Benita shook her head uncertainly. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if they’d let me refuse.”
“Well, then. Pretend it’s part of the job. No personal obligation.”
“Very well, if you like.” She took a deep breath. “And since you have people in Albuquerque who are already familiar with my house and you’re set on being helpful, could they pick up a few little items for me? My personal papers and some things that belonged to my mother? And my dog? I left him in a kennel there. And, could you fix it so I could send a letter to my former bosses, quitting my job and sort of … misleading them about where I am?”
The SOS looked amused. “Why not? Simplifying your life is what we have in mind. Give me a list.”
The SOS handed Benita a blank page, and she wrote down the half dozen items she had already decided to recover. Her documents and tax returns were all in one place, a shoebox in her closet. She also wrote down Sasquatch’s name and description and the place he’d been left.
The FL said, “Go ahead and write your letter to your former bosses. Address it, no return, then call Chad Riley at the White House. He’ll have an office there for the time being, and he can take care of it.”
The three women rose. General McVane came back into the room, very red in the face, stalking angrily toward Benita. “Had you planned that little disappearing act . . .”
The SOS laid her hand protectively on Benita’s shoulder. “She did not, General McVane, and we’d all be grateful for a more moderate tone. I attended the Cabinet meeting today, just as you did, and it was made clear that the intermediary is simply a woman who was selected by the aliens for their own purposes. She had no part in that selection, she has done her part well and faithfully, and she deserves generous recognition of that fact.”
McVane flushed. “Sorry, ma’am. It’s just . . . frustrating!”
Benita heard something more than mere frustration in his voice. “You were trying to find their ship, weren’t you? You had people all set up to follow them when they left.”
McVane cursed at her, heard himself, and turned even brighter red.
The SOS looked at Benita in amazement, then turned on McVane with an expression of outrage. “I thought the Cabinet agreed we wouldn’t try anything like that.”
“No such order from the commander-in-chief,” he snarled.
“What did you call that meeting?” snapped the SOS. “A chat room? We all understood what the parameters were! Top secret and absolutely no interference! Whom have you involved?”
He spoke through his teeth. “No one who knows anything! My men were asked only to follow everyone who left here!”
“I suppose it was inevitable,” said the FL, glaring at him angrily. “Did you use this woman’s name, General?”
“No. I swear. I didn’t.”
“But your friends followed you here. And they’re waiting to follow everyone back so they’ll know who all the participants are. Have you identified her to them?”
McVane flushed again. “Ma’am, I don’t know her name. They didn’t use her name at the meeting, they haven’t used her name tonight! And even I don’t have a photograph.”
The SOS said, “But if you’d had one, you’d have passed it around! The president will be very interested in that, General McVane.”
The FL turned toward Benita, drawing her away from the confrontation. “That surprised me. How did you catch on?”
Benita shook her head. “I don’t know. Something about the way he spoke, or looked. So frustrated. He would have been surprised, but why would he have been frustrated?”
“You’re very perceptive.” The FL gave her a long, level look. “Hardly in keeping with what we’ve learned about you, quite frankly. And that little speech during dinner! I don’t know about the envoys, but I was impressed.”
“Actually, I was quoting my mother’s father. He was a history professor in Mexico. He specialized in pre-Colombian history, so he knew a lot about bloody gods. Mami, that is, my mother, used to quote him a lot.”