Amelia’s play was performed three times, Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoon. Kevin, Denise, and Jeremy went to all of the performances. The Porters came to the Saturday performance with their younger children and many of the university teacher ed students came to one of the shows, too. As an arts specialty school, local papers sent reviewers to cover the play, and the reviews generally agreed that the acting was excellent and Amelia’s performance was noted as being particularly impressive. “The haunting, hypnotic presence Miss Hadad imparted to the character of Emily showed a maturity in her performance far in excess of her age, elevating the play into an almost flawless achievement for this excellent performing arts school,” one reviewer gushed.
The following Monday afternoon, Amelia and Jeremy arrived back at Amelia’s flat much later than usual. Kevin and Denise were already home.
“Got your text that you’d be late,” Denise said as the entered. “What kept you?”
Jeremy sighed. “It’s tough hanging with a celebrity,” he groaned.
Amelia giggled. “The video of the play was put up on VueTube and went viral; over 10,000 views since Saturday. The head’s been getting calls all day from agents and scouts who want to talk to me. So after school he had me meet with him, Mr Davis—he’s the drama teacher—two staff governors, and the school solicitor, to tell me about what I should do about contacts with those people, even before I left school, ‘cuz there even were several loitering about the building waiting for me to go out.
“They told me not to talk to anyone and definitely not sign anything without a solicitor present and if you want to talk to someone about it, Mr Davis knows lots about the entertainment industry and I have his number.”
“So how’d you escape the scrum?” Kevin asked.
Jeremy chuckled. “There were almost a dozen people waiting at the front of the building looking at the kids as they left—they had pictures of Amelia, it seemed, since they were looking at a paper and then the kids. I texted Mrs Thompson, my security person, to drive around to the staff car park and wait close to the staff entrance. We slipped out that way. We’ll go in that way tomorrow too, I think. Mrs Thompson said it’s a good thing Amelia’s last name isn’t like either of yours which means they can’t find out where she lives. Say, whose name is registered to her mobile?”
“Oh, it’s in my name,” Kevin said.
“Good; they can’t find her that way either. Head says these people are like sharks but have short memories. Only the really serious agents will persist and they’ll be mostly polite.”
“Amelia, how do you feel about this notoriety?” Denise asked.
“Um, it was funny at first but now I’m a little concerned. I never thought that something like this would happen.”
“Well, your performance was a knock-out,” Denise told her. “As good as a professional, in fact. So you’re in demand as the hot new talent. Is that what you want as a possible career?”
“Ah, no... I love acting, but not as a career; it’s loads of fun, but I want to have a career in helping people, like you, Denise—and Kevin too.”
Denise looked at her sharply. “Tell me, sweetie, how you felt when you came out for your curtain calls and the audience stood and cheered and whistled and clapped? Some people feel exhilarated, feel a rush, even a tingling, like getting horny. Did you feel that?”
“Oh... um, not really... I felt, um, really happy that I did so well that people liked it and glad that I made them feel good. I think that was the scariest part of the play—all that emotion washing over me at the end was almost too much, really,” Amelia said, thoughtfully. “Why do you ask? Do people really get horny over that?”
“For sure they do, sweetie! Many actors get turned on sexually from audience adulation. They get a high, almost like a drug, and can get addicted to the feeling. You didn’t feel any of that? Or when you were in plays in Jakarta?”
“Definitely not, no. I liked acting ‘cuz it let me forget about my pain; I could be someone else—even when I was learning my lines it let me forget that pain ‘cuz I could be ‘not me.’ I could become the character I was playing. So the reward for me was being able to ignore my pain, not the audience’s reaction. Um, this time, I felt a connection to the play’s character and wanted to bring Emily to life ‘cuz the play’s message meant a lot to me. And it gave me great satisfaction that I could make the audience understand the play’s message. That’s how I interpreted the applause—not for me, but for Emily. She was the heroine, not me.”
Kevin smiled. “Amelia, that was beautiful, like your name. Very well said, and very mature.”
