by Edward Klein
“I follow you, Vangie,” I said. “I can picture it. Go on.”
“Well,” she said, “I started working on my jump shot on the court right next to Obama’s court. Which gave me the opportunity to keep an eye on him. The first thing I noticed was how he was the center of attention among all those big tall guys—some of them former college hoop stars, and some of them pros. They all gave Obama a man-hug, and then started a loud trash-talking exercise designed to endear themselves to Mr. Big Shot.
“I pretended I didn’t notice any of this. I fired a long three-pointer, and heard the woosh of a ‘just net’ field goal. You know, Higgy, when I’m on the basketball court, I forget all my worries about my mother’s health and things… and how you keep ignoring me…and breaking my heart.…”
“Vangie, please stick to the story,” I said.
“It’s like I was back playing basketball at Tennessee or in Moscow,” she said. “Anyway, while I’m working on my jump shot, Obama’s looking at his watch and talking into his cell phone. He looks really annoyed. And I figured out why. There were only five players, including Obama. He was one short to play three-on-three. He was waiting for somebody who hadn’t showed up.
“I thought to myself, Vangie Roll, this is your big chance. Don’t blow it. So I began a drill that I perfected in college: dribbling with alternative hands while running tight figure eights until I‘m on the left side of the hoop. I then do a reverse lay-up, grab my own rebound, and repeat the drill in reverse. Believe me, I can do this exercise blindfolded without ever missing a dribble or a shot. Not to be arrogant about it, but few men in that gym could come close to doing what I was doing. An’ dat’sda truth.”
“I believe you,” I said.
“After a dozen repetitions,” she went on, “I was sweating and short of breath, so I stopped and grabbed a bottle of lemon flavored Gatorade. And as I gulped the drink, I purposely bent over and toweled the sweat off my sneakers. And just as I expected, I heard a voice saying, ‘Excuse me.’ And I knew who it was without looking up.
“I turned around and there, not three feet from me, was our mark, Barack Hussein Obama, with a big smile on his face. I noticed him give me a quick once-over, from my face all the way down to my toes and back up. He seemed particularly focused on my arms. Go figure that.
“He says to me, ‘I hate to bother you, but I saw you practicing by yourself, and you look pretty good, and we’re one player short….we have less than an hour left before I have to go change for a fundraiser. How would you like to play a little three-on-three with us?’
“And I say, ‘Why not? Let me grab my stuff and I’ll be right over.’
“But before I could pick up my gym bag, Obama’s got it, and he’s walking with me over to his court. Higgy, I have to admit his manners are impeccable, and he has a light, flirty way about him. The other players stopped as we arrived. They looked jealous at the ease with which he had picked me up.”
I was feeling a little of that jealousy myself. “How did the game go?” I snapped.
“Great. Obama divided the six players into two teams,” Vangie said, “and I ended up on the other team, and was assigned the task of guarding him. As a basketball player, he was fluid and smart; he ran his team as a point guard. He’s not particularly fast, but he still moved well enough, and his jump shot was pretty steady.
“A couple of times, I decided to guard him aggressively. I used my long arms, and held my hands in front of his eyes to make it more difficult for him to measure the range of his shot. When I did that, he got flustered. But he remained polite, even when jive-talking to the other players on my team.”
She paused, trying to add up her assessment of him. “One thing I saw right away was his ability to talk ghetto to the black players—‘Yo game is phat, bro’—but talk preppy to the white guys—‘Excuse me…so sorry….’ Now, that’s something I’d never encountered on the court before. That’s an art, especially for an aspiring politician with national ambitions. And I wondered where he learned to switch it on and off like that.”
She was admiring him entirely too much for my taste. It sounded like she had fallen in love with the man. “Go on,” I said irritably.
“You know, Higgy, in pickup basketball, everybody’s constantly calling fouls on the other team, and you can get into pretty heated arguments over these calls. But not Obama. He just laughed at these petty arguments. He even called a couple of fouls on himself—also something I had never seen on the court before. He would just stop the game, mutter, ‘My bad,’ and toss the ball to the other team. This impressed me.
