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I slid out into the cold. Closed the door behind me and stood
still for a second. The bulk of the building loomed up over me
in the dark. People said it was the world’s largest office complex
and right then I believed them. I started walking. There
was a long ramp up to the doors. Then there was a guarded
lobby the size of a basketball court. My special unit badge got
me through that. Then I headed for the heart of the complex.
There were five concentric pentagon-shaped corridors, called
rings. Each one of them was protected by a separate check
point. My badge was good enough to get me through B, C, and
D. Nothing on earth was going to get me into the E-ring. I
stopped outside the final check point and nodded to the guard.
He nodded back. He was used to people waiting there.
I leaned against the wall. It was smooth-painted concrete and
it felt cold and slick. The building was silent. I could hear
nothing except water in pipes and the faint rush of forced-air
heating and the guard’s steady breathing. The floors were
shined linoleum tile and they reflected the ceiling fluorescents
in a long double image that ran away to a distant vanishing
point.
I waited. I could see a clock in the guard’s booth. It rolled
past midnight. Past five after midnight. Then ten after. I waited.
I started to figure my challenge had been ignored. These
guys were political. Maybe they played a smarter game than I
could conceive. Maybe they had more gloss and sophistication
and patience. Maybe I was more than a little bit out of my
league.
Or maybe the woman with the voice had thrown my message
in the trash.
I waited.
Then at fifteen minutes past midnight I heard faraway heels
echoing on the linoleum. Dress shoes, a staccato little rhythm
that was part urgent and part relaxed. Like a man who was busy
but not panicked. I couldn’t see him. The sound of his heels on
the floor was billowing out at me around an angled corner. It
ran ahead of him down the deserted corridor like an early
warning signal.
I listened to the sound and watched the spot where it told me
he would appear, which was right where the fluorescent tubes
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on the ceiling met their reflections in the floor. The sound kept
on coming. Then a man stepped around the corner and walked
through the flare of light. He kept on walking straight towards
me, the rhythm of his heels unbroken, not slowing, not speeding
up, still busy, not panicked. He came closer. He was the
Chief of Staff of the Army. He was in formal evening mess
dress. He was wearing a short blue jacket nipped in at the waist.
Blue pants with two gold stripes. A bow tie. Gold studs and
cufflinks. Elaborate knots and swirls of gold braid all over his
sleeves and his shoulders. He was covered with gold insignia
and badges and sashes and miniature versions of his medals.
He had a full head of grey hair. He was about five-nine and
one-eighty. Exactly average size for the modern army.
He got within ten feet of me and I snapped to attention and
saluted. It was a pure reflex action. Like a Catholic meeting the
Pope. He didn’t salute back. He just looked at me. Maybe there
was a protocol that forbade saluting while wearing the evening
mess uniform. Or while bareheaded in the Pentagon. Or maybe
he was just rude.
He put his hand out to shake.
‘Very sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘Good of you to wait. I was at the
White House. For a state dinner with some foreign friends.’
I shook his hand.
‘Let’s go to my office,’ he said.
He led me past the E-ring guard and we turned left into the
corridor and walked a little way. Then we stepped into a suite
and I met the woman with the voice. She looked more or less
like I had predicted. But she sounded even better in person
than she had on the phone.
‘Coffee, major?’ she said.