American Quartet (11 page)

“I need you, Fi,” he whispered. “With me. Always.”

“Are you sure it’s not just generic? Man needing woman?”

“That, too.”

“The vectors have to intersect,” she said stupidly. They rarely do, she thought. To him her career was an annoyance, to be disposed of sometime in the future. Was being needed by him enough for her? The question was at the core of her uncertainty. It was incredible how little they understood about each other.

“Do you love me?” he asked gently, disengaging. For the first time in her life she felt the danger of surrender. She wanted to say: Define that, as if she were sweating a witness. Actually, she had resisted the definition ever since she had met him. If it had to do with longing, she did have her moments. And when he was near her, like now, she felt the full power of her sexuality. Could it be sustained for a lifetime? Or was she asking too much of life? She responded by kissing him deeply on the lips.

“I hope you love me, Fi,” he said. “Because that’s what I need most of all.” She felt him pressing her, selling, persuading.

“Take me in,” he whispered. “And never let me out. Let’s marry.”

A part of her was ready for surrender. Its implications frightened her. He was thinking primarily of his own immediate needs and aspirations.

“We’ll see,” she whispered, unsure of what it meant. “After the campaign.”

“Yeah,” he drawled. “Maybe then.”

REMINGTON
smeared grease on his burned hand, carefully applied gauze, then wrapped it with surgical tape. The bandage inhibited the mobility of his fingers and he had to utilize one of those clip-on black ties that he detested.

He was showered, shaved, bandaged and ready at the moment the door chimes echoed through the house and his first guests arrived. He had deliberately set the party for that date and time. The guest of honor was the Secretary-General of the OAS, Manuel Ricardo. The cosmic judge would surely enjoy the irony.

A tall man in impeccable tails, the regular butler at his sit-down dinners, opened the door and pointed to Remington, who stood at his regular receiving place in the foyer. The first guests were Senator and Mrs. Harrison from Montana.

“What the hell happened to your hand, Tad?” Harrison asked, after Remington had implanted the obligatory two-cheeker on Mrs. Harrison’s heavily rouged cheeks.

“The hammer missed,” he said with a grin.

Other guests began to arrive—the Swiss and German ambassadors, the assistant secretary of the Treasury, a titled European and his wife. Remington’s small dinner parties were known for their “A” mix, three or four top diplomats, a senator or two, sometimes a member of the Cabinet, a titled couple and, if possible, a cultural figure or someone from the world of high finance, a highly decorated general.

Servants passed drinks and hors d’oeuvres in the big room, dominated by his heroic portrait. In the dining room, hidden by a brocaded screen, white-gloved waiters put the final touches on three tables for eight. Passing from guest to guest, he joked about his bandaged hand.

“You look marvelous,” one of the women whispered, the wife of the German ambassador, a Nordic beauty with huge breasts, suitably displayed. She had coquettishly assaulted him on earlier occasions.

“An appellation that doesn’t begin to describe you,” he said with a wink. “Someday I intend to emulate Hannibal,” he added, watching a blush begin below her neck and move downward. He knew she loved the suggestive banter.

“I hope you have a herd of strong elephants.”

“I can vouch for their trunks,” he whispered in her ear. She giggled with pleasure.

He felt buoyant. High. Deliciously stimulated. His mind seemed fresher, his voice deeper. He had never felt more articulate, more witty and charming.

“Do you expect a plum if the Republicans win, Tad?” General MacIntosh asked. He was a squat yet imposing man, a three-star general.

“I’m keeping a low profile.”

“But if something big was offered?” the general persisted.

“That would depend.” It was the perfect note, knowing yet noncommittal. “They have to win first.”

He moved away, checking his watch. Dinner would begin precisely at nine. The guests of honor, Manuel Ricardo and his wife, had not arrived. It was all part of the preordained plan, the perfect irony. The Pan American Union Building was the showcase of the OAS. His guest list made no allowances for a no-show. Ricardo’s presence would be still another validation to be added to the others.

“It was an absolutely ghastly act,” someone said, the remark casually flung across the room. He turned to find the knobby face of Countess Faille, looking agitated and already slightly tipsy. “I heard it on the radio as we were coming here.”

