Windmills of the Gods

She said icily, “What can I do for you, Mr. Slade?”

“Nothing, really,” he said easily. “We’re neighbors. I work here in the department, so I thought I’d come by and say hello.”

“You’ve said it. I assume you have your own desk, so in the future you won’t have. to sit at my desk and snoop.”

“Well, well, it has a temper! I heard the Kansians, or whatever you people call yourselves, were supposed to be friendly folks.”

“Mr. Slade, I’ll give you two seconds to get out of my office.”

“I must have heard wrong,” he mumbled to himself.

“And if you really work here, I’d suggest you go home and shave and put on some proper clothing.”

He waved his hand at her. “Bye, honey. I’ll be seeing you.”

Oh, no, Mary thought. No, you won’t.

The next morning when Mary arrived for her daily session with Stickley, Mike Slade was there as well.

He grinned at Mary. “Hi. I took your advice and shaved.”

Stickley looked from one to the other. “You two have met?”

Mary gritted her teeth. “Not really. I found him. snooping at my desk.”

James Stickley said, “Mrs. Ashley, Mike Slade. Mr. Slade is going to be your deputy chief of mission.”

Mary stared at him. “He’s what?”

“Mr. Slade is on the East European desk. He usually works out of Washington now, but he spent four years in Remania, and It’s been decided to assign him to work with you.”

“No!” she protested. “That’s impossible.”

“Mrs. Ashley, Mike Slade happens to be our top field expert on East European affairs. Your job is to make friends with the natives. My job is to see to it that you get all the help I can give you. And his name is Mike Slade. I really don’t want to hear any more about it. Do I make myself clear?”

Mike said mildly, “I promise to shave every day.”

Mary turned to Stickley. “I thought an ambassador was permitted to choose her own deputy chief of mission.”

“That is correct, but-“

“Then I am unchoosing Mr. Slade. I don’t want him.”

“Under ordinary circumstances you would be within your rights, but in this case I’m afraid you have no choice. The order came from the White House.”

In the days that followed, Mary could not seem to avoid Mike Slade. The man was everywhere. She ran into him in the Pentagon, in the Senate dining room, in the corridors of the State Department. He was always dressed in either denims and a Tshirt or in sport clothes. Mary wondered how he got away with it in an environment that was so formal.

One day Mary saw him having lunch with Colonel McKinney, her military attaches. They were engaged in an earnest conversation, and Mary wondered how close the two men were. Could they be old friends? And could they be planning to gang up on me? I’m, getting paranoid, Mary told herself. And I’m not even in Remania yet.

BEN Cohn was seated at a corner table at Mama Regina’s when his lunch guest, Alfred Shuttleworth, arrived. The headwaiter seated him.

“Would you care fora drink, gentlemen?”

Shuttleworth ordered a martini.

“Nothing for me,” Ben Cohn said.

Alfred Shuttleworth was a sallow-looking middle-aged man who worked in the European Affairs section of the State Department. A few years earlier he had been involved in a drunkdriving accident that Ben Cohn had covered for his newspaper, Shuttleworth’s career had been at stake. Cohn had killed the story, and Shuttleworth showed his appreciation by giving him news tips from time to time.

“I need your help, AI.”

“Name it, and you’ve got it.”

“I’d like the inside information on our new ambassador to Remania.”

Alfred Shuttleworth frowned. “What do you mean?”

“AI, Lindbergh never had a buildup like this. Here’s this Cinderella, who comes out of nowhere, is touched by the magic wand of our President, and suddenly becomes the nation’s number one celebrity and political savant.” Now, I’ll admit the lady is pretty but she isn’t that pretty. The lady is bright-but she isn’t that bright. I’ll tell you something else That’s out of killer. I flew to junction City, Kansas, her hometown, and talked to the sheriff there.” Ben Cohn paused.

“Go on,” Shuttleworth said.

“Mrs. Ashley originally turned down the President because her husband couldn’t leave his medical practice. Then he was killed in a convenient auto accident. Voildl The lady’s in Washington, on her way to Bucharest. Exactly as someone had planned from the beginning.”

“Someone? Who?”

“That’s the jackpot question.”

“Ben, what are you suggesting?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. Let me tell you what Sheriff Monster suggested. He thought it was peculiar that half a dozen people showed up in the middle of a freezing winter night just in time to Witness the accident. And do you want to hear something even more peculiar? They’ve all disappeared.”

“Go on.”

“The driver of the army truck that killed Dr. Ashley is dead of a heart attack. Twenty-seven years old. Colonel Jenkins-the officer in charge of the army investigation, as well as one of the witnesses to the accident-he’s been promoted and transferred. No one seems to know where.”

Shuttleworth shook his head. “Ben, I know you’re a dam good reporter, but I think you’ve gone off the track. You’re building a few coincidences into a Hitchcock scenario. People do get killed in auto accidents. You’re looking for some kind of conspiracy where there is none.”