Top Hook. Gordon Kent

ugly, she thought. Look out, people. She was representing her new boss on a committee where everybody else knew each other, and, as the new kid on the block, she found it best simply to listen and watch. And the one she watched was Shreed.

      The memorial service was at eleven. She had debated not going but had decided that her own bitterness was better hidden, so she would go and be solemn. Now, the committee chair, Clyde Partlow, kept looking at his watch to make sure he wound things up in time to get there, too. They all had copies of the agenda, which he forced with the brutality of a cowhand pushing cattle through a chute. Shreed said almost nothing.

      Then they got to “Security in the 21^st Century,” and Shreed went through the ceiling. His face flushed a dark, ugly red, and his eyes got bigger and his lips pulled back to show his teeth.

      “How dare we discuss security when our own Internal Investigations can’t stand the heat being turned up by one goddam accused spy!” he shouted. The meeting had been very low-key, and his voice made people jump.

      It wasn’t like Shreed to shout. What the hell, she thought. Had grief deranged him?

      “Afraid I don’t follow you, George,” Partlow said, checking his watch and making sure that the proper note of respect for the bereaved rang in his voice.

      “Peacemaker! Two years ago! It tanked because somebody tipped the French and the Libyans, and now our goddam Internal Investigations doesn’t give enough of a shit to pursue it!”

      Other people thought this was odd behavior, too. She could hear it in the silence, in the changed breathing.

      “Uh, well, George, that’s certainly a serious matter. Maybe you ought to share your concerns with—”

      “I’m sharing my goddam concerns with you, Clyde! You’ve got Security in the 21^st Century on your agenda, or is that just a Partlow nod to trendiness? Goddamit, Peacemaker was my project and you know it, and I’ve never had the support I’m entitled to!”

      He’s trading on his wife’s death, she thought, and then, For Christ’s sake, give him the benefit of the doubt; the man’s so upset he’s lost it. But if he wanted to behave badly and be forgiven, he had the perfect opportunity, she thought. Partlow was more or less Shreed’s superior, but, like everybody, he was afraid of Shreed, plus Partlow was a placator and a fence-mender. She knew Shreed’s tactics, and, damn it, what he was doing was using his bereavement to force Partlow to action.

      Plus, she thought, Shreed really was angry. Enraged, in fact.

      “What would you have us do?” Partlow said. He glanced around at the other members of the committee, who were trying to escape by not looking at him.

      “I’d have us goddam well tell Internal Investigations they can’t dump a spy charge just because some smartass inside-the-Beltway lawyer holds a flame to their assholes! Look!” He began to tap the table with a long finger. “You approved Peacemaker! This committee approved Peacemaker! It failed! Why? Because word leaked out and the international community of peace-loving, no-balls, third-world nations bitched to the White House! Now we’re on the track of finding out who and why, and Internal says to their suspect, ‘Oh, we didn’t really mean it, sorry, we’ll just back off and you can go betray some other project!’ Eh? Well?”

      Partlow checked his watch. “If you have a recommendation, George—”

      “Yeah, I recommend we shove a poker up our ass so we have some backbone.”

      “Oh, George—”

      “All right, I recommend we vigorously protest to Internal their canceling of this investigation, and we go on record with the Director that they continue or show cause why not, which won’t sit well because they’re already in the Director’s shit book because of past failures. Okay?”

      “Is that a motion, George?”

      “You bet.”

      A tall man from Ops seconded it with a louder voice than seemed called for. Sally wanted to say that she didn’t understand the motion because she didn’t know what or whom Internal was investigating, but either everybody else knew or they were so snowed by Shreed’s grief that they didn’t dare ask. The motion passed on a voice vote.

      What the hell is he up to? she asked herself.

      When the meeting was adjourned, she lingered. Shreed had gone right to Partlow and was hammering at him about the thing. Even though he’d won, he wanted more. “Now, Clyde, do it now! I don’t give a good goddam if you’re late for Janey’s memorial service, what d’you think I do, take attendance at the door? You want to show some sympathy, get on the line to the head of Internal, he’s a buddy of yours, tell him we’re not taking No for an answer, either he reinstates the Siciliano investigation or he’s dead. Dead, d-e-a-d, as in one too many failures! Do it!”

      Siciliano, she thought. That’s the name of Alan Craik’s wife. What the hell? Sally had been there when the rift between Shreed and Craik had opened, something about an event in Africa years ago. Was Shreed still angry, was that what all this was about? Was he trying some petty revenge on Alan Craik through the man’s wife?

      “Goddamit, just do it!” she heard Shreed shout.

      The man’s ballistic. But why?

      NCIS HQ, Washington.

      Mike Dukas was sitting at a borrowed desk in an office already being used by somebody else. The desk wasn’t really a desk, only an old typing table from the days of IBM Selectrics, and the chair was a mismatched typing chair that already hurt his back.

      “You Dukas?” a voice said. He looked across the room. A black male agent was holding up a telephone.

      “Yeah.”

      “Phone call.” He held out the telephone. “Make it quick, will you? I live on that thing.”

      Dukas took the call standing by the guy’s desk. “Dukas.”

      “Dukas, it’s Menzes. CIA Internal Investigations.”

      “Yeah, yeah, I remember.”

      “The deal’s off.”

      “Hey—”

      “We had a go, then we had no-go. From the top: no deal, definitely pursue, by the book. Your lawyer lady wants to go public, that’s her prerogative; it won’t change a thing.”

      Dukas was thinking hard. He couldn’t see what had changed the dynamics, but he was a realist; if Menzes said the deal was dead, it was dead. “You kicking it to us?” he said.

      “Exactly. ‘By the book,’ that’s what I was told, and the book says it’s the Navy’s to pursue.”

      “We oughta talk.”

      “Nothing’ll change, man. This isn’t my doing. But, yeah, there may be things to talk about. This case—”

      “What?”

      “I don’t want to talk on an open phone.”

      “Jesus, Menzes, this is gonna hit the woman hard.”

      “It hit me hard; I don’t like to be second-guessed.” Menzes was angry. He was a standup guy, a hardnose, and somebody above him had jerked his chain.

      “We’re talking everything here? No change of orders? She goes to Big Turd, West Virginia? No Houston?”

      “Back to square one. Only it’s NCIS’s baby now.”

      “Yeah, but we wouldn’t—” Dukas gave up; there was no point in going over it again. But he wanted to talk to Menzes, so he arranged to meet him next day at someplace called the Old Commonwealth Tavern, aka “the Agency Annex.” When Dukas hung up, the black agent said, “Oh,