The Red Menace #2 by James Mullaney

Author:James Mullaney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: humor espionage action adventure spy retro patiotic
Publisher: James Mullaney

Chapter 11

Milo O’Hara sat with his back ramrod straight in the uncomfortable plastic chair in the Internal Review Service Building in Washington, D.C.

A vent directly above his head hummed a steady stream of cold recirculated air down the collar of his starched white dress shirt. O’Hara shivered but did not move.

The only other seat available in the waiting area belonged to a secretary. She was a severe woman with a steel gray permanent, dark blue skirt and matching jacket. The white buttons on her jacket looked as if they were tightened on an assembly line at the Ford Motor Company, and a perfectly white collar matched the buttons as well as the white plastic of the narrow glasses through which she occasionally shot O’Hara disapproving glares. A gold nameplate on her desk identified her as Mrs. Edna Pimm.

Despite the cold from the vent, O’Hara was sweating profusely under his arms. He was worried that the perspiration had seeped through his jacket, but he dared not check. His briefcase was balanced on his knees and he did not realize it was bouncing until Mrs. Pimm looked up from the clackity-clack of her relentless typing.

“Do you mind?” she demanded, glaring not at O’Hara but at his offending foot which, unknown to him, was tapping nervously on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” O’Hara said, shifting the briefcase and placing a meek hand to his knee. Mrs. Pimm offered a deeply unhappy “humph!” and resumed her typing.

O’Hara kept his hand plastered to his knee to keep his leg from trying to escape.

After an eternity added onto the one he had already spent in the outer office, O’Hara sneaked a peek at his watch. The meeting was supposed to take place at nine a.m. It was now 2:13 in the afternoon.

He waited another ten minutes before he finally worked up the nerve to speak. “I’m…ahem…that is, excuse me?” O’Hara said.

Mrs. Pimm’s locomotive typing ceased but her fingers remained locked in place over the typewriter keys. Sharp eyes glared like twin lasers at the nuisance polluting her waiting room. “What?” she said.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Pimm, but if today is inconvenient for him, I could come back another day.”

“Do you have a meeting scheduled for today?” she demanded.

“Well, I…that is…yes.”

“Then your meeting will be today. Stay.”

O’Hara did so for another twenty minutes. His underarms were a river by the time the intercom on Mrs. Pimm’s desk buzzed.

Not a word was spoken. In a conditioned reflex that would have made Ivan Pavlov proud, Mrs. Pimm immediately stopped typing the instant the buzzer sounded. She rose sharply from her desk and, on a pair of pumps color coordinated to match her skirt, headed for the closed door behind her desk.

When she turned and found O’Hara was still sitting, she gave a frown that included her entire head, from lacquered permanent hairdo to the turkey wattle that dangled from chin to neck. “Well, hurry along,” she snapped. “I don’t have all day.”

O’Hara snatched his briefcase and hustled past Mrs.

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