Denise hugged her. “Honey, you’re very well balanced, it seems. Many actors are egotistical, or exhibitionists, or approval-seekers, and feed on the adulation of their audiences for a psychological high. If you’re not interested in an acting career, that’s just fine; you won’t be tempted by all the fancy offers that’ll be thrown at you. But those people can be persistent; so you can just ignore them. Is that okay?”
“Sure, Denise.”
“And you won’t lose your talent, honey. Remember that; it’s a part of you that you can return to when you want. So if you ever change your mind, that’s a career option you can always go back to. You’re still young and’ll have plenty of choices to make as you get older.”
“Thanks, Denise. You’re the greatest,” Amelia whispered as they embraced again.
Kevin grinned at Jeremy. “Ever get the feeling that you’re superfluous, buddy?” he joked.
Jeremy grinned back. “Not every guy is lucky to have a celebrity as a girlfriend, so I’m content to bask in her radiance,” he chuckled. “Besides, I make a pretty good bodyguard.”
Amelia looked at Jeremy. “You can guard my body anytime, you know,” she said and burst out laughing. “I hope you’re not annoyed with me, darling,” she told him. “For making our lives even more complicated now.”
“Oh no,” Jeremy grinned. “Mrs Thompson will have to earn her keep now on our school runs. Just think, you’ll get to see how covert operations are really run.”
Amelia tapped him in the chest. “You goofball. But you’re cute so I’ll keep you around.”
Denise sent an email to Hanford explaining that Amelia had decided that she wasn’t interested in any agents’ offers and to let any callers know of her decision. She also asked him to attempt to keep any stalkers at the school away from the entrances.
The following morning, Amelia and Jeremy decided to use the school’s main entrance instead of the staff one. After all, Jeremy pointed out, he could protect her. Mrs Thompson was a little dubious but agreed, telling them that she’d drop them off, but then cruise past the school’s entrance to ensure that they got safely into the building.
As they expected, there were a number of men loitering near the school entrance, but they were on the sidewalk, staying away from the immediate entry area. Jeremy and Amelia waited down the block from the school until a public bus arrived and then they joined the group of kids that disembarked, walking with them to the school entrance.
As they passed several men on the sidewalk, two of them called out, “Miss Hadad, please?” and began following.
She ignored them and continued walking but one ran to follow her. He caught up with Amelia and Jeremy at the entrance steps, still calling Amelia’s name. Jeremy turned to face him as Amelia continued up the stairs.
“You’re trespassing, mate,” Jeremy growled. “No one’s interested in your pitch.”
“What’s it to you?” the man shot back.
“Nothing, but if you’re still here this afternoon, the school will have you arrested for stalking, okay? Tell your mates that too; the head teacher asked us pupils to report any harassment to him and I’ll be reporting you now.”
Just then a police officer appeared and spoke to Jeremy. “Is this person bothering you, sir?” he asked.
“Actually, Constable, he’s begun stalking one of the pupils who attends the school, together with those other loiterers over there on the sidewalk. You might want to question them why they’re watching every girl going into the school. They even have pictures. Looks very creepy, wouldn’t you say?”
“Thank you, young man,” the officer said. Then to the man, “You, come along with me now, away from the building. I want you to tell me...” his voice faded away as he escorted the man away.
Jeremy’s mobile pulsed with an incoming text. He checked; it was from Mrs Thompson.
“Rang bobbies, said kids being harassed at school,” it read.
He texted back, “OK, they came. We’re good. Thx.”
Within a half hour, the sidewalk was empty of loiterers and they didn’t return; however, Hanford received over a dozen phone calls about Amelia asking for her contact information. He refused to give any information, citing pupil privacy laws. One of the calls was from a person who threatened to sue the school for the contact information. Hanford just hung up on him.
After school, Mrs Thompson was waiting to pick up the two teens. They climbed into the car and she pulled out. After a minute, she muttered “Goddamn” and made a quick u-turn. Jeremy looked up.
