Mascarenhas popped the cork from the bottle, bouncing it off the ceiling. Underwood caught the overflowing champagne in a glass, which he handed to Mascarenhas, who raised it high.
“Here’s to the successful end of one contract and the beginning of many more.”
Underwood filled the champagne glasses, and several employees passed them through the crowd until everyone had one. Kaufmann took a sip of champagne, savoring the bittersweet achievement.
The current contract expired at the end of the month and Clark Curtain Labs hadn’t won enough new government contracts to keep everyone employed. Kaufmann looked around, figuring that over half of those present would be looking for work by the end of the month unless the oft-promised replacement contract materialized. Kaufmann reckoned he’d be among those unemployed.
For the last ten years, Kaufmann had been assigned to the contract, developing the initial software, then tweaking the middleware as various microprocessors and other components went obsolete and were replaced with new versions. As the effort drew to a close, he’d seen the writing on the wall and had asked to be transferred to another contract, but Mascarenhas had disapproved each request. Kaufmann was far too valuable; no one knew the software code better than he did.
Kaufmann tilted his head back, emptying the glass. He hadn’t been happy, stuck to a dying contract. But at least he’d gotten a glass of champagne out of it.
4
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The mid-afternoon sun filtered through the windows of his West Wing corner office as Chief of Staff Kevin Hardison reviewed the document on the table. Across from him, also reviewing a copy of the proposal, sat his White House nemesis, Christine O’Connor, the president’s national security advisor, while an aide on Hardison’s right took notes. Hardison braced himself for Christine’s rejection of his latest recommendation. Instead, she nodded her agreement. Hardison pulled back slightly, examining the woman across from him — the only person from the opposite political party on the president’s staff — more closely.
During the past three years, Christine had opposed him on almost every key proposal. The perennial thorn in his side was an incredibly obstinate woman. Even more irritating, her attempts to persuade the president to her point of view were quite effective. Hardison had stopped tracking who the president sided with more often once the trend became clear. However, during the past two months, Hardison had experienced a reversal of fortune. Christine had suddenly become agreeable.
Following the events at Ice Station Nautilus, Christine had buried herself in her work, staying late into the night and working every weekend. After she returned from Russia, however, the pattern had reversed. She left early when possible and no longer worked on weekends unless the matter was urgent. Her interactions with Hardison and the rest of the president’s staff had grown distant, and Christine had surprisingly agreed to several proposals Hardison was certain she’d vehemently oppose. Hardison took advantage of Christine’s unusual pliability this afternoon, circling back to a proposal she’d refused to endorse three years earlier: a reorganization of the nation’s numerous intelligence agencies.
As much as Hardison relished his newfound success, he missed the old Christine. Without her infuriating opposition on almost every issue, coming to work each day had become less … fun. As he reviewed the document before him, he realized he’d scheduled this meeting for opposing purposes. If Christine’s new trend held, he’d obtain her endorsement for a key policy proposal — one the president would be sure to push forward with Christine on board. However, she’d made her position on the issue clear during previous meetings, practically throwing Hardison out of her office the last time he brought it up. He was certain Christine’s bona fides would surface this afternoon when he pressed the matter.
“So,” Hardison said. “I take it you agree with the restructuring?”
“I’ll consider it,” Christine replied, with no hint of the icy tone he expected.
Hardison contemplated his next move as the aide typed notes into her laptop. He focused again on Christine, who was staring out one of the triple-paned, bomb-resistant windows in his office. The fresh scar across her cheek was faintly visible. His eyes went to her wrists; the cuts had likewise healed. Although Christine hadn’t shared the details, the CIA report had painted a clear enough picture: Christine handcuffed to a pipe above her head as she was tormented by Semyon Gorev, the director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. Hardison wondered what Christine had thought when Gorev slid his pistol barrel into her mouth. The emotions that must have flooded her body as he slowly squeezed the trigger.
There had been no bullets in the pistol, part of Gorev’s sadistic torment. A few hours later, Christine had somehow reversed the roles, jamming a gun into Gorev’s mouth. Then she blew his brains out.
The aide finished her notes and looked up. Christine was still staring out the window.
Hardison turned to the aide. “Excuse us for a few minutes. I need to talk with Miss O’Connor privately.”
The aide pushed back from the table and the movement caught Christine’s attention, interrupting her reverie.
When they were alone, Hardison said, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
“You haven’t been yourself the last few weeks.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “I’m fine.” This time, her voice had an edge to it.
“You’re not fine. It’s obvious you’re still dealing with what happened in Russia. It’s affecting your work.”
“I don’t have time for this.” Christine’s eyes went to the aide’s empty seat. “Are we done?”
“We’re not done. I know you don’t consider me a friend—”
“Because you’re not.”
“—but I do care about you a tiny bit. You need to take some time off. Clear your head.”
Christine leaned forward, placing her hands on the edge of the table. “I don’t need your psychoanalysis. I’m doing just fine.”
Hardison collected his thoughts. It was pointless to continue. There was too much animosity between them. Deservedly so, he had to admit.
“You’re right,” Hardison said. “You’re doing just fine. That’s all I have for today.”
Christine stood and grabbed her notepad, then left without a word.
Christine tossed her notepad on her desk, then settled into her chair. She stared at the dark computer display for a moment, reviewing her conversation with Hardison. She hadn’t realized it was so obvious. Her thoughts turned to what had occurred in Russia, then to Ice Station Nautilus. To what she’d done to her good friend Captain Steve Brackman, the president’s former senior military aide. Former, as in deceased. Thanks to Christine. She went back even further to her imprisonment in the bowels of China’s Great Hall of the People, then to her townhouse where she lay on the floor as a man tried to drive a knife through her neck.
This wasn’t what she had signed up for. She was supposed to be a White House advisor whose confrontations were limited to those across a conference room table. Not those requiring a semiautomatic pistol, especially one shoved into her mouth or someone else’s. What had occurred in Russia, along with her pending trip to Moscow in two weeks — she was the primary U.S. nuclear arms negotiator — weighed heavily on her mind.
She woke the computer, then selected her personal folder. Her hands hovered over the keyboard as she examined nine versions of an almost identical document, each one beginning with—Letter of Resignation. She opened the latest one, read it twice, then hit Print. She signed the letter and placed it in a folder. After a moment of indecision, she took a deep breath, then headed down the seventy-foot-long blue-carpeted hallway toward the Oval Office.