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sometimes known, don’t think it’s funny, because it was a commonly accepted fact that in the heyday of the Cold War, the Soviets had fed the center coordinates of the courtyard into at least five ICBMs. This was not attributed to a Russian sense of humor but to the reliability, or lack of it, of their missiles and warheads.
    “Big” is the adjective that best describes the Pentagon, and with over 6.5 million square feet, it’s easy to get lost. If the casual visitor should see a man in uniform talking to a pretty civilian employee, it’s not because he’s trying to score but because he’s lost. Yet everyone will think he’s hitting on her, which even in this day of political correctness is much better than appearing to be asking for directions, a major violation of the male ethic. When the $1.2 billion renovation that was started in 1993 is completed in 2006, the added 200,000 square feet of office space will only make the situation worse.
    But in spite of its size and idiosyncrasies, the occasional scandal about contracting and budgeting, the personal ambitions stalking its offices, and the egos that define the command corridors, the Pentagon is an efficient place, and the taxpayers get good value for their money. For the next two days Stuart worked in an administrative limbo, making it even more efficient, shuffling the never-ending flow of paperwork that flooded the Air Force. “Paperwork” was really a misnomer, since most of the Air Force’s business was conducted on computers. But the devilish machines had not streamlined the military’s penchant for documentation. In fact, they’d only made it worse. Consequently the first file Stuart opened contained over thirty unanswered queries, letters, and one inventory form to be filled out and dutifully forwarded. He went to work on the inventory, the most time-consuming project.
    Late on Wednesday afternoon Peggy Redman, Priestly’s secretary, telephoned. “You can come back. Everything’s fine.”
    “What happened?”
    “Cooler heads prevailed and decided you did the right thing by riding out the hurricane in Cuba. And, can you believe it, your report was forwarded, unchanged, to the committee working on the Quadrennial Defense Review?” She gave a low, very wicked laugh. “No one knows how that happened or how to answer the committee’s questions, least of all Colonel Priestly. It seems you’re suddenly the indispensable man around here. The good colonel has dropped the investigation.”
    Stuart shook his head in amusement. Peggy Redman had saved him because she had what management experts call “institutional loyalty.” An untold number of trees had died providing the paper describing this phenomenon but, in short, it was nothing more than a blend of dedication and common sense. Peggy believed in what her office did and knew what it took to get the job done. It also helped that she liked Mike Stuart and hated Colonel Roger “Ramjet” Priestly with a pure and refined passion.
    “Thanks, Peggy,” he said, vowing to send her a large bouquet of flowers. He was certain she had forwarded the report to the committee by simply misrouting it. He returned to the inventory he was working on because it grated on his nature to leave projects incomplete, no matter how trivial. He worked hard, but it was after 8:00 P.M. by the time he finished. He turned out the light in the admin office and hurried to catch the next Metro. For Stuart, as for so many who worked at the Pentagon, it was easier to take the subway than fight the traffic and parking. But at that late hour there were only three other passengers on the train.
    As the crow flies, it was less than four miles from the Pentagon to Stuart’s basement flat in Capitol Hill, the multiracial residential area immediately east of the Capitol. The journey normally took about thirty minutes, depending on how quickly he transferred lines at the midway point, and it was a short walk from Eastern Market, the