Читать книгу An Affair of State онлайн

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He didn't pack the written and photographic memories of his father. He would ask Stud to put them in a safe deposit vault. He wasn't sure why he wanted to keep them, but he did want to keep them. He felt he could depend on them, too. Wasn't that a silly feeling?

He had also bought a diplomatic dispatch case, of handsome pigskin, tooled in London. It had cost him forty-five dollars, and this seemed a lot of money, especially when he had nothing to put in it except a handful of personal papers, and the parchment commission, carefully enclosed in cellophane, in which the President of the United States said he reposed "special trust and confidence in your Integrity, Prudence, and Fidelity." He was enamored of the dispatch case as a woman with her first mink wrap. It was the patent of his office, the insignia of his rank. Anthony Eden could possess no better. He was admiring its austere beauty, standing on the table with his black homburg beside it, when Susan Pickett called.

She said she'd just heard from a girl in Balkans that he was leaving soon, and she hoped he'd drop in and see her before he left.