“I told him that you were running down a couple of leads and you sent me instead. Where were you?”
“Running down a couple of leads,” McGarvey said, sitting at his desk. The first two thick files contained the National Intelligence Estimate and Watch Report. Adkins had done the lion’s share of the work, and he felt bad about treating the man this way.
“Look, you’re the DDO, but if you want me to act as your chief of staff, you’re going to have to let me know what the hell is going on.”
McGarvey motioned for Adkins to have a seat. “You’re right, Dick, and I’m sorry it has to be this way. But this time I’m going to have to keep you out of the loop.”
Adkins started to object, but McGarvey held him off.
“I told you right from the start that there’d be no lies, no bullshit, no hiding anything between us, and I meant it. Neither of us can do our jobs very well any other way. I’m not running a Howard Ryan shop here. But this time you’re better off not knowing, because the axe is going to come down on every exposed neck in the building.”
“Okay,” Adkins said. “You’re up to speed here, and except for the routine crap, which anyone can handle for you, there’s nothing more I can accomplish. You’ll have my resignation on your desk within the hour.”
“I won’t accept it.”
Adkins shook his head in irritation. “Not much you can do if I simply walk out the door.”
McGarvey’s private line rang. It was Murphy, and he sounded mad.
“You’re back.”
“About twenty minutes ago,” McGarvey said.
“Has Dick briefed you?”
“He’s here now.”
“I want to see you as soon as you’re finished. The President has pushed back his briefing to nine-thirty tonight, and he’s going to want some specific answers which I don’t have, at least not beyond the NIE and Watch Report.”
“I’ll be right over,” McGarvey said heavily. He was going to have to maneuver the DCI tonight, and in order to do that he was going to have to lie to his boss.
Adkins had risen to go, and when McGarvey hung up he motioned for the chief of staff to sit back down.
“I don’t have all the answers, Dick.”
“I’m not asking to be protected, Mac. Nobody here is. We’ve got jobs to do, and as you like to say, we can’t do them by shitting the troops.”
It was a fault he’d fought all of his life, McGarvey thought morosely. Not stepping up to his commitments under the guise of keeping his people out of harm’s way. He despised that trait in other people, probably because he recognized the failing in himself. He wasn’t a team player, he’d told himself. Which in itself was a load of crap. He’d never worked completely alone, despite what he kept telling himself. And he couldn’t work alone now. The fact was he needed Adkins here running the DO, just as much as he needed Rencke’s skills, and just as much as he needed his daughter’s love and his ex-wife’s respect and understanding.
“Otto’s been digging through the files and he’s come up with connections between the bombing in Georgetown, an outfit called the Far East Trade Association, Joseph Lee, the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry, the zaibatsu that brought down all those airliners a couple of years ago and Tony Croft.”
“The White House,” Adkins said softly, as if he were afraid of being overheard.
McGarvey nodded, but kept his silence. He wanted to see if Adkins would head toward the same conclusions Otto had.
“None of this might have come to light if you hadn’t taken the DDO.”
“That’s right.”
“But there’s more, isn’t there,” Adkins said. “Something to do with the incident in North Korea and the situation in the Sea of Japan.”
“I think so.”
Something else suddenly occurred to Adkins and his eyes widened slightly. “Tony Croft was feeding information to Lee.” Now he looked frightened and angry. “What else, Mac? Are you saying it goes further?”
McGarvey took a moment to answer. Once this mountain was crossed there was no easy way back. “This office is clean and the tape recorder is off, so whatever is said here stays here until I tell you otherwise.”
Adkins took his own time to reply, working out for himself the ramifications. “I won’t lie.”
“I’ll never ask you to do that,” McGarvey said. “But any report generated in the DO on this subject will not be released without my signature so long as I’m DDO.”
Adkins thought that out, then nodded.
“Very well,” McGarvey said, and he told Adkins what Rencke had discovered at Fort A.P. Hill.
Adkins was stunned. “Do you have any proof other than what Otto dug out?”
“No.”
“But you’re going to try to get it?”
“Tonight,” McGarvey said. “But that’s just half the problem, because I still don’t know what the connection is between all this and the explosion at Kimch’aek and the standoff between the Japanese and Chinese.”
“What’s the point, Mac? If Lindsay’s been bought and paid for by the Japanese — something I think is far-fetched — where’s this going? Certainly not a war between Japan and North Korea, or China. That’d be suicide. And you can’t honestly believe that the President is a traitor.”
“No, I don’t. At the worst I think he’s been influenced into giving Japan more leeway than he should. Something a notch above most-favored trading status. Maybe to buy them some time.”
“For what?”
McGarvey spread his hands. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m sure as hell going to try to find out, because I think whatever they’ve been waiting for is about to happen.”
Frank Ripley walked into the busy launch control center at 8:00 A.M. and felt the chill of angry indifference that had grown steadily over the past week. Nobody said hello or even looked at him as he went up to the console the Tiger team had been assigned for the launch. The shutters on the sloping glass wall facing the pad were open, sun streaming into the five-tiered room that was practically the twin of launch control at the Cape. In the distance the H2C rocket was sheathed in its prelaunch gantry, and even at three miles he could see a great deal of activity out there.
Before the mood had drastically changed he and the others had been besieged by the staff for words of wisdom and advice. Most of his team had been in space, and when they’d first gotten here they’d been treated like heroes. Ripley wasn’t overly sensitive. He was an engineer used to dealing in hard facts. He could get lost in the technical problems of the moment. But he was a highly experienced astronaut whose knowledge could be useful to them if they wouldn’t shut him out.
He sat down, powered up his console and put on his headset. The launch clock between the two main status boards was stopped at forty-eight hours. It was a critical point in the prelaunch sequence at which all systems were run through a second-to-final diagnostic test. Once they were assured that everything here in launch control, out on the rocket and at the six monitoring stations around the Earth was nominal, no glitches, no problems with equipment, weather or personnel, the clock would start again.
From this moment on, Ripley was expected to monitor launch preparations but not offer any advice unless asked, or unless he spotted a possibly important anomaly. He had a job to do, despite the chilly mood, and he set about to do it.
McGarvey had to remind himself why he was withholding vital information from the DCI. Sitting across the desk from Murphy, he was struck by the enormity of the situation he’d been pushed into. Wars had started with a lot less provocation than the Japanese had provided the North Koreans. At this point it came down to his ego, his understanding of an explosive situation that would almost certainly be at odds with Murphy’s perceptions and his own willingness to do what he thought was the right thing.