Джозеф Файндер - House on Fire

I excused myself, got up from the table, left the phone there. At the entrance to the room, Fritz Heston looked at me.

“Excuse me,” I said quietly, as if he were a servant, “where would I find the bathroom?”

He pointed, didn’t reply. Up close I could see he had white hair and was probably around sixty.

I found the small guest bathroom right off the foyer, all black and white tiles and nickel fixtures, like a restroom in a men’s club from the 1920s. Took my time in there. When I came back, I could see at a distance Fritz walking away from the table.

I returned to the table, picked up my phone, and glanced at it. On its screen, and visible to anyone, were a couple of texts. One was from a Mark_Foster@mckinsey.com, its subject “quick wins.” Another one from Kerry_Granville@mckinsey.com, subject “MECE analysis.” I slipped it back into my breast pocket. I had no doubt that Fritz Heston had taken a peek at my phone. He couldn’t resist. Then I sneaked a glance and saw that he had left the room. Maybe the ruse had worked.

Suddenly a slight blond man in his early twenties burst into the room. He had on ripped jeans and Chuck Taylors and a wrinkled tuxedo jacket worn ironically. “Happy birthday, Dad,” he sang out. “Sorry I’m late. Car trouble.” He laughed delightedly. Cameron was weaving slightly as he approached the head of the table. Accompanying him was a woman I at first saw only from the side, but I recognized her gait before I knew for sure who she was.

I felt my blood jump.

It can’t be .

“The prodigal son arrives at last,” said Conrad, extending his arms. He wasn’t smiling.

I kept staring at Cameron’s date. Everything else fell away.

“The gang’s all here,” Cameron said. “Saving the best for last.”

As the couple came up to Conrad, I could finally see the woman’s face. I startled, jerked my head like a cartoon character.

It is her .

Megan must have noticed me gaping like an idiot, because she said, “Wait, you know her?”

At least I recovered quickly. I shook my head. “No. She just looks like someone I used to know,” I said.

Seven years ago

I was still recovering from a gunshot wound I’d gotten in Afghanistan, working on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in southwest DC for a covert unit of the Defense Intelligence Agency, when I got an email with an order to report to something called DCIS, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. No explanation, of course. DCIS was based not in the Pentagon but in a generic office building in Alexandria. They uncovered fraud and corruption within the Pentagon and in the defense procurement system. That sounded cool to me.

Anyway, I went where I was told. When I got there, I went to a conference room, where I was met by a very stern-faced woman around my age who acted a lot older. Major Margret C. Benson looked over my service jacket for a while before launching into a no-bullshit briefing on the operation I was joining. She was running it. The target was a civilian procurement officer in the Pentagon named Harkins who was rumored to be corrupt. Harkins was meeting someone for dinner at the Capital Grille who he believed worked for a big defense contractor. The whole dinner was being choreographed, audiotaped and videotaped, and I was to be one of the lowly techs who sat in a white panel van during dinner, making sure the feed was good, standing by to replace any defective component if need be.

Major Benson was small and lithe, almost wiry. Her uniform always seemed a size too big. She was cute but serious as all hell, never cracked a smile. She thanked the DIA for providing much-needed manpower. Then she drilled us on how the op was going to proceed.

When she was finished, I made an attempt to get out of tech duty. I suggested that I could, instead, play the defense contractor executive. After all, I’d just served a couple of combat deployments, yet no one knew who I was. I could talk armaments knowledgeably. It was a ballsy suggestion, for a neophyte, and she cut me right off. “I got dibs on that, Sergeant Heller,” she said with a slight smile. I reminded her I was no longer “sergeant,” since I was now a civilian, but that didn’t stop her from calling me Sergeant Heller.

A few hours later, I was sitting in the van watching our target, Harkins, the greedy procurement officer, sip his water and gnaw at his bread, waiting. The broadcast quality was excellent.

Then a big, blowsy woman came up to the table, all big hair and French manicure and copious makeup. She spoke in a strong Texan twang, ordered a Cosmo, and soon they were laughing and drinking and making deals. He was drinking bourbon, and she was inhaling Cosmos. Her accent dripped sugar syrup. I wondered about this woman. Either she really was Marjorie Cairns of Irving, Texas, or she was Meryl Streep.

“Who the hell is that?” I asked one of the other techs in the van.

“You don’t know? That’s Major Benson.”

“That’s Maggie Benson? Underneath the big shoulders and all that hair?”

“Yeah.”

“Man, she’s good,” I said.

“Oh, you have no idea.”

Now the slight blond man in the dinner jacket and his date were standing before me. He offered his palm, a touch and a slide, barely a handshake at all.

“Cameron,” he said to me.

The woman had copper-red hair and blue eyes, and she was dressed in a black, off-the-shoulder sheath. Her eyes gazed directly, defiantly at me. “I’m Hildy,” she said, almost daring me to acknowledge her.

“Nice to meet you, Hildy,” I said, “I’m Nicholas Brown.”

“Nicholas.” She smiled politely but barely glanced at me, as if she didn’t know me. Well played.

I played it the same way. Whatever she was up to, I wasn’t going to derail it. Nor did I want her to mess up my cover.

But what the hell was she doing?

Cameron said, “You with somebody?”

“Sukie,” I said.

From across the table, Sukie flapped a hand. “Nice of you to make it,” she said to Cameron.

He grinned, cocked an eyebrow. He looked at Sukie, then back at me. “Huh,” he said after another beat. “Huh. Well, enjoy. Welcome.” He half-sauntered, half-stumbled his way down the table to his place at the far end near the kids.

Maggie Benson went around to the other side. She was far enough away that I couldn’t talk with her, yet close enough that I could watch her interact with Cameron and the others. She was either a little drunk herself or plausibly acting that way. She took a sip of wine.

Maggie was wearing a reddish wig and probably contact lenses. I hadn’t seen her in seven years, and she was even more beautiful than she was back then. She also had to be a dozen years older than Cameron, though she didn’t look it.

But my thoughts were interrupted by Megan, on my right. “So how long have you and Sukie been together?” she said.

“Just a couple weeks,” I said, gnawing on a rib, and I came right back: “So you’re the senior VP for Europe, right?” Most people like talking about themselves.

“Right,” she said.

I glanced at Maggie and saw her take another sip of wine, though the level in her glass didn’t seem to be dropping.

Then I turned back to Megan. “It’s surprising, if you don’t mind my saying so, that you haven’t been made CEO already. I mean, with your smarts and experience? I’d think a lot of companies would feel very comfortable with you in the cockpit. So what am I missing?”

I could see her flush a little before she replied, smoothly, “My father’s sharp as a tack. And as long as he stays that way, we’re in the best possible hands.”