“I don’ know.” She sounded drunk.
He kept the impatience out of his voice. “When do you expect to hear from him?”
“I don’ know.”
Damn the woman. “Listen to me.” He spoke slowly and carefully, as though addressing a small child. “Tell Angel I need this done immediately. I want him to—”
“Wait a minute. I gotta go to the toilet.”
He heard her drop the phone. The Controller sat there, filled with frustration.
Three minutes later she was back on the line. “A lotta beer makes you pee,” she announced.
He gritted his teeth. “This is very important.” He was afraid she was going to remember none of it. “I want you to get a pencil and write this down. I’ll speak slowly.”
That evening Mary attended a dinner party given by the Canadian embassy. As she had left the office to go home and dress, James Stickley had said, “I would suggest that you sip the toasts this time.”
He and Mike Slade make a wonderful pair.
Now she was at the party, and she wished she were home with Beth and Tim. The faces at her table were unfamiliar. On her right was a Greek shipping magnate. On her left was an English diplomat.
A Philadelphia socialite dripping with diamonds said to Mary, “Are you enjoying Washington, Madam Ambassador?”
“Very much, thank you.”
“You must be thrilled to have made your escape from Kansas.”
Mary looked at her, not understanding. “Escape from Kansas?”
The woman went on. “I’ve never been to Middle America, but I imagine it must be dreadful. All those farmers and nothing but dreary fields of corn and wheat. It’s a wonder you could bear it as long as you did.”
Mary felt a surge of anger, but she kept her voice under control. “That corn and wheat you’re talking about,” she said politely, “feeds the world.”
The woman’s tone was patronizing. “Our automobiles run on gasoline, but I wouldn’t want to live in the oil fields. Culturally speaking, I think one has to live in the East, don’t you? Quite honestly now—in Kansas, unless you’re out harvesting in the fields all day, there really isn’t anything to do, is there?”
The others at the table were all listening closely.
There really isn’t anything to do, is there? Mary thought of August hayrides and county fairs and exciting classical dramas at the university theater. Sunday picnics in Milford Park and softball tournaments, and fishing in the clear lake. The band playing on the green and Town Hall meetings and block parties and barn dances and the excitement of harvest time…winter sleigh rides and Fourth of July fireworks rainbowing the soft Kansas sky.
Mary said to the woman, “If you’ve never been to Middle America, you really don’t know what you’re talking about, do you? Because that’s what this country is all about. America isn’t Washington or Los Angeles or New York. It’s thousands of small towns that you’ll never even see or hear of that make this country great. It’s the miners and the farmers and the blue-collar workers. And yes, in Kansas we have ballets and symphonies and theater. And, for your information, we raise a lot more than corn and wheat—we raise honest-to-God human beings.”
“You know, of course, that you insulted the sister of a very important senator,” James Stickley informed Mary the following morning.
“Not enough,” Mary said defiantly. “Not enough.”
Thursday morning. Angel was in a bad mood. The flight from Buenos Aires to Washington, D.C., had been delayed because of a telephoned bomb threat. The world isn’t safe anymore, Angel thought angrily.
The hotel room that had been reserved in Washington was too modern, too—what was the word?—plastic. That was it. In Buenos Aires, everything was auténtico.
I’ll finish this contract and get back home. The job is simple, almost an insult to my talent. But the money is excellent. I’ve got to get laid tonight. I wonder why killing always makes me horny.
Angel’s first stop was at an electrical supply store, then a paint store, and finally a supermarket, where Angel’s only purchase was six light bulbs. The rest of the equipment was waiting in the hotel room in two sealed boxes marked FRAGILE—HANDLE WITH CARE. Inside the first box were four carefully packed army-green hand grenades. In the second box was soldering equipment.