When Press Officer Ann Farris walked into the room, her smartly tailored red pantsuit drew an admiring nod from Lowell Coffey II. She could tell right then that he’d had an exhausting night. When Lowell was alert, he had constructive criticism about everything from fashion to literature.
“Busy night?” she asked.
“I was with the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee,” he said, turning back to a crisply folded copy of the Washington Post.
“Ah,” she said. “Long night. What happened?”
Coffey said, “Mike thinks he’s got a bead on the Russians who were really behind the tunnel bombing. He sent Striker in to get them.”
“So that little Eival Ekdol man they picked up wasn’t working alone.”
“Not at all,” said Lowell.
Ann stopped by the coffee vending machine. She fed in a dollar bill. “Does Paul know?”
“Paul’s back,” he said.
Ann brightened. “Really?”
“Really and truly,” said Lowell. “Caught the red-eye out of L.A., said he’ll be in this morning. Mike’s going to brief the entire team in the Tank at nine. ”
Poor Paul, Ann thought as she picked up her double espresso and collected her change. Out and back in less than twenty-four hours. How Sharon must have loved that.
The seats around the six round tables were occupied by executives doing surprisingly little. Psychologist Liz Gordon was chewing nicotine gum in the smoke-free room, nervously twirling a lock of short brown hair, sipping her dark coffee with three sugars and reading the new week’s supermarket tabloids.
Operations Support Officer Matt Stoll was playing poker with Environmental Officer Phil Katzen. There was a small mound of quarters between the men and, instead of cards, both of them were using laptops linked by a cable. As she walked past them, Ann could tell Stoll was losing. He freely admitted that he had the worst poker face on the planet. Whenever things weren’t going well, whether he was playing cards or trying to fix a computer responsible for the defense of the free world, sweat collected on every pore of his round, cherubic face.
Stoll surrendered a six of spades and a four of clubs. Phil dealt him a five of spades and a seven of hearts in return.
“Well, at least I’ve got a higher card now,” Matt said, folding. “One more hand,” he said. “Too bad this isn’t like quantum computing. You confine ions in webs of magnetic and electric fields, hit a trapped particle with a burst of laser light to send it into an excited energy state, then hit it again to ground it. That’s your switch. Rows of ions in a quantum logical gate, giving you the smallest, fastest computer on earth. Neat, clean, perfect.”
“Yeah,” Phil said, “too bad this isn’t like that.”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” Stoll said as he popped the last of a chocolate-covered doughnut in his mouth, then washed it down with black coffee. “Next time we’ll play baccarat and things will be different.”
“No they won’t,” Katzen said, sitting back as he raked in the pot. “You always lose at that too.”
“I know,” Stoll said, “but I always feel bad when I get beat playing poker. I don’t know what it is.”
“Loss of manhood,” Liz Gordon piped in without looking up from her National Enquirer.
Stoll glanced over. “Come again?”
“Consider the elements,” Liz said. “Strong hands, stone-faced bluffs, the size of the ante … the whole cigar-smoking, Wild West, backroom, night-with-the-boys thing.”
Stoll and Katzen both looked at her.
“Trust me,” she said, turning the page. “I know what I’m talking about.”
“Trust someone who gets their news from the tabloids?” Katzen said.
“Not news,” Liz said. “Fruitcakes. Celebrities live in a rarefied atmosphere that makes them fascinating to study. As for gamblers, I used to treat chronic cases in Atlantic City. Poker and pool are two games men hate to lose. Try Go Fish or Ping-Pong-they’re much less damaging to the ego.”
Ann sat at Liz’s table. “What about intellectual games like chess or Scrabble?” she asked.
“They’re macho in a different way,” Liz said. “Men don’t like losing those either, but they can accept losing to a man much easier than they can to a woman.”
Lowell Coffey snickered. “Which is just what I’d expect a woman to say. You know, Senator Barbara Fox busted my chops harder last night than any man has ever done.”
“Maybe she was just doing her job better than any man has ever done,” Liz observed.
