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mayhem predominated in another. As far as the viewer could guess, there was no international news worth mentioning. |
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Morgan turned off the television and went into the bedroom. He packed an Air Force B-4 bag with a change of clothes and put it by the door. He stood at the window for a time, listening to the night sounds. Not much happened after dark in suburban Leesburg. It was a middle-class town that suited Morgan, hardly a part of the Washington complex at all. Ordinary people lived here. The kind of people he felt comfortable with, the kind he was sworn to protect. Would Charlotte Conroy dismiss his feelings as sentimentality, or would she understand? Anna Neville and her friends would make snide remarks, surely. So American. |
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Sometimes in Leesburg one could hear aircraft taking off and landing at Andrews. Not tonight. The stillness was palpable. It had rained in the afternoon; the woods behind the house were wet. Through the open windows of the roomMorgan's all-purpose "other" roomcame the smell of damp earth. The night was unseasonably warm for November. |
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Morgan was tired. Tomorrow would be a long and difficult day. He was still very skeptical of the value of his trip. There was no telling how Anna Neville would take exposure to a Marine half-colonel in the service of the NSC. He was starting at a disadvantage. The track record for such colonels, those who had gone before him in Washington, was dicey at best. He was weary of telling the casual questioner that he had never met Oliver North, and that he had neither the desire nor the power to emulate North's actions. |
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A feline growl awoke Morgan at a quarter after three. Tripoli stood stiffly at the foot of the bed where he had been sleeping. The cloud cover had thinned, allowing pale moonlight to penetrate the room. Tripoli looked enormous and angry, fur standing, tail upright and stiff as a bottle brush, back arched, and ears flattened for combat. A jungle sound rumbled in his chest while he stared at an open French door. |
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