Spencerville (23 page)

"I told you, this is a preexisting condition."

"Right. That's very romantic. Are you out of your fucking mind?"

"Probably."

"Well, we can integrate this situation into the equation."

"Speak English."

"Okay. Are you running off with her?"

"That's the plan."

"When?"

"Saturday morning."

"Can it wait?"

"No. It's getting hot here."

"I'll bet it is. That's why you have that piece stuck under your shirt."

Keith didn't reply.

Charlie asked, "Does the husband know?"

"No. If he did, this place would have been under fire when you drove up." Keith added, "He knows his wife and I were an item way back. He doesn't like that. He gave me until tomorrow to get out of town."

"Are you going to kill him?"

"No. I promised her I wouldn't. They have two kids. In college."

"Well, they had him around a long time. Good memories, life insurance, tuition taken care of."

"Charlie, don't joke about killing. I've had enough of that."

"Termination. You don't say kill, and you have to make a joke about it or it sounds ugly." He added, "Wouldn't life be easier for you if this guy committed suicide or had an accident? I didn't like him."

"He doesn't meet our requirements for termination."

"Did he threaten you with bodily harm?"

"Sort of."

"There you go. Paragraph five of the rules of termination."

"Commandment one. Old Testament."

"You got me. Hey, do what you have to do. Actually, if you come live in D.C., you'll be okay. She'll like the capital."

"Not to live there for five years. She's a country girl, Charlie."

"I'd like to meet her."

"Sure." Keith put out his cigarette.

Charlie said, "You're coming back with me on the two-fifteen. You know that, don't you?"

"First I've heard of it."

"There's no way out of this one, Keith. Believe me. But I'd rather you come as a favor to me. Not because you owe me a favor, but so I can owe you a favor."

"I'd like to keep the bullshit out in the farmyard."

"You're coming to Washington to save my ass. I can't go back there and report to the secretary of defense that I couldn't get you to see him and the president. Jesus, I'd be spending the next five years in Iceland counting radar blips. My wife would run off with somebody like you."

"Cut it out." Keith stayed quiet for a while, then said, "They rely on our loyalty toward one another more than our loyalty toward the government, don't they?"

"That's all that works these days."

"Don't you feel used?"

"Sure. Used, underpaid, unappreciated, and unneeded. You're right, the danger has passed, and we're... how does that ditty go? 'The danger's passed, the wrong is righted; the veteran's ignored, the soldier's slighted."

"There you are."

"But so what? We'll play if they pay." He looked at Keith. "You know, buddy, I sometimes feel like I'm on a football team that just won the big game. The other team's gone home, the stands are empty, and we're running plays against nobody, in the dark." He sat quietly a moment, and Keith could see that Charlie Adair was having his own little crisis of conscience and confidence. But with Charlie, you never really knew.

Charlie looked up. "The meeting is tomorrow morning."

Keith said, "In fact, I had planned to fly to Washington on Saturday on the two-fifteen. Can we make the meeting for Monday?"

Charlie adopted his make-believe officious tone of voice, and replied, "My good man, you have an appointment with the secretary of defense at eleven-thirty A.M. tomorrow in the Cabinet Room, then you will go into the Oval Office at precisely eleven fifty-five where you will shake hands with and say hello to the president of the United States. As much as these two gentlemen would like to work their schedules around yours, they may possibly have other appointments on Monday."

"Perhaps a little advance notice would have been appreciated by a private citizen who has all sorts of constitutional rights not to be summoned by..."

"Keith. Cut it. You're no more a private citizen than I am. And you know how these things happen. It happened to Sir Patrick Spence."

"Who?"

"The guy in the Scottish ballad. My people are Scottish, and this place is named Spencerville. That's how I happened to think of it."

"Think of what?"