“What’s the matter?”
“Yeah,” Thompson said. “We’re being followed. I felt uneasy when I picked you up; there was an occupied car sitting across from the school and there’s never been one there before. Okay, let’s see if I’m right.”
She sped up and then made a sudden right turn.
“Damn,” she grumbled, looking at her mirror. “He is tailing us. Guys, I don’t like this; this probably isn’t just a dumb agent trying to sign up Amelia. Keep your heads down, okay?”
She thumbed her radio. “Olympus, Prometheus here, code 16, 11-55.”
“Go ahead, Prometheus.”
“North 2214, 30 kph to Queen’s Road, ETA 1 minute, target black 4-door Vauxhall Meriva.”
“10-4. Wait one.... Metro unit 34 responding. 10-20?”
“20, Lausanne and Queen’s.”
“10-4. Unit 34 coming from northeast of you. Make for Fordham Park.”
“10-4. That’s in two minutes.... Almost there... Now turning left on Pagnell, northbound... Now on Pagnell.”
“10-4, Pagnell.”
“Olympus, target overtaking us... shit, forcing us to the side of street on Pagnell.”
“10-4. Metro unit 34 advises ETA two minutes.”
Thompson stopped the car. “Guys, keep down. Those blighters are getting out of their car.”
“Prometheus, Metro 34 ETA one minute.”
“4. Two subjects approaching vehicle, could be armed.”
“10-4. Advising Metro 34.”
The men came up, one on each side of their car, and one of them tapped on the driver’s window while the other man tried the passenger door; it was locked.
“Open up! Get out!” the one at Thompson’s door called.
“Bugger off!” Thompson called back.
“Okay, we’re coming in!” The guy pulled out a pistol and slammed it into the window, then screamed as the window resisted his blow; he dropped the pistol, clutching his hand.
Just then a siren whooped and the two men whirled around. A police car pulled up behind Thompson’s car and an amplified voice called, “Freeze and get down on the ground now!”
Then a second police car came barreling down the street from the opposite direction and skidded to a halt.
The man at the passenger side of the car ducked down and pulled out a pistol.
“Git outta here or I’ll shoot thems in the car!” he called.
An officer had exited the second police car and, using the Vauxhall as a shield, crept around its side. Meanwhile, the first man, who had dropped to the ground, reached for the pistol he had dropped. Suddenly there was a high-pitched zinging sound and the man on the passenger side screamed and dropped, hit with taser darts, while the cop from the first car shouted, “Freeze! You make a move for that gun, you’re dead!”
He lay still; Thompson looked out of the closed window.
“Olympus, tell Unit 34 that subject is still within reach of the pistol,” she advised dispatch.
“10-4.”
There was a burst of communication from the Unit 34 police car a few seconds later and then the cop called out, “Slowly roll onto your back away from the car and keep your arms where I can see them!”
Then two more police units arrived.
Two minutes later both men were in handcuffs and were getting stuffed into different patrol cars. Thompson opened her door and got out.
“Thanks, mates,” she called to the cops walking up to her. “What the hell, that was an attempted kidnaping, it seems. They pulled a pistol and tried to break the window. Armored glass doesn’t break so easily.”
One of the officers from the final car to arrive came hurrying over.
“I’m Sergeant Hutchins... you’re Mrs Wilma Thompson from the U.S. Embassy security section?”
“Yep, Sergeant. Thanks for your men’s quick response. Those blokes were tailing us and then decided to pull us over; I guess because they thought this was a quiet street.”
Hutchins looked over at her car. “Your passengers okay?”
Thompson grinned and looked back at her car. The two teens were looking out at the scene, wide-eyed.
“Sure. Maybe the young lady’s a bit shaken but the boy’s cool. I’ll see to them. You can book those two blokes for attempted kidnaping, but add all the other charges too, assault, weapons, motor vehicle, resisting, the lot. I’ll be doing a report for the embassy since this was a crime against a diplomatic dependent; if you send an investigator by later, I’d be happy to share it.”
