Little Green Men (3 page)

That night, after the symphony at the Kennedy Center, they sat on the marble steps by Memorial Bridge and he told her in excited tones, in the moonlight, about his senior thesis on France's decision to withdraw from military participation in NATO in 1966. She was enthralled. From Oxford, where he was avoiding his own military participation in the Vietnam War, he wrote passionate letters to her about the emerging Common Market. They were married at Christ Church in Georgetown. It was a by-the-Establishment-book affair. The secretary of state, an old family friend of Bitsey's parents, attended. The reception was at the Chevy Chase Club. The honeymoon, in Bermuda. Jobs awaited them on their return. Bitsey in the marketing and sales office of the Hay-Adams Hotel. Banion as staff aide to Sen. Germanicus
P.
Delph of North Carolina - fortuitousiy, as it turned out, just as the Delph hearings on the CIAs unsuccessful attempts to assassinate the Canadian prime minister were getting under way. It was the beginning of Banion's unlikely career as a television "personality." But then in Washington, most careers are unlikely, one way or another.

Senator Delph held his position strictly by virtue of seniority on the Senate Committee on Governmental Eliminations. He was not, as one pundit at the time put it, a charter member of Mensa. The newspapers usually described him as a man of "limited intellectual interests." Banion, bright young man that he was, made himself indispensable to the senator, and as the hearings unfolded during that long, hot summer, he became familiar to the millions of Americans watching on TV as the handsome young staff aide whispering almost nonstop into Senator Delph's ear.
The Washington Post
wrote that he "appeared not only to have the senator's ear, but to live in it."

Banion's authorship of the resulting committee report did much to enhance his new luster. It struck a well-balanced tone between righteous indignation and cautious reform, between those who thought that the United States had no business trying to poison Canadian prime ministers and those who, while disapproving of this particular instance, felt that the United States ought to reserve the right to dispatch troublesome Canadian PMs in the future, should circumstances warrant. The quality of the prose was unusually high for a congressional report, down to elegant literary quotes from Cato the

Elder, Paul Valery, and, with a touch of intellectual sauciness, Mao Zedong.
The New York Times
bestowed upon him the laurel of "young man to watch." Other senators tried to poach him away from Senator Delph for their own staff.

Banion began to appear as a frequent guest on
Washington Weekend,
one of the more thoughtful, if intolerably dull, weekend television shows. He enjoyed the sensation of being stared at on the street by people who had seen him on television, the little
ah
of recognition by a
maitre d'
when he arrived at the restaurant. Peg Bainbridge. the
Post's
editorial-page editor, invited him to contribute an article to her Op-Ed page. She liked what she saw and asked for more. He resigned from Senator Delph's staff - or, as he put it a bit pompously, let it be known that he was "allowing himself to be lured back into the private sector" - and set up shop as a print-and-pixel pundit, with a syndicated column in the
Post
and a regular slot on
Washington Weekend.

He stood out on
Washington Weekend,
though, to be frank, anyone with a pulse would have, considering the other regulars: a gassy, perpetually indignant columnist who had once been ambassador to Lesotho; a woman who had been covering Washington for one of the wire services since the Truman administration, and whose favorite phrase was "on the other hand"; a woman TV reporter who was having an affair with an ancient Supreme Court justice; and an obese, lisping think tanker who had published a book passionately arguing that Shakespeare's plays had been written by Queen Elizabeth. When Roger Panter, the Australian press baron, bought the television station that owned
Weekend,
Banion made his move. He wrote him a memo proposing certain changes, beginning with making him the show's host. Panter promptly sacked the other regulars and gave the show to Banion with orders to "juice it up" and a budget to do just that.

Banion changed the format to a live, Sunday-morning one-on-one interview, introduced with a crisp taped investigative piece, and concluding with a one-minute parting thought by Banion. It certainly beat watching a bunch of self-important talking heads sucking their thumbs and regurgitating thoughts stolen from that morning's papers, all in order to drive up their already inflated lecture fees. In a medium glutted with sound bites, people were happy to come on and have twenty minutes of national TV exposure all to themselves, even if Banion sometimes extracted an admission price by flaying them alive, on air.

