Nature of the Game Read online

  “Hell, Wes,” said Noah. “You know you want to say yes! You ain’t a cubicle kind of guy.

  “’Sides,”—Noah leaned forward—“we’re good friends to have. There’s colonel up ahead, if you make the cut. You’re behind a lot of good men in cut-back times. War College would help. Good word on the Hill. Who knows what could come up?”

  “We’re making no promises,” Denton added quickly. “We want you to do an honorable job. For your country.”

  The three men stared at each other.

  “What if nothing is there?” said Wes.

  “If that’s what you find—and that’s what’s true”—Denton shrugged—“then we’re all better off.”

  “What if it is a bureaucratic shot? Zap the new DCI?”

  “We’ll deal with that,” said Noah.

  “What if it’s something more?”

  “Then you’ll be there to help us,” said Denton. “Help us help our country. You will be there, won’t you, Wes?”

  Again, silence drifted through the room.

  “Understand me,” Wes finally said. “I’ll do this job—if I believe some answers you’ll give me. But I’ll do it because it will be my job: no trades. Eagles land on my shoulders, I get them because I earned them, not because I bargained for them. Don’t do me any favors I don’t ask you for, and I’ll work for you.”

  “Then it’s a deal!” Denton smiled.

  “What questions?” said Noah.

  “Can you square this with the Corps?”

  “By Monday morning, I can horse-trade the Commandant to transfer you on detached duty to my personal staff.”

  “People at Langley won’t like it,” added Denton. “Trust none of them—not even Billy Cochran. Trust no one but Noah and me.

  “Work through Noah. Work it your way. We want no paper on it. No ties to the CIA. Use whatever resources you can scrounge. I can’t give you a ‘please assist’ letter. Tell no one more than you need to. Noah will arrange your expenses.”

  “Let’s be sure everyone knows his place,” said Wes. “I work for you. Not Noah. Am I to assume that whatever he tells me comes straight from you? Unedited? Unrefined? And what I send back gets there the same way?”

  Denton shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  “Noah has my full confidence,” he said.

  “I’ll assume he speaks directly for you. And if I have any doubts, I’ll go straight to you.”

  The Director looked at his longtime right-hand man.

  “I know about deniability, cutouts,” said Wes. “And getting left out in the cold.”

  “Oh, do you now?” said Noah.

  Denton waved his hand to calm his men.

  “You’ve got it,” said the DCI. “Of course.”

  “What if I get in trouble?” asked Wes.

  “Trouble’s not what this is about,” said Denton. “If there is trouble, it’s to end with you. This is a new era. The last thing America needs is another spy scandal. Understand?”

  “Yes sir,” said Wes.

  “Tell no one about tonight,” said Denton. “Be surprised. You’d be a logical selection, even if you weren’t who you are.”

  “Who am I?” asked Wes.

  “You’re the chosen one,” said Denton.

  The Director stood and his men followed suit. He shook hands with Wes.

  “Leave the uniform in your closet,” he told Wes.

  Wes’s shirt was soaked. He was exhausted.

  “Why are we doing this?” Wes asked.

  “Nature of the business.” Denton shrugged. “Bottom line? I need to know why that guy is so damned unimportant.”

  CHINA KINDA GUY

  Nick Kelley met Jud on a cool April 1976 morning, in Washington, D.C., while working as a muckraker for columnist Peter Murphy. Nick was typing on a battered Underwood manual in his cluttered office at the rear of a mansion seventeen blocks north of the White House, concentrating on his story about a stamped SECRET General Accounting Office study leaked to him by a Senate staff source. The GAO study suggested that the Pentagon was squandering $500 million on a missile system because Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wanted to use it as a bargaining chip with the Soviets at the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.

  “Excuse me,” said a man’s deep voice in the hall.

  Standing in the hall was a man who, unlike Nick, topped six feet tall. They both wore blue jeans. The man’s chest and biceps were so muscled his arms curled out from his sides like parentheses. A brown polo shirt strained across his shoulders. The man’s hair was ruddy, curly and shorter than Nick’s over-the-ears black locks. The stranger’s eyes were diamond blue.

