The American Ambassador

by Ward Just

  North watched him go, then sat down heavily in his chair. Neither one of them had left Minnesota. What the hell were they doing in Africa? Africa was a bad place to create another self, though people often tried. Africa could add another layer to a personality, but you had to keep it away from the center of your being. You had to build a wall around yourself. Africa was too extreme, and the Ericksons were too ordinary. Ordinary people in an extreme situation. The culture of North America was not thick enough to absorb Africa. It could colonize, but it could not subdue; it could destroy, but it could not defeat. It was wise not to fight Africa. The ambassador knew there would be trouble from the first time he met Alice Erickson, with her prairie zeal and her passion to understand. With understanding would come sympathy, Q.E.D. Short, blue-eyed, plump, understanding Alice; tall, blue-eyed, slender, condescending Harry. She wore Moroccan bangles and brightly colored slippers, like a character out of Ali Baba. She confided to Elinor that in Morocco she had tried kif, though Harry would have none of it, straight-laced Norwegian that he was. Emotionally, he was still in Eagle Bend. “My Harry,” she said grimly, seeking a reference that Elinor would appreciate, “belongs to the school of Edvard Munch.”

  Bill North smiled in spite of himself, thinking of all this.

  But the performance this morning was something else. Personnel problems seemed to vary in inverse proportion to the importance of the assignment. Nevertheless, he made a mental note to speak to the assistant secretary, or send him a message, back channel. It was not important enough for the under secretary. Geography was destiny, and Harry and Alice belonged in a chilly northern climate.

  His secretary put her head in. “Ambassador Kleust is here.”

  He rose to greet them. Kurt Kleust, and two others whom he didn’t know. He and Kurt shook hands and Kurt introduced his companions: Major Bruch and Herr Duer. North had seen Bruch at a distance, but Duer was unfamiliar to him. Major Bruch was the military attaché Herr Duer was tactfully unidentified. They were all sweating. North buzzed Cynthia for iced tea, and indicated the couch and the two chairs flanking it. He offered cigarettes while the Germans removed their jackets.

  Kleust said, “Bill, you look tired.”

  He had brought a fat art book for Elinor, a collection of the German Expressionists, mainly the school known as Die Brücke, the Bridge. Kleust believed that she was devoted to twentieth-century German art; in fact, Bill was the enthusiast. He and Kleust looked at the plates while Major Bruch and Herr Duer sat politely silent.

  “Squalid German politics, marvelous German art.” They were looking at a Käthe Koilwitz woodcut.

  “They go together, night and day,” Kleust said.

  “Is it not true everywhere?” Major Bruch inquired. “Even America?”

  “No,” Kleust said.

  They talked German politics for fifteen minutes, Herr Duer silent on the sidelines. The talk turned to polo. Kleust and Major Bruch were great horsemen. Last week they had played the annual match with the British, and won, as they had the year before. North had thrown out the ball, feeling overweight and out of place on a huge stallion; he hated horses. He had invited the Chinese ambassador to watch the match, and spent an hour and a half explaining polo through an interpreter. It had been an interminable three chukkers, and not a black face in the spectators’ enclosure; they might as well have been at the Myopia Hunt, except for the heat and the flies. Major Bruch told an elaborate anecdote about his opposite number, the British military attaché, an overage captain who broke his mallet and was unhorsed. The British were fine sportsmen and played with dash, but—

  The preliminaries continued. The essence of the diplomatic life: haste makes waste. Fresh cigarettes were lit. North was watching Duer while listening to Major Bruch. Bruch reminded him of an illusionist distracting the audience with his easy mouth while his hands were cooking the deck, stuffing aces up his sleeve. He judged Duer to be in his middle thirties. His face and arms were white, and his forehead beaded with sweat. He was evidently unused to the tropics. Coming inside from the heat, it was always wise to sit quietly and wind down. Duer was leaning forward in his chair, coiled, waiting. He was clean-shaven but for some reason North suspected that he normally wore a beard. Herr Duer was not with the embassy, he knew that much; he wore the distracted air of someone committing a thought to memory. He had the manner of a detective, and the unkempt appearance of a Fassbinder fugitive, the sort of man who would automatically be singled out at the airport security barrier.

