Michael Palmer - Oath of Office

“Hey, there, boss,” Cap said. “Welcome to the land of the living. There’s a guy calling out your name. I think he wants to talk with you.”

Lou pulled the oxygen off. He had to clear his throat and spit out a gob of thick mud in order to speak. “George?”

“Medics took him away,” Cap said. “One of them gave me a thumbs-up, so I think he’s not in any big trouble.”

“Medics?”

Lou’s head cleared rapidly. He rolled over onto his side, gagging and coughing. Then, with Cap’s help, he sat up and looked around. In every direction were crumpled-up parachutes. There were dead bodies, too-a row of them, being dragged away from the train and lined up by soldiers in black greasepaint. Lou recognized Chester’s man, Dolph, as two soldiers set his body down next to the others. He was bloodied, and it appeared he had been shot many times. The landscape was complete and total carnage.

To Lou’s left was the grain car. Its hatch was open, and the contents of the bin had been emptied out onto the ground.

“Chester?”

“The medics took him, too. I’m no expert on dead, but he sure looked it to me.

A soldier approached, his face also blackened. “Lieutenant Brad Taylor, United States Army, Second Ranger Battalion. Are either of you Dr. Lou Welcome?”

“I am,” Lou responded weakly.

“Do you need your oxygen mask, sir?”

“If I have trouble breathing, I’ll put it back on.”

“Very well. I’m glad you’re okay, sir. I have been instructed to tell you that President and Mrs. Mallory send their regards.”

Millie Neuland unlocked the front door of her restaurant and motioned for Lou to come inside. She had on what he had come to believe was her standard uniform-a light blue gingham dress and frilly half apron. Her broad smile upon seeing him rivaled the brightness of the midmorning sun.

“Dr. Lou!” she said, wrapping him in her arms. “What a pleasant surprise. I’m so glad to see you. Are you all right? Your face looks a little bruised.”

“I’m fine, Millie. Fine.”

“Wonderful.”

Behind Millie, across the vast restaurant, Lou could see half a dozen cooks and an equal number of waitstaff, all getting ready for what was sure to be another busy day.

Everybody eats at Millie’s, he was thinking.

“Business as usual,” he said.

“Business as usual,” Millie echoed. “Come in, come in.”

Millie seized Lou tightly by the arm and guided him into the expansive foyer.

“So, what brings you out here so early?” she said. “You know you don’t have to beat the crowd to get served first.”

Lou grinned. “If the truth be known,” he said, “I came here to talk to you. Is there a private place we can sit down?”

“Why, of course, dear. My office is on the second floor.” She gestured to a staircase off the right side of the foyer and undid a velvet rope so they could ascend.

Shuttered office doors lined one side of a long carpeted corridor that was interspersed with foldout tables, on which there were several fax machines, a printer, and reams of copy paper. There was also a water bubbler and mailbox cubby system, in addition to numerous employee notices on bulletin boards-OSHA-type stuff. Taped to the wall was a poster announcing an upcoming softball game against a rival restaurant.

“Lots of excitement in the news today,” Lou said as Millie unlocked a door at the end of the hall.

“I should say. Soldiers dropping out of the sky in the middle of nowhere to subdue a drug king-that certainly is exciting. Can I get you some tea? Coffee? Eggs? We’re going to begin our breakfast experiment in another month.”

“Thanks but no thanks,” Lou said.

Millie’s office, a modest, windowless space with a ceiling that was peaked like the roof above it, was surprisingly uninviting. There were no framed pictures about. No motivational posters adorning the walls. Not a single cookbook, either. There was just a simple desk, two chairs, several filing cabinets, and a lot of papers.

All business.

Lou closed the door behind him as he entered.

“This used to be a supply closet,” Millie said, gesturing him to the classic hard-backed maple kitchen chair on the guest side of her desk and taking what looked like a high-end orthopedic desk chair on the other.

“So why’d you make it your office?” he asked.

“Oh, I didn’t want to be tempted to spend too much time in here. You can’t understand your customer if you’re not with your customer. Know what I mean?”

“I don’t think there’s a restaurateur who knows their customers like you do,” Lou said.

“Everybody eats at Millie’s,” she replied cheerfully, picking up a menu off her fairly cluttered desk to show Lou the saying printed below her rainbow.

“That commando raid in West Virginia,” Lou said. “Actually that’s what I came out here to talk with you about.”

“Now, what a strange thing for you to do,” she said, her blue eyes narrowing slightly and surrendering some of their sparkle.

“Not so strange,” he said. “I’m not sure what your news source was, but the raid had nothing to do with drugs.”

“Now, how would you know that?”

“Because I was there,” Lou said.

Millie tried for a quizzical look, but her eyes had grown hard. “And if the raid had nothing to do with drugs,” she asked, “exactly what did it have to do with?”

“Corn. It had to do with corn.”

“Oh?” Millie crinkled her nose and smiled at him benignly. “I’m afraid I’m not following.”

“Renee,” Lou said.

“Who?”

“My ex-wife, Renee. She’s the one who really figured it out for me.”

“Figured what out, dear? You’re not really making any sense.”

“You see, once I realized that William Chester’s corn was the cause of all these people periodically losing their judgment and doing crazy, sometimes dangerous things, I was looking for a common thread-something that would tie John and Carolyn Meacham, Roberta Jennings, Joey Alderson, and the staff at DeLand Hospital together. I kept thinking it had to be airborne, or how else could those people have become affected as they did.”

Millie Neufeld was granite now. “I’m afraid I still don’t get you, Doctor. Perhaps you’d better come back another time.”

“But then it hit me. On the helicopter ride back from West Virginia, we actually flew somewhere near your place. By then I already knew. Just as you said, everybody eats at Millie’s.”

Millie, her smallish hands gripping the edge of her desk, glared across at him. “Why don’t you stand up, Lou?”

He did as she asked.

“Will you take your shirt off, dear?”

“Wire?”

“I just want to make sure our conversation stays private, if you know what I mean.”

Lou took off his shirt, and Millie gasped at the extent of his cuts and scrapes. He pulled up his pant legs, too, then put his shirt back on.

“I don’t have a wire,” he said.

“And you don’t have any proof, either, my friend. Merely allegations.”

“The FBI could seize your invoices. I bet they’ll find you have a very limited number of food suppliers. I bet they’ll also find that each of your suppliers can be traced to a food processing plant owned by Chester Enterprises and its subsidiaries. Like I said, it’s all about corn-specifically, Chester corn.”

“Interesting concept. The trouble is, I wouldn’t be so foolish as to keep any invoices around.”

“What percentage of the food you serve is processed from that stuff?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Yes, you could. How about Millie’s Cola? Who makes that?”