Golden Years

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “No point in it. Maybe Bride Mary isn’t there. That we know about the place will be enough to give the creeps the creeps … You have all the safe-deposit boxes lined up for our articles?”

  “They’ll be filled with all your material on Monday morning by law firms whom I don’t know and who don’t know who’s behind the drop. It won’t work for long, but it will last a few days, which is all you’ll need.”

  “And the fail-safe mechanisms?”

  “All in place. The most important one is the one you report from the plane.”

  “After I get the message from the answering machine in my basement—which we’ll make sure is working before we leave.”

  “What if we don’t hear from you or about you from our observers?”

  “Give it an hour, then act.”

  I shivered.

  “Okay. I’ll check in on Sunday evening and will expect to hear from you at Palwaukee on Monday morning.”

  “And we’ll call you again that evening when we’re back here,” I said.

  “Please God.” Vince sighed loudly just like his wonderful Sicilian mother.

  I shivered again.

  Why was I doing this? Why was I permitting my crazy husband to do it?

  The Good April came home from the hospital on Sunday afternoon. She seemed in good health and good spirits, though still quite frail. Home was home, but only half home without her husband.

  We had a quiet little party, only ten or twelve of us; but we drank tea, ate scones, and quickly left. I noted with some interest that Sean brought Erin along. She seemed reluctant at first, but joined in the laughter and singing. Nice little voice. She’d fit in all right. But look, kid, if you’re scared—and there’s reason to be scared—quit now. If you become the third one to break his heart, I’ll claw your eyes out.

  Well, I wouldn’t really.

  Vince came over in the evening for a last briefing. He was somber, we were lighthearted. The Light Brigade, maybe?

  We made sweet and tender love, then slept till the alarm went off at 5:00. Rather I woke at 5:00. I had to haul poor Chucky out of bed.

  We were barely dressed when the limo showed up at 5:30 to take us to Palwaukee. Rain pounded on the car windows and the wind buffeted the car itself. At Palwaukee we found our (borrowed) Gulfstream III waiting for us in the dark, one engine running and its navigation lights spinning. The limo drove us right up to the boarding ramp. A cabin attendant held an umbrella over us as we were hustled into the plane. The copilot loaded our luggage in the hold. We both carried briefcases with our arguments.

  The pilot spoke to us with the genial confident smile that pilots always maintain, no matter what the weather.

  “The conditions are acceptable for takeoff,” he said, “though just barely. We’ll have no trouble getting above the weather, then ahead of it. It will be a smooth ride to DC. So relax and enjoy the flight. Janet will bring you breakfast as soon as she can … Incidentally, the weather will have passed through by the time we return to Chicago tonight. Please fasten your seat belts now. We expect to be in the DC area in an hour and a half, maybe a little less.”

  “What did he say?” Chucky stared at the luxurious comfort of the interior of the Gulfstream.

  “He said fasten your seat belt.”

  He was so sleepy that I had to do it for him.

  “This isn’t the whole plane, is it?”

  “It’s a Gulfstream III. It has intercontinental capabilities. We could fly to Paris in it.”

  “Good idea.”

  The pilot taxied to the end of the runway. The rain pounded the windows. The plane rocked in the wind Suddenly we were racing down the runway and off into the dark. Chicago had vanished almost immediately after we left the ground. My husband was clutching the armrests tightly.

  Takeoff at 6:00. Into the general aviation airport in Maryland a little before 8:30 local time. Our appointment was at 9:30. Tight squeeze?

  “Where is Mary Margaret when we need someone to say the Rosary?”

  I can never tell whether my husband is joking about airplanes or whether they really frighten him. He is, however, a very poor traveler. If we staggered into the Fed’s office and he vomited on them, it would be most unfortunate.

  Then we shoot through the clouds and climb into the pink sky of sunrise. Old Sol himself suddenly shoots above the horizon turning our cabin red and gold.

  “Who turned on that bright light?” Chuck demands.

  Janet brings us a great breakfast, complete with English muffins, omelets, bacon, orange juice, grapefruit slices, toast, and jam. I prepare Chuck’s muffins for him.

