Barry Eisler's Blog: The Heart of the Matter, page 2

More on the Craft of Writing Fiction

Another fun discussion about the craft of writing fiction, this one an interview with Gideon Hodge:

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How to Start Writing Your Novel (or Screenplay or Whatever)

Over the years I’ve received a lot of questions about the craft and business of fiction—including in a bunch of recent interviews I’ve done about my latest novel, The System—questions to which my responses have been unfortunately piecemeal. Rather than the ad hoc approach, recently I decided it might be more useful to more people if I offered some periodic thoughts here on Substack. So here we are.

If you find this video useful, let me know in the comments—there’s a ton more to say on the topic and if people enjoy it, I’ll make time to do more.

Here’s the video I mention in the talk: Andrew Stanton’s Clues to a Great Story.

Okay. There are a lot of ways into this subject. Eventually we can talk about characters, structure, dialogue, and more—but for now I’m going to start by analyzing Ken Follett’s opening to his novel The Key to Rebecca, a terrific thriller that begins with the best example of opening craft I’ve ever read.

I’ve included the jacket copy below so you have context. Back in the day when I would teach writing workshops, I noticed that a fair number of students didn’t want to give context—“Just read it pure and unsullied, I don’t want you to be influenced by anything I might say,” they would tell me. My response was always, “We can do it anyway you want, but know that in the real world, no one ever reads a book or sees a movie without context. You never buy a book without knowing something about it; you never go to a movie without some notion of the movie that’s more specific than ‘It’s a movie.’ You’ve always been cued beforehand. So I recommend that rather than an unrealistic and artificial experiment, we do in practice what always happens in real life, instead.”

And now, on to The Key to Rebecca.

A brilliant and ruthless Nazi master agent is on the loose in Cairo. His mission is to send Rommel’s advancing army the secrets that will unlock the city’s doors. In all of Cairo, only two people can stop him. One is a down-on-his-luck English officer no one will listen to. The other is a vulnerable young Jewish girl…

The last camel collapsed at noon.

It was the five-year-old white bull he had bought in Gialo, the youngest and strongest of the three beasts, and the least ill-tempered: he liked the animal as much as a man could like a camel, which is to say that he hated it only a little.

They climbed the leeward side of a small hill, man and camel planting big clumsy feet in the inconstant sand, and at the top they stopped. They looked ahead, seeing nothing but another hillock to climb, and after that a thousand more, and it was as if the camel despaired at the thought. Its forelegs folded, then its rear went down, and it couched on top of the hill like a monument, staring across the empty desert with the indifference of the dying.

The man hauled on its nose rope. Its head came forward and its neck stretched out, but it would not get up. The man went behind and kicked its hindquarters as hard as he could, three or four times. Finally he took out a razor-sharp curved Bedouin knife with a narrow point and stabbed the camel's rump. Blood flowed from the wound but the camel did not even look around.

The man understood what was happening. The very tissues of the animal's body, starved of nourishment, had simply stopped working, like a machine that has run out of fuel. He had seen camels collapse like this on the outskirts of an oasis, surrounded by life-giving foliage which they ignored, lacking the energy to eat.

There were two more tricks he might have tried. One was to pour water into its nostrils until it began to drown; the other to light a fire under its hindquarters. He could not spare the water for one nor the firewood for the other, and besides neither method had a great chance of success.

It was time to stop, anyway. The sun was high and fierce. The long Saharan summer was beginning, and the midday temperature would reach 110 degrees in the shade.

Without unloading the camel, the man opened one of his bags and took out his tent. He looked around again, automatically: there was no shade or shelter in sight—one place was as bad as another. He pitched his tent beside the dying camel, there on top of the hillock.

He sat cross-legged in the open end of the tent to make his tea. He scraped level a small square of sand, arranged a few precious dry twigs in a pyramid and lit the fire. When the kettle boiled he made tea in the nomad fashion, pouring it from the pot into the cup, adding sugar, then returning it to the pot to infuse again, several times over. The resulting brew, very strong and rather treacly, was the most revivifying drink in the world.

How Does Anyone Deal With a Regime This Evil?!

