"Kathleen O' Neal & Michael W. Gear - People 5 - People Of The Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Neal Kathleen)

All seemed normal--except for the two men who seated themselves to
Keene's left. The look of them stirred Mary's premonition of trouble.
Keene's unease was reflected in the way he moved his hands like nervous
spiders across the tabletop, continually restraightening the papers
before him. His posture indicated complete deference to the
white-haired, medium-framed man who lounged in the plastic chair to his
left, and to the dandy sitting to that man's left.

Mary studied White Hair, aware that he was vaguely familiar. She had
seen him before. And not just around a government office someplace.
Something in the newcomer's slouch, in the too-easy smile, bespoke
authority. He wore a tweed
jacket--unusual for California in midsummer--but his collar was open.
He appeared fiftyish, health-spa fit and suitably at ease on this trip
to "the field." Capable blue eyes dominated his face. She pegged him
immediately: career bureaucrat. This man carried clout within the
Bureau; undoubtedly he was one of the shrewder talents who'd risen
above the sea of midlevel managerial incompetence.

Washington bigwig!

And to his left sat the Dandy, the nattily dressed lapdog. Mary
immediately cataloged the man's prim mannerisms as a classic case of
East Coast Urban Wuss. Although he was no more than thirty, his
hairline had receded over half of his scalp; the remaining strands had
been carefully arranged in an attempt to disguise the bald spot. He
wore a three-piece silk suit worth at least a thousand dollars and a
snow-white, button-down shirt; a conservative red-and-gray-striped tie
pinched his soft white throat.

The Dandy opened an expansive-looking leather briefcase and extracted
several sheafs of papers, all of them paper clipped and clotted with
yellow sticky notes that bore clear script. He wore a bulbous silver
ring with a yellow stone. The word "Harvard" reflected from the
metal.

His fingernails look like they've never even seen real dirt, Mary noted
dryly, but he was the danger. She could sense it, like Power
whispering to her soul.

The Dandy wouldn't look up, but studied his papers through horn-rimmed
glasses before pulling a fancy pen from his inside pocket and jotting
more notations on his yellow sticky notes.

".. . think the Raiders will come back this year," Keene's mild voice
droned.

That was the district manager's main job, Mary knew: to keep the staff
thinking that everything was all right, no matter that Iraq had maybe