The moment Madeline Fathom entered the office of the director, she knew the situation was unusual. Highly unusual.
Even given that the intelligence agency she worked for generally handled the most delicate issues of national security, it was still unheard of for the National Security Adviser to sit in on a meeting between the director and one of his field agents.
She was especially surprised to see this Security Advisor present. George P. D. Jensen. The common wisecrack was that his middle initials stood for “plausible deniability.”
For the past two decades, due to a curlicue in the confusing welter of laws which had replaced the Patriot Act after its repeal, Madeline’s agency had wound up becoming the preferred agency of choice for American presidents when they wanted to maintain as low a profile as possible in a security matter that was likely to become publicly contentious. The official name of the agency—Homeland Investigation Authority—was meaningless. Its critics commonly referred to the agency as “the President’s Legal Plumbers.” And the agents of the HIA itself joked that their motto was The Buck Vanishes Here.
“Please, Madeline, have a seat.” With his usual old-fashioned southern courtesy, Director Hughes had risen to make the invitation. “I believe you’ve met Mr. Jensen before.”
“Yes, sir, I have.” She and Jensen exchanged nods after she sat down in one of the chairs in the lounge area of the director’s large office. Madeline’s nod was courteous; Jensen’s was so curt it bordered on rudeness.
Jensen had not risen, needless to say. Even by the standards of Washington, D.C., the National Security Advisor was punctilious when it came to maintaining the pecking order. Superiors did not rise from their seats to greet subordinates, period; not even when the subordinate in person was a very attractive woman in her early/mid-thirties.
Not that Madeline cared. Bureaucrats came; bureaucrats went. She had her own motives for the work she did, and the approval or disapproval of people like Jensen ranked nowhere on the list. She was reasonably polite to them, as a rule, simply as a practical convenience.
There was silence, for a moment. As Madeline waited, she considered the seating arrangement. Director Hughes was sitting in a large armchair directly across the coffee table from her. Jensen was sitting to her left, on the couch. That was unusual, also. Normally, when she and the director met, they did so sitting across from each other at his large desk in the corner.
Of course, that would have required Jensen to sit on a chair no larger or more comfortable than her own. Can’t have that.
The director suddenly beamed at her. He was a short, plump man with iron-gray hair and good-natured features. The iron-gray hair was real; the good nature was off-and-on; and the beaming smile brought her to full alert.
This one’s going to be a bitch.
The National Security Advisor spoke. “There’s a... situation, Agent Fathom.”
Politeness had its limits. “There’s always a... situation. Honestly, why do people talk that way?”
Jensen’s face tightened. The Director laughed. “You’ll have to excuse Madeline, George. As I told you, she came into our world from the wrong direction. Understands our language, but doesn’t speak it at all. ”
So they’d already been discussing her, including her personal history. Madeline wasn’t surprised, but the knowledge didn’t make her any happier. Be a bitch got ratcheted up to be a pure bitch.
The Director shifted his good cheer back onto her. “I assure you, Madeline, this one really is a... situation. Unique, I assure you. Utterly unique. We need someone to be there to watch over our interests—our country’s interests—when many of those there, even on our side, won’t have nearly so, shall we say, clear a vision of what must be for the future.”
Madeline was a bit relieved. While the director was often given to dramatic little speeches, he rarely indulged in true hyperbole. The assignments she liked were those in which she was really dealing with important issues of national security. Unlike most of her assignments, she thought sourly. Which, stripped bare, usually involved nothing more substantive than the petty internecine warfare practiced by Washington’s spaghetti bowl of competing bureaucracies and security and intelligence agencies.
She put up with the second for the sake of the first. The government might be everyone else’s scapegoat, but Madeline Fathom owed it her life.
“Show me, sir.”
“You have your VRD on? Excellent. Watch. And then we shall talk.”
After she’d watched everything, she had to take off the VRD glasses to stare. “Are you serious, Director?”
“Never more so, my dear.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “This thing cannot be kept secret long.”
The National Security Advisor’s expression had never quite lost the tightness that her earlier wisecrack had put on it. Now, it came back in full force.
“Let’s not be defeatist about this, shall we?” he snapped.
Madeline gave Jensen a glance so quick it was almost rude. As if flicking away a fly with her eyes.
