“I’ve seen your handiwork.”
“Your strength is figuring things out. So any ideas? You said the prison thing is not the big deal here. And for what it’s worth, our boss agrees with you.”
“Doeshehave any ideas?” asked Decker.
“Not that he’s shared. But from what I could gather, he has a strategy about the prison issue that’s he’s going to pull the trigger on. We’ll let him handle that piece. You focus on the time bomb.”
Decker eyed him skeptically. “You’re not authorized to operate in this country.”
“So the law says.”
“Well, you seem to beoperatingokay.”
Robie rose. “You should get some sleep.”
“What I should do is start to figure this out.”
BLUEMAN SATin a leather chair at a prestigious club within a stone’s throw of the Capitol Building. Silent men in starched livery walked around carrying trays with expensive whiskeys and bowls of cheap nuts. The walls were paneled with luxurious wallpaper, and on them were hung portraits of old, grave men in suits. The carpet underfoot had several inches of give. The furnishings were old but originally expensive. Newspapers rustled alongside murmurings of educated, cultured voices and clinks of ice cubes in cocktail glasses as both business and government leaders made decisions that would have massive impact on millions of people, all without their knowledge or consent.
If one did not know better, it could have been 1920 rather than a century later.
Blue Man’s gaze roamed the room. He nodded to those he liked and respected, and also to those he loathed and distrusted, but to whom some level of acknowledgment was required. It certainly said something that he had been in this business so long that the latter group far outnumbered the former.
His gaze finally alighted on the stout man who came into the room, carrying a folded newspaper and a glass half full of gin and tonic along with a self-important look.
Blue Man rose and approached him. “Patrick?” he said.
Patrick McIntosh, the gentleman who had met with Colonel Mark Sumter in that little house over a thousand miles from here, stared back at him, his features instantly wary.
“Roger, how are you?”
Blue Man’s real name was Roger Walton. He had almost no occasion now to ever use it.
But this was one of those times.
“Not bad, not bad. You?”
“Things are going very well, thank you.”
“Do you have a moment?” said Blue Man. “I’ve engaged a private room.”
The smile that McIntosh had forced onto his lips retreated to a straight line one might employ after being sworn in to testify in front of a hostile congressional committee.
“A private room? Why the need for that?” He chuckled. “Am I going to get the third degree?”
“We’ve both been around long enough to know the answer to that,” replied Blue Man genially and also largely unresponsively, as he placed a firm grip on McIntosh’s elbow. “Oh, and Director Cassidy sends her best.”
“So you’ve spoken with Rachel?” said McIntosh as Blue Man led him down a dark paneled corridor to a door that opened into a ten-by-ten windowless room with two upholstered chairs facing one another.
“She is my superior, after all.”
“I meant had you spoken to her aboutme?”
“Not to sound like a cliché, but that would be classified.” Blue Man tacked on a smile, which seemed to relieve McIntosh.
“I’m glad I’m no longer in the public sector. You should make the jump, Roger. A man with your experience and Rolodex. The money you could make.”
“My needs are simple, my salary more than ample.”