Balance of Power

TWO

When they were at Op-Center headquarters at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland or at Striker’s Base in the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, the two forty-five-year-old men were Op-Center’s Deputy Director, General Michael Bernard Rodgers, and Colonel Brett Van Buren August, commander of Op-Center’s rapid-deployment force.

But here in Ma Ma Buddha, a small, divey Szechuan restaurant in Washington’s Chinatown, the two men were not superior and subordinate. They were close friends who had both been born at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut; who had met in kindergarten and shared a passion for building model airplanes; who had played on the same Thurston’s Apparel Store Little League team for five years — and chased home run queen Laurette DelGuercio on the field and off; and who had blown trumpet in the Housatonic Valley Marching Band for four years. They served in different branches of the military in Vietnam — Rodgers in the U.S. Army Special Forces, August in Air Force Intelligence — and saw each other infrequently over the next twenty years. Rodgers did two tours of Southeast Asia, after which he was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to help Colonel “Char-gin’ Charlie” Beckwith oversee the training of the U.S. Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment — the Delta Force. Rodgers remained there until the Persian Gulf War, where he commanded a mechanized brigade with such Pattonesque fervor that he was well on his way to Baghdad while his backup was still in Southern Iraq. His zeal earned him a promotion — and a desk job at Op-Center.

August had flown eighty-seven F-4 spy missions over North Vietnam during a two-year period before being shot down near Hue. He spent a year as a prisoner of war before escaping and making his way to the south. After recovering in Germany from exhaustion and exposure, August returned to Vietnam. He organized a spy network to search for other U.S. POWs and then remained undercover for a year after the United States withdrawal. At the request of the Pentagon, August spent the next three years in the Philippines helping President Ferdinand Marcos battle Moro secessionists. He disliked Marcos and his repressionist policies, but the U.S. government supported him and so August stayed. Looking for a little desk-bound downtime after the fall of the Marcos regime, August went to work as an Air Force liaison with NASA, helping to organize security for spy satellite missions, after which he joined the SOC as a specialist in counter-terrorist activities. When Striker commander Lt. Colonel W. Charles Squires was killed on a mission in Russia, Rodgers immediately contacted Colonel August and offered him the commission. August accepted, and the two easily resumed their close friendship.

The two men had come to Ma Ma Buddha after spending the morning discussing a proposed new International Strike Force Division for Op-Center. The idea for the group had been conceived by Rodgers and Paul Hood. Unlike the elite, covert Striker, the ISFD unit would be a small black-ops unit comprised of U.S. commanders and foreign operatives. Personnel such as Falah Shibli of the Sayeret Ha’Druzim, Israel’s Druze Reconnaissance unit, who had helped Striker rescue the Regional OpCenter and its crew in the Bekaa Valley. The ISFD would be designed to undertake covert missions in potential international trouble spots. General Rodgers had been quiet but attentive for most of the meeting, which was also attended by Intelligence Chief Bob Herbert, his colleagues Naval Intelligence Chief Donald Breen and Army Intelligence head Phil Prince, and August’s friend Air Force Intelligence legend Pete Robinson.

Now Rodgers was simply quiet. He was poking his chopsticks at a plate of salt-fried string beans. His rugged face was drawn beneath the close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and his eyes were downturned. Both men had recently returned from Lebanon. Rodgers and a small party of soldiers and civilians had been field testing the new Regional Op-Center when they were captured and tortured by Kurdish extremists. With the help of an Israeli operative, August and Striker were able to go into the Bekaa Valley and get them out. When their ordeal was over and an attempt to start a war between Turkey and Syria had been averted, General Rodgers had drawn his pistol and executed the Kurdish leader out of hand. On the flight back to the United States, August had prevented a distraught General Rodgers from turning the handgun on himself.

August was using a fork to twirl up his pork lo mein. After watching the prison guards eat while he starved in Vietnam, if he never saw a chopstick again it would be too soon. As he ate, his blue eyes were on his companion. August understood the effects of combat and captivity, and he knew only too well what torture could do to the mind, let alone the body. He didn’t expect Rodgers to recover quickly. Some people never recovered at all. When the depth of their dehumanization became apparent — both in terms of what had been done to them and what they may have been forced to do — many former hostages took their own lives. Liz Gordon had put it very well in a paper she’d published in the International Amnesty Journal: A hostage is someone who has gone from walking to crawling. To walk again, to face even simple risks or routine authority figures, is often more difficult than lying down and giving up.

August picked up the metal teapot. “Want some?”

“Yes, please.”