  At last the major came to the end of his story. He cleared his throat and passed the attaché case to Herr Duer. North wondered if they were wired, Bruch and Duer.

  Kleust said, “This is informal.”

  North smiled.

  “Bill, let me show you some pictures.” He nodded to Duer, who opened the attaché case and handed a manila envelope to North. It was not sealed. There were three eight-by-ten glossy prints, taken with a long lens; three middle-aged men at a café table, all of it foreshortened.

  Duer said, “Hamburg, last month. The fifteenth of last month, at four in the afternoon.”

  North’s expression did not change. His hands were trembling slightly. He walked to his desk and took a magnifying glass from the center drawer. He had to push the Smith & Wesson to one side to get to it. He returned to the chair studying the photograph, noticing as he did so a sigh and a rustle in front of him; impatience. He looked at only the top photograph. He did not recognize any of the three at the table, they were ordinary middle-aged men in dark suits and open collars, apparently Germans. But his eyes were elsewhere now, at a table in the rear of the café. He needed a moment, so he looked at Kleust and shrugged.

  Duer said softly, “Look again, please, Ambassador. The upper right of the photograph.”

  He looked through the glass again. A smudge of a face, but unmistakable, a positive sighting. His stomach turned as he looked through the glass. He said, “Last month?” He was concentrating on the photograph, all the details. The face was in profile, bearded under a black beret. The right hand held a cigarette, the angle of the hand was unmistakable. Bill Jr. was talking to someone across the café table but his companion, whoever it was, was concealed by the waiter’s body.

  North said, “It’s him. Who are the three in the foreground?”

  “Our people have an interest in them,” Major Bruch said.

  “Are they connected?”

  “We don’t think so. We have no reason to think so and it would be unlikely. The three in the foreground are not political. At least they are not political in that way. In the way of your son.”

  North nodded, looking at each of them in turn. For a brief moment, he had an urge to thank them but he didn’t. Whatever Kleust said, this was an official visit. It was not personal, so appreciation didn’t come into it. “Who is he with?”

  “A female, according to the waiter. He remembers her because of her good looks. And she wore a short leather skirt. She was a good-looking young female.”

  “German?”

  “The waiter thinks she was foreign, but is not sure. Your son spoke excellent German, very fluent. But the young woman did not speak at all, according to the waiter.”

  North looked from Bruch to Duer and back again.

  “That is all we know about that,” Herr Duer said.

  “Hamburg,” he said.

  “Hamburg,” Colonel Bruch said.

  “And nothing since then?”

  “Nothing positive,” Duer said.

  He looked at the other two photos. They were essentially the same scene, taken from different angles. The clearest of them showed Bill Jr. in corduroy trousers and a dark sweater at the café table, raising a cup of coffee to his mouth, a characteristic gesture, his elbows out, holding the cup in both hands. His expression was pouty, like an infant’s. Smoke curled around the cup, from the cigarette in his left hand. He was frowning, annoyed at something. The photograph was not clear enough for North to see his eyes. A waiter was be
nding over the table, the waiter in white shirt and black tie, his body concealing the young woman. North recognized the expression on his son’s face. He and the young woman were having an argument. He was talking and she was listening; or, anyway, she was silent. She was probably not listening. Talking was one of his long suits. His thoughts would be on his own arguments, what he would say next, and how, particularly how; when he was hot, his speech became almost Edwardian, elaborate, rich with sarcasm, a literary monologue in complete sentences, subject, verb, predicate. The moral life of the young.

  “We are trying to find out about the young woman,” Kleust said.

