Nature of the Game Read Free Page A

East was where he’d been. Jud headed north, the direction a mouse took in search of the wren he loved in the only happy story Jud remembered from his childhood.

THE CHOSEN ONE
    M ajor Wesley Chandler, United States Marine Corps, drove past two sheriff’s deputies parked at the mouth of a suburban Virginia cul-de-sac, their windows cracked so they wouldn’t suffocate, their engine chugging so they wouldn’t freeze in the March night. He nodded to them; they noted his uniform and nodded back, comrades-in-arms against the barbarians.
    Cars lined the residential street, middle-class mobility machines. He saw no limousines. And no parking spaces.
    A man with an unbuttoned overcoat stood in the porch light’s glow at the rambling Tudor home that matched the address on Wes’s notepad. A second man wrapped in Washington’s ubiquitous Burberry trench coat lounged against a blue sedan with three antennae on its trunk. The Burberry was unfastened. A plastic tube ran from the coat to the man’s left ear. The two men’s eyes rode with Wes as he cruised past the house.
    He drove back to the mouth of the cul-de-sac. The parking space he found was too close to the corner for the law, but the deputies didn’t seem to care.
    Wes shut off his engine. The night chill reached through the car to stroke him. He checked his watch and remembered the two phone calls that had summoned him here.
    The first phone call had come to his office at the Naval Investigative Service headquarters on Thursday. Yesterday. He’d been staring at the computer screen in his gray-walled cubicle a mile from the Capitol building, trying to convince himself that the memo he was writing really mattered. That first call had been from a woman.
    â€œIs this Major Chandler from New Mexico?” she’d said.
    â€œThat’s where I was born.”
    â€œI’m Mary Patterson. Way back when, I was Congressman Denton’s secretary. We met when the Academy bused the cadets up from Annapolis to meet the members who appointed them.”
    â€œThat was twenty-five years ago,” said Wes.
    â€œNow I’m working with the boss at his new shop.”
    â€œCongratulations.”
    â€œThat’s why I’m calling you,” she said. “Mr. Denton wants to honor the people from his days on the Hill—like his staffers and you fine men who did him proud at the service academies. Just an informal cocktail party after work.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œTomorrow,” she said. “Can I tell him you’ll be there?”
    â€œI’ll try,” said Wes.
    â€œOh.” Her voice chilled. “Well, do try. Please.”
    The second phone call had come at nine-thirty A.M. Friday.
    â€œMajor Chandler,” said a man’s gravel voice, “my name is Noah Hall. Exec assistant to Director Denton. We’ve never met.”
    The gray walls of Wes’s office drew closer.
    â€œYou will go to his reception tonight, right?”
    â€œSince you put it that way,” answered Wes.
    Noah Hall chuckled. Agreed Wes should wear his uniform.
    â€œYou bringin’ a date?” asked Hall.
    â€œNo, should I?” And who should I get? Wes wanted to add.
    â€œCome alone.” Noah Hall told Wes when to be there.
    Wes’s heels clicked on the sidewalk as he walked into the cul-de-sac. He exhaled silver clouds that vanished in the night. These houses were elegant barns. Sculpted hedges, chiseled trees, lawns trimmed even in their seasonal death. The rainbow flicker of television shone through the window of one home.
    Laughter floated to Wes from his destination. The man by the door watched him approach, while the eyes of the man at the curb swept the street. In the dark yard behind the house, Wes spotted the pinpoint orange flare of a cigarette cupped in an overconfident hand.
    â€œCold for this, isn’t it?” Wes told the man at the door who unwisely had his hands deep in his