[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] stepped out among the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html sunshine and flowers and trees, you no longer felt the oppressive weight of power. Washington became just another city full of busy people, and one prettier than most. Off in the distance the thin white spear of the Washington Monument stood out against the stark blue summer sky like a cloud that had been turned on its end and rooted in the earth. Around him people oohed and aahed at the massive piles of stone. Each structure was a monument unto itself, to whichever branch of the immense bureaucracy it happened to house. Husbands read aloud the names on the signs out front to their perfectly literate wives. Street vendors hawked hot dogs and ice cream and Italian ices. Oak fought to lose himself in the sounds and sensations of the city, but his inner thoughts wouldn't let him be. Was he really that burned out? Was it finally time to transfer to a desk where if he had to lie he could do it on paper instead of to another human being? How could somebody like Wayland help him? By advising him not to live a lie? Living lies was his profession. Where did that leave a man emotionally? Corcoran had been right about the commendations. What he did, Oak did exceptionally well. A transfer anywhere within the Bureau was his for the asking. What would it be like to be himself for more than a few months at a stretch, instead of Cletus White or Andrew Booker or BJ Tree? To be able to go through a day's work without wondering in the back of your mind if you were going to wake up floating facedown in some unnamed bayou or ghetto Dumpster later that night? That had happened before. Not to him, but to others less skilled in maintaining the Lie. They had signed away their lives and usefulness in a single moment of thoughtlessness. So what kept him with undercover? Why did he continue to trust his life to the flawless maintenance of a false persona? Responsibility. The knowledge that no matter how distasteful and unpleasant the job, he was better at it than anybody else. He'd fully intended to quit, to transfer out four or five years ago. Three years had been the maximum for anyone in his position when he'd gone into undercover. Now it was ten, because he'd done it for ten. Each additional day he stayed with undercover, he was extending the parameters of his own specialty. I am the Lie , he thought, and the Lie is good . He felt lousy. The Bureau needed him. His country needed him. The people needed him. But what Page 30 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html about Joshua Oak? Was there anything left of him, or had he simply become an amalgam of all the different aliases he'd assumed during the last decade? A name on a post office box, a Social Security number: that much testified to the existence on earth of a man named Joshua Oak. God, but he was tired. Maybe Corcoran was right. Maybe he ought to go straight to Nettles and say that he'd had enough, that he wanted out. Give him a nice quiet job somewhere researching kidnappings and violations of the Mann Act or something. He liked Washington. He could see himself serving out the rest of his years until retirement right here in the city. No more field work, no more getting shot at in the line of duty. He halted, blinked. He'd long since passed his intended destination, the Smithsonian museum. Somewhere along the way he'd made a right turn, crossed Constitution Avenue, and gone straight through the Ellipse. Might as well keep going, he told himself. He crossed onto E Street and found himself walking along the back side of the White House grounds. The view here wasn't as impressive as the one from the front, with the fountain and big flagpole, but the flowers and trees were just as pretty on E Street as they were on Pennsylvania Avenue. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html It was a fine day for demonstrating and a good place to do it. The serious protestors always did their demonstrating out back of the White House, where they were more likely to catch the eye of some high government official being driven in to see the President. If you wanted to be photographed you paced around out front. If you wanted to get your message across, you hung around the back driveway. Quite a few of the unhappy today, Oak mused. You didn't rally need the signs to match up demonstrators with causes. The women in the jeans and sloppy shirts who hadn't washed their hair in a week were radical feminists. Beneath the shade of a big tree, neat and turned out as though ready for a sermon, were the anti-abortionists. Across the broad stone driveway and sharing the occasional frosty glare with their opponents were the pro-choice advocates. Yuppie fanatics versus the traditional. There was some shoving and pushing going on among a large homogenous group that spilled out into the street. Oak identified them immediately. Beige skin, short haircuts, neatly trimmed black beards, and hints of wildness in their expressions. Pro-Khomeini Iranians, a heaping helping off Hezbollahs, asserting their right to tell their hosts where to get off. A few anti-clericals had infiltrated the carefully organized march and were doing their best to disrupt it, hence the pushing and shoving. He slowed. Pushes were starting to turn into punches as the rhetoric heated up. Both groups were utilizing to the fullest the opportunity to exercise the freedom of speech and demonstration that was denied to them in the homeland. Oak turned his amused gaze on the other placard carriers. They had stopped marching and were staring at the riot-in-the-making. These good people were used to picketing silently, at the very most chanting in rhythm; but not too loudly or impolitely. The Iranians, never loath to allow their deepest and most primitive emotions full rein, must have looked like men from Mars to the peaceful marchers from Des Moines and Cincinnati. Anti-abortionists stood shoulder to shoulder with the Get-U.S.-Out-of-Central-Americans and the anti-vivisectionists and stared at something utterly alien to most of them: real violence, the intrusion of the outside world into their familiar venue of all-American protest. Oak watched for their reactions with interest. 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