Each player occupied a powerful position in the federal government, yet none of them were known to the general public. Dillon, had he desired the job and had he been willing to contribute to whomever was running for president, could have been the Secretary of Defense; Harry Cramer had once been short-listed for a seat on the Supreme Court but had made it clear he wouldn’t serve. Marge had twice declined the job of Secretary of State, having seen all too often how the press-and Congress-devoured the person in that position. Which was the third thing they all had in common: they all loved power but were astute enough to realize that the real power in Washington lay in the hands of the long-serving bureaucrats who occupied positions below the radar-the special assistants, the undersecretaries, the deputies to the deputies. The people in these positions were less likely to be changed out when a new administration occupied the West Wing and, because of their experience and longevity, they all knew exactly which levers to pull to make the gears of Washington spin. The reason Dillon had organized the game was that his friends not only had the wealth to play for staggering amounts but the game was also a forum for exchanging information-although all the players were extremely tight-lipped about giving away secrets. They came to acquire knowledge, not to dispense it.
The last thing they had in common, maudlin as it might sound, was they all believed in public service. Like Dillon. He was a Rhode Island Crane and before the terms conservationist and environmentalist became common to the English language, in an era where worker safety was the employee’s problem and not the employer’s, at a time when the word union was most often associated with the word communism, Dillon’s great-grandfather ripped from the earth as much timber, coal, copper, and oil as he possibly could-and then emerged as a respectable fellow because he would occasionally build an orphanage or add a wing to a hospital. Dillon could have squandered his life sailing yachts or owning baseball teams, yet both he and his father, similar to the Kennedys, whom they knew quite well, had elected to devote their considerable abilities to government service. Dillon’s father had been a congressman for thirty-five years, but Dillon had opted for his nearly invisible position at the NSA.
Of all the poker players, Marge found Dillon to be the most interesting-and the best-looking. He dated stunning women but-as far as she knew-he had never come close to marriage. He was quite vain about his appearance, spending a fortune each year on clothes, but wasn’t the least bit vain about his accomplishments. His drab title of deputy to the deputy director disguised the fact that he was one of the most powerful players in the intelligence community, and although his attitude toward his job was typically flippant, as if he were completely above the fray, there was no one more adept-or more ruthless-in dealing with the Machiavellian maneuvers that occur within all bureaucracies. But the oddest thing about him was his education: he had a doctorate in physics, a field of study quite out of the norm for people from his class and background. One of the reasons he’d gone to work for the NSA was that he could actually understand what the wizards did at Fort Meade.
Dillon casually tossed five one-thousand-dollar chips into the center of the table, and Marge calculated that the pot was now at thirty-two thousand. “Okay, Judge,” Dillon said, “you’ve been called. What do you have?”
Cramer fanned his cards out on the table.
“A straight, jack high. Did I mention, Dillon, that today’s my birthday? I’m feeling very lucky tonight.”
Marge watched a look of irritation flit across Dillon’s face. He hated to lose-they all did-but the look passed quickly. He was too gracious-and too rich-to pout over the twelve thousand he’d lost on the hand. He turned to the bartender and said, “Katherine, would you mind looking below the bar? There’s a bottle of Dom Perignon Oenotheque there. Please pour us each a glass so we can toast Judge Cramer’s continued good health.”
It was Marge’s turn to deal. “Seven-card stud, threes and nines are wild.”
The men all groaned. Marge liked wild card games because even geniuses like Dillon had a harder time calculating the odds.
As she was dealing, she asked Dillon, “Who do you think will replace Martin Breed?”
Paul Winfield, who worked at the Federal Reserve, said, “Who’s Martin Breed?”
“My God, Paul,” Stephen Demming said, “don’t you read anything but the financial section of the papers?”
“Why would I?” Winfield said.
Marge knew that Winfield actually read every word in four papers daily-including the entertainment sections and gossip columns. He did this because he firmly believed that everything affected the markets. Marge assumed he was pretending to be ignorant of General Breed because he thought he might learn something he didn’t already know. She loved these devious bastards.
“Martin Breed,” Demming said, “was a two-star army general who would have gotten his third star this year. The word is that Charles Bradford was grooming him to be his replacement as the army’s chief of staff. Breed died a few days ago from cancer. He was only fifty-two.” Turning to Dillon, he said, “I’ve heard that Stan Parche will most likely end up in Breed’s spot.”
“I don’t think so,” Dillon said. “My guess is Jillian Chalmers. But, of course, the final decision will be made by Bradford.”
“And you think Bradford would select a woman for that position?” Marge said.
Dillon winked at her. “Who said Jillian is female? No one has bigger balls than her.”
7
Claire approached Dillon’s office but didn’t enter because he was talking with his boss, the deputy director.
The building was buzzing with an operation in progress. One of Dillon’s other divisions-Claire’s organization was just a small part of his domain-had intercepted several cell phone calls from Yemen indicating there was something onboard a ship that would soon dock in Long Beach. But whether the cargo was a bomb or a biological weapon, or something mundane like drugs or illegal aliens, wasn’t clear. The NSA was trying to get more information so the Coast Guard would have a better idea of what they were dealing with before they stopped the ship. However, and because of the deputy director’s body language, Claire suspected they weren’t talking about the California-bound vessel.
The deputy director was simultaneously nodding and frowning. The nods implied that he agreed with everything Dillon was saying, but the frowns indicated that he didn’t like anything he was hearing. This meant, Claire was fairly sure, that they were discussing Dillon’s budget. Dillon’s attitude toward his authorized annual budget-a budget that totaled several hundred million dollars and which he agreed not to exceed each year-was that what he was doing was so important that if more money was needed, Congress could either raise taxes or take the money from some other federal agency that was less important. In other words, not an attitude the deputy director appreciated, since he was the one who would have to crawl up to Capitol Hill and beg for the money. And judging by the deputy director’s simultaneous nods and frowns, Dillon was telling the man the significance of everything he was doing and providing a reasonable explanation as to why it all cost so much-but he was also saying there was no way he could reduce his spending.
But Claire knew the real reason why Dillon could never meet his budget-and it had nothing to do with any mismanagement on Dillon’s part. The real reason was that Claire’s organization was not included in the budget and was being secretly funded out of Dillon’s other operations. This, however, was not a fact Dillon could share with his boss.