Читать книгу An Affair of State онлайн

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When Jeff Baker got out of the Army he knew it was time for him to try to become a Foreign Service Officer. The War Manpower Act was a godsend. It saved him a written examination. Two years as a line private, and three as a company grade officer, and then two more on occupation duty didn't fit a man for passing written examinations.

He mailed his application after he returned from Vienna, and while still on terminal leave, and then tried to forget about it.

He was offered jobs by a New York import house anxious to start a flow of Florentine and Austrian hand-tooled leather goods into the United States; by an ambitious tourist bureau impressed with his service record and wartime travels; and by a brigadier general on whose staff he had once served, and who was now public relations vice president for a group of distillers.

He could have stalled them, on the grounds that he had to settle his father's estate, but he turned them all down. Ever since he could remember, he'd wanted only one job.