The American Ambassador

by Ward Just

  North said, “As the Spanish say, ‘Authority that does not abuse loses its prestige.’ ”

  Carruthers said, “That’s a hell of a thing to say, Bill.”

  He was very tired. He said, “So where are we, Paul? What do you want?”

  “It isn’t what we want. It’s what they want, the committee and Dunphy. It’s our best guess that they want an embarrassment. Terrorism’s quite the thing, now. Reasonable that a committee of the Congress would want to look into it. Is there an American connection? That’s on the surface. It’s the hidden agenda that’s the difficulty. That’s Dunphy’s property.”

  Hartnett turned to North. “Will you please tell me. Who the hell is Dunphy? Name’s familiar, just barely. Kind of name you find in paragraph six, or mentioned on the Sunday morning programs. But who is he? I mean, what does he do when he’s not advancing Warren Winston?”

  North said, “He was a spear carrier for Lyndon Johnson. He was back in the woodwork in the West Wing and then when LBJ bowed out, he went to Johnson City to help him with his papers. When LBJ died, he came back here, set up a law practice. He’s a casualty of the ’sixties, that’s the truth of it. He loved Johnson. I met him once in Bonn, years ago when I was in the political section. I drove them around, did a little interpreting, fetched him a Scotch and soda when he wanted it. I mean LBJ. Dunphy fetched his own Scotch, beginning about ten each morning.”

  Hartnett smiled. “Well, that’s something. Drunks’re easy.”

  “He’s not a drunk,” North said. “He was drinking because there was nothing for him to do, except look after LBJ. The old man wasn’t well, you could see it. He was drinking because he hated to see what was happening to the old man. He was devoted to him. He said that LBJ would be dead in a year, and he was. Pat Dunphy is an awfully angry man. He’s a son of a bitch.”

  “What’s he doing with Winston’s committee?”

  “He goes in and out,” North said. “Public, private, public, private. Loves trouble. Loves stirring it up. Loves watching it happen. He loves to get even.”

  Hartnett was thoughtful a moment. “Why?”

  Carruthers cleared his throat. “He’s got an idea that it was the government that failed LBJ. Made him withdraw in ’sixty-eight. Killed him.”

  “So he doesn’t care much for the Department of State.”

  North smiled, “I think that’s fair to say, Dick.”

  “There’s something else,” Carruthers said. “LBJ wanted to make him an ambassador. Nothing big, he wanted to do his boy a favor. He sent out the word just shortly after he withdrew from the race. We dragged our feet at the Department, and one or two gents spoke out of turn. Passed the word quietly to the Foreign Relations Committee that LBJ was trying to pull a fast one, place one of his hacks as chief of mission to a very important country. Pat Dunphy: not qualified. Before you knew it, it was summer. The Democratic Convention, poor Hubert, all the trouble, LBJ despised and pitied. The Foreign Relations Committee never got around to holding hearings, and the nomination was dropped. But Pat Dunphy didn’t forget.”

  “Well, well,” Hartnett said. “So it’s personal.”

  Carruthers screwed up a tight smile. “It usually is,” he said. He consulted a document, then laid it face up on the table. It had the seal of the Department of State at the top of the page, and was stamped

  SECRET—SENSITIVE

  EYES ONLY

  An internal memorandum, something for the under secretary. North couldn’t see the date. Carruthers covered it with another piece of paper. He said, “Everybody’s got a history. Entangling alliances, old enmities. Enmities,” he repeated. “So that’s what we’re up against, Pat Dunphy wanting to get even. Warren Winston wanting to make a name for himself. And others on the committee simply curious.” He looked up. “I know this is hard.”

  “Yes,” North said. “It is.” Then, “But I’ve been through it before, and you have my report.”

  Hartnett looked at his watch. “It’s eight o’clock.”

  Carruthers said, “We’d like to talk to Elinor.”

  “You know where to find her,” North said.

  “It would be . . . very helpful if she’d cooperate.”

  “You’ll have to ask her. But she doesn’t know any more than I do.”

