Acts of War

SIXTY-THREE

Paul Hood spoke to Mike Rodgers while Hood was in London en route to Washington. Rodgers was about to leave the infirmary at Tel Nef to join the Strikers for the flight back to Washington.

The men had a short, uncommonly strained conversation. Whether he was afraid of releasing rage, frustration, sadness, or whatever else he was feeling, Rodgers wasn't letting go of anything. Getting the general to answer questions about his health and the accomodations at Tel Nef took very specific questions. And even then his answers were terse, his voice flat. Hood ascribed it to exhaustion and the depression that Liz had warned them about.

When he'd placed the call, Hood hadn't intended to tell Rodgers about the pardon. He'd felt that that was something best done when Rodgers was rested and surrounded by the people who had orchestrated the amnesty. People whose judgment he respected. People who could explain that it had been done to protect the national interest and not to bail Rodgers out.

Ultimately, however, Hood felt that Rodgers had a right to know what had transpired. He wanted him to use the flight to plan for his future in Op-Center and not an imagined future in court.

Rodgers took the news quietly. He asked Hood to thank Herbert and Martha for their efforts. But as he spoke, Hood had an even stronger sense that there was something else taking place, something unspoken that had come between them. It wasn't bitterness or rancor. It was something almost melancholy, as if he'd been doomed rather than saved.

It was almost like he was saying good-bye.

After hanging up with Rodgers, Hood called Colonel August. Rodgers and the Striker commander had grown up together in Hartford, Connecticut. Hood asked him to use whatever stories or jokes or reminiscences it took to keep Rodgers diverted and amused. August promised that he would.

Hood and Bicking bid a warm farewell to Professor Nasr at Heathrow, and promised to come and hear his wife play Liszt and Chopin. However, Bicking did ask him to have the pianist consider replacing the Revolutionary Etude with something less politically charged. Nasr did not disagree.

The State Department flight from London had been relaxed and filled with uncustomarily sincere compliments for Hood. They were nothing like the surface-deep congratulations which he sometimes received at meetings and receptions in Washington. Officials on the plane seemed delighted with rumors that Striker had broken a slew of secular laws in the Bekaa Valley. They were almost as happy with that as they were that the Ataturk terrorists had been found and neutralized and that Turkish and Syrian troops had withdrawn from their common border. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Tom Andrea put it, "You get tired of playing by the rules when everyone else isn't."

Andrea also pressed for details on who had helped Hood, Bicking, and Nasr escape the palace assault in Damascus. But Hood only sipped the Tab Clear he'd picked up in London and said nothing.

The plane landed at 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday. An honor guard was waiting for the fallen DSA operatives, and Hood stayed with them on the tarmac until the coffins had been unloaded and driven away. Then he got in the limousine which was waiting to take him and Warner Bicking home. The car had been sent by Stephanie Klaw at the White House, who had also sent along a note.

"Paul," it read, "welcome home. I was afraid you might take a cab."

The car took Hood home first. He held Bicking's hand between his before climbing out.

"How does it feel to have been the pawn of two Presidents?" Hood asked.

The young Bicking smiled and replied, "Invigorating, Paul."

Hood spent an hour lying in bed with his kids. After that, he spent two hours making love to his wife.

And after that, with his wife curled beside him, her hand in his, he lay awake wondering if he'd made the mistake of his life telling Mike Rodgers about the pardon.