August kept an eye on his friend as he turned the two cups rightside up. He filled them and then set the pot down. Then he stirred a half packet of sugar into his own cup, raised it, and sipped. He continued to stare at Rodgers through the steam. The general didn’t look up.

“Mike?”

“Yeah.”

“This is no good.”

Rodgers raised his eyes. “What? The lo mein?”

August was caught off guard. He grinned. “Well, that’s a start. First joke you’ve made since — when? The twelfth grade?”

“Something like that,” Rodgers said sullenly. He idly picked up his cup and took a sip of tea. He held the cup by his lips and stared down into it. “What’s there been to laugh about since then?”

“Plenty, I’d say.”

“Like what?”

“How about weekend passes with the few friends you’ve managed to hold on to. A couple of jazz clubs you told me about in New Orleans, New York, Chicago. Some damn fine movies. More than a few nice ladies. You’ve had some real nice things in your life.”

Rodgers put the cup down and shifted his body painfully. The burns he’d suffered during torture at the hands of the Kurds in the Bekaa were a long way from healing, though not so long as the emotional wounds. But he refused to lie on his sofa and rust.

“Those things are all diversions, Brett. I love’em, but they’re solace. Recreation.”

“Since when are solace and recreation bad things?”

“Since they’ve become a reason for living instead of the reward for a job well done,” Rodgers said.

“Uh oh,” August said.

“Uh oh is right,” Rodgers replied.

August had sunk a hose into a cesspool and Rodgers had obviously decided to let some of the raw sewage out.

“You want to know why I can’t relax?” Rodgers said. “Because we’ve become a society that lives for the weekend, for vacations, for running away from responsibility. We’re proud of how much liquor we can hold, of how many women we can charm our way into bed with, of how well our sports teams are doing.”

“You used to like a lot of those things,” August pointed out. “Especially the women.”

“Well, maybe I’m tired of it,” Rodgers said. “I don’t want to live like that any more. I want to do things.”

“You always have done things,” August said. “And you still found time to enjoy life.”

“I guess I didn’t realize what a mess the country was becoming,” Rodgers said. “You face an enemy like world Communism. You put everything into that fight. Then suddenly you don’t have them anymore and you finally take a good look around. You see that everything else has gone to hell while you fought your battle. Values, initiative, compassion, everything. Now I’ve decided I want to work harder kicking the asses of those who don’t take pride in what they do.”

“All of which is very heartfelt,” August said. “It’s also beside the point, Mike. You like classical music, right?”

Rodgers nodded. “So?”

“I forget which writer it was who said that life should be like a Beethoven symphony. The loud parts of the music represent our public deeds. The soft passages suggest our private reflection. I think that most people have found a good and honest balance between the two.”

Rodgers looked down at his tea. “I don’t believe that. If it were true, we’d be doing better.”

“We’ve survived a couple of world wars and a nuclear cold war,” August replied. “For a bunch of territorial carnivores not far removed from the caves, that ain’t bad.” He took a long, slow sip of tea. “Besides, forget about recreation and weekends. What started this all was you making a joke and me approving of it. Humor ain’t weakness, pal, and don’t start coming down on yourself for it. It’s a deterrent, Mike, a necessary counterbalance. When I was a guest of Ho Chi Minh, I stayed relatively sane by telling myself every bad joke I could remember. Knock-knocks. Good news, bad news. Skeleton jokes. You know: ‘A skeleton walks into a bar and orders a gin and tonic… and a mop.’ ”

Rodgers didn’t laugh.

“Well,” August said, “it’s amazing how funny that seems when you’re strung up by your bleeding goddamn wrists in a mosquito-covered swamp. The point is, it’s a bootstrap deal, Mike. You’ve got to lift yourself out of the muck.”

“That’s you,” Rodgers said. “I get angry. Bitter. I brood.”

“I know. And you let it sit in your gut. You’ve come up with a third kind of symphonic music: loud passages that you keep inside. You can’t possibly think that’s good.”

“Good or not,” Rodgers said, “it comes naturally to me. That’s my fuel. It gives me the drive to fix systems that are broken and to get rid of the people who spoil it for the rest of us.”

“And when you can’t fix the system or get back at the bad guys?” August asked. “Where does all that high octane go?”

“Nowhere,” Rodgers said. “I store it. That’s the beauty of it. It’s the far eastern idea of chi—inner energy. When you need it for the next battle it’s right there, ready to tap.”

“Or ready to explode. What do you do when there’s so much that you can’t keep it in anymore?”

“You burn some of it off,” Rodgers said. “That’s where recreation comes in. You turn it into physical exertion. You exercise or play squash or call a lady-friend. There are ways.”

