Brian Haig - The Capitol Game

“You’re a fine man, Jack Wiley. When are you gonna find a fine woman? The kids are always askin’ when Uncle Jack’s gonna settle down.”

Jack laughed. “You have a sister?”

“Yeah. A real uptight bitch. She’s too old for you. Already been married and divorced three times, anyways. Can’t hold a man.”

Jack smiled. “Can I have her number?”

Bellweather was right. It was nearly five in the evening the next day when Jack called. Walters’s assistant, Alice, unfamiliar with his name, swore up and down her boss was out of the office and in any event was too busy to speak with him. But Jack loudly insisted that she interrupt whatever her boss was doing and mention his name.

Walters at that moment had a putter clenched in his sweaty palms, having just lined up a shot, when his cell phone rattled. He was on the back nine of the Army Navy Country Club, hosting two admirals and a high-level assistant secretary of acquisition from the Pentagon. A shipbuilding company down in Pascagoula, owned by CG, was a year late and now two hundred million and counting in cost overruns on a pair of Navy destroyers. Walters was using the occasion to talk them out of a full-blown audit, doing it the usual way, hinting at the job openings that were expected to come open right about the time the three men were in the window for retirement.

He blew the putt, an easy five-footer, threw down the putter, cursed, and jerked the phone off his belt. “What?” he yelled, wishing he could strangle the caller.

His knees almost went rubbery when Alice, after apologizing profusely for breaking his concentration, mentioned who was calling. Alice’s predecessor had been fired only the week before. Divorced, three kids, a big mortgage, she was walking on eggshells, trying desperately to avoid that fate. The betting pool around the office gave her two weeks. Three at the outside.

Walters barked, “Put him through.”

A moment later, he heard magic. “Mr. Walters, I suspect you’ve heard about me,” Jack said in a very friendly tone.

Walters tried to smile into the phone. “Sure have, Jack. Couldn’t be sorrier about that stupid meeting with Ed Blank. What an ass.”

“I was hoping you and I could meet,” Jack said abruptly.

“Love to. Say when.”

“Okay, ‘when’ is tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes. I’m afraid my schedule’s gotten very cluttered.”

“Yeah, well, my schedule’s pretty loaded, too,” Walters snapped back. The idea that this uppity punk was busier than him was ridiculous. But he quickly regained his composure, and in a tone that was only mildly friendlier suggested, “Why not tomorrow? I’ll tell my secretary to find me an hour.”

“Tell her not to bother.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You know what it means. Good-bye, Mr.-”

“No… wait!” Walters nearly screamed. The clutch of admirals and the assistant secretary politely edged away.

Wiley made no reply. Not a sound, not a peep. At least he hadn’t hung up, though.

“Listen,” Walters said, trying not to sound desperate and failing miserably. “Maybe I can make time tonight.”

“Maybe?”

“Okay, I can. What time?”

“I won’t be free until about nine.”

“Then nine it is.”

“And bring along some of your directors, Mr. Walters. This is a fast train. I want to be sure you can commit to a deal.”

Walters was fiercely tempted to tell him to cram it. Who did this guy think he was, ordering him around like some snot-nosed junior executive? He worked up every bit of his nerve and said, “Sure, no problem. Where?”

“I’m in town, so how about your headquarters?”

Walters was about to reply when the phone line suddenly went dead. One of the admirals sank a thirty-footer. “Good shot, sailor,” Walters yelled over his shoulder. “Sorry, gotta go, boys, finish without me,” and he jogged back to the clubhouse, howling into his phone for Alice, the temporary assistant, to arrange champagne and snacks, and to contact three directors and tell them to be there at all costs.

Tell them the fifteen-billion-dollar man is back.

Dan Bellweather was personally awaiting Jack in the downstairs lobby when he arrived, alone, hauling a small black suitcase. Bellweather shook his hand with great enthusiasm, escorted him past the security people and up in the elevator to the tenth floor, where the spacious senior executive suites were located. “We’re glad you came back,” he happily informed Jack on the way up.

“I’m not exactly back, Mr. Secretary,” Jack replied, polite but poker-faced.

Bellweather smiled nicely. Oh yes, boy, you’re definitely back. After a moment, he said, “I understand you were a military brat.”

“I grew up bouncing around Army posts. Fun life.”

Bellweather could almost recite from memory the many places Jack had lived. “And you were in the Army yourself,” he noted, “and your father was a lifer. Why did you leave it?”

“The war was over. I did my part, time to enjoy the peace.”

“You mean make money, huh?”

“Sure, why not.”

“I admire that motive,” Bellweather said, and his smile widened and sparkled. Nice to see Jack had honorable ambitions.

They had reached the tenth floor and Jack encouraged Bellweather to step out first. After a fast trip down a long hallway, he ushered Jack into a large wood-paneled conference room where three other gentlemen in a mixture of thousand-dollar suits and blazers were picking at snacks on a side table and waiting.

“Jack,” Bellweather said, almost gushing with pride, “I’d like you to meet Alan Haggar and Phil Jackson, two of our directors. And of course Mitch Walters, our CEO.”

Like nearly every other CG director, Alan Haggar was a former high government official, a deputy secretary of defense, number two in the mammoth Pentagon hierarchy, who had left the current administration only six months before. He was short and flabby with a pinched face and narrow, indistinct eyes blurred behind thick bifocals: he appeared to have been hatched in a bureaucracy. His smile was tight, obviously forced and slightly nervous. He was the newest and, at forty-five, the youngest CG director.

To his right, Phil Jackson, a lawyer, had been a close confidant to many presidents-Republicans or Democrats, he went both ways-particularly when they got into legal trouble and needed a slick operator to stonewall, obscure, twist elbows, and finagle a way out. In a town loaded with powerful fixers, Phil Jackson had written the textbooks they all studied. He was tall, skeletally thin, entirely bald, stone-faced, with severely narrowed eyes that looked slightly snakish.

The four men quickly gathered around Jack in a tight huddle, hands were shaken, then Bellweather led Jack to a wall upon which hung twelve photographs in elegant gold frames. “Our directors, Jack”-he waved a hand reverently across the gallery-“I think it would be fair to say we’re led by a rather distinguished, illustrious group.”

What an understatement: at one time or another the heavyweights on the wall had ruled and/or misruled a healthy chunk of the planet. The engraved plaques attached to the bottom of the frames were a waste of space and money; few of CG’s directors required any form of introduction.

Included in the august group were a former French president, an Australian prime minister, a former British defence minister, a former secretary of state, even a former American president. Jack spent a politely dutiful minute moving down the line, gazing at the photos, before he glanced at his watch and suggested, “It’s getting late. Why don’t we get started?”

“Okay, fine,” Walters said. “Would you care for a glass of champagne?”