"The Scottish ballad." He recited, " 'The king sits in Dumferling Town, drinking his blood-red wine, oh, where will I get a good sailor, to sail this ship of mine?' — that's the president talking. Then, 'Up and spoke an elderly knight, who sat at the king's right knee' — that's the secretary of defense, who says, 'Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor, that sails upon the sea.' That's you. Then, 'The king wrote an official letter, and signed it with his hand, and sent it to Sir Patrick Spence who was walking on the sand.' That's me coming here. Then, 'The first line that Sir Patrick read, a loud laugh laughed he; the next line that Sir Patrick read, a tear blinded his eye' — that's you again."

"Thank you, Charlie."

" 'Oh, who is this that has done this deed, this ill deed to me, to send me out this time of year, to sail upon the sea? Make haste, make haste, my merry men all, our good ship sails at morn' — actually two-fifteen — 'Oh say no more my master dear, for I fear a deadly storm.' " Charlie Adair said to Keith, "So that's how these things happen. That's how they've happened since the beginning of time. The king's sitting around, not doing shit, pounding down a few, and some harebrained idea pops into his head, and some asshole flunky tells him it's a great idea. Then they send me to pass it on." He looked at his watch. "So make haste, make haste, Mr. Landry."

"What happened to Sir Patrick Spence, if I may ask?"

"He drowned in the storm." Charlie stood. "Okay, you can travel as you are, minus gun, but please pack a suit. We don't want to overdo the Cincinnatus thing in the West Wing."

"I have to be back here tomorrow night, latest."

"You got it. Hey, if you're coming to D.C. with your lady on Saturday, Katherine and I will take you to dinner. It's on Uncle Sam. I'd like to meet her."

"I'm turning down the job."

"Wrong. You'll tell them you need the weekend to think it over. You have to speak to your fiancee. Okay?"

"Why mess around?"

"Maybe you owe it to — what's her name?"

"Annie."

"To Annie to be consulted. We'll take her around Washington, we'll have private tours of everything, and we'll talk it over. Katherine is good at that."

"Annie is a simple country girl. I told you, this is not the life..."

"Women love cities. Shopping, good restaurants, shopping. Where are you staying?"

"I don't know."

"I'll book the Four Seasons. She'll love Georgetown. Looks like downtown Spencerville. You can show her your old haunts. Stay away from Chadwick's. Linda still hangs out there, and we don't want a scene. I'm looking forward to this weekend. Let's roll."

"You're a shit."

"I know."

Keith left Charlie in the kitchen, went upstairs, and packed a garment bag.

On the way to the airport, Keith said, "When they asked me to leave, you didn't stand up for me, Charlie."

Charlie lit a cigarette as he drove. "I didn't want to. You were burned-out, buddy. You wanted to leave. You know that. Why would I want to prolong your unhappiness?"

"What makes you think I'm any less burned-out now?"

"I don't know. This was not my idea. They think there's some energy left. It's like carbon soot, you know? You run it through the afterburners and apply more heat, and you get a little more fire out of it."

"Interesting analogy. What happens to the burned soot?"

"It turns into vapor and blows away."

Keith directed Charlie to Toledo Airport, and they made the flight with a few minutes to spare.

They had first-class tickets, and Keith asked, "Do I get a twenty-one-gun salute at National?"

"Absolutely. And a red carpet."

"Brass band?"

"The whole works. The White House travel office does it right."

Keith put on the earphones and read during the flight, so he didn't have to listen to Charlie Adair.

The aircraft began its approach and descent into National Airport. Keith and Charlie were sitting on the left side, which had the best view. Government and military air restrictions prohibited aircraft from approaching National from the east because of security concerns involving the White House, and aircraft approaching from the north, south, and west had problems getting low enough because of all the high-rise buildings on the Virginia side of the Potomac and noise restrictions in the Maryland suburbs. For this reason, when airliners approached from the north, as they were doing, they flew directly over the Potomac River, which afforded a spectacular panorama.

Keith, in the window seat, looked out at the sunlit city. The aircraft seemed to glide over the river, and Keith could see Georgetown, the Watergate, then the Mall, the Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson monuments, and in the distance the Capitol. It was truly a beautiful experience, and he never tired of it, especially after he'd been away awhile.

