“Anyone know what this mysterious meeting is about?” Menendez asked. Obviously, he was not used to being in the dark.
The door opened and a confident attractive woman in her late forties walked in carrying a laptop computer.
“Uh, oh,” Menendez said in a stage whisper. “Stand by for action. The dragon lady is here.”
The woman walked up to the coffee area, smiling slightly at the gathering, and poured herself a cup, tilting the sugar container into it.
“Some coffee with that sugar, boss?” Menendez asked, smiling.
The woman greeted them all with a smile that lit up her face. She needed no introduction. Her Senate confirmation hearings had been plastered over all the news files. Margo Allende, former CIA deputy director of operations and master of clandestine services, had been accused by the senators of the National Party of torturing enemy combatants. She had been confirmed by a one-vote margin after answering that she would never allow such an action under her leadership of the Combined Intelligence Agency.
“Good to meet you, Ms. Allende,” Pacino said, shaking her hand. He was surprised. He’d expected her to look older, but the woman was youthful, perhaps in her mid-forties, tall, slender, her straight auburn hair pulled back into a bun, revealing her perfect jawline and long throat. She had a small upturned nose, strong cheekbones, and behind her thick-rimmed glasses she had wide, deep blue eyes, with long auburn lashes under thin arcing eyebrows. She held his gaze, her eyes smiling at him along with her mouth.
“Please. Call me Margo. ‘Ms. Allende’ is my mother. God help us all if she shows up to this meeting.” Allende’s south-of-Atlanta accent was thick as warm honey. Pacino noticed she was still holding his hand in hers, her hand soft and warm.
Pacino introduced her to the admirals and the six of them got to their third cups of coffee, until Director Allende looked at her watch. “Not sure what’s holding up the silver spoons,” she said, “but why don’t we get comfortable in the seating area while we wait?”
“Silver spoons?” Pacino asked.
Allende bit her lip, as if weighing her words. “The VP, Secretary of State and Secretary of War, all go way back together. They tend to disapprove of Carlucci’s, well, let’s just say sensitive initiatives that he tries to get accomplished. So I’ll be nice and just say that when it comes to clandestine activities and projects, those three all need lots of convincing.” She took a club chair by the side of the fireplace facing the door.
When the door opened, the vice president strolled in with three cabinet members, and like the admirals and spymasters before them, found their way to the coffee machine. Pacino stood, as did the others. As the three newcomer men shook the hands of the others, Vice President Karen Chushi came up to Pacino. She stood a head shorter than he did, slim in a tight dress that complimented her figure. She stood too close to Pacino, close enough he could sense an alluring perfume, and she looked up at him with wide light green eyes. He felt her soft hand reach for his.
“Admiral Michael Pacino,” she said in a nasal and irritating south Texas-accented voice, even as she spoke in, what to her, must have been a tone of intimacy. “I’ve waited a long time to meet you. I’m Karen Chushi.”
“Madam Vice President,” Pacino said respectfully. Her nickname of “The Voice” seemed apt, Pacino thought.
“Maybe we would have met sooner if the president had read me into your little ‘Fractal Chaos’ security program.” Her tone took on a resentfulness.
The Secretary of State arrived, his great bulk seeming to dwarf the petite vice president. He held out his hand to Pacino. “Seymour Klugendorf, State Department,” he said in a sonorous voice, smiling in what seemed genuine pleasure. Pacino tried to keep a neutral facial expression, but the man’s tremendous size was freakish. Where, Pacino wondered, did he buy pants that big? The secretary had to be well over four hundred pounds. Before Pacino could say a word, the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy strolled up, sipping from their mugs with the presidential seal.
A tall, slender, man with a marathon runner’s physique, in his late forties, bespectacled with steel-framed glasses, nodded at Pacino. The Secretary of War, Bret Coppin Hogshead, was one of those cool, logical figures, known to get through hostile wartime press conferences with calm, low-voiced sound bites that made him a favorite of the Washington think tank crowd, but unpopular with the rank and file of the military. He looked more like an actuary or an accountant than a major member of the president’s cabinet. Hogshead came from old money, his ancestors arriving on the Mayflower four hundred years ago.
Beside Hogshead stood Secretary of the Navy Jeremy Shingles. He and Pacino had become acquainted in the aftermath of the drone submarine incident, where Pacino found himself having to brief Shingles, then an undersecretary of cyberwarfare in the War Department, about the drone incident and the loss of the Piranha. Shingles was a former civilian test pilot, and later Space Shuttle astronaut, who had taken over the helm of his father’s corporation, McDermott Aerospace, a major defense contractor, second only to DynaCorp. Once, over drinks, Shingles had told the tale of his childhood being raised by Caspar Shingles, the “barnstorming billionaire” who had founded McDermott Aerospace with former Air Force General Billy McDermott. Two years into the company’s history, the elder Shingles had fired McDermott, but decided to keep the name of the company despite McDermott’s lawsuits and claims on the company’s profits. Decades later, McDermott Aerospace supplied the military with most of their fighter jets. A political cartoon had once derisively depicted the front of the Pentagon with a sign reading “Property of McDermott Aerospace.” President Carlucci had known Shingles from years before, and Shingles was one of Carlucci’s few allies in the contentious politics of the administration’s cabinet.
People thought, Shingles once explained, that the president’s cabinet functioned like the direct reports of a corporate chief executive officer, but it most certainly did not. Cabinet level appointments had to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, which meant that in the partisan political realm, each cabinet member had to somehow appeal to both sides of the aisle. They also had to have connections to the Washington, D.C. power networks, and be scandal-free. In the swamp of D.C., having a clean record was not something that came easily. After having five of his proposed cabinet members rejected by the Senate on a partisan vote, Carlucci threw up his hands and appointed people who could be Senate approved, and the eventual result was a cabinet that was anything but a rubber stamp.
It was one of the reasons, Carlucci had explained to Pacino, that he hadn’t read the three cabinet members and the vice president into the “Fractal Chaos” program. Pacino knew it wasn’t that their offices tended to leak secrets, though there was more than a little truth in that, but that Carlucci knew that these particular members of his administration would have opposed their operation to steal the Iranian modified Kilo submarine, and Carlucci was in no mood to be scolded by his own cabinet or have his orders questioned. But since the operation was about to happen, he had decided to read them into the program and invite them here, perhaps so that if it failed, they too would be accountable for the mission. It had seemed a dangerous decision to Pacino, but Carlucci had proceeded anyway.
Finally the interior door to the room opened, three Secret Service agents appeared, two moving toward the outside entrance, the other staying at the interior door, and in walked President Vito “Paul” Carlucci, dressed in a track suit and sneakers. He smiled and walked through the room, greeting everyone personally. When he came to Pacino, he leaned in and whispered, “Careful with these cutthroats, Patch.” He went on to greet Catardi before Pacino could respond.