The President's Man
Page 30
It was the first time they had made love in more than a year, and they were a little awkward at it. They were like people just beginning to get to know each other; perhaps that was what they really were.
Anyway, by the time Pete Freestone arrived in the first week of July, they could at least swing a fair imitation of the world’s happiest married couple.
The four fifty-five from San Francisco apparently had had a tail wind, because Pete was about five minutes early as he rounded the causeway into the terminal, a small suitcase in his right hand and a clothing bag slung over his shoulder. He saw Austen behind the barrier, opened his mouth in something that, at that distance, was probably intended to be taken for a delighted grin, and put down the suitcase for a moment so he could have an arm free to wave. He was wearing a light gray suit that did a lot for him and, on closer inspection, seemed to have lost about fifteen pounds.
On the other side of the barrier, Austen took the suitcase and they walked out together to where his limousine was taking up about a block of the curb.
“Jesus—is that yours?”
“It goes with the job.”
Austen’s driver came out from behind the wheel and took the suitcase and the bag and opened the door for them.
“Home, Jimmie.” Austen pressed the button that raised the smoked-glass partition, turned to his friend, and smiled a lopsided, slightly embarrassed smile. “I love saying that. When are you getting married?”
“How did you know I was getting married?”
“I’m a spy, remember? Look at you—somebody’s been seeing to your wardrobe lately. Besides, everyone I know is getting married.”
“Yeah, well. . .”
And then Pete Freestone, the veteran journalist, blushed deeply and muttered something about a girl he had met at Weight Watchers. He seemed eager to change the subject, and there would be plenty of time later. Austen decided to give him a break.
“So what brings you?” he asked, ignoring the stupid obviousness of the question. “Is the Chronicle planning to burn us over this treaty, or what?”
“Why, is that a suggestion?”
The expression on Pete’s face was perfectly serious for a moment, and then he grinned—it had been a joke. Austen found he was able to breathe again.
“No, I’m on leave from the paper. I’ve got a contract for a book, of all things.” Pete’s eyes turned into perfect circles. “I’m getting a thirty-grand advance to write Simon Faircliff’s biography in time for the election, so he’s invited me for lunch and a three-hour interview.”
“Not bad. But watch out for the pecan pie.”
The next afternoon the two men sat outside on the flagstone terrace behind Austen’s house in Alexandria, drinking iced tea. They were in their shirtsleeves, and the only sounds besides their own voices were the chirping of the birds and the drone from the odd speedboat passing on the river. Pete was talking about his book, which, with his usual enthusiasm, he expected would make him both rich and famous.
“I started out thinking I could knock the thing off in four or five months,” he said, crouching forward in his chair. “I mean, hell, I’ve been interviewing and studying Simon Faircliff for the last fifteen years. And the public career is easy. It’s the private man I’m having trouble with.”
“Well, I don’t think you’ll get very far with that on Monday. He’ll talk your ear off about this trip to Russia—that’s what he wants to put across right now.”
“Then you don’t suppose I could. . ?” He used the tip of his thumb to gesture back toward the house, where Dottie was in the kitchen making dinner. Austen shook his head.
“She won’t even talk to me about him, pal—you know all about that. “
“I didn’t really think. . . Well. . .”
“Not a chance. Sorry.”
Pete shrugged his shoulders in an embarrassed apology and then stared down at the ground for several seconds, as if he couldn’t think of anything more to say. “I went up to Oroville,” he said finally, making what seemed like a conscious effort to pick up the thread again. “They’ve got a kind of museum full of stuff about his childhood. They’re very proud of him. I’ve never known a politician who could resist something like that, yet Faircliff hasn’t been near the place in forty-five years. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
Now it was Austen’s turn to shrug. “I was born in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and I’ve never been back either. Some people just aren’t real big on home towns, Pete. But I’ve never heard him mention it, one way or the other.”
“I think I’ll ask him about it.”
“Go ahead. You do that.” Austen smiled, wondering whether the smile looked as uncomfortable as it felt. “But you’ll probably end up listening to an analysis of the state of Soviet missile deployment instead. That’s the obsession of the hour.”
“Yeah. . .” Pete looked as if he hadn’t heard a syllable, and then suddenly he snapped back into focus. “You know, I was up there for about three weeks, talking to people and looking the place over, and a spooky thing happened. I discovered that I was being shadowed.”
They sat looking at one another for a moment, during which the outside temperature seemed to drop about fifteen degrees. The smile on Austen’s face never wavered.
“Can you describe any of them?” he asked, just before the silence began to verge on the ludicrously awkward. “I doubt whether any of our people could have been shadowing you without my knowing about it—why the hell would they? But I can check it if you like.”
“Okay—I got a picture of one of them.”
Pete reached back to his trouser pocket for his billfold, from which he extracted a two-by-three color photograph of a man turning away to cross an intersection in the opposite direction. The man looked annoyed, and like the sort it might be dangerous to annoy too much. The head was in profile, but the one visible eye was no more than a slit. The moustache was dark and perfectly straight.
