“I refuse to believe that,” Millikan shot back.
“Yes, mon vieux, I know. And that is why I’m going home to put on a military uniform and you are going—as I hear it—back to the university.”
“You and I both know that we will be back. We will have another day.”
Tariq Aziz leaned back, looked at Millikan, and chuckled. “Of course we will.”
Within moments he was gone, talking on his cell phone. Dellinger fell in beside Millikan as he strolled out into the Place de la Concorde.
“She was right,” Millikan said.
“Pardon me?”
“Betsy Vandeventer. She had it exactly right: the Iraqi strategy was to use biological weapons to force Israel into the war, thus destroying the coalition. Very clever strategy. Very nice analysis on Ms. Vandeventer’s part.”
Dellinger seemed stunned and confused. “Would you like me to put a commendation in her file?”
“I’d like you to hire her,” Millikan said.
“Hire her?”
“Yes. Now that she has a clearer understanding of how the chain of command works, she’ll be an excellent addition to my staff.”
Dellinger grinned. “I’ll get right on it, sir.”
“She despises me,” Millikan said, “but she’s human. So figure out what she wants, and make her an offer she can’t refuse.”
January 1991
Chapter Fifty-Five
Just getting on I-66 and heading west seemed too easy, and Betsy had forgotten how to do anything easy and straightforward. So she took to smaller streets and wandered, keeping the sun generally on her left. She drove through Arlington National Cemetery, got caught in the swirl of traffic around the Pentagon, and ended up blundering southward into the city of Alexandria: first a dangerous-looking border neighborhood, but then into Alexandria proper, with its beautiful curving streets of lovely southern mansions, well-endowed churches, and private schools, all surrounded by nicely tended azaleas and dogwoods that would explode into bloom sometime later, after she had left thecity behind.
“You want me to get out the map?” said the man in the passenger seat, a big man in jeans and a flannel shirt, who had been shifting uncomfortably and biting his tongue as Betsy wandered aimlessly around northern Virginia. “We’re never going to see Steptoe Butte at this rate.”
“What’s your hurry?” she said. Both of them had two months’ severance pay coming in, and Betsy had just got her security deposit back in full.
Paul Moses leaned his seat back in resignation, reached out with one long arm, and turned on the radio. He began punching the scan button and soon found a news station, which was doing a live phone interview with a reporter in Baghdad. The bombing was going to start any day now.
“What do you think?” he said. “Where should we stay tonight? I was thinking maybe Colonial Williamsburg.”
“There’s only one landmark I want to reach today,” Betsy said, “and there it is.”
They were headed west on Duke Street, which turned into the Little River Turnpike. Up ahead of them a tangle of ramps surrounded the approaches to a massive, ten-lane overpass, the beltway that ringed the city and marked—in some sense—the town limits of Washington, D.C. All ten lanes, in both directions, were filled with traffic, and traffic was stalled. Betsy accelerated above twenty miles an hour for the first time all day—although the rented car, burdened with much luggage and pulling a U-Haul trailer, didn’t have much zip. As they passed through the shadow of the overpass, she suddenly let out a most un-Betsy-like Indian war whoop. And then they emerged into the bleak January sunlight again.
Stalled motorists on the outer ring of the beltway had the monotony of their morning commute broken by an unusual sight: a westbound car and trailer pulling onto the shoulder of Little River Turnpike just below them, and a couple of heavyset people in comfortable, rumpled clothing jumping out, throwing their arms around each other, and exchanging a long kiss. After a few moments the novelty of this sight wore off, and they turned up their radios to hear the latest report from the Gulf.
February
Chapter Fifty-Six
It was three thirty-seven A.M., and for once Maggie was asleep. She had got to be a pretty good sleeper in the last few months. Clyde was prouder of this fact than anything. Out of all the hundreds of baby books, Clyde, through lengthy reading and scrutiny, had picked out the one that worked.