Jim DeFelice - Threat Level Black

“Coffee?” asked Mozelle. She’d already figured out the answer: A fresh cup was in her hand.

“Thanks.”

“Where do you want to start?” she asked.

“Better get Howe on the line,” he told her. “Might as well get that over with.”

“Then you’ll want to talk to Keiger at State.”

“All right.”

Blitz opened his e-mail queue and began going through his messages. He was about three e-mails in when Mozelle buzzed through, indicating Howe was on the line.

“Colonel, I’m sorry,” said Blitz immediately, without waiting for Howe to say anything. “The CIA is throwing a roadblock up.”

“That’s why my clearance was pulled?”

“It’ll be restored. They moved ahead before I could cut it off.” Blitz had decided to simply have interim clearances posted through his office; he scanned the list of his e-mails to see if he had received confirmation that this would happen.

“What’s going on?” Howe asked. “Am I being screwed here? Because if I’m being screwed, I don’t want the job. The hell with it.”

“Colonel…Bill. You have to calm down. This is unfortunately something that occasionally happens around here. I’ll deal with it. I promise you, I’ll deal with it. What happened was that the CIA launched a review, and as part of the standard practice, certain individuals who aren’t under immediate control-say, a military person still working in a certain area-the clearance gets-”

“The CIA is screwing me?”

“It’s not clear, precisely,” said Blitz, who wasn’t about to stick up for the agency. “On the one hand, the investigation has nothing to do with you. But on the other hand, they may be using it-may, I emphasize-they may just be trying to put pressure on. You’re in a bit of a unique position. It’s possible that they’re looking for you to genuflect.”

“You know what they can do with that.”

Blitz drew a breath.

“Colonel, let me ask you a question,” he said. “You knew nothing about the Korea operation until the Pentagon contacted you, correct?”

“That’s a question?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know anything about it, no.”

“And you’ve already told several people everything that happened.”

“Absolutely.”

“Then there’s not going to be a problem. One of my aides will clear this up for you. As a matter of fact, it may already have been cleared up. In the meantime, you can just go about talking to the board members.”

“How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

There were already two other lights lit on his phone, the next calls he had to make. Blitz decided to push on: Either Howe would stick with him or not. He couldn’t afford any more time on this today.

“It’s important that NADT be headed by someone with your experience and abilities,” Blitz told him. “This isn’t a roadblock, this is a pothole. Please don’t get discouraged.”

“Right.” Howe hung up, clearly unhappy.

Blitz hit the Next button, moving ahead.

Fisher had the cabdriver drop him off behind the department store that sat next to the diner. He waited for the cab to drive off, then went over to the Dumpster near the loading dock. The aroma mixed stale aftershave with week-old fish, and it got ten times worse when he opened the lid. But Fisher had given his nose for his country before; he took a step away, gulped semifresh air, then came back and began climbing up on the garbage bin.

“Yo, dude, what you up to?” said a store worker, appearing from the back.

“Stargazing,” said Fisher, putting his hands on the roof and pulling himself up.

“Dude. Dude,” said the store worker below as Fisher got up to the top. The roof was covered with tar, and Fisher realized he’d have to try vouchering the shoes on his expense account. But there was nothing to be done; he walked out to the end of the roof, peering over the side toward the parking lot where he’d left his car.

The car was there. If someone was watching it, they weren’t being obvious about it.

“Yo, dude, you can’t climb up on our roof, man,” said the store employee, who’d climbed up after him.

“You don’t think?” asked Fisher.

“What are you doing, dude?”

“FBI,” Fisher said.

“Really. Like, whoa. Cool. You got, like, a badge?”

“Sure,” said Fisher, without showing it to him. “I’m, like, with the roof-climbing division. We’re checking to see if there have been any UFO landings here.”

“No shit, whoa,” said the kid. He turned his eyes toward the sky. “I think I saw a flying saucer the other week.”

“You filed the report?”

“Wasn’t me, dude.”

Fisher went back to the spot where he’d climbed up.

“Hey, dude, I think I’m stuck in this tar.”

“I’ll send a helicopter.”

On the ground, Fisher tracked around the back of the lot adjoining the diner, still looking to see if anyone was watching his car. Finally he went back inside, going up to the counter to order a takeout coffee. A man in the front booth near the window got up promptly and left; Fisher turned and watched him, trying to decide if he’d seen the man earlier or not. There was a problem in the kitchen about an order of hash browns after the eleven A.M. cutoff; by the time Fisher got his coffee, the man had driven off.

Fisher took a sip from his cup and surveyed the area. Either the surveillance operation on Howe was pretty good or it was nonexistent.

Or they had other places to watch.

Fisher went back inside to use the restroom, checking again to see if there were any obvious henchmen inside; henchmen, in his experience, were always obvious.

Outside, he went back to his car. He was just reaching for the door when he noticed there was something on the pavement underneath the back.

“Shit,” he yelled as he threw himself down.

As he hit the ground the ground, the car exploded.

Howe’s conversation with Blitz had left him even more frustrated and angry. He drove around for a while, debating with himself whether to just go home and say, “The hell with everything.”

This was exactly what he hated about Washington: bullshit political games. Why in the world did he think NADT would be different?

Belatedly, he remembered he’d told McIntyre to meet him for lunch. He made it to the restaurant only ten minutes late; McIntyre didn’t appear concerned at all, and claimed he hadn’t even noticed the time.

“Drinks?” asked the waitress.

“I’ll have a beer,” said Howe. It was clear he wasn’t getting any real work done today.

“Not for me,” said McIntyre. “Can’t,” he explained to Howe when she left.

McIntyre and Howe had not been close before Howe saved his life, but the former NSC aide was well known as an after-hours partyer, and the few times that Howe had lunch with him McIntyre had at least two drinks. He had also been more than a little full of himself, smarter than nearly everyone he dealt with and quick to admit it. But now he seemed humbled-not shattered so much as sobered.

“Are you really sick?” Howe asked.

“I was stressed. I’m dealing with it. I’m better than I was a few weeks ago, and I was better then than a few weeks earlier than that.” He took a sip of his seltzer. “I don’t know if there’s an okay. I take an antidepressant, and I’m not supposed to drink alcohol, so I don’t.”

He shrugged.

“You were depressed?” asked Howe. “Like suicide?”

“No, it’s more like being, I don’t know…anxious? Super nervous? Like you have this adrenaline rush but no energy. And edgy.” McIntyre shrugged again. “The doctor has all these metaphors. Basically, he calls it post-traumatic stress because of what happened in Kashmir. I killed somebody.”