Completely agree with this observation from a recent NYT op-ed on North Korea:

"Pursuing diplomacy with North Korea won’t be universally popular. The regime is far from admirable. It has, among other things, advanced its military capabilities at the expense of its starving and impoverished population."

In fact, it's actually much worse than that and I don't know why the writer is holding back. The regime spends a trillion dollars a year on its military--which it euphemistically calls "defense." To support its insane military spending, the regime has put its people so far into debt that it has to raise an additional trillion dollars a year through taxes and further borrowing just to service the ever-ballooning debt. And even as it continues to fatten its gargantuan military, almost 40 million of its own people live below the poverty line!

I totally agree, how do you even begin to pursue diplomacy with a regime as obviously insane and destructive to its own people as that one?

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A Few Thoughts on the American Attack on Iran

Yesterday I got invited onto a reasonably well-known and somewhat Trump-friendly podcast to talk about the leaks involving America’s attack on Iran. A friend had recommended me, and because I didn’t want anything I might say on the show to reflect poorly on my friend, I responded to the invitation with the following—after which I didn’t hear back. Which is of course fine, but because I think my take has some merit (and because I took the trouble to write it), I’m posting it here:

* * * * *

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Thanks for asking and I’d be happy to. But let me first share with you my take, with the understanding that if it’s not what the host is looking for, I will completely understand!

I know almost nothing about bunker buster bombs; or about the resilience of the Iranian facilities at Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz; or about what it takes to damage or destroy centrifuges and/or enriched uranium. And I have a feeling that most of the people confidently opining one way or the other about the degree to which Midnight Hammer achieved its aims know no more than I do.

What I do know a bit about is human nature (it’s a novelist’s stock in trade, along with coffee!), so I know the Trump administration is highly motivated to depict the attack as an unqualified success. In this regard, I find it hard to believe that when Trump announced the Iranian program had been “obliterated,” anyone in the administration could really have known such a thing.

But similarly, I know Trump’s political adversaries are equally motivated to present the attack as a catastrophe, and will therefore engage in leaks, distortions, and even fabrications to discredit Trump.

Knowing that each side is heavily motivated to spin or worse, I tend to discount the trustworthiness of all these claims, whichever direction. And I hope the Trump administration will soon settle the argument by releasing some form of information expert third parties can dispassionately evaluate. Though of course, partisans will continue to discount even a third-party assessment if it doesn’t track with their political slant.

I should also add that I think none of this crisis—none of its risks and none of its costs—would have been necessary if in 2018 Trump hadn’t withdrawn from the JCPOA. I’m far from an Obama fan, but I think his administration and the other powers involved (China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK, and US, plus the European Union) did as good a job in negotiating that deal as anyone could have. It limited Iran’s enrichment to keep it far from weapons-grade, and involved intrusive on-site inspections. There were no allegations that Iran was ever violating it before Trump withdrew.

I should also add that I feel no partisan affiliation for the Republican or Democrat wing of the duopoly. I tend to distrust and even to loathe all politicians more or less equally, and that’s the framework I generally apply to events.

Apologies for the long text but I appreciate the invitation and wanted to let you know in advance how I approach this topic! Again, if the host is looking for a different take, I will completely understand.

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Recommended: "Why Mearsheimer Is Wrong on China"

Let me start by noting that I’ve never been a fan of debate as an efficient way to get to the truth. It’s typically two opponents (either singly or in teams), each motivated by the desire to win and make the other side lose. A format built on motivations like that is as likely to produce truth as a machine built to produce heat is likely to produce light. Some, maybe, but if illumination is really the point, all that heat is at best inefficient. Personally, I’d rather watch an MMA match. It’s less pretentious.

Much better than debate is discussion. That is, a conversation between two people who see a topic differently and are interested in exploring the foundation of their differences. This format is rare—almost unheard of on the Internet!—and it typically requires maximum erudition, minimal ego, and mutual respect.

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With all that as prologue, I highly recommend this thoughtful, respectful Substack article by Arnaud Bertrand, “Why Mearsheimer is Wrong on China.”

