State Secrets Read Online Free PDF

thin and the last tenant had owned a dog, judging by the oval stains by the door and in front of the foldout sofa bed. At least he had a telephone. David went to it and, with perverse pleasure, punched out Walt Zigman’s home number.
    It was after one in the morning on the East Coast and Walt’s voice was a groggy rumble. “Who the—”
    “Goddard,” David said crisply, grinning. “I said I’d report Monday. This is my report.”
    Zigman swore fiercely. “Goddard, did anybody ever tell you that you’re a son of a—”
    “I met her.”
    “Holly Llewellyn?” Walt’s interest was immediate. Clearly, he was now wide-awake. “How did you manage that so fast?”
    “Simple. I bought yesterday’s paper and read the food section. There was a write-up about her new class.”
    “Her new class in what?”
    David closed his eyes. There was no way out of this one. “Fruitcake,” he answered reluctantly.
    Zigman laughed. “Fitting,” came his rapid-fire reply, just as David had expected.
    “You’re getting corny in your old age, Walt.”
    “Did you find out anything?”
    David unzipped his jacket and flung it down on the couch. It covered the toys and the model airplane in its colorful box—he’d be up half the night assembling that sucker. “Sure,” he snapped. “She fed me grapes and poured out the whole sordid story of her life in the underworld.”
    “Don’t be a smart—”
    “I met her. That’s all. But I can tell you this much, Walt—she’s no traitor. I’m wasting my time here.”
    “You’re getting paid for it. Keep your eye on the ball, Goddard. When it’s time for you to come back to D.C. and follow the new first lady around, I’ll let you know.”
    This time it was David who swore. “Tell me, Walt,” he began dryly, “does she have a dog?”
    “Three of them,” said Walt with obnoxious satisfaction. “By the time the new first family takes up residence, you’ll be back on good old Pennsylvania Avenue, passing out poochie treats.”
    “You’re funny as hell, you know that? In fact, why don’t you take your goddamned job and—”
    “Goddard, Goddard,” Walt reprimanded in his favorite fatherly tone. “Calm down, I was just kidding you, that’s all. You’re a damned good agent.”
    Agent. If he hadn’t felt like screaming swearwords, David would have laughed. “I didn’t work my way through law school so that I could walk dogs, Walt.”
    “You really are unhappy, aren’t you?”
    “In a word, yes.”
    “We’ve been through this before.”
    “Yeah. Good night, Walt.”
    “Goddard!”
    David hung up.
    After a few minutes he hoisted himself up off the foldout couch, dug the stuffed animals out from under his coat and set them on the scarred counter that separated his living room–bedroom from the cubicle the landlady called a kitchen.
    Thinking of his nieces and how they were going to enjoy the Webkinz, he began to feel better.
    Presently, David took a TV dinner out of the tiny freezer above his refrigerator and shoved it into the doll-sized oven. While it was cooking, he stripped off his clothes, went into the bathroom and wedged himself into a showerdesigned for a midget. After drying off with one of the three scratchy towels the landlady had seen fit to lend him, he went back to the living room and dug his robe out of a suitcase. Someday, he promised himself, he was going to write a book about the glamorous life of a Secret Service agent.
    After consuming the TV dinner, he set about putting the model airplane together. It was after midnight when he finally gave up, washed the glue from his fingers, folded out the sofa bed and collapsed, falling into an instant sleep.

3
    I t was very bad luck that, after a quick visit to her bank that bleak Tuesday morning, Holly encountered David in the neighborhood branch of the post office. Or was it luck?
    Holly looked at the carefully wrapped parcel in his arms and decided he was only mailing the Webkinz he’d bought the