“What?” someone inquired.

“The shooting.” The buzz of conversation lost its momentary rhythm.

“Someone in the Pan American Union,” the countess exclaimed, taking another drink from a silver tray.

“It better not come to this country,” General MacIntosh asserted.

“What?” Remington asked.

“Terrorists,” the general muttered.

“You think that . . .” Remington checked himself and turned away to hide his surprise. Terrorists?

Excusing himself, he stepped behind the screen. The waiters nodded, alert and ready. His experienced eye surveyed each table setting, the flower arrangements, the Waterford crystal, the rare plate, the polished silver. The plate, his mother’s pride, had once belonged to Czar Nicholas. Somehow she had managed to get her hands on it before Marjorie Merriwether Post could get to it. The memory was reassuring.

“You’d be proud of me, my darling,” he told himself, certain of his mother’s presence nearby. “We shall have an exquisite celebration.”

At that moment he heard the chimes and rushed to the hall to greet the guests of honor.

The Secretary-General and his wife looked pale and shaken.

“You cannot imagine,” Mrs. Ricardo said breathlessly.

“Cold-blooded bastards. They attacked the poor man inside the building.”

They,
he thought, enjoying their reaction.

“It’s frightening. They’ll stop at nothing,” Mrs. Ricardo said, taking a Scotch from a tray. “I really need this.” She took a deep swallow.

“America is no longer safe,” the Secretary-General sputtered. “We are no longer immune here.”

“Who do you suppose it was?” Remington was all innocence.

“Crazies,” Ricardo said, with Latin emotion. “They have no ideology. Destroy for the sake of destruction. The world is going mad.”

“We’ll have to put a stop to it,” General MacIntosh said, as the other guests crowded around the Secretary-General and his wife, eager for details.

The conversation of his guests drifted in and out of his consciousness. Remington listened vaguely, his mind transcending the sense of time and place as he recalled the act, the firing of the pistol, the startled look on the man’s face, the surge of ecstasy. He was translating history, illustrating power, recycling his mother’s compelling desires. Are you proud of me, mother? he cried within himself. He was certain that she could hear him as he withdrew again into the tunnel of his memoy.

A fall rain had deepened the green of the back lawn of the great house. Puffs of clouds passed over an incredibly blue sky and San Francisco Bay in the distance merged the colors into aqua dotted with foaming whitecaps.

Until then, at the height of his Senate campaign, he had been brave, with an inner invincibility, like hers, that could not be broached. Now the polls showed him losing. He was getting a bad press and words like elitism and dilettante were being used as cruel and deliberate barbs. The prospect of loss came crashing in on him, squeezing out his courage.

“They don’t understand,” his mother said. “They are fools.”

“Whatever they are doesn’t matter. I’m losing.”

“You will not lose. You’ll see.”

“Maybe I can’t hack it, mother. Maybe I can’t realize your expectations?”

“That is unworthy of us, Tad,” she said with lofty scorn. “We don’t give up.”

“I am just facing reality.”

“Whose?” she snapped, her blue eyes widening. “They are not going to beat us. Never. And you, my dear, are heading for the White House. It is as simple as that.”

“Nothing is as simple as that,” he had protested.

“Now, now,” she said, smoothing his hair again, forcing him closer, enfolding him in her warmest embrace. She had made a refuge for him out of herself.

The memory was as real as his skin and he felt the familiar tug of pleasure at the center of himself.

The details of the dinner had been impeccably planned. Deliberately, he had not shared the honors with a surrogate hostess. Because it was his mother’s celebration as well, he dared not profane it. One of the tables, subtly larger than the others, had been set for nine, and he had inserted himself between the wife of the Secretary-General and the wife of the German ambassador.

“None of us are safe any more,” Mrs. Ricardo said.

He wished she would stop harping on that. She drank glass after glass of white wine, ignoring the vichyssoise. Her deep-set brown eyes flitted about, agitated, like those of a trapped bird. He felt mischievous.

“Who was the victim?” he asked, taking the hand of the wife of the German ambassador under the table, as if drawing her into his private conspiracy. The returned pressure on his fingers assured her complicity.

