Chapter One
Duty Station
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Office of the National Security Advisor
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, 29 November 1994
1000 Hours, Local
Major Peter J. Newman, U.S. Marines, reporting as ordered, sir."
"You don't have to call me, 'sir,' Major. I'm a civilian," replied the President's National Security Advisor seemingly absorbed by the papers on his desk. For more than a minute he never looked up.
Major Peter Newman was a startling contrast to the
bloated and disheveled man in the two-thousand-dollar Armani suit seated before him. The Marine stood just over six feet and was trim and muscular. He was thirty-eight but looked much younger. His only "blemishes" were a broken nose that he'd earned during the second round of a Naval Academy boxing match and a two-inch scar above his left eyebrow made from a piece of hot shrapnel during the Gulf War. Major Newman stood at rigid attention in front of the desk.
Dr. Simon Harrod looked up at the ramrod-straight
Marine standing in front of him, eyes fixed at the wall in the space above Harrod's head. Harrod was annoyed. Apparently letting this military martinet cool his well-polished heels for two hours in the West Wing reception lobby hadn't done much to instill timidity. He decided to put this Marine in his place right away.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you, not the wall! In this administration, we don't go for all that military mumbo jumbo!" Harrod barked.
"Whatever you say, sir."
It wasn't that Simon Harrod, Ph.D., disliked military
men. Like the President, he loathed them. He'd had his fill of these close-cropped, cleanly shaven boneheads
when he had been a professor of international studies at
Harvard's Kennedy School. Now the grossly overweight,
rumpled, former antiwar activist had a dozen
high-ranking Army, Navy, and Air Force officers toiling
for him on the National Security Council staff. And he
knew that behind his back, they contemptuously referred
to him as "Jabba the Hutt." He didn't care. He was content that now they had to dance to the beat of his drum or their careers were finished.
"Sit down." The Marine did as ordered, and Harrod went back to perusing the Officer's Qualification Record and Confidential Personnel Summary before him in the disarray of his desk. Newman's "short" bio ran seven pages, and the National Security Advisor took his time with it even though he already knew everything he needed to know about the officer now sitting as stiffly as he'd been standing. Without looking up, Harrod ticked off the high points: "You're a regular military machine aren't you, Newman? Father is a retired Army brigadier . mother was an Army nurse . born at the post hospital at Fort Drum, New York . graduate of the Naval Academy . served in Grenada, Beirut, Panama, Desert Storm." Newman said nothing as Harrod continued reading.
"It says here that you didn't want this assignment, Major Newman. Why?"
"I'd rather be commanding Marines, sir."
"I told you not to call me 'sir.' I thought Marines were capable of following a simple order."
"What do you want me to call you - Mr. Harrod?"
"Dr. Harrod will do," said Jabba the Hutt. Newman nodded but said nothing, so Harrod went back to the file and the Personnel Summary and started asking questions to which he already had the answers.
"You're married. What does your wife do?" asked Harrod in a more conciliatory tone.
"She's a flight attendant."
"Children?"
"No."
"You talk to your wife about your work?"
"Not if I'm not supposed to," replied the Marine.
"Well, here you're not supposed to. You got it?" Newman nodded, knowing as he did so that he and his wife were barely speaking about anything of significance anyway, so this directive hardly mattered.
"What year did you graduate from Annapolis, Newman?"
"Class of '78."
"What was your class standing?"
"Number 143, top 15 percent."
"It says here you were 'deep selected for captain and
major.' What's 'deep selected' mean?"
"I was promoted early, as they say, 'ahead of my peers.'"
"Is that because you have the Navy Cross and a Purple
Heart from Desert Storm?" Harrod asked with a thinly disguised sneer.
"I don't know."
"Well, I'm not impressed. If you guys had done the
job right, we wouldn't have this mess on our hands with
Saddam Hussein."
Once more Newman didn't reply, so Harrod again
buried himself in the officer's paperwork for a full five
minutes. The Marine looked around the well-appointed
office. Thick carpet. Nice furniture. Three phones.
Large mahogany desk covered with piles of paper, many
bearing classified cover sheets labeled TOP SECRET.
Several bore the additional admonition EYES ONLY
FOR THE PRESIDENT. On the walls, an eclectic collection
of what appeared to Newman's unschooled eye
to be original artwork: he recognized some of them - a
Wyeth nude, a Remington landscape, and several modern
pieces that he didn't recognize. Behind the cluttered
desk was a watercolor of uncertain origin, depicting
what could only be the grisly violence of General
George Armstrong Custer's final moments at the Little
Big Horn.
The National Security Advisor looked up to see Newman
staring at the painting. "It's by a Native American artist. I got the idea from Hafez al Assad. In his presidential
palace in Damascus, he has a painting of Saladin and the Saracens butchering crusaders. It reminds his visitors whom they are dealing with. I put this one here to remind all you green- and blue-suit types how stupid and costly military operations can be."
Harrod glanced down at the file and then back at Newman .
(Continues.)
