Alien Diplomacy

warning you, he wouldn’t sound delusional to you, since we, in fact, know something bad is going to happen tonight.”
    “Yes, but there’s a difference between loony conspiracy theorists and the ones who know what they’re talking about. And, trust me, they sound different.”
    “True. You did spend many formative years with Mister Reynolds.”
    “Exactly. So, let’s take the leap and say that Jack didn’t kill himself, but instead he was murdered. Why kill him?”
    “Because he’d leaked information,” Len said without missing a beat.
    “Chuckie wasn’t worried about it. If the Conspiracy King doesn’t worry about a leak, I’d guess no one else does.”
    “Well, it wasn’t a leak out of our division,” Kyle offered. “Mister Reynolds might have worried if it had been.”
    I stared at him. “He leaked C.I.A. information. And it was out of someone’s division. Maybe that someone wasn’t happy that people were being told to stay away from the President’s Ball.”
    “Specific people,” Len suggested.
    “Yeah, maybe, because while Jack said he’d called everyone in class and the instructor, it didn’t sound like he’d called anyone else. He might not know anyone else who’s going to the ball other than his wife’s coworkers. And Eugene and I were dead last on his to-call list, so I think he might have said something if he’d called other people before his Washington Wife classmates.”
    “Do you have a roster of your classmates?” White asked.
    “Apparently I do somewhere. We can look for it when we’reback. Did anyone pay attention to where Marcia and Nathalie went after we left them?”
    Kyle nodded. “Our sunglasses have mirroring inside, on the outer parts of the lenses.”
    “You have rearview mirrored sunglasses? Really?”
    He shrugged. “The C.I.A. has all the cool toys. Anyway, they watched us, then they walked off in the other direction.”
    “They went out of range once we’d stopped again,” Len added.
    “Why are the dogs still staring back there, then?”
    Len shrugged. “Dogs have better senses of hearing and smell than we do. Do you want us to go back and follow them?”
    I tried to sight along the same way Duchess was looking, since she was the best trained of the four dogs. As I did so, I saw that she was actually looking across the street. I could just see the Paraguayan Embassy in the distance, but that wasn’t what my dog was watching.
    She was watching a man I recognized. I’d been seeing him a lot recently. “Why is Malcolm Buchanan hanging out down the street?”
    The men with me all turned. Either Buchanan noticed or he had seen enough of whatever he was watching, because he wandered off in the opposite direction.
    “Who’s he?” Len asked, sounding suspicious and willing to make Jeff proud in the defending my honor category.
    “Yet another person from my Washington Wife class. Not one of the jerks. At least, as far as I know.”
    “I believe he was watching you,” White said.
    “I saw him earlier,” Len admitted. “But he didn’t seem interested in us.”
    “Before.” This was now the third time I’d spotted Buchanan somewhere just hanging around.
    “He was watching you,” Len said. “I just thought it was because he thought you were hot.” Len seemed to realize what he’d said, because he matched Kyle in the turning red department.
    While Len busied himself with being embarrassed, I wondered if it was time for a restraining order, but dismissed the idea as a little too flattering toward myself. If Buchanan was following me, I had to figure it wasn’t to see if I wanted to have an illicit affair. “I honestly don’t think he’s after me like that.” I didn’t. There was too much going on, and Buchanan had now been identified as likely being involved in it in some way.
    “Do you want to follow him?” Kyle asked. He didn’t sound like he thought this was a great plan, but he’d be willing if I was all for it.
    Part of me did, but I honestly didn’t have any guess about what we’d find out. And with Jamie along, it didn’t sound wise. Plus, if I sent the boys without me, Jeff would have a conniption fit if he ever found out, and I was fairly sure he’d find out. And if they spotted both Buchanan and the women, and they weren’t together, then the boys would likely split up, and that meant they could be in danger.
    “No. This is yet more weird to add to the almost nothing we have to work on.”
    “True,” White