The Kindly Isle

V

The NSA team caught up with me again six months later, in my office. I was just getting ready to leave, to pick Edna up for the drive down to Chesapeake Bay, where the company was considering the acquisition of an elderly and declining hotel. I told them I was in a hurry.

"This is official business," Mooney's partner growled, but Mooney shook his head.

"We won't keep you long, Wenright. Michaelis has been reported in the States. Have you heard anything of him?"

"Where in the States?"

"None of your business," he snapped, and then shrugged. "Maryland."

I said, "That would be pretty foolish of him, wouldn't it?" He didn't respond, just looked at me. "No," I said, "I haven't heard anything at all."

He obviously had not expected anything more. He gave me a routinely nasty look, the whatever-it-is-you're-up-to-you-won't-get-away-with-it kind, and stood up to go. His partner gave me the routinely unpleasant warning: "We'll be watching you," he said.

I laughed. "I'm sure you will. And don't you think Michaelis will figure that out, too?"

That night I told Edna about the interview, though I wasn't supposed to. I didn't care about that, having already told her so much that I wasn't supposed to about Michaelis's work and my suspicions. There were a lot of laws that said I should have kept my mouth shut, and I had broken all of them.

She nibbled at her salad, nodding. We were dining in the hotel's open-air restaurant; it was late spring, and nearly as warm as it had been back on the island. "I hope he gets away," she said.

"I hope more than that. I hope he lives and prospers with his work."

She giggled. "Johnny Happyseed," she said.

I shook my head slightly, because the maitre-d' was approaching and I didn't want him to hear. He was a plump young man with visions of a career at the Plaza, and he knew what I was there for. He was desperately anxious to make my report favorable. The hotel itself was fine. It was the top management that was incompetent, and if we bought it out there would be changes—as he knew. Whether he would be one of the changes I didn't yet know.

So when he asked, "Is everything satisfactory, Mr. Wenright?" he was asking about more than the meal. I hadn't been there long enough to have made up my mind—and certainly wouldn't have told him if I had. I only smiled, and he pressed on: "This is really a delightful old hotel, Mr. Wenright, with all sorts of marvelous historical associations. And it's been kept up very well, as you'll see. Of course, some improvements are always in order—but we get a first-class clientele, especially in the softshell crab season. Congressmen. Senators. Diplomats. Every year we get a series of seminars with Pentagon people—"

Edna dropped her fork.

I didn't, but I was glad to have him distracted by the necessity of clapping his hands so that a busboy could rush up at once with a fresh one. Then I said, "Tell me, isn't it true that the crabbing has been very poor lately? Some sort of disease among the shellfish?"

"Yes, that's true, Mr. Wenright," he admitted, but added eagerly, "I'm sure they'll come back."

I said, "I absolutely guarantee it." He left chuckling, and wondering if he'd missed the point of the joke.

I looked at Edna. She looked at me. We both nodded.

But all either of us said, after quite a while, was Edna's, "I wonder what kind of seafood they eat in Moscow?"