John Mearsheimer is a rightly lauded professor of political science at the University of Chicago (who also has a Substack page) and one of the foremost proponents of the Realist school of foreign policy. His prescience on topics like NATO expansion and the destruction of Ukraine is in my experience unparalleled.

(Here I must pause, Montie Cranston style, to salute whoever decided to call the Realist school the Realist school. I myself have learned a lot from Realist scholars like Professor Mearsheimer and Harvard professor Stephen Walt (here’s my review of Professor Walt’s excellent book The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy). But however realistic it might or might not be, it’s a great product name. Who doesn’t want to claim the mantel of realism? It’s like the New York Times saying about itself “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”)

And Arnaud Bertrand, the author of the article I’m recommending, is an entrepreneur who in addition to his native French speaks idiomatic English and Chinese (and probably other languages I don’t know about). He lived for eight years in China, and his ability to explain the country’s history and culture to outsiders is Tiresias-level insightful. Also he obviously has outstanding taste in fiction, because he had some exceptionally kind things to say about my latest novel, The System. :)

I got so excited by Arnaud’s article and its implications about the role of human nature and culture in great power politics that in addition to writing this post, I left a long comment. For anyone who’s curious, the comment is here.

Oh, and for another example of a discussion about China with an exceptional light-to-heat ratio, here’s a video of Professor Mearsheimer and Columbia University Economics professor Jeffrey Sachs, who’s nonstop advocating for global sanity makes him in my eyes almost a modern-day bodhisattva.

Well, that’s a long enough intro. I’ll only add that for anyone interested in China specifically, great power politics generally, and the role of human nature and culture in all things, Arnaud is someone to read and savor. And his terrific article on Professor Mearsheimer is a great place to start. Enjoy.

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A Tokyo Romance

Ian Buruma's Behind the Mask was one of the seminal books (along with Nicholas Bornoff's Pink Samurai and John David Morley's Pictures from the Water Trade) that fueled my fascination with Japan, and A Tokyo Romance is a fine follow-up/companion. Unlike Behind the Mask, which is a relatively detached though still passionate examination of the bizarro world of Japanese sexual mores and related topics, A Tokyo Romance is a personal story--the story behind the study, I think you could say.

Buruma is always an engaging guide, and his insights and enthusiasms, now tinged with a touch of nostalgia and the patina of experience, has the eternal outsider's gift for seeing, and presenting, what insiders are too close to perceive. Part of the tragedy of being human, as Kierkegaard said, is that "Life Can Only Be Understood Backward, But It Must Be Lived Forward." Regardless of whether you love Japan as I do, this book is a beautiful example.

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An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions

This past April, I attended a talk by David Zweig hosted by Lee Fang, a journalist I follow here on Substack. I hadn't heard of Zweig's book An Abundance of Caution, and TBH given the subject matter I was expecting something of a dry presentation.

It was anything but.

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With passion, humor, and tremendous insight into human nature, Zweig laid out the evidence not just for what had gone so horrifically wrong in the American response to Covid, but also why. None of it was judgmental or accusatory; instead, though there was some righteous anger in the mix, it was clear Zweig had no interest in finger pointing and instead was driven to depict and document what had gone wrong only to improve the odds of getting things right next time.

I’ve now finished listening to the audio version of the book and it completely tracks with what I learned at the April book talk (the narrator, Jonathan Yen, is also great). Multiple aspects of the American pandemic response—most of all, school closures—were the result of panic and magical thinking, and willfully ignored voluminous evidence from other similarly situated countries (and even similarly situated American states).

Years ago I read about how, when planning a mission, the Pentagon determines the minimum assets and conditions needed to proceed. For example, planners might determine that four helicopters is the minimum; fewer than four available means an automatic order to abort. So if the mission starts with five and loses two to equipment failure or whatever, the mission is automatically aborted. These decisions are made in advance because planners have learned from experience that on the day of the mission, with substantial resources invested and everyone’s blood up, it will be tempting to revise the minimums and proceed based on new assumptions. These on-the-fly approaches are unduly dangerous and tend to result in failure and unnecessary suffering, or worse.

Which is not a bad summation of what happened in response to Covid.