  “That’s strawberry jam,” he protests.

  “Eat it anyway.”

  He eats all of his breakfast and half of mine. Then he leans back contentedly and sleeps all the way to Maryland. Sometimes I think he enjoys consuming breakfast as much as he enjoys consuming me.

  Since mothers worry, I spend some of my time worrying, not so much about our caper since I know we’ll pull that off, but about my kids. We told them at home that we’d be away all day and back in the late evening. No details. Miss Nosey Parker lifts her red eyebrows in suspicion. She knows we’re up to something that we probably shouldn’t be, but since we’re adults, she doesn’t ask any questions. She and Erin will feed themselves and Shovie in our absence. Erin will try to take charge because she’s the employee. Mary Margaret, shrewd little precinct captain that she is, won’t resist that decision but will help her in such a way that she does half the work.

  Erin is reluctant to respond to Seano’s interest. It’s a class thing. She’s a domestic servant and he the scion of the family. She’s read too many English novels. The Crazy O’Malleys don’t care about such things. Our eldest son is married to a Mexican-American woman who gives her children Latino names that refer to us—Juan Carlos and Maria Rosa. Chuck insists she call him Don Carlos, which she laughingly does, and I become Donna Rosa. Erin doesn’t draw any conclusions from that, poor kid. Hopefully she will.

  As the Good April often says, “Everyone can’t be Irish, but they’re just as good as we are anyway.” Except that Erin is Irish.

  One time at the country club, an obnoxious commodity trader made a crack about “that little spic’s tits” when he was standing behind Chucky. My husband floored him with one quick punch. The guy threatened to have us thrown out of the club, but ended up quitting himself.

  I don’t know where my husband, sleeping peacefully next to me and looking like the adorable little boy that he usually is, ever learned that punch. Mary Margaret has offered to teach him the black belt stuff, but Chucky says he doesn’t need it.

  I also worried a little about Mary Margaret. She had caught me off guard in her question about whether I was an alcoholic. The other kids had asked less direct questions like, “Mom, why don’t you drink.” And I would reply with limited truth, “I had trouble with it when I was younger and just gave it up.” That was all they needed to hear and all they wanted to hear. But Mary Margaret was more probing. I gave her a more detailed answer, which satisfied her for the moment. She might come back later for more details, some of which she wouldn’t want to hear, especially about her half brother Karl, who was a pilot for Lufthansa. Or maybe she would want to hear it. Could she imagine what it would be like to be a few months out of Fenwick and a member of an Army of Occupation? Could she picture the loneliness? And the astonishing stories of Chucky’s capers in Bamberg—all the lives he had touched? Maybe she could. I’d have to play that by ear. I would be rigorous with myself about telling her the truth, but only as much truth as she demanded.

  I glance over the outline of our “presentation” to the Feds. Chuck had outlined our respected arguments. He’s the bad cop, I’m the good cop, which I think is a mistake in casting, but what do I know? If the Feds are guilty about what they’ve done to Bride Mary O’Brien or if they are sufficiently afraid of Chucky, we’ll do okay.

  The plane begins to descend. Janet clear
s away breakfast. The pilot says we will land in Maryland on time. We circle over Chesapeake Bay, a splash of blue under the Indian summer sun, and slip into the airport at Simpsonville. We tell the crew we’ll be back about 11:30. They promise lunch and an ETA Santa Rosa at about 3:00 Santa Rosa time.

  A limo is waiting for us on the runway. Two local security people, both very dignified Nigerian students at George Washington University bow us into the car. They are to drive us to Dupont Circle and wait in Chevy Chase till we return.

  At Dupont Circle, there is a Benz with two Reliable Security people from Chicago who will drive us the few blocks to our destination and drive us away afterward. They phone a confirmation to Mike Casey in Chicago. Chuck and I are astonishingly relaxed.

  “I hope the lunch is as good as the breakfast,” he says as we pull up to the obscure and worn little office building on Massachusetts Avenue just off I Street. Now I begin to worry. Will we ever get back to the plane?

