Murder at the Pentagon by Margaret Truman

to her office. She should go directly to her quarters and read, but decided to call Foxboro just to see if she could resurrect their dinner plans. She needed the break, felt she would be better equipped to digest what she was reading after a few hours’ respite.
    “Jeff, Margit.”
    “Congratulations,” he said.
    “For what?”
    “I just heard on the radio that you’re defending Cobol.”
    “You heard it on the
radio
? We’re having the press conference tomorrow at ten.”
    “An academic exercise, I suppose. Jesus, how did you get roped into that?”
    “I’ve been asking myself the same question. Feel like that drink and dinner? Maybe you could help me come up with an answer.”
    “You should have turned it down.”
    “I tried. No luck.”
    “Margit, you don’t have much of a legal background.”
    She stiffened at the comment; it seemed unnecessarily broad. He sensed it, adding, “I mean, you have a good background, but have you ever defended anybody charged with a crime of this magnitude?”
    “You know I haven’t. I brought that up, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Besides, Colonel Bellis assures me I’ll have the total resources of his office available to me. Jeff, there’s no sense in beating to death whether I should be in this position or not. I am. That’s the unfortunate reality. I have a lot of catching up to do before the press conference tomorrow, but I would love a relaxing drink and dinner with you.” She paused. “I really need that, Jeff.”
    “Okay. When you called earlier, I figured we were off for tonight, and I decided to hang in here to finish a project. It can wait until tomorrow. Where are we meeting?”
    She flushed with relief and pleasure. “You name it,” she said.
    “Feel like Thai?”
    “Sure.”
    “Thai Taste, the Georgetown one.”
    “What time?”
    “Six?”
    “See you there. And … thanks, Jeff.”
    They ate charcoal-grilled marinated chicken, a platter of
satays
, and talked for three hours. Foxboro did most of it once Margit had exhausted her comments and thoughts about being assigned to the Cobol case. On most social occasions Foxboro was more of a listener than a talker, but when he was obsessed by something, he could launch into a long and detailed monologue on the subject. This night, it was the effect the detonation of the nuclear device in the Middle East was having upon military budget hearings on the Hill, and on the atmosphere in the Pentagon. A vast army of lobbyists, military and civilian alike, were coming down hard on Congress to restore massive cuts that had taken place over the past two years. “If only they’d stop at restoring the cuts, maybe we could live with some of it, but they not only want to bring the budget back up to where it was, they want millions more tossed into it.”
    “He does pose a much more substantial threat now that he has nuclear capability,” Margit said.
    “Sure, everybody understands that, but it shouldn’t mean that two years of domestic social reform have to go down the drain. Christ, you people have been running this country for years.”
    “ ‘You people’!”
    She hated it when he did that, lumped her into the giant military bureaucracy instead of viewing her for what she was, a human being who happened to have chosen a career in the military, a woman who knew she was falling in love with him, not without reservations, certainly not as a cognitiveact; rather, it was a purely emotional, visceral reaction of a woman to a man.
    She reached across the table and touched his hand. “Jeff, let’s not end the evening in a debate over the military budget. I know you feel deeply about it, and I respect that, but when you say ‘you people,’ you stop viewing me as an individual.”
    “An individual who happens to be a major in the air force.”
    “Yes, but so what? I don’t set policy. I’m a lawyer, like you, and I also happen to love flying. That doesn’t make me part of some military