  “You’re …,” said the man, hesitated; smiled. “You’re Nick Kelley. And you wrote a novel. Flight of the Wolf.”

  Nick blinked: How’d this guy get past the receptionist?

  “Am I right or am I right?” said the stranger.

  “Yes,” answered Nick. He turned away from the typewriter so that his body hid the security-stamped report on his desk.

  “See?” The man’s grin was infectious. “Told you so. I recognized you from the picture on the cover.”

  “No one’s ever done that before,” said Nick.

  “Interesting book,” said the stranger. “I know a little about that stuff—spies.”

  “Oh,” said Nick, big-time cool.

  “Yeah. I was in Special Forces.”

  “Really,” said Nick. In 1976, before he decided the Vietnam war was a tragedy, he’d flunked an Army ROTC enlistment physical. In the haunted world of heroes where Nick lived, he’d fantasized about being in the Army’s Special Forces, wearing the elite green beret. He’d read the books. Knew the words to the song about the unit that in 1966 climbed the rock charts. Reporting had taught him military jargon. “What were your MOS areas?”

  “I was primarily a zero seven. Intelligence.”

  “Really.” Nick didn’t know if “zero seven” meant anything.

  “We should get together sometime. Have dinner.”

  Nick shrugged.

  “My name is Jud,” said the stranger. “Jud Stuart.”

  “What are you doing here?” asked Nick.

  “Working in the building.” He smiled. “See you around.”

  Then he vanished.

  After hiding the SECRET report, Nick circled through the halls of what had once been a Victorian whorehouse.

  “Jenny,” he asked the receptionist slumped in a cigarette fog, “there’s this big guy, polo shirt and jeans, hanging around. Jud something. What’s he doing here?”

  “He’s a locksmith,” she said. “Fixing the doors.”

  There wasn’t a door in the mansion Jud didn’t work on that spring. One day he’d be there for four hours, the next day not at all. He’d run into Nick in the halls or stick his head in Nick’s office. He’d joke and cheerlead Nick and the other reporters into joining his amusement. He’d personalize news events: “Can you believe that shit? Blows my mind!” Then he’d toss a soft question for Nick to knock back with his Washington-insider bat. Jud’s questions implied the correct answer: “Was it isolated growing up in a small town in Michigan?” Nick fell into the habit of agreeing with him. And liking him, being charmed by a man who would laugh out loud in a city where everyone else hid their insanity. Most of all, Nick was awed by Jud’s churning energy.

  “He’s like a bear who’s swallowed a nuclear reactor,” Nick told one of the other reporters.

  “Does he glow in the dark?” asked Nick’s colleague.

  Jud never again brought up Special Forces or spies. Whenever Nick mentioned such topics, Jud sidestepped them.

  Besides working at the muckraker’s nationally syndicated column to satisfy his curiosity and social conscience, Nick was writing a novel about auto workers to satisfy his demons. Jud regularly repeated his dinner invitation. Nick truthfully kept telling him he was busy. Secretly, he wondered what he’d have in common with a locksmith, whether Jud was a jackal hoping
to feed off Nick’s fleeting fame. Or crazy.

  One 1976 Wednesday morning as April strolled toward May, Nick’s ancient Dodge wouldn’t start. He was thirty minutes late getting in to work. Nick slumped in front of the Underwood, trying to inspire himself to feed the news machine.

  “I was worried about you,” boomed Jud from the doorway.

  Nick told him about the car.

  “So you cabbed it in,” said Jud. Nick saw the idea light his face. “I got the company truck! I’ll finish about six, same as you. We can get something to eat, then I’ll drive you home.”

  “Well, I …”

  “We’re going to end up doing this sooner or later. Might as well make it easy on yourself, kill two birds with one stone.”

  And then Jud grinned. “You got a girl, right?”

  “Ah, yeah,” said Nick. “Yes.”

  “She doesn’t live with you, does she?”

  “Around the corner.” Nick shrugged. “Her choice.”

  “Like hell,” said Jud.

  And Nick had to laugh.

