The door to the office opened so suddenly that Mary Ellen startled. A man in a military uniform marched out then turned back.
“Keep me posted,” he said.
Mary Ellen could see that her boss, Irene Baldwin, had followed him to the door. The officer looked familiar but Mary Ellen couldn’t put a name to the face, although she realized he resembled too many military elite—thick-chested with steel-gray hair, a rubber-stamped scowl, and lifeless eyes.
She watched the man march all the way down the hall before it hit her. General Lorimer was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Off the top of her head she couldn’t think of a single project her boss was supposed to be working on with the Department of Defense. She wondered what brought him here.
“Wychulis. Good, you’re on time. Enter,” Irene Baldwin said with a wave of her hand then darted back in her office before her last guest had even reached the elevator.
Baldwin had changed the office so remarkably from its previous occupant that each time Mary Ellen walked in she had to remind herself she worked for the government, not a Fortune 500 company. But it was also a reminder that Baldwin not only had worked for a Fortune 500 company but had run one.
Where framed black-and-white photos of agricultural history had hung on the walls, there were now canvases in vibrant-colored oils with abstract images that on closer inspection could depict stalks of grain or bird’s-eye views of a forest. The new wall decorations looked like they belonged in a contemporary art museum instead of the office of an undersecretary in the Department of Agriculture.
“Sit,” Baldwin told Mary Ellen.
Her one-or two-word commands reminded Mary Ellen of dog obedience school.
Baldwin continued to stand behind her desk and pull file folders from a neat stack piled on the polished corner. The only other things on the desk were three pens and a legal pad.
“I have questions,” she said, sorting through the contents of a file folder.
Mary Ellen sat on the edge of her chair. Of course, she had questions. Every morning she had questions and she expected Mary Ellen to save her precious time by providing the answers. Mary Ellen kept her back ramrod straight, her feet flat on the floor, preparing for whatever Baldwin wanted.
“I have a request to continue”—Baldwin paused to put on a pair of reading glasses—“something called a mobile slaughter unit in Fort Collins, Colorado. What exactly is that?”
“It’s part of the ‘Know your farmer, know your food’ initiative. The unit travels from site to site and provides services to small regional producers at a host farm.”
“Services?”
“Yes.”
“Slaughter services.”
“That’s correct.” Mary Ellen refrained from any more details. One thing she had learned about Baldwin—and learned the hard way—was that the woman enjoyed making a game of what she believed were the agency’s “absurdities” or “foibles.” Despite Mary Ellen’s recent absence she had almost five years invested at the USDA and a loyalty to public service. She didn’t appreciate the sarcasm even if some of it was justified. Of course any agency had problems.
Baldwin came from the private sector. She had worked her way up the ranks of a large food corporation, ultimately becoming responsible for developing the research facility which was known worldwide for its cutting-edge labs. It was no secret that she was hired to bridge the communication gap between the Food Safety and Inspection Service and the private processors and distributors who provided the nation’s food supply. Her experience would give credibility to an agency that had the reputation of beating up on those same processors and distributors that it was supposed to work closely with, not just regulate to assure the safety of the nation’s food supply.
“Second question.” Baldwin pushed at the glasses that tended to slide to the end of her nose. “Why do I have a citizen’s petition from”—she paused again as she flipped pages—“a Wesley Stotter, who says these mobile slaughter units are, quote, being used for unethical and secretive government experiments, unquote?”
“I’m not familiar with that petition.”
“No?” Baldwin slid the file to Mary Ellen’s side of the desk. “Please read it. Stotter is a syndicated talk-radio guy. Looks like he has a rather significant audience, though a somewhat strange mix of antigovernment and UFO fanatics. Could be nothing. Could be a media headache waiting to explode into a migraine. Last question.”
Her curt, brisk style had Mary Ellen’s head spinning and stomach turning the first several days.
The woman pulled another file from the stack.
“What in the world is a ‘spent hen’ and why is there a pending review waiting for my confirmation?”