“Sorry.” Austen shook his head, tucking the picture into the pocket of his shirt. “I’ve never seen this article before.”
. . . . .
Dear Frank,
It’s very hot in Moscow and you can’t get a decent meal anywhere, not even here in our own embassy. These people don’t seem to have ever heard of air conditioning—you were smart not to come.
I am writing this and sending it out via diplomatic satchel because the Russians have got so many bugs installed in this building that I’m sure they can hear the scratching of my pen—under the circumstances, using the telephone or even a coder is just a waste of time.
Van Deman says that his private sources of information are afraid to talk to him anymore. Apparently there have been some arrests lately, and rumor has it that the KGB is about to crack down on a good chunk of our network here. I pass the message on for your evaluation.
Give my love to Dottie.
Simon
A courier brought the letter to Austen’s front door just as he was about to sit down to breakfast. He read it quickly, put it in his jacket pocket, and went back into the kitchen.
He would worry about it later.
Even from the hall he could hear Dottie humming to herself. They had gone to a movie the night before to see a revival of Song of the South, which Austen remembered ever so faintly from his childhood, and the sound that was coming from in front of the refrigerator consisted of disjointed fragments of “Zip-ah-dee-doo-dah,” rendered, as usual, about a quarter-tone sharp.
The honeymoon had outlasted Pete Freestone’s visit by nearly two weeks. They were still sleeping together and had made love last night almost as soon as they got back inside the door, so it was possible to flatter oneself that the lady’s good mood was perhaps not exclusively traceable to Walt Disney.
The whole business had the tentative quality of a casual, on-againoff-again affair, something that might jell for them or might not. But it was better than nothing, Austen figured. It was better than he had been doing for a long time.
“Just business—a note from your father. He says Moscow’s too hot and the food is lousy. He sends his love.” He smiled, perhaps a little uncertainly, as if she had caught him out in something, but she hardly seemed to notice.
“I don’t know,” she said finally, as if to the orange juice. “You think I’m too hard on him too, don’t you.”
“I don’t know either, sweetheart. We’re none of us perfect men; maybe we have it coming.”
“But you don’t think he’s a monster.”
“No.”
“And you think I’m wrong because I can’t love him?”
“Yes, and it isn’t that you can’t love him. You do love him, or you wouldn’t worry about it so much.”
“Maybe.” She set the orange juice down on the kitchen table and began drifting back toward the refrigerator—for what, she probably couldn’t have said herself, since everything was already out. “Maybe you’re right. All that with my mother, I don’t suppose there’s anything to it.”
“I don’t suppose so, no.”
What else could he have said? And how the hell was he supposed to know? She had been trying so hard lately to see things from his point of view, perhaps so that she could finally just break down and forgive him and they could both have a little peace and happiness. But it wasn’t destined to work out that way—he knew it, even if she didn’t. There wasn’t a thing in the world he could do but just keep on lying.
“Have your breakfast before it gets cold,” she said.
. . . . .
Half an hour later he saw the limousine pull into his driveway. George Timmler was in the back.
“Take a look at this.” Austen extracted the note from his pocket and passed it over. “I suppose they felt that if our ambassador had heard about it, it must have filtered down to us too. I wonder whether this isn’t some kind of probe.”
As they slipped along through the quiet residential streets, he could look out and watch children trudging along the sidewalk on their way to school. For as little as the trouble of opening his window a crack, he could have heard their voices. The sight of them made him feel as if his whole world had lost contact with ordinary reality.
“It’s true, though.”
“I know it’s true.” He glanced around at Timmler with momentary annoyance. “But look who they’ve picked up—Karsakov, Razumihin, Florinsky, Demidov. All old names, all compromised already. I wouldn’t be surprised if they planned to roll up every stick of our old network as soon as the treaty is ratified, just to show us who’s the new boss.”
Turning back to the window, he saw that they had already left the children far behind them. For some reason this fact depressed him.
“The point is they haven’t touched any of our new people. I think they’re testing us; if we don’t seem worried enough, they might conclude we’re on to them.”
Timmler seemed to weigh this for a moment, and then, as if making the greatest concession in the world, he nodded. “It’s possible we could tip them by overreacting,” he said finally. “They could be looking for that, too.”
“Then maybe we ought to do nothing.” Austen took the note from Timmler’s unresisting fingers and put it back in his pocket. “I’ll wait until he gets back, and then I’ll act the part of the worried liar and tell him everything’s fine. Maybe he’ll just assume I’m trying to make myself look good while I cover my bureaucratic butt.”
“That might be best. When’s he due?”
“In a week. He signs day after tomorrow, and then there are stops in Bonn, Paris, Brussels, and London so the allies won’t feel neglected. I’ll talk to him then.”
. . . . .