“With just a few minutes left in the game, the intensity picked up, and Obama reverted to his favorite move: a drive to the hoop, a quick stop and then a sudden jump shot. By that time I knew it was coming, and I used my long arms to stuff the ball just as it came out of his left hand. The ball rolled away, and one of my teammates picked it up, scooted unopposed down the court, and jammed it into the basket for the winning score.
“Everybody was laughing at Obama. ‘My oh my, she bitch-slapped you, man!’ I laughed along with them. The game ended with handshakes all around and the players grabbed their towels and bags. But Obama hung back.
“ ‘You wanna sit for a sec?’ he asked me.
“ ‘Sure,’ I said.”
I interrupted. “Of course, all he wanted to do was sit. Sure, I buy that, all the way.”
She ignored my comment, then went on. “We walked over to the bleachers, and climbed up a couple of rows and sat down. Obama leaned back against the seat behind him, his long, lean legs stretched out in front of him.
“He said, ‘You mind?’ and he fished out a pack of Marlboro Lites and a matchbook from his bag.
“ I said, ‘No…go right ahead. Your wind was good in the game. Smoking doesn’t bother you?’
“He laughed and said, ‘It bothers me at home, I’ll tell you that. My wife Michelle won’t let me smoke in the house. So I have to sneak outside.’
“I wasn’t sure if there was a double meaning in that comment, but if there was, he kept it pretty well hidden. He took a long drag on the Marlboro and then said, ‘I’m running for the United States Senate, and I’m trying to shape up for a big fundraiser we’re having soon. It’s a basketball game featuring a bunch of NBA players. I hope I can hold my own.’”
“Oh, he’ll do just fine,” I remarked. “He’ll just get run over by them.”
“You know,” she said, “what’s funny is I could tell he was in love with the vertical pronoun. It was, I this, I that—all the time. His favorite topic was himself.
“I told him not to worry. I said, ‘Oh, you got some game. Maybe not Division One level…but you can hold your own.’
“He was pleased by my praise, but he didn’t return the compliment, even though he had to know I could run circles around him on the court. He didn’t say anything about my playing. So I said, ‘I played at Tennessee and then two years in the pro league in Moscow.’
“He didn’t show the slightest interest in my basketball exploits. But he did seem mesmerized by my arms. I was still perspiring, and the veins in my arms were popping with engorged blood, and my biceps were defined and taut. Higgy, I’ve always been proud of my arms, but I’ve never seen a man so fascinated by a woman’s arms.
“I decided to take advantage of his attraction to my blessed arms and ask him about something I’d seen in the Sun-Times.”
‘I read what your opponent in the United States Senate race, Alan Keyes, said about you yesterday. He claims you weren’t even born in the United States. He says you were born in Mombasa, in Kenya.’
“For a fleeting moment—less than a nanosecond, but I caught it—a strange look came across his face. That look was filled with a combination of fright and evasion. Then he caught himself and, as if on cue, he gave me a wide smile and a dismissive shrug of his shoulders. But still, he stood right up, stamped out his cigarette butt, and said, ‘You from around here?’”
‘
Hyde Park,’ I said. ‘Grew up there and still live there.’
“But he wasn’t listening. I was no longer of any use to him. Instead, he packed up his things and grabbed his BlackBerry. He started checking his emails, paying no attention to me. So I got up, too, and waved good-bye, and walked out the door. I came straight home and called you on our secure line.”
“That’s terrific work, Vangie,” I said. “Tell me, now that you’ve spent an hour or so with this guy, what’s your professional evaluation?”
“Higgy,” she said, “I think it would be a major mistake to write Obama off as just another narcissistic politician. Sure, he’s totally obsessed with himself, and sees everything through a projection of himself. But he has two assets that make him different from your run-of-the-mill self-absorbed pol.”
“What’s that?”
“First off, he’s what people where I come from call ‘tight.’ Meaning, he’s sharp and smart and clever as hell, and a real cool customer.”
