"They don't do a damn thing," the operations director said. "They sit around and play cards and the only thing even vaguely worklike they do is make a phone call once a day. Six agents. Nothing but one phone call a day."

Stantington was pacing the perimeter of his office, making neat 90-degree turns at each corner.

"Who do they call?" he asked.

"Somebody's aunt, I think. A little old lady in Atlanta."

"And their budget is how much?"

"Four million nine hundred thousand. But it's not all salaries of course. Some of it gets hard to trace."

6

Stantington whistled, a small sip of noise. "Four million nine hundred thousand," he said aloud. "Fire them. Imagine if Time magazine found that one out."

"Time magazine?" said the director of operations.

"Forget it," Stantington said.

"Should I check the old lady out?"

"No, dammit. Check her out and that'll cost money. Everything around here costs money. You can't even go to the toilet without it costing you twenty-three dollars and sixty-five cents. No. We check her out and that pushes the cost of this Omega whatever-it-is up to five million. And that's a bad number. Nobody's going to remember four million nine hundred thousand, but give them five million and they'll notice that. And then they'll start, five million here and ten million there and they'll nickel and dime us to death. Let that happen and we'll be crapping in the hallways."

The director of operations and the chief of personnel looked at each other quizzically. Neither understood the admiral's obsession with bathrooms, but both nodded at the Omega decision. The project, whatever it was, had no linkage to any program anywhere. The group was connected to nothing but the old lady in Atlanta and she was nothing. Without notifying anyone, the personnel director had checked. She was nothing and knew nothing or nobody. He had checked because he thought she might be related to the President. Everybody in that part of the country