The director intervened. “George, save that silliness for public speeches, would you?”
Hughes was still smiling, but he was also letting the steel show. He’d been the director of the HIA through three and half administrations—and both he and Jensen knew that he would still be the director when the current administration was gone. For over two decades, Hughes had done such a good job of balancing the demands of security with the need to tread lightly on the liberties of the public that even the HIA’s critics were fairly civil in their attacks. The political classes in the nation’s capital considered him well-nigh indispensable—a status that was definitely not enjoyed by national security advisers who’d held their position for less than two years.
“I told you already—Madeline is one of my three best agents, overall, and without a doubt the best one for this assignment. She’s got a better technical education than Berkowitz or Knight, and, unlike them, she’s single and has no family ties.”
In the brief, silent contest of wills that followed, Jensen looked away first. “Still,” he grumbled.
Hughes wasn’t about to let him off the hook. “Still... what? I do hope that the President has no illusions that we can keep this situation a secret for more than another day or so—and that he understands the consequences if it appears to the public, when it does finally surface, as if we were trying to hide something.”
His face now pinched, Jensen stared at the opposite wall and said nothing. Madeline knew the man was not actually stupid, so she was quite sure he understood the realities of political life. But “not stupid” and “faces facts readily” weren’t the same thing. The Security Adviser was obviously still in the throes of the standard bureaucratic reaction to all unpleasant news—isn’t there some rug we can sweep it under?
“You remember the endless ruckus over UFOs and Roswell Area 51?” Hughes’ shoulders heaved in a soundless laugh. “Well, I can guarantee you that’ll seem like the hushed tones of the audience in a fancy symphony hall compared to the hullaballoo you’ll be facing—if there’s even a hint that the administration tried to suppress the news beyond the initial few measures that any reasonable person will accept as minimal security precautions. And I won’t even get into the international repercussions, since that’s not really my province.” Relentlessly: “But it is yours, isn’t it?”
Jensen finally took his eyes from the wall. “Yes, I understand all that! It remains the case that we have no idea what we may discover in that alien installation. There could well be items of tremendous military significance.”
“Of course,” Hughes agreed, inclining his head. Smoothly, the gesture slid from being a polite nod of accord to a pointer at Madeline. “And that’s precisely what Ms. Fathom will be there for. Making sure the wheat doesn’t get mixed up with the chaff, so to speak.”
Jensen gave her a glance that was every bit as quick as the one she’d given him, and more openly hostile.
“She seems awfully young for the post. Meaning no offense, Ms. Fathom,” he added, obviously not caring in the least if she was offended or not.
“Alexander the Great conquered the world by the age of thirty-three,” Director Hughes said cheerfully. “So I imagine, at the same age, she can handle this little problem. And there’s really no other suitable choice, George. At your insistence, I showed you the dossiers of the other senior agents.”
“And I told you I’d be considerably more comfortable if we went with either Knight or Berkowitz.”
Hughes gave the man a look that was not so much hostile as simply weary. “George, cut it out. This is not a James Bond novel and I am not ’M.’ If you want comic book agents, go somewhere else. Try one of the cowboy outfits. Good luck finding an agent who can understand the technical material involved well enough to know an alien weapon system from a bag of popcorn—and better luck still, finding one who won’t get you involved in Martian drug dealing to finance the operation. Or have you forgotten that not-so-little scandal?”
The Security Adviser winced. As well he might. The President, then the serving Vice-President, had almost failed of election due to that mess—and Jensen’s predecessor had lost his job.
Having made his point, Hughes eased up the chill and went back to his usual affability. “Look, George, here’s the simple truth, bitter as it may be. My people are civil servants. Strip away their training, skills, and the fact that sometimes their job puts them in dangerous situations, they’re not much different from your neighborhood postman. You want Jeffrey Berkowitz? Fine. Reinstitute the draft and conscript him. Failing that—no? you don’t want to open that can of worms, either? didn’t think so—then I wish you equally good luck getting him to accept this assignment. We’re talking about a man who has three children still living in his home. You want Morris Knight? No sweat. Just find an instant cure for his wife’s kidney condition and somebody to take care of his two kids. Do you really think you—or me, if I was stupid enough to try—could talk either one of them into leaving their families for a period of several years, at least two of which they won’t even be on the planet Earth any longer? And if they refuse, then what are you going to do? Neither of them are under military discipline and we’re not at war, anyway. They’ll just quit. With their skills and background, I can guarantee you they’ll have jobs within a week that pay them twice as much as they’re making now.”
