“Retribution,” Hail said.
“Retribution, retaliation, revenge, vengeance… really? In two seconds my smartphone can pull up a dozen more synonyms. Sounds like you have you own little killing club put together and you’re trying to wrap it up in a neat bow of your own, a doctrine that you feel is more justifiable than all the others.”
Hail smiled. He was enjoying this back and forth.
“These days,” Hail responded, “just about every large organized mass of humanity has a killing club. You would refer to yours as your army, your navy or your air force. Then of course you have your CIA, your FBI and a lot more black ops stuff that isn’t even on the books. So what bow do you wrap your killing club in? How do you justify your actions, Joanna?”
“I don’t,” the President responded with a coy smile. “That’s why God created the Senate and the Congress.”
Hail laughed.
The President laughed.
And they finished their lunch.
Washington, D.C. ― The White House Oval Office
“These are the people I wanted you to meet,” the President said as she and Hail entered the round room from the east door of the Rose Garden.
Hail saw a smiling Trevor Rogers to his right, standing in front of a well-worn leather chair. Trevor gave Hail a told you I would see you again nod and smile.
Standing in the middle of the room was a big man. He was wearing a dark uniform and just about every inch of the material was embellished with a colorful doo-dad or shining medal. The grey-haired man held out his hand toward Hail.
“Hi, Marshall. My name is Quentin Ford. You probably don’t know me, but I knew your Dad. He was a good man.”
Well, at least someone thought he was a good something, because he sucked as a Dad, Hail thought to himself.
Hail allowed his hand to be crushed by the General. He smiled and thanked the man for nerve damage.
There were two couches in the room that faced one another and two men were standing in front of each one. Hail thought it looked territorial, like if they moved to greet him they might lose their place on the couch and then have to stand the rest of the day.
Therefore, Hail walked over and stuck out his hand to a tall man, grey hair, good bones, wearing a grey suit. The man shook Hail’s hand almost reluctantly, as if Hail had cooties.
“Jarret Pepper, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency,” the man said sternly.
Hail felt like saying, Marshall Hail, King of the World, or some such nonsense, but decided on “Marshall Hail”. Hail took an immediate dislike to the CIA guy, but that was easy because the man was already trying to be disliked.
Hail turned to the man guarding the other couch. He was the opposite of his couch guarding counterpart. This was a short man, no hair, bad bones and he was wearing a dark black suit. Unlike Jarret Pepper, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency this man smiled cajolingly and said, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Hail. My name is Eric Spearman and I’m with the NIA.”
Hail turned to look at all the folks in the room and said, “NIA, FBI, CIA and the General represents the good old USA, so I think we have all the acronyms covered.”
Hail said it in the way of a joke to break the ice. Everyone laughed except for the CIA guy.
Instead of sitting behind her desk, the President walked to the other side of the room where two high-backed peach colored chairs were positioned. To Hail, the chairs looked like something his great grandmother would have owned. The two chairs, along with the two couches, created a somewhat intimate and informal seating arrangement. Joanna Weston motioned with her hand for Hail to take the peach chair next to hers. The men guarding their spots in front of the couch plopped down and Hail’s friend and the general both sat down as well, each of them selecting the end of one of the two couches.
With everyone in place and all comfy, the President started off with, “Mr. Hail and I just had a nice working business lunch. He is aware that we all know that he and his crew, or staff, or however he would like to refer to them, were indeed responsible for the death of North Korea’s Kim Yong Chang. To get directly to the point, which is the way I like to do things, Mr. Hail has requested the assistance of our combined talents to help him locate the remaining persons on the FBI’s top ten list.”
Pepper was the first to speak up.
“Why the FBI’s list? What about the CIAs list?”
Hail looked at him for a moment, wondering if the question was rhetorical. When no one said anything, Hail responded, “As far as I know, you don’t post a top ten list. Heck, you don’t even post how many people you employ, even though your agency is supported with tax payer’s dollars.”
Trevor Rogers smiled. The General smiled. The banker looking guy had his nose in his iPad. The President just looked annoyed, like, Oh… here we go.
But Pepper looked pissed.
The CIA man checked his tone before speaking and leveled it.
“Much of what we do is secret, as you well know, Mr. Hail, so divulging how many people we employ is essentially providing our enemies with our troop count, so to speak.”
Pepper waited for a reaction. When none came he asked, “How many people work for you, Mr. Hail?”
“Thousands,” Hail said.
“No, I mean, how many people work with you on this new, ah… how should we call it… pastime that you have undertaken?”
“Thousands,” Hail repeated.
Pepper made a face, part annoyed, part irritated.
Hail stared at him blankly.
“Well, let me change the subject a little bit,” the General interjected. “How did you kill Chang? I think that’s the question on a lot of our minds.”
“Poison,” Hail said.
The General responded, “Well, son, we guessed it was poison with the video and all, but we were wondering specifically, what was the delivery device?”
“Orange juice,” Hail told them honestly.
“Well, son, we determined it was in the drink, but I guess what I’m driving at is how did you get the poison into the orange juice?”
“We had a spy working in Chang’s compound who put it in the orange juice,” Hail said.
“He’s lying,” Pepper blurted out. “There is no way he had anyone in that compound and we all know it.”
The General looked at Hail like his father used to look at him, as if his son had just disappointed him… again.
“Well, he’s got a point, son,” the General said.
Hail was getting tired of being called son by the General and he was tired having to explain anything to Pepper.
“What difference does it make to any of you how it was done? Or even more to the point, what difference does it make to you how it will be done in the future. All you have to know is that it will be done in the future. The same way we got to Kim Yong Chang. You guys give me the location of the next person you want to disappear and we will make it happen.”
No one said anything.
“Isn’t that what you want?” Hail asked.
“We want to be part of the process,” Pepper said.
“That’s why I am here,” Hail said. “So…”
“No, I mean we want to be part of the process. We want to have someone on your team. Someone on your end of the wire that works for us,” Pepper declared.
“No way,” Hail said immediately.
“To bad,” the President said. “We really wanted to work with you on this… this… project,” she decided on.
“But right now, Mr. Hail, we have more of a pieces problem than we have a people problem,” the General said.
“What do you mean?” Hail asked.
“It would be better if Pepper had one of his men brief you on it. Hopefully you can help. And if you can help us out of this jam, then hopefully we can help you,” the General said.