Call to Treason

TWENTY-NINE

Like dinner the evening before, lunch with Kat was a welcome respite from angry thoughts. She was a sophisticated young woman with an eye firmly on the future but also a critical eye on the past. She had not only been influenced by her police family, but her journalistic background had given her broad political exposure. Kat Lockley knew how the system worked. More importantly, the New York native obviously knew how to work the system.

“Being New Yorkers, how did you ever hook up with the senator?” Rodgers asked. “You said he was an old friend of your father… ”

“Army days. They drifted later, but never far or for long. When my dad was on the police force, he helped set up a program called Vacation Swap, when kids from the city went to some other place and vice versa,” Kat said. “He and one of their other army buddies, Mac Crowne — a Park Avenue dentist, fittingly — took kids out to the Orr Ranch a couple of times a year. They were as different as could be, which is probably why they got along so well.”

“Did you ever go?”

“A couple of times,” she said. “Good thing, too.”

“Why?”

“Senator Orr says he would never entirely trust a person who was uncomfortable around horses,” she replied.

“The admiral does not strike me as an equestrian,” Rodgers noted.

“He isn’t. But he hunted sperm whales as a teenager in Newfoundland, before it was banned. That registered big on the Orr machismo scale.”

“I hope the senator realizes I have nothing to offer along those lines—”

“But you do,” Kat commented. “Tanks. Big beasts, difficult to tame. To the senator, tank warfare is like a medieval joust. Very manly.”

“I see,” Rodgers said.

Kat was absolutely a good person to have on the team. Experienced, enthusiastic, energetic. It was not just Kat, though. The entire conversation felt good. It was full of insights and compliments, camaraderie and hope. When it was over, Rodgers decided to go back to Op-Center and clean out his desk. Though he was still technically on the payroll, he wanted no part of the organization. He did not want to hold on to the anger Hood had made him feel. He would say his good-byes to those who wanted to hear them, and then Mike Rodgers would do exactly what Kat Lockley was doing: use the considerable experiences of his lifetime to look ahead. Rodgers could not imagine that Paul Hood would want or need him for anything over the next few days.

He walked Kat back to the office building, then drove out to Andrews Air Force Base — possibly for the last time. Mike Rodgers was not sentimental that way. Yet he did wonder if, on the whole, this had been a positive experience. So much good had been done but at an extraordinary cost. For himself, the sadness of the people he had lost would probably be stronger in his memory than the goals they had achieved. He also believed, as he had since Op-Center was chartered, that he would have done a better job running it than Hood had done. He would not go so far as to say that good things had happened in spite of the director. But he would say that Hood had not been as proactive as he would have been.

Hell, I was the one who assigned myself to the North Korea mission, Rodgers thought.

If he had not, Hood might have refused to let Striker act as aggressively as it did. His CIOC-friendly methods may have allowed Tokyo to vanish under a barrage of Nodong missiles. Waiting for approvals and charter revisions was the way to build a legal and clean-living entity, not necessarily the most effective one. It would be like soldiers in the field asking the president or secretary of defense to okay each maneuver. Rodgers always felt it was better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.

The air force guard standing near the elevator saluted smartly. Rodgers saluted back. Nothing in the young woman’s eyes betrayed knowledge of what had gone on below. Perhaps she did not know. Op-Center’s grapevine tended to grow, and remain, underground.

The initial discomfort of employees in the executive section had passed. They greeted Rodgers warmly as he made his way to his office. Rodgers told Liz Gordon and Lowell Coffey that he had decided to accept Senator Orr’s offer and would be working on the campaign. Both wished him well. Rodgers did not know how he would respond to Hood if he saw him. The general could — and would — ignore his replacement, Ron Plummer. The political liaison had not won that job, it had been granted to him by default. That made Plummer neither enemy nor rival, just a man with a catcher’s mitt. Paul Hood was a different matter. He was the one who had made the default call. Rodgers imagined everything from ignoring him to grabbing the front of his lightly starched white shirt, slamming him against a wall, and spitting in his wide, frightened eye. What stopped him, when they did meet, was the realization that Hood was finally doing what Rodgers had wished he would do for years: telling the CIOC to screw its own rules and doing what he thought was best for Op-Center. It was only too bad his newly found courage came at Admiral Link’s expense.

Hood was talking to Bob Herbert in the intelligence chief’s office. The door was open as Rodgers walked by. He offered only a peripheral glance inside. Eyes on the future, he reminded himself. Now that he thought of it, that mantra would make a terrific campaign slogan.

Neither man called after him nor hurried into the hallway. Rodgers felt relieved for a moment. There would be no confrontation with Hood. He would not have to listen to Herbert explain why he had joined the assault. Then Rodgers felt offended. Who the hell are they to ignore me?

