LITMIR.BIZ

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hands, parades or even giving stump speeches to the League of Women Voters.”

      Actually, Derek had spent most of his daydreams back in the green, lush fields of Kentucky. Planting and replanting in his head the plot of land that belonged to his father. Feeling the soft tender shoots in his hands. Smelling the heavy, damp air of morning. Hearing the cicadas’ nighttime mating call and the creak of the rocking chair on the front porch.

      Sometimes his dreams had been so real, so fresh, so vibrant that he had thought the hellish prison cell was itself the dream and that he could awaken. A deep and brooding loneliness would overtake him when he would realize the truth. That he couldn’t awaken, he could only endure. And find a way out.

      The fact that he was in Washington was proof enough to these men that he had indeed found a way out.

      But Derek knew they were wrong.

      And that’s why he had to say no.

      “Besides,” Derek added, bringing out his trump card with a devilish smile. He had figured this one out about six months into his captivity. “General, you can’t tell me what to do because my enlistment expired while I was away.”

      A bespectacled suit who had been seated in a folding chair next to the ficus plant pulled a yellow legal pad out of a briefcase.

      “Joe Morris, Justice Department,” he introduced himself. “Lieutenant McKenna, a soldier may be called back to active duty or held back from a discharge under special circumstances.”

      Morris glanced at his notes.

      “The case of Green versus Grant is most instructive on this point,” he said. “And I’ll just read you a quote from the Supreme Court opinion. Justice Thomas, writing on behalf of the court, states that—”

      “I don’t think we need the legal mumbo jumbo at this point,” the general interrupted. Joe Morris looked crestfallen, having lost his moment to show off what he had produced in a week of research into legal lore. “Just give us the bottom line.”

      “The bottom line, sir?”

      “Yes, the special circumstances.”

      Morris swallowed and then looked at Derek.

      “All it takes is a request from the President to reinstate you, Lieutenant. And he can actually reactivate the request repeatedly, for as long as he feels that your services are required for the national interest. In other words, as the Supreme Court stated—”

      “Get the President on the phone,” the general told his aide, slyly adding another cube of sugar to his coffee.

      Derek lifted his hand. The aide hesitated, a slim, manicured hand held aloft at the phone.

      “All right, fine, I’ll give you two weeks if you don’t call,” he said.

      “Three months,” the general countered.

      “A month.”

      “All right, a month, but we’re going to shuffle this schedule so that it’s heavy. Very heavy. That means appearances every day.”

      Winston leaned his head back and signaled to his aide.

      “Get an alternate schedule produced stat.”

      “Yes, sir. I’ll have it by tomorrow, sir.”

      “No, you’ll sit down at my desk right now and put it together while we wait. A month divided into three-hour appearances, four a day, comes out to...”

      “Fairchild, even combat soldiers get some rotation time,” Derek said.

      “This isn’t war,” the general said archly. “This is a pleasure.”

      “A pleasure in which I’m not so sure I want to indulge,” Derek said, leaning back in the comfortable pillows on the couch. He lifted his boots, noting with joyful mischief that they carried just a few drops of tar from the recently repaved streets of Washington. “I’m willing to start next week.”

      “Tomorrow, soldier.”

      “Three days from now.”

      “Hey!” Winston exclaimed. “You can’t put your feet there. That table was purchased by the wife of Martin Van Buren! It’s a national treasure.”

      The upper-floor offices of the drably modern State Department building had been recently refurbished with elegant furniture, rugs, paintings and fixtures from the early 1800s.

      Derek crossed his boots comfortably on the priceless table. A globule of tar was dislodged from the sole of his right boot and dropped onto the leather writing pad of the congressman from Arizona before he could snatch it away. Ignoring the elected official’s distress, Derek snagged a soda can from a hospitality tray next to the couch.

      “Can I borrow your pen?” he asked the Justice Department lawyer. Joe Morris held out a Mont Blanc.

      “My mother gave it to me as a graduation present,” he explained.

      Derek rejected it in favor of a disposable ballpoint in the hands of the undersecretary.

      He turned the pop can over and stabbed the pen’s point into its bottom. Then, holding the can aloft so that the tab was scant inches from his open mouth, he popped it open and removed the pen. The soda shot downward in a violent stream. Derek’s Adam’s apple bobbed only five times as he swallowed the entire contents of the can.

      He had had two years to practice this chugging method, learned in college but then fallen into disuse. But the Iraqis love American colas and chess. Coached by his men, Derek had become a master of the latter in order to bargain for the former. He and his men had been living on sodas, smuggled-in food and a strong solidarity. The small pleasures and fun they created daily had been their salvation in a hell that civilization forgot.

      Still, he could be a gentleman if he wanted.

      But for his purposes, being a gentleman didn’t suit.

      After emptying the can, he put it on the hospitality tray. He returned the pen.

      And then he let loose a burp.

      Not a grotesque burp, but loud, clearly satisfying and utterly unrepentant.

      “Mr. Fairchild, are you sure you want me to continue working on this calendar?” the aide said.

      Her words hung in the air. Winston stared in horror. Derek shifted his crossed legs just a bit so that another drop of Washington street tar divebombed onto Mrs. Martin Van Buren’s precious coffee table.

      “Don’t you think it would be a mistake to send me anywhere?” he asked, letting loose another burp. Resisting the urge to put his hand over his mouth.

      “General, maybe this isn’t such a good idea. After all, he’s not housebroken,” the representative from Arizona pointed out. “He could do anything out there.”

      “I could,” Derek agreed and burped for emphasis.

      “He does that once on Larry King Live and we’ve got a real situation,” the undersecretary said.

      The congressman from New York gnawed at his pencil.

      The general glared at Derek, willing him into an embarrassed apology.

      “Soldier,” he warned.

      “General,” Winston Fairchild said, leaning forward in his seat. “If I might offer a possible solution...”

      “What?” the general snarled.

      “Call Protocol,” Winston said to his aide. “Get Chessey Banks Bailey on the phone. Gentleman, this man needs the functional equivalent of Mary Poppins.”

      

      On the other side of the building, in a basement office of an annex to an annex with a single six-inch-square dusty window near its ceiling, Chessey Banks Bailey arranged ten linen envelopes on her gunmetal government-issue

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