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       3

      Now. Washington’s clocks are five hours behind those of London. It was seven o’clock in the evening when, on the thirty-fifth floor of the Evans building, which towers over the rushing and romantic waters of the Potomac river and houses the overflow from the Russell Senate office building, Joe (Hot Potato) Murphy and Pete (Kitten) Sikorski resolved to work late on something that had just turned up on the print-out.

      Joe and Pete had semi-official access to the big CIA computer along the river. Both were ex-Company men. Now they were part of the big new up-and-coming Ivel-for-President campaign team. Their days of Dirty Tricks were past. Joe and Pete worked tirelessly and logically for the IFPC and, so far, within the law. If both kept firearms in their office drawers, and bedroom shelves, and gun holsters beneath their left arms, both were licensed and entitled so to do. They were allies; kingmakers. They were devoted and loyal. Hot Potato and Kitten! Joe and Pete made more of their nicknames than did their familiars and friends, perhaps feeling the need for sympathetic magic to make themselves ordinary and kind, and more like other men.

      ‘Praise be,’ said Joe Hot Potato Murphy, staring at the coded print-out. He liked to emphasise his Irish origins. He cultivated the twinkle in his eye and the roguish charm of his manner. They disarmed the unwary.

      ‘Here’s the Australian bitch again. She’s moved up a notch to the Pay Good Attention file. What are our options here, Pete?’

      Pete proposed and Joe disposed. Pete had one degree in economics and another one in law, and burn marks on his upper arms, to mark the spots where he had practised steeling himself against pain.

      ‘We disclose nothing,’ said Pete, ‘in case we blow something. This is a very sensitive area.’

      ‘It might be more sensitive than we can legitimately handle,’ said Joe.

      ‘Hell no,’ said Pete. ‘She’s just a woman like any other.’ Pete’s wife was a tall, pretty blonde who sprayed herself all over with deodorants four times a day, so as not to cause offence. If she stood still, which she seldom did, so busy was she in the pursuit of hygiene and physical perfection, that she appeared like a painting against the drawing-room wall, framed by drapes. Then the sound of her husband’s voice would activate her again, and her pretty hands would start patting and folding and tidying and replacing, and her long legs would scissor to and fro, and her manicured feet in their shiny shoes go clip-clip-clop on the tiled kitchen floor.

      ‘A feminist and a radical,’ warned Joe. ‘And her father’s a communist, now resident in Saigon. That doesn’t make her a woman like any other. Her show goes out live and she’s got a six-million audience hanging on her every word. And that doesn’t make her like just plain folks, either.’

      ‘We can take care of the talk show,’ said Pete.

      ‘We should have taken care of her,’ said Joe, ‘a long time ago.’

      ‘Joe,’ said Pete, ‘quit living in the past. She’s a wife and mother. We don’t wage war on women.’

      ‘It is an insult to the sweet name of womanhood,’ said Joe, ‘to call her a woman at all. A feminist and a radical! A wife, you say! Is a woman who makes her husband wash the dishes worthy of the name of wife? What sort of mother is it who makes her man change the baby’s nappy? We have some problem with definitions here!’

      ‘I hear you, Joe, I hear you.’

      They talked like this for a while longer, using words as cloaks of darkness, the better to build the trivial into the significant; the easier to justify ill temper, neurosis and spite, and thus keep their good opinion of themselves. Now they made decisions. They would take appropriate precautionary measures, intensify the security ring around her, and wait and see how the cookie crumbled.

      ‘There are more ways than one,’ said Joe, ‘of crumbling cookies.’

      And they both went home to their wives, comforted by the thought of their many options, first double-locking and otherwise securing their offices, which bristled with anti-bugging devices of one kind or another.