SSI OFFICES
Leopole asked, “Jack, have you heard back from Main?”
Jack Peters felt a bit defensive; he had ceded some of his responsibility to Sandra Carmichael, head of foreign ops. “Not yet—it’s only been a couple of days. But I told him that we need small-arms and tactics instructors qualified in French and Arabic. The most likely prospects are Special Forces guys since one of their missions is training local people.” He almost said “indigenous personnel” but thought better of it. SSI was not big on Pentagonese.
Leopole twirled the pencil between his fingers. “Well, these days the French part shouldn’t cause much fuss. But Arabic speakers are golden. We might have to call in some markers to get a couple of those guys.” He looked back at Mohammed. “Unless…”
Seated across the room, Omar Mohammed read his colleague’s mind. “Oh, no you don’t. Non. Laa.” He waved a deprecatory hand.
Leopole got the drift, though he spoke neither French nor Arabic. However, Omar Mohammed spoke them fluently, and five other languages besides. Now he was nearing completion of a course in Indonesian.
“Hey, you did just fine in Pakistan on the Pandora Project,” Leopole insisted.
Mohammed almost winced at the memory. “Only because I was the default for Pashto and Urdu.” He shook his head. “Nope, no way, Jose.” The latter phrase, incongruously crafted in Dr. Mohammed’s cultivated tones, drew immediate grins and chuckles around the table. With his dignified manner and elegant Vandyke beard, Mohammed appeared the last person in Arlington, Virginia, who would employ colloquialisms.
Leopole spoke to Peters again. “Jack, I take it that our standby files don’t have anybody with the language and technical skills just now.”
“The people we have on file are qualified either in French or Arabic, or they’re gun guys. Not both, other than J. J. But I’ll see if Dave can get his personnel contacts to move faster.”
Mohammed had a thought: “Where is Alex Cohen? After all, he speaks fluent Arabic.”
Leopole and Carmichael exchanged glances. Without waiting for Leopole, she replied, “Ah, he’s traveling. Besides, I don’t think an Israeli-American would be too popular in a Muslim—”
“Sorry I’m late, everybody!”
Martha Whitney burst into the room. It was odd, Carmichael thought, how Martha inevitably “burst.” Partly it was her joie de vivre; partly it seemed calculated. Martha was a thespian at heart—always “up,” always “on.”
Most of her colleagues thought it noteworthy that Whitney, who hailed from Detroit, usually affected a southern accent. It was as if she went through life doing a decent impersonation of Pearl Bailey. At forty-eight, she was heavier than a few years before, partly the result of bearing and rearing two sons.
“There was a three-car pile-up on 395 just before the Washington exit,” she explained. “I tell you what, baby, it looked pretty bad when I drove past. There was this Subaru with the front end all…”
“Martha, thanks for the traffic report,” Leopole interjected.
Whitney barely registered the mild rebuke. “Well, I was gonna stop on account of my CPR training, you know? But the ambulance just arrived so I kept on a-comin’.”
Leopole made certain that everyone ways introduced, then nodded to Carmichael, the tacit message plain on his face. You have the conn. Babe.
“Ah, Martha, we’re discussing a training mission in Chad. We think you could make a contribution so we’d like to discuss it with…”
Whitney arranged herself in the padded chair. “Well, I’m not much of an instructor, y’know. But I’ve worked in Africa before. In the field, that is.”
Carmichael didn’t know whether to take that last comment as a catty dig at her lack of covert ops experience. She decided to ignore it. For now.
“Well, there are other reasons for considering you for this mission. After all, you speak French, and that’s…”
Whitney waved a bejeweled hand. “Oh, c’mon, honey. You think I don’t know why I was hired? Same reason the Company hired me: I’m practically invisible. Baby, I be Stealth Woman. Despite thirty years of women’s lib and sensitivity training, the plain fact is that most folks don’t expect much from a black woman.” She gave a conspiratorial grin. “That includes some black men.” After a dramatic pause and a furrowed brow she added, “No, wait. That includes most black men.”
Jack Peters had never met Martha Whitney. That was obvious to Leopole and Carmichael when he said, “Obviously it would help to have an African-American in Chad.”
Whitney’s cheery face abruptly wrinkled in disdain. She shook her head in one direction and a warning finger in the other. “Darlin’,” she began. “Don’t you be layin’ that PC BS on me. When I hear ‘African-American’ or ‘Eye-talian-American’ or ‘Mexican-American’ that’s like a red flag to the bull, you know? It’s like you’re sayin’ I’m half American. Like maybe I don’t quite measure up, you know?”
“Well, I was just…”
“Now I’m tellin’ you for sure. If you figure you got to describe me racially, well, honey, I’m sorry for you. I’m a woman, and I’m black, so I’m a black female American. That’s an adverb modifying an adjective modifying a noun, and the proper noun is American! But I ain’t never an African-American. If you gotta hyphenate me, then you better remember that I’m an All-American!”
He gulped visibly. “Yes, ma’am!”
It was too late; Whitney was spooled up. “Just ’cause I can’t show you my pedigree don’t mean that I walk around like my oldest boy, wearin’ his kinte cloth. I don’t know what tribe sold my people into slavery, or even if they ever was slaves. But I figure anything that happened before my people learned to read and write is way beyond my poor ability to add or detract, so let’s get past it, shall we?”
Leopole smiled in spite of himself. Martha Whitney had given an impromptu English lesson and, knowingly or otherwise, had quoted the Gettysburg Address.
Peters stuck out his hand. “Let’s start over. Martha, I’m Jack.”
She shook. “Glad to meet you, honey.”