Washington Deceased Read Free

that?”
    â€œHe thinks he may be in danger.”
    â€œYou mentioned that. Why does he think so?”
    â€œHe said he couldn’t tell me.” Wendy looked away from Michaelson. Her cheeks flushed. “He asked me to see if I could get you to come out and talk to him. Not on the phone, he said. Face to face.”
    Michaelson nodded.
    â€œCould we do it this afternoon?” he asked.
    Wendy looked back at him, startled. She had thought that, if everything went perfectly, maybe she could get Michaelson out to see her father in a week.
    â€œNo visiting in the afternoon,” she said. “Tomorrow morning would be the earliest.”
    â€œTomorrow morning, then. Where are you staying?”
    â€œHartnett Hall.”
    â€œI know it. I’ll pick you up out front at 7:15. That should get us there comfortably by 9:00.”
    â€œGreat. I mean, thank you.”
    â€œYou’re welcome. Before we go out there, there’s something you could do yet today. Go to the Library of Congress and see if you can put together a list of the members of Congress who were on the Subcommittees on Western Hemisphere Trade of the International Commerce Committees in the House and Senate for the period from two to five years ago. Also everyone on the staffs of each member.”
    â€œOkay,” Wendy said. “But what makes you think those names will be useful? You don’t even know what the problem is yet.”
    â€œTrue enough,” Michaelson agreed. “But we know that it involves sugar, and we know it involves Congress. Those subcommittees seem like a good place to start.”
    Wendy glanced over at the demonstration as she began to attack her sandwich. A short man with wiry black hair was using a bullhorn to address the sign-waving throng. He had already harangued them and led them in antiphonal chants. Now he gestured over to a U-Haul trailer parked illegally at the edge of the circle and eyed skeptically by a brace of D.C. motorcycle officers. Over the bullhorn he promised the sign wavers that soon— soon —they would all expose graphically the agony to which innocent animals were subjected in order to satisfy the human species’ unhealthy craving for meat.
    â€œI wonder what the problem is,” Wendy said, referring to the demonstration. “It looks like they’ve run out of steam and are improvising.”
    â€œI’ve been wondering the same thing,” Michaelson commented. “They probably have something visual planned for the climax, but they can’t do it until the TV cameras arrive.”
    The man with the bullhorn began slowly to circle the fountain, looking for something new to rev up the demonstrators’ flagging enthusiasm.
    Wendy shrugged and turned back to face Michaelson.
    â€œYou were in the Foreign Service for quite a while,” she said, trying to make conversation.
    â€œThirty-five years,” he confirmed.
    â€œWhy did you leave?”
    â€œGood question.” Michaelson squinted toward Georgetown. He was used to making quick tactical decisions, and he decided now on tactical grounds to tell Wendy Gardner the truth. He reasoned that if Desmond Gardner’s problem was half as serious as it sounded, Wendy would be hearing the truth about Michaelson from someone before long. “It was sort of a gamble.”
    â€œWhat do you mean by that?”
    â€œWhen I finished my tour as Area Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs, I sat back and looked at what I had still available to me in the Service. It boiled down to a rather vague hope that if things broke just the right way I might be able to exchange the handful of political chits I had for a promotion one or two rungs up from the regular civil service.”
    â€œYou have political chits?”
    â€œA few.”
    â€œHow did you get those?”
    â€œThe usual ways. A couple of once and future presidential candidates sounded marginally less moronic on