LaValle said with no fear of contradiction. "One more word out of you and I'll have you put under formal investigation."
Marks was about to reply when a sharp look from the DCI forced him to bite back his words. His jaws clamped shut, but the fury in his eyes was unmistakable.
Hart came around the desk, and the junior marshal cuffed her hands behind her back.
"Is that really necessary?" Marks said.
LaValle pointed at him wordlessly. As they marched Hart from her office, she said, "Take over, Peter. You're acting DCI now."
LaValle grinned. "Not for long, if I have anything to say about it."
After they'd gone, Marks collapsed into his chair. Finding that his hands were trembling, he clasped them together, as if in prayer. His heart was pounding so hard he found it difficult to think. He jumped up, walked over to the window behind the DCI's desk, stood staring out at the Washington night. All the monuments were lit up, all the streets and avenues were filled with traffic. Everything was as it should be, and yet nothing looked familiar. He felt as if he'd entered an alternate universe. He couldn't have been witness to what just happened, NSA couldn't be about to absorb CI into its gigantic corpus. But then he turned around to find the office empty and the full horror of seeing the DCI frog-marched out in handcuffs swept over him, made his legs weak, so that he sought out the big chair behind the desk and sat in it.
Then the implications of where he sat, and why, sank in. He picked up the phone and dialed Stu Gold, CI's lead counsel.
"Sit tight. I'll be right over," Gold told him in his usual no-nonsense voice. Did nothing faze him?
Then Marks began to make a series of calls. It was going to be a long and harrowing night.
Rodney Feir was having the time of his life. As he accompanied Afrique into one of the rooms in the back of The Glass Slipper, he felt as if he were on top of the world. In fact, popping a Viagra, he decided to ask her to do a number of things he'd never tried before. Why the hell not? he asked himself.
While he was undressing he thought of the information on Typhon's field agents Peter Marks had sent him via interoffice mail. Feir had deliberately told Marks he didn't want it sent electronically because it was too insecure. The info was folded into the inside pocket of his coat, ready to give to General Kendall before they left The Glass Slipper tonight. He could have handed it over while they were at dinner, but he'd felt, all things considered, that a champagne toast after all their treats had been consumed was the proper way to cap off the night.
Afrique was already on the bed, spread languidly, her large eyes half closed, but she got right down to business as soon as Feir joined her. He tried to keep his mind on the proceedings, but seeing as how his body was totally in it, there wasn't much point. He preferred dwelling on the things that made him truly happy, like getting the better of Peter Marks. When he was growing up it was people like Marks-and, for that matter, Batt-who'd had it all over him, brainiacs with brawn, in other words, who'd made his life miserable. They were the ones who had the cool circle of friends, who got all the great-looking girls, who rode in cars while he was still tooling around on a scooter. He was the nerd, the chubby-fat, really-kid who was made the butt of all their jokes, who was pushed around and ostracized, who, despite his high IQ, was so tongue-tied he could never stick up for himself.
He'd joined CI as a glorified pencil pusher, and, yes, he'd worked his way up the professional ladder, but not into fieldwork or counterintelligence. No, he was chief of field support, which meant that he was in charge of gathering and distributing the paperwork generated by the very CI personnel he longed to be like. His office was the central hub of supply and demand, and there were days when he could convince himself that it was the nerve center of CI. But most of the time he saw himself for what he really was-someone who kept pushing electronic lists, data entry forms, directorate requests, allocation tables, budget spreadsheets, personnel assignment profiles, mat泄riel lading bills, a veritable landslide of