The Secret Government

The freaks of Dupont Down Under were discussing the news that the decades-long legal battle about their home turf was finally on the road to settlement. Some of the younger freaks had not even been around when the food court had shut down and the older freaks had moved in, but even the older ones had long ago stopped worrying about The Man's coming back. It was Sebastian L'Arche who had brought this news down to them, knowing there was more than one military vet down there, but he had already returned to the surface, with no takers on his offer of assistance to anybody looking for a new home. "Where will we live?" "We kept the Secret Government out of our tunnels--why can't we stop these new people?" "Why does Jim Graham want to put a men's strip club down here? It's too drafty in these tunnels!" The Elder jumped up onto a crate and hollered for everybody to shut up. "This is our HOME," he said. "NOBODY's gonna take us outta here!"

A few miles to the south, former Senator Evermore Breadman was burning the midnight oil at Prince and Prowling, working on the counter-proposal for the quiet title-action on Dupont Down Under. He normally avoided municipal matters, but he could not resist such a valuable chunk of real estate up for grabs. He paused to take some Metamucil (orange-flavored) and looked at his calendar to see when Charles Wu would be back in town to discuss Asia--which was making his ignorant clients nervous no matter how often he told them that he could make money for them no matter what was going on politically. He waved away the cleaning lady and turned back to his counter-proposal, but in the back of his mind, he was trying to remember the name of the Christmas song she was humming. It would come to him later in a dream: "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear".

A couples miles to the west, the Assistant Deputy Administrator for Anti-Fecklessness was also burning the midnight oil, with the higher-ups all out on vacation. The White House had already condemned Bhutto's assassination in Pakistan, but the diplomatic dispatches were flying in from all over the world urging the State Department to make a stronger statement about regional security in Asia. The problem was...it did not appear that Condoleezza Rice actually wanted to make a stronger statement. Where was she? How could she not return to Washington at a time like this? The Assistant Deputy Administrator began wondering if he was on The List in the event that a nuclear catastrophe necessitated the Secret Government be relocated to a safe bunker. And if he was, would he be allowed to take Eva Brown with him?

Not too far away, Henry Samuelson was driving back into Washington after a visit with Cedric at the Arlington group home for the mentally challenged. Cedric had told Samuelson about Rice's secret visit there a couple of months earlier--that was not a surprise, but the conversation she had held with Cedric was. Then again, could he rely on Cedric to remember anything that happened after 2001? Samuelson was uneasy as he crossed the bridge above the frigid Potomac, wondering if World War III was going to play out the way the Heurich Society was expecting, and wondering if Rice's agenda was really aligned with the Society's. Down in the depths of the water, Ardua began stirring, sensing that the holidays were coming to a close.