Aha! So that's what they want! They want me to turn him in. "I consider myself to be very lucky, right place, right time and all. Yessir." Scott downplayed his position with convincing humility. "It seems as if he has selected me as his mouthpiece."
"All we want, in fact, all we can ask," Musgrave said, "is for you to give us information before it's printed." Scott's eyes shot up in defense, protest at the ready. "No, no," Mugrave added quickly. "Nothing confidential. We know that Miles Foster is the Spook, but we can't prove it without giving away away too many of our secrets." Scott knew they were referring to their own electronic eavesdropping habits that would be imprudent in a court. "Single handedly he is capable of bringing down half of the government's computers. We need to know as much as we can as fast as we can. So, whatever you print, we'd like an early copy of it. That's all."
Scott's mind immediately traveled back to the first and only time an article of his was pulled. At the AG's request. Of course it finally got printed, but why the niceties now? They can take what they want, but instead they ask? Maybe they don't want to get caught fiddling around with the Press too much. Such activi- ties snagged Nixon, not saying that the President was Nixon- esque, but politics is politics. What do I get in return? He could hear it now, the '<MI>you'll be helping your country,<D>' speech. Bargaining with the President would be gauche at the least.
So he proposed to Musgrave instead. "I want an exclusive inter- view with the President when this thing is over."
"Done!" said Musgrave too quickly. Scott immediately castigated himself for not asking for more. He could shoot himself. A true Washington denizen would have asked for a seat in the Cabinet. But that was between Scott and his conscience. Doug would hear a dramatized account.
"And no other media finds out that you know anything until . . ."
Scott added another minor demand.
"Until the morning papers appear at the back door with the milk," joked Musgrave. "Scott, this is for internal use only. Every hour will help."
Scott was given a secret White House phone number where someone would either receive FAX or E-Mail message. Not the standard old PRESIDENT@WHITEHOUSE.GOV that any schmo with a PC could E-mail into. His was special. Any hour, any day. He was also given a White House souvenir pen.
"It went fine," Kennedy said to Marvin Jacobs from his secure office in the White House basement. He spoke to Marvin Jacobs up at Fort Meade on the STU-III phones.
"Didn't matter," Marvin said munching on what sounded to Kennedy like an apple. A juicy one.