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Page 40
roy knew how to make tough decisions. She was wasted in New York.
Along the row of wall clocks showing times across the world, minute hands snapped down to the vertical position. It was precisely 0730 hours eastern standard time. The communicator pinged.
''You may go in now,'' Camilla Varig said.
The office Vincent Kellner kept was spartan. Two walls were hung with lockable map cases, and a bank of four television receivers, presently dark, stood along another wall. Across the room from Kellner's desk the paneling was rolled aside, displaying a CIA-generated electronic projection of North America from the Parry Channel in latitude 74 north to the isthmus of Panama.
Vincent Kellner was the frugal son of frugal immigrants, and his upbringing had left its mark. The elder Kellners' only extravagance, it was said, had been the education they had procured for their son. Kellner could have been a success at whatever he chosebusinessman, academic, perhaps even a soldier. He had chosen a career in public service, and said so proudly. His adversaries described him with disdain as the perfect faceless bureaucrat, with no particular principles or beliefs. Morgan was not sure this was true. Theoretically, Vincent Kellner was a Republican, but he served a Democratic President. He had accepted the post of Adviser for National Security Affairs eagerly, with every intention of becoming at least as famous as the other former Adviser of German descent.
Morgan noted that the Adviser's desk was bare, as always. Kellner worked with ideas, not papers. In one of the office's three uncomfortable armchairs sat Ambassador Conroy, upright and stiff-backed. She wore a black silk suit and diamond earrings, and her fur-lined raincoat was thrown over the arm of the chair. At this hour of the morning she looked tired, as though she had not slept.

 
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