He should have known Pope Paul better than that. The man was a diplomat, and diplomats could not leave situations unresolved. Even without the blessings of their governments, they usually employed back-channel routes to try to defuse crises. Maybe they needed to do good. Maybe they needed to meddle or to be loved. The motives were too complex for Rodgers to fathom. All he understood was soldiering. Until he came to Op-Center, that was all Rodgers needed to know. Inevitably, after the talks had broken down or bought only a temporary respite, it took spilled blood to grease the wheels of civilization.

Hood knocked on the open door as Rodgers was taking citations and photographs from the wall.

“I would like to change the date when I’m officially relieved of all responsibilities to Op-Center,” Rodgers said. He did not look at Hood.

“When do you want to leave?”

“Today,” Rodgers said. “Now.” He put the framed pictures and documents on the desk then went and got two shoulder bags from a small closet in back. He stood behind the desk and carefully placed the mementos inside. He did it without sentiment or nostalgia about leaving. A soldier’s life should be portable. The only item from his tenure here was a photograph of himself with Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Squires and Striker. It was taken after the team had been assembled, about two months before they went to North Korea.

“Is this how you want it to end, Mike?” Hood asked.

“You mean, without a parade or a twenty-one-gun salute?”

“I mean with this barrier between us,” Hood said. “I want to give you that salute, Mike. Not just because you deserve to be honored but because Charlie once told me why it was created. Weapons were discharged to show that the military was granting safe passage to a trusted visitor.”

“I told him that,” Rodgers said wistfully. He could still see himself and the strapping officer sitting by the pool near the Striker quad when he asked about that. They had just come back from drilling and had heard a volley in the distance. “Twenty-one guns for the number of states in the union when the navy began the tradition. An old military tradition, just like something you reminded me of yesterday. Something I had overlooked for years.”

“What was that?”

“We called it ‘the faith and bullet rule’ in Vietnam,” Rodgers told him. “When you meet a politician, only put one of those in him.”

“You know, Mike, tactics are easier when the objectives are clear, when you know what hill or town you have to take and what resources are available to do it. Politics is a war without rules of engagement or the immediacy of gun-fire. Sometimes you don’t realize you’ve been hit until days later or until you read it in the newspaper.”

“I guess I should be grateful my executioner looked me in the eyes when he pulled the trigger,” Rodgers replied.

“I did not say that,” Hood insisted.

“Then I’m confused,” Rodgers told him. “Are we talking specifically about us or are we having a philosophical discussion about what my grandfather used to call ‘follytics’?”

“I’m trying to apologize,” Hood said.

“For what? Firing me? Placing my new boss under a magnifying glass?”

“Neither. We’ve been over those. I’m sorry there’s nothing I can do about any of it.”

Rodgers buckled the first bag. Before he loaded the second, he regarded Hood. “That’s another difference between soldiers and politicians,” he said. “No can do is not in our vocabulary. Neither is surrender.”

“That may be,” Hood said. Now there was a bit of steel in his voice. “I’ll tell you this, though, Mike. If I had made a stand on these points that obviously offend your sense of honor, the battlefield would be hip deep with corpses. And I still would have lost the battle.” Hood extended his hand. “I won’t be offended if you don’t shake it. I’ll only be sad.”

Rodgers had not yet started loading the second bag. He began putting the keepsakes inside.

“I can’t,” he said.

“You mean you won’t,” Hood said.

Rodgers snickered. “Politicians play with words, too.” He held up his right palm. “I mean this hand just took down a photograph of a man who gave his life for this place. It can’t, and won’t, clasp the hand of a guy who was afraid to lose his job. And by the way, Paul. A battlefield littered with war dead is not the same as a job market having to absorb some bureaucrats. Don’t ever compare them.”

“I wasn’t,” Hood said. “I was only trying to connect with you somehow.”

“Well, you failed.”

“I can see that.” Hood lowered his arm. “If you change your mind, the hand is still extended.”

“I appreciate that.”

“And I do wish you well,” Hood added.

“I appreciate that, too,” Rodgers said with a little more formality.

Hood left, shutting the door behind him. Rodgers looked around. The office seemed both bigger and smaller because of the naked walls. Men are small, but their deeds are large.

Rodgers did not regret what he had just done. Unlike Hood, he did not even feel sad. All he felt was a sense of pride that he had lifted himself from the battlefield and soldiered on. He finished packing the second bag, then went to his desk and removed the few personal items that were still there. A leather bookmark with the NATO logo, a letter opener from the king of Spain in gratitude for the way Striker had helped prevent a new civil war.

A memorial card from the service of Bass Moore, the first Striker killed in action.

Rodgers was convinced that he had done the right thing by rejecting Hood’s hand. As he left his former office, the general was convinced of something else. That there was probably nothing on God’s sweet earth that would ever make him rescind that decision.