Spencerville

her and come to a decision.”
    “In other words, I don’t have to be at work on Monday morning?”
    “I’ll take care of that. We’ll get you a residency hotel until you find something. I’ll get that approved.”
    “Thank you.”
    Keith studied the menu.
    Charlie said, “With a promotion, you can afford a town house in Georgetown.”
    “I doubt it.”
    “What’s a brigadier general make these days? About eighty-five thousand?”
    “I guess. I’ll give it my full consideration.”
    “But how are you leaning?”
    “Forward. I’m trying to read the menu. This conversation is closed.”
    The drinks came, and Charlie proposed a toast. “To all of us who serve, past, present, and future.”
    “Cheers.”
    The waiter took their order.
    Charlie asked, “Did you speak to your lady last night?”
    “She lives with her husband.”
    “Oh, right.” He chuckled and said, “Ted almost dropped his dentures when you said that. That was pretty funny. I didn’t know you were going to say that.” He added, “Why did you say that?”
    “I felt like it.”
    They reminisced about old times, talked about the post–Cold War world, guessed about the future. The food came, and they ate. In truth, Keith was enjoying himself. He liked Charlie Adair, he liked to discuss the real issues, he liked his Scotch, and he liked his steak. He could not imagine living here again, but he could imagine getting back into intelligence work, out of the country, maybe someplace where he could actually do some good, but he couldn’t think of where that could be. The irony, however, was that he was too far up the ladder to do the fieldwork any longer, and if you said no to the president, you didn’t ask for another job. And even if he could wangle a job overseas, it wouldn’t be fair to Annie. She had two kids in college in Ohio, and a family in Spencerville. He had to start thinking like a private citizen with private responsibilities and commitments. He said to Charlie, “Why do we still think we have to police the world?”
    Charlie replied without hesitation, “Because we still have millions of people on staff and millions of square feet of office space and billions of dollars allocated by Congress. It has nothing to do with idealism, it has to do with office space. If we withdrew from the world stage, this would be a ghost town, and the Jockey Club would close.”
    “That’s a little cynical. People could work in domestic programs. The heartland is dying.”
    “That’s not for people like us. Do you want a job with the Department of the Interior, or Health and Human Services?”
    “No.”
    “There you go. Even if they offered me more money and a higher position at HHS, I’d say no. The glamour jobs have to do with helping foreigners or fucking foreigners.” Charlie lit another cigarette and exhaled. “You remember the peace dividend? They fired you so we could have more peace dividend. We were going to rebuild America with that money. It’s not happening. We’re still trying to run the world. We
want
to run the world.”
    “The world can do fine without us.”
    “Maybe.” He looked at Keith and asked, “If the Soviets were still a threat, would you come back?”
    “If they were a threat, I wouldn’t have been fired.”
    “Answer the question.”
    “Yes, I would.”
    Charlie nodded. “You see, Keith, secretly you’re unhappy because the Cold War is over—”
    “No.”
    “Listen to me. You dedicated your life to fighting godless commies, and a lot of people shared your sense of mission. You were a product of the times you grew up in and a product of small-town USA. To you, this was like a holy war, and you were on the side of God and the angels. You
were
one of the angels. Now Satan and his legions are defeated, we’ve invaded hell itself and freed the imprisoned souls. Then… what
? What
? Nothing. Your country doesn’t need you to protect it from the forces of evil. You were happier when the devil was alive and the White House was ground zero on a Soviet missile map. You woke up each day in Washington knowing you were on the front lines and were protecting the weak and frightened. You should have seen yourself stride into the office every morning, you should have seen the fire in your eyes when I told you you were going overseas on assignment.” Charlie stubbed out his cigarette and said, “The last few years, you looked like a knight who killed the last dragon, sitting around with a bad