  “Yes, of course,” Carruthers said.

  “She doesn’t know anything.”

  Hartnett said, “When do you think we can wind this up?”

  “Our problem is, we have to know everything they know. When they come snooping around with their pieces of paper. Dunphy and the gumshoe. We have to be able to say, Oh, yes, well, there’s a simple explanation for that. So if we might.” Carruthers looked at Hartnett, raising his eyebrows. The look said, A little while longer. His soft voice caused the two men to lean forward, the better to hear him; each word was carefully enunciated. “So if we might, just so I have it clear in my own mind, to smooth some of the rough edges. Can we go back to the embassy, the week before Thanksgiving 1982.” He looked at the ceiling, as if trying to assemble his thoughts. “You see, the other thing that’s interested them, that they can’t pin down, and that worries them, is the German connection. So. You’re in your embassy, your office, and the Germans come to call. They have made a request to see Ambassador North—”

  “Paul, this wasn’t the Court of Saint James’s. Kleust rang me up and said he wanted to chat and I said fine, when, and he gave me a time and I said, fine, any time you want. I didn’t know what was on his mind. Maybe he wanted a tennis game.”

  “—and you granted it. What happened next? I mean the names of those present, our side and their side, what you said and what they said and so forth and so on.”

  “You have all that.”

  “Yes, and so does the committee.”

  “And it wasn’t our side and their side. It was not a confrontation, or démarche. It was a chat, them and me.”

  “Whatever,” Carruthers said.

  “Not ‘whatever,’ ” North said. “Let’s get it straight. It’s important. I didn’t know what it was about. It turned out, as you know, to concern my boy. They wanted to give me some information. Kleust’s initiative.”

  “Kleust?”

  “Kurt Kleust, an old friend.”

  Hartnett said, “You have Bill's report. He has nothing to add to that. There is nothing to add to it.”

  “We want to make certain that nothing was inadvertently omitted. That sometimes happens, no? And now there’s a little bit of urgency. And any time the Germans are involved—” He raised his hands and let them fall. “That committee, there’s so much mischief to be made.”

  Hartnett switched on the lamp at his elbow. They had been sitting in near darkness. “This isn’t the best time for Bill,” he said.

  “I know,” Carruthers said. “Alas. But it’s the time we have. Winston and Dunphy aren’t going to wait on Bill’s health, and we can’t either.”

  North said, “Tell me again what Winston wants.”

  “Winston?” Carruthers paused, steepling his fingers. He reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette, found one, and lit it. The smoke hung in the damp air. “He wants a conspiracy. I don’t think he can get one, but that’s what he wants. The ambassador, the ambassador’s son, the Department of State.”

  “Christ,” Hartnett said, laughing.

  “A conspiracy to suppress.”

  “What?” North said. “Suppress what?”

  “The connection,” Carruthers said. “They have an idea that your boy is a dangerous character. And they’re not the only ones who have that idea. Young Bill has an unpleasant record, and has had access to classified information. The way our embassies are secured. Or not secured. The procedures, the encryption system. I don’t have to spell it out. And you and Elinor are the last people to’ve seen him and we didn’t know about it before, we knew about it after. Do you see?” he smiled encouragingly.

  “You mean, our loyalties.”

  “That’s
correct.”

  North said pleasantly, “Are you taping this conversation, Paul?”

  His smile faded. “No.”

  “Good,” North said.

  “And I don’t take it kindly that you’d suggest such a thing. It’s against the regulations. I wouldn’t do it. And the under secretary wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t, Paul. Apologies.”

  Carruthers was silent a moment, then nodded at Hartnett. “Is he wired?”

  “You wired, counselor?”

  Hartnett opened his coat, as if he were about to be frisked. “Not me,” he said.

  “I guess no one’s wired,” North said.

