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was really what marital intimacy was about.
    The doctor gave his general a parting kiss on the forehead and wished her well. She grabbed her leather briefcase from its spot beside the door. There was nothing in it but pens and a notepad and the originals of her letter. She knew it would not be so empty when she came home. The general stepped into the bright morning. The driver was standing beside the car and opened the door. He introduced himself as Angel Jimenez and told her there was an iced tea in the cup holder in the backseat.
    “How did you know that is my drink, Angel?” the general asked.
    “I sent the question up the ladder until someone knew the answer,” the young man replied.
    “And that person was?” she asked.
    “Actually, General, no one knew. They called your military driver.”
    “I see.” She smiled. “Well done.”
    “Thank you, General,” Angel replied.
    General Carrie slid into the unfamiliar car.
    “There is a folder on the seat for you,” the driver said.
    “I see it. Thank you.”
    The general picked it up. She tore the red paper seal with an index finger. After years of riding in a Cutlass, the Saturn seemed small. Certainly the leather seat needed breaking in. But she did recognize the heavy-bottomed ride as the result of armor plating and the thick windows as bulletproof. She did not know if she were more or less a target than before, but she understood that the precaution was necessary.
    General Carrie looked at the folder. The outside said Eyes Only. Inside were sealed manila envelopes. Each contained a concise dossier on the personnel of her new command. She flipped through them, looking for familiar names. As expected, there were only two: Bob Herbert and Stephen Viens. She knew Bob and his late wife Yvonne from the Middle East, and Viens from his years with the National Reconnaissance Office. Both were solid professionals, though she had heard that Herbert was more of a loose cannon than ever.
    No matter. President Debenport wanted her to reconfigure Op-Center, to run a tighter command. Either Herbert would fall in, or he would be replaced.
    Carrie started scanning the files to familiarize herself with the personnel she would be meeting today. Former political liaison, now deputy director Ron Plummer. FBI liaison Darrell McCaskey. Director of Tech Operations Matt Stoll. Psychologist Liz Gordon. The evaluations written by Paul Hood and his former number two Mike Rodgers suggested that they were all rather individualistic, what the army called rogues.
    Hood seemed to like and encourage that. Rodgers did not. Carrie sided with Rodgers.
    It would be a challenge to bring them around, but that was what Carrie had been waiting for her entire career. She did not intend to blow it. Besides, the general was representing more than just women in her new position. She was also a standard-bearer for the military. It was flattering, it was terrifying, and it was invigorating, all at once. And the only way she would get through this was to remember something her dad, a newspaper editor in Pittsburgh, had told her when she went off to enlist. He knew her better than anyone when he said, “The job is not about you or having something to prove, honeypot. It’s about serving your nation.”
    She began reading the dossiers in greater detail as the car merged smoothly onto the Capital Beltway.

FIVE
    Washington, D.C. Monday, 8:29 A.M.
    There was an unusual calm in the West Wing as Hood arrived.
    The offices and corridors were never as busy as they were fictionalized on TV, people dashing here and there with purpose bordering on panic. But there seemed to be a bubble around Hood as he made his way through the security checkpoint and was greeted by the president’s assistant executive secretary. Eyes would come near him and then slide away, like sand off a beach ball.
    Maybe it was his imagination. Or paranoia. In D.C., those were not hindrances; they were tools.
    Hood was taken directly to the Oval