Shadows and Lies

by Ronald Watkins

  “Maybe you should quit,” she said with a laugh.

  “I just resumed the nasty habit. Begin at the beginning.”

  Marei turned sober. “I met Dick at the Moroccan Embassy not long after he took office. My father was doing business with the king of Morocco, and asked me to join him since my mother was ill. Dick’s wife was out of the city. It was the usual kind of affair. Boring. I could tell he wanted me but I knew his reputation so I wasn’t flattered. I made it hard for him, stayed the other side of the room, ignored him when he tried to make eye contact, you know, the games a foolish woman does. My father left me alone to talk business and I told him I was leaving. While Dick was busy with important men, I gathered my wrap and started to leave. He stopped me at the front door and said he had to see me. I told him I had no interest in seeing him later. Like I said, silly games. I told him I wanted him now, this moment and if he intended to see me again that’s what we’d do. He took me into a closet and I...” she met Powers eyes, “as you say here, I blew him. I think he liked it very much. That was how it started.”

  “How often did you see him?”

  “Perhaps twice a month. Our schedules often conflicted. And, of course, with a man like that, I wasn’t the only one, but I think he liked me best. That’s what I think anyway.”

  “Did you suspect Dorat was a French agent?”

  “Suspect? I knew. They approached me in Paris not long after I began the affair. I told Dick about it and no one bothered me again.”

  “Then they planted Dorat on you?”

  “No.” She smiled. “You don’t know much do you? Yvette and I worked together before. In fact, I helped her get the job with Air France. We were roommates for a time in Paris, us and two others. When I was given the Washington route she told me about the apartment next to her. That was long before any of this.”

  “So when the approach to you failed they went to her.”

  “Yes, and of course she told me. We decided better someone I knew about, that way I could control what she told them. Dick’s people checked the apartment from time to time so I wasn’t worried about bugs or anything. That’s what you call them, right? Bugs? It wasn’t a problem, not at first anyway. The French and Americans are allies and I certainly didn’t know any state secrets, not unless telling them the President likes smoking pot and enjoys fellatio qualifies as one.” She fidgeted with the cigarette, reluctant he thought to continue.

  “What happened next?”

  When she spoke her eyes evaded his. “What do you think of him?”

  “Not much. I consider him to be an actor rather than a President. He’s superficial, narcissistic, wants to be loved. I don’t think he’s much of a President, but he’s the only one we have.”

  “You see him clearer than I did. But I know him now. He’s worse than you say, much worse.” She nursed her cigarette.

  “What about the tapes?”

  “What tapes?” Her eyes were all innocence.

  “The ones of you and him having sex.”

  Marei laughed then held her side and stopped. “Where do you get such ideas?”

  “I saw one.”

  “You saw...? It’s a forgery!”

  “Julie, tell me about the tapes.”

  She punched her cigarette out. “I don’t want to talk anymore. Leave me alone!”

  Powers considered what to say next before he spoke. “Dorat was a friend, then?”

  “Yvette is my best friend.” Marie suddenly looked apprehensive.

  “She’s dead.”

  “Mon Dieu, non!” Her face turned ashen.

  “Someone tied her up then slipped a plastic bag over her head. So tell me about the tapes.”

  “Who killed her?” she asked in a whisper.

  “I have my suspicions, but I don’t know. I believe it’s the same people who want to kill me now that I’ve found you and will kill you when they find you. The tapes.”

  The earlier torture had taken its toll. Whatever courage she possessed had long since been consumed and remained only as a reflex. She collapsed, looking crestfallen. Powers could scarcely hear her when she spoke. “He liked watching.”

  “It seems risky.”

  “I thought so, but he wouldn’t listen. He enjoys taking chances. Maybe you’ve noticed that about him. He said his people watched the apartment periodically. He thought the tapes were safe there. Like you say, it was stupid and I agree.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, Julie. A man in his position doesn’t take risks like that just to watch himself having sex.”

  She lit a fresh cigarette and her eyes turned very wise. “A man does if it’s important to him. After he met Yvette he urged me for months to get her to join us in bed. You’re shocked?”

  “Not at all. It’s a common enough fantasy, especially of middle-aged men.”

  “Not just in America. He became very persistent so I finally begged her to join us. It didn’t turn out very well though. We were not lesbians and she had to get drunk to do it. At first Dick didn’t notice he was so excited and Yvette is... was... a very beautiful woman. He wanted us to... you know, but every time I put my hand anywhere near her she started giggling. Pretty soon I was laughing as well. It was... very funny. But Dick was furious. Yvette was laughing so hard she went to her apartment. It took me hours to calm him down. You see what I’m telling you?”

  “Not really.”

  “He needed something different all the time. The tapes helped him.”

  “Helped?”

  She blew smoke at him. “Don’t be a simpleton.” Her voice was nasty.

  “How many are there?”

  “Four.”

  “It sounds very seedy.”

  “I know. He made me feel like a whore.” She said nothing for a long moment then, very quietly, “What bothered me about it was that I liked it sometimes.”

  “Didn’t you want out?

