COLONEL “BEAR” SMYTHSON ran with the smooth, effortless rhythm of a natural track athlete, despite being a big, broad-shouldered wrestler. Although it was still an hour before sunrise, it felt good to be out and running hard on such a lovely spring morning. There was enough dawn light to pick out the Iwo Jima Memorial with its heroic depiction of marines raising Old Glory, while on his left shoulder, as he headed back toward his married quarter in Fort Myer, the myriad crosses on the green slopes of Arlington Cemetery gleamed white.

Bear needed this time to himself. Not only was his early morning run around Arlington Cemetery the only exercise his job permitted, but it also gave him time to think, to plan his day, and to get things into perspective before the tsunami of work hit him in the office. As Executive Assistant to the US National Security Adviser, he was a busy man in a key post. Today might be a Saturday, but most Saturdays were working days. Sundays too, when needs required.

While some of his predecessors had found the pressure too much and been quietly “returned to unit,” Bear flourished on the challenge. A tank commander by background, he had been noticed not only as an inspirational leader in combat, but also as a highly capable staff officer, a rare combination in any army. He had spent much of the previous decade fighting America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, on his left wrist he wore a silver bracelet with the names of the soldiers killed in action under his command, an ever-present reminder of the human consequences of war.

As an African American, Bear had had his own mountain to climb in the US Army. A native of Atlanta, Georgia, he may have grown up after the segregation era, but he had never forgotten the humiliation of waiting for the white boys to finish on the fairground rides before the black boys were allowed their turn. He might be a “bird” colonel, who wore a Silver Star for valor proudly on his chest, but when he went to visit his mother in her care home in Atlanta, the few whites he saw in the area looked as if they still expected to push in front of him to get to the fairground rides. There might have been a black president for the previous eight years, but sometimes it still felt as if he was back in Atlanta in the 1970s. The secret to success, he had discovered, was never to let anyone see the hurt it inflicted.