The papers he had written for the State Department were received with great interest, so that he found himself sitting one day with Johann Kascht and an undersecretary for Middle Eastern Affairs in the large reception room of the office of the secretary of state of the United States. They were ushered into the secretary’s office. It was even larger than the outer office and was paneled entirely in walnut. The floor was covered with plush, royal blue carpet with the seal of the United States in the middle. There were bookcases built into the walls. These were filled with leather-bound books and mementoes, mainly photographs of the current secretary with every imaginable dignitary, including several with the president. A large semicircle of overstuffed couches, chairs, and small tables bearing vases filled with cut flowers faced the desk where the secretary sat. Behind him stood a wooden standard holding an American flag. A portrait of the president hung above and behind the secretary in an elaborate gold frame.
The secretary rose from behind his great mahogany desk and, shaking hands with Kascht and Louis, gestured toward the chairs that had been set right in front of his desk. His assistant brought coffee in a silver pot on a silver tray for the three visitors.
The secretary had Louis’s papers in front of him. “I am told that you have done some important work here,” said the secretary. He folded his hands on the small stack of papers. His thin fingers laced together smoothly and perfectly, and Louis recalled thinking that the secretary might have actually practiced this gesture. “You come highly recommended by Professor Kascht and Undersecretary Bowes. I don’t have to tell you how explosive things are in the Middle East. The Soviets are making great gains in Syria and Egypt right now. We need to bring some new thinking to the problem. I would like for you to come aboard as part of our team at State. Yours would be primarily a research position, to begin with, but you would report to the undersecretary and would be expected to make policy recommendations. I think you can make an important contribution.” He gazed at Louis with cold blue eyes and waited for him to say yes.
VII
ANNA KARENINA LAY HEAVILY ON LOUIS’S CHEST. THE LIGHT BREEZE moved the curtains in the window. The dim, little light left the corners of the hotel room in darkness. It is in the corners, Louis thought, that I need to see. He gazed ahead of himself, into the darkest corner, but saw nothing.
When his appointment to the State Department had finally been confirmed, Louis and Sarah had bought a house in Arlington in Virginia, across the river from Washington. Sarah finished her dissertation and was hired as an assistant professor of French at George Mason University in nearby Fairfax. Louis left for his office each morning before seven and some evenings did not return until after the children were asleep. He accompanied the undersecretary on trips to the Middle East with increasing frequency.
“You’re on a fast track, Louis,” said Hugh Bowes, laying his arm across Louis’s shoulder. Hugh Bowes knew about fast tracks. His career trajectory was legendary. He was barely thirty and already an undersecretary of state. Bowes had come to the Department of State from Princeton University where he had been a protege of H. William Kendall, the dean of foreign policy analysts and founder of the Institute for Middle Eastern Studies. Within a year, Kendall had retired from the institute and Bowes was in charge.
For Bowes, it was only a short step from Institute director to undersecretary of state. He understood many things, but above all he understood how to make himself indispensable to those above him. He was soon invited to policy meetings, whether they concerned the Middle East or not. He often traveled with the president and advised him on the domestic ramifications of his foreign policy decisions. He stood in the background at press conferences, in case his expertise was required. He appeared as an administration spokesman on television news shows. When he spoke publicly, he articulated the administration’s views with clarity and wit. His manner was both competent and self-effacing. In person, he was charming and engaging.
Bowes invited Louis to attend a policy briefing at the White House. Bowes put his arm around Louis’s shoulder. “The president and the secretary will be there and could use the benefit of your thinking on . . .” Louis could no longer remember what the specific issue had been. But he could remember the excitement he had felt at being invited to attend this meeting. He remembered the sense of his own importance which easily overwhelmed any wariness he ought to have felt. Now, though, as he remembered the weight of Bowes’s arm across his shoulder, a little shiver ran through his body, and he pulled the blanket higher.
Louis and Sarah had shopped together for a new suit for the occasion. They drove to Lord and Taylor. They picked out several blue and gray models; then they weighed the cut of each suit, the width of the stripe. They laid neckties across each suit. This suit had the correct air of importance, but its cut gave Louis a narrow, pinched look. That tie was too bright. It might upstage the president or the secretary. As they talked over which suit, which tie, this detail and that, their voices were hushed, their brows knit in concentration. The salesman waited dutifully through the long silences while Louis and Sarah thought about what the other had said. They might have been discussing their future together, or their children. But they were talking about buying a suit.
“Mr. President, Mr. Secretary, I think you will all be interested to hear Mr. Morgon’s thoughts in this area,” said Hugh Bowes. He brushed his thinning hair back with his hand and turned to peer at Louis through his thick glasses. What Louis said was not new to Bowes. In fact, what he offered was a synthesis of his own views and points that Bowes had made when they had spoken earlier that morning. Though Louis’s ideas were controversial, Bowes assured him they coincided with his own ideas on the subject.
After some discussion, Louis’s ideas met with general approval. “Watch out for this young man, Hugh. He could be after your job,” said the president to general laughter.
“I will, Mr. President,” said Hugh.