  She yawned. “I’m tired. I need to sleep.”

  “Later. Answer me.”

  Marei set her jaw line before speaking. “You aren’t a very nice person, are you? How could I get out? He wouldn’t let me. The man is dangerous. Just how was I to leave the situation? You tell me. I was just a stupid girl playing games when this began. Now look what you’ve done to me!” She gestured at her wounds.

  “I’ve done nothing except get you away from men who were torturing you.” he said. She snorted. “Is that why you decided to blackmail him with the video tapes? To force him to end it?” he said.

  “Blackmail?” She looked dumbfounded.

  “Yes. So you could get out of it.”

  “But I didn’t! You have to believe me! I didn’t know what I was going to do, but there was no way out by that time and I certainly wasn’t foolish enough to try blackmailing him, not knowing the kind of man he is, the kind of men who work for him. I’m not lying. Maybe I’m not the smartest person in the world, but I wasn’t so dumb as to try and blackmail the President of the United States!”

  EIGHTEEN

  Seven Fountains, 7:48 p.m.

  Powers stared at the woman then said, “Your story is that you weren’t attempting to blackmail the President?”

  “Story? It’s the truth! I wouldn’t be so crazy as to try something like that. Whoever said I did is a liar!”

  Powers sipped his coffee then said, “I think it’s time you told me just who attacked you and why. This is no time for secrets.”

  Marei’s voice turned to a hiss. “The only reason I’m still alive is because I’ve not said what I know.”

  “The only reason you’re alive, Julie, is because I saved your life and because the others haven’t found you yet. You’re silence with me isn’t going to save you anything.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “Just who are you trying to protect?”

  “You’re a fool! Do you know that? I pity your wife, if any woman would have you.”

  “Answer me!”

  “Merde! I’m trying to protect me! Can�
��t you see that?”

  Powers rose abruptly and crossed the room where he stood looking at the blackness outside. The rain slick window was a mirror and he could see Marei slumped on the couch, looking very small and vulnerable. He didn’t like himself very much for what he was about to do, but she had to learn sometime and he needed to jar her into cooperation. He turned to face the woman before speaking.

  “Julie, very little I’ve seen and heard these last 48 hours makes sense to me. There is something going on that I need to know about, perhaps more than one thing that I have to know about. You said earlier your father would protect you. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but that won’t be possible. Your father and mother were murdered Sunday night.”

  Marei’s face turned white in an abrupt ghastly blush. Powers had seen the reaction just once before, in combat. Her pale face turned the color of a white sheet of paper. Her mouth moved as if she wanted to speak but no sound came out. He walked over, sat on the couch and reached across her shoulders. She gulped air like a fish taken from the water but still no sound came. He pulled her gently towards him and she moved like a mannequin. He held her in his arms then finally the sound came, a deep wail from within the frail woman, a cry of anguish, of despair and of loss so primeval it wrenched his gut and might as easily have come from an ancient cave as this cabin in the woods.

  ~

  Marei was asleep within minutes. There was very little remaining of her strength. Powers lay her down and pulled the wool blanket up to her chin. He turned the television on, surprised they still had electricity. There were three stations but only one with decent reception. He kept the sound down, so as not to disrupt Marei, and watched Dan Rather embrace the camera lens with his eyes and speak emphatically about the convention. Someone he didn’t recognize was singing God Bless America, but the television reporters were using the time to interview delegates, primarily elected officials, and ask them a series of heavily slanted questions, questions with an outrageous answer built in. Everyone smiled as if they were playing a game and all of them made love to the camera.

  Powers finished the pot of coffee as he sat staring, at but not really seeing, what was on the television. He realized he was hungry and rummaged in the kitchen until he located a can of chicken noodle soap he heated on the gas stove and ate standing up. The storm outside was unchanged and a weather warning ran continuously across the bottom of the television screen telling everyone to stay inside. He couldn’t help admiring the cabin. It was holding up well.

  A politician he didn’t know was delivering a windy introduction and Powers was half asleep when the First Lady, wearing a bright pink Chanel dress and a Jacky-style strand of white pearls, walked confidently onto the stage with a wraparound smile and friendly wave of her hand. Madison Square Garden erupted. Powers glanced at Marei who was so deeply asleep she might have been dead and turned the television up enough to hear clearly.

  The camera panned the enthusiastic crowd, interposing short takes of Becky with those of grinning women delegates. She was their hero. The First Lady moved to her left, waving continuously, then strode to her right, switching to the other arm. The camera moved to close up. Powers could see the strain on her face, the skillful though heavy makeup that masked it.

  Rather was speaking through the tumult. “...remains popular despite a steady stream of revelations ...” The crowd drowned him out as Becky approached the lecture, raising both arms in a large V. “...ruling of the court earlier today... let you listen.” Then Rather pursed his lips as he glanced over his shoulder towards the stage. The crowd slowly calmed and Rather needlessly said by way of introduction, “The First Lady.”

