128.
The first thing I noticed when entering the Senator's lavish meeting room is an arrogant wall plaque, black with embossed gold letting in an altogether pompous semi-italicized font proclaiming this area to be the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. I wondered if the Senator is as superficial as the agency he obviously hides his ego behind.
We are seated at a massive maple table, polished to a mirror-like finish, on opposing sides facing each other as the Senator presides at its head in a chair several times the size of ours. I am choking on the intentional symbolism and reach for the pitcher of iced tea and pour myself a glass, offering the same to my colleagues. The Senator, a southerner from a long line of professional politicians, is costumed in an expensive three-piece dark gray charcoal silk suit. His Windsor-knotted crimson tie is paired with the obligatory red, white and blue lapel pin. I cannot see his shoes but imagine them to be spit-shined and cleaner than the double-barrel side by side Remington shotgun that hangs over his desk with an inscription that I cannot read from this distance. I imagine it comes with a story, probably a motto, and a metaphorical warning. I resist my immediate knee-jerk response to despise what I take to be a fraudulent excuse for authenticity and give him a chance. I decide to allow him the benefit of any prejudgemental doubt.
His first sentence unequivocally removes it.
“Y’all screwed the pooch pretty good on this one.”
Silence.
TOM and Julie sit devoid of any change in facial expression and our legal representation fidgets slightly in his seat opening a fresh yellow legal pad while dramatically thumbing the top of a ball-point pen much like locking and loading a sidearm. I sit with my hands folded, fingers interlocked in from of me, watching the Senator. If he was a mind reader I would be arrested for what I am thinking about doing to his skinny neck.
“We have two brave public servants whose wives and children must now somehow endure the trauma of their loss,” he orates condescendingly, “furthermore, the administration is most displeased with the press coverage and media response,” he pauses for maximum impact before dropping the thematic bomb, “they naturally want somebody’s head on a silver platter.” He drags out ‘somebody’s head’ into a four syllable aria of minor-key doom, “or,” he adds, “another vote of confidence on your abilities from none other than myself.”
Silence.
I want to plead our case and fill in some of the blanks he is obviously ignorant of and consider an opening apology and sincere regret for the two lives lost in the line of duty, but I look to TOM quickly for support and get the non-verbal warning signal; a diagonal head movement with steely eyes fixed upon mine. The translation is to zip it.
TOM allows the silence to linger like the smoke from a fine cigar. It hangs in the air above us like the sword of Damocles ready to fall. My tongue is about to bleed out from the hard bite-down. This is a test of wills. I get it now. TOM and our representation are waiting him out, patient with their strategy of getting the Senator to revel his intentions, without any admission of negligence, impropriety of failure on our part. We will not plea bargain with our methodology or high-risk protocols. It is the very nature of our work and everyone at the table knows it. TOM is betting on the unnerving silence being the worst of our sentencing for the obtuse public relations crimes.
Still we all know that the Senator controls both our charter and the covert funding necessary for our operation to continue.
The painful silence is finally broken with the Senator making another diphthongized, drawling attack on the results of our operation. We are in the ninth inning of a reprimand game with the eventual victor being the team leaving the field with more self-respect than the other. This is all show, an egotistical reminder of where the power rests and how the game is played, moreover, it is a brutal, ham-fisted mnemonic of who calls the shots and owns the plantation.
The Senator asks if we have anything to say in our defense, or if his proclamation is sufficient admonition for our crimes. TOM closes his folder signaling to Julie, myself and our council to do likewise. We all stand.
“Please do better on your next assignment,” he says skipping the ‘r’ in both better and your.
We all nod with appropriate contrition and move towards the door.
Outside I want to cry in mocking celebration but realize this is not the time. We won the verbal war of wills without the utterance of a single word.
But I feel dirty, something is bothering me.
Silence.
Muzzle flash.
The shotgun inscription, too far to clearly read, sure looked like it was presented by someone with the initials of MBI.
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