On the streets of D.C. various functionaries walked with their raincoats on and heads down, chains bearing their badges giving them identity and value in the city. The Agency people looked with some disdain on these hoi polloi civil servants. They had been told that the Agency was the crème de la crème of Washington, a veritable elite knighthood, and they didn’t wear their IDs in the outside world. When Betsy presented her credentials at the Ag security desk, she was waved through with some deference.
On the third floor of the south building another security checkpoint loomed. Beyond it was the specially recrafted “secure conference room.” She was still ten minutes early, but all the chairs at the large oval table were filled, except for the one reserved for the Agency.
She reached into her purse and found an asthma inhaler. Feeling conspicuous in the hallway, she ducked into a side corridor.
As the burst of expensive pharmaceuticals expanded into her lungs, she was startled by a dry, smoky-sounding voice from nearby. “You should get yourself a carburetor for that thing.”
She coughed uncontrollably, forgetting to cover her mouth. “Excuse me. I’m sorry, what did you say?”
He was a worn-looking gentleman in a nice enough suit, the skin of his hands and face mottled, blotched, and lumped with age, cigarette smoke, alcohol, stress, and other malign influences. “Hi, I’m Betsy Vandeventer,” she said, stepping forward and extending her hand.
“From the Agency,” he said, shaking it. Betsy was startled to smell a strong odor of booze on his breath.
“Is it that obvious?”
By way of an answer he said, “I’m Hennessey.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Oh.” Hennessey was infamous in the Agency.
“Pleased to meet you.”
“You don’t have to say that. Anyway, about that carburetor.” He reached into the hip pocket of his jacket and drew out a white plastic cylinder about the dimensions of a beer can. From the opposite pocket he took out an inhaler, loaded up with the same brand of asthma medication that Betsy used. He fitted the outlet of the inhaler into one end of the “carburetor” and put the other end to his lips. “See, you spray the stuff into the carb. Then you inhale. Gives you better aerosolization. Or some shit like that. Jesus, isn’t the Agency providing you guys with decent health care anymore?”
Hennessey was a spy gone bad. Turning his back on a distinguished career, he had left the gentlemen’s club of the CIA and gone to work for the FBI, in the counterintelligence division. His job, in effect, was to investigate CIA employees and ruin their careers or throw them in prison on whatever pretext he could dig up. He had become a bogeyman of sorts in Agency folklore; Betsy was a little scared just to be talking to him.
“Well, excuse me, Mr. Hennessey, but I don’t want to be late for my meeting.”
“Hell, me neither,” Hennessey said, and fell into step with her. They presented their credentials at the security checkpoint and were waved through into the room. Betsy had been relegated to the status of wall-creeper as the result of King’s last-minute inclusion, so she chose a chair against the wall near King’s place at the table—which was still conspicuously vacant. Hennessey, unnervingly, sat next to her.
She wasn’t the only wall-creeper. Word had rapidly spread that Millikan himself was going to show up from the White House, and several division chiefs had been aced out of their chance for glory by their superiors.
She should have been thinking about her twin assignments—officially, supporting King with facts and figures, and unofficially, making observations that she’d later relay to Spector. In the latter category Hennessey’s presence there was certainly interesting. What on earth did he have to do with Ag Department credits to Iraq?
It was well-known that Hennessey and Millikan despised each other. Millikan was a noted Harvard professor who periodically came down to Washington, first to serve in the Kennedy administration and later—after becoming a leading light of the neoconservative movement—for Ford, Reagan, and Bush.
Undersecretary of Agriculture Larry McDaniel’s executive secretary scurried into the room and announced, “Dr. Millikan is meeting with Dr. McDaniel, so the session will not start for fifteen minutes. I know you are all extremely busy today, and Dr. McDaniel extends his apologies. He hopes that in light of the renewed importance of this meeting, you will understand. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering in some coffee and muffins, so please take what you want.”
For most of the apparatchiki at the meeting her announcement was a very good thing indeed. Not only would they finally be in on Something Big before it was reported in the Post, they would have the chance to munch on the High Fiber Department’s muffins, widely known as the best in the District.