The Affair Read Free Page A

chest, red-faced, black-haired, in his middle forties. Plenty of old Scottish blood in his veins, filtered through the rich earth of Tennessee, which was where he was from. He had been in Vietnam as a teenager and the Gulf as an older man. He had combat pips all over him like a rash. He was an old-fashioned warrior, but unfortunately for him he could talk and smile as well as he could fight, so he had been posted to Senate Liaison, because the guys with the purse strings were now the real enemy.
    He said, “So what have you got for me?”
    I said nothing. I had nothing to say. I hadn’t expected to get that far.
    He said, “Good news, I hope.”
    “No news,” I said.
    “Nothing?”
    I nodded. “Nothing.”
    “You told me you had the name. That’s what your message said.”
    “I don’t have the name.”
    “Then why say so? Why ask to see me?”
    I paused a beat.
    “It was a shortcut,” I said.
    “In what way?”
    “I put it around that I had the name. I wondered who might crawl out from under a rock, to shut me up.”
    “And no one has?”
    “Not so far. But ten minutes ago I thought it was a different story. There were four spare men in the lobby. In DPS uniforms. They followed me. I thought they were an arrest team.”
    “Followed you where?”
    “Around the E ring to the D. Then I lost them on the stairs.”
    Frazer smiled again.
    “You’re paranoid,” he said. “You didn’t lose them. I told you, there are shift changes at twelve o’clock. They come in on the Metro like everyone else, they shoot the shit for a minute or two, and then they head for their squad room. It’s on the B ring. They weren’t following you.”
    I said nothing.
    He said, “There are always groups of them hanging around. There are always groups of everyone hanging around. We’re seriously overmanned. Something is going to have to be done. It’s inevitable. That’s all I hear about on the Hill, all day, every day. There’s nothing we can do to stop it. We should all bear that in mind. People like you, especially.”
    “Like me?” I said.
    “There are lots of majors in this man’s army. Too many, probably.”
    “Lots of colonels too,” I said.
    “Fewer colonels than majors.”
    I said nothing.
    He asked, “Was I on your list of things that might crawl out from under a rock?”
    You were the list , I thought.
    He said, “Was I?”
    “No,” I lied.
    He smiled again. “Good answer. If I had a beef with you, I’d have you killed down there in Mississippi. Maybe I’d come on down and take care of it myself.”
    I said nothing. He looked at me for a moment, and then a smile started on his face, and the smile turned into a laugh, which he tried very hard to suppress, but he couldn’t. It came out like a bark, like a sneeze, and he had to lean back and look up at the ceiling.
    I said, “What?”
    His gaze came back level. He was still smiling. He said, “I’m sorry. I was thinking about that phrase people use. You know, they say, that guy? He couldn’t even get arrested.”
    I said nothing.
    He said, “You look terrible. There are barbershops here, you know. You should go use one.”
    “I can’t,” I said. “I’m supposed to look like this.”
    Five days earlier my hair had been five days shorter, but apparently still long enough to attract attention. Leon Garber, who at that point was once again my commanding officer, summoned me to his office, and because his message read in part without, repeat, without attending to any matters of personal grooming I figured he wanted to strike while the iron was hot and dress me down right then, while the evidence was still in existence, right there on my head. And that was exactly how the meeting started out. He asked me, “Which army regulation covers a soldier’s personal appearance?”
    Which I thought was a pretty rich question, coming from him. Garber was without a doubt the scruffiest officer I had ever seen. He could take a brand new Class A coat from the