Call to Treason - Tom Clancy [50]
"If having your budget whacked is redefining, I suppose the answer is yes," Rodgers replied.
"I heard about the cuts, but that isn't what I meant. I'm talking about the Wilson investigation."
"Wow, that's really the talk of the town, isn't it?" Rodgers asked.
"Everything is the talk of this town," Lucy said.
"The Wilson investigation is a fluke," he said.
Rodgers leaned past the reporter and ordered a Samuel Adams. He hated being pushed, and he hated being pushed by journalists even more. They attacked the front door, the back door, the windows, and when that did not work, they crawled under the front stoop and waited like snakes.
"Is that what you two are here to discuss?" Lucy asked.
"Good guess, but no," Kat told her.
Lucy frowned. "You're not going to tell me it's purely social."
"Actually, it is," Rodgers said as the bartender handed him his beer.
"I was at the senator's party last night. Ms. Lockley wanted to meet me and called. Here I am."
"Why were you at the party?"
"Free food," Rodgers said.
Lucy smiled. "All right, General. I won't press. But Kat? I want a half-hour window if there's any news. That will give me time to put it on my web site."
"And give you bragging rights for being the first," Rodgers said.
"That's what gives a reporter heft," Lucy replied. "You remember those days, don't you, Kat?"
Kat said she did and agreed to give Lucy a scoop if there was one to be had. The reporter left the bar to scout for leads elsewhere. Kat picked up a shopping bag that was beside the stool, and Rodgers escorted his date and his beer to the restaurant atrium for dinner.
"Sorry about all that," Kat sat as they were seated. "She got there right before you did, so there was no time to disengage. I hope it wasn't too painful."
"Define 'too."
"Enough to make you not want to work with us," Kat said. "We have to be much more accessible than the key people at Op-Center."
"It will take getting used to, but I'll survive," Rodgers said. "All I need to do is keep up that Gary Cooper facade."
"That may be even more appealing," Kat pointed out.
"Maybe, but at least there are only two words to the script," Rodgers said. " "Yup' and 'nope." I can handle that. But how about we do what we told Ms. O'Connor. Keep this social."
"Good idea," she said, just ahead of a smile that was the first one he could recall seeing.
"Anything interesting in the bag?" Rodgers asked.
"A present and my Nikes," Kat said. "Heels get tiring."
"I can imagine," he said. "You want to change? I won't say anything."
"Not appropriate in here. When I leave."
"So tell me. How did you come to work with the senator?" Rodgers asked.
"Well, as you probably gathered from Lucy, I used to be one of them," she said. "I graduated from Columbia and was hired by the Wall Street Journal as a reporter for the Washington Bureau."
"Were your folks reporters or politicians?"
"They were New York City cops. Both of them. So was my older brother.
The Lockley family defined the word tough."
"Was there any pressure for you to go into law enforcement?"
"Not directly." She laughed. "Unless you consider taking martial arts and gun safety classes instead of ballet and playing with dolls to be pressure. I didn't mind, though. We did it as a family."
"Sounds pretty well-adjusted," Rodgers said.
"It was."
"Then where did journalism come from?"
"Our other family activity was watching the news on TV," Kat said. "The local news always had a lot of police stories, and I loved watching the reporters. They got to hang with police officers and firefighters and soldiers, so I started doing my own newscasts with our video camera and interviewing my folks and their friends. I loved it, and it stuck."
The waiter came over, and they took a moment to look at the menu. They decided to order several appetizers and share.
"So," Rodgers went on. "Did you go directly from the Journal to becoming the senator's press secretary?"
"Pretty much," she said. "I made some stabs at getting into TV, but you need connections, fangs, or both.