  The handsome man at the security desk looked at us suspiciously.

  “Ambassador O’Malley and Ms. Clancy to see Colonel Chandler.”

  He pondered Chuck’s passport very carefully.

  “Where are you ambassador to?” he demanded, his accent pure hill country.

  “Currently without a post. You’ll see my name on your list.”

  The White House barrier all over again?

  “What’s on the list is my business, sir.”

  “Not when my name is on it.”

  “You don’t look like an ambassador to me.”

  Chuck sighed loudly.

  “Neither did Adlai Stevenson.”

  “Who are you, ma’am?” He glanced at my driver’s license with contempt.

  I almost said that I was the woman who slept with the ambassador. But we didn’t have time to waste with this jerk.

  “It says who I am—Rosemarie Helen Clancy.”

  “Yes, ma’am … I can read even if I am a redneck. What is your relationship to the ambassador.”

  Again I curtailed my wit.

  “His wife, sir, of almost thirty years.”

  He seemed skeptical.

  “Tell you what, Officer. Either you call the colonel’s office and tell him we’re here or I’ll knock out a few of your front teeth. That will create a crisis and you’ll lose your job.”

  He picked up the phone and punched in three numbers.

  “There’s a man down here who claims to be an ambassador and a woman he claims is his wife … O’Malley, that’s the name all right … He don’t look like any fucking ambassador … All right, I’ll send him up.”

  “Third floor,” he said ominously.

  “I know where it is … You may lose your job anyway.”

  There was no sign naming the offices on the third floor. An officious woman met us at the elevator and said that Colonel Chandler would be right with us.

  Chuck glanced at his watch.

  “Our appointment was at 9:30.”

  “It’s 9:35.”

  “We would have been punctual if it weren’t for that fucking asshole downstairs. Tell the colonel I expect to see him immediately.”

  Chuck was putting on one of his acts. I had almost never heard him use that language, much less to a woman. She scurried back down a corridor and came back.

  “Come with me, please,” she said reproachfully.

  The offices along the corridor were occupied by men and women, busily shuffling through papers.

  William Chandler had put on a little weight and lost a little hair since Bonn. However, he still radiated genial, aromatic charm.

  “Chuck, Rosie, great to see you again,” he said, leaping up from his steel, government-issue desk. “It’s been a long time.”

  He extended a hand which Chucky didn’t take.

  “What the fuck kind of asshole operation you running around here, Bill? Your security guard downstairs tries to keep us from getting up here and insults my wife. Your secretary gives me the Colonel-Chandler-is-busy stall. Is this how efficient our intelligence community is these days?”

  He sank back into his chair like someone whose balloon had been pierced by a pin.

  “I’m sorry, Chuck. Because we’re so secret we don’t exercise too much clout on picking our support staff. We pretty much take what the government gives us. I really am sorry. I’ve wanted an excuse to get rid of that guy downstairs. Now I have it … Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “Tea for both of us, please, Bill … . Simmer down, Chucky. It wasn’t Bill’s fault.”

  “Same fucking idiocy over at the White House.”

  Chandler left the room. He was one of the top intelligence people in DC but he had to make his own tea. A penalty for not being out at Langley or over at the FBI. There were costs one had to pay for top secrecy.

  He came back shortly with a teapot which was probably a family antique and two elaborate china cups. As he poured the tea, he said to me, “How are all your wonderful children, Rosie, especially that little redhead who was so fluent in German?”

  I was now to be the good cop.

  “They’re fine. The little redhead is still fluent in German and graduates from college this spring. There’s an even smaller redhead who is going off to grammar school. The oldest two are married, both with two children and expecting a third. Kevin Patrick is finishing his dissertation at the University of Chicago in musicology. Jimmy will be ordained in the spring. Seano is, I think, in love with an Irish immigrant. We can’t complain.”

  “The little redhead still knows everything?”

  “And everything else besides … Actually, she’s a dear.”

  “Glad to hear it … Chucky, congratulations on your photo of the president. Has him just right. I hear you provided him with some interesting insights.”

