Читать книгу An Affair of State онлайн

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They carried the bags to the bottom of the stairs, and then a taxi driver appeared to help him. "Goodbye, chum," Stud said. "Remember to brush your teeth every day, and mail your laundry home Fridays."

"So long," said Jeff. "See you in three years."

"The lady," said the taxi driver, "says for you to hurry."

They didn't talk much on the way to the airport. He said the Lincoln Memorial was always beautiful at this time in the morning. She said wasn't it, but she thought the Jefferson Memorial was more graceful. He said he liked the Jefferson Memorial too, particularly when the cherry blossoms were coming out around the Tidal Basin.

They swung down to the Mount Vernon Highway, and she grabbed his arm tightly, on the curve, and clung to him. "That'll be in April," she said.

"What'll be in April?"

"The cherry blossoms. I wonder where you'll be in April, who you'll be with, what you'll be doing?"

"I wish I could be right here," Jeff said.

"But you can't."

"No, I can't."

Then they were at the National Airport, clean and fresh from its pre-dawn scrubbing and yet surprisingly busy for the hour, and the porters had his luggage. They walked to the Pan-American counter, the uniformed ticket agent checked his name on the manifest, and he found himself caught up in the smooth conveyor belt that in twenty minutes weighs and loads exactly fifty-six thousand pounds of passengers, luggage, mail, and freight on a trans-Atlantic plane. He exhibited his ticket, his virgin diplomatic passport, his government immunization register. His next of kin, he was forced to recall, was Aunt Martha, in Chicago, whom he had neglected to write for six months, and who had no idea he was on the way to Europe.