Empire (Empire 1)

“She makes excellent cookies, sir.”

“Her baking is none of your business, Captain Coleman.”

“It is when she offers me cookies, sir. Begging your pardon, sir.”

“So what did she want with you?”

“I called her, sir. Since I couldn’t learn anything about you or my assignment there at the Pentagon, I hoped to discover something about what you expected of me by talking to your wife.”

“I don’t like you intruding into my personal life, Captain.”

“Neither do I, sir. I don’t see that you left me a choice, sir.”

“So what did you learn?”

“That your wife is so worried about you, sir, that she enlisted me to try to find out what your clandestine operations are.” How far should he go with a new superior officer, and on a cellphone, no less? He plunged ahead. “She believes you’re morally troubled about those operations, sir.”

“Morally troubled?”

“I think the word she used was ‘guilty,’ sir.”

“And you think this is any of your business?”

“I’m convinced that it’s none of my business.”

“But you’re still going to do it.”

“Sir, I’ll just be happy to find out what we actually do in an office so secret that the secretary treats your subordinate like a spy.”

“Well, Captain Coleman, she treats you like a spy because the last two clowns we had in your position were spies.”

“For your wife, sir? Or for some foreign power.”

“Neither. They were spying for people in the Pentagon who are also trying to figure out what I’m doing when I’m not in the office.”

“Doesn’t the Army already know what you’re doing?”

There was a moment of hesitation. “The Army owns my balls and keeps them in a box somewhere between Fort Bragg and Pakistan.”

Sometimes a non-answer was a perfectly usable answer. “It’s a mighty big box, then, sir. This Army’s got a lot of balls.”

This time the pause was even longer.

“Are you laughing at me, sir?” asked Cole.

“I like you, Coleman,” said Malich.

“I like your wife, sir. And she likes you.”

“Good enough for me. Coleman, don’t park. Don’t even come to the Pentagon. Meet me at Hain’s Point in half an hour. Do you know where that is?”

“It’s a big long park, sir.”

“At the statue. The giant. Half an hour.”

Malich clicked off before Cole could say good-bye.

What was the phone call about? A test to see if Cole would tell him what his wife said? Or was Malich really angry at him for leaving? Why the meeting in the park as if they were trying to avoid bugs? And if secrecy was so important, why did they talk over unscrambled cellphones?