Page 22 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

Banfield glanced up. Trevor Das, her immediate supervisor, draped an athletic arm over the cubicle barrier. He wore a stylishly cut dress shirt and designer-label suit slacks. She knew from her few visits to his corner office in the main building that the matching suit coat was freshly pressed, tailored to fit his broad shoulders, and studiously draped on a hanger.

“I’m sorry?” Banfield said. She pulled a hank of her flame-red hair behind a freckled ear.

“Your phone?”

She glanced down at her cluttered desk in search of her phone, finally finding it under a stack of bulging file folders.

“What about it?”

Das held up the unplugged phone cord. Cell phones were forbidden in the annex.

“Again?”

Banfield rolled her eyes and grimaced.

“Sorry, Chief. You know I can’t handle the distraction.”

“It wouldn’t have hurt my feelings if you had kept your office near mine.”

“I like it down here. Nice and quiet. Lets me focus.”

Das couldn’t help but grin. Banfield was her own person. He put up with her eccentricities because she got the job done. She was relentless to a fault and had proven her analytical skills were second to none in her nearly thirty years with the Company. He glanced around the office. Or more accurately, the oversized storage room with Banfield’s desk thrown into the mix.

“Actually, I don’t mind coming all the way down here. I’m training for a triathlon and I need to improve my endurance.”

“Funny.” Banfield smiled. Das was pleasant enough, and a decent administrator of the interagency arms-trafficking task force they both served. She had applied for the head position and had made it to the final round of interviews—par for the course. Early in her career she had won dozens of commendations for her superlative analytical work. She had single-handedly thwarted terror plots, uncovered spy networks, and ferreted out enemy battle plans. She thought after all her years of faithful service it would finally have been her turn.

And yet she wasn’t entirely surprised when Das was handed the brass ring instead of her. It was a management position requiring the necessary people skills to navigate interagency coffee klatches, closed-door subcommittee hearings, and departmental briefings. Exactly the kindsof things she wasn’t good at. Still, it would have been a nice cherry on top of her long career that would soon be coming to a close.

But Das? He was so young. Just two years out of grad school. But he was the latest chosen one. The son of a venture capitalist, Das bragged that his childhood playground was his father’s Gulfstream as the two of them jet-setted around the globe sniffing out cutting-edge tech opportunities. The privileged upbringing partly explained why the handsome young man was fluent in four languages, including Hindi, his parents’ native tongue.

He was also the product of an Ivy League education, a scratch golfer, and a consummate ladies’ man according to the office gossip she overheard in the cafeteria.

“So what can I do for you, Trevor?”

Das flashed a beguiling smile.

“You did something with your hair.”

In fact, she had just colored her hair yesterday to tame the gray. She absentmindedly ran her fingers through the length of it, an old nervous habit.

“Thank you for noticing. But I’m guessing my hair isn’t the reason for your visit.”

“I know I’ve interrupted you, but I need to ask you a question.”

“Of course.”

Das checked his Rolex. “Look, I gotta run. There’s a meeting on the Hill I have to sit in on. I’ll keep it short.”

“Shoot.”

“Tell me more about this Langston Overholt character. You used to work for him, didn’t you?”

“Years ago.”

“And what’s your opinion of him?”

“A legendary field officer, a first-rate intellect, and an old-fashioned, dyed-in-the-wool patriot.”