The policies which were designed and implemented out of Louis’s suggestions met with success. In the peculiarly bloodless language of the State Department, the desired outcomes were achieved. As Sarah later pointed out to Louis, Hugh Bowes’s prestige and influence had been enhanced without any risk to himself. After all, Louis was his man, and he was Louis’s sponsor. With success, all power accrued to Bowes; when things went wrong, all blame would accrue to Louis.
In fact, as Louis eventually came to realize, Sarah, who had certainly been less naive than he in such matters as the thirst for power and the venality it engendered in high government circles, had still grossly underestimated the resourcefulness and cunning of those who desired power, as well as the intensity of their desire and the ends to which they would go to fulfill it.
They desired power above everything else, but were, at the same time, only dimly aware of their desire. When they thought of power at all, they saw it as a neutral force that could be used for good or for evil. They did not recognize how it could make virtue seem like weakness. Power required what the powerful called toughness, but what often enough turned out to be murderous brutality.
Louis thought with alarm of other bodies which had turned up during his time at the State Department. He recalled the case of Wilson Pemberough. A graduate of Harvard University and a Rhodes scholar, Pemberough started his career as an officer on the Soviet desk. He then received diplomatic postings in Cairo, Beirut, and Vienna, where he performed his duties with efficient enthusiasm, rendering the United States “exemplary service,” as one citation he received when he left the government put it. Pemberough was the embassy’s political officer in his last two postings, which meant that he concerned himself with political events in the country and compiled daily reports about them which he sent back to Washington.
This work, which was fairly routine and easily dispensed with, was a cover. For, as was often the case with embassy political officers, Pemberough was also responsible for running the United States’ secret agents in the country where he was posted. This work co
nsisted mainly of receiving the agents’ reports and passing on assignments to them. This was done mainly by dropping messages at agreed-upon sites, but sometimes by means of secret rendezvous. Pemberough was the only person at the embassy who knew who these agents were.
Pemberough had also recruited, and was running, a few agents that no one else knew about at all. He had done this on his own initiative. Such freelance work was frowned upon, but was often tolerated because of the intelligence it afforded. One of Pemberough’s agents was a young secretary at the Soviet Russian embassy in Vienna named Ines Palyatskaya. Pemberough was handsome and sensitive. He showed concern for Ines’s well being. She gave him information about her work. She smuggled photocopies of diplomatic papers to him. In return, Pemberough gave her love and affection.
That is not to say that Pemberough felt either love or affection for her, though it is true that he enjoyed their passionate hours together. But he pretended that he loved her in order to get the information he desired. His caresses, his tender words were part of his job.
Pemberough had a young wife. When Pemberough put off going back to Moscow with Ines, as he had promised he would, she threatened to tell his wife. Ines’s body turned up in the Danube canal. Since his superiors knew nothing about Ines, Pemberough did not feel obligated to tell them of her death. But an enterprising Viennese police detective was able to establish her connection to Pemberough. Pemberough insisted that she had been done in by the Soviets, but he was recalled to Washington. He was forced to leave the foreign service. Still, so as not to ruin his possibilities outside government service, he left with citations from his superiors and a nice pension.
Louis realized now that Pemberough, or Hugh Bowes, for that matter, might not even understand that they wanted power, let alone how badly they wanted it. They thought of themselves as men of principle. Very often they were. Take Wilson Pemberough and his superiors, for instance. They all were certain that Ines Palyatskaya’s death had been an unfortunate necessity, that she was a sacrifice to the higher good.
Hugh Bowes believed in democracy, the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the extension and dissemination of those rights to the rest of the world. Whatever power Hugh acquired was only acquired in the service of his principles. But Hugh was also a pragmatist. His study of politics and political philosophy, and then his own experience, had shown him the impossibly intricate interconnectedness of all things, and he had eventually come to understand that the world’s problems would be solved by those who could develop and master the most detailed understanding and control of this impossible complexity, including the seamy and clandestine complexity represented by the Wilson Pemberoughs.
For some reason, the sight of Hugh Bowes eating now came back to Louis with astonishing clarity. Hugh always had his supper delivered to his desk, carried in on a silver tray. It was always a steak, well done, a baked potato, and a salad. He washed everything down with great gulps of Coca-Cola or coffee. He continued to read, dictate, and take down notes in his small, cramped hand. He never spilled or dropped anything. Yet he did not even seem to notice that he was eating. Louis was reminded of pictures he had seen of great bombers refueling in midair. Five minutes after the food had been delivered, nothing remained but the tray, the dinnerware, and the crumpled foil from the potato.
Anna Karenina slid to the floor, and Louis awoke with a start. It was nearly midnight. The curtain hung still in the window. The corners of the room remained in impenetrable blackness. The only sound was the rhythmic chirping of crickets outside. The world was at peace, and yet Louis’s heart raced with terror. By making inquiries the night before, and now by waiting in this hotel room, he had made himself the bait in a dangerous trap.
