CHAPTER 26
OH, RANDOLPH!
I hope this isn’t going to make things awkward between us!” Angel shouted from her office bathroom while reassembling herself.
Bird sat on the sofa of sin, mind swirling, drinking vodka.
“Oh, God!”
“What?” Bird said apprehensively. It had only been an hour. Surely she couldn’t be pregnant already?
“My lips!”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“They’re chewed raw! You’re an animal!”
“Sorry,” he said.
“I don’t mind. I’m a carnivore myself.” Angel’s head appeared from behind the bathroom door. “You don’t have herpes or anything, do you?”
“No, Angel. I don’t have herpes.”
Her head disappeared again. “I usually ask before. But you were so impetuous.”
Bird took a large swig of vodka. “Angel, could we talk?”
“There are so many more things I’d rather do with you than talk, mister.”
Bird poured himself another drink. He called out, “I’m not like this, you know.”
“Like what?” It sounded as though she was applying lipstick.
“I mean, I don’t go around forcing myself on women.”
Angel emerged from the bathroom, her toilette complete. “Are we feeling guilty?”
“I’ve only done this once.”
“Once?” Angel snorted. “I got the impression Minci was frigid—but once, in eight years of marriage? That must be some kind of record.”
“Her name is Myndi. I meant—being unfaithful.”
“The great circle of life. Lust, remorse, lust, remorse. Take it from a pro: Concentrate on the lust. It’s so much more rewarding. Pour me one, would you?” She picked up the remote control and flicked on the TV.
“I thought we were going to talk,” Bird said.
“I just want to hear about the East China Sea.”
“Angel, I think it would be best if we didn’t do this again.”
“Didn’t you enjoy it? That’s weird. Nothing on CNN. Let’s try Fox.”
“No, it was amazing. Really. I . . .”
“Me, too. I haven’t had an orgasm like that since Bush 43’s first term. God I miss him.”
She was sitting next to him on the sofa of sin, her thigh against his. He smelled her perfume.
“Nothing on Fox either. That is interesting.”
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I am married.”
“Darling,” Angel said, “trust Momma. It’s all going to be fine.” She reached over with her hand and began to walk her fingers up his leg. “ ‘The itsy-bitsy spider fell down the waterspout.’ Barry loves it when I do that.”
“Uh, maybe not do that.”
“Where did she get the name, Myndi? Lord & Taylor?”
“Angel, could you not talk about my wife that way.”
“Teas-ing. Does she have a sister named Muffy?”
“Angel.”
“So where do you think Myndi is right now?”
“How should I know?”
“No further questions, Your Honor.”
“She’s training. She made the team, you know.”
“Yes, you said. I was so relieved. It was like this enormous weight being taken off me. I’d been so worried.”
“That’s not very nice.”
“Darling, when did I ever claim I was nice? What about that trainer of hers you’re always blowing on about?”
“Sam? Why?”
“You are aware of the statistics?”
“What statistics?”
“Incidence of extramarital intercourse between equestriennes and their trainers. They did this huge study. I think I read it in Forbes. Something like over seventy percent. Or eighty.”
“Angel.”
“Google if you don’t believe me. Didn’t it ever strike you as curious that wealthy men with younger, trophy wives hire gay trainers for them?”
“I’m not wealthy, and she and I are the same age, so I wasn’t really focused on that. And where did you learn all this?”
“Sweetheart,” Angel said, “do you think I’ve been in a convent all these years?”
“No. Hardly.”
“Did I strike a nerve? Need novocaine? I actually do know people in Virginia and Maryland. There are these agencies that specialize in gay trainers. Apparently the best ones are English. Big surprise, there. So your Sam, is he gay?”
“I haven’t asked. I don’t think so. No.”
“Is he good-looking?”
“Angel. I don’t know. I suppose. He doesn’t look like the Elephant Man or anything. Listen, just because in a moment of weakness I—”
“Is that what it was?”
“You have no reason—or right—to imply that Myndi and Sam are—”
“Doing the woolly deed?” Angel took Bird’s glass out of his hand and put it on the table. “Darling, I couldn’t care less what those two are doing in the hayloft. I just don’t want you to end up being the chump.” She was twirling a strand of his hair in her finger. “As for your moment of weakness, I don’t remember you being particularly . . . weak.”
Her skirt rode up, revealing a lacy fringe of thigh-high stocking.
“Well, well.” Angel smiled. “And what do we have here?”
And so began Moment of Weakness, Part 2.
“Oh, Bird. Bird. Bird.”
She pulled away from him.
“Darling,” she said, breathing heavily. “Do you think we might come up with a different nom d’amour for you?”
Bird, also breathing heavily at this point, said, “Is something wrong with my name?”
