Interconnected

Charles Wu smiled as he looked out the window at Delia sitting up on a blanket in his backyard.  His nanny, Mia, had already reported a few unsolicited offers to make Buffy Cordelia Wu an infant model, but the spy could not tolerate any added scrutiny of his personal affairs.  He yawned, bored with listening in on the G8 summit he had bugged at Camp David.  His mind wandered, and he again began gloating about how pleased Hillary Clinton was with his behind-the-scenes role in persuading Beijing to release Chen Guangcheng for a flight to the U.S.  It felt good to be working on Chinese issues again!  Wu had been thinking lately of scaling back on his European and Middle Eastern intelligence work, but everything was so interconnected--at least, that's what people kept telling him.

"It's too interconnected now!" Henry Samuelson was saying at the Heurich Society meeting a few miles away.  "The Administration does not understand the potentially catastrophic chain reaction of failures which might occur!  The U.S. openly siding with the Sunni Arab League against the Shia in Syria?  This will isolate Iran even more!  Without the Iranian counter-balance in the Middle East, all bets are off."

"What are you proposing?" said the former Chair of the Heurich Society, in a sneering challenge to Samuelson.  "Letting Iran have a nuclear bomb as a counter-balance?!"

"Me?  You want me to propose something?  When did this stop being a Society and start becoming the Samuelson-solves-everything club?!  Who came up with Project Occupy?  Me!  Who came up with Project Troll?  Me!  Who came up with Project Cinderella?  Me!"

"Gentlemen!" the speakerphone crackled.  (It was Condoleezza Rice, phoning in from California.)  "I have a proposal concerning the upcoming NATO meeting in Chicago  How many people do we have attending?"  (The Chair and former Chair glared at each other in silence, both thinking the same thought:  what the hell does NATO have to do with it?)

Across the River, Cedric was building a model nuclear bomb out of bottle caps and aluminum cans.  "Rice and lipstick, Rice and lipstick," he sang, "they go together like oil and dipstick."  The social worker on duty at the Arlington Group Home for the Mentally Challenged was baffled by a lot of things that came out of her charges' mouths, but this song was uncharacteristic of Cedric.  (He doesn't even like rice!?)  Cedric abruptly looked up at Hue Nguyen and said, "We had a long talk on Friday about it."  (He was obliquely referring to a phone call with Condoleeza Rice.)  Then his eyes returned to the task at hand, and he resumed singing:  "Rice and Arabs, Rice and Arabs--they go together like blood and scarabs."

Back in D.C., the mentally unstable Glenn Michael Beckmann raced through the Gangplank Marina, jumped awkwardly into a yellow kayak, and began paddling furiously after the Flying Scot sailboat which had just picked up Congressman Herrmark's chief of staff and was heading north.  Beckmann had been spying on her for four days, and was convinced that she was part of the United Nations conspiracy which had poisoned his apartment at Southwest Plaza and would soon ban guns, pick-up trucks, American history classes, and roast beef sandwiches.  (It was all so obviously interconnected, but it took last night's dream to put it all together.)  He could see the blue and purple windbreaker she was wearing to cover up the layers of skin coming off her arms, and the billowing cotton skirt she was wearing to cover up the layers of skin coming off her legs.  You'll never set foot in D.C. again, you U.N. zombie!

Steering the Flying Scot were Herrmark's twin bodyguards from Greece:  Nick and Costas.  Their cousin (and fellow Congressional staff member), Ann Bishis, was seated nervously next to the chief of staff.  It was Ann's idea to take the suspected zombie out on a boat:  if neither sun nor wind succeeded in forcing her to expose her limbs, the twins would "accidentally" capsize the boat and let the god Poseidon decide her fate.  (Bishis was also praying to her spirit animal, the pelican, for aid and guidance.)

Back at the Gangplank Marina, Washington Post "Metro" reporter Perry Winkle--who had also been following Congressman Herrmark's chief of staff since hearing her called a serial killer--finally found a speedboat owner to take him out in hot pursuit, and they raced away from the dock.  He could see the sailboat was momentarily stalled, waiting for the wind to pick up.  Then he realized there was a kayak heading straight for the sailboat. 

I've got you now, you damned zombie!  Beckmann dropped the paddle into the bottom of the kayak as he glided right up to the sailboat and picked up his axe.

Nick ducked, and Costas pulled Ann down, unintentionally giving Beckmann a clear shot at the chief of staff, who turned around in puzzlement too late to see the blade coming for her neck.  The zombie's head went flying into the Potomac River, and the zombie's body slumped down into the sailboat--with hundreds of maggots crawling out of its neck.  Ann screamed, Nick vomited, and Costas cried out to Athena to save them.

"I should kill you all, but since you weren't in my dream, let this be a warning to you!" screamed Beckmann, still brandishing the bloody axe in the air.  Then he dropped the axe into the river, picked up his paddle, and started heading back to the pier.

Winkle's rented boat captain had cut the motor at the first sign of the axe, and the two men flinched as Beckmann raced past them.  "I need to interview those people," said the reporter, pointing to the three people still on board the sailboat.

"Like Hell!" exclaimed the captain, who promptly started his engine and launched his speedboat away from both the sailboat and the kayak.

Twenty feet below them, Ardua of the Potomac gleefully swallowed the zombie head and set aside the axe for some future purpose.  She stared upward, waiting patiently for the humans to throw the zombie body down as well.  (She liked it when zombies terrorized the humans, but she never let any food go to waste.)  I will have to find somebody to make up for the loss to the ranks, mused Ardua, but that Beckmann is just too much fun!