"And you don't?"

"Oh, sure, but I don't really care. I may tell you my views, but whether you agree with them is your business."

After another long look at Cade, Mandi said, "I see," and shifted off the fridge as she asked, "Are you ready to do something about dinner?"

Cade also stood up and said, "Great idea."

"Will they let you have one of the agency cars?"

Shrugging, Cade said, "Sure. No problem."

"Good. I think it would look better if we visit several fast-food places.

It'll look funny if we order enough food for a party, then don't have a party.

Especially if the food disappears."

"Good point. Chances are good that someone would notice something like that on this floor." He paused, then added, "They keep pretty close track of the pool cars, too. Might be better if we just rented something. Or flew."

With a wry grin, Mandi asked, "You want me to fly you from one burger stand to another?"

"No, ma'am. We'd fly to where there are a bunch of them close together, like at beltway exits along the Interstate. Then we'd walk. No vehicle records to worry about that way."

Mandi nodded. "Yeah. Okay. Sounds good."

Chapter Seventeen

Mandi didn't particularly like the man she'd met in Washington, but the President was the only one who could quietly approve a fairly large clandestine expenditure.

It was one thing to select and convert people, but it was quite another to provide them a base of operations, communications, training, equipment, and all the other logistical necessities.

He'd easily understood the urgency of getting the program underway, but he'd balked when Mandi -- well aware that their conversation was likely being recorded -- avoided discussion of her method of converting regular people to superpeople.

Leaning back in his chair, he'd asked, "Why can't we just convert one of our Ranger units, ma'am? Wouldn't that be a lot simpler and faster than hand-picking and having to train every single... what do we call them? Convertees?"

"Close enough," said Mandi. "Not everybody can be converted. Some people simply aren't suitable for the process."

"You're saying it won't work on everybody?"

To avoid saying that she simply wouldn't accept everybody, Mandi said, "Some of the money would go to pre-conversion evaluations. Training would eat most of the rest of it."

"What kind of training?"

"Imagine that you instantly became ten times as strong as you'd ever been.

Could you immediately shake hands with someone? Hold a child? Could you take a step and not leap fifty feet? Could you even hold a coffee cup without breaking it? It takes time and training to adjust safely."

Their discussion had lasted almost an hour, at the end of which time he'd promised her five million and the use of a decommissioned underground missile facility in Nevada.

"If your program shows promise in six months," he said, "You'll get more money. I'm basically giving you this first five million for all you've done since you've been here."

Five million. It was a quarter of what she'd asked for and almost exactly what she'd expected.

Concealing a grin, Mandi grimaced slightly, sighed, and said, "Well, if it's the best you can do..."

The man held up a hand and said, "I"m sorry, but it is. For now, anyway.

Give me results that I can show the other party when they start interrogating me about why I gave you money, ma'am. We'll take it from there when the time comes."

Thinking about the meeting as she flew back to Atlanta, Mandi had to admit that he'd been a bit more reasonable than she'd antic.i.p.ated.

The meeting had been a test of sorts, of course, for both partic.i.p.ants.

She'd made it known through John's NIA offices that she'd wanted a private word with the President.

Known to be something of a Bible-thumper who didn't really approve of Mandi's costume or the fact that she professed no interest in religion at all, the President had nonetheless managed to clear an hour for her on a few day's notice and he'd listened to her pitch.

In Mandi's opinion, that had proven him at least to be tractable and reasonable enough to work with, even if he wasn't really very likeable.

Mandi had been able to appear in the Oval Office less than ten minutes after the President's secretary had called John. That had impressed the living h.e.l.l out of the President, but he'd carefully avoided letting her know that.

She'd simply flown into the White House as someone had used a service entrance. It had been that simple. Exterior sensors had sounded an 'approaching object' alert, but Mandi had been over the fence and across the grounds before the sensors had understood what they were seeing.

Other sensors within the building had also detected her, but far too late to be of any use in stopping her. Mandi had flown to the doors of the Oval Office and knocked firmly as she'd said h.e.l.lo to his personal secretary.

The secretary had seen Mandi seemingly appear out of nowhere to float to a stop in front of the doors, then she'd felt a blast of breeze from Mandi's pa.s.sage down the corridor.

