Читать книгу The Spoils of War - Gordon Kent, Gordon Kent - Страница 13

“I got your list.”

Dukas looked up from his paperwork. Triffler was standing in front of the desk, his coming into the office unnoticed, his words meaningless. Dukas frowned. “List?” he said.

“The bunch in DoD. Information Analysis?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah—” Dukas came back from the Land of Paperwork. “That was quick.”

“The black DC network. We use drums.” “You know, it doesn’t help for you to keep saying how black you are. In fact, you’re about as black as my Aunt Olympia.”

“We keep saying it so you guys won’t.” Triffler was hitting keys on Dukas’s computer. “I networked this, but I figure you don’t know how to access it, which is why I came here in my very own person.”

“I like stuff on paper.”

“We know you do, Mike. We all laugh about it all the time.” He punched a last key, his long, thin body curved into a bow because he was standing, and a list of names came up on the screen. “Ecco, as they say over here—the roster of OIA.”

Muttering that Triffler did good work and he thought he’d keep him around, Dukas swung his chair to face the screen and started scrolling down. There were only forty names, and he didn’t have to read all of them.

“Well, well, well.”

“A hit?”

“You done good.” Dukas tapped the screen. “Spinner, Raymond L. Ha!” He was smiling. “How stuff you do does come back to bite you in the ass!”

“Shakespeare said something like that.”

“What d’you know about Shakespeare?”

“Andrew’s a freshman at Brown. A parent’s got to keep up.”

Dukas looked fleetingly troubled; perhaps he was thinking that when his yet-to-be-born child was a freshman somewhere, he’d be ready for Social Security. He jerked himself away from the thought. “This guy—” Dukas tapped the screen again. “Raymond Spinner. I busted this guy for passing internal fleet information to his daddy, who swings in Washington. I persuaded him to cash out. And now he’s washed up on a beach in DoD—I think Daddy’s been at work again—and he thinks he’s going to fuck me over.” Dukas grunted. “Well, well, well.”

“You’re going to do something ugly.”

“Surely not.” He smiled at Triffler. “I’m going to be a good little bureaucrat.” He began to draft an email as a reply that piggy-backed on the one he had received:

From: Michael Dukas, Special Agent in Charge, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Naples, Italy

To: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Department of Defense, Office of Information Analysis

Subject: Your request.

Message: Per 1347.5 Sec. 11, please locate your place in chain of command and justify referenced request. Recommend GS-10 Raymond Spinner expedite.

“What’s 1347.5?”

“How the hell should I know?”