By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

“Some candy ass in the State Department found out about you sending back-channel stuff?” Grasher asked.

“No, sir. I think I got away with that,” Miller said.

“Then what didn’t you get away with?”

“There have been no specific charges, sir,” Miller said. “I asked the milattaché, and he said I would be advised ‘in due course.’ ”

I really don’t like where this is going.

“What job were you relieved from? The attaché job or the agency?”

“Both, sir. And my security clearances have been revoked. He said he had been ordered to ‘implement my relief ’ by the ambassador, who also apparently told him to get me out of the country as quick as possible. Which he did. I was on a South African Airways turboprop three hours after Colonel Porter came to my apartment and relieved me.”

“A South African Airways turboprop?”

Miller nodded.

“Yes, sir. It was the first plane out. Luanda to Kinshasa in the Congo on the turboprop, then Brussels on Air France— which bothered me: I’m boycotting all things French and I hated to see them getting my tax dollars—then London on another puddle jumper, and then Orlando on a Virgin Airlines 747 full of Disney World-bound tourists. I rented a car in Orlando, drove here, found a motel, took a shower and had a shave, put on my uniform, and came here.”

He’s being witty. But as much to convince himself he’s tough and in charge than to amuse me.

But, Jesus! They must have really wanted him out of there right then! There’s all kinds of explaining to do when you have to move an American on a foreign carrier.

Or maybe that’s something else the goddamned CIA routinely gets away with.

What the hell did Miller do?

Colonel Grasher held up his hand, palm out, as a signal for Miller to say nothing else for the moment. Then he picked up one of the telephones on his desk.

“Omar, have we had a heads-up on Major Miller? For that matter, have we had anything on Major Miller?”

He listened to the reply and then said, “If anything comes in, get it to me right away.”

He replaced the telephone in its cradle.

“Be imaginative, Miller,” he said. “Come up with some reason why you might have incurred the displeasure of the CIA, the State Department, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

“Sir, you have not advised me of my rights to have legal counsel, right? What I tell you will not appear on a charge sheet?”

If he didn’t think he was really in the deep doo-doo, he wouldn’t have said that.

“Jesus, that bad, huh? Okay. What you say here is forgotten as soon as you say it.”

“When that airplane . . . the . . . 727?”

Grasher nodded.

“. . . went missing, I sent a satburst suggesting a Russian arms dealer named Aleksandr Pevsner may have had something to do with it . . .”

“I saw that. The boss showed it to me,” Grasher said. “The satburst and, before that, your back channel.”

“Sir, I expected I would get a follow-up message, what the agency calls a ‘develop further,’ so as soon as I had time I did a filing. The ‘develop further’ never came.”

"And?”

“So I suppose what I should have done was shred my filing. But I didn’t.”