“No, darling,” she said, tracing a line across his lips with a fingernail. “It’s a sweet name. But I like to . . . express myself when I’m in the arms of Eros. And shrieking ‘Oh, Bird, oh, Bird, oh, Bird’ doesn’t . . . It just sounds a little . . .”
“All right,” Bird said, impatient to get back to business, “call me Walter if you want.”
“Walter? Um. Sounds . . . Cronkite-y.”
Bird lay back on the sofa. “Then call me Ishmael. Whatever.”
Angel sidled up against him. “Do you know what I’d like to call you?”
“No idea.”
“Randolph.”
Bird stared. “Why would you want to call me Randolph?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always thought it was such a hot name.” She was playing with his earlobe now. “Only when we’re doing it. I wouldn’t call you that in front of the staff.”
“Good idea. It could only confuse them.”
“Do you like it?”
“I don’t really have an opinion on it. But if it makes you happy . . .”
“Let’s take it out for a spin, shall we?”
Back to business. Within moments Bird heard, “Mmm. Oh. Yes, darling. Oh. Ohhhh. Yes, Randolph, yes!”
SEVERAL PLEASANT if perplexing hours later, the defense lobbyist formerly known as Bird was in the passenger seat of a cab on the way back across the Potomac to the Military-Industrial Duplex.
Angel was certainly a more complex package than he had imagined. Randolph? God knows where that came from. What other surprises lurked ahead? Would he soon be dressing up as General Patton? And yet Bird felt more relaxed and pleasant than he had in a long time.
The message light was blinking. Twelve new ones. He was about to hit the Play button, and then thought no. Whatever the world wanted from him, it could wait until tomorrow.
He took a long, hot shower and soaped off the sin.
He was walking back to the kitchen when the phone rang. It was after 1:00 a.m. He felt the little barbed hook of guilt. No, don’t pick up. He wasn’t confident that his mendacity was up to the job. He would need to practice. He knew this much: after eight years of marriage a wife possessed better sonar than a submarine. One pinggg and you were dead in the water.
He glanced at the caller ID. Whew. He
picked up.
“Randolph speaking,” he said.
“You need to come back here.”
Seven times and she wanted more? The woman was insatiable.
“Baby, I’m limp. I need my sleep.”
“Turn on the TV. Be here in an hour.” Angel hung up.
Bird picked up the remote control and clicked On.
A news correspondent was talking, but Bird’s eyes went to the bottom of the screen:
DALAI LAMA DIES IN CLEVELAND
Bird heard the flow of words coming from the TV reporter but was unable to process them. The hospital was behind him. A crowd had gathered. The people held candles. The correspondent kept chattering, but Bird didn’t want words. Wasn’t interested in words. He pressed the Mute button and watched.
He stood in front of the TV, towel around his waist. The Washington Mall lay before him, everything very still. The only motion was the correspondent’s lips and the candles flickering in the distance behind him. Bird felt a sadness descending on him that he couldn’t explain. The man whose death had just been announced had been just a piece in a cynical game of chess. So he was at a loss to understand why he felt so bereft, standing there, stock-still, frozen in a private moment of silence.
The Dalai Lama’s face came on the screen, the dates of his birth and death beneath. He was smiling, as though he were about to tell a slightly naughty joke.
Bird felt an inexplicable but profound sense of loss that he had never met the Dalai Lama. He was pleased that the TV people had selected this particular photograph, a favorite of Bird’s. It was so eloquent of the Dalai Lama’s humanity—a man who could laugh after everything he had been through—escaping assassination, fleeing his native soil, watching it fall to invaders and occupiers—all the hardships, sorrows, and deprivations, yet still somehow “a fellow of infinite jest.” Bird remembered a line from one of the hundreds of articles he had read: “He giggles a lot.”
What a good epitaph it was. And so the great soul was gone out of the world now and had taken his giggles with him. Bird felt the tears trickling down his cheeks. Whoa, he thought, where are these coming from?
CHAPTER 27
THE FOG MACHINE OF WAR
Only at the most trying of times did Rogers P. Fancock utter four-letter words—and then only mentally, to himself.
This delicacy of manner he had inherited, along with a substantial sum of money, from his father, Hancock P. Fancock. By way of compensation, Fancock indulged in frequent usage of nonscatological, blasphemous expostulations.
But now, Monday morning, 2:00 a.m., as the weekend from hell was segueing into what looked to be a week from hell, the s——, f——, and even the truly vulgar c——words were cropping up in Fancock’s mind.
Where the f——was Strecker, goddamn it? And why wasn’t he answering his f——ing cell phone?
“What is it, Bletchin?”
“Sorry, sir, but it’s Mr. Strecker on the secure line, and I know you’ve been trying to reach him.”
