Priestly left Stuart standing to keep him off balance and send the message that he was less than happy. He tossed a report onto the desk between them. “What’s this piece of shit?” he asked almost good-naturedly.
Stuart cocked his head and eyed the title through his glasses. “Our input into the Quadrennial Defense Review.”
“And you expect me to sign off on it?”
I’ll be glad to witness your X, Stuart thought. Wisely, he stifled that thought and said, “I just crunch the numbers.”
“Crunch them again.”
“Will do, sir. But the results will be the same.”
Priestly leaned forward. “The mission of the Air Force is to be able to fight two major theater wars simultaneously.” He tapped the offending report with a forefinger. “Now you’re telling me we can’t do that.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What exactly did you say? Educate me.”
Not possible, Stuart decided. “I said that we do not have the necessary access to tankerage to guarantee the flow of POL to two major theater wars being fought simultaneously.”
“There’s no way I’m going to tell the committee working on the Quadrennial Defense Review that the Air Force cannot meet its mission.”
Stuart tried to be reasonable. “The operative words, sir, are ‘cannot guarantee the flow.’ There are work-arounds described in Appendix C.”
Priestly kicked back in his chair and steepled his fingers, studying the man in front of him. He sighed. “Stuart, you’re just another thumb-sucking milicrat” — Priestly’s term for a military bureaucrat — “who wants to get down to the third floor.” The third floor of the Pentagon was the “money floor,” where the defense budget was assembled. For the professional bureaucrat it was considered a plum assignment with real power. Stuart wanted to say that he only wanted out the front door — in eighteen months. “It’s too bad,” Priestly continued, “that you can’t see the big picture for the trees. It would help if you had ever strapped on a jet and been on the cutting edge of what the Air Force is all about.” He paused, gathering steam for his favorite lecture about being a can-do Air Force. Stuart braced himself for the tirade. He had heard it before and accepted it as the penultimate act before Priestly sent him back to his cubicle in disgrace.
Unfortunately, the telephone rang before Stuart could escape. The colonel answered it with a curt “Priestly.” He listened for a few moments and stared at Stuart. “This is the first I’ve heard about it, sir. I assure you—” His faced flushed as the caller cut him off. The colonel was not used to being on the receiving end of a harangue. Then, “Yes, sir. I’ll check into it.” He carefully dropped the phone into its cradle. An image of a monk handling a holy relic that delivered ecclesiastical messages directly from God flashed in Stuart’s mind.
Priestly took a deep breath. “That was my boss, Brigadier General Castleman. What exactly in God’s name were you doing in Cuba?” Before Stuart could answer, Priestly shifted into overdrive. “Your security clearance prohibits you going there, and you should’ve reported you were in contact with a hostile foreign power. By not reporting that contact, you took all my options off the table. I have no recourse but to ask for an Article 32 investigation leading to court-martial.”
“Sir, I tried to tell you, but—”
Priestly held up a hand and interrupted him. “Air off, Stuart. I don’t want to hear any lame-ass excuses.” He glared at the lieutenant colonel. “But how in the hell did Castleman learn about it?”
“Because I reported it, as required, when I signed in from leave this morning. It was early, you weren’t here yet, so I left a memo for the record on your e-mail.”
Priestly shook his head. “That’s a load of bullshit, and you know it.”
“It’s a matter of record, sir. And there are mitigating circumstances, which are outlined in the memo. It’s all in your computer.”
Priestly shook his head in wonder, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He tapped the offending document lying on his desk. “First this report and now Cuba. What’s got into you?”
Good question, Stuart thought. He was standing up to Priestly, when not too long ago he would have been running for cover.
Priestly made his decision. “I’m sidelining you until I can get to the bottom of this. Report to the Administration Section and make yourself available for whatever shit detail they have. They’re always hollering for help.”
“Is that all, sir?”
“Dismissed,” Priestly muttered. Stuart snapped a salute and, without waiting for it to be returned, spun around to leave. “You’re on the edge,” Priestly said, stopping him. “One more screw-up and I’ll push you over. You can kiss your retirement good-bye. Think about it.”
I am thinking about it, Stuart thought.
The Pentagon is aptly named for its five sides, five concentric rings of offices, five floors, and the five-acre center courtyard that has been called Ground Zero. The inhabitants of the Puzzle Palace, or Fort Fumble, as it is sometimes known, don’t think it’s funny, because it was a commonly accepted fact that in the heyday of the Cold War, the Soviets had fed the center coordinates of the courtyard into at least five ICBMs. This was not attributed to a Russian sense of humor but to the reliability, or lack of it, of their missiles and warheads.
“Big” is the adjective that best describes the Pentagon, and with over 6.5 million square feet, it’s easy to get lost. If the casual visitor should see a man in uniform talking to a pretty civilian employee, it’s not because he’s trying to score but because he’s lost. Yet everyone will think he’s hitting on her, which even in this day of political correctness is much better than appearing to be asking for directions, a major violation of the male ethic. When the $1.2 billion renovation that was started in 1993 is completed in 2006, the added 200,000 square feet of office space will only make the situation worse.
But in spite of its size and idiosyncrasies, the occasional scandal about contracting and budgeting, the personal ambitions stalking its offices, and the egos that define the command corridors, the Pentagon is an efficient place, and the taxpayers get good value for their money. For the next two days Stuart worked in an administrative limbo, making it even more efficient, shuffling the never-ending flow of paperwork that flooded the Air Force. “Paperwork” was really a misnomer, since most of the Air Force’s business was conducted on computers. But the devilish machines had not streamlined the military’s penchant for documentation. In fact, they’d only made it worse. Consequently the first file Stuart opened contained over thirty unanswered queries, letters, and one inventory form to be filled out and dutifully forwarded. He went to work on the inventory, the most time-consuming project.
Late on Wednesday afternoon Peggy Redman, Priestly’s secretary, telephoned. “You can come back. Everything’s fine.”
“What happened?”
“Cooler heads prevailed and decided you did the right thing by riding out the hurricane in Cuba. And, can you believe it, your report was forwarded, unchanged, to the committee working on the Quadrennial Defense Review?” She gave a low, very wicked laugh. “No one knows how that happened or how to answer the committee’s questions, least of all Colonel Priestly. It seems you’re suddenly the indispensable man around here. The good colonel has dropped the investigation.”