Hutchins nodded. “Sounds good, ma’am. Let’s see if we can move the cars so you can get out of here.”
She watched while the cops shifted the cars; then she walked back to hers and got in.
“Okay, Amelia, you all right?” She turned to look at Amelia who sat there, goggle-eyed.
“Um, yes, Jeremy told me we were safe in here and this car was like a tank.”
Thompson snorted. “Well, not that secure, but yeah, it’s pretty well armored. Listen, do you need to talk about it? This can be pretty traumatic and I don’t want you getting bad thoughts or dreams about what happened.”
Amelia nodded, “Yes, maybe if we talk a bit so I know what happened. Jeremy was keeping me down on the car’s floor and I didn’t see anything.”
“All right. There are some shops about a half-kilometer away. I’ll park there and we’ll talk. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Four minutes later, she parked.
“Okay, Mrs Thompson, please explain,” Jeremy asked. “I missed a lot of that too.”
“Sure. I called into dispatch that we had an unknown vehicle following us and told them where I was and my direction and speed. Dispatch alerted a nearby metro police unit and gave them the vehicle description and then told the police unit where I was headed. The police told dispatch where I should go to meet up with them. I didn’t expect to be pulled over like that, though...”
The radio beeped. “One sec...” She answered, “Prometheus, go ahead.”
“Olympus. Metro reports situation secure?”
“Secure. Be back in about 30 minutes.”
“10-4, Prometheus. Out.”
“Prometheus out.”
“Wow,” breathed Jeremy.
“Yeah, this is why we’re really careful, kids. I first thought that those berks were following us to try to find out where Amelia lives to contact her, but it was way more sinister than that. We don’t know who they were after, but I suspect that it wasn’t Amelia. Maybe it has something to do with Jeremy’s actions in protecting you last fall, Amelia. Let’s get you home now. You staying with her, Jeremy, or going home?”
“As much as I’d like to stay, I need to get home myself,” Jeremy told her. “You be okay by yourself, sweetie?”
“Um, Denise should be home now, actually,” she replied.
Amelia had exciting news for Denise when she arrived home, and for Kevin later that evening.
~~~~
In school, the Avery-Denison project was progressing very well; the university faculty had been recruiting additional teacher ed students to learn the exercises; two teams from the original student group were training six additional teams of students at the university. After experiencing the various exercises as couples, the new teams visited Norwich Academy to observe the children in their actual classes.
Also, work continued on developing the project curriculum. Based on pupil observations made by Denise’s team, the curriculum was updated and expanded, and local secondary-school teachers were beginning to visit to observe the classes.
Several evenings after the day of Amelia’s exciting car chase, Warren Porter called Kevin.
“Hi, Kevin, it’s Warren.”
“Hi, how’s it going?” Kevin replied.
“The usual. Stamping out crises. And that’s the reason for my call now, not a crisis, but over your school project with Denise and the kids,” Porter remarked. “No one’s in trouble, but there’s a political matter brewing over how a couple of American college kids are revolutionizing British education.” He laughed. “You won’t believe the ruckus in Whitehall and Parliament over your project, which is getting rave reviews by the education experts, by the way.”
“So what do you need from us, Warren?” Kevin asked.
“Can you, Denise, and Amelia come to the embassy this Saturday afternoon? Ambassador Wixom and a few staff members want to talk to you about what you’re doing so they can speak intelligibly about your activities here.”
“Sure, we don’t have any pressing plans. Say, do you need anyone else, like someone who’s actually doing the teaching? Denise and I aren’t involved with any direct pupil contact anymore. That’s being handled by certified teachers and student teachers so we’re completely legal under the Brits’ education laws.”
“Good, trust you to have made sure of that. That’s a great point, thanks. No, this isn’t about specifics; it’s about your general role in bringing the Avery project to England.”
“What time do you need us—and is there anything else?” Kevin asked.
