Worst Case Scenario by Michael Bowen Page B

and we’re not under fire, we don’t have a defense perimeter to worry about, and we don’t have bodybags piling up like cordwood. Yet some lifer with a charity star and a Rolodex is making up his own little triage rules, and someone dies because of it. It just got to me.”
    Settling back, Michaelson took a sip of scotch. The sip turned into a substantial swallow. Gazing steadily at the mildly abashed smile that split Deborah Moodie’s lips, he thought for a moment about which of the two lies he should call her on. He chose the first.
    â€œYour description of how you got caught up in this issue in the first place was very thorough,” he said.
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œAs you went through it, though, the mischievous notion occurred to me that, somewhere along the line at the beginning there, someone might have given you a hint.”
    Deborah’s face went flat. Michaelson imagined an armored knight flipping down the visor on his helmet: one instant you saw a human face, and the next you saw nothing but cold steel and angry eyes.
    â€œDid you have any particular source for that hint in mind?” she asked in a taut voice.
    â€œI was hoping you’d tell me.”
    â€œI thought I just did tell you.”
    Michaelson rested his forearms on his knees. He did his best to open his own features up, to disguise the threat implicit in his dark, piercing eyes.
    â€œI’ve worked with cover stories for over forty years,” he said mildly. “I know one when I hear one.”
    â€œThat’s out of line,” Alex Moodie snapped in a low tone that tried to match Michaelson’s and didn’t quite make it. He moved a couple of protective steps closer to his wife.
    â€œWe’ve been sparring for close to a minute now and Deborah hasn’t told me I’m wrong,” Michaelson said. “If I’m out of line, I’d like to hear it from her.”
    â€œDo you really think I made all that stuff up about the report and the table in the appendix?” she asked.
    â€œNo, I don’t. I think you just started somewhere after the beginning. And I still haven’t heard you tell me I’m wrong.”
    Deborah lifted her glass and drank briefly. The sip was measured, practiced, calculated sedulously to suggest that the liquor was appreciated but not needed.
    â€œYou’re not wrong,” she said. “Someone did leak some sketchy information about the incident to me, and I dug the report out to start following it up.”
    â€œAnd to cover the leak,” Michaelson suggested, nodding.
    â€œTrue,” Deborah said, a bit pointedly for someone who’d been on the defensive five seconds before. “When someone’s done you a favor, you don’t want to leave them hanging out to dry.”
    â€œAbsolutely right. Of course, you wouldn’t be hanging Sharon Bedford out to dry at this point, would you?”
    â€œYou’re right,” Deborah said as she finished her scotch and soda. “She doesn’t have anything to fear now from any bureaucrat in the world.”

Chapter Ten
    â€œI’m glad that one of us had a productive evening,” Marjorie said around eleven o’clock Monday morning, after Michaelson had summarized his Sunday-night talk with the Moodies. “If it was Bedford who gave Deborah Moodie the story about this general getting favorable treatment on a transplant, then that has to be related somehow to whatever Bedford was shopping around at the CPD conference.”
    â€œImplying that Pilkington’s chat with Alex and me and his interest in Bedford’s death isn’t exactly a coincidence, either,” Michaelson said.
    â€œRight.”
    They were in the backroom of Cavalier Books, Marjorie’s store just beyond Dupont Circle on Connecticut Avenue. Marjorie was in the process of returning three dozen hardcover books to their respectable but soon to be poorer