Sudden Threat by A.J. Tata

Author:A.J. Tata [Tata, A.J.]
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Variance
Published: 2008-11-25T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 55

Meredith waited until everyone had departed for the day, walked through the outer cubicles and offices one time, then reentered Rathburn’s office.

Dead men tell no lies, she thought. Meredith immediately scolded herself. He’s not dead.

Yet.

She tried to stop herself, but couldn’t prevent the sinking feeling that her boss was either dead or about to be killed.

She wandered around Rathburn’s E-ring lair, where he had worked for the past three months as the newly appointed assistant secretary of defense for international affairs. Typically an impotent position, Rathburn had seemed unusually powerful and con-nected in his beginning days with the Department of Defense.

What were his connections? she wondered. He had been a professor at Georgetown University’s National Security Studies Program and was woven tightly with the party leadership that had risen to power. What gave him that link?

Meredith, just over thirty, had always wondered how powerful men achieved their status. There were worlds that she could simply not imagine, and even the idea of taking a simple trip to Palau with Rath-burn had excited her beyond belief. To approach the source of importance and authority was akin to discovering truth. It was, she thought, like reaching out with her hand to touch Mother Teresa. Would some of the goodness rub off? Could she wave her hands over the wafting fumes of power, inhaling them, and experience the sensation herself? Achieve the status?

Rathburn had somehow drunk the elixir and one morning found himself in position to influence world events via his connection to the secretary of defense.

She picked up a football signed by all of the Washington Redskins. Next to it was a large machete given to him by a Gurkha soldier in Nepal. Other mementoes were scattered on several bookshelves and display tables.

She studied the diplomas on the wall for the first time as she spun the football in her hands the way a wide receiver might as he shot the breeze with the quarterback. She had seen the diplomas before, of course, but had never really read them. Rathburn had earned a Harvard undergraduate degree with a major in economics; a Harvard MBA; and a Princeton Ph.D. in political economy. Interesting, she thought. Mostly a finance background.

I guess that is what makes the world turn, she mused.

She sat at his computer and contemplated what she was about to do. Meredith had thought at length that day after her meeting with Stone. She had gone for a run around the Washington Monument from the Pentagon and during that exercise she began thinking about the comments she’d heard from the Japanese man leaving Stone’s office. The Japanese emissary had spoken in perfect English, as if he had attended Harvard.

What was the reference to “Beasts of Burden?” Sure, she knew it was a famous Rolling Stones’ song, but could it have been something else? Then, Stone’s preceding comment about getting satisfaction on one hand seemed innocuous enough, while on the other hand, when coupled with the “Beasts of Burden” comment, could have been some kind of code.

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