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Silence fell. Peaks could feel rather than see the looks being exchanged between Pope and Oberlin. A decision had been reached and he could do nothing but wait.
Oberlin rose abruptly, motioning for Peaks to keep his seat. “I have a meeting with POTUS. I leave it to you, Ms. Pope. Good day.”
Her assistant leaped to open the door and she was gone. Peaks turned back to Undersecretary Pope, assuming that he was about to hear the final words of dismissal. And yet, despite everything, every expectation, he was still stunned when it came.
“Tom, we’ve asked you to do an impossible job,” Pope said with a sigh. “You’ve done tremendous work. But we feel it’s time to make some changes in the leadership of HSTF-Sixty-Six, and of the Ranch.”
Peaks felt as if his whole body was tingling, like a mild electric current was going through him. He’d never been fired before; he didn’t know the proper etiquette, he didn’t know what to do with his hands or what expression to plaster on his face.
“We want you to take the next week, Tom, and ease the path for General DiMarco. She’ll be taking over as overall director, which will free you up to focus on some aspects of your continuing research.”
So that was it. They wanted to keep him on as a glorified project manager, a bureaucrat running the research program at the Ranch, but reporting to his former subordinate, the former colonel and now brigadier general Gwendolyn DiMarco. DiMarco was what was known as a “comer,” an officer with a great future marked out for her. She was the first woman general with substantial combat experience, she had a double PhD in anthropology and engineering, and was a star of the war college, third in her West Point class. Absolutely no one would be surprised if General DiMarco ended up as Army chief of staff, perhaps even chairman of the Joint Chiefs, someday.
She’ll march in and take credit for all my work.
“This is a mistake,” Peaks blurted. “This is a big mistake pulling me out at this critical time. DiMarco has already screwed up, she tried to control the morphing process and—”
“General Di
Marco,” Pope said acidly.
“She’s not going to know what’s going on, it will take her weeks to get up to speed and her judgment . . .” His rush of words petered out when he saw the set expression on Pope’s face. “Time will be lost,” he finished lamely. “Time we don’t have.”
“The general will be at the Ranch to assume command tomorrow at fourteen hundred hours. I’d like you to fly back immediately and begin preparing staff for the transition.”
Time stopped for Tom Peaks. It had happened: he had been fired, or at least demoted, which was the same thing really. This supercilious pencil pusher and her icy bitch of a boss had conspired to destroy his career and advance the career of, surprise, surprise, another woman. Peaks had never thought of himself as any sort of sexist, but it was becoming clear to him now that there was a good-old-girls’ network working against him.
In fact, when he thought of it, most of his problems were because of women: Dekka Talent, Shade Darby, even that silly little social climber Erin O’Day with Knightmare. Now Pope and Oberlin and DiMarco.
Peaks could barely master his emotions as he left the office, turned the wrong way in the corridor, corrected himself, and walked as fast as he could toward the distant exit.
On the private jet back to California, he ordered a scotch from the cabin attendant—not an Islay product—drank it too quickly, and ordered a second to savor as he read yet again through the psychological profiles.
Justin DeVeere, a talented young artist, utterly amoral, a complete narcissist.
Dekka Talent, a seemingly average, underperforming young woman suffering from, but coping surprisingly well with, posttraumatic stress disorder and bouts of depression.
And Shade Darby, the one with the thinnest record, the sketchiest profile. Good grades, great test scores, impressive IQ. A young woman sufficiently determined—and sufficiently bold—to manipulate her father’s data and pull off a heist under the noses of the entire security apparatus of the United States.
She was the one responsible: Shade Darby. It was her theft of the rock that caused him to rush Dekka’s . . . introduction . . . to the role he had planned for her. It was her theft of the rock that first got the wind up Pope’s skirts. A former secretary of defense had once talked about how there were known knowns—the things we know that we know, like the sky is blue and the sun rises in the east. Then there were known unknowns, like what is the cure for cancer? But there were also unknown unknowns, and these were the most dangerous: things we don’t know we don’t know. The things that came out of the blue. The things you didn’t even know you had to prepare for.
Like a teenaged girl stealing some of the rock.
And using it.
And developing one of the most useful, dangerous, and hard-to-defend-against superpowers.
One little bitch of a high school girl.
He ordered a third drink. What did it matter, he wasn’t the one flying the plane, and there’d be a car and driver waiting for his ignominious ride back to the Ranch. How should he make the announcement? How could he possibly frame it so it didn’t look like a public humiliation?
He still needed the paycheck, and if he was a good little boy, if he knuckled under properly to the great generalissimo and the mighty bitch goddess of the Pentagon, they might let him stay on as chief of research. He should be able to stomach it, he told himself. It shouldn’t matter, he told himself. Who cared if people snickered behind his back? he told himself.
Or . . . or he could quit. Just quit. He’d made plenty of friends in private industry, people who would love to have him and the knowledge he possessed, and who would pay twice, no three times, no ten times what he was making working for DARPA.
Nondisclosure agreements, and noncompete agreements, and, he reminded himself, the unfortunate fact that almost every single thing he knew was classified “Top Secret” and “Top Secret: Sensitive Compartmented Information.” He had nothing to sell, really, nothing that wouldn’t get him arrested and thrown into some supermax prison.
The cabin attendant, smiling, leaned over him. “Would you like another, sir? Or can I get you something to eat?”
