by Edward Klein
Meanwhile, the Ayatollah was addressing the subject of incentives.
“As you know,” he said, “we are at war with the Devil himself, Saddam Hussein. Tehran is being attacked by air every night. We could use your help.”
The Deuce had been briefed by Bill Casey and was authorized to make a tempting offer.
“Eminence,” he said, “assuming Ronald Reagan becomes the President of the United States, and assuming you promise to keep the American hostages in captivity until then, I’m authorized to tell you that certain military assets could be made available—medium-range missiles capable of reaching Baghdad, for example…”
Khomeini waited for the translation and nodded his assent. He then turned to me.
“Speaking of missiles,” he said, “perhaps there is something more your father could do for me.”
I translated for The Deuce.
“Of course, Eminence. How can we help?” The Deuce said.
Lowering his voice almost to a whisper, the Ayatollah said, “Last year while living in Paris, I read about some promising new drug that was in the experimental phase. I think it was called sildenafil citrate. It helps a man launch his own missile.”
“Ah!” The Deuce said, immediately grasping the Ayatollah’s meaning. “Higgy, tell the Imam that a Swiss company is conducting trials on erectile dysfunction as we speak. I think I can secure some of this product for the Ayatollah.”
When I had completed the translation, the Spiritual Guide smiled. We had reached a common understanding. He raised his glass of champagne in a toast—“To lust beyond the heart!” he shouted—and then downed its contents with one deep contented swallow.
CHAPTER NINE
Ronald Reagan was elected president, Bill Casey was appointed director of Central Intelligence, and I was given a new boss to report to at the CIA—Whitney Nutwing.
Our first meeting got off to a bad start.
“My, my, you don’t look at all like your father,” said Nutwing. “But I can see the resemblance to your mother. How is that poor woman?”
I detected an insult buried somewhere in the remark. But I was too busy staring at the meat hooks hanging from the ceiling to pay much attention.
“My m-mother is…the same,” I stammered.
That was in fact true. My mother was a fulltime resident at Silver Hill, an expensive dry-out in Connecticut for rich drunks.
“Your mother was quite a beauty in her day,” Nutwing said, “if a little bit too corybantic for her own good. Corybantic—C-O-R-Y-B-A-N-T-I-C: look it up in the dictionary. But as her son, I suppose you don’t want to hear about that side of your mother…. Come, join me by the window. If my research is correct, your brand of drink is Hidalgo Manzanilla Pastrana sherry.”
I didn’t think it wise to drink during this first meeting with my new boss, so I declined.
“Un momento,” he said, holding up a warning finger.
Uh-oh, I thought. He’s switching to Italian. Alarm bells went off in my head. I had been warned to be on guard whenever Nutwing started spouting Italian
“Higgy,” he said, “lesson number one: a good agent never passes up an opportunity to drink. Why? Because it loosens the mouth of the person offering the drink.”
He handed me a glass of sherry and then guided me over to his overstuffed green sofa. He collapsed into his seat and the cushion emitted a loud sigh.
He looked me over for quite some time, particularly in the groin area, and then said, “Higgy, you need a cover…”
I looked down at my slacks and checked to see if my fly was open.
“No, not that!” he said. “A cover…a legend…a profession that will hide the true nature of your agency work. Any ideas?”
“Not really,” I replied.
Nutwing sipped his drink and then asked, “If you weren’t a CIA agent, what would you most like to be?”
“A writer, I suppose.”
He chuckled loudly.
“I’ve read your Harvard senior thesis on ‘How Constructive Thinking Could Have Prevented the American Revolution,’ “ he said. “Believe me, Higgy, you’d never get far as a writer. Any other ideas?”
Stung by his criticism, I replied, “Well, I suppose I could… teach.”
“Higgy, teaching is the last refuge for failures. Surely, you’ve heard the old saying, ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach’? Of course, the ultimate last refuge for failures is this: Those who can’t teach become literary agents.”
That was a novel idea. “A literary agent?” I said. “What do they do?”
“Not much at all,” he replied. “Which is the beauty of that profession.”
