“Not only that, but Stanwyck is part of the Pentagon group that is trying to centralize all the armed forces, which would weaken the autonomy of the Air Force, and indirectly strip Air Force Systems Command, out at Andrews, of any real independent power at all.”

McPherson shakes his head. “So we were pawns in a battle between two parts of the Air Force? It wasn’t even interservice?”

Goldman pauses to consider it. “Basically true. But it was the program that was the pawn, though. And from what we now know, I suspect it was a pawn that Stanwyck intended to sacrifice all along. Because”—he stops to sip at his drink—“it was Stanwyck himself who told James of the existence of the Stormbee program. This was after you had been working on your superblack proposal for some time, see, after Stanwyck had made sure, by the use of in-house spies, or inquiries from Feldkirk or whatever, that you had a good, workable system. Only at that point, when the superblack mechanism was already rolling to award LSR the contract, did Stanwyck tell James about it, supposedly in the course of answering a request for information. But I think it was planned. I think that that was the shoving of the pawn out into an exposed position, to set up the sacrifice.”

“You mean Stanwyck wanted the program taken away and turned white?”

“Well, think about what had to happen as a result. James gets mad as hell, and because he’s a four-star general he has the authority to make it a white program, and take over the administration of the bidding process. At that point, you people at LSR are doomed, because no matter what the various other bids look like, James is bound and determined that LSR is not going to win this contract, because you are the company that Stanwyck chose. At the same time, as Stanwyck well knows, LSR has a damn good system worked up. So … do you see?”

“He set James up to initiate cheating in the evaluation process,” McPherson says. He feels a certain theoretical pleasure in understanding at the same time that disgust is twisting his stomach again. “If it happened, and we protested successfully, then James loses power.”

“He might even lose his job! They might force him to retire, no doubt about it. At this point James has his back to the wall, and that’s a fact.”

“So Stanwyck’s gambit worked. The pawn was taken, but the king is in trouble.”