  “It’s a hell of a thing to accuse someone of, a colleague,” Carruthers said. “It’s important that we have mutual trust here. We are on the same side. We are in the same boat, and it’s important that we have our ducks in a row. You don’t want to be surprised, I don’t want to be surprised. We want no embarrassments, not you, not the Department, not the under secretary. And when we’re up there in front of the television lights, Winston and Dunphy on the high dais, if that’s what it comes to, we’ve not only got to be clean. We’ve got to be seen to be clean, doesn’t that make sense? Don’t you think, Bill? Isn’t that wise? Because otherwise we get our clocks cleaned, and there’s just a hell of a lot of embarrassment all the way around. So let’s have no more talk about wires. Let’s concentrate on the main thing. And the main thing’s the committee, what it has and what it doesn’t have.”

  North listened, nodding, distracted. As Hartnett said, everything was personal; to think, after all these years, Warren Winston, back in his life. The last time he had seen him, almost ten years ago, they had reminisced about being young in Washington. A favorite pastime of the middle-aged in the capital. The nature of things in ’61—’62, and how the town had changed, how contemporary it had become. Winston seemed not to have aged, proving once again that appearances are not always deceptive. He was turned out in a fawn-colored suit, his hair blow-dried, his eyes clear as window glass, his skin as tight and rugged as a mountain climber’s. Jogging and Nautilus. He drank soda water and spoke frequently of “cognition.” North remembered feeling disappointed, Winston seemed a parody of a modern politician. He had the smile and manner of a talk-show host, as slippery and cold as ice. In the old days he’d imitated the President, altogether a more attractive model. What are you doing now? Winston had asked, and North replied that he was political counselor in Bonn, but was shortly to leave to become ambassador in central Africa. That right? Winston had said with a show of interest; but he had not asked which country, and his eyes continued to roam. Presently he excused himself, took a colleague by the arm, and went off into a corner; the senator was not interested in reprising the old days. Watching Winston, North was aware of a paradox; as the city had become more cosmopolitan, it had also become more self-centered. It was like Paris, except there was no École Polytechnique; instead, there was television.

  North looked at Carruthers. “Didn’t you work in the Justice Department in the old days?”

  “For about a minute and a half.”

  “Civil rights?”

  “Antitrust,” Carruthers said. “But I wasn’t much of a trustbuster, and I always wanted to be at State. I wanted to be a diplomat, like you. An ambassador, or an assistant secretary. But I didn’t want to do the Foreign Service drill, counsel in Ciudad Juarez or wherever. So I went to the Pentagon for a year, and then back to the White House. And then, two years after Dallas, back to my old firm.” He laughed. “Except it wasn’t mine anymore. When I got back there were fifty partners, the kids’d taken over. My name was on the door, but that was it. So I stayed a couple of years to find my feet, and then took the three best young ones and the two really good old ones, and formed another firm. Amazing, how many contacts you keep; in Washington, there are only a hundred people and they all know each other. But I got bored so I came back inside. I had more money than I could ever spend. That was five years ago. I like the government, so I came back to it. I like it on the inside.”

  “I knew Winston, back then.”

  “Everyone knew Warren Winston. That house he shared with whatshisname. The one in Georgetown. Bachelors together. There was plenty of action in that house.”

  “He used to drink. Now it’s sermons and soda water.”

  “Yep.” Carruthers nodded. “And jogging.”

  North said, “In the old days, they all wanted to be President, but knew they couldn’t. It was a harmless fantasy. Now they know they can. Anybody can, given money enough and hard work, and some luck.”

  Carruthers looked at Hartnett. “I wouldn’t depend on luck. Bill. I wouldn’t depend on that at all.” He put out his cigarette. “See, he’s got something, doesn’t he? And now with your interim appointment, the suspicions’re piling up. It’s bad luck and bad timing. We know this has been in the works for some time, and I guess you’d have to say things kind of fell between the cracks at the Department. But Winston looks at it. It just bothers the hell out of him. See, he’s not like us. You and I, we haven’t believed in coincidence for so long that when there’s a real coincidence, we can see it. Only a cynic can identify a saint.”

  Hartnett laughed. “Do that again, Paul?”

  Carruthers sighed. “He wants something the worst way.”

