“Enough,” the president said. “Major, you told me you wanted to have a frank discussion. Well, let’s do it. You have the floor.”

“Thank you, sir.” Again, he hesitated, but his resolve was clear when he locked eyes with Klein. “As I think you’ve become aware, I run an organization that protects the interests of the military and ensures the country is as well defended as it can be. We operate on similar unstable legal ground as your group—which is why I’m willing to admit any of this.”

“Mutually assured destruction,” Klein said.

“I hope not, Fred—we’re on the same side. But I don’t have to tell you that it’s a difficult business. In going through the background of your Jon Smith, I can see that you’ve been forced to make tough decisions. And like me, you’ve probably made a few mistakes along the way.”

Over the last few days, Klein had gathered a substantial dossier on the retired soldier, piecing together a probable history of his organization and making connections between him and the Pentagon officials supporting him. But it seemed that Whitfield had been similarly occupied and equally successful. The questions were, what did he want and how could they get out of this particular standoff without tearing the country apart?

“All right,” the president said. “I think we all understand the position we’re in. Now, what do you know about Merges in Sarabat?”

Klein was relieved that Castilla hadn’t mentioned North Korea or Morocco. Apparently, he wasn’t prepared to lay their entire hand on the table. Would Whitfield hedge similarly?

“It was a military field test done by Dresner prior to releasing the unit. I don’t know the exact details because I’m not a scientist and this is just one of hundreds of experiments and tests that we helped fund during development.”

“So you’ve known about this technology for a long time,” Castilla said. “Much longer than we have.”

Whitfield nodded. “I became aware of it almost twenty years ago when it was a skunkworks project in one of Dresner’s subsidiaries. The research looked promising and the military applications were obvious.”

“Obvious enough for you to support it through black funding from the Pentagon.”

“It wasn’t a project that was far enough along to get the government funding it needed. There was less than a fifty-fifty chance that Dresner could pull it off. And he wouldn’t accept public funding from the military anyway. In the end, I persuaded him that it was the only way he was going to get his dream financed and that we’d keep it completely out of the public eye.”

“And in return, he would create a military version and give us exclusive rights to it,” Castilla said.

“That’s exactly right, sir.”

“At a high cost, though. People died in Afghanistan. Women and children.”