His audience built steadily. His first big ratings coup came when former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara went on the show to reveal that he had been addicted to mind-altering hair-restorative drugs the whole time he was escalating the war in Vietnam. Suddenly
Sunday
became the show to be on.

Ample Ampere, the giant electric company, signed on as sole sponsor. Banion signed a lucrative multiyear contract. The salary was nice, but the real money came from lecture fees, astronomical, bordering on intergalactic. It was amazing how much corporations were willing to pay to hear in person the same stuff they could get on TV but such is the nature of celebrity. The historian Daniel Boorstin defined it as "being known for being known." He might have added, "being paid for being known." Banion's youthful visage was now a fixture in the media firmament. Amazonian villagers with satellite TV would recognize his face if it went floating up their tributary.
Maitre d's
now saved tables for him on the chance that he might show up. His caricature was duly painted on the walls of the Frond restaurant, where big
feet dined on briefcase-sized steaks and four-pound lobsters (despite the fact that younger, smaller lobsters have more tender flesh). He had to allow extra time in airports for signing autographs on his way to the gate. That is, in the event he was even traveling by commercial airline. His lecture agent, Sid Mint, now hinted strongly to his clients that
their chances of getting John O
. Banion to speak at their special event would be greatly improved by sending the corporate jet to fetch and return him.

And here he stood, in Val Dalhousie's Rigaud-candle-scented parlor, preparing to have his posterior caressed by the very people who ran the country. Life was good. And it had all been so effortless.

Ah, here came Bitsey and Tyler. Tyler, curator of the Fripps Gallery, was looking natty today in a houndstooth blazer, dark blue shirt, French silk tie with little framed paintings - how appropriate - gold collar pin. He wore his hair slicked back at the sides in the manner of the athletically wealthy.

"Is that blood on your shoes?" Tyler grinned.

"He'll survive," said Banion airily.

"Can't wait to see the seating plan at your dinner for him."

"If he comes," said Bitsey, looking even more alarmed than usual. "Val says they'll cook up some last-minute crisis just to cancel."

"This administration doesn't have to cook up a crisis. They come naturally."

"Here's how to solve
that,"
said Tyler in a lowered voice. "I happen to know that Orestes Fitzgibbon is going to be in town that day." Orestes Fitzgibbon, the Anglo-Greek financier, now a naturalized American citizen - owing to a tax problem - had recently purchased Immensa Corporation for $7 billion. He was known to be impulsively generous with his money - in part, it was said, because it infuriated his numerous ex-wives. "He's presenting us with a third El Greco. Why don't you invite him to your dinner? I doubt the president would be late if he knew Fitzgibbon was going to be at his table. He sat next to Senator Rockefeller two years ago and wrote him a campaign check for a million - on the spot."

"Oh God, that would completely solve it," said Bitsey. "Can we get him on this short notice?"

Tyler smiled.

"I'm not really his
biggest
admirer," Banion said. "I'm glad he's giving you all those El Grecos, but I sat next to him at an Erhardt Williger dinner, and frankly I found him kind of rough around the edges."

"Oh, Jack," said Bitsey, "don't be such a
stick."
Bitsey had been to so many dos at the British embassy that she had started to sound like a subject.

"I'm sowing marital discord," said Tyler. "You two sort it out and let me know."

"It's
decided,"
said Bitsey.