What might therefore help for next time would be a checklist, prepared before panic starts its caustic work on reason--a checklist against which policy proposals can be evaluated. This book is filled with them: as just one example, the notion that before changing a policy such as "kids attend school," the proposed new policy must be based on actual evidence, not on vague wishes. I therefore hope it will be widely read by anyone likely to be involved not just in future pandemic responses, but in any significant policy undertaking.

I also hope the book’s publisher will consider a more compelling cover. I think I understand why they went with what they went with—it’s a photo of an empty classroom, with semi-transparent plastic and cardboard screens separating each desk from all the others. But especially at thumbnail size (which is the size anyone buying in an online store will see), it’s not easy to see what’s depicted. I initially thought it was voting booths or something. And even if you can immediately understand the image, it’s inert. I know the point is that the classroom is empty, but humans are wired to care more about humans than about rooms, and I think something that more actively and intimately portrays a critical theme of the book—we conducted a vast, harmful social experiment on our children—would more effectively communicate that this book is anything but dry and technocratic. The experiment didn't make children disappear, as suggested in the cover photo; in fact it made them suffer unnecessarily. I'd welcome a cover depicting or suggesting that.

I offer this feedback to the publisher as someone whose own books have occasionally been saddled with inert and sales-deadening covers (if you’re curious, search for “Barry Eisler Connexion Fatale”). This is an extraordinary book and deserves to be packaged in a way to appeal to the widest possible audience.

I know "must-read" gets overused, and maybe I'm guilty of the overuse, too, because I'd use the same description for Scott Horton's "Provoked" and for Annie Jacobsen's "Nuclear War: A Scenario." But if you'd like to see better policymaking in the future, especially when the stakes are highest, then yes, An Abundance of Caution is indeed a must-read.

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The Constitution is Toilet Paper

Under the Constitution (and as expanded on in the Federalist Papers) the president cannot unilaterally take the country into wars. That's a power for kings (see Federalist 69) and so the framers deliberately vested the power to declare war with Congress (Article I, Section 8).

But the way the question of war with Iran is discussed would be no different if Article I, Section 8, didn't even exist. Which means that functionally, it doesn't. On arguably the most important power of all, the Constitution is just a piece of paper for the president to wipe his ass with.

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THE SYSTEM, Out Today!

Thrilled to announce that my 19th (!) novel, THE SYSTEM, is out today! It’s available in digital and trade paperback, and though the audiobook (narrated by me) was also supposed to be here today, it seems there’s been some delay, which should be sorted out shortly.

If you’re in the Bay Area, I’m launching the book tonight at Kepler’s in Menlo Park. Swing by at 6:00 pm for a signed copy and to support your local bookstore.

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What’s THE SYSTEM about? I’m glad you asked:

A riveting exposé of the inner workings of American power—as gripping as House of Cards and as fraught with personal dynamics as The Diplomat .

Valeria Velez has just pulled off a stunning upset in California’s 27th District, ousting ten-term corporatist incumbent Fillian Dunne from his seat in Congress. Young, beautiful, and idealistic, Valeria and her boyfriend/campaign manager Preston Jante are determined to use Valeria’s new position to “stop stuffing the maw of the military machine” and return power to the people. But when fugitive hacker Lance Thaddeus uncovers a top-secret Pentagon program combining artificial intelligence with nuclear command-and-control, Valeria might have to choose between her ideals…and her life…

And even while trying to navigate the unfamiliar pathways and temptations of American power, Valeria will have to contend with a mother still frozen by bitterness about the past, a brother jealous of Valeria’s future, and the ghost of the father who abandoned them all and then died before Valeria could even begin to understand his reasons.

But as Valeria will discover, in the world she has entered, personal and political can be meaningless distinctions. There are no solutions, only trade-offs, and as Valeria negotiates with the factions holding real power in America—Wall Street, the Pentagon, Silicon Valley—the lines between compromise and capitulation, savvy and sell-out, player and played, become increasingly hard to see, with ultimate stakes not just for Valeria, but for the very future of constitutional democracy in America.