He sipped his drink and, with great effort, reached over the enormous mountain of his belly toward a bowl of mixed nuts. He scooped up a handful and dropped them into his mouth.
“A literary agent works a couple of hours a day…at most,” he explained, chewing the nuts. “They take three-hour martini lunches. They travel occasionally to meet authors. All of their expenses come out of the author’s share. Yes, the more I think of it, the better I like the idea. Being a literary agent is the perfect cover for your work with us at the CIA.”
CHAPTER TEN
Which brings me to my early days as a ten percenter—a literary agent who takes ten percent of all his authors’ earnings
As part of my CIA legend, I was the president of my very own company, the Sticky Fingers Literary Agency, and I naturally spent a lot of time in the publishing capital of the world, New York City, and especially at Elaine’s, the East Side watering hole made famous by the likes of Michael Caine, Woody Allen, and Jackie Onassis. Elaine’s was the Mecca for the city’s big-name writers.
One night, Taitsie and I flew up from Washington to hang out at Elaine’s. I intended to use Taitsie and her feminine charms as bait to hook a celebrity author for my agency. I told her it was important that she look her best for the occasion. Taitsie didn’t disappoint. She wore a tan, tasseled rawhide miniskirt and a pair of brown suede five-inch-high platform heels. Not to be outdone by my gorgeous companion, I was decked out in a slouchy Armani sports jacket and a pair of silk willow-green slacks.
She made a grab for my crotch. “Not looking bad there, Bottom.”
From the very beginning, Taitsie refused to call me Higgy, which she said she “hated.” So she called me Theodore, which I hated. Taitsie found a compromise in calling me “Bottom.” It came out like the sound you hear on the snare drums after a stand-up comic tells a joke—bah-DUM! I still get aroused every time I think about the way Taitsie drew out that word—bah-DUM!
My ardor was chilled on the Delta Shuttle to New York, when Taitsie finally told me the whole story of her affair with her father’s old Princeton roommate, Richard “Rip” Hack.
“I’m a sculptor,” she said. “I like to do nudes of women, especially black women, and my godfather Rip Hack saw my work and liked it. Rip sits on the board of the Museum of Modern Art and he was able to arrange a spot for me in a sculpture show at the museum. And, as they say, one thing led to another….”
I still found the idea revolting. “What did your mother think about her husband’s old college roommate shagging her daughter?”
“You don’t spare a girl, do you?” Taitsie said. “Well, the affair with Rip is over now, but while it lasted, my mother was naturally aghast. Like everybody else. Like you are probably, too.”
“Aghast—yes—but not aghast at you,” I said. “I’m aghast at Rip Hack for taking advantage of a vulnerable young girl.”
“Bottom,” Taitsie said, squeezing my hand, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
We hailed a taxi at LaGuardia Airport, and I told the driver to let us off on Second Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street, two blocks south of the famous yellow sign over Elaine’s. At the corner, we passed a lighted phone booth. Inside stood a man dressed in cowboy boots, a pair of faded jeans, and a large black Stetson hat. Two things about him caught my attention:
the slight dusting of white powder under his nose, and the fact that he was urinating in full view inside a lighted phone booth.
“You don’t see that too often,” I remarked to Taitsie.
“Thank God,” she said, disgusted. “Whoever he is, I hope I never run into him.”
I held open the door to Elaine’s and we entered the noisy, smoke-filled saloon. The owner, Elaine Kaufman, came over to greet us. She took one look at the tassels hanging from Taitsie’s rawhide miniskirt and said, “What’s the matter, honey? Can’t you afford a tailor for that hem?”
“Taitsie,” I said, “meet Elaine.”
Taitsie gave Elaine a friendly buss on the cheek, and Elaine broke into one of her surprisingly girlish smiles.
“Higgy,” Elaine said, pointing at Taitsie, “I think this one’s a keeper.”
Elaine then led us to one of her coveted VIP tables against the wall in the front of her establishment. The table next to ours was occupied by a raucous group of heavy drinkers: Mike Lupica, the New York Daily News sports columnist; Pat O’Brien, the CBS sportscaster; and the writers Pete Hamill and Gay Talese.
