Bob Holtzman, the senior White House correspondent for one of the Washington papers, settled into his chair opposite Cutter for the deep-background revelations. The rules were fully understood by both sides. Cutter could say anything he wished without fear that his name, title, or the location of his office would be used. Holtzman would feel free to write the story any way he wished, within reason, so long as he did not compromise his source to anyone except his editor. Neither man especially liked the other. Cutter's distaste for journalists was about the only thing he still had in common with his fellow military officers, though he was certain that he concealed it. He thought them all, especially the one before him now, to be lazy, stupid people who couldn't write and didn't think. Holtzman felt that Cutter was the wrong man in the wrong place - the reporter didn't like the idea of having a military officer giving such intimate advice to the President; more importantly, he thought Cutter was a shallow, self-serving apple-polisher with delusions of grandeur, not to mention an arrogant son of a bitch who looked upon reporters as a semiuseful form of domesticated vulture. As a result of such thoughts, they got along rather well.
"You going to be watching the convention next week?" Holtzman asked.
"I try not to concern myself with politics," Cutter replied. "Coffee?"
"Your guess is as good as - well, that's not true. We've had the bastards under surveillance for some time. My guess is that Emil was killed by one faction of the Cartel - no surprise - but without their having made a really official decision. The bombing last night might be indicative of a faction fight inside the organization."
"Well, somebody's pretty pissed," Holtzman observed, scribbling notes on his pad under his personal heading for Cutter. "A Senior Administration Official" was transcribed as
"Maybe they did."
"How'd they know that Director Jacobs was going down?"
"I don't know," Cutter replied.
"Really? You know that his secretary tried to commit suicide. The Bureau isn't talking at all, but I find that a remarkable coincidence."
"Who's running the case over there? Believe it or not, I don't know."
"Dan Murray, a deputy assistant director. He's not actually doing the field work, but he's the guy reporting to Shaw."
"Well, that's not my turf. I'm looking at the overseas aspects of the case, but the domestic stuff is in another office," Cutter pointed out, erecting a stone wall that Holtzman couldn't breach.
"So the Cartel was pretty worked up about Operation TARPON, and some senior people acted without the approval of the whole outfit to take Jacobs out. Other members, you say, think that their action was precipitous and decided to eliminate those who put out the contract?"
"That's the way it looks now. You have to understand, our intel on this is pretty thin."
"Our intel is always pretty thin," Holtzman pointed out.
"You can talk to Bob Ritter about that." Cutter set his coffee mug down.
"Right." Holtzman smiled. If there were two people in Washington whom you could trust never to leak anything, it was Bob Ritter and Arthur Moore. "What about Jack Ryan?"
"He's just settling in. He's been in Belgium all week anyway, at the NATO intel conference."
"There are rumbles on The Hill that somebody ought to do something about the Cartel, that the attack on Jacobs was a direct attack on -"
"I watch C-SPAN, too, Bob. Talk is cheap."
"And what Governor Fowler said this morning...?"
"I'll leave politics to the politicians."
"You know that the price of coke is up on the street?"
"Oh? I'm not in that market. Is it?" Cutter hadn't heard that yet.
"Not much, but some. There's word on the street that incoming shipments are off a little."
"Glad to hear it."
"But no comment?" Holtzman asked. "You're the one who's en saying that this is a for-real war and we ought to treat it such."
Cutter's smile froze on his face for a moment. "The President decides about things like war."
"What about Congress?"
"Well, that, too, but since I've been in government service there hasn't been a congressional declaration along those lines."
"How would you feel personally if we were involved in that bombing?"
"I don't know. We weren't involved." The interview wasn't going as planned. What did Holtzman know?
"That was a hypothetical," the reporter pointed out.
"Okay. We go off the record - completely - at this point. Hypothetically, we could kill all the bastards and I wouldn't shed many tears. How about you?"
Holtzman snorted. "Off the record, I agree with you. I grew up here. I can remember when it was safe to walk the streets. Now I look at the body count every morning and wonder if I'm in D.C. or Beirut. So it wasn't us, then?"
