Enemy of the Good by Matthew Palmer

Author:Matthew Palmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-04-25T16:50:13+00:00

17

Kate had never needed an alarm clock. She was an early riser and her body always seemed to know when it was time to get up. The price to be paid for this talent was that there was no sleeping in on weekends. Her body had never learned the difference between Sunday and Monday.

Kate rolled over in bed, glanced at her phone to check the time—twenty minutes after six—and thought about checking her e-mail. Logging on to her State Department account would require inputting three separate passwords. Screw it. She would do it after her run.

It was supposed to be a cool morning, so she chose a hooded sweatshirt with the Georgetown Hoyas bulldog logo and black track pants. Kate boiled water and used a French press to brew a single cup of coffee. She ground the Kona beans fresh. Life was too short to drink bad coffee.

She drank the Hawaiian coffee black and ate half a banana imported from South Africa while skimming the headlines in both Vecherniy Bishkek and the Washington Post on her iPad. The brassy Cuban timba group Los Van Van played in the background over Pandora. After her run, she planned to do the New York Times crossword puzzle. The world grew a little smaller every year. Her father’s Foreign Service career had been in an entirely different era, when living behind the iron curtain, even in the sheltered bubble of diplomatic life, had meant giving up many of the daily luxuries Americans took for granted. Globalization had changed all that, and the combination of online shopping and the diplomatic pouch meant that it was possible to live an American middle-class lifestyle in the most far-flung corners of the planet.

It was comfortable, but it did remove an element of adventure from the career. Kate’s generation of diplomats was not required to be nearly so intrepid as their predecessors. She could not help but think that something important had been lost in the transition. On the other hand, women and minorities had not been especially welcome in the Foreign Service when her father had joined. So maybe it was just as well that things had changed. Isolation and spotty communications capabilities had only reinforced the Ivy League old-boys club of the earlier era.

Kate laced on her running shoes and headed out the door of her apartment. She tried to run every morning, no matter the weather, and she had mapped out a four-mile loop that took maximum advantage of the available green space. This early on a Sunday, the streets were largely deserted. The air was brisk and Kate set a comfortable pace that she thought would put her at about a seven-minute mile.

As she ran, Kate thought about Ruslan. It had been two days since they had raced each other across the djailoo and shared a kiss as emotionally powerful and confusing as any she could remember since . . . well . . . the last time she and Ruslan had kissed.

This was not going to be easy, she realized.

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