  “You want me to tell you about Africa,” North said.

  “Yes. I want you to tell me about Africa, the day the Germans came to call.”

  Hartnett groaned, looking at his watch.

  North thought a moment. “Come by tomorrow morning, and I’ll tell you about Africa.”

  4

  NOTHING MOVED, but he sensed restlessness in the hospital, a kind of fever. Restlessness everywhere in the city, the sound of whispering, marching feet, pressure. His own feet were motionless, sticking up at the end of the bed like two exclamation points.

  ! !

  Insomnia, memory’s snake eyes, the reward for an uneasy conscience. That which I should, have done I did not do. Insomnia, and a numb left hand, medical tests, and now they wanted to know all about Africa. On the bureau opposite, Elinor had placed a selfportrait, what the Germans call a Selbstbildnis. It had been painted more than three years before, when they arrived in Africa the second time, his first ambassadorship. He had been worried about the reception, his role in the coup almost twenty years before; perhaps there would be a snub when he presented his credentials to the president. But there had been four changes of government since then, and the coup was referred to only as “the events.” Many of the participants were dead. The president had been cordial, and had held his lecture to two hours flat. His government had an urgent need for money, there were so many schemes begun: electrification, the railroad, an installation for the air force and its fleet of MiGs. The president was eloquent with a poet’s command of image and metaphor. North listened politely, with his ambassador’s grave expression, and tried to remember himself as he had been twenty years earlier, a callow second secretary, so eager to get into the game. His instructions as ambassador were different. The aid budget was down; and there would be no military hardware, period. Make friends, the under secretary had told him; enjoy the country, there’s wonderful hunting and fishing. Watch the Russians. Be nice to the Chinese. Meet the leaders of the opposition if it’s possible. Don’t make any promises you can’t keep, which meant: Don’t make any promises. This country, the under secretary had said, is not on our leader board.

  He had found himself lulled by the president’s musical baritone and at the end had shaken hands and said how pleased he was to be there. You were here before, the president said. Yes, he had replied, as a very young man. At the time of the events, the president said. Yes, he said. Only yesterday, the president said. Nearly twenty years ago, he said. And so much has changed, he added. And the president had smiled, showing an enormous gold tooth. Welcome back.

  Africa had a sexual effect on him. Elinor had never s
eemed more desirable. The Selbstbildnis showed her as she was then, thinner, less gray in her hair, her skin soft and tan. She had painted herself on the lawn, the little bouquet of a garden behind her, the white African sky overhead. She was leaning forward, her hands primly clasped in front of her, her expression one of the most open desire. He had titled it A Woman Waiting for Her Lover. She had dismissed it as kitsch, a sentimental view of their mornings together. It was a powerful mnemonic, for he had always regarded his tour as ambassador as an extended holiday, AWOL from the world; what fun they had had.

  They were always up early, making love. Most mornings, the power was off, the house silent as a desert. He thought of them as Bedouin, austere before the world, loyal only to each other. They were a tribe of two. It was warm in the big bedroom, the sun already climbing, the glare fierce. Lying back stretching, he watched her do her hair. She refused to cut it short, despite the heat; it takes more than that, she said. Her hair was thick. She brushed it a hundred strokes each morning, concentrating, her tongue between her teeth. The whish-whish of the brush and the creak of the bed were the only sounds in the room. Her shoulders and back glistened with sweat; he was languid, loose as rubber, filled with energy. When he tried to help her with her hair, she said, softly, no. They sat cross-legged at the end of the bed, amid the tangled sheets, and always she turned to him and laughed, a womanly, throaty chuckle, tossing her head, her hair bouncing on her shoulders. He was randy as a teenager. So proud of yourself, she said.

  In the dense heat of Africa they would remember things from their American childhoods, episodes that had lain buried, hidden all these years, now miraculously available. The stories enchanted them, one story leading to another, serving to remind them that they were people with individual histories, each with a life that predated the other’s. The stories were presented with high good humor, so surprising; they were precious as antiques. Why, you never told me that!