“No,” said Coffey. “I couldn’t use the kind of shorthand with her that I used with the men on the committee.
Ask Martha, she was there.”
Ann said, “Senator Fox has been a rabid isolationist since her daughter was murdered in France years ago.”
“Look,” Liz said, “all this isn’t my opinion. Countless papers have been written on the subject.”
“Countless papers have been written about UFOs,Coffey said, “and I still think it’s all a sack of horsefeathers. People respond to people, not sexes.”
Liz smiled sweetly. “Carol Laning, Lowell.”
“Excuse me?” Coffey said.
“I’m not allowed to talk about it,” Liz said, “but you are-if you’ve got the cajones.”
“You mean Prosecutor Laning? Fraser v. Maryland? Is that in my psych profile?”
Liz said nothing.
Coffey flushed. He turned the page, creased and recreased the fold, and looked at the newspaper. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Elizabeth. I crashed into her car by accident after the trial. It was my first case and I was distracted. Losing to a woman had nothing to do with it. ”
“Of course not,” Liz said.
“It’s true,” Coffey said as his pager beeped. He glanced at the number, then dropped the newspaper on the table and stood. “Sorry, kiddies, but you’ll have to hear my closing argument some other time. I’ve got a world leader to call.”
“Male or female?” Phil asked.
Coffey made a face as he left the room.
When he was gone, Ann said, “Don’t you think you were a little rough on him, Liz?”
Liz finished with the National Enquirer, collected the Star and Globe, and stood. She looked down at the rosycheeked brunette. “A bit, Ann. But it’s good for him. Despite the bluster, Lowell listens to what people say and some of it sinks in. Unlike some people.”
“Thank you very much,” Stoll said as he shut his computer and disconnected the computers. “Before you got here, Ann, Liz and I were ‘debating’ about whether her ineptitude with hardware was actually a physical limitation or a subconscious antimale bias.”
“It’s the former,” Liz said. “It would be the same as saying that your skills with hardware ipso facto make you a man.”
“Thank you again,” Stoll said.
“My God,” Ann said, “I move that we all cut back on the morning caffeine and sugar intake.”
“It’s not that,” Stoll said as Liz left. “It’s just the Monday after an international blow. We decided we’re all a little testy because nobody thought to preprograrn their VCRs for the week we’re going to be living here.”
Katzen tucked his laptop under his arm and rose. “I’ve got some material to get for the meeting,” he said. “See you folks in fifteen.”
“And then every quarter hour after that,” Stoll said, following him out, “until we’re all old and gray.”
Alone now, the Press Officer sipped her espresso and contemplated the primary Op-Center team. They were a bunch of characters, with Matt Stoll the biggest kid and Liz Gordon the biggest bully. But the best people in any field usually were eccentric. And getting them to work together in close quarters like this was a thankless job. The best Paul Hood could ever hope for among his eclectic officers was peaceful coexistence, shared purpose, and some degree of mutual, professional respect. He got that through high-maintenance, hands-on management-though she knew the toll that took on his private life.
Leaving the cafeteria to go to the meeting, Ann ran into Martha Mackall. The forty-nine-year-old Political Officer and linguistics expert was also hurrying to the meeting, though she never seemed to be in a hurry. The daughter of the late soul singer Mack Mackall, she had his cheek-splitting smile, smoky voice, and easy manner-layered atop her own core of steel. She always appeared cool, the result of having grown up on the road with her father, where she learned that drunks, rednecks, and bigots were more intimidated by a sharp mind and wit than by a sharp knife. When Mack was killed in a car crash, Martha went to live with an aunt who made her study hard, put her through college, and lived to see her make the move from her father’s “Soul to Go” days to the State Department.
“Morning, glory,” Martha said as Ann increased her speed to keep up with the taller woman.
“Morning, Martha,” Ann said. “I understand you had a busy night.”
“Lowell and I did the Dance of the Seven Veils up on the Hill,” she said. “Those Congresspeople take a bit of persuading.”