  North looked again at the picture and wondered what the argument was about. The waiter was present, so it would not be anything personal or political. Probably the coffee was foul. The sugar dish was empty. He had complained and the young woman had objected, perhaps to his tone of voice. One could be wonderfully rude in German. He said, “The three in the foreground—”

  “We photographed your son by the sheerest chance. It was Herr Duer who noticed him in the background of the picture. Herr Duer has an—interest in your son. And his associates. And their plans for the future, insofar as they effect the BRD. Herr Duer’s eye was drawn to the beret, it is not usual to see berets in Hamburg. Something about the angle of the face, and the hands holding the cup of coffee . . . Herr Duer has an excellent memory.”

  Duer said, “By the attitude of the waiter we are guessing that this is a familiar café to your son, though the waiter denies that he has ever seen him or the young female before. Look at the waiter’s feet. They are crossed, and he has one hand on the table. This is the attitude of one who is conversing, not merely taking an order.”

  German thoroughness. “Seems so,” he said.

  “We thought, looking at your son, that perhaps there was an argument of some kind. His face is dark. But the waiter could remember no argument.”

  North nodded but did not reply.

  “Then, looking at some of the other photographs we have collected, we thought that perhaps his face was always dark.”

  North said, “The waiter is lying.”

  Kleust leaned forward. “That was what we thought, Bill. We have the café under surveillance, but there is no sign of them, your son or the young female. And the waiter behaves normally. And of course until now we were not certain that it was your son. We had no positive identification until today. It was only a guess on Herr Duer’s part. Give thanks to the beret.”

  He said, “Where is the café?”

  “Around the corner from the Hotel Prem. An expensive neighborhood, fashionable. A neighborhood where tourists often go. Of course there are not many tourists in Hamburg. Hamburg is not Munich. And this was in October, so there are even fewer tourists.”

  Duer said, “Does your son normally wear a beret?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Nor a beard.”

  “Nor a beard.”

  “Do you know the Hotel Prem?”

  He nodded. “Stayed there once, years ago.” Subtle of Kleust, remaining silent. Three years earlier they had had dinner at one of Kleust’s haunts on the harbor, a fish house. He and Elinor and Bill Jr. and Kleust, the American consul general, and the resident spook. Bill Jr., bored and sullen, did not speak so they ignored him. It was an excellent dinner, very jolly; the consul paid. Bill Jr. left them in front of the restaurant, walking away through the gauntlet of wharf whores. And that was the last time he had seen his son. He disappeared into Germany. He remembered that Kleust had returned them to the Hotel Prem and they had a nightcap in the bar, a half bottle of Fürst von Metternich. He and Elinor did not miss Bill Jr. until the next morning, when the receptionist reported that his bed had not been slept in. Will your son be returning? Bill thought a moment and said, No, he won’t be, knowing he was gone, knowing they would not see him again for a very long time.

  “Your whole family?”

  “Bill Jr. was with us.”

  “Well,” Kleust said.

  “What do you intend to do now?”

  “We have the café under surveillance, as the ambassador said,” Herr Duer said. “And the authorities in Hamburg have been alerted. We have the waiter under surveillance also, but we do not expect anything to come of this. There is nothing in. The waiter’s background. To suggest any connection with your son or your son’s associates. Of course that, in itself, is perhaps suspicious.” Herr Duer smiled.

  North smiled back. Quite a piece of work was Herr Duer, squaring the circle. Heads I win, tails you lose. He handed the photographs back to the German, who put them in his attaché case and closed it. For a moment no one said anything.

  North said, “The other three, in the foreground—”

  Duer made a little gesture of dismissal, but his eyes were bright.

  North said, “Could be a coincidence.”

  Kleust sighed. “I am afraid Herr Duer does not believe in coincidence.”

  Herr Duer leaned forward. Half moons of sweat showed under his armpits. He gave off an odor of cologne mixed with sweat as he shook a damp cigarette out of the pack on the table and lit it. He smiled fractionally, displaying yellow teeth. “With your permission,” he said politely. “This is a formidable lead, the best one we have had. In fact the only one we have had, that is verifiable. They are very careful, these people, very professional, very meticulous.” He paused again, glancing at Kleust. “We thought you might be able to help us. We thought you might be persuaded to come to Hamburg, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “To help you find my son.”