“I can handle that,” I said.
“But that’s not the main thing that makes him different,” Vangie continued in a more conspiratorial tone. “I told you, when we were sitting in the stands, I brought up the rumor being floated by Alan Keyes that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. That he was born in Kenya?”
I started to get more interested. “Yeah?”
“And a look came over his face. Just for a fleeting moment. But I’m telling you this, Higgy. There’s something there. There’s definitely something there.”
“What kind of something?”
Vangie took a moment before answering me.
“Higgy, for that one brief moment, I believe I saw deep into Barack Obama’s soul. There’s something about his birth. His official biography says he was born in Honolulu. But think about this: if he wasn’t born in Honolulu—if, say, he was born in Kenya—if that’s true, then he’s not an American citizen, and he can’t be elected president.…”
I could hear her clap her hands and I wanted to join her. This was perfect. An overseas sleuthing job. Just the sort of job for a globe-trotting spy like moi.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Once back in Washington, I wasted no time in setting up a meeting with Whitney Nutwing at his CIA safe house on Tracy Place.
“The Tchaikovsky Circle has hit pay dirt,” I told him, blithely disregarding all the ifs surrounding the mystery of Barack Obama’s birth—as well as the menacing meat hooks swinging from the ceiling. “It looks like our boy Obama might have been born in Kenya.”
“Well, then, what are you waiting for?” Nutwing said, his hands on his commodious hips. “Start packing for the Dark Continent.”
With the prospect of spending several weeks in Africa, I had an excuse to go on one of my clothes-buying sprees—all charged, of course, to the CIA. I bought three custom-fitted lightweight poplin suits; two African-style safari outfits; a new double-breasted white dinner jacket that made me look like Bogie in Rick’s Café; a dozen lightweight Egyptian broadcloth cotton shirts; a new set of ties; and assorted sundries, such as hiking clothes and boots, a brand-new pair of Zeiss binoculars, two sun-reflective hats from Orvis, and two spray-bottles of DEET insect repellant.
As I was loading all of this stuff into my gigantic Louis Vuitton steamer wardrobe trunk, I heard Taitsie come down the stairs from her sculpture studio and say goodbye to her artist’s models—two tall, gorgeous African-American women with to-die-for bodies. The front door closed and Taitsie made her way to the first-floor master bedroom, where I was packing. She stared at the trunk.
“Where are you going this time?” she asked.
“Canada,” I said, pretending horror at the very idea. “To meet a Canuck author who wants to write a book about the French and Indian War. He’s got an interesting theory that if the French had won that war, instead of the British, we’d all be eating cheese and bread and drinking red wine—and staying slim.”
Taitsie picked up my African-style safari shorts. In a sour tone she asked me, “I suppose you’re going to be wearing these shorts when you and your so-called author go on safari in the frozen Abitibi-Témiscamingue region in western Quebec?”
Taitsie had become deeply suspicious of my behavior. And no wonder. My frequent absences and the secrecy with which I conducted my life gave her reason to fear that I was seeing other women. And although I swore that I was faithful, my conduct caused a serious breach of trust. Our relationship had grown tense, and she wasn’t shrieking Sie müssen aufhören! Too often these days.
Without ever discussing it, Taitsie and I had decided that having a child might somehow save our marriage, which explained how our son, Theodore J. Higginbothem IV, or Vier (German for “four”), had sprung out of the birth canal. He was the spitting image of his mother—glossy black hair, eyebrows that went straight across his forehead, and a little too much white in his eyes. The question “Are children born wild?” briefly crossed my mind, but he had grown into a fine boy. Taitsie had him working with clay when he was three years old, and by the time he was nine, he showed remarkable artistic talent. Taitsie enrolled him in Sunday art classes at the National Cathedral Elementary School.
Before long, though, Vier lost interest in art and became obsessed with sex—one more way in which he resembled his mother. Rather than spend his Sunday hour in art class working with clay, Vier wowed an audience of artsy young girls with classic comic routines that he had seen on the TV Land channel. One of his favorites was Sid Caesar’s “Wings Over Boomerschnitzel.”
