By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

“General Withers is here, sir,” she announced.

“How nice! Would you ask the general to come in, please?” he replied, loud enough for whoever was in the outer office to hear.

“Yes, sir.”

She smiled at him. She was aware that the secretary of defense regarded the commanding general of the Defense Intelligence as a PB who was UN because he was VFG at what he did.

They had brought the acronyms with them from Detroit, too, where they had been used between them to describe a vast number of Ford executives. They stood, respectively, for “Pompous Bastard,” “Unfortunately Necessary,” and “Very Fucking Good.”

Lieutenant General William W. Withers, USA, carrying a small leather briefcase, marched into the secretary’s office a moment later, trailed by a lieutenant colonel and a first lieutenant. Both wore the insignia of aides-de-camp and each carried a heavy leather briefcase.

On his part, General Withers regarded Secretary Beiderman as someone who suffered from a severe superiority complex and who had proven again and again that he could be a ruthless sonofabitch. But, on the other hand, Withers had learned that Beiderman said what he was thinking, never said anything he didn’t mean, and whose word was as good as gold—all attributes General Withers had seldom found in other civilian officials of government and certainly not in political appointees.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary,” General Withers said.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Beiderman said, gesturing for everybody to sit down in the chairs arrayed in a semicircle before his desk.

“Before we get into the briefing,” Beiderman began as he opened the cigar humidor on his desk and removed an eight-inch -long, very black Dominican Lonsdale, “personal curiosity. Did they ever find that 727 that was stolen?”

Smoking was forbidden in the Pentagon. General Withers had heard a story—which he believed—that when someone had brought this to Beiderman’s attention, the secretary’s response was that so far as he was concerned the vice of smoking was henceforth to be considered within the Defense Department in the same light as carnal relations between members of the same sex; that is, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

General Withers waited until Secretary Beiderman had gone through the ritual of cutting off the end of the cigar with a silver cutter and then had lit it with a gold butane lighter before replying.

“Mr. Secretary, actually, that’s at the head of my list.”

That caught Beiderman’s attention.

“Uh-oh. What’s happening?”

General Withers made a waving gesture with his left hand. The lieutenant and the lieutenant colonel immediately stood up and walked out of the office.

“What the hell is going on, Withers?” Beiderman demanded. “Your people don’t have the need to know?”

“This is a matter of some delicacy, Mr. Secretary,” General Withers said.

“For Christ’s sake, out with it.”

“I regret that I don’t have the complete picture, Mr. Secretary, ” General Withers said.

“Jesus Christ! Let’s have what you do have!”

“Mr. Secretary, are you aware of a Gray Fox operation currently in progress?”

“No, I am not.”

“I have information that there is such a Gray Fox operation. ”

“Authorized by whom? To do what?”

“I have information that the initial foreign shores destination was the Royal Moroccan Air Force Base at Menara.”

“My questions were, ‘Who authorized it?’ and ‘To do what?’ ”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Did you ask?”

“I have been unable to make contact with General McNab, Mr. Secretary. He’s the Eighteenth Airborne Corps . . .”