“I’ll send a car for you at 2 pm. Business dress, and plan to stay for dinner there. Charlie told me he has some entertainment planned but I don’t know about what he has in mind. Sometimes his sense of entertainment is a bit strange but he’s harmless, so you guys will have fun after we take care of business.”
~~~~
On Saturday afternoon, the embassy limo picked up Kevin’s group and drove them to the embassy. Amelia had never been in a major embassy before; Denise had been here before and also in the Indonesian U.S. embassy, which was like a large estate house, and in the embassy in Seoul. The London embassy was massive and stately, and the Marine guards welcomed them with impressive ceremony.
Porter greeted them in the entry hall and led them to his office. “My staff would like to meet you guys; they’ve heard nothing but your names all month so they came in today,” he joked.
When they walked into the deputy mission head’s suite, Jeremy came out of an interior door. Amelia ran to hug him.
“I was glad to hear you’d be here, darling,” she whispered.
“Well, they wanted to pump all of us for info about what we’ve been up to,” he smiled.
“Kevin said we’re not in trouble... but are we? This place is impressive... overwhelming.”
“No one’s in trouble, sweetie. Yeah, this is quite a place. Actually all of the government buildings in London are kind of spectacular.”
“Come on, folks, let’s go to the conference room,” Warren called.
They went into the room and there was a spread of light snacks set out; in a minute a number of people began coming in. Porter made the introductions and for the next half hour, they conversed among themselves. Then Ambassador Wixom entered with a woman. He came over to Kevin and Denise and took their hands.
“Hello there,” he grinned. “You’re our latest American celebrities to wash up on these shores. Since our last meeting, Denise, you’ve outdone yourselves in changing an entire country’s educational policies. Outstanding. Where is your ward, Amelia? I want to meet her... oh, over there with Jeremy. Two incredible teenagers, those are. I want you to meet Veronica Chambers, she’s the mission’s chargé.”
While Chambers began chatting with Denise and Kevin, Wixom walked over to Amelia; Jeremy saw him coming and took her hand to turn her to face the man.
“Amelia, let me introduce you to Ambassador Wixom, Ambassador, this is Amelia Hadad, my girlfriend.”
“Jeremy, you know you can skip the ‘ambassador’ stuff here—we’re informal now.” Wixom grinned at him. “Amelia, it’s a real pleasure to meet you—and you call me ‘Charlie’ too, you hear?” She nodded. “I saw the video of your play performance, dear, and you were simply stunning! And then you got chased by talent scouts trying to sign you up, and then around South London by some criminals who were after Jeremy,” he chuckled while Amelia blushed.
“Thank you, sir,” she said. “That was an exciting car ride, actually, like an adventure story,” she giggled. “Mrs Thompson was really cool, too, the way she handled it. They were really after Jeremy?”
Wixom got serious. “That’s what the police told us. Those two were friends of one of the guys Jeremy pulled off you, that time in your school, and they cooked up a scheme where if they grabbed him, they could get their friend off in exchange for letting Jeremy go. Stupid, stupid men. What a dumb idea.”
“Oooh, yeah. Very dumb. A revenge thing,” Amelia nodded and Jeremy squeezed her hand.
Wixom nodded. “I’m glad it wasn’t any more than that, dear. Anyway, I hear from Warren that you and Jeremy have been the on-site project leaders of that new program that Denise and Kevin introduced.”
“Well, there’s actually a number of us, the student teachers and their faculty...”
“Don’t be so modest, dear, my sources tell me of how much you do. Jeremy, how important is Amelia in the project?”
“She’s essential, sir. She’s had a number of significant insights into working with the kids and made some really important contributions to the curriculum design too.”
Amelia smiled at him shyly. “Thanks, Jeremy.”
Wixom grinned. “Well, folks, let’s get down to business and start our little pow-wow.” He raised his voice. “Okay, gang, we’re starting our meeting in five minutes. Let’s wrap up the chat and we’ll see everyone Monday. Thanks for coming.”
