and put her hands on her hips. “No.”

“Come on,” said Ferguson. “We’re obviously meant for each other.”

Thera told him in Greek that he was an animal and a pig. The first words sputtered. She imagined herself to be the technical secretary she was portraying, not the skilled CIA paramilitary looking for violations of the new Korean nuclear nonproliferation treaty.

And she imagined Ferguson not to be her boss and the man who had saved her neck just a few months before but a snake and a rogue and a thief, roles he was well accustomed to playing.

Though he was a handsome rogue, truth be told.

“Go away,” she said in English. Her cheeks were warm. “Go!”

“Should I take that as a no?” Ferguson asked.

Thera turned and stomped to her table.

* * *

She seemed to take that well,” said Stephen Rankin sarcastically when Ferguson got back to the table. “What’d you do, kick her in her shins?”

“I tried to, but she wouldn’t stand still.” Ferguson sipped from the drink, a Sicilian concoction made entirely from local liquor. It tasted like sweet but slightly turned orange juice and burned the throat going down, which summed up Sicily fairly well.

“You think she’s gonna bail?” Rankin asked.

“Nah. Why do you think that?”

“I don’t think that. I’m asking if you think that.”

Ferguson watched Thera talking with the Swedish female scientist. He could still smell the light scent of her perfume and feel the sway of her body against his.

She wasn’t going to quit, but she was afraid. He’d sensed it, dancing with her. But fear wasn’t the enemy most people thought. In some cases, for some people, fear made them sharper, smarter, and better.

Ferguson thought Thera was that kind of person; she’d certainly done well in Syria, and there was as much reason to be afraid then as there would be in North Korea.

He jumped to his feet to chase the thought away “Let’s get going, Skippy.”

“One of these days I’m going to sock you for calling me Skippy.”

“I wish you’d try. Let’s get out to the airport.”

2

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

“Ms. Alston? Ma’am?”

Corrine looked up from her computer to see Jess Northrup, poking his head in the doorway.

“President was wondering if you could wander into his office in about five minutes,” said Northrup, who as an assistant to the chief of staff was the president’s schedule keeper. “Senator Tewilliger’s in there.”

“Thanks, Jess.” Corrine hit the Save button and stood up. “How’s the car?”

Northrup’s face, which had been so serious his cheeks looked as if they were marble, brightened immediately. “Paint job over the weekend,” he said. “Assuming matters of state don’t interfere.”

“You promised me a ride with the top down.”

“Soon as it’s done.”

Northrup’s car was a 1966 Mustang convertible he’d started rebuilding soon after Jonathon McCarthy won reelection as senator nearly four years before. McCarthy was now president, but Northrup’s car still lacked key items, among them an engine.

“Do you have a fresh yellow pad?” she asked her secretary, Teri Gatins, in the outer office.

“Wandering into the Oval Office?” said Gatins.

Corrine returned the assistant’s smirk. Having an aide “spontaneously” interrupt him was a favorite McCarthy tactic for cutting short visits from people like Gordon Tewilliger, who were too important and dangerous to blow off but too dense to take all but the most obvious hint that it was time to leave.

“You have that appointment with Director Parnelles at Langley on Special Demands this afternoon,” said Gatins as Corrine took the notebook. “Should I get you a sandwich?”

“I’m not really hungry. It’s only eleven.”

“I’ll get corned beef,” said the secretary, picking up the phone.

* * *

The president’s office was only a few feet down the hall, but in that distance Corrine transformed herself, consciously changing her stride and stare. Senator Gordon Tewilliger was not, technically speaking, an enemy, but he was far from a friend.

Very far. Though he was a member of McCarthy’s own party, there were strong rumors that he was thinking about launching a primary fight against him. The election was a good three years away, and Tewilliger had steadfastly denied that he was interested in the job, but even the news-people thought he was testing the water.

Corrine winked at Northrup, knocked once on the door, and pushed inside.

“Well, now, if I didn’t know any better, Gordon,” said McCarthy, eyes fixed on Tewilliger, “I might think one or two of those projects there smelled of pork.”

“Pork?”

“Pork might not be the proper word in this context.” McCarthy came by his South Carolina accent honestly — his forebears, as he liked to call them, had been in the state since before the revolution — but sometimes it was more honest than others. At the moment it was honest in the extreme.

“I expect that many of those programs are important programs in their own right,” added McCarthy. “One or two of those highway patrol elements, I believe, should be funded through Transportation. And in a case or two of high priority relating to homeland defense, those items might be added by our budget director, working in close relation with your staff, of course.”

Senator Tewilliger, who for a moment had felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach, now felt like a man pulled from the ocean. He knew it was partly, perhaps mostly, a game — he’d seen McCarthy operating in the Senate and was well aware how smooth he could be — but still, in that instant he felt grateful, even flattered, that the president was going to help him.

Then he felt something else: the absolute conviction that he, Gordon Tewilliger, deserved to be the next president of the United States. McCarthy couldn’t be trusted with power like this.

Corrine cleared her throat. “I didn’t realize you were in the middle of something.”

“Well, now, Miss Alston, I am always in the middle of something,” said McCarthy. “Isn’t that right, Senator?”

“Yes. Corrine, how are you?” Tewilliger nodded in Corrine’s direction.

“Senator Tewilliger and I were just discussing how important the security of Indiana is. He has been doing quite a bit of work to ensure that we do not forget the state in the upcoming homeland defense bill.”

“Just keeping the home fires burning,” said the senator.

It occurred to Corrine that, had McCarthy lost his bid for president, she could well be working for Tewilliger right now, as counsel to the Senate Armed Services Committee; he had inherited the chairmanship when McCarthy left.

Then again, she and Tewilliger had clashed in the past, and it was much more likely that he would have fired