Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 by Q Clearance (v2.0)

as he
interrupted countless dinner parties for phone conversations with Woodward and
Bernstein.
                   He had discovered that an assistant director
of the CIA was a genteel junkie, addicted to paregoric.
                   And he had engineered an embarrassment to the
Carter Administration, adding grain alcohol to the Chassagne-Montrachet he
served to a senior official of the Carter White House, a chunky, good-humored
koala of a man who had only recently learned to tie a necktie, who had been
seated beside the wife of the Egyptian ambassador, a raven-haired, onyx-eyed
beauty with skin that shone like honey and teeth as white as Chiclets. By the
dessert course, the Carter man was so thoroughly ripped that he gazed liquidly
at the ambassador's wife's breathtaking cleavage, asserted vigorously that he
had always wanted to see the Pyramids and begged ravenously to be permitted to
"munch on the Valley of the Kings" —all well within earshot of
several attentive members of the Washington press corps.
                   Each of Pym's coups was received with an
insouciant "So what?"
                   Either the information received was
practically useless (in the cases of both the Bay of Pigs and Watergate, things worked out perfectly
without any interference from Mother Russia), or else it was regarded as
inconsequential (half the Politburo was addicted to alcohol, and booze-fired
betises were as common as flatulence).
                   The reaction infuriated Pym, who thought he
had done exemplary work—especially considering that he had been given no specific
assignment—and impelled him to a rash exchange that he had long since come to
regret.
                   During his last meeting with a contact, a
twilight walk in Rock Creek Park a year ago, he had endured sarcasm and
condescension for nearly an hour before finally exploding, "What do you want
from me? You want me to run an agent in the . . . White House ... for God's
sake?"
                   "That would be nice," said the
wretched weasel of a man, who, apparently, knew Pym better than Pym thought,
for he added, "Then perhaps you can end your days here, instead of coming
home to read the news on Radio Moscow."
                   "Home!" Pym choked, feeling as if an
ice pick had been plunged into his liver.
                   "Just a thought," the man said
before he turned down a bosky path and disappeared in the shadows.
                   The next morning, Pym's dormant hemorrhoids
burst into agonizing bloom.
                   He began to prowl the perimeters of the White
House grounds, not looking for anything specific, but hoping—almost
mystically—to absorb an aura that would give him a clue as to how to proceed.
                   Then the poor black lady's shopping bag had
burst, and he had sensed the cracking open of a door.
                   Next, Eva had come home to work for him, which
Pym regarded as a gift, a blessing from whatever gods oversaw his life.
                   He had not been close to Eva since she went
away to boarding school when she was ten. Her letters from Bennington had been infrequent and remote, alluding to
increased political commitment in which, she was sure, he had no interest at
all. He began to think of her as an adult with whom he had some distant
connection. He never imposed himself on her: First, he knew she would resent
and resist it; second, he quite approved of the political drift she was taking
on her own. She worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, then
for Common Cause, then for Greenpeace.
                   Then she had called, from a jail in Colorado . Evidently, she had joined a radical
environmental group intent on blowing up the Glen Cfenyon Dam.
                   Pym bailed her out and hired a lawyer who, for
$16,000, got Eva's case