them all by shouting. Then the big car came up to the Pentagon River
Entrance and the Marine sentry stepped over. Webster clicked off his
phone and buzzed his window down for the identification ritual.
The director of the FBI,” he said. To see the chairman of the joint
chiefs of staff.”
The sentry snapped a salute and waved the limousine through. Webster
buzzed the window back up and waited for the driver to stop. Then he
got out and ducked in through the personnel door. Walked through to
the chairman’s suite. The chairman’s secretary was waiting for him.
“Go right through, sir,” she said. The general will be along in a
moment.”
Webster walked into the chairman’s office and stood waiting. He looked
out through the window. The view was magnificent, but it had a strange
metallic tint. The window was made of one-way, bulletproof Mylar. It
was a great view, but the window was on the outside of the building,
right next to the River Entrance, so it had to be protected. Webster
could see his car, with his driver waiting beside it. Beyond the car
was a view of the Capitol, across the Potomac. Webster could see
sailboats in the Tidal Basin, with the last of the evening sun glinting
low on the water. Not a bad office, Webster thought. Better than
mine, he thought.
Meeting with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was a problem
for the director of the FBI. It was one of those Beltway oddities, a
meeting where there was no cast-iron ranking. Who was superior? Both
were presidential appointees. Both reported to the president through
just one intermediary, the defense secretary or the attorney general.
The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was the highest-ranking
military post that the nation had to offer. The director of the FBI
was the highest-ranking law-enforcement post. Both men were at the
absolute top of their respective greasy poles. But which greasy pole
was taller? It was a problem for Webster. In the end, it was a
problem for him because the truth was his pole’ was shorter. He
controlled a budget of two billion dollars and about twenty-five
thousand people. The chairman oversaw a budget of two hundred billion
and about a million people. Two million if you added in the National
Guard and the Reserves. The chairman was in the Oval Office about once
a week. Webster got there twice a year, if he was lucky. No wonder
this guy’s office was better.
The chairman himself was impressive too. He was a four-star general
whose rise had been spectacular. He had come from nowhere and blitzed
upward through the army just about faster than his tailor could sew the
ribbons on his uniform. The guy had ended up lopsided with medals.
Then he had been hijacked by Washington and moved in and made the place
his own, like it was some military objective. Webster heard his
arrival in the anteroom and turned to greet him as he came into the
office.
“Hello, General,” he said.
The chairman sketched a busy wave and grinned.
“You want to buy some missiles?” he said.
Webster was surprised.
“You’re selling them?” he said. “What missiles?”
The chairman shook his head and smiled.
“Just kidding,” he said. “Arms limitation. Russians have gotten rid
of a bomber base in Siberia, so now we’ve got to get rid of the
missiles we assigned against it. Treaty compliance, right? Got to
play fair. The big stuff, we’re selling to Israel. But we’ve still
got about a couple hundred little ones, you know, Stingers,
shoulder-launch surface-to-air things. All surplus. Sometimes I think
we should sell them to the dope dealers. God knows they’ve got
everything else they want. Better weapons than we’ve got, most of
them.”
The chairman talked his way around to his chair and sat down. Webster
nodded. He’d seen presidents do a similar thing, tell a joke, tell a
light-hearted story, man-to-man, get the ice broken, make the meeting
work. The chairman leaned back and smiled.
“So what can I do for you, Director?” he asked.
“We got a report in from Chicago,” Webster said. “Your daughter is