Security personnel scrambled to surround Mandi almost instantly. They ran toward her in the hall and two popped out of hidden pa.s.sageways, guns drawn and faces stern. One even yelled, "Freeze!"

"I have an appointment," said Mandi, then she turned to the secretary and asked, "Would you tell the President that Mandi Steele is here? He's expecting me."

Only one man -- a male secretary -- asked why Mandi hadn't presented herself at the front gate. The other four men and two women present were with the Secret Service, and they already knew the answer. One of them rather brusquely told the secretary to get back to work.

The guy pouted a bit as he left, then he asked the same question of the President's secretary in a hurt tone.

She gave him a roll of her eyes and said, "Think about it, dummy. She wants something or she wouldn't be here at all. This was just a grand entrance to let POTUS know she's n.o.body to take lightly or mess with in the slightest way."

Stiffening at her words, the guy stalked away muttering, "She's not even a U.S. citizen. I'll bet she doesn't even have a G.o.dd.a.m.ned green card."

Perhaps two minutes pa.s.sed before the electronic locks built into the doors of the Oval Office snapped off and the President opened the doors to greet Mandi with a handshake.

"Sorry about all the fuss," he said. "Come on in, ma'am."

Yes, he'd put on a show of being pleasant enough, but his calm had been an act right up until their very last moment together, and his gaze had too often been focused on her upper anatomy instead of her eyes during their conversation.

Mandi landed on the hotel roof and changed, then slipped into the hotel and went to her room, where she ordered a triple steak dinner to feed Cade's conversion before she checked in with John about the look-alike contest.

As she waited for John to finish a conversation, she heard three of the other agents discussing the previous day's events and Ed Cade's name came up.

"That cop Avery was stunned," said one guy. "He actually used the word 'stunned'. He said Cade popped that guy twice before he could get his gun out.

Said he only barely had his own gun out when the guy went through the window."

The woman snickered and said, "I'll bet he was gonna yell 'freeze!' or something like that. He'd have been dead meat."

"Yeah, but some hindsight-quarterbacks with the PD are asking if Cade shot before he'd validated his target."

"No-f.u.c.king-way," said the woman. "Cade's never called it bad yet and he had over twenty kills on the books before he retired. If he'd screwed up even once, some political b.u.t.tmonkey would have been all over it in a flash."

'Twenty kills?' thought Mandi. She turned to face the woman and asked, "Twenty kills? How many arrests?"

The three agents blinked at her for a moment, then the woman looked at one of the guys and asked, "Two, is it? The kids he busted for car theft in Miami six years ago?"

Nodding, the guy said, "Yeah. Sounds right. I've never heard of any others."

"Car theft?" asked Mandi, "Was he working with the police?"

The woman shook her head.

"No, he just happened to walk out of a building while two kids were trying to jack a Mercedes. One of them pulled a knife on him, so he showed them the antique .45 he carried when he wasn't on duty and turned them over to the cops."

"I see. So he's never taken any prisoners when he's been doing agency work?"

The guy shrugged and said, "If he has, I've never heard about them."

"Wait a minute, Jerry," said the woman, "I think she's getting the wrong idea, here. Ma'am, Cade's no 'Dirty Harry'; he just seems to have an absolute knack for being right where the s.h.i.t hits the fan. To the best of my knowledge, he's never had a really decent opportunity to take a prisoner, you know what I mean? When it goes down, you do what you have to and hope you're making the best decision."

"Still... You really think that not one of those twenty kills could have been arrested instead?"

"Maybe," said the guy, "If they'd have run out of ammo or volunteered to stop shooting. In the only case I know about personally -- I was there -- the guy went down shooting at us with an AK. Didn't stop firing until he ran the clip dry. By then Cade had returned fire and put four rounds in him. It was a clean shoot, ma'am. The guy died pulling the trigger. As far as I know, all his kills have been like that. Nasty to the end."

"One thing, ma'am," said the woman, "Cade doesn't shoot to wound or incapacitate. If he shoots at all, he shoots to kill. That's what some of the flak's been about in his records, but the fact is, we all do the same thing.