Soon the room cleared, leaving Wixom, together with Mrs Chambers and two other people. They joined Warren and Barbara Porter, Amelia and Jeremy, and Denise and Kevin, sitting around the table.
“I don’t know if you got to meet Rosemary Turner earlier, she’s our minister-counselor for public affairs, and Marshall Royston, our Consular Affairs Bureau chief,” Wixom said, looking at Kevin, Denise, and Amelia. “They’ve been fielding many questions about you two, Denise and Kevin, from various people in British government. Many think you’ve been planted here by the U.S. government to sow rebellion,” he laughed. “Seriously, we do want to know how everything you’ve been doing here happened and not have to try to figure things out piecemeal as we’ve been doing over the past six months. I guess we first became aware that a U.S. undercover agent was active here in London at the beginning of September, correct, Rosemary?”
She laughed. “Oh yes. That story you told about the president and the PM—that was a classic. But Public Affairs had found out about a week earlier that something was up when we got a call from their education department about a U.S. citizen involved in some kind of college protest movement. At the time we had no idea who it might be, but when Warren reviewed our weekly report, I think he connected the dots. Am I correct, Warren?”
Porter grinned. “Yep, I recalled that Denise was taking classes there and about her anti-Program activities in the States. But I couldn’t follow up on that just then since the president was to be arriving to attend the summit the following week and we were so busy preparing. Then, in Brussels, when the PM mentioned the turmoil in her education department, I figured that Mr Gerston would appreciate the one-up over the PM. But I didn’t know that her staff had already actually identified Denise.”
He grinned at Denise, but she was blushing and trying to disappear under the table.
“Hey, honey, don’t be embarrassed... diplomacy is a game in one-upmanship all the time and you helped us in a big way. It’s nice to teach the Brits that if we in the Colonies do something really dumb, like the Program, we have smart people who can come forward to set us straight. And then they can come over here next to set the Brits straight,” he finished, laughing.
They continued reviewing Kevin’s and Denise’s activities through their meeting with the National Program Committee.
Then Royston spoke. “That’s when I got some calls from a few of their MPs. They wanted to know how two of our citizens became involved in their education system to the extent that a whole state curriculum was being revised and redesigned by foreigners. We had to tread very lightly here because one of the principals involved was the bloomin’ son of the deputy chief of mission! Fortunately Jeremy was born here and the Brits never thought to link him to Warren at that point—not until the PM saw him at his school. Hell, did we ever hear about that!” he chuckled.
“Yeah, Charles wasn’t in the office when she called,” Chambers put in. “I had to take the call. You know how Mrs Grayson can come on so strong—she began with a little tirade about Yanks meddling in British affairs but I sensed that she was pulling my leg. I told her that as a British citizen—Jeremy has dual citizenship, after all—she should be proud of his contributions to British education. She began to laugh and told me how impressed she was at what she saw at the school. She was also getting favorable reports from her staff about public reaction too.”
“Okay,” Wixom prompted, “after that Program Committee meeting, what did you magicians do to mobilize their entire education system to do what even one city in the U.S. can’t seem to even get started past a few schools, let alone the whole country?”
The other staff members looked questioningly at him.
“I’m referring to that Avery-Denison Program,” Wixom explained. “They can’t even get its curriculum development off the ground there, I hear. Applications for grants to fund it are being stalled and only a few schools are adopting it. With great success too, I hear. But Denise et al, in a meeting lasting a few hours, mobilized a major branch of the British government, loosened some purse strings, created a college teaching program, recruited a pilot school, and trained a teacher cadre, all in the course of a month. One month!”
He turned to Denise. “What the hell did you do, and can you teach us how to do it?”
She grinned. “Well, to put it bluntly, I guess I scared the shit out of them. First Jeremy showed them how their Program violated all kinds of laws on their books, international treaties too. Then Amelia showed them how their ignoring social minorities had caused terrible injustices and showed them that the public viewed the Program as a government evil. Then I showed them the data that scared the shit out of them. And finally Kevin showed them a lifeline, the Avery Program, and they grabbed it. The MPs who were there, they looked like they were pole-axed when we listed the projected social and indirect financial costs that a study of the Program revealed would result if it were to continue in schools here. So everyone began throwing money at us to get us to develop the Avery Program here. But even before all that happened at our meeting, Jeremy and Amelia had been running a covert anti-Program campaign for maybe two months, Jeremy even longer; surely you must have followed the anti-Program articles in the press?”
