Tom Clancy's op-center_ acts of war - Tom Clancy [3]
"Yeah," Coffey replied. "The nosebleed seats. I'm working for a low-profile government agency nobody's ever heard of--"
"Low-profile doesn't mean lack of distinction," Katzen pointed out.
"It does in my end of the arena," Coffey replied. "I work in a basement at Andrews Air Force Base--not even Washington, D.C., for God's sake--brokering necessary but unexciting deals with grudgingly hospitable nations like Turkey so that we can all spy on even less hospitable nations like Syria. On top of that, I'm roasting in the freakin' desert, sweat running down my legs into my goddamn socks, instead of arguing First Amendment cases in front of the Supreme Court."
"You're also starting to whine," Katzen said.
"Guilty," Coffey said. "Birthday boy's prerogative."
Katzen pushed up the back of Coffey's felted wool Australian Outback hat so it covered his eyes. "Lighten up. Not every useful job has to be a sexy one."
"It isn't that," Coffey replied. "Well, maybe just a little it is." He removed the Outback hat, used his index finger to wipe sweat from around the band, then settled the hat back on his dirty blond hair. "I guess what I'm really saying is that I was a law prodigy, Phil. The Mozart of jurisprudence. I was reading my dad's statute law books when I was twelve. When all my friends wanted to be astronauts or baseball players, I was thinking it'd be cool to be a bail bondsman. I could've done most of this stuff when I was fourteen or fifteen."
"Your suits would've been way too large," Katzen deadpanned.
Coffey frowned. "You know what I'm saying."
"You're saying you haven't lived up to your potential," Katzen said. "Well, ditto, ditto, and welcome to the real world."
"Being one disappointment among many doesn't make it sit any better, Phil," Coffey replied.
Katzen shook his head. "All I can say is, I wish I'd had you at my side when I was with Greenpeace."
"Sorry," Coffey said. "I don't hurl my body off ship decks to protect baby harp seals or stop six-foot-six hunters from setting out raw meat to draw out black bears.
"I did both of those once," Katzen said. "I got my nose broke doing one and scared the hell out of the harp seal doing the other. The point is, I had these pro bono slackers who didn't know a porpoise from a dolphin. What's worse was they didn't give a shit. I was in your office when you negotiated our little visit with the Turkish ambassador. You gave it everything and you created a handsome piece of work."
"I was dealing with a country that's got forty billion dollars of external debt, most of it to our country," Coffey said. "Getting them to see our point of view doesn't exactly put me in the genius class."
"Bull," Katzen said. "The Islamic Development Bank holds a lot of Turkish chits as well, and they expert a lot of pro-fundamentalist pressure on these people."
"Islamic law can't be imposed on the Turks," Coffey replied, "not even by a fiercely fundamentalist leader like the one they've got now. It says so in their Constitution."
"Constitutions can be amended," Katzen said. "Look at Iran."
"The secular population in Turkey is much higher," Coffey said. "If the Fundamentalists ever tried to take over here, there'd be civil war."
"Who can say there won't be?" Katzen asked. "Anyway, none of that is the point. You sprinted through NATO regulations, Turkish law, and U.S. policy to get us in here. No one else I know could've done that."
"So I had to cajole a little," Coffey said. "Even so, the Turkish deal was probably the high point of my year. When we return to Washington it'll be business as usual. I'll go to see Senator Fox with Paul Hood and Martha Mackall. I'll nod when Paul assures the senator that everything we did in Turkey was legal, that the soil studies you did in the east will be shared with Ankara and were the 'real' reason we were here, and I'll guarantee that if the Regional Op-Center program receives further funding we will continue to operate legally. Then I'll go back to my office and figure out how to use the ROC in ways not covered by international