Vier announced that he wanted to be a stand-up comedian when he grew up. When I thought deeply, which didn’t happen too much, it occurred to me that his comic aspirations might be a cry for attention. My son sensed that his parents’ marriage was falling apart and that he wasn’t getting the love he deserved from Taitsie and me.
“Higgy,” Taitsie said, “stop packing. I have something I want to say to you.”
I put down the Orvis sun-reflecting hat.
“I love you, Higgy,” Taitsie said. “I’ve loved you from the moment I first saw you across that crowded room in my father’s embassy. But if you go on this trip and leave me again for one of your… implausible expeditions, don’t expect me to be here when you come back.”
“No French and Indian War?” I asked.
“No French and Indian War.”
“But this book might be the long-sought cure for obesity,” I said. “Imagine, a country of slim Americans.”
“It might be the cure for obesity,” she said. “But it won’t be the cure for our marriage.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
As I passed through customs at Moi International Airport, I strolled alongside a skinny-legged porter who shoved my overloaded luggage cart through the crowd like a battering ram. We stopped only long enough to have my passport stamped, and playing the grand American role to the hilt, I dispensed my largesse—a few Kenyan shillings—into the palms of customs officials to make them look the other way. The port of Mombasa, the second largest city in Kenya, was one of the major routes in the world cocaine traffic. I could have been bringing in 100 kilos of nose candy, and no one would have been the wiser. I was… untouchable.
In the airport concourse, thumping Taarab music blared from loudspeakers. Hundreds of people, dressed in a riot of colorful African, Muslim, Hindu, and Western clothes, lined up behind a security railing, searching for loved ones among the faces of the disembarking passengers.
“Hey, Higgy! Over here!”
The voice calling to me was most certainly not that of a loved one. It belonged to Sydney Michael Green, who had been assigned to The Tchaikovsky Circle by my boss, Whitney Nutwing, without so much as a by-your-leave. Nutwing had sent Sydney Michael Green to Mombasa a week ahead of me to “prep the battlefield,” as he put it.
To my disgust, I saw that a week in Africa had not done much to improve Sydney Michael Green’s appearance. He had a week’s worth of stubble on his double chin and twenty pounds of flesh hang
ing over his belt. Three inches of pants cuffs pooled around his down-a-the-heels loafers. He elbowed his way through the crowd and approached me with his arms outstretched and sweat dripping from his jowly face.
Neither Russ Slanover nor Vangie Roll understood why I had agreed to accept Sydney Michael Green as a member of our team. He and I couldn’t have been more different. I was neat; he was a slob. I treated women with respect; he treated them like free samples at Macy’s. I came from privilege and the best education money could buy; he was the uneducated son of a poor Irish maid and a Jewish scrap dealer.
Still, I was aware that Sydney Michael Green’s skills as a field investigator were second to none among black-ops agents in the CIA. Where Vangie Roll could insinuate herself into the Chicago political and financial worlds, and Russ Slanover could hack into any computer site no matter how high and thick the Chinese Wall, Sydney Michael Green could smell trouble a hundred miles away—and deal with it quickly, effectively, and by any means necessary.
But that wasn’t the real reason Whitney Nutwing had inserted Sydney Michael Green into my team. If I stumbled carrying out my assignment, Sydney Michael Green was there to assume command of The Tchaikovsky Circle. He was waiting—drooling, should I say?—in the wings to take my job.
“Here, Higgy, let me take over,” Sydney Michael Green said.
He was referring to my luggage cart, not my job. I was traveling with two extra-large suitcases, three humungous duffel bags and, of course, my customary gigantic Louis Vuitton wardrobe trunk.
As we emerged from the Word War II-era airport, it was high noon, and a brutal African sun hammered on the anvil of my head. The humidity shrouded me like a blanket and I could feel the perspiration instantly seep through my natty suit. It was a hellishly long hike to the car park.
On the way we passed an attractive Hindu woman in a sari.
