Chapter One Thousand Three Hundred Fifty-Three
6th January 1960
Edward J. Kelly International Airport, Chicago, Illinois
“Would you mind telling me why we are doing this again?” Jane asked as they waited to board the flight to Portland.
“Because I was asked to” Gloria replied as she looked up from her book, “And there is no we here, you came along because it sounded interesting.”
In return for a copy of Katherine von Mischner’s biography that Katherine herself had taken a red pencil to, providing key edits that she felt it needed. Gloria had agreed to travel to Portland, Oregon and investigate the death of a friend of a friend of hers in return. There was the promise of a further interview in the near future where Katherine would fill in some of the blanks in her biography. Gloria realized that the friend in question was Nancy Jensen, it was a small wonder why this matter was so important to the Countess. However, rattling around in Gloria’s mind was the warning from Sir Malcolm Blackwood, those who found themselves in Katherine’s debt often had a hard time discharging it.
“Oh” Jane said, and she went back to watching people walking past through the terminal, freeing Gloria to get back to her book. There were times when Gloria was certain that Jane had nothing but dryer lint between her ears. Any time she found a new cause to get into, Jane tended to get a little too into it. It was something that had gotten her into trouble in the past and Gloria found tempering Jane’s impulsive nature to be tiring at times.
The book that Gloria was reading was proving to be a bit involved. It was the English edition of The Windward Shore, the second book of the Corded World Trilogy by Annelies Frank that Kat had given her in Montreal, with all three books signed by the Author. Gloria had finished Daughter of the Stone Forest in only a few days despite how dense of a read it was. All the books were set on the shores of the Baltic Sea sometime in the early Bronze Era with the second book occurring roughly a century after the first. The central character a middle-aged woman who was apparently the great granddaughter of the protagonist of the first book. Themes of survival and endurance were found throughout both books, but most of all the idea that memory was the greatest weapon that women had was the message that Gloria was taking away so far. As soon as she completed this errand for Katherine, Gloria would need to contact Ms. Frank. She sounded like an interesting woman.
Looking up Gloria saw Jane smiling at two pilots who were walking down the concourse. One of them tipped his hat to her as they passed. The last time that Gloria had gone for a night out on the town with Jonny in New York, Jane had said that she would like to do that sometime except she didn’t want to be a third wheel. Jonny, being ever practical, had suggested a double date by fixing Jane up with one of his friends. That would undoubtedly be the dour, humorless Staff Sergeant Jameson “Whiskey” Parker. Gloria couldn’t think of anything that Jane might have done to warrant a punishing evening spent with a man who might say three words beyond “Have a good night” if she was lucky.
As she watched, the two pilots walked over, and Jane was shamelessly flirting with them. One of them mentioned that he had seen her in the minor role she had recently played in a film and Jane covered her mouth to hide a giggle. On second thought, a night with Parker was exactly what she deserved. Fortunately, the call for boarding the flight to Portland came over the intercom.
Washington D.C.
There were jokes flying around about how being Vice President was no longer worth a bucket of warm piss, instead it simply came with the cost of a quick burial. Because Vice President Allard had died in office what had been a simple matter of nominating a sitting President for reelection had aggravated the existing divisions within the Democratic Party.
It was particularly galling to Harriman was that many within the Party seemed to be more interested in fighting with each other rather than recognizing that they had a common purpose. With a decent economy and relative domestic tranquility, Harriman should have been cruising to an easy reelection. However, with the infighting, the Republicans saw an opportunity to reclaim power after twelve years in the political wilderness and nearly being extinct as a National Party just a decade earlier. If many in his own Party couldn’t get half a loaf with Harriman, why did they seem to think that getting nothing with whoever the Republicans nominate was would be a good trade?
Then there was the better “Dead than Red” crowd who seemed to have spun recent events in Cuba to their liking. They seemed to think that former Government of that island being bought off by the Mafia and stealing everything in sight until the people were so pissed off that they overthrew it was far better than the Langist Government that replaced it. Didn’t they learn a damned thing by what had happened in Mexico? Getting rid of a moderate government eventually led to a radical one even if the revolution was stomped out for a generation. The last thing he needed was for them to do something stupid and make a complicated situation worse.