  It was five minutes into her speech before the delegates were silent enough to make it possible to follow what Becky was saying. She talked of pride, her confidence in the American people, in their judgment, about the certainty of victory in November. Every 20 or 30 seconds applause drowned her out. Somewhere a media person was counting the number of interruptions and the anchors would use that to gage the success of the speech, so of course it was written to create as many interruptions as possible. “Time to embrace the courage of this great nation...” Applause. “Must not forget those who are too often forgotten...” Applause. “The courage to seek change...” Applause. “Reach out to those trapped by circumstances...” Applause.

  “There is a plague upon the land,” she continued forcefully, “a blight that deprives our strongest and most able of their youth, an evil that seduces our young and despoils our conception of vitality. It is as corrupting a presence in our society as has ever existed. I’m talking about tobacco, that great demon that destroys and devours everything and everyone who stands against it! The money from this monstrous giant has corrupted Congress for generations as well as many instruments of government, but not me! I will not be silenced!!” The crowd erupted with revival zeal. The camera flashed a shot of a grinning Rather. “We must be... we have no alternative but to become a tobacco-free nation! Not just for us but for the children!!”

  Becky continued on the evils of tobacco for another five minutes, then she gazed at the crowd and waited until it grew silent. She removed a portable microphone from the podium, walked casually to the side and said, “Let me speak from the heart. Not as First Lady, not as the wife of our beloved President, not as a spokesperson for a cause, but as a woman, as an American. In my short lifetime I have watched the slide of this great nation into moral decay. As we have come to correct past injustices, to accept a much broader and more just definition of family and community, we have too often forgotten basic right and wrong. We are a nation awash in cynicism, in spin doctoring, in damage control. When I speak the basic truth my words are judged as if I were making a calculated pitch rather than speaking with simple candor. It has seemed to me at times that we have lost the capacity to hear honest talk about honest feelings. It saddens me.”

  Becky moved from the stage down four short steps to the delegates and worked from person to person telling how she met them, the lesson she took from their contact, the strength she drew. It was highly effective and at times very moving. “We are not a nation of peoples but of individuals, of women and men who still know right from wrong and want simple justice for their loved ones. Is that so hard?”

  “Turn it off.” Powers looked behind him. Marei was sitting up wide eyed, transfixed by the television. “Turn it off!” He did as she asked then sat facing the couch.

  “Do you want something to drink or eat?” She shook her head sharply. “In that case, we should talk,” he said, moving back to his place beside the couch.

  Marei was still staring at the silver dot in the middle of the television screen. “You know he hates her, don’t you?”

  “The President hates his wife?”

  Marei nodded her head slowly. “He told me many times. People believe they have an arrangement, that’s what you call it here, don’t you? An arrangement. They did at one time, but she takes too much from it. I think he’d kill her if he could. I doubt he told you that when you spoke to him.”

  “It’s difficult to believe.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You think so? You don’t know him then. Let me tell you something. Sometimes he had me make my hair like hers, with the band and everything and put on my makeup like she does, you know, old. Then he had me just lay there on the bed. He’d pretend to come into the bedroom and find me there dead. He’d act surprised then lift my arm and let it drop. He’d say, ‘Becky, Becky, are you really dead? I can’t believe it! Is it true?’ Then he’d run has hands over me, squeezing very hard on my breasts, my thighs, until it hurt and left bruises, but I had to lay there, as if I felt nothing. I was a dead body. He’d take off his clothes, push my legs apart and do it to me. I couldn’t move at all. He’d pump away saying, ‘You’re dead, you bitch! You’re dead! Dead!’ It never took long for him then. He liked it very much. We did that sick game many times this summer. May I have a cigarette please?”

  Powe
rs was almost physically ill as he extended the pack, then lit one for each of them. They smoked in silence for some time. “He’s a very cruel man,” Marei said finally, “not at all the fool he puts on. He was hurting me more and more often, and not just when I pretended to be his... wife. I told him I didn’t like it, but what I wanted made no difference to him. The only time I suggested we stop seeing each other he thought I was joking at first, but when he realized I was serious he was very ugly about it. He told me it was impossible, no one ever stopped seeing him and the sooner I understood that, the better for me. Besides, I could get him off two or three times in a night and he wasn’t giving me up. He didn’t say that but it’s what I think.”

  “There’s something you aren’t telling me, Julie. Another reason you couldn’t walk away from this.”

  Marei eyed him levelly. “You’re saying I’m a liar?”

  “Why not? There’s a great deal at stake. But the sooner you understand that I’m on your side and tell me everything you know, the better chance we both have of living through this.”

  She considered that for a moment. There was resignation in her voice when she finally spoke. “My father knows... knew Saddam Hussein. I met him several years ago. Early this summer I carried a message from the President to him, and his answer back.”

  It was nearly a minute before the full significance of what she said sank in. “You’re a courier for the President?”

  “Yes. Five letters to Saddam, five back.”

  “They’re secretly negotiating over the Gulf?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who knows about this?”

  “People on their staffs must know.”

  “On the radio, driving here, I heard the French are demanding a statement from the President that there have been no secret deals. They must know or suspect something.”

  “Why not? Anything is possible after these last three days.”