It occurred to Keith that, as he landed, the city was exerting its own gravitational pull on him, drawing him into its grip. It had probably occurred to Charlie Adair, too, when he booked seats on the left side of the aircraft.

They landed on time at National Airport. There was no twenty-one-gun salute, nor a red carpet or a band, but there was a government Lincoln Town Car and a driver who took them to the Hay-Adams Hotel on Sixteenth Street, a block from the White House.

Adair offered to come in and have a drink, but Keith said, "You've been kind enough for one day."

"Don't take it out on me."

"What time tomorrow?"

"I'll come by and collect you at ten-thirty."

"Too early for an eleven-thirty."

"You know the drill at the White House. A half hour early is late. A minute late is a bad career move."

"See you at eleven."

"We could hit traffic. The car could break down..."

"We can walk. I can see it from here. See?"

"Ten forty-five."

"Okay. Bring my return ticket, or I'm not going anywhere with you."

"I'll have it with me."

"And reserve me a car at the other end. Toledo, Columbus, or Dayton."

"Will do. See you tomorrow."

Keith went into the restored landmark hotel and checked in. The reservations having been made by the White House travel office, everyone was deferential. This was a town, he knew, that lived and breathed power, not politics, as people thought. Power.

Up in his room, he looked out over Lafayette Square at the White House and the huge dome of the Capitol beyond it. He'd been gone less than two months, but the mad energy of the place grated on his nerves. Too many cars, too many horns honking, too many people, too hot, too humid, too everything.

He considered calling the Porters, but there was still a possibility that their phone was tapped, and in any case, there was no reason to call them and no reason to call Annie's sister since he intended to be back in Ohio on Friday evening, home before midnight, and at Terry's house before ten A.M. Saturday.

He also considered calling friends in Washington, but there was no point in that, either. In this town, among government workers, your friends and your business colleagues were almost always the same people. If you lived in the suburbs, you might have neighbors who were also friends, but if you lived in town, as he had done, your social life was an extension of your career. He'd gotten a few letters from former colleagues, but basically, if you were out of the business, you were out of the loop, even if you stayed around.

He made himself a drink from the room bar and stared out at the city, which someone had recently described as the last and only power capital left in the world. Could he live here again? Why would he want to? Even as a retired government employee, he never considered it.

In many ways he was typical of hundreds of thousands of men and women, military and civilian, whose careers had been suddenly cut short by the end of the Cold War. And in this respect, too, he was no different from millions of other warriors in the past, the winners as well as the losers, whose services were no longer required. But unlike the soldiers or veterans in Charlie Adair's little ditty, he never felt slighted, and would have welcomed being ignored.

He watched the rush hour traffic below, then looked over the city. Most of the people he knew who were in his situation had not gone literally home as he had, but had found that they were more comfortable close to the Beltway where they'd spent probably half their careers. He, on the other hand, wanted a complete break with the past, and he thought he'd accomplished that. In fact, he had accomplished that. "I can say no to the president. That's what I fought for. Mr. President, what part of no didn't you understand?" He smiled to himself.

He had an early dinner alone in his room and ordered a bottle of Banfi Brunello di Montalcino to go with his Chateaubriand and truffles. He told himself he did not miss this kind of food, then admitted that he did. But if he wound up in Spencerville, he'd get a couple of good cookbooks. The Porters could do the vegetables, he'd do the meat, and maybe Annie could learn continental pastry. Maybe not. What difference did it make? And, in any case, he had no idea where he was going to wind up. The point was, this brief sojourn in Washington had highlighted the differences between here and Spencerville — not that they needed to be highlighted; they were monumental enough.

In some strange and perverse way, however, he missed this place. He had to admit that. Charlie Adair knew that, which was why he'd brought him here. Keith kept telling himself he wouldn't live in Washington again, and he couldn't live in Spencerville. So he'd find a neutral corner of the world where he and Annie could be happy and at peace.

He finished dinner and left the room. Downstairs, he asked the doorman to get him a taxi. Keith told the driver, "Georgetown."

