It all stinks!

Triple agent Charles Wu was in the back seat of the taxi, listening to his Ethiopian driver's latest intelligence on Somalia.  Wu was thinking two things:  (1) his clients were not interested in paying for this when much bigger balls were in play, and (2) he was not catching any of those balls.  Have I become incompetent?  He looked out the window as they drove past Embassy Row, fighting back his greatest fear:  that his little daughter had made him soft.  Plenty of people have children without becoming soft!  Why him?!  Or could it be worse than that?  Was he becoming old?  He was treating the Assistant Deputy Administrator for Hope to lunch at the Four Seasons--not to pump him for State Department secrets but to explain Wu's failure to deliver China success stories on President Obama's recent trip to Asia.  There was a time a State Department meeting meant buying secrets from C. Coe Phant in a Foggy Bottom dive bar, or even meeting directly with the Secretary of State to discuss Project R.O.D.H.A.M.; now it was he and the ADAfH commiserating over the tempestuous state of international affairs.  The driver pulled up to the Georgetown hotel and waited patiently for Wu's $200 tip.  Wu walked into the lobby and saw that the ADAfH was already waiting for him, having finished the annual trip to the Pentagon 9/11 remembrance ceremony.  They shook hands silently.

A few miles to the east, Congress was back in session, and so was the Bicameral Anti-Zombie Caucus.

"We have to reconsider that he might be a zombie!" exclaimed Congressman Herrmark.

"Just because Dick Cheney writes an op-ed about 9/11 that tries to shift blame for Iraq to Obama does not mean he's undead!" replied Senator Rand Paul.  "It's completely consistent with the attitudes he's always espoused!"

"The man should have keeled over from a heart attack years ago!" insisted Congressman Herrmark.  "I think he's still secretly running the Senate--through the Zombie Caucus!"

"We've never gotten close enough to Cheney to find out," said the Representative from Florida, "and we need to focus our energies on thwarting Zombie Caucus riders and getting Zika funding."

"Your theory that Hurricane Hermine has spread Zika all over Florida, and that Zika is going to create zombies, is just not supported by the facts," said a Representative from Connecticut.

"That's easy for you to say!" she retorted.  "All you have to worry about in Connecticut is Lyme disease, and we know that doesn't create zombies!"

"Ladies and gentlemen," interjected Congressman Herrmark's Chief of Staff, Ann Bishis, "if I could have your attention for a minute, the Zombie Caucus is a perennial concern whoever is leading it, and we need to step up our efforts to identify likely elected and staff members.  If you could direct your attention to the monitor, I'm going to pull up a live camera feed from one of our new spy drones."  ("Spy drones?!")  "Only the size of a fly, they can get close to almost anybody, even follow them into bathrooms and secret meeting places.  They can eavesdrop on conversations, take photos of documents and screenshots, and witness anybody removing makeup or clothing which covers rotten flesh."

"And people snickered at my earmark to get these built in Montana!" declared the Representative from the gold and silver state.

"They melted in the Iraqi heat," said an Indiana Representative.

"What if they get captured?" asked Senator Paul.

"If they get swatted, they crumple into parts so tiny that nobody realizes what they really are."

"But what if they get captured?" repeated Senator Paul.

Bishis cleared her throat, uneasy about challenging him.  "I don't think people try to capture flies."

"They do if they suspect spy drones!" insisted Senator Paul.  "And smart people always suspect spy drones!  Honestly, I'm not comfortable with this at all!  Once again we're being asked to give up civil liberties for questionable efforts to improve national security!"

"Senator!" exclaimed Congressman Herrmark.  "Zombies have no civil liberties!"

"People should be presumed innocent until proven Zombie!" declared Senator Rand.  "That's what America stands for!"

Downtown, Glenn Michael Beckmann was exercising (he would argue) a civil liberty of his own--and using a drone to do it.  This was no tiny insect-like drone, no:  this was a 100-pound drone winging its way rapidly from Beckmann's Southwest Plaza balcony to the Trump Plaza Hotel.  His militia members had tried to tell him that private drones were illegal in Washington (and sure suicide so close to the White House), but Beckmann would have none of it.  "The so-called 'man of the people' is charging $800/night to stay in this den of casino thieves and hotel harlots financed by Saudi petrodollars!" he had written in his blog leading up to the hotel's opening.  (He had actually written it in code on his fake lifestyle blog as "The so-called 'trumpet douche bags' are going for $800/case, even though you're rolling the dice and getting black crude as lubrication!")

Semi-satisfied that Gretchen Carlson had extracted a huge financial settlement from the Fox News suits, Beckmann had returned his focus to going after Donald Trump a few days ago.  "Fly, baby, fly!" he cried in delight as his drone receded in the distance.  A few of his followers were decamped near the monstrosity of capitalism run amok and would send Beckmann cellphone video as soon as they spotted the drone delivering its payload. "Here it comes!" said the text message on Beckmann's phone, and then a minute later, the triumphant moment:  forty pounds of pig manure sprayed all over the Old Post Office Pavilion bell tower.

