Free The Threat by David Poyer

the country needs.”
    Knight watched cigar smoke rise, silent. He seemed on the cusp of saying something else. But got up abruptly instead and walked Dan to the door. A handshake, briefer than the first, and he was on his way.
    *   *   *
    The car idled, crept forward, idled again. A Metro cop stood with hat pushed back and hands in his pockets. A marine guard bent to glance inside the Bentley ahead, then straightened and waved them on. Dan saw it had diplomatic plates.
    He was in blues, and it felt good to be back in them, but the marine still wanted to see his ID. He also managed an appreciative glance at Blair’s legs. Dan couldn’t blame him. She looked great in a short black cocktail dress. She knew what her legs looked like, and occasionally used a strategic glimpse of thigh to fluster and confuse.
    The vice president’s residence was a white Victorian with mansards. Dan thought it looked like a battleship, with its porch as a prow and the cupolaed turret as the bridge. More marines directed them where to park on a clipped lawn. Dan held Blair’s door. It wasn’t Halloween yet, but mist eddied from the porch as they approached, and creepy music. A skeleton twinkled with electric lights.
    â€œGood evening, how are you, thanks for coming … Oh, Blair, thanks for coming. And who’s this? Mr. Titus?”
    â€œDan, meet Geraldo B. Edwards. And Mrs. Edwards. Dan Lenson, Mr. Vice, currently serving on the NSC staff.”
    The vice president was short and peppery, with gray hair brushed straight back like Spiro Agnew’s. A former Disney executive, then junior senator from Florida, Geraldo B. Edwards had cratered on Super Tuesday after a bitter nomination fight. De Bari had picked him at the convention to balance the ticket. The office of the vice president was in the Old Executive, but Dan had never seen him there. Early in the term, Edwards, appearing on The Capital Gang with Al Hunt, had challenged the president’s decision to reduce troop levels in NATO. Since the First Commandment of the vice presidency was “Do not publicly disagree with the president,” Edwards hadn’t spent much time around the Eighteen Acres since. The president kept him on the road with trade delegations, fundraising, and foreign funerals. The word was that Edwards was “out of the loop,” and there was no more scathing dismissal. The second lady was padded, powdered, and pleasant, and said absolutely nothing as she shook his hand with a slow, sweet smile that plainly conveyed Inside my head I’m far away.
    The house seemed empty, though guests were still arriving. They looked down into a tented annex set up in the garden, facing a back lawn and a wooded ravine. The guests were already deep into the drinks and buffet. Most were elderly or middle-aged. Many seemed to be foreigners, judging by the dashikis and thobes and saris among the black ties and long dresses. Dan even saw one tiny woman in a kimono.
    â€œSee anyone you know?” he asked Blair. She was fiddling with her earrings, a wrinkle between her eyebrows indicating mild annoyance.
    â€œI’m more interested in those I don’t know. Is that Milton Obote?”
    Dan wasn’t sure who that was. But the intellectual-looking officer by the garden exit was certainly the new deputy CNO for training, Admiral Contardi. Dan remembered briefing him in the cramped flag officer’s quarter of USS Cochrane before a strike into the littoral of Africa.
    In the foyer, shaking hands with the vice president, Mrs. Clayton sparkled like a garnet set in gold. Behind her Dan recognized Alicejames “Mokey” Revell, the secretary of state, a political general who’d served four presidents with steadily decreasing competence. So he’d be Dina White’s boss … “Big Jack” Weatherfield, the secretary of defense, the only African American in the cabinet. He was a former trial