The Mordida Man by Ross Thomas Read Free Book Online Page A

ruler’s last name, “Mourabet.” Underneath in a far different, somewhat shaky Palmer method was written, “These suckers aren’t kidding.” The postscript was signed “Bingo.”
    Ambassador Dokubo put the letter carefully back down on the desk as the President slowly turned around in his chair, his expression grim, his face ashen.
    â€œYou read it?”
    Ambassador Dokubo nodded. “I did, Mr. President.”
    The President rose. So did the Ambassador. The President looked at the Nigerian thoughtfully for a few moments and then spoke, carefully choosing his words. “I’m not sure yet just what steps we will take, Mr. Ambassador. But it could be that we might call on you to serve in an intermediary role of some kind. Would you agree?”
    Dokubo nodded gravely. “My country and I are at your service, Mr. President.”
    â€œThank you. And I’m also sure that I can rely on your complete discretion.”
    â€œComplete, Mr. President.”
    After leaving the Oval Office, Dokubo hurried to his waiting Mercedes. Before the chauffeured car had even reached the south gate, Dokubo, using his attaché case as a desk, was making frantic notes about the morning’s meeting, which he had already decided to make the epiphanic chapter in his memoirs.
    The President, meanwhile, had again turned away from his desk to stare out at the south lawn. When he turned back, his face was no longer ashen. Instead, it had resumed its normal tan except for the rosy flush that had crept up his neck to his ears. His mouth was stretched into a thin, furious line as he picked up the telephone.
    When the secretary answered, his voice was a snarl. “Get me that fucking Coombs out at that fucking CIA.”

6
    The deceptively slight man with the sleek gray head and the small prim mouth had heard all of the words before many times. Words of the barracks, the barnyard, the oil rig, the pool room, and the saloon. Short, harsh-sounding words mostly, with three consonants and a single vowel. He never used them himself and disapproved of their use by others, on the grounds that they betrayed a lack of imagination. Yet he was neither surprised nor dismayed that the words were coming now in a furious stream from the mouth of the President of the United States.
    If anything, the words bored him, even though they were being used to describe his own incompetence and lack of character. So after a short span of listening, he tuned the words out and thought instead about his roses.
    The slight man whose roses often won prizes was Thane Coombs, who nine months before, on his fifty-eighth birthday, had been named Director of Central Intelligence. Coombs was also nearly the last of the World War II OSS veterans who once had permeated the Central Intelligence Agency. That he had lasted long enough to be named Director was tribute more to his political skills, which were adroit, than to his intelligence, which, while not quite true brilliance, still left him far cleverer than most.
    When after six minutes the President showed no signs of running down, Coombs let his mind drift to an idle examination of the fact that the man sitting behind the Woodrow Wilson desk had been only three years old when a twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant Thane Coombs had parachuted into France near Dijon as a member of a three-man Jedburgh team. But since this was only a notional comparison and really not very interesting, Coombs decided to interrupt the President in mid-word. The word he interrupted was “asshole.”
    â€œIt wasn’t us, Mr. President.”
    The President completed the word he had begun, but stopped in mid-sentence. He gaped, a mouth-wide-open gape of surprise and disbelief, until he realized what he was doing and clamped his mouth shut into a harsh line of total suspicion.
    â€œNot you?” he said, making it somehow an accusation rather than a question.
    â€œNo, sir,” Coombs said,