  “Yes,” Duer said.

  “How would I do that?” he asked softly.

  Herr Duer cracked his knuckles. He was trying not to show his excitement, but his voice rose and he spoke rapidly. “It is well known, people return to that which is familiar to them. The Hotel Prem, for example. You have been in Hamburg with the boy, you might remember places you visited with him. And you could recognize him, in a café or across the street, with a beret or without a beret or a beard, or however he chose to present himself. I don’t have to say to you. It is in everyone’s interest to find your son, before.”

  “Before what?”

  “He is a violent boy,” Duer said sharply.

  North looked at Duer, then turned to Kleust. There was a moment of silence, and then Kleust nodded at Duer, almost apologetically. Duer immediately rose. “You and the major,” Kleust said. “Please to wait outside for a moment. I wish to speak to the ambassador privately.” He turned to North for confirmation. It was North’s office and North’s embassy and Kleust did not wish to seem—Teutonic.

  “Sorry about all this,” Kleust said when they were alone.

  “It’s hard as hell, Kurt.”

  “I know it is.”

  “I don’t care much for your Herr Duer.”

  “Nor do I. He is interested only in his work. But he’s good, he’s the best we have, though he has the personality of a . . .” Kleust sought the word and North said, “Bowling ball.” Kleust thought a moment, then smiled. “I would have said polo mallet.”

  North stepped to the window and stood looking down into the courtyard. Harry Erickson was walking to his car, talking animatedly to the station chief. They looked like boys without a care in the world, playing hooky from school. He said, “I suppose Duer’s efficient.”

  “Very,” Kleust said.

  “Unorthodox or by the book?”

  “Both,” Kleust said. “That’s why he’s so good.”

  “You’ve got quite a file on my boy, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” Kleust said.

  Harry Erickson looked up and saw the ambassador in the window, and quickly looked away. He and the station chief got into the big Land-Rover. “One of my officers,” North said from the window, “young fellow, good record, except that he’s younger than springtime. Wife’s having an affair with another woman. Or that’s the story. That ever happen with your people?”

  “I know all a
bout that.”

  Of course he would. There were no secrets in embassy ghetto. “Jan Francis is a friend of mine.”

  “I’d forgotten,” North said.

  Kleust laughed. “You remember my commercial attaché. Fell in love with Bruch’s deputy, a darling captain. Fine horseman. They were discreet about it and it didn’t matter except it drove Bruch crazy. He had the captain transferred to South Africa, which ruined the polo team last year. But I understand the move produced benefits for the security services. The commercial attaché cried for a month and tried to follow his boyfriend, though he didn’t try very hard. Not much for a commercial attaché to do in South Africa and this lad was very much the careerist. So he’s in Athens now. You have too many people in this embassy, Bill.”

  “I know that. It’s called bureaucratic creep.”

  “Well, you’re the ambassador—”

  “They keep sending me people. And they are usually people who can’t stand the climate or the Africans. They think it’s exotic until they get here, and then they want to be somewhere else. Oslo or Geneva or Rome.”

  “Jan Francis likes to make trouble. She likes to make trouble for the Americans, particularly.”

  “She has a husband,” North said.

  “He does not count,” Kleust said.

  North watched Harry Erickson and the CIA man get into the Land-Rover and drive away. Benson raised the candy-colored barrier and saluted smartly. Harry returned the salute casually, a weary general on friendly terms with the ranks. He tried to imagine Alice Erickson and Jan Francis in bed together, doing whatever women did. Well, he knew what they did; but it was hard imagining them doing it. He wondered if it was fun for Jan, making trouble for Americans. Whether or not it was fun, it was certainly easy. “She ought to pick on someone her own size,” he said.

  Kleust said, “That’s difficult, in this country.”