“They wheeled me around like a fucking tourist—I must have seen a million of those Fabergé Easter eggs. And Lenin’s tomb, of course. Personally, I think it’s a wax dummy in there; the guy’s been dead for sixty years.” It was strange, but Simon Faircliff seemed to find the idea deeply unsettling. His eyes took on a glazed look, and the lines around his mouth seemed to deepen. Of course, it was only his second day back from Europe; he hadn’t even gotten over his jet lag yet.
“No, it’s Lenin.” Austen stretched his legs out in front of him; the sofas in the Oval Office were so low that every time he sat down on one of them he seemed to be looking out at the world from over the tops of his knees. “They’ve got him rigged up with spigots, and they change the formaldehyde every month.”
Faircliff’s face wrinkled with distaste. “Jesus—is that what you get for being a hero? I think I’d rather just be buried, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll make a note of it.”
The President smiled—it was a big joke—and pushed the half-lens reading glasses he had taken to wearing lately a little further back on his nose. He really did look tired. The coffee table between the two men was covered with briefing books and papers.
“But you don’t think we’re in bad shape over there?” he asked, glancing up at his son-in-law and lieutenant whom he was supposed to love and trust. “You say yourself they’ve got four of our people, and Van Deman makes it sound like that might be just the beginning.”
“Look, Simon, Van Deman’s a nice guy, but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” The Director of Central Intelligence held out the palms of his hands as if to say, He’s old-line Foggy Bottom—what can you expect. . ? “Do you know what the life expectancy of one of our Russian agents is? About five years, if he happens to be very, very good. Those people have never heard of due process, Chief; they bug your phone and toss your apartment as a matter of routine. I think the KGB is just seeing what they can make out of a few arrests.”
“Okay, Frank, you’re the spy.”
You’re the spy. The expression on his face was curiously benevolent, as if he could see right through you, knew that you were lying, and was prepared to forgive you that and all your other weaknesses and sins. And Austen, who carried the lie in his heart—what did the words matter, if the intention was to deceive?—was properly humbled.
“So what else did the lords of the Kremlin have to say to you?” he asked, discovering that he could still meet Faircliff’s steady, penetrating gaze with a fair approximation of unconcern. “I don’t suppose there were any offers to sell us Cuba.”
One had the impression of a grief that was almost physical, as if what you saw was the soul. And then he smiled again, the way anyone might at a child’s bad joke. “My God, Frank. Those people want to grab the whole wide world.”
. . . . .
About a week before Labor Day, Austen managed to get his desk clear enough to permit him a weekend off. It was a sufficiently rare event to warrant certain preparations.
“I got tickets. High government service doesn’t count for anything anymore; I had to pay a scalper eighty bucks for the two of them. We can go up to New York and have a time of it.”
Dottie picked up the tickets from where they were lying on her writing desk and read the name of the play.
“I’ve never heard of this; it’s probably a turkey.”
“Probably. It’s been running for a year and a half.”
So they packed a suitcase, threw it in the back of the family car, and set out on Interstate 95 shortly before lunch that Friday morning.
He had booked into the Regency, which he discovered was just around the corner from Sixty-first Street. There wasn’t anything he could do about it, however, and the lobby was full of tycoon types, so probably no one would think it strange that the Director of Central Intelligence, escorting the daughter of the President of the United States, should check in there. No one would have any reason to look any further than that.
Besides, Austen had followed his usual practice and made all his arrangements under another name.
It was absolutely essential, particularly when he went anywhere with Dottie, simply to keep from being mobbed by reporters. Mr. and Mrs. Austen’s pictures appeared infrequently enough in the press that with a little luck they might be able to last the weekend without anyone recognizing them.
So everyone’s secrets were probably safe enough.
It was only about four in the afternoon by the time they had gotten settled in and unpacked. Austen picked up the phone and made a dinner reservation at Le Perigord for the decidedly un continental hour of six, and after that there was nothing left to do except sit around and watch Dottie preening herself for her big evening on the town. He decided he could probably have found worse ways to kill a couple of hours.
She sat on a velvet-covered stool in front of the vanity table with nothing on but a pair of pink satin panties as she did up her hair in preparation for taking a shower. Austen crouched behind her, reaching around to cup her breasts in his hands as he kissed her on the shoulder.
“Come on, Frank, we’ll never make the restaurant,” she said, in that tone of voice that was almost as much an invitation as a rebuff.
“I am coming on, can’t you tell?” He let his lips work their way up to the hollow of her throat. “Besides, I’d rather make you anyway.”
And they still arrived at their table before the maitre d’ hotel even noticed they were late.
It was a lovely and frighteningly expensive meal. Austen ordered a bottle of champagne that alone cost over fifty dollars. The service was swift and unobtrusive, and the food was wonderful. For dessert they had strawberries about the size of a clenched fist. And through it all they sat with their knees pressed together like a couple of guiltily overheated teenagers.
But Dottie had been right—the show was a turkey. Nobody could have made sense of the plot, which seemed to be some sort of parody of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, set in Civil War Atlanta. There was even a dance number representing Sherman’s march to the sea.
“This is awful.”
“I know.”