Seven Days in May

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 The parking lot stretched away to the north, cheerless and vacant. Its monotonous acres of concrete were unbroken except where the occasional shadow of a maple tree speared thinly across the pavement. In the nearby lagoon that opened out into the Potomac, small craft lay in rows at their moorings as though glued to a mirror. No ripple disturbed the surface of the water where it reflected the early-morning sun that was now rising over the silent domes and roofs of Washington across the river.

Colonel Casey parked at the River entrance of the Pentagon. He stood beside his car for a moment, jingling his keys absently as he eyed the old Ford with disgust. Age had settled upon it. Its enamel, once a deep blue, was faded down to a kind of neutral smudge. A rear windowpane was cracked and the fenders were nicked and dented.

Turning away from his car, Casey looked at the great building. The Pentagon loomed up, opaque and formidable, rows of identical windows marching away around its corners without a single touch of grace or humor, as bleak and grim as the business that kept men busy inside it year after year.

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