Grass Roots Read Free

don’t have to come to Georgia as the candidate’s wife yet?
    I’ve got a reprieve?”
    “Not unless you want a reprieve. I’ll marry you today, if you like.”
    She kissed him again.
    “Listen, sport, there’s plenty of time for that.” She looked a little embarrassed.
    “I didn’t want to tell you just yet, but Beken took me aside yesterday and told me he’s behind me for ADDI. He’s willing to recommend me. That means, if I want it, it’s mine.”
    The look she gave him now begged for his indulgence.
    “Assistant Deputy Director for Intelligence?”
    “Right. I was going to pass, but if I’ve got another couple of years, well…”
    “The first woman in the job?”
    A smile spread across her face.
    “The very first.” Now her guard was down.
    “Oh, Will, I’ve dreamed about having a shot at this. I’ve wanted it so much, and I had begun to think I’d never get it.”
    “I’m glad there’s time for you to have a shot at it.”
    “We’ll have to keep things as they are, though,” she said. It was a question; she was looking at him worriedly.
    “You do understand? If Beken or the Director got wind of our relationship, it could cut the ground right from under me at a time when I’m about to get everything I really want at the Agency.”
    He grinned.
    “Things are pretty good. I’m satisfied. Two years from next November, though, and we’re off to Georgia?”
    “You’ve got a deal.” He kissed her.
    “Did I ever mention that I like kissing you when you’ve been asleep? Your mouth is so warm.” “Mmmmm,” she said.
    “Come back to bed.”
    As he left the house and got back into the Porsche, Will was glad he’d come back to tell Kate the news. Still, he was a little apprehensive about her promotion. She liked her work, and she was brilliant at it.
    She had been head of the Soviet Office at the Central Intelligence Agency, but two years before, in what seemed to be a lateral move, after most of the hierarchy had resigned after a scandal, she had been shuffled into a special assistant’s job. Liaison to the Operations Directorate, with no real authority.
    Seemingly at a dead end, her enthusiasm had waned to the point where she had promised to leave the Agency and marry him when he returned to Georgia to prepare his campaign for the Senate.
    Now, she was up for an important promotion, to one of the top half-dozen jobs in the Agency. He wondered whether, in only a couple of years’ time, she would be ready to leave it.
    He turned up the car’s heater. It had suddenly become colder. will drove to the little airport at College Park, Maryland. It was the only general aviation airport in the Washington, D.C.” area, founded by the Wright Brothers. He drove the car out to the tie-down and loaded his luggage and two briefcases into the Cessna 182RG, then parked the car in the lot and left the keys at the office. The car would be collected and garaged at a local gas station.
    After a thorough preflight inspection of the single-engine airplane, he phoned air-traffic control for his clearance, then took off, following the airport’s mandated departure procedure. The little field was surrounded by the University of Maryland and a heavily built-up area that was allergic to aircraft noise. He contacted Washington Departure and was cleared to ascend to his cruising altitude of eight thousand feet.
    In a moment, he was into the two-thousand-foot overcast, and at four thousand feet, he broke out into sunshine and clear skies. He had picked up a little ice in the clouds, but now the sun melted it away.
    Shortly, he was over Virginia and headed south by southwest. The sun streamed into the airplane, warming the air and washing away the cares of the capital city, and he began to unwind as he could only at the end of a congressional session. He felt a tug of regret at leaving Kate behind, but she was spending Christmas with her son and her parents.
    As he flew on toward Georgia, the clouds beneath him