Call to Treason - Tom Clancy [3]
He was making a difference.
Now I'm recruiting spies and analyzing data, he thought. It was honorable work, but there was a big difference between commanding and supervising. What was it the Chinese leader Liu Shao-chi had said? The true leader is an elephant. The rest are just pigs inserting scallions into their nose in an effort to look like one.
With a nod toward the bartender, Rodgers turned back to the room. There was nothing in here that appealed to him. Not the glad-handing, not the eavesdropping, not the neediness, and not the facades. But Rodgers was definitely beginning to smell onions in his own nose. It was time for a change.
Rodgers would talk to Senator Orr and Admiral Link, but first he wanted to talk to Paul Hood. For there was one concession Mike Rodgers would never make, however bored he became. It was a concept he did not think many people in this room would understand.
Mike Rodgers put loyalty above all else.
* * *
TWO
Washington, B.C. Sunday, 11:18 p.m.
There was a time when the Liverpool-born William Wilson could not have afforded to stay in a landmark hotel like the Hay-Adams, with its view of the White House, the Washington Monument, and Lafayette Park. Or been invited to a Georgetown party hosted by a United States senator.
Or been picked up by a woman who looked like this one did.
What a difference two billion dollars makes.
The lanky, six-foot-three-inch Wilson was the thirty-one-year-old inventor of the Master Lock computer technology. Launched five years before, it used a combination of keystrokes, visual cues, and audio frequencies to create hack-proof fire walls Not content with revolutionizing computer security, Wilson bought the failing London Merchant-Farmer Bank and made it a European powerhouse. Now he was about to go on-line with Master Bank an on-line service that invested in European businesses. Wilson had come to Washington to meet with members of the Panel of Economic Advisors of the Congressional Committee on Banking Financial Services. He intended to lobby for an easing of foreign direct-investment restrictions that were put in place during the War on Terror. That would remove hundreds of millions of dollars from American banks and stocks. In exchange, Wilson would guarantee an equal investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in American companies. That would keep cash flow circulating in the United States, though the bulk of the profits and tax benefits would still be his.
The stunning young woman had approached him early in the evening, just minutes after he arrived. She was a reporter. After assuring him that she was not angling for an interview her beat, she said, was the environment and meteorology the woman asked if she could stop by later in the evening.
"I'm drawn to men who create technological quantum leaps," she said.
Who could resist a come-on like that?
Two hours later Wilson left the party with his two bodyguards and driver. He had agreed to meet the woman at eleven p.m. There were paparazzi outside, and Wilson did not want to be photographed leaving with anyone. The world was a conservative place. He preferred to remain a champion of the financial and science sections, not a libertine of the