“Oh, yes. Most interesting,” Wixom said.
“Well, Jeremy, with Amelia’s assistance more recently, was the Realist,” she grinned.
“You’re kidding!” Chambers remarked. “We know about how that blog got the public’s attention.”
Denise laughed. “No, not kidding; Warren, you knew that Jeremy was doing a human rights blog. But you didn’t know it was the Realist, right?”
“No; I suspected it but wasn’t certain,” he grinned. “I told Jeremy to be sure that he kept secret his doing the blog so that it wouldn’t be connected with the embassy. And he certainly did keep it secret—the blog’s author was never found, right?”
“That’s what the press said; they couldn’t find where the server was and then one paper even posted a reward for revealing the blogger’s identity,” Royston said. “But they never found out either thing.”
Denise agreed, “That’s right. Okay, so those blog articles softened the target, as our Marine friends like to put it, and turned public opinion strongly against the Program. The blog articles publicized our ‘Just Say No’ campaign and stiffened parents’ and children’s resolve, finally prompting lawsuits against schools and teachers—this was a whole campaign to wear the Committee members down before our meeting. We planned it just like a military campaign. Our friends in Atlanta had told us all about how they ran a military-style anti-Program campaign at their high school and got the Program stopped from running there. We just applied social psychology to make the Committee members receptive to our suggestions, after all.”
“Holy shit,” Wixom breathed as he sat back. “You guys are truly dangerous if you can manipulate people like that...”
Kevin broke in. “Not really... Manipulation—suggestion like that actually only works when people can sense that something’s greatly amiss, sir. True, we can play on people’s emotions and sympathies, but there has to be a valid social cause or else our messages would be ignored as irrelevant. Publicizing issues that condemns the deliberate injury of children definitely attracts the attention and sympathy of plenty of people, and that’s how we mobilized our support.”
“All right, then, so tell us what you did after the Program Committee meeting to get your project running,” Wixom sighed.
Denise told of Kevin’s sending for copies of the draft and preliminary Avery-Denison Program materials, her getting Dean Phillips’ support for her university’s involvement, her recruiting of the education school’s student teachers, and the initial training for the student teachers and mentors.
“We did all that over the break,” she concluded. “Then the student teachers began the classes, but because Kevin and I had our own courses to attend, Jeremy and Amelia were the on-site project leaders and they did an amazing job in keeping it on track until the student teachers felt comfortable and secure in how they ran the classes. Also, since they both are Brits,” she grinned at the two of them, “there was no direct American instructional contact.”
“Remarkable,” Turner said, shaking her head. “That could have been a sore point with some sensitive British politicians, but you sidestepped that problem neatly. Tell me, was that intentional?”
“Oh yes,” Kevin remarked. “We wanted to keep our involvement at arm’s length. I’m sort of sensitive to that kind of problem; remember, I’m the son of a diplomat and saw the kinds of problems that can happen when there’s foreign meddling in a country’s internal affairs, even it it’s unintentional.”
Wixom looked around the table. “I think we can all agree that this was a remarkable achievement that these youngsters brought about.”
There was a chorus of agreement.
“It would have been an amazing job for seasoned politicians and diplomats, even,” he went on. He shook his head. “Now I see why Harry... ah, the president... is so impressed with you two, Denise and Kevin.”
He glanced at the clock. “Okay, we’ve got about fifteen minutes before dinner. If anyone wants to freshen up? Barbara, you can show Amelia and Denise where the women’s lounge is and Warren or Jeremy, please show Kevin to the men’s facilities. We’ll meet in the reception hall for cocktails at 5.”
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