“Come over and join us,” Lupica said, addressing me but staring at Taitsie’s long, slim legs.
“Sure…why not?” I said.
Gay Talese, ever the Old World gentleman, stood up and held a chair for Taitsie. As we resettled ourselves at the table, the door of Elaine’s suddenly burst open and in stumbled the urinating phone-booth cowboy we had passed on Second Avenue.
“Hey, Don!” Lupica called to him.
The cowboy plopped down on the seat next to Taitsie’s. I could hear her suck in her breath.
“Meet Don Imus…syndicated radio host, humorist, philanthropist, and equal opportunity addict,” Lupica said.
Don Imus sniffled and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.
“We’ve met—sort of,” Taitsie said. “I thought that white mustache came from a jelly donut.”
“I’m sorry,” Imus said, turning to Taitsie, “but you have me at a disadvantage. I don’t recall our having been introduced.”
“We caught your act in the phone booth,” Taitsie said. “Relieving yourself.”
“Oh, that,” Imus said, flashing a sheepish smile. “Believe me, that was the least offensive thing I did today. In any case, our formal introduction deserves to be memorialized by a drink!”
He summoned the waiter.
“A drink for the lady,” he said, “and a round of drinks for everyone else in the joint!”
Lupica leaned over toward me. “In addition to a good shrink and a good accountant, Don needs a good literary agent,” he said. “This is your big chance, Higgy. Go for it!”
“Well, Don…“ I began.
“You can’t call me that,” he said. “Only my friends call me Don. And you aren’t my friend.”
“And only his friends call him Higgy,” said Taitsie with just enough flirtiness to disarm the irascible Imus.
He took one long measure of her voluptuous legs. “Okay,” he said, “you can call me Don if I can have your date’s phone number.”
I ignored this preposterous suggestion. Taitsie would no sooner go out with him than she would jump into bed with a pair of lesbians. Instead, I made, in my innocence of those days, an offer I was sure would charm him. “Don,” I said, “if you let me represent you as your literary agent, I promise I’ll read every draft…every paragraph …everything you write. And I’ll help you become a best-selling author.”
“Why would you bother to read any of my shit?” he asked.
I was surprised. “Because if I’m going to represent you I need to know what I’m representing.” “That’s crazy, man,” he said.
He was clearly stone drunk. I tried to get through to him by appealing to what I knew to be his soft spot. “Listen,” I said, “don’t you read the books and articles by the authors you interview on your radio show?”
“He can’t even remember who he interviewed this morning!” said Pete Hamill.
“Higgy, let me tell you something,” Imus said, ignoring Hamill. “You’ve got to change your entire approach as a literary agent. I mean it. You’ve got to adopt my theory of inverse proportion. The less work you do, the more successful you become. You’ve got to stop reading the manuscripts they send you. If you want to be a really successful agent, you’ve got to stop reading altogether. Just call up the book editors, make a submission, and within a week or so you’ll have a contract. Believe me, Higgy, making money on ten percent commissions will be a snap.”
Then he turned to Taitsie.
“So what’s your telephone number, sweetheart?” he asked. Taitsie smiled at him but didn’t say anything.
“If you don’t give it to me, I’ll have my show’s producer look it up,” Imus said.
“Sorry, buster,” Taitsie said, “but I’m unlisted.”
Instead, she reached over and grabbed my hand. Holding it up like a winning prizefighter, she announced, “Him, I’m betting the house on him.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In the spring of 1986, during one of my secret trips to the Middle East on behalf of the CIA, I sent Taitsie a telegram. It said: MARRY ME?
She replied: YOURS IS THE BEST OFFER I’VE HAD SO FAR THIS MORNING. SO THE ANSWER IS: LET’S DO IT!
We set a date for a summer wedding at the Provincetown Inn so that Taitsie’s artsy friends on Cape Cod could attend. After the wedding cake was cut and the toasts were over, The Deuce took me aside.
“Higgy, Bill Casey needs a favor,” he said.
“Sure, Dad.”