“An Argentinian. Jorge Perfidio. Lovely man. Charming wife. Two small children. It was a hateful act.”

“Maybe it was an act of passion,” he goaded, watching her empty her glass as her agitation increased.

“Terrorism,” she scowled. “They are jealous of us.”

“They?”

He was smiling, chiding her, deliberately punishing her for her foolishness. She hadn’t the remotest understanding of what had occurred. Was she attempting to trivialize the will of the cosmic force?

“You will have it in this country,” she continued passionately. “I guarantee it. You are living in a fool’s paradise here.”

“Perhaps,” he said, but she was not to be daunted. The crab imperial was served and more white wine. He had chosen it carefully, a Chablis grand cru. Later a St. Emilion, 1966, would be poured with the beef Wellington.

He turned to the wife of the German ambassador, whose hand still clung to his, caressing.

“We were talking about terrorism,” he said.

“In Germany we have cured that problem.”

“Yes,” the other woman said, finishing off her wine. “We know all about German cures.”

He felt the grip on his hand tighten. The Latin lady’s glass was refilled. She was getting drunk now, her pent-up hostility erupting. He enjoyed the spectacle. It was always a public sport in the capital to see someone in the vortex of power lose control.

“Public life is a menace,” she lashed out bitterly. “Sop to the unquenchable male ego. Diplomacy is a worthless profession.”

“She is getting drunk,” the German ambassador’s wife whispered, clutching his hand. He listened to the buzz of conversation. Candles flickered. The white-gloved waiters delicately passed the silver plates. The power of this orchestration comforted him. If only they could understand his need, the cosmic pull. It thrilled him to think about it. He wanted to assure them of the necessity of his acts, the glorious inner voltage that electrified his acts. He moved the German ambassador’s wife’s hand to his erection. She gasped at him, startled. But she did not pull her hand away. Then he turned suddenly to Mrs. Ricardo, bending low, his mouth near her ear.

“Perhaps he needed killing?” The words were designed for her ears only. She turned glazed eyes toward him, her lips trembling, unable to speak. Behind her rouged cheeks her skin went dead white. As he looked at her, there was a brief second of communication, and in that moment he felt the sweetness of confession. The woman abruptly stood up.

“I feel ill.” She gagged and cupped her hand over her mouth as she hurried off. The sudden movement at the table forced the German ambassador’s wife to remove her hand.

“She drinks too much,” she said, apparently disappointed by the interruption.

He had wanted to say: Czolgosz killed him. But that would have been beyond her comprehension.

Fools, the lot of them, he thought. Moths around a candle, flickering at the edges of power. Only he knew real power, only he had the ability to will events.

When Mrs. Ricardo returned, they had nearly finished dessert. She eyed him warily.

“I hope you are feeling better,” he said. She nodded and quickly turned away. He stood up and tapped his glass. All conversation ceased.

“There is no greater joy than breaking bread with friends,” he began. “Especially friends so distinguished . . .” The compliments droned on. The Secretary-General was appropriately lauded for his achievements. Remington carefully briefed himself for the toasts, bathing both his honored guest and the others in a warm pool of hyperbole. The response, he knew, would be equally laudatory. Compliments would assail him. But nothing would ever remotely touch what was inside, the secret power.

Still, he could find contentment now in dealing with ironies. There was simply no other way to translate himself to them. Their ignorance was massive, their reality covered by a veneer of self-delusion. They would never know the inner truth of anything, especially of himself. The best he could do was to throw them a bone.

“Few of us has any insight into his own destiny,” he told them. He looked beside him at the pale Mrs. Ricardo, barely holding herself together. “We live in perpetual danger. There is a predatory flock of eagles preying upon us, against which we are defenseless lambs. Terrorism, as we have learned tonight, has indeed come to America. Terrorism has torn one of us from the bosom of our loved ones. We cannot, we must not let this occur again.” Inside he was laughing at them. One man could easily terrorize a nation. “Perhaps a moment of silence would be appropriate,” he said, lowering his head. The guests followed suit. In the silence he thought of his mother. She would have sneered at them all.