The real-world basis for THE SYSTEM is documented in my extensive footnotes, which you might find interesting even independent of the novel. And here’s a bit more about the story’s origins:

The world you live in is just a sugar-coated topping. There is another world beneath it. The real world.

—Blade.

Before going on to make a living as a novelist, I spent three years in a covert position in the CIA. At the time, I had a typically skewed understanding of how power is exercised in America, both domestically and abroad. But as I learned more about how, why, and by and for whom power in America is really wielded, I began to realize that the world I’d always believed in was, as Blade put it in the eponymous movie, “a sugar-coated topping.”

Flash forward to the last eight years or so, a time during which the phrase deep state (or call it the military industrial complex, the administrative state, the bureaucratic state, the blob, etc) has become en vogue not just on the American left, where it first gained currency, but in the wider discourse, as well. To which my response is:

What took you so long?

And thus THE SYSTEM, which represents the culmination of all I saw of the culture of the deep state during my time with CIA; my understanding of the real nature of American power as shaped by years of obsessive reading, writing, and speaking on the topic; and everything I’ve learned about the craft of storytelling from over two decades as a novelist and screenwriter.

THE SYSTEM is something of a departure for me. For one thing, while the story has all the sex, it’s driven less by killing. Its fuel is more the crooked timber of humanity mixed with the kind of power that shapes all our lives today. In this sense, I suppose you could say THE SYSTEM is a bit more serious than my other books (though the Livia Lonenovels all deal with human trafficking—hardly a frivolous topic). Luckily there’s no inherent contradiction between delicious and nutritious, a case I once made in an article for NPR about Orwell’s 1984—a novel that can be read as a terrific thriller but is of course also far more. And while THE SYSTEM is certainly political, it isn’t partisan. In fact, I call it post-partisan, because it reflects my view that Dem/GOP and left/right are increasingly counterproductive ways of accurately understanding how power in contemporary America is really acquired, expanded, and exercised.

It’s been said that the best detective novels are about not just how the detective works the case, but how the case works the detective. Similarly, on a dramatic and human level, THE SYSTEM depicts not only what America’s system of power is and how it functions, but also what it does to its members—how it warps their outlook, their ideals, and their values the more they advance within it.

Or, to quote Nietzsche, “When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you…”

Valeria Velez is about to gaze into the abyss of American power. THE SYSTEM depicts what happens when the abyss gazes back.

I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Best,
Barry

* * * * *

“A devastating depiction of power in contemporary America, stunningly rendered through the lens of an idealistic politician determined to use her new position in Congress to make the world a better place—and who discovers that the first offering demanded by politics is principle, with far more consequential sacrifices to come. The System is as gripping as House of Cards and as fraught with personal dynamics as The Diplomat, and best of all, it offers us a view not only of the workings of the game it depicts, but roving access to the minds and souls of the players, and the pieces, caught up in it. I love this book.”

—Blake Crouch, bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion

“The System is the real deal: smart, stylish, and riveting. But it’s also much more: by subjecting Washington’s sordid underbelly to careful scrutiny, Barry Eisler performs a much-needed civic duty. At a time when American democracy is genuinely at risk, this is the book to read.”

—Andrew Bacevich, Co-Founder, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, author of The Age of Illusions

“In The System, Barry Eisler brilliantly demonstrates how the traditional left/right divide masks the true workings of power in America, crafting a work of fiction that paradoxically provides the most honest portrait of the country’s political reality I’ve had the pleasure to read. This book could spark an important public conversation—and I hope it will.”

—Arnaud Bertrand, entrepreneur (founder of HouseTrip and MeAndQi.com) and writer on international relations

“A searing, frighteningly prescient indictment of Washington power games and the modern machinery of the national security state.”

—Lee Fang, Independent journalist

“The System depicts a fictionalized version of the late US Empire—an economic and military juggernaut now in terminal decline as the regime and its institutions buckle under the weight of their own corrupt and corrupting inertia. With compelling prose, Eisler has written a deep political thriller in which the characters exist in shades of gray. They all must accommodate various governmental and private sector interests in such a way as to become complicit in a system so illegitimate that its true dimensions cannot be candidly discussed or explained in “mainstream” settings. Let us hope that entertaining fiction like this can help snap Americans out of their red/blue partisan trances and unite them against their real enemy—the oligarchic regime itself.”

