And he smiled at her. “This is the inner circle, sweetheart. All of us can discuss anything we want without fear of being overheard and misunderstood. Keep your ears open and your mouth shut.”
Colleen started to bridle when a stern man who could have passed for a minister, a plain, almost mousy woman at his side, came over and stuck out his hand.
“David Whittaker, acting DCI,” he said. “I’m pleased to meet you finally. Bob has told me about you and your work for the club. We appreciate your efforts.”
They shook hands and introduced their wives.
“I wasn’t aware you were a member,” Remington said. Sandberger had warned him about sticking to a fine line between familiarity and awe. These were Washington’s true power brokers, but Admin, in Roland’s words, was “covering their asses.”
Whittaker smiled faintly. “Charter member, actually. Bob’s an old friend; he and I go way back together.”
“He’s not here yet?”
“He’ll be down in a bit,” Whittaker said. “Likes to make his entrances. His only fault, I suspect, but he’s a bit of a showman, if you know what I mean.” He spotted someone just coming in. “Please, enjoy yourselves,” he said. He nodded to Colleen and he and his wife went to greet the new arrivals, Dennis Tressel, the assistant adviser to the president on national security affairs, and his wife.
“You never told me about this,” Colleen said, reprovingly yet with a bit of admiration.
Remington got two glasses of champagne and they stepped aside. “Actually, the Club is a new client. Roland knows more about them than I do. We’re just stand-ins tonight.”
“I approve, Gordo,” Colleen said. “These people need to be our group, if you know what I mean.”
“Perfectly—” Remington said, but his wife had spotted someone she evidently knew, and she waved and walked off, just as the armed man from the front hall who’d directed them back here approached.
“Mr. Foster would like to have a word, sir,” the bodyguard said. His accent was Cockney and it grated in Remington’s ears.
“My wife?”
“You won’t be long, sir.”
Remington noticed Whittaker and a couple of other men, including Tressel, disappearing through the pool doors back inside the house. “Of course.”
“Just this way, then, sir,” the bodyguard said, and Remington followed the man back into the house behind the others, who’d obviously been here before and knew the way.
Upstairs and down a short hall, the bodyguard stopped at double doors and stepped aside. “Mr. Foster is expecting you, sir.”
“Royal Marines?” Remington asked.
“No, sir,” the bodyguard said. “United States Marines, Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Schilling.” He turned lightly on his heel and walked back past the stairs and went through a door at the end of the hall.
Remington hesitated for just a moment. This was his initiation, something Roland had mentioned. “Tell it like you see it. Don’t be an asshole, but remember Foster hired Admin because of our track record. They need us more than we need them.”
Remington knocked once, and went in.
Robert Foster, seated on a couch in the middle of the tastefully furnished, book-lined room, was a man in his mid-sixties, short, somewhat stocky with the build of a midwestern farmer, who touted himself as nothing more than a “servant of the common man.”
Seated on the couch with him and in chairs across a coffee table, were Whittaker and Tressel, plus Air Force general Albert Burnside, who was the chief political adviser to the Joint Chiefs.
Foster was as far right a conservative as was possible, with exceedingly strong views on everything from the role of religion in government, to abortion, states’ rights, the Constitution and the makeup of the Supreme Court, and the powers of the executive branch versus a meddling, ineffective Congress. And he was a multi-millionaire with a law degree from Florida’s Stetson University and an MBA from Harvard.
To this point in his career he’d made his money as an economic adviser to several foreign governments, including South Korea, Japan, Australia, and the Czech Republic, but most notably Mainland China in the mid-nineties. The last had taken his supporters somewhat by surprise, until they realized that an emerging China would be needed to shore up the U.S. government, which would, in Foster’s estimation, be faced with a financial meltdown. It was because of his advice that China had become a major bondholder for the U.S. In some circles he had come out the hero—America’s savior, or so the conservative think tank Arnault Group had labeled him. But Democrats, except for the ones he had bought and paid