Of course, that would have required Jensen to sit on a chair no larger or more comfortable than her own. Can't have that.
The director suddenly beamed at her. He was a short, plump man with iron-gray hair and good-natured features. The iron-gray hair was real; the good nature was off and on; and the beaming smile brought her to full alert.
This one's going to be a bitch.
The National Security Adviser spoke. "There's a . . . situation, Agent Fathom."
Politeness had its limits. "There's always a . . . situation. Honestly, why do people talk that way?"
Jensen's face tightened. The director laughed. "You'll have to excuse Madeline, George. As I told you, she came into our world from the wrong direction. Understands our language, but doesn't speak it at all."
So they'd already been discussing her, including her personal history. Madeline wasn't surprised, but the knowledge didn't make her any happier. Be a bitch got ratcheted up to be a pure bitch.
The director shifted his good cheer back onto her. "I assure you, Madeline, this one really is a . . . situation. Unique, I assure you.
Utterly unique. We need someone to be there to watch over our interests—our country's interests—when many of those there, even on our side, won't have nearly so, shall we say, clear a vision of what must be for the future."
Madeline was a bit relieved. While the director was often given to dramatic little speeches, he rarely indulged in hyperbole. The assignments she liked were those in which she was really dealing with important issues of national security. Unlike most of her assignments, she thought sourly. Which, stripped bare, usually involved nothing more substantive than the petty internecine warfare practiced by Washington's spaghetti bowl of competing bureaucracies and security and intelligence agencies.
She put up with the second for the sake of the first. The government might be everyone else's scapegoat, but Madeline Fathom owed it her life.
"Show me, sir."
"You have your VRD on? Excellent. Watch. And then we shall talk."
After she'd watched everything, she had to take off the VRD glasses to stare. "Are you serious, Director?"
"Never more so, my dear."
She shook her head in disbelief. "This thing cannot be kept secret long."
The National Security Adviser's expression had never quite lost the tightness that her earlier wisecrack had put on it. Now, it came back in full force.
"Let's not be defeatist about this, shall we?" he snapped.
Madeline gave Jensen a glance so quick it was almost rude. As if flicking away a fly with her eyes.
The director intervened. "George, save that silliness for public speeches, would you?"
Hughes was still smiling, but he was also letting the steel show. He'd been the director of the HIA through three and a half administrations—and both he and Jensen knew that he would still be the director when the current administration was gone. For over two decades, Hughes had done such a good job of balancing the demands of security with the need to tread lightly on the liberties of the public that even the HIA's critics were fairly civil in their attacks. The political classes in the nation's capital considered him well-nigh indispensable—a status that was definitely not enjoyed by national security advisers who'd held their position for less than two years.
"I told you already—Madeline is one of my three best agents, overall, and without a doubt the best one for this assignment. She's got a better technical education than Berkowitz or Knight, and, unlike them, she's single and has no family ties."
In the brief, silent contest of wills that followed, Jensen looked away first. "Still," he grumbled.
Hughes wasn't about to let him off the hook. "Still . . . what? I do hope that the President has no illusions that we can keep this situation a secret for more than another day or so—and that he understands the consequences if it appears to the public, when it does finally surface, as if we were trying to hide something."
His face now pinched, Jensen stared at the opposite wall and said nothing. Madeline knew the man was not actually stupid, so she was quite sure he understood the realities of political life. But "not stupid" and "faces facts readily" weren't the same thing. The Security Adviser was obviously still in the throes of the standard bureaucratic reaction to all unpleasant news—isn't there some rug we can sweep it under?
"You remember the endless ruckus over UFOs and Roswell Area 51?" Hughes' shoulders heaved in a soundless laugh. "Well, I can guarantee you that'll seem like the hushed tones of the audience in a fancy symphony hall compared to the hullaballoo you'll be facing— if there's even a hint that the administration tried to suppress the news beyond the initial few measures that any reasonable person will accept as minimal security precautions. And I won't even get into the international repercussions, since that's not really my province." Relentlessly: "But it is yours, isn't it?"