—Aaron Good, author of American Exception: Empire and the Deep State

“The charade of American democracy is well understood by Barry Eisler, and the cast of scheming characters in The System magnificently reflects the shadowy techno-feudal world that defines so much of our lives whether we consent to it or not.”

—Kevin Gosztola, journalist and editor of The Dissenter, author of Guilty of Journalism

“The System is a literary hat trick: a gripping thriller; a steamy love story; and a compelling depiction of how power is really exercised in America. In addition to his own CIA experience, Eisler has clearly done his homework on the incestuous workings of Congress, the Pentagon, and Silicon Valley, and his latest reads like a secret glimpse not just behind today’s headlines, but behind tomorrow’s, too. I hope we’ll see much more of Valeria Velez as she navigates her Faustian advance through Congress specifically, and within the system at large.”

—Ryan Grim, Drop Site News, author of The Squad

“Caught in the incestuous maze of Silicon Valley Big Tech and Washington DC’s cutthroat bureaucracy, newly elected Congresswoman Valeria Velez risks her conscience, political future, and possibly her life to uncover the truth about an ultra-secret Pentagon plan to reshape nuclear command and control. Demonstrating the exceptional knowledge of politics, combatives, and spy tradecraft for which he is known, CIA veteran Barry Eisler artfully weaves together a steamy love story and provocative commentary on the workings of American power. The footnotes alone were fascinating. I couldn’t put this book down and I’m already pining for a sequel.”

—Daniel Hoffman, former CIA three-time station chief and senior executive Clandestine Services officer

“The System is a rare and refreshing novel that tells the truth about government’s position within our society. Rather than a mythological force for good that is tragically corrupted by money, ideology, or authoritarian personalities, Eisler shows in clinical detail that the government is fundamentally a system of power and control that corrupts everything and everyone who interacts with it.”

—Scott Horton, author of Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine and Director of the Libertarian Institute

“Barry Eisler is a master of cut-throat crime and espionage capers, but The System takes on what might be the nastiest arena of all: the double-dealing and infighting of politics in Washington, D.C. Can an idealistic first-term Congresswoman outplay lobbyists, the Pentagon, and shady political “consultants” without losing her soul (and maybe more)? Sprung from tomorrow’s headlines and deeply researched, The System is a wildly entertaining page-turner as well as a cautionary tale about how national security policy really gets made—and for whom.”

—Stephen Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University, author of The Hell of Good Intentions

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THE SYSTEM Chapter 5

Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 4 here.

Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out tomorrow—Friday, June 6th!

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* * * * *

Chapter 5

Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.

—John Dewey

Valeria sat in the hushed Tyson’s Corner Ritz Carlton conference room, all wood-paneled walls and thick carpeting and stylish leather furniture. Dennis’s restaurants were high-end, but it was one thing to work in a place, another to be served there, and she was anxious. She took a sip of coffee from a delicate porcelain cup and had to admit it was delicious—though how much of that was the coffee and how much the presentation she wasn’t really sure.

Preston, sitting next to her, was looking left and right as though anticipating an ambush. “I don’t like it,” he said. “We should have just met at Dunne’s office.”

“I told you, he said we could. But he thought we’d be better off keeping this meeting private.”

Preston threw up his hands. “I don’t even understand who this guy Cranston is. There’s almost nothing about him on the Internet. Plus Dunne acting like he’s your new BFF, and setting up a meeting at this fancy hotel, which by the way is totally not in keeping with your brand—”

“Fillian said Cranston doesn’t advertise, so—”

“When did he become ‘Fillian’?”

“Preston, we beat him, okay? He’s finished. We can afford to be magnanimous.”

He shook his head and looked away.

She waited a beat, then leaned closer and whispered, “You know you’re cute when you sulk.”

It was true, too. He had such beautiful lips, and when he pouted it always made her want to take advantage of him.

He looked at her sidelong. “You’re bad.”

She put a hand on his thigh. “I noticed there’s a lock on the door.”

