Читать книгу An Affair of State онлайн
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Early in 1949 the Department sent him a letter regretting the delay in passing on his application. There were thousands ahead of him. In addition, he must realize that delays and bottlenecks had developed in conducting the necessary investigations. That was easy to understand. With things as they were, practically everybody was being investigated.
He went to Canada and Mexico because he had never been to Canada and Mexico. His friend, Stud Beecham, said the war had given him a chronic case of itchy foot. But he just felt restless. When his savings ran out he returned to Washington.
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There was pitifully little to do about the estate. His father had died while Jeff was in Italy, about the time of the campaign on the Garigliano. (He hardly remembered his mother at all, for she was gone when he was six.) Nicholas Baker left the house in Georgetown, encumbered with a mortgage, and some victory bonds, and two thousand in cash after all debts were paid, and the deed to five building lots in Florida, at a town called Welaka Springs. The building lots had been purchased in 1927, and Jeff surmised, from his father's correspondence over twelve years, that they would still be under water.