said Major Duncan, leading the Cons-Op director to the security counter, behind which sat a tired looking female officer.
"How may we assist you, sit? If you'll give the information to Lieutenant Russell, she'll call for an escort."
"I wish to see the two prisoners housed in E Section, Isolated."
The lieutenant and the major looked at each other, as if startled.
"Did I say something wrong?"
"No, Director Sorenson," replied Lieutenant Russell,
her dark-circled eyes roaming over the keys of a computer as she typed.
"Merely coincidence, sit."
"What do you mean?"
"That's who Deputy Director Connally had to meet with at three o'clock this morning," answered Major James Duncan.
"Did he say why?"
"Pretty much the same words you used at the gate, sir. The conference was so maximum-classified that our own guard had to remain outside Section E after opening the cell."
The signal was complete.
"Major, take me there at jj once. No one had clearance to interrogate those men but me!"
"I beg your pardon, sit," interrupted the lieutenant.
"Deputy Director Connally had full clearance. It was spelled out in an interAgency order signed by Director Talbot."
"Get Talbot on the phone for me! If you don't have his private number, I'll get it for you."
"Hello?" said the guttural, sleepy voice of Knox Talbot over the line.
"Knox, it's Wesley-"
"Who the hell bombed whom? Do you know what time it is?"
"Do you know who a Deputy Director Connally is?"
"No, I don't, because there isn't one."
"What about an inter-Agency order, signed by you, that cleared him to meet with the ncos?"
"There was no such order, so I couldn't have signed it. Where are you?"
44where the goddamned hell do you think?"
"Here in Virginia?"
"I only hope my next call is less unsettling, because if it isn't, you've got some serious housecleaning to do."
"The AA computers?"
"Try something less sophisticated, try something very human."
Sorenson slammed down the phone.
"Let's go, Major!"
The two Blitzkrieger were in their beds, lying on their sides. When the cell doors clanked open, neither moved. The director of Consular Operations crossed to each and threw back the blankets. Both men were dead, their eyes shocked open at the moment of death, blood still trickling from their closed mouths, the back of their heads blown away, soiling-the wall.
The syncopated sound of the jazz combo below floated up to the private dining room; it meshed with the vibrant noise outside on Bourbon Street in New Orleans's French Quarter.
Around the large table sat six men and three women, all but one dressed with relative formality--conservative suits and ties, and severe business apparel for the women. Again, except for one, they were white, clean-cut, and looked as though they had been plucked, much younger, from Ivy League yearbooks of decades ago, when quotas meant something. They ranged in age from their forties to their early seventies, and to an individual, each possessed an aura of wary superiority, as if constantly in the presence of annoying inferiors.
Among this group were the mayors of two major East Coast cities, three front line congressmen, one prominent senator, one president of an octo puslike computer corporation, and a most fashionably dressed woman, who was the leading spokesperson of the Christians for a Moral Government. They sat properly upright in their chairs, their skeptical eyes on the man at the head of the table, a large heavyset figure with swarthy skin, wearing a white safari jacket, unbuttoned to mid-chest, and large tinted glasses that blocked out his eyes. His baptismal name was Mario Marchetti; his sobriquet in the FBI files was the Don of Pontchartrain. He spoke.
"Let us understand each other," he began, his voice deep and soft, the words measured.
"We have what historians might call a concordat, an agreement between entities that do not necessarily concur on all things but find a common agenda that allows them to coexist. Do you follow me?"
There were affirmative murmurs and the slight nodding of heads, until the senator interrupted.
"That's a mighty fancy way of putting it, Mr. Marchetti. Wouldn't it be simpler to say we both want something, and each can help the other?"
"Your record in the Senate, sit, hardly reflects such straightforward talk. But yes, you're quite correct. Each entity can give assistance to the other."
"Since I've never met you before," said the expensively dressed woman from the Christian far right, "how exactly can you help us?
Even as I speak, I find the question somewhat demeaning."
"Get off your fucking high horse," said the Don of Pontchartrain quietly.
"What?" The reaction around the table was more one of stunned silence than of anger or shock.