War of Eagles by Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik, Jeff Rovin Page B

handle, Rodgers was finally able to call the White House switchboard. They put him right through. That was how Rodgers knew that Hood was reporting to the Oval Office. He had been given cabinet-level treatment. Someone had literally walked his extension information to the switchboard rather than E-mailed it, where it might go unattended for hours. The name Paul Hood had been placed before the bank of operators so they knew who he was, where he was, and what his title was.
    It also puts the president’s fingerprints all over Hood, Rodgers reflected. Unlike Op-Center, where a man was measured by his abilities, Hood’s fate was tied to that of the new chief executive. Whatever Hood himself did, he could be elevated or scapegoated at the whim of Dan Debenport.
    “This is Paul Hood.”
    “Christ, Paul. Didn’t they even give you an assistant?”
    It took a moment for Hood to place the voice. “Mike?”
    “It is,” Rodgers replied. “Bob told me where to find you.”
    “Jeez, I’m glad he did! How the hell are you?”
    “I’m doing terrific,” Rodgers assured him. “The change has been good for me.”
    “I can imagine,” Hood said. “Unexus ain’t small potatoes.”
    “No. Lots of starch here,” Rodgers joked, glancing at his jacket.
    “How does it feel being in the private sector for the first time?”
    “I’m happy, and my bank account is happy,” Rodgers admitted. “Speaking of changes—”
    “Yeah. This is a big one. A sudden one,” Hood said.
    “Are you okay?”
    “I’m tucked in the corridors of power without an assistant,” Hood said. “I’m told there will be a couple of them waiting in my other office down the road. An office that has a window, I hope.”
    “That would be nice,” Rodgers said. He had a fleeting screw you moment as he looked out his own large floor-toceiling window. The Washington Monument rose in the distance, stone white against a cloudless blue sky.
    “Bob tells me you’re enjoying what you’re doing,” Hood went on.
    “I’m still fighting with powers from across the sea but usually with less bloodshed,” Rodgers said. The banality of this conversation was painful. Still, after six months of silence the quasi-hail-fellow-well-met dialogue was necessary. “So what can you tell me about this new position of yours?”
    “Not a hell of a lot, yet,” Hood said. “ New is the operative word. The job is just some five or six hours old.”
    “Has it got a title?”
    “A lofty-sounding one. I’m special envoy to the president.”
    “Which is what, exactly?” Rodgers asked.
    “Well, I’m still a bit unclear about that,” Hood admitted. “The position was described as ‘an international intelligence troubleshooter, unaffiliated with any group but with access to the resources of all of them.’ ”
    “What about political access through the president?”
    “You mean working heads of state?” Hood asked.
    “Exactly. In particular, I wonder if that includes getting the ear of the Chinese prime minister?”
    “I don’t know. Does it pertain to intelligence troubleshooting?”
    “It does,” Rodgers said.
    “Impacting the private or public sector?”
    “Public there, private here.”
    “ ‘Here’ meaning Unexus.”
    “Right,” Rodgers said.
    “Maybe you had better give this to me from the top,” Hood suggested.
    Paul Hood had never been an evasive, cover-your-ass bureaucrat, and that was not what was happening here. He sounded like a man who really did not know the mechanics, let alone the parameters of his job. Since it had only been in existence for one morning, that was understandable.
    Rodgers told him what had happened with Le Kwan Po and the Xichang space center and the exclusion of the Guoanbu from the equation. Hood seemed surprised to hear that. Unlike Washington, Chinese intelligence agencies shared information with each other and with the impacted ministries.
    “What you really need to know is whether the prime minister has specific