“Thank God,” Fancock muttered, reaching for the phone. “Goddamn it, Barney, I’ve been calling you for hours. Where in blazes have you been? Why haven’t you—”
“Rog. Rog. Trust me. I’ve been busier’n a one-legged Cajun in an ass-kicking contest.”
“No, no homey metaphors just now, thank you. Are you in Cleveland? Tell me you’re in Cleveland.”
Barney whispered. “San Diego. But shhh about that.”
“San Diego? But what about Cleveland?”
“Rog, calm down. Don’t worry. My peeps are in Cleveland. They got the situation covered. Meanwhile, did I hear that you were trying to get him moved to NORAD?” Barney laughed. “Who in hell came up with that?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“The Big Guy? God save the United States of America.”
“When I told the president that I was in receipt of actionable intelligence that the Chinese were going to try to kill him, he went . . . Suffice to say he was adamant that we move him to a secure federal facility. And since it didn’t seem quite right to put him in a supermax prison or Guantánamo . . .” Fancock sighed. “I ran it past His Holiness’s person, Jingjam. But His Holiness was asleep. They were going to ask him when he woke up. I gather he never did. Wake up, that is. Well, at least he went in his sleep, God rest him. Barn, tell me that he died of natural causes. Please tell me that. Barn?”
“Well,” Barney said in what struck Fancock as an inappropriately frisky tone, “we won’t know that until we get the autopsy, will we?”
“Oh, Barn. I haven’t slept since last week. I’m an old man. I don’t have the energy to drag this out of you with hooks. The TV says he slipped away quietly, peacefully. Tell me this is true.”
“He had cancer, Rog. Tumors on the brain like birdshot. Something like that would tend to have a deleterious effect on your life expectancy.”
“Why are you talking in this elliptical fashion?”
“You recall teaching a seminar on exit strategies?”
“What on earth does that have to do with this?”
“This is all about exit strategy, Obi Wan. That chapter in your book? ‘Tactical Ambiguity,’ about how to use chaos and confusion as a cloak? You had that real nice term for it, ‘The Fog Machine of War.’ Well, we’re going to generate us a little fog in Cleveland, Ohio.”
“Now hold on, Barney. Steady on. Things are getting sticky. Admiral Doggett called an hour ago. The PLA is mobilizing ground forces in Tibet. And the Taiwan Strait looks like Broadway on Saturday night.”
“Then all the more reason for fog. Remember Rumsfeld’s maxim? ‘If you can’t solve a problem, make it bigger’?”
“Yes, I remember that one. We’re not using that playbook.”
“Rog—do I have the papal blessing?”
Fancock listened to the ticking of the grandfather clock in his office.
“Rog? You there? I know you’re tired, but don’t fall asleep on me. I’m waiting for my execute order.”
“The Big Guy is very nervous about all this, Barn.”
“He damn well should be,” Barney said. “He’s the President of the United States of America. Are you telling me he’s curled up in a fetal position under his desk in the Oval Office, with his thumb in his mouth?”
“It’s not quite that bad, but he does have reservations.”
“Reservations.” Barney snorted. “You got a copy of Shakespeare in your office there?”
“Of course. Why?”
“Find the ‘Once more unto the breach’ speech from Henry the Fifth and go in there and read it to him. That’ll put the lead back in his pencil.”
Fancock sighed. “Very well, Barn. You have authorization to proceed.”
“Thank you. We’ll get this right for you, Rog. Don’t you worry. You were always such a tough grader. Still can’t believe you gave me a B on my thesis.”
“I’m hoping for an A on this one, Barn.”
“You and me both, Professor. Failure is not an option.” Barney laughed. “Actually, failure is always an option. But here goes nothing.”
“That’s so reassuring.”
CHAPTER 28
YOU REALLY ARE A THOROUGHGOING BASTARD, AREN’T YOU?
President Fa entered. The Politburo Standing Committee neither stood nor nodded in greeting. It was chilly inside the room, and it wasn’t the air-conditioning. But then Fa hadn’t been expecting a show of solidarity or collegiality—no, not this morning. The ever-vigilant Gang had given him all the latest intelligence and gossip. Fa teased him, “You are my éminence jaune.”
So here was where things stood: On his return from Lhasa, Minister Lo had gone directly to the Guowuyuan, the State Council, rather than to the Standing Committee, to make his report on the situation in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. This was not strictly insubordinate, but there was a strong whiff of impertinence to it.
Gang had further learned that Lo had preemptively lobbied the State Council against permitting
the Lotus’s body to be brought back to the land of his ancestors for stupa burial. Indeed, Lo had told the council that MSS agents within the Tibetan’s circle were “issuing instructions to their people back home to prepare for traditional holy war.”
They Eat Puppies, Don't They? Page 20