"That's for stealing the people's 360-degree view of downtown Washington!" hollered Beckmann, shaking his fist in the direction of the Trump Plaza Hotel.  "And performing a lobotomy on Melania!" he added.  (He had recently blogged about this.)  "And spying for Russia!"  (He had not blogged about this because the lamestream media was already covering it!  Amazing!)  "And telling the 9/11 hijackers to crash into the World Trade Center instead of your tower!"  (He had recently blogged about this, though it was a little more speculative than his usual conspiracy theories.)  "And for giving a bad name to crazy people!  I don't need to be further stigmatized, you mental health bigot!"  At this point he realized there were some people in the parking lot looking up at him and taking cellphone videos, so he ran back into his apartment.

Over at Redskins headquarters, Golden Fawn was tilting at her own windmill--namely, the anachronistic existence of the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation.  After a period of resistance, the National Museum of the American Indian employee had accepted a seat on the Foundation this summer, and had quickly made waves.  She sat down in the conference room in her usual braids and traditional clothing, and waited patiently for the agenda item she had requested.  At long last, the Chairman let her speak.

"I cannot tell you how deeply disappointed I am that this Foundation refused to help the Standing Rock Sioux in their fight against the oil pipeline threatening their water and sacred sites," she began.

"As our attorney told you on the conference call, they have no rights to those sacred sites," said the Chairman.

"You mean federal courts have ruled against them, as they did from the beginning and now continue to do because traditional jurisprudence means repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again in the name of 'precedent.'"

"The Sioux already have their victory," said another member of the Foundation board, whom Golden Fawn quickly unnerved with her black-eyed stare.

"You think a temporary reprieve by President Obama--a reprieve I and others secured by vigorous lobbying--will keep their water and sacred sites safe from oil spills?  You're more naive than I thought."

"There is a process that needs to play out," said the Chairman.  "This Foundation is not about encouraging civil disobedience."

"If this Foundation is not about protecting water and sacred sites, it is not about protecting the life of any tribe in this country.  You really think handing out blankets is enough?"

"That is uncalled for!" exclaimed a Cherokee member from Oklahoma, who had gotten a huge cash payment and business incentives to sit on this board.  "This is a charitable foundation, not a political action coalition."

"This Foundation is a spiritual failure," Golden Fawn said, but nobody replied to her.  She looked at the Chairman to see if he would expel her, but he simply opened the next item of business on the agenda.

Back at the Four Seasons, Charles Wu was trying to explain how his plane to Beijing had arrived late, and there were mix-ups about meeting times, and he had not had the usual amount of time to smooth a path for visiting Americans, and there was really nothing he could do about the man-made islands....And then came the ice pick.

"What have you done for us, lately?" asked the exasperated Assistant Deputy Administrator for Hope.  "I'm a very busy man.  I'm supposed to be pulling Turkey back into NATO's orbit, for God's sake!  Turkey, who thinks making peace with Russia is a better idea than making peace with the Kurds!  Russia, in case you haven't noticed, has returned our country to a Cold War footing.  Oh, and I have a permanent headache about the damned Clinton email server.   And Iraq and Syria are Hell on Earth, and somehow the U.S. gets the blame.  And what are you doing for us in Asia, exactly?  Because, Obama's visit was not very good."

Charles Wu felt a rumble in his intestines he had not felt since the surge of puberty testosterone had turned him into a virile young man.  It was true, he knew!  He had done nothing for the U.S. lately!  He had juggled Beijing, Hong Kong, and Britain for years, but somewhere along the line, instead of selling secrets about his current home, the United States, he had become somebody expected to deliver for the United States.  He couldn't just tell the State Department secrets about Beijing if they were bad news, no!  Wu was supposed to fix things!

"Well," Wu began, a little desperate, "I do have intelligence for you about recent communications between China and Pakistan."

"Great!  That's great," said the ADAfH sarcastically, reaching for the bread basket.  "Can't wait to hear it!"

A couple miles away at Adams Morgan Day, Angela de la Paz was licking ice cream and telling Dulles Samuelson she had no memory of 9/11.  (She had still been a young child at that time.)

Dulles replied, "my dad was never the same after that.  He was one of the ones scapegoated and forced into retirement from the CIA--and that's actually when he told us for the first time he had been in the CIA."

Angela shook her head in sympathy--not for Henry Samuelson's career but for the effect on his kids.  "People didn't talk about it much where I grew up.  They had other things to worry about getting killed by--they still do."  She suddenly remembered saving somebody in a Columbia Heights alley, and meeting the man who would become the father of the baby she later gave away after his death.  "It all stinks," she said.

"I got accepted into the FBI," Dulles said suddenly, and then he searched her face for a reaction, but got the same sad smile he usually did.

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COMING UP:  House of Dreams!