  “Must be tough,” said Jud. “You meet dozens of women who are knocked out by an author, even if they only know the movie of your book. Plus investigative reporters are cool these days. Am I right?”

  Nick blushed.

  “You chased her, got her, but longer and more ’n you imagined. She stuck with you when you were nothing, stays absolutely true, right? You don’t want to ever hurt her, but you’re a man, and from time to time …”

  “We have an understanding,” said Nick.

  “Anybody ever explain to you that you could be too loyal for your own good?”

  “Nobody I ever believed,” said Nick.

  “Same here,” said Jud. “You can end up bent out of shape by all that though, ’specially with women.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Nick.

  “Hell, I’m stuck, too! My lady’s crazier than me! Plus I keep seeing these women around town. Drives you nuts, doesn’t it?”

  “Can.”

  “We owe ourselves a night out with the boys, right?”

  I can tell Janey I’m with a source, thought Nick. Keep the mute terror out of her eyes. That’s potentially true. Why do I have to tell her anything? No more confessions.

  “Okay,” said Nick. He’d call Janey, tell her.

  “I’ll bring a couple things to show you.” Jud smiled. “You’ll get a kick out of them.”

  At 6:17, Nick was pacing his office, nervous that Jud wouldn’t show. And that he would. Just as he decided to tape a sorry note to the door, grab a cab home, Jud loomed in the hall. He’d changed his work shirt for a Hawaiian shirt with white sharks cruising on a blue background. He carried a red nylon gym bag.

  “There’s a cheap Spanish restaurant over on M Street,” said Jud. “What with parking and a beautiful night, we might as well walk. That’s okay with you, isn’t it?”

  “Sure,” Nick said politely. “Sure.”

  They were two blocks down Sixteenth Street, headed toward Scott Circle and the National Rifle Association’s glass and steel monolith, Jud laughing and lecturing about everything and nothing, when suddenly the big man halted.

  “There’s a friend of mine,” said Jud. “Got to say hello.”

  An old woman with a cane tapped her way toward them.

  “Mrs. Collin!” called out Jud, leading Nick toward her.

  Her cane rose as the two men hurried toward her.

  “Yes?” her voice was clear but tentative.

  “Don’t you remember me?” Jud asked her.

  She squinted.

  “I should wear my prescription sunglasses,” she said as the sunset shimmered on her wrinkled face.

  “You don’t even like wearing your regular glasses.”

  “That’s right.” The old lady frowned. “I know your voice, but …”

  “Imagine me in a suit and tie,” said Jud. “And about forty fewer pounds.”

  “Oh, my Lord!” A bright smile showed how pretty she once was. “Jud! I haven’t seen you … why, almost four years!”

  “We’ve both been busy.”

  “I’ve retired, you know,” she confided.

  “No! I didn’t.”

  “Thirty years. People shouldn’t work past their time. Block out you young folks.” Her lips tightened and her head shook. “Jud, your hair is too long!”

  “Gotta hide your losses.”

  The two old friends laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jud. “This is my friend Nick Kelley.”

  Mrs. Collin’s handshake was dry and firm.

  “Did you read the book Flight of the Wolf?” Jud asked. Nick felt his neck flush. “See the movie? Nick wrote that book.”

  “How very nice,” said the proper old woman.

  “Thank you,” said Nick, certain she’d experienced no consequence of his imagination, bored with this social encounter.

  “Mrs. Collin, tell Nick what you did. Where we met.”

  “I was a White House telephone operator,” she said. “Last five years, I was nightshift supervisor.”

  “Are you guarding the new President?” she asked Jud.

  The sidewalk opened under Nick’s feet.

  “I don’t work those assignments anymore,” answered Jud.

  “You Secret Service agents are all such lovely young men,” she said. “Come visit me. I’m in the phone book.”

  “If I get some time, of course I will,” said Jud.

  “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Kelley.” She smiled. “I shall look for you in the bookstore. I never forget a name.”

  With a farewell smile, she tapped her way up the street.

  “Secret Service?” Nick said to Jud.

  “Everyone was somebody before.” Jud roared with laughter, clapped Nick on the back so hard Nick staggered.