This outfit doesn't deal with muggers and burglars. We mostly get the diehards and psychos. At our end of things, if you pop a guy in the leg and yell 'drop the gun', chances are real good he'll kill you when he goes down shooting."

The guy beside her chuckled and said, "Cade's just been in a lot of wrong places at wrong times. Like Cindy said, he always had a real talent for that."

Mandi chatted with them about some of the things they'd been through to try to get a perspective on Cade's agency performance, but by the time she'd been called into John's anteroom office, she'd begun to have some misgivings about having converted Cade.

It had occurred to Mandi to wonder how Cade would handle being converted without consultation, but not for long. He seemed to be exactly the kind of man Mandi wanted on her team; capable, determined, outside the reaches of political parties and religions, and able to both teach and learn.

He was a little long in the tooth, but that didn't seem to make any difference concerning his effectiveness. And -- his profession as an armed spook aside -- he seemed a warm, giving person, not just another of those 'I am my job'-types.

Cade's reaction when she dropped by his room seemed to validate all her immediate gut feelings about him. He'd simply grabbed his gear and said that 'on-the-job is the worst possible time to have to learn new tricks'.

Mandi had almost laughed at that. Almost. He was right, of course, but she didn't have the luxury of time. As soon as the convention job ended, she had to return to Las Vegas.

But still... Twenty kills and no arrests? Had she read him wrong, despite her training and genetic predispositions?

After signing in for the look-alike contest, she'd been led to a dressing room with the twenty-six other women and had put on the rather crude replica of her costume. When all the women had been paraded past the audience and judges, they waited in the wings for the results.

That's where she was when she saw John suddenly head for the doors. Looking through the walls, she saw agent Pierce holding a man down and agents Evans and Bartow on the floor as a man hurtled toward Cade with a weapon.

Mandi almost abandoned the contest to go to his aid, but the situation unfolded too quickly. In a bit less than eight seconds the attacker was unconscious and dying fast and Cade was again on his feet, talking into his lapel mike.

When Carter picked up the attacker's weapon and asked if Cade was okay, he shruggingly replied that he could use a coffee. Was that just a bit of bravado for Carter?

For several long-seeming moments more Mandi watched Cade after he'd resumed his post in front of the doors. He showed no outward signs of aftermath anxiety; his heartbeat and respiration returned to normal inside three minutes as he stood calmly in a loose parade-rest stance.

Had she been mistaken about him, after all? Had his soft side only been a facade for her benefit? John appeared and dismissed Cade, who headed for the escalators as John returned to the ballroom.

Mandi's contest alias -- Jane Blaise -- was softly called by the woman emcee, who was working from a list. She said that there would be photo opportunities after the show with a local modeling agency for any who wished to partic.i.p.ate. Prizes were awarded and the contest ended, then Mandi and most of the others were led offstage.

At the photo booth, Mandi/Jane grinningly explained that her partic.i.p.ation had been a spur-of-the-moment thing brought about by the offer of a costume for the occasion. She said that she had no interest in modeling and signed 'Jane Blaise' on a release form for pictures taken during the contest.

John was waiting for her as she left the dressing room.

"Only sixth place, huh?" he asked with a grin. "Too bad. You really do sort of look like her, you know."

She returned his grin with, "So they tell me." Glancing around to see there was n.o.body near, she asked, "Can you spare a minute? It's about Cade."

Stiffening slightly, John asked, "Cade? What about him?"

"How well do you know him?"

Giving her a studious look, John said, "We go back a long way, Mandi. The seventies in Europe. The Cold War. He was with a different agency back then. So was I, for that matter..."

"That's the job, John. How well do you really know him?"

"Well, I'd trust him with my life or anyone else's. Does that answer your question?"

With a trace of hesitation, Mandi said, "Almost. What do you think of his ability to recover almost instantly after something like what just happened? Do you think that's normal?"

John stopped and leaned back against the wall, his arms crossed and a thoughtful look on his face.

"It is for Cade," he said. "Why all the questions, Mandi? Has he done anything or said anything to you that..?"

Shaking her head, Mandi hurriedly said, "No, nothing like that. He's been a perfect gentleman around me. To me. No problems there. But I watched him kill that man in the lobby, John. A few minutes later his system was completely back to normal, as if nothing had happened."