“Uh-huh. And what are we going to tell Dunne and Cranston when they get here?”

“They’re political people. They’ll be late.”

“And if they’re not?”

She let her hand drift higher. “I’m a congresswoman-elect. They’ll wait.”

He shook his head. But she could tell he wanted to, and it excited her more. “You know I could order you,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And you’d have to do whatever I tell you.”

He glanced at the door. “Come on, we can’t.”

She was totally turned on now. She stood and went around the table. “Val, this is crazy,” she heard him say.

She locked the door, then came back and stood behind him. “Face me.”

He spun the chair around and looked at her. He was flushed.

“Scoot down in that nice leather chair. And open your pants.”

“Val—”

“Stop wasting time,” she said, breathing hard. “Do as I tell you.”

He glanced at the door again, then eased his hips forward and unbuckled his belt. A moment later his pants were around his thighs, his erection straining against his boxers.

She bent her knees and reached under her skirt. Moving even a little she could feel how wet she was.

Preston was past protesting now. He slid his boxers down. She hooked her thumbs inside her panties, lowered them until they dropped, and stepped out of them. Then she raised her skirt, straddled his thighs, and took hold of him. He gasped.

“Shhh,” she whispered, pressing her fingers against his lips. “You have to be quiet.”

She guided him slowly into her. He moaned beneath her fingers and pushed up with his hips.

She paused and pressed her fingers more firmly against his mouth. “No. Hold still. Stay just like that.”

He moaned behind her hand and settled back into the seat. Staring into his eyes, she eased down again, then up a little, then down again, then more, until he was fully inside her. She waited a moment, still staring into his eyes, then started moving, relishing the feeling of having him under her control. She could feel the breath whistling out of his nose past her fingers and hear his soft groans and it was so hot, so fucking hot, she loved having him like this, making him do exactly what she wanted and how she wanted. And she loved that he loved it, too.

She could tell from his eyes that he was already close. “No,” she cooed. “Not yet, baby, you’re not allowed to come yet. Not until I tell you.” She started rubbing hard against the spot over his pubic bone, the way she needed to get off. He grunted and she knew it was hurting him but she rubbed harder, faster, and she felt her orgasm rolling in and she heard herself saying Good, okay, like that, yes, yes, yes, and she felt him coming and then she was coming, too, and she grabbed the back of his head and closed her mouth over his and sucked on his tongue and rode him the way she needed to and came and came and came.

When it was done she collapsed against him, and they stayed that way for a moment, foreheads and noses pressed together, catching their breath and laughing softly. She could feel a trickle under her thighs and was glad they had switched from condoms to an IUD. Maybe it was Pavlovian, but she loved that wetness afterward, and the accompanying sensation of him softening inside her. There was something so vulnerable involved, as though he wasn’t just spent from their lovemaking but was actually dissolving from it. It made her feel responsible for him, protective, and so achingly tender she could almost cry.

The handle of the door clicked against the lock. Preston froze under her. “Shit,” he breathed.

There was a knock. She jumped off Preston’s lap, snatched her panties from the floor, and pulled them up. Preston dragged his pants back into place and buckled his belt.

She walked quickly to the door and looked over at Preston: We good? He raked his hair back and nodded.

She smoothed her skirt, and then, trying to ignore the stickiness between her thighs, unlocked the door and opened it. There was Dunne, holding a briefcase and a Starbucks coffee awkwardly in the same hand. He raised his eyebrows. “Thought I had the wrong conference room.”

“Oh,” she said. “We just . . . you made it sound like it would be better if we kept this meeting private, so . . .”

She realized if he asked, Then why would you open the door without asking who’s there?, she would have no good answer. For a second she felt sure he knew, that they’d been busted like a couple of horny kids. But no, probably she was being paranoid. Preston’s influence.

“Absolutely,” Dunne said, walking in. “With a little privacy, you can get away with all sorts of things in this town.”

Valeria sensed he was suppressing a smile, and instantly changed her mind about being paranoid. Well, fuck him if he has a problem with it. I’m the congressperson now. She closed the door and went back around the table.

