Free The Threat by David Poyer Page A

lawyer and, according to the whispering gallery, a left-handed nephew of one of the Dulles brothers, Allen or John Foster. There was an aging columnist whose picture Dan had seen in the papers since his childhood. A laughing woman surrounded by admiring men; he recognized her as a hot star.
    â€œHalle Berry,” Blair whispered. She had a gaga smile he’d never seen before, and he realized she was starstruck. It made him grin. Who’d have thought?
    She started to move, towing him behind her like an energetic tugboat with a balky barge. She introduced him to senators, floor assistants, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, the SecDef general counsel. He strained to remember names, but didn’t obsess. He remembered when he’d hated parties. This wasn’t so bad. When she excused herself to use the ladies’ room he stood absently swirling the ice-melt in his glass, watching Berry and wondering if he should go over and make pleasant.
    â€œWhy, is it Daniel V? I think it is. Is that you?”
    He took a tighter grip on his OJ and tonic. He’d wondered when and where he’d run into her again. “Sandy. What a pleasant surprise.”
    Sandy Cottrell had been in his postgraduate class at George Washington. There’d been something there, but not romance, despite Cottrell’s frictioning his crotch with her bare toes on the dais of the Ways and Means Committee hearing room. With her flushed cheeks—she sweated even when it was cold out—her over-the-edge manner, her spacy laugh, he’d always suspected she was on something stronger than the hand-rolled cigarettes she chain-smoked.
    A decade had not been unkind. But she’d gone glossy, as if sealed over with some transparent lacquer. Her blond hair was expensively cut. Her perfume was even stronger than it had been years before. She wore a diamond-studded Rolex and was smoking, but now it was a filter tip.
    He gestured at it. “What’s this? You used to smoke that ragweed stuff—”
    â€œDouwe Egberts. But smoking hand rolls isn’t good for the image.”
    â€œYou never worried about your image before.”
    â€œYou’ve got to be the most unobservant son of a bitch I’ve ever met,” Cottrell deadpanned. He saw that, as usual, she gave the impression of being three sheets to the wind.
    â€œWhatever happened to you and Professor F?” he asked her, trying to crack through the gloss.
    â€œI know you thought I was fucking him for the grade. But that actually turned out okay. We even still like each other.”
    â€œI never thought you were fucking him for a grade, Sandy.”
    â€œWhat did you think I was fucking him for?”
    â€œSo, what are you doing now?”
    â€œI’m in Congress,” she told him. “Remember the guy I used to type for? The guy who tried to put rubber in the asphalt? He got caught buying ad space for a citizens’ committee that didn’t exist. They had to come up with somebody fast, from a district that breeds more farmers than lawyers. Who better than his campaign committee chair? And the name’s not Cottrell anymore. It’s Treherne. That’s my man, over there talking to the guy in the sheet. He had a million to spare. The rest is mystery.”
    Her gaze shifted and Dan realized Blair was back. The two women traded evaluating looks. He said hastily, “Blair, this is an old friend of mine, Sandy Cottrell, I mean Sandy Treherne, recently elected to Congress from Tennessee. My wife—also undersecretary of defense for manpower and personnel.”
    â€œOh, yes. I’d heard … I won’t ask you what the difference between manpower and personnel is, if you won’t ask me if I ever bonked your husband,” Sandy said.
    Dan had thought absolute zero impossible, but Blair’s smile proved him wrong. “I’m so glad to meet you, Mrs. Treherne. Tennessee? What