"How'd the party go last night?" Colt asked.
"Lousy. Neal's getting more stubborn every year."
"We're gonna hafta lower the boom on him."
"That might not be so easy."
"I know, but what else is there?"
"Maybe if we got somebody to brief him on the space- plane interceptor . . . he's pissed about not being in on that."
"Murdock don't have the guts to suggest that upstairs."
"I know."
The secretaries began drifting in, chatting over their plastic cups of synthetic coffee. True luxury now consisted of obtaining real coffee, smuggled in through the embargo that extended from Mexico's borders southward. 185
Sniffing at the aroma, Colt said, "How can they make it smell so good and taste so lousy?"
Kinsman shook his head.
"Damned Commies won't stop at nothing," Colt com- plained to the world in general. "First they cut off our oil, and now our coffee."
The Colonel's private secretary, an iron-gray woman with a hawklike unsmiling face, arrived last—as befitted her rank.
"Colonel Murdock is upstairs," she informed Kinsman and Colt. How she knew this was a mystery they did not question. "He's briefing the General on yesterday's testi- mony."
Yesterday's fiasco, thought Kinsman.
The two majors sat in front of the chief secretary's desk. Kinsman felt like a traveling salesman kept waiting before being allowed to make his pitch to the prospective customer.
"You catch the late news last night?" Colt asked.
Kinsman shook his head.
"Shoulda seen our beloved leader," Colt said solemnly.
The secretary glared at him, but quickly returned her attention to the morning mail on her desk.