  Chuck pretended to relax.

  “He didn’t seem to take what I said very seriously.”

  “Most of our people in the various agencies wouldn’t buy it either. But some of us think you may just be right.”

  “I am,” Chuck said, “just you wait and see.”

  “Ten bucks on it?”

  “Agreed. 1991 a cutoff date?”

  “Fair enough … Now what can we do for you this morning?”

  Chuck pretended to hesitate.

  “First thing. If you or your friends have any inclination to sanction us for what I’m going to say, I warn you that all our information is hidden in several secret places you’ll never find and that we have already prepared a press release.”

  He looked startled. He remembered the dictum from the Bonn days—never fuck around with Chuck O’Malley. He can be real mean.

  “Chuck, I don’t know what you’re talking about … We wouldn’t dream of sanctioning you, no matter what you said or did. You’re too well known.”

  “So was Jack Kennedy.”

  “You know we didn’t do that.”

  “I’ve never been sure about that … You certainly tried to get Fidel Castro.”

  “I give you that, but it was because Bob Kennedy forced us to. You’re safe no matter what you want … But what do you want?”

  “I want you to deliver Bride Mary O’Brien and her daughter to her husband by 5:00 P.M. local time today. Otherwise, all hell will break loose.”

  “Who?” he said as his facial expression took on an image of a man utterly flabbergasted. Unfortunately, the brief quirk of fear came first. A vein in his neck was twitching.

  “You know who I mean. She’s probably up in your safe house in Rosetta. It should not be hard to drive her down to the wine country this afternoon.”

  “I’ve never heard of Bride Mary O’Brien.”

  “That wasn’t the name with which she was born. When she came in out of the cold you gave her that identity, which you lifted from an Irish immigrant in exchange for a green card. She’s called Kathleen N. Houlihan now and also Ms. Sean O’Shea. Her husband is a Kerryman. Your cowboys were too dumb to get the allusion. Don’t worry. We did
n’t talk to her. So you don’t have to worry about sanctioning her.”

  “We wouldn’t do that …”

  “And you better not think of sanctioning the second Bride Mary either, though some of your cowboys might want to do that now that Bill Casey is the head of the CIA.”

  “You have murder on the brain, Chucky. We don’t do that anymore, at least not very often.”

  “I want to establish that, if your guys didn’t learn it in Bonn or Saigon, it is not wise to fuck around with me.”

  “I think we did learn it, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The pallor that had crept over his face revealed that Chuck had terrified him.

  “Let me clarify the story for you, Colonel. The woman whom you are holding in durance vile up at Rosetta House—is the head man there Mr. Jackson still or is that a name for whoever is in charge?—and who is known now as Bride Mary O’Brien is an American, probably born in Ireland, who did something very brave as a young woman for you and your playmates. I don’t care what it was or what her name was. At some point you pulled her in out of the cold, perhaps as a reward for her bravery or, more likely, because you weren’t sure she would be able to withstand torture if the other side lifted her …”

  “Nobody holds up under torture these days,” he said quietly.

  “Regardless. You gave her a new name, probably did some cosmetic surgery, and set her free—as free as anyone can be with you spooks watching her every move. The cowboys who supervised her were scared. She had done too much. She knew too much. What if she decided to write a memoir? What if someone turned her? They didn’t want to let her go. They wanted a tragic accident to occur. The rules said that could not be done and a lot of you thought that if she died there might be an investigation of what had happened. So you called the cowboys off and warned them of ultimate sanction if they harmed her.”

  “This is all fiction, Chuck,” he said sadly. “None of it’s true.”

  “Then a couple of years ago, with Stan Turner out of the show and Bill Casey to take over if Reagan was elected, the cowboys came back. She was a walking time bomb. All right we can’t kill her. But let’s lift her for a while, at least until some of the danger goes away. They figured that eventually they could squeeze authorization for termination with extreme prejudice. Dope her and the little girl up, take them a hundred miles over the ocean in a helicopter, and dump them, just like the cowboys did in ’Nam.”