LITMIR.BIZ

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      “We’ve seen enough, I think,” the congressman from New York said, flipping off the television set with the remote. An aide closed the armoire doors.

      The congressman sat on a comfortable armchair by the window.

      “I want this guy in Manhattan for the Fourth of July,” he said.

      “We get him in Washington,” corrected the general. “Can’t have a hero in New York on the Fourth of July—he’s got to be in his nation’s capital.”

      The New York congressman narrowed his eyes.

      Winston Fairchild III pulled a sheaf of papers from a manila envelope and cleared his throat to get the meeting started. The group was ordinarily of a type not given to listening. In addition to the general and his aide, an assistant undersecretary to the Defense secretary had been sent over by the White House, and three congressmen who held key chairmanships of committees affecting the military had asked to attend. His office facing Twenty-third Street had been transformed into a gentleman’s tea party, with real china instead of foam cups and dainty pastries instead of the stale bagels sold at the basement cafeteria.

      But while it all looked very cozy, this was a serious meeting about a serious opportunity and everyone was paying close attention to the soft-spoken Fairchild because he had something that everyone wanted—a real-life honest-to-God true blue American hero.

      Winston was descended from a long line of behind-the-scenes advisers—his great-great-great-grandfather had served as George Washington’s aide-de-camp, his great-grandfather had advised Lincoln to shave his mustache, and his father had told Franklin Delano Roosevelt that cigars were bad for his health. Fairchilds had seen generals and presidents come and go. Winston had some perspective on the men gathered in his office—any one of them could be retired, disgraced, dishonored or just plain tired of Washington within the year.

      But a hero! A little of the stardust of heroism could rub off on any or all of these men and a career could be made.

      “McKenna could reinvigorate the military’s image,” murmured the honorable congressman from Arizona. “We sure need that.”

      “Absolutely,” the general snorted.

      “Let’s begin, shall we? Lieutenant Derek McKenna is thirty-three years old,” Winston said, nodding to the summer intern to pass out copies of the fact sheet he had prepared over the weekend. He pulled his wire-rimmed glasses from a small tortoise case. “He was born and raised in Kentucky on a farm in the mountains between Elizabethtown and Bowling Green.”

      “E’town,” corrected the general.

      “Pardon?”

      “Kentucky folks call it E’town,” the general said. “You don’t pronounce the L, the I, the Z, the A, the B, the E, the T as the H.”

      “I see,” Winston said, and dutifully crossed out the unnecessary letters on his copy of his report. “Thank you, General. Now, continuing, he received good grades in school, but dropped out of his first year in college at Bowling Green University in order to help his father on the farm. Two years later, the farm back in order, he joined the Army. He is a career soldier with a distinguished record. A list of his medals is Appendix B on page seven of your handout.”

      Everyone except the general turned to page seven.

      “And then there was Iraq,” Winston said.

      An uncomfortable silence. Everyone knew about Iraq and the terrible fate that had befallen McKenna and his men. Part of the team sent in to help with humanitarian relief for Kurdish rebels on the border with Turkey, he and his men had been presumed killed in a firefight with Iraqi Republican guards. A United Nations resolution condemning the killings, the President expressing outrage in his weekly radio address, a Congressional team of negotiators failing to get the bodies back, a darkly foreboding article in the New York Times and then...nothing.

      Lieutenant McKenna’s story faded from public consciousness, replaced with the Los Angeles celebrity trial of the week and new scandals at the upper reaches of government.

      Until last week, when Derek McKenna—sporting a chest-grazing beard, a tobacco-colored tan, native chuprah dress and a haircut as crude as a caveman’s—stepped across the Turkish border. He led his men, having not lost a single one, on an impossible journey to freedom from a Baghdad prison. By the time the Wiesbaden military hospital in Germany gave him a haircut, lent him a razor and issued him a new uniform, America remembered it had a hero. The television news conference from Wiesbaden where Derek McKenna announced that all he wanted was to go home and live a quiet life had put a lump in the throat of the most cynical of Americans.

      And the men gathered in the well-appointed State Department offices knew they had a solid gold, all-American, apple-pie opportunity.

      “The President’s position is that we have him by rights,” the undersecretary said. “We put him on every news outlet, every parade, every ribbon-cutting ceremony. every graduating class...”

      “And every campaign fund-raiser?” the general asked archly. “After all, this is an election year.”

      “No, of course not,” the undersecretary said, placing his hand over his heart as if to quell his outrage. “But we can at least agree that we all want a piece of him. The only question is how to divide the hero pie, right, gentlemen?”

      The men gathered around the low table nodded, and Winston, sensing that his briefing on McKenna’s attributes was over, laid a large appointment calendar on a space he cleared of clutter.

      “Gentlemen,” he said, shoving his glasses to the bridge of his nose. “May I present Derek McKenna?”

      And for the next four hours, the men argued, cajoled, coerced, ranted, threatened and bargained behind the locked doors of the office of Winston Fairchild III until they had every minute of Lieutenant Derek McKenna’s next six months accounted for.

      Chapter One

      “No,” said Lieutenant Derek McKenna.

      He looked around the swank State Department corner office. The men he addressed hadn’t quite absorbed the word he had uttered, but their baffled expressions suggested their brains were working feverishly. Derek would be patient—after all, no wasn’t a word any of these men heard all that often.

      Any right-thinking soldier would be scared to tell the gathering that he wasn’t going along with their carefully laid plans. Who was Derek McKenna to say no to the general at the helm of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two congressmen, several State Department officials and somebody from the White House who had been identified as the undersecretary of the undersecretary of the chairman of something that had been lost in the rush of handshakes and salutes that had started this meeting?

      But Derek had spent two years in hell and wasn’t scared of a few suits or a chestful of medals.

      “No,” Derek repeated, in case anyone in this room still didn’t get it.

      They didn’t

      Just stared at him, the congressmen from New York worrying a pencil with his teeth, a bubble of dribble erupting on the open mouth of the congressman from Arizona, the State Department official whose office this was rubbing his glasses on his tie.

      “Did you say no, son?” the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asked.

      “Yes, sir. I mean, that was a no, sir,” Derek said. And then he lifted his chin, challenging the general to disagree. He was going back to the farm. No more of this see-the-world, broaden-your-horizons, more-to-life-than-this for him.

      Kentucky was just fine.

      “I said no and, with all due respect, General, I meant it,” Derek said. He shoved the appointment calendar off his lap. An aide rushed to pick it up. “I’m not doing any of this.”

      “But, soldier...”

      “General, I didn’t

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