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"By now both have been sworn in, issued credentials, and are probably already on their way here, if they haven't landed already. Joel can be very persuasive, if you hadn't noticed."
"I've noticed, sir."
"Why do you want them down there?"
"Because they're both cops, and I'm not, and Betty's a woman, and I'm not, and Jack is black, and I'm not."
"'Welcome to the Secret Service. Don't unpack; go back to the airport, where an FBI plane is waiting for you. Castillo will explain everything when you get to Argentina.'"
"Can you do that, sir?"
"The truth is, Charley, that I can't not do it. I don't want to explain to the President why I didn't give you something you asked for."
"Sir, how about getting Dick Miller out of the hospital and having him vet the daily intel reports?"
"Charley, you know as well as I do that he just had yet another operation on his knee."
"Sir, he told me that just as soon as he can get out of bed, he's going on recuperative leave."
"And instead you want him to come over here with his knee in a cast and go through the daily intels?"
"I think he'd rather do that than lie in a bed at Walter Reed or go home."
"I'll see what I can find out, but refusing you that would be something I might be able to justify to the President. Even in his present state of mind, I think he might be sympathetic to my explanation, 'Sir, Major Miller is in Walter Reed, recovering from an operation on his knee.'"
"Yes, sir."
"I'll call you when I have ETAs on both planes."
"Thank you, sir."
"Charley, did you ever hear that 'no good deed goes unpunished'?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'm almost sorry-operative word almost-that you found the goddamn 727."
"Yes, sir." [TWO] "Doctor," the secretary of Homeland Security said into the phone to the chief, orthopedic surgery division, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, at the other end of the line, "let me be sure I understand you. Presuming he keeps his leg as immobile as reasonably possible, there is no reason Major Miller has to stay in Walter Reed while waiting for his cast to be removed, and that will not be for fifteen days?
"And you have advised him of this and that he's free to go on recuperative leave?"
Hall looked at Joel Isaacson sitting in an office chair on the other side of the desk as Hall parroted the doctor:
"You have strongly recommended personally that he go home and get TLC from his mother, whom you have known all of Major Miller's life.
"And you think I should know that Major Miller is at least as stubborn and hardheaded as his father, whom you have known even longer than you have his mother, as he has declined to take the recuperative leave despite your strong personal recommendation."
Isaacson smiled and shook his head.
"With your permission, Doctor, I'm going to ask Major Miller if he would like to perform some limited duty-administrative-in my office. If he agrees, I have a place-with room service-for him to stay, and can get a Yukon to haul him back and forth-
"Just keep him off his leg? I can do that, sir." "Joel, you call him," Secretary Hall directed. "If I call, he'll consider it an order."
Isaacson nodded and reached for Hall's telephone. Hall slid a yellow stick-'em note with the Walter Reed telephone number on it, and Isaacson punched it in.
"Put it on the speakerphone," Hall ordered. "Dick, Joel Isaacson. Am I calling at a good time?"
"A good time for what?"