Jensen’s jaws tightened. After a moment, he turned to face Madeline.
“And what about you, Ms. Fathom? Are you willing?”
While the director and the NSA had been having their little contretemps, Madeline had been pondering the same question. Not so much to find the answer—that was pretty much a given—but simply to find out how she felt about it.
She was...
Excited as all hell. Mars!
“Yes, sir,” she replied stoically. “I’m willing.”
The next ten minutes or so were taken up by a long lecture from the National Security Adviser explaining to Madeline the imperative necessities of national security, the supreme importance of her assignment to the fate of the nation, and the sublime nature of that nation itself.
Madeline put up with it, easily enough. Early in her career, she’d spent considerable time at public ceremonies and she knew the little tricks for getting through a long blast of hot air with no damage, when she had no security duties to keep her mind occupied. The one she favored most, which she used on this occasion also, was reciting the ingredients to her favorite recipes for bouiallabaise. She was partial to bouiallabaise, so she had eight of them. Enough to get her through most episodes of pointless windbaggery.
Throughout, of course, she maintained The Expression flawlessly. The one that she’d learned as part of her training and later experience in the field, and, like all agents she knew, considered every bit as essential when dealing with politicians and bureaucrats as body armor was in dealing with desperate armed criminals. The Expression combined Personal Probity of Character and Concern for the Public Welfare in equal proportions, with a generous admixture of Calm Certainty That We Can Do The Job and just that little needed soupcon of Eagerness To Tackle The Assignment.
When Jensen was finally done, his earlier hostility toward Madeline seemed to be on vacation for a while. A short holiday, at least. She was not surprised. From long experience, she knew that the period immediately after giving a pompous and officious speech was as relaxing and satisfying for bureaucrats of Jensen’s type as the aftermath of orgasms was for most people.
He rose, nodded to her, and left the room. He did not, of course, offer to shake hands.
“What a prick,” she said dispassionately, after he was gone. She made no attempt to keep the director from hearing. She knew full well that his own opinion of Jensen was no higher than hers, even though he’d never said anything explicitly. The entire current administration, for that matter, was held in no high regard by Hughes.
The director just smiled at her. “Ah, Madeline. Think what a disaster your career would have been if you’d gone into the Foreign Service and tried to become a diplomat.”
“Could have been worse. I could have followed my first inclination and joined the Secret Service. Then spent my whole working life listening to speeches like that. And maybe—fate worse than death—had to take a bullet to let the windbag keep prattling.”
He laughed, softly. “Aren’t you glad, now, that I saved you in time?”
“Pretty much. I’ve still got a bit of a grudge over Antarctica. I don’t mind horrible conditions, and I can accept wasting half a year of my life. Putting the two together was a bit much.”
“Well, look on the bright side. This new assignment will take a lot longer chunk of your life, and the conditions could definitely get worse than even Antarctica. But whatever else it’ll be, it won’t be a waste of your time.”
“No, it certainly doesn’t sound like it. How much authority will I have?”
“As much as you need.”
She cocked her head skeptically.
“No, Madeline, I mean it. The reason the National Security Adviser insisted on sitting in on this meeting was because your assignment will be specifically authorized by the President. We’re not going to have to work through the usual cut-outs on this one.”
She pursed her lips in a soundless whistle. “I’ll be damned. I would have thought hell would freeze over first.”
“Don’t overdo it. Whatever else, they are not stupid. They can’t afford to play games with this one, and they know it. Even if the knowledge is making them choke a little.”
The director picked up a large envelope on his desk. “This is your confirmation as head of security for the entire project. It’s already got the President’s signature on it. Jensen was here in case he decided to yank it at the last minute. Which—ha! by the skin of your teeth, you disrespectful hoyden—he didn’t. I’ll see to it that General Deiderichs gets a copy.”
Madeline nodded. “All right. I assume you want me to start immediately.”
“Magnanimously, I shall pretend I didn’t hear that. Your flight to Albuquerque is already booked. Five hours from now, so don’t dawdle.”