  “Surprised?” said Jud. Then he laughed again and lectured on nothing and everything as he led Nick to the café.

  “Really,” said Jud when they sat at the table, “Wolf was a good book. You wrote it young and made a lot up, didn’t you?”

  “It’s a novel.” Nick shrugged.

  “But it’s about something. I hate books that are about nothing.”

  “Me, too.”

  “What did you use? Two, three reference books about the CIA, faked the rest, right?”

  “I used what I could.” Nick wanted to yell that three years earlier, in 1973 when he was twenty-four, there were only three good books on the CIA and no one who’d talk. Certainly not in Michigan.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I liked it. It had an attitude.”

  The waiter put chilled mugs of beer on the table. Nick beat back his irrational impulses to storm out or beg forgiveness from this critical stranger. Jud took a long pull from his beer.

  “Hey!” said Jud, lifting the nylon gym bag from the floor to his lap. “Almost forgot.” He reached inside the bag.

  “You’re a writer,” he said, pulling out a thick gold metal pen, handing it to Nick. “What do you think of this pen?”

  “Looks fine.”

  “No, try it. Go ahead.”

  Nick sighed: Get it over with. He took the heavy metal pen. Twisted the top and the point emerged. He scrawled blue lines and circles on his white napkin.

  “Works.”

  “Does, doesn’t it?” said Jud, taking it back.

  He unscrewed the top. Unscrewed the cap holding the refill cartridge. Shook half a dozen sawtooth-ended, three-inch strips of metal onto the tablecloth.

  “Picking locks isn’t like in the movies.” Jud held up one of the metal strips. “This is a pick, small, but it’ll work. Lock-picking is a two-tooled job. You need a tension bar to pressure the bolt while you use the pick to manipulate the tumblers.”

  Jud stuck the jagged end of one of the picks crossways in a vise slot of the pen, tighted the grip.

  “The picks double as tension bars.” He handed the apparatus to Nick. “I made it myself.”

  If
you didn’t, thought Nick, turning the machine over in his finger, who did? Why do you have this?

  “I’ll teach you how to pick locks,” said Jud. “If you want.”

  “Sure!” said Nick.

  Jud smiled. “I need the pen.”

  The secret tool rested lightly in Nick’s hand, real metal of the kind that before tonight—before Jud—he’d only touched in his imagination or spun into his books. Reluctantly, he passed the pen to the man across the table. Jud turned his toys back into innocence just as the waiter delivered two steaming burrito dinners. Nick declined another beer, then so did Jud.

  “What did you do in the White House?” asked Nick.

  “During Watergate? I stayed out of jail.”

  Jud laughed; Nick joined him.

  “Who’d believe this world?” said Jud.

  “Seriously,” said Nick. “What about the Secret Service?”

  “Want to see my résumé?”

  Nick blinked. “Ah, sure.”

  From the gym bag came a printed sheet, with Jud’s suit-and-tied picture in the middle. Nick skimmed the lines: Army, Special Forces, Secret Service. Phrases like “technical security.”

  “That’s a piece of paper,” said Jud, folding it into the bag. “I used it once. Have you ever seen one of these?”

  Jud passed a hand-sized, red-covered folder to Nick.

  Who frowned, said, “A passport.”

  “A diplomatic passport,” corrected Jud.

  Nick leaned out of reach, opened the folder.

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” said Jud. He held out his hand.

  Nick flipped pages. Entrance and exit stamps. Someplace called—

  Gently, Jud lifted the folder from Nick’s fingers.

  “That’s interesting,” said Nick as the passport dropped into the red gym bag.

  A stunning blonde with a whiny coat-and-tied man in horn-rimmed glasses brushed past their table.

  “No, that’s interesting,” whispered Jud. He chuckled. Kept an arctic smile on the couple as they sat across the room.

  “Women,” said Jud. “They’re such bullshit, aren’t they?”

  So they talked about women, how beautiful they were and why the great ones always seemed to end up with jerks. The waiter laid the bill on the table. Jud reached for it, but Nick beat him.