Preston stood and offered a hand. “Congressman.”

Dunne set down his bag and coffee and shook Preston’s hand. “Not much longer,” he said with a chuckle. “Thanks to the two of you.”

Valeria was surprised his tone wasn’t at all bitter. If anything, it was . . . buoyant. Her mind flashed to an O. Henry story she’d read as a kid, The Ransom of Red Chief, about a child so obnoxious that when he’s kidnapped the parents are actually relieved.

Dunne took a seat across from them. “Montie’s running late,” he said. “A meeting at the Department of the Interior. That oil spill off Louisiana.”

Valeria had seen something about a Gulf spill on the news, though reports were vague. “How bad is it?”

Dunne shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, it’s going to be classified as an SONS—a Spill of National Significance. Like the Deepwater Horizon incident. But in the end, still just a spill.”

“Can I ask you something?” Preston said.

There was a pause. “Sure,” Dunne said.

Preston’s tone had been notably direct, and Valeria thought she knew where he was going. But she didn’t like the timing any more than the tone.

“We appreciate that you want to keep the NGAD program in Palmdale,” Preston said. “And we’re looking forward to meeting Cranston and hearing your thoughts on strategy. But—”

“You want to know why I’m dealing in Valeria.”

It was as Valeria had thought. She and Preston had talked about Dunne’s motives. But she hadn’t expected Preston to bring it up so soon, or so abruptly. Was he trying to catch Dunne off guard? Did he feel protective of her immediately after their lovemaking?

Preston nodded. “Pretty much.”

Dunne looked at Valeria. “You want the truth? Or the whole truth?”

She smiled, hoping it would obscure her irritation with Preston. “Does anyone ever answer that question other than ‘the whole truth’?”

“No,” Dunne said. “But I like to offer the option.”

When she didn’t answer, he said, “The truth is that as I’ve told you, I want to protect those jobs.”

“Really?” Preston said. “I mean, ultimately those people voted you out of office. Why do you care? I think most people would enjoy the schadenfreude, a little How-you-like-me-now? fuck-you laugh.”

She and Preston had used exactly those phrases when they’d been trying to divine Dunne’s motives—and one more, too, a flip of the bird as you ride off into the sunset. But that was when it was just the two of them. What was the point of being so aggressive about it to Dunne’s face?

Dunne looked at him. “I don’t know which of those people voted for Valeria and which voted for me. I do know none of their kids voted at all. Would you prefer that I punish everyone just to get back at whichever people were foolish enough to vote for the wrong candidate?”

Valeria smiled at the way he put it. “So what’s the whole truth?”

Dunne shifted his gaze to her. “The whole truth is that if you’re not part of the package, Valeria, I have less of a chance of selling it.”

“Why? What do I have to offer?”

“Here’s the good news,” Dunne said. “The Pentagon takes you seriously. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have moved the program, which is about punishing you. The bad news is the way they take you seriously. They see you as a threat. So you need to make nice with them. Show them you know when competition should give way to cooperation.”

“Cooperation?” Preston said. “No. You mean cooptation.”

Jesus, Preston, ease up, we can read between the lines, you don’t have to call him out every time—

“This move isn’t about the program,” Dunne said, ignoring Preston’s jab. “It’s about Valeria. And Valeria, if you don’t make nice with the Pentagon, then no matter what else I can put together to get the decisionmakers to see the error of their ways, my chances of getting them to keep the program in Palmdale are much lower.”

For once, Preston held back, and for a moment they were all quiet. Valeria said, “What if the Pentagon doesn’t want to play nice?”

“We’ll cross that bridge if we have to,” Dunne said. “But if we don’t at least try, the program is gone. And five thousand jobs gone with it.”

* * * * *

Chapter 1 here. Chapter 2 here. Chapter 3 here. Chapter 4 here.

Endnotes to each chapter are here.

Preorder in digital today; digital, trade paperback, and audiobook (narrated by yours truly) out tomorrow— Friday, June 6th!

And if you’re in the Bay Area, I’ll be launching the book at Kepler’s tomorrow— Friday, June 6th, at 6:00 pm. Hope to see you there!

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