The taxi made its way through the tail end of rush hour traffic and crossed Rock Creek at the M Street bridge. On M Street, Georgetown's main commercial street, they passed a number of his old haunts, which conjured up memories of bright and beautiful young people at the bars or sitting in booths, discussing art, literature, and travel, and sometimes they'd discuss sports, too. But these were all hors d'oeuvres, the things you nibbled on before the main course, which was politics and power.

Keith directed the driver past his old apartment on Wisconsin Avenue, then down some side streets where friends lived, or had once lived, including streets on which lived women he'd known. He didn't see anyone he knew on the streets, which was just as well, he thought.

He tried to picture Annie here and realized that she would be perplexed and perhaps bewildered by this world. Even the simple act of telling a doorman you wanted a taxi would be alien to her. Of course she'd pick it up quickly, but that didn't mean she'd enjoy urban living, not even in the quaint streets of Georgetown. No, she'd feel dislocated and she'd become dependent on him, and that would lead to resentment, and when a woman was resentful — who knew where that would lead?

They could live in the suburbs, of course, or the exurbs, and he could commute, but he pictured phoning her out in Virginia or Maryland at eight P.M. and telling her he had a meeting that would last until midnight. Younger couples in Washington and elsewhere led this kind of existence, but they were in the striving mode of their lives, and both spouses usually had careers, and one of them hadn't spent most of their lives in a rural town of fifteen thousand people.

She'd adjust, of course, and probably not complain, because that was how she was. But it would be such an uneven relationship; it would be his world, and his job, and his friends, and he no longer cared for this world, that job, or those friends and colleagues. He would be miserable.

But maybe not. That was the thought that kept nagging at him. He knew he didn't want to impress her with the so-called glamour and excitement of Washington cocktail parties, formal dinners, important people, and power. He wasn't impressed, and he doubted she would be. On the other hand, maybe a year or two wouldn't be bad, as long as it was finite. During that time, maybe the situation in Spencerville would resolve itself. He played around with this thought, then said, "Could it work?"

The cabbie glanced back. "Yes, mister?"

"Nothing. Take a right here." Keith read the name on the cabbie's license — Vu Thuy Hoang. He asked the man, "Do you like Washington?"

The man, from long practice and with the inherent politeness of the Vietnamese, replied, "Yes. Very good city."

Like so many of his displaced compatriots who lived and worked in the capital of the country that had tried to help and succeeded in failing, this man, Keith thought, had suffered. He didn't know how or to what extent, but there was a story of suffering in Vu Thuy Hoang's history that would shame most Americans, like himself. Keith didn't want to know the story but asked the man, "What part of Vietnam are you from?"

Used to the question from one too many Vietnam veterans, he replied quickly, "Phu Bai. You know?"

"Yes. Big air base."

"Yes, yes. Many Americans."

"Do you go home?"

"No."

"Would you like to go home?"

The man didn't reply for a few seconds, then said, "Maybe. Maybe for visit."

"You have family in Phu Bai?"

"Oh, yes. Many family."

"You are welcome back? You may go to Vietnam?"

"No. Not now. Someday. Maybe."

The man appeared to be in his mid-forties, and Keith imagined that for some reason or another, he was persona non grata in his native land. Perhaps he'd been a government official under the old regime, or a military officer, or had worked too closely with the Americans, or done something more sinister, like been a member of the old, despised National Police. Who knew? They never told you. The point was that in Phu Bai there was a police chief, and the police chief had a list, and on that list was this man's name. That police chief was sort of the Phu Bai equivalent of Cliff Baxter, except that Keith's problem with Baxter wasn't political or philosophical — it was purely personal. But the bottom line was the same — some people could not go home again because other people didn't want them to.

Keith said to the man, "Back to the hotel."

"Yes? No stop?"

"No. No stop."

At the Hay-Adams, Keith gave Vu Thuy Hoang a ten-dollar tip and free advice. "As soon as you can, go home. Don't wait."