“Pretty lonely ones.”

“They work for me,” Rodgers said. “Besides, as long as you keep striking out with the ladies I’ve got you to dump on.”

“Striking out?” August grinned. At least Rodgers was talking and it was about something other than misery and the fall of civilization. “After my long weekend with Barb Mathias I had to take a sabbatical.”

Rodgers smiled. “I thought I was doing you a favor,” he said. “She loved you when we were kids.”

“Yeah, but now she’s forty-four and all she wants is sex and security.” August twirled noodles around his fork and slid them into his mouth. “Unfortunately, I’m only rich in one of those.”

Rodgers was still smiling when his pager beeped. He twisted to look at it then winced as his bandages pulled at the side.

“Those pagers are made to slip right off your belt,” August said helpfully.

“Thanks,” Rodgers said. “That’s how I lost the last one.” He glanced down at the number.

“Who wants you?” August asked.

“Bob Herbert,” Rodgers said. His brow knit as he took his napkin from his lap. He rose very slowly and dropped it on the chair. “I’ll call him from the car.”

August leaned back. “I’ll stay right here,” he said. “I’m told that there are three women to every man in Washington. Maybe one of them will want your plate of cold-growing string beans.”

“Good luck,” Rodgers told him as he moved quickly through the small, crowded restaurant.

August finished his lo mein, drained his cup, and poured more tea. He drank it slowly as he looked around the dark restaurant. This state of mind Rodgers was in would not be easy to dispel. August had always been the more optimistic of the two. It was true, he couldn’t glance at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial or flip past a cable documentary about the war or even pass a Vietnamese restaurant. Not without his eyes tearing or his belly burning or his fists tensing with the desire to hit something. August was usually upbeat and hopeful but he was not entirely forgiving. Still, he didn’t hold on to bitterness and disappointment the way Mike did. And the problem here was not so much that society had let Mike down but that Mike had let himself down. He wasn’t about to let that go without a serious struggle.

When Rodgers returned, August knew at once that something was wrong. The bandages and pain notwithstanding, the general moved assertively through the crowded restaurant, weaving around waiters and customers instead of waiting for them to move. He did not rush, however. The men were in uniform and both foreign agents and journalists paid close attention to military personnel. If they were called away in a hurry, that told observers which branch and usually which group within that branch was involved in a breaking event.

August rose calmly before Rodgers arrived. He stretched for show and took a last swallow of tea. He dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the table and moved out to greet Rodgers. The men didn’t speak until they were outside. The mid-fall air was biting as they walked slowly down the street to the car.

“Tell me more about the good things in life,” Rodgers said bitterly. “Martha Mackall was assassinated about a half hour ago.”

August felt the tea come back into his throat. “It happened outside the Palacio de las Cortes in Madrid,” Rodgers went on. His voice was clipped and low, his eyes fixed on something in the distance. Even though the enemy was still faceless, Rodgers had found a place to put his anger. “The status of your team is unchanged until we know more,” Rodgers went on. “Martha’s assistant Aideen Marley is talking to the police. Darrell was in Madrid with her and is heading over to the palace now. He’s going to call Paul at fourteen hundred hours with an update.”

August’s expression hadn’t changed, though he felt tea and bile fill his throat. “Any idea who’s responsible?”

“None,” Rodgers said. “She was traveling incognito. Only a few people even knew she was there.”

They got into Rodgers’s new Camry. August drove. He started the ignition and nosed into traffic. The men were silent for a moment. August hadn’t known Martha very well, but he knew that she was no one’s favorite person at Op-Center. She was pushy and arrogant. A bully. She was also damned effective. The team would be much poorer for her loss.

August looked out the windshield at the overcast sky. Upon reaching Op-Center headquarters, Rodgers would go to the executive offices in the basement level while August would be helicoptered over to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, where Striker was stationed. Striker’s status at the moment was neutral. But there were still two Op-Center personnel in Spain. If things got out of hand there they might be called upon to leave in a hurry. Rodgers hadn’t told him what Martha was doing in Spain because he obviously didn’t want to risk being overheard. Bugging and electronic surveillance of cars belonging to military personnel was not uncommon. But August knew about the tense political situation in Spain. He also knew about Martha’s involvement in ethnic issues. And he assumed that she was probably involved in diplomatic efforts to keep the nation’s many political and cultural entities from fraying, from becoming involved in a catastrophic and far-reaching power struggle.

He also knew one thing more. Whoever had killed her was probably aware of why she was there. Which raised another question that transcended the shock of the moment: whether this was the first or the last shot in the possible destruction of Spain.