Project Aura by Bob Mayer Read Free Book Online Page B

the gray world of covert operations for most of his career, but this was the most bizarre thing he’d ever heard.
    "Are you with us, Sergeant Major?"
    Dalton didn't ask the question that popped into his mind: what would Nexus do to him if he said no? "Yes, sir. If you don’t mind me asking, who is number one on the speed dial?”
    Eichen grimaced. “Let’s hope you never have to use that. Because if you do, that means I’m dead.” He turned for the door, but paused, hand on the knob. "I am sorry about your wife. I know this is a difficult time to ask this of you."
    The door swung shut behind the general. Dalton saw the headlights go on and the car drove away, leaving Dalton once more alone in the dark in the house filled with memories.
     
    *****
     
    Henry Kissinger had once stated that power was an aphrodisiac, but Deputy Director of the National Security Agency Linda McFairn thought that too narrow and foolish a definition. She cared little about bedding younger, good-looking men, unlike the majority of her male colleagues high in the echelons of government, who spent much of their free time pursuing young, nubile women, or, in many case, young men. To McFairn, power was a lever that could be used to produce desired results. Sex, unless it served a specific purpose, was a waste of energy and, in a town where slander was thrown about with ease, a potentially damaging act, more so for a woman than a man, naturally.
    She'd learned that over thirty-eight years ago when she started as a Russian linguist at the National Security Agency. She spent twenty years working her way in various slots in the Operations Directorate then got her big break as Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director. It took another eighteen years of more assignments and a lot of politicking for her to make it from the outer office to the inner office.
    As Deputy Director she was second only to the Director, a three-star Air Force general. In reality, her decades in the Agency, as opposed to his recent assignment, made her more experienced in the power workings of Washington and inside the Agency. The Director was always a military man, as the NSA fell under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense, which meant she had gone as high as she could possibly could in the Agency. The fact that she had never married had produced more than a few subtle and not so subtle charges that she was a lesbian, something she found typical of male thinking. She'd discovered there were two basic reactions by most men to women in power: if they could screw her, they'd tolerate her but not respect her; if they couldn't bed her, then she was a lesbian and they still wouldn't give her respect. She had decided that while they might not respect her as a person, they would respect the power she wielded. The NSA was in charge of all electronic intelligence activities for the United States, which meant its domain was information. And information, used properly, was power.
    Her office was on the top floor of the "Puzzle Palace" at Fort Meade, a large glass building that dominated the landscape. It was at one end of the main corridor, the Director's at the other end. She made the trip to his office once a day to sit in on the daily intelligence briefing, if both he and she were in town. He was currently overseas, leaving her in charge.
    Her desk was teak and quite large, over eight feet wide by four across. A twenty-inch flat-screen monitor was perched to her left, the keyboard and mouse on a moveable shelf just under the desktop. The in-box was to the far right, the out-box to the far left. Her policy was never to leave anything in the in-box when she locked up to go home, which had caused her to spend many a late night in the office, once in a while forcing her to catch a nap on a plain leather couch on the far side of the room and not go home. The fact that she was here at two in the morning was not an unusual occurrence.
    On the wall next to the door, directly across from