Worst Case Scenario Read Free

concocted by the CIA. Americans have been murdered in Guatemala over rumors about snatching children for organ transplants. Former French cabinet members are facing jail for letting AIDS-contaminated blood be used for hemophiliac transfusions. And so forth and so on and et bloody cetera. We already have a foreign policy that looks like a slow-motion train wreck. Pander to the ambient hysteria with another confected scandal and we can write off the next few years along with the last few.”
    â€œThere must be a much higher premium on imagination at the fudge factory these days than there was before my retirement,” Michaelson said, shaking his head. “But you can put your fevered mind at ease. I’m not telling tales to the scribblers, and I’m not going to.”
    â€œWell, I believe you, of course,” Pilkington said. Coming from Pilkington, this conveyed something between studied agnosticism and utter disbelief.
    â€œGlad to hear it,” Michaelson said.
    â€œI do wish I could come up with some plausible explanation for the journalistic sniffing about that’s suddenly gotten so hot and heavy in this area. I don’t have a very high opinion of the trade myself. I’ve always said that working for a daily newspaper must be like producing pornography without the redeeming element of sexual gratification.”
    â€œI think I have heard you commit that simile before, now that you mention it.”
    â€œBut I assume reporters aren’t complete morons and that they have something to go on when they start down a trail.”
    â€œGood luck,” Michaelson said. “I wish I could help you, but I can’t.”
    â€œPlease do keep our little talk in mind, then,” Pilkington said. “They can’t go on like this, you know. The White House, I mean. Regardless of how the next election comes out. Sooner or later they simply have to make some real changes, get someone who knows a hawk from a handsaw into the game. It would be a shame for you to deal yourself out just when your card’s about to turn up.”
    This was Michaelson’s most vulnerable spot. In his early sixties, retired for several years from the foreign service, chaffing under a sinecure at Brookings, passed over a number of times for senior policy-making positions that he coveted, Michaelson made no attempt to conceal either his ambition or his disappointment at its frustration.
    â€œCongratulations on not mixing your metaphors,” he said with cold gentility to Pilkington. “Have a pleasant afternoon.”
    He walked out of Pilkington’s room morally certain that no reporter in America gave two rips about secret medical treatment given to a rich Arab politician more than a decade ago. Pilkington’s real worry was something else related in some conceptual way—some covert governmental action with foreign policy implications and involving medical care. How had he put it? “Something that sounds a lot like this.”
    Whatever it was, he thought Michaelson knew something about it. Why did he think that? Because Michaelson had looked rather aggressively into Deborah Moodie’s problem? Maybe. Michaelson’s real reason for doing that wouldn’t make sense to Pilkington, who’d assume that Michaelson was pursuing some personal agenda. Pilkington wanted Michaelson to earn the bribe (or avoid the threat) implicit in his heavy-handed sermon by telling what he knew. He expected Michaelson to clear himself of suspicion by saying No, silly, those reporters aren’t after the Amahdi story, they’re looking into something else altogether. Now listen carefully .
    That much was reasonably clear. Less apparent was why Pilkington had gone out of his way to let Michaelson know that Jeffrey Quentin was here. That Jeffrey Quentin had suddenly acquired a foreign policy title. And that Pilkington didn’t like Jeffrey Quentin. That Pilkington wanted Michaelson to