I stood looking up at the Times building, from across the street. The curb was like a line in the dirt, cross it and the world would change. The reporter was waiting for me. But I didn’t move. And then I felt something brush my hand and I whirled, and was surprised to look into the open, scared face of Karen Vleska.
“You, too?” she said.
“This isn’t the way to do it either,” I said after a moment, aware of the hundreds of people on the block flowing past, going to work, shopping, oblivious to the nation’s old secrets and new ones, needing to know more about some things, I knew, but, I realized suddenly, not needing to know all.
Was I already becoming like the director?
“We need to go to Washington,” I said.
Our fingers had become entwined, and I knew that to anyone on the street we looked like lovers, holding hands, walking away from the Times building, toward the happy bustle of Broadway. A couple in deep loving conversation. A couple so involved with each other that we seemed cut off from the world. A couple strolling out of Times Square and later, through green, lovely Central Park, and after that, into a Central Park West hotel.
Lovers? Well, we spent the night together, all right, but not that way… Karen dozing fitfully, waking from nightmares occasionally, me awake, too alert to sleep, with my sidearm within reach; me aware of every creak in the hallway, every ring of a phone through the wall, every honk of a cab far below.
He tried to bribe me with a job, and then he threatened my life. Were we followed here? Maybe we should not have waited, should have just gone to the Times.
The early Metroliner brought us into the capital at rush hour, when the highways around Washington were as clogged as arteries, tubes carrying life blood from the body’s extremities in or out of the pumping heart. Andrew Sachs had called ahead, had made arrangements, had reached his counterpart at the Pentagon, and so we were expected when we arrived, ushered through security, and along the bustling hallways, and into the muted, wood paneled room from which emanated directions guiding millions of U.S. servicemen and women around the world.
Up close, the Secretary of Defense looked smaller than he did on television, but more robust, with a thoughtful bluntness. He served us coffee himself, added two sugars to Karen’s, milk to mine. He told us to relax, although he didn’t seem that way himself. He leaned forward in his leather chair and kept his hands flat on his desk blotter, beside the Remington sculpture of an Indian hunting buffalo. Behind his head was a photo of the President looking down, and four oil paintings of World War Two battle scenes, one honoring each branch of service. Naval aircraft carriers under fire in the Pacific. Army troops in their foxholes among the wintery French woods. Marines storming ashore at Normandy. Coast Guard rescuers taking survivors aboard after a U-boat sank a merchant marine ship off Maine.
“Sir, we have a story we think you should hear,” I heard myself say.
He told me to tell it slowly, to take my time. He never took his eyes off my face.
(reprinted from the Wall Street Journal)
BIG PHARMA SUICIDE ROCKS WALL STREET
Top executives at Pacific-North Pharma, one of the Dow’s biggest gainers this month, were rocked Sunday night at the news of the suicide of the head of their generics division.
Elias Pelfrey shot himself to death at his suburban home in Westchester. Bedford Hills police said that Pelfrey left a note saying that he was depressed over personal matters. His wife told them that she heard the shot around 2 A.M., rushed into his study, and found him dead of a wound to the head. He had shot himself through the mouth.
Pelfrey had recently taken over the generics division of Pacific-North, the group responsible for designing the vaccine effective against the Spanish flu. The drug has been responsible for saving millions of lives, said spokespeople at the Surgeon General’s office. It also made Pacific-North Pharma Wall Street’s biggest gainer recently.
Pacific-North Pharma stock price seems unaffected by Pelfrey’s death.