“You and Taitsie are planning a two-week honeymoon in the Greek Islands, right? Bill has a proposition for you. He’ll pay for your entire honeymoon—plane fare, the yacht, all of it—but he needs you to pop into Tripoli to see someone.”
“Who?” I asked.
My father turned ultra casual, a sure sign I was in for trouble. “He wants you to represent President Reagan at a small ceremony just outside of Tripoli in honor of Libya’s president, Muammar Khaddafi. When you meet the Colonel, hand him this box and tell him it’s a gift from President Reagan.”
Taitsie was thrilled with this little side trip. Of course, she didn’t know my real purpose. She believed that my only business was the Sticky Fingers Literary Agency, which I ran out of an office attached to our house on M Street in Georgetown. The idea of a quickie trip to an exotic locale like Tripoli acted like an aphrodisiac on her imagination.
On the plane from Frankfurt, we joined the Mile High Club—twice. The first time, we did it in the lavatory, while a German stewardess pounded on the door shouting “Sie müssen aufhören!” “You must cease!” The second time was just before the breakfast service. We did it under a blanket using a position I had never even dreamed of before. Just as Taitsie reached orgasm, she cried out, “Sie müssen aufhören!” and we both cracked up. From then on, Sie müssen aufhören! was our secret signal when we wanted to do the two-backed beast.
The CIA station chief’s wife picked us up at the airport and took us to the Al-Kabir Hotel. On the drive, Taitsie couldn’t stop talking about the dark-skinned Libyan women and their clothes.
“Oh, Bottom, look at that bui bui! I’d love to sculpt that woman nude!”
I paid little attention to her fascination with Muslim women and their bui buis. My mind was on the assignment at hand. I was to attend a small Muslim ceremony, called an al-Tasmyia, where a child is officially given his or her name. In this particular case, the child was the daughter of Colonel Muammer Khaddafi, the Libyan strong man.
The Colonel, unlike the Ayatollah, did indeed live in a tent. Granted, his tent was twice as large as Barnum & Bailey’s, and it had dozens of rooms and toilets with running water. But the colonel was, as my mother used to say about the people The Deuce dragged home for dinner, “an odd duck.” He wore lipstick and makeup and his teeth were all fake and filled with gold. He was protected by forty gun-toting female bodyguards in khaki uniforms and re
d berets. He insisted that these women be both virgins and experts in hand-to-hand combat.
As instructed, I handed the box to Khaddafi, and passed on President Reagan’s best wishes. The colonel opened the box and saw that it contained a gold necklace encrusted with diamonds that spelled out the Arabic words assalamu-alaikum, which translated as “Peace be upon you.” I figured the present was for his twelve-year-old daughter, but he immediately draped it around his own neck and had one of his virgin bodyguard fasten the clasp.
Taitsie and I left the next day, bound for Athens and our cruise around the Greek Islands. But before we left Libya, she said, “Bottom, I have an idea. Let’s do it camel-style.”
“Sie müssen aufhören! I replied.
Later, while we were on the yacht Daphne off the Greek island of Santorini, I heard on the shortwave radio that the CIA station chief in Tripoli and an unidentified Libyan woman had been assassinated in the Al-Kabir Hotel. I immediately phoned The Deuce.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Do you remember that necklace you gave Khaddafi?”
“Of course,” I said. “He was supposed to give it to his daughter, but he kept it for himself.”
“Not exactly” The Deuce said. “The necklace contained a CIA-engineered homing device that was intended to guide our bombers to a target in Libya. We planned to retaliate for Khaddafi’s terrorist bombings in Europe. But things didn’t quite work out that way.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Well,” The Deuce said, “it seems that Khaddafi didn’t like the way the gold in the necklace clashed with the gold fillings in his false teeth, so he gave the necklace to his daughter. She, in turn, gave it to her nanny, who in real life was an undercover agent working for the CIA. And the nanny turned over the necklace to our station chief in Libya, who should have checked it out, but instead he gave it to his Libyan mistress. And the damned thing acted as a guidance system for our bombers just when the station chief and his mistress were doing the nasty at the Al-Kabir Hotel.…”
