I asked him, "We're apparently heading back there. Why? Where were we going when they stopped us?"
He wasn't sure. "I wanted to keep on going," he said, "and get you out of the country. I still think that would have been best. There was to be a cruiser waiting at Bremerton for a shakedown cruise. But whoever is running all this—and I don't think that the President has thought too much about it—wants us to get back to Washington for another conference."
"Another meeting?" I was disgusted. Washington political rashes manifest themselves most often by the consistent eruption of conferences in which nothing is said, nothing decided, nothing done. "What does who think what?"
He blinked, and then smiled. "I couldn't say. I've been in this game only twenty years. At any rate, you can see who's worried."
I didn't see, exactly.
"No?" He was amused. "Don't you remember the discussion we had about who was going to watch the watchers? Now that there's been a leak, the Army is going to blame the Navy, the Navy is going to blame the FBI, and I take punishment from all three." He sighed. "My department seems, invariably, to be in the middle."
I let it go at that. I didn't have the heart to remind him that a good portion of the trouble and friction this country has had in its history has been because the State Department has been sitting on the water bucket when it should have been playing deep centerfield. No use worrying about things until the fuse is burnt half its length, I thought. That might be, for me and all of us, a good policy to adopt, for the time being. Let the boys at the top fret and worry; let them wrack their brains and beat their heads against the wall. I'd do what they told me, if I could. The man that pays the salary worries about the unemployment tax.
"Stein," I said, "are there any more of those sandwiches?"
The Old Man settled back in his seat and began to read the Kansas City Sentinel all over again. He was still worried when we landed in Washington.