Washington Deceased Read Free Page B

rebuttal. This was to put his bullhorn as close to Michaelson’s ear as he could manage and scream “Cannibal!” at him.
    He raised the bullhorn for this purpose, but that was as far as he got. Irritated at the intrusion and furious at the impending incivility, Wendy bobbed up and stuffed the remains of her chicken sandwich into the bullhorn’s muzzle. She did this with considerable vigor, so that she not only reduced the roar from the instrument to a pathetic, tinny bleat, but also forced the mouthpiece brusquely against the aggressor’s lips and teeth, cutting the former and chipping the latter.
    It wasn’t clear what turn the confrontation would have taken had a policeman not intervened by tapping the man with the bullhorn on the shoulder.
    â€œExcuse me,” the policeman said. “Are you the one in charge of that trailer over there?” He pointed toward the U-Haul.
    â€œYes,” the man said, rather happy to shift his defiance from the blazing-eyed young woman to the armed cop.
    â€œI’m going to have to give you a citation.”
    â€œWhat for?” the man sneered. He began to hope that this disaster might be salvaged yet. He raised his voice. “What pretext have you invented for interfering with our peaceful assembly? Disturbing the peace? Inciting to riot?”
    The demonstrators hooted appreciatively at these absurd possibilities.
    â€œNo,” the policeman explained as he began to fill out the ticket. “Cruelty to animals.”
    â€œWhat?”
    The man looked over his shoulder in time to see two other policemen snap the lock on the trailer and rescue from its steamy inside a calf in a simulated holding pen that the man had been saving to impress the media. Unfortunately, the media chose only now to appear, and began videotaping the heroic efforts of the police officers to save the wobbly-legged calf from the nearly fatal effects of dehydration and overheating it had suffered at the hands of the animal rights activists.
    â€œDo you mind if I ask you something?” Wendy said when she and Michaelson had finished viewing the spectacle.
    â€œGo ahead.”
    â€œWhat happened to the little finger on your left hand?”
    â€œI lost most of it in an accident,” Michaelson said dismissively. “What you did with the sandwich just now was marvelous, by the way.”
    Wendy blushed and shrugged.
    â€œIs that what you meant when you said the use of force is a form of negotiation?” she asked.
    â€œYes,” Michaelson said reflectively. “As a matter of fact it is.”
    ***
    Michaelson’s interest in becoming CIA Director would have surprised those of his former colleagues who had known him only by reputation. The Foreign Service looks on the Central Intelligence Agency in much the same way that an old money, East Coast family might look on a ne’er-do-well nephew who had gone to Hollywood and made a fortune producing pornographic films: that is, with a mixture of embarrassment, contempt—and envy.
    Henry L. Stimson captured the Foreign Service attitude perfectly when he explained that he had closed the State Department’s code-breaking office because gentlemen didn’t read each other’s mail. Even today, most old school FSO’s still try to ignore the colleagues with titles like Water Hygiene Expert or Attaché for Science and Technology Affairs who pass themselves off as embassy staff but who everybody knows are spooks. The FSOs disapprove of supposed subordinates whom the locals believe (often correctly) to have more real power than the U.S. ambassador, and who have their own private communications link—the back channel—for sending Washington messages that the ambassador not only hasn’t cleared but doesn’t even know about.
    Michaelson never shared this attitude. His view was that gentlemen neither read each other’s mail nor launched sneak attacks on each other’s naval