Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

“I personally hope Red Ravisher takes that miserable pervert to the cleaners,” the First Mother-in-Law said, when Roscoe J. Danton had reported his version of what had transpired, “but I can’t see how she hopes to collect if she did throw the Frenchman at you.”

“What miserable pervert?” the President asked.

“Who said that just looking at your wife made him tinkle down his leg? Santa Claus? No, Ol’ Hockey Puck Christian. That miserable pervert.”

“Mommy dearest, what Mr. Christian said was that looking at me made him tingle down his leg. Not tinkle.”

“What’s the difference?” the First Mother-in-Law asked.

“To tingle,” Robin Hoboken said, “is to feel a ringing, stinging, prickling, or thrilling sensation. Tinkle is what small children say when they have to urinate.”

“Either way, it’s perverted. But anyway it’s moot.”

“What’s moot, Mother Krauthammer?” the President inquired.

“Whether that miserable pervert pisses down his leg when he sees Belinda-Sue here, or just prickles. As a Southern lady, I don’t even want to think about Matthew Christian prickling. But I know perversion, whether it’s tinkle, tingle, or prickle, when I hear it. But that’s not your problem, Joshua. That’s what’s called moot.”

“What is my problem, Mother Krauthammer? If I may ask.”

“If it ever gets out what you’re planning to have this Colonel Castillo of yours do to those poor illiterate teenagers with your Delta Force and your SEALs, you can rename this new library of yours.”

“What do you mean rename it?”

“The President Joshua ‘Child Murderer’ Ezekiel and Mrs. Belinda-Sue Clendennen Presidential Library and Last Resting Place of the Monster comes quickly to mind. ‘Here Lies the Murderous Bastard’ also comes to mind.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” the President said.

“If I may hazard a guess, Mr. President,” Robin Hoboken said, “I suspect that the First Mother-in-Law is alluding to Somalian teenagers.”

“What about Somalian teenagers?”

“God, he doesn’t know, does he?” Mother Krauthammer said.

“I don’t know what?”

“Demographically speaking, Joshua,” the First Mother-in-Law said, “your typical Somalian pirate is between fifteen and nineteen years of age, and a kindergarten dropout. In other words, he can’t read or write.”

“I can’t believe that!”

“Believe it, Joshua. I got it from the Vienna Tages Zeitung.”

“From the what?”

“It’s a newspaper. I suppose if my name was O’Hara, I’d be reading the Dublin Daily to get the news I can’t get here, but my late husband, Otto, may he rest in peace, was a Krauthammer and of Viennese ancestry, and he taught me to get it from the online edition of the Vienna Tages Zeitung.”

“Hackensack, you know about this newspaper?”

“That’s Hoboken, Mr. President,” Robin replied. “Yes, sir. It’s a daily, three hundred and sixty-five thousand circulation, four hundred and forty-five thousand on Sunday. It is a member of the Tages Zeitung chain, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. It has a very good reputation.”

“And this newspaper says the Somalian pirates are illiterate teenagers?”

“So they do,” Mother Krauthammer said. “And they suggest that one of the reasons the piracy can’t be stopped is that so far no one has been heartless enough to start shooting illiterate teenagers.”

“My God, I’d be known as the Heartless Butcher of Somalia!” the President said. “Every Somalian-American in the country would vote for my opponent! I’d never get reelected! Is there nothing I can do?”

“One wild thought running through my mind,” Mother Krauthammer offered, “is that you turn this Colonel Castillo of yours to other things.”

“Hoboken—” the President began.