“Is that right? I heard otherwise.”
“I don’t really care what you heard, Mason.”
Quantrell laughed. “Well, don’t keep the lady waiting, Pete. I’m sure she has lots to tell you.”
He strode down the hall, and Bunting watched him every step of the way until the aide touched his shoulder, which made him jump.
“Secretary Foster will see you now, Mr. Bunting.”
He was ushered into the large corner office where the polycarbonate glass allowed in ample sunlight, but never a bullet. He sat across from the woman. She was dressed in pale blue—her favorite color, Bunting had observed. Ellen Foster was forty-five, divorced, childless, as ambitious as he was, and brilliant. That was just the way it was. The filter became incredibly picky at this level. She was also blond, slender, and attractive, and she could gallop the range from iron maiden to feminine flirt with ease. That didn’t hurt, either, in this city where honey and vinegar were often used as aphrodisiacs.
Foster, the secretary of Homeland Security—a recent innovation prompted by 9/11—nodded at Bunting with an unreadable expression. She was an excellent tactician, he knew. She sat atop the largest security agency in the country. It had swallowed turf and budget dollars like a giant vacuum cleaner. This had caused a lot of envy from other agencies that resented the new kid on the block’s heft and reach. But it was the new world, and Foster was the newest member of the Cabinet. She had the president’s ear and confidence. When the person in the White House had your back, you were platinum. Foster knew this, of course. She could afford to appear cooperative and magnanimous to her competitors. For in the end, she knew she would come out on top.
Foster rose to greet him. “Peter, good to see you. Family well?”
“Yes, Secretary Foster, all well. Thank you.”
She motioned to the couch and chairs set against one wall. A pot of coffee and cups were on the table there. “Let’s relax a bit. This isn’t a formal meeting, after all.”
This gave Bunting no comfort at all. More professional executions occurred at informal meetings than did at the official ones.
They sat.
“I saw Mason Quantrell out in the hall.”
“Yes, I suppose you did.”
“Anything interesting going on with Mercury?”
She smiled and pushed the sugar bowl toward him. Obviously no answer to that was coming.
“He doesn’t know about…?” said Bunting.
“Let’s focus on you, Peter.”
“Okay.”
He had just placed the cup to his lips when she struck.
“The vaunted E-Program has obviously crashed off the tracks.”
He swallowed too large a mouthful of coffee and tried to keep his eyes from watering as the liquid burned his throat. He set the cup down, sponged his lips with his cloth napkin.
“We have issues, yes, but I wouldn’t say that we’ve crashed.”
“How would you describe it?” she asked pointedly.
“We’ve gone off course, but we are working hard to get back on. And I—”
She held up a finger, silencing him. Foster lifted a phone and spoke three words. “The reports, please.”
Moments later an efficient-looking aide delivered the folder to her. She leisurely turned the pages as Bunting stoically watched. He wanted to say, You still use paper files? How quaint. But he didn’t dare.
She said, “The report quality has degraded considerably. Usable intel from the E-Program has fallen thirty-six percent. The reports are a mess. The dots are not being connected like they were. You told me the operation would not be measurably impacted. It clearly has.”
“It’s true that the bar has been set very high. But I—”
She broke in again. “Now, you know you have no bigger supporter than me.”