Clare Boothe Luce had introduced them. Tyler was originally Australian. His father had made some vast, murky fortune selling the adductor muscles of giant clams
–
Tridacna
gigas
- to aging, impotent Formosans who thought they would help them get the old noodles to stiffen, then laundered that ill-gotten fortune in opals, oil, ranching, and vineyards. Young Tyler was sent off to English boarding school at an early age to be sodomized and otherwise inculcated into the British establishment. He'd gone on to Cambridge and then became a protege to Sir Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of the Queen's pictures at Buckingham Palace, Windsor, and Hampton Court, and, as it turned out, Soviet agent. It came as rather a shock that the man who had educated the monarch on the subtleties of Poussin had been whispering state secrets to the KGB's London
rezident.
Tyler moved on and married the high-stepping, troubled daughter of Sir Reginald Pigg-Vigorish. Sir Reg was up for a life peerage just about the time their divorce was announced and, not eager for his daughter's shall we say
peculiar
sexual antics to become tabloid fodder, settled a few spare Cezannes on his son-in-law to ensure his discretion. The divorce was settled quietly. Tyler sold the Cezannes to L'Orangerie museum in Paris for an undisclosed sum ($8.7 million) and left for America and the curatorship of the prestigious Fripps Gallery. His social luster was enhanced by the fact that he was close to the Prince of Wales. Banion was trying to enlist Tyler's help in getting the prince on
Sunday.
What a coup that would be. Well, there was no point arguing with Bitsey over having that oversexed troll Fitzgibbon to dinner. It was, as Bitsey had made plain, decided. Had the two of them rehearsed this little dance?

But here was Tony Flemm, host of the second-rated Washington show, trying not to look jealous. "Jack. Nice show."

"Do you think? I don't know."

That's right, torture the poor bastard, make him explain, make him elaborate in front of everyone on just
why
he thought it was such a good show. But wait, here came Burton Galilee, beaming, shaking his head in mock horror at Banion's ruffling of presidential eagle feathers. And here, just behind him, came the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and behind him, the French ambassador. A triumph. Banion filled his lungs with scented candle air and exhaled the soft, sweet vapors.

Val was clapping her hands. "Lunch, everyone, lunch!"

THREE

Monday mornings promptly at ten, Banion and his secretary, Renira, reviewed the previous week's mail and the coming week's schedule. She had read the mail to decide which of the approximately three to four hundred pieces warranted personal answers and had prepared an hour-by-hour summary of the week. Renira was British, and her voice could emasculate a phone caller by the final syllable of "Hello?" As a media figure, Banion believed it was his duty to have a listed telephone number. As a practical matter, he found this a colossal nuisance.

Last week's mail contained the usual number of letters hailing Banion's brilliance; the usual number denouncing him as an intellectual bully; the usual asking for amplification on a point; the usual asking him to read "the enclosed" manuscript with a view to helping get it published; the usual asking him to speak, gratis, at an upcoming function (these were forwarded to Sid Mint, Banion's lecture agent, who would then inform them that Banion's fee started at $25,000); the usual number beginning with "You won't remember me, but . . ." (to which Renira would reply, "You are correct that Mr. Banion does not remember you"); the usual number of offers of commercial endorsement, generally for fountain pens, expensive leather briefcases, running shoes, luxurious writing paper, dictionaries, CD-ROMs, ocean liners, sports cars, and of course walking sticks, Banion's trademark eccentricity - some said affectation. (His collection included a cane made from the amputated leg bone of a Civil War soldier; it had belonged to John Wilkes Booth; another made from a bull's penis.) These received curt, offended form replies.

A clothing store chain had recently offered $100,000 if he would be photographed wearing a pair of $29 dungarees. This offer Banion had wistfully considered. Of course he couldn't go hawking clothing -much less jeans. He never ventured outside his Georgetown house without a tie - but a hundred thousand smackeroos for an hour's work was significantly better than minimum wage. He declined, coolly, with the form letter, but it left him in a foul mood all day, calculating what he could have bought with the money. Christie's was holding a wine auction, and there were a few cases of 71 Romanee-Conti that had caught his eye, but
...
no
...
mustn't start doing that sort of thing. A number of Washington media bigfeet had started down that trail of late, hawking milk, credit cards. So undignified . . .