“How high does it go?” Deputy Director Davies looked concerned as he asked, and uncomfortable. The chair which held him was olive green, like much of the world he worked in. It was a wing back chair, and it sat on the downwind and downhill side of General Ross’s desk. They sat in the War Department headquarters in Washington DC, in an old building with high ceilings, and open transoms over the doors. Years of slack funding had taken their toll on the building, and the latest refit had left conspicuous electrical conduits and downright ugly light fixtures dangling from the ceiling. They looked incongruously battle ready dangling from the wooden slat-board ceilings.

“I’m not sure, maybe as high as the cabinet. If I thought this conversation was going to leave this office, you know I couldn’t let you make it home tonight.” Ross was young for a four star general, and his aptitudes for ruthlessness and politics were equally well honed. He was still in fighting shape, nearly two decades after his time in the Great War. He was looking for his next fight, and it was looking like a covert war, the kind Teddy Roosevelt would have hated, even as he excelled at it.

This comment made Davies’ eyebrows rise, and he declined to respond in kind. His years building the Bureau of Investigation had left him with the idea that a stated threat practically doesn’t count, and certainly isn’t as important as the unspoken one. “Who is it? Reds?”

“Reds? Maybe. Maybe Yellows, Greys, and whatever color Nazi’s are.”

“Why the southwest? That’s … well, it’s kind of remote.”

“Army intel, son, can’t tell you. It’s more than even I know, but that desert down there …” The General’s face crinkled a little as he tasted the words he was about to say, and found them unappealing. “Destiny is out there. I know,” he added quickly, raising a hand from the desk to stifle Davies’ skepticism before it started. “Everybody’s destiny, and I can’t tell you why because I don’t know. Army intel, even over my pay grade.” He could say that with a wry smile. There was a level of intel that seemed to be above everybody’s pay grade, even the President’s. Secrets that only a few men anywhere knew at all.

“So where does that leave us?” Davies was still a little unclear about why he was there.

“The army can’t do the things that need to be done, but we can fund it, under the table. That will keep it off of your books as well, and it can stay between you and me.”

Davies pursed his thin lips, and considered. In his game, knowledge was power, and having his own team that was off the books entirely, at the epicenter of “everybody’s destiny,” sounded like a darn good start. “Do you know if my agency is compromised?”

“Maybe.”

“All right then, we have a deal.”