“Not as much as we’d hoped. I have been able to confirm that both are on hold.”

“Why?”

“Smith reported a concussion from a car accident this morning.”

Whitfield would have actually allowed himself an admiring smile if the situation weren’t so dire. Had that simply been a convenient excuse or was the army scientist sticking his middle finger in the air?

“And Russell?”

“Some sort of disciplinary action. Obviously, our eyes aren’t as sharp inside the Agency.”

Disciplinary action. He himself might not have thought of that. Credible in that it was something that could crop up suddenly, would prevent reassignment, and also was entirely fitting with her work history. Clever. Clever enough to make him break a sweat.

“Keep me informed, Captain. There are no details too trivial.”

“I understand, sir.”

Whitfield severed the connection and reached into an open safe to retrieve the file on Smith, ignoring for the moment the much thinner one on Russell. His wife started a vacuum cleaner somewhere in the house but the comforting sense of normalcy that it usually provided didn’t come. Not today.

He spread the contents across his desk in neat stacks—not something that could be done with the computer files the captain was constantly trying to get him to use. There was something about seeing it all laid out that helped him think. Though he recognized that his was the last generation harboring such a bias.

Lieutenant Colonel Smith’s record was spotless. He had performed admirably as a front-line doctor in virtually every hot spot on the planet and later had become one of the army’s top virus hunters. It seemed generally agreed on that he was borderline brilliant in the realm of science and, more interesting, just as capable in combat. On no less than two occasions, he had taken command of the special forces team he’d been embedded with as a doctor and the experienced operators had fallen in behind him without question.

If he had any weakness, it was that he wasn’t terribly good at hiding the fact that he believed himself to be the smartest man in the room. It was an attitude that tended not to be particularly appreciated by one’s superiors, but one that Whitfield could sympathize with. And in Smith’s defense, it appeared that he generally was the smartest man in the room.

In truth, if he had been aware of the existence of Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, Whitfield would have seriously considered recruiting him. The problem was that he suspected someone had beat him to it.