Louis took the phone off the hook and turned out the light. A dim glow from the street lamp below shone through the window and cast pale squares on the ceiling. The dial tone sounded very loud in the dark. After a minute, the phone went silent. Louis waited naked in bed. He fought to remain alert. But the stream of his memory which had swept him along this far, and his dawning understanding of the murder, of his life, of everything seemed irresistible.
A State Department official, even one so new as Louis had been, was sought out by reporters, by diplomats lobbying for their own interests, by other policymakers in other departments. He was sought out for recommendations and advice, for influence that he might be able to exert, for pressure he could bring to bear. Louis was an amiable colleague, eager to learn how the government worked, curious about his colleagues and the work they did. He was bright, friendly, and attractive, with an intelligent and attractive wife. He and Sarah were invited to parties at embassies, at the homes of undersecretaries and assistant secretaries, and he found that, just by virtue of these contacts, which, as far as he could tell, he neither sought nor encouraged, he began to have some small measure of power and influence, which is to say, he began to be perceived as having power and influence. His opinions were listened to as though they were more than opinions. He listened to himself as he spoke in order to be certain that he conveyed the proper balance of helpful instruction and restraint. He watched his own face in the gilt-edged mirror behind the person opposite him, watched his own lips move, saw his hair, his clothes, saw himself smile, as though he were watching someone else, or rather, as though he were watching a part of himself he had never seen before. “Of course, the president cannot be certain that this particular new policy vis-a-vis Jordan will succeed. It is a risk, as any untried policy is, but it is a calculated risk, and I believe he knows that, and, having carefully weighed all the alternatives realistically available to him, the president thinks a possible favorable outcome far outweighs the risk.” The others around the table would listen and nod as though he had just told them something not only new but useful. While he had said nothing that was untrue, he often had the uncomfortable feeling that he had nonetheless been dishonest, that the face he had watched in the mirror was the face of an imposter.
He was quoted as an “unnamed administration source” in a Washington Post account of policy meetings and a decision taken. Those who toiled daily in the State Department labyrinth and in the press knew from reading the particular points being made who this unnamed source was and immediately adjusted their view of him to take this new information into account. Or, if they didn’t know, they set about finding out, since in their minds, from the absence of knowledge of this sort it was only a short fall to the absence of influence.
Louis had been invited to appear on a national television news show to explain what King Hussein of Jordan might be hoping for from his forthcoming meeting with the president, and what he could more reasonably expect. Louis was on the air, answering the anchorman’s questions and explaining why His Majesty’s expectations might be unrealistic, for a full thirty seconds, which one of the show’s producers assured him, as she was removing the microphone from his jacket, was “a lot of air time, a lot of exposure. Ten million people watch this show.”
Johann Kascht, his old professor, invited him back to the university to address the political science faculty and graduate students. Louis spoke to them with wit and assurance about how policy was actually formulated in Washington and what misconceptions about policy formulation he had brought with him to Washington. He did not speak to them about his unease. He did not mention the dark undercurrents, the intrigue, and duplicity his work had laid open before his eyes. The more he studied the Palestinian question, for instance, the more he found assassination, organized violence, and betrayal not only condoned, but encouraged in order to promote what were known as “American interests,” but which were often something not quite so virtuous, or so easily defined.
Even then, Louis had found his smooth ascent not only heady, but also disconcerting. Disconcerting, but to his astonishment now, nothing worse. The intrigue, the danger, none of the dark business had touched him in any way. At least not until now. Louis was certain now that the murdered man’s footprints led back thr
ough his recollections to his State Department past. But try as he might now, he could not find the nugget that would illuminate the course things had taken.
It was true that Louis had been enticed, even seduced, by the attention he got, by the weight and the feel of power. But it was also true that with each small success his unease had grown. Undressing after a dinner party, looking at his children in their little beds, looking at Sarah studying herself in the mirror, the feeling of loss and confusion and loneliness would not be driven away.
Certain changes in United States policy during the Six Day War in the Middle East, taken at Louis’s recommendation, had not had the desired outcome. Several members of the National Security Council had issued a report in which the loss of Israeli and Egyptian lives was attributed to this mistaken direction, although that was probably an overstatement of the case which they made for their own reasons. Nevertheless Hugh Bowes, instead of distancing himself from Louis, as Sarah had predicted he would in such a moment, spoke up in a cabinet meeting and assumed responsibility for the failure himself. Everyone there knew that Louis was the author of the failed policy.
“We expected that things would develop otherwise,” said Bowes. “We did not expect such a quick and decisive victory by Israel. We made a serious miscalculation. I take full and complete responsibility.” In the corridor at the State Department Louis thanked Hugh Bowes. Hugh laid his arm across Louis’s shoulders. “We’re a team, aren’t we, Louis? It’s already been taken care of.”
In fact, when the opportunity arose for Louis to be promoted in grade and to be attached to the Central Intelligence Agency as the representative of the secretary of state, Hugh Bowes supported him enthusiastically. They met with the secretary in his great paneled office to formalize the appointment. “Langley is a world all its own, Louis,” said Hugh afterward. “Let me know how things develop for you out there.”
A French Country Murder Page 4
