The Navidad Incident (16 page)

Matías isn't discounting how Angelina might react. Didn't he tell Lee Bo he can't afford to lose her? She's everything to him, the incumbent dictator of his desires. Yet sex aside, there must be something Angelina's not providing, or why would this maid from Melchor even bother him? Highly irrational, but so are the extenuating circumstances of the moment. Doesn't her very advent signal strange times ahead? Why else would he brood over a woman he's hardly seen head on, let alone spoken to? Everything's changing directions so quickly, escalating thick and fast, the usual channels can't deliver. With so many unknowns volleying at him from all sides, reflexes alone won't do.

Now's no time to be standing idle. The music's playing, so you better dance it to the end. And if you think before you move your arms and legs, you ain't dancing. You can't lose the moment, that flash of decisive inspiration. He's been here before. Just like when he decided to ask former Imperial Navy mentor Kazuma Ryuzoji to sponsor his studies in Japan. Or the anxious months before he finally brought Angelina here to this country, when he felt like he was fraying on the edge. Or when he first ran for president. Even after losing the presidency, the road to reinstatement was paved with snap decisions, like that contract with Ketch and Joel; the minute he met them, he knew it was no coincidence. Knew it without a second's hesitation. Call it a gut feeling—
Yes, here's a solution!
And now, this maid from Melchor is practically waving another contract right under his nose. But first, better read the fine print!

Matías reaches a decision. Before breakfast, he takes out a sheet of his personal stationery and pens a short note to Angelina:

Need an extra hand at the villa. Lend me that maid from Melchor for a while.

Matías

He's dashed off memos to Angelina before. He hates to telephone and would rather not rely on others to relay urgent messages. Heinrich, however, he can trust to deliver a simple note. Nothing new about that. Only this time, he'll be bringing someone back with him.

What will Angelina make of this snap request? He thinks it over. Any way he looks at it, the maid takes first priority. He'll have plenty of opportunity to explain it all to Angelina later. Or no, she'll catch on soon enough without his having to explain a thing. He needs the maid's powers to overcome the crisis he faces. Angelina picks up on these supernatural vibes more than he does, Matías tells himself. She'll understand better than anyone.

At eight thirty, Heinrich arrives. Immediately the President summons him to the back office and hands him a sealed envelope. “Take this to Madame before midday, wait for her instructions, then come back here.”

Heinrich, expressionless as ever, takes the envelope and heads for the garage. The President half-listens to Jim Jameson read off the day's lackluster schedule as he thumbs through a stack of papers to be signed, his eyes barely skimming the words. None of it sinks in. All documents have been prepared according to ministry manuals and precedents on file: minimal bureaucratic meddling, hand delivered by his excellent staff for the executive secretary to scrutinize before reaching him. As a rule, he'd read each one, but this morning he just can't seem to focus and signs them perfunctorily. He gets up and saunters from the office, touching base with Jameson now tackling mountains of paperwork out in the foyer.

“I'm stepping out for a bit. Be back in thirty.”

It's so unlike him to simply walk out in the middle of his morning session that Jameson rises in alarm, but the President reassures him.

“Just going out for a little walk. Won't take long.”

And with that, he leaves the startled executive secretary behind and walks down the hall. First President Cornelius undertook the construction of this Presidential Villa immediately after assuming office. While hardly luxurious by foreign standards, the sprawling neoclassical structure with its imposing whitewashed walls is the biggest thing ever built on the islands. In the beginning, opinion was not entirely favorable, but eventually the islanders came around to the idea that a president was bigger than all the clan elders put together; he needed a building this size to inspire international confidence. Even simple folk from the tiniest outlying villages know by now that in today's world, image is everything.

Matías likes the building. Admittedly, it was only after he became president he realized how much he liked it, how much he went in for big things in general. Construction proceeded slowly. Then six years after independence, just as the plasterwork was to receive the last finishing touches, President Cornelius fell ill and died; he never knew the comforts of living here. Three months later, Home Office Attaché Matías Guili was sworn in as his successor and quite pleased to take up residence. Soon he was having additions installed, with his own private quarters tucked unobtrusively behind, complete with Japanese bath. What he really likes about the Presidential Villa, however, is its formidable frontage, the broad lawn graced with translucent curtains of flowing water, the long galleries in columns end to end. It takes a lot of man-hours just to keep the tropical undergrowth from encroaching, and the illuminated fountain doesn't come cheap either, but the coffers can spare that much. These things aren't for Matías; it's the nation that needs them.

He's lived here eight years, not counting the three months when he lost out to Bonhomme Tamang. His rival never actually resided here during his short term in office—no, he commuted every morning from his own humble bungalow—or rather, just as he was moving in, the “American” president up and died.

Matías ambles through the building with no real urge to go outside. The villa is big enough for a good walk. The U-shaped two-story Palladian pastiche centers on a faux third-story facade surmounted by three flagpoles. At most times, when there are no visiting dignitaries, only the Republic of Navidad flag waves from the middle pole. Most of the ground floor is given over to various executive staff offices, in name at least; only the right wing is actually occupied. Walking the long hallway toward the left wing, behind which hide his private quarters, he passes the occasional secretary bearing a briefcase or an armload of papers. Each without exception is startled to encounter the President wandering about at this hour and fumbles to come up with a salutation. He ignores them all and keeps walking.
If only he were a ghost, invisible to others!
sighs an inner voice, his stray thought surprising even himself. He's still got plenty to do, too much in fact. By the time he runs into his fourth underling bowing clumsily, he's already regretting this whole exercise.

He makes straight for a stairway, which leads up to the grand hall that occupies the better part of the upper floor, a formal reception room for inaugural ceremonies and fêting guests of state. To either side are passages that run the length of the left and right wings upstairs, leading to various waiting rooms and some ten spacious guest suites. Apparently Cornelius had different ideas for the Presidential Villa; Matías has no intention of putting up guests here, official or otherwise. He occasionally has food catered in and will hire temporary help for special functions, but it's no fun being a hotel. Nor will he make a single budgetary concession to hire extra help. A once-a-week cleaning is the only time anyone comes up here. The beds where no one sleeps in rooms where no one stays are draped with white drop cloths. The President walks the corridor devoid of human presence, reaches the end, turns around, and walks back. He turns a corner, passes through three sets of double doors to the grand hall, turns another corner, reaches the other end, and returns. Back and forth.

He thinks of the man who had this mansion built. His dark face and ash gray hair, that winning smile, his unshakable sangfroid in decision-making. Unlike Matías, he could openly boast about his one-quarter German blood, and at age thirty he anointed himself battle-ready with that
nom de guerre
: Cornelius. An air of megalomania wafted about him and propelled him into the presidency, fulfilling an already tangible promise of greatness. If the man hadn't come along at the right time, the country might never have adopted the presidential system. Certainly no one else would have built such a grandiose Presidential Villa, nor put up such strong opposition to America. Yes, but if as a result Navidad drew closer to Japan, which in turn led to this Brun Reef oil-stockpiling thing, who was to say that trading off America for Japan was really an improvement? Seen against the growing estrangement between those two countries, was choosing a nearby major power over a distant superpower such a smart move?

Walking the corridor, it all comes back to him: Cornelius's face, his proud-chested stature, his deep rich voice. Whatever else you could say about him, the man had all the makings of a president. Compared to which Matías's own small frame is almost laughable. Not that Matías strikes people as especially short. There's something about him; he has only to ignore his height as if it were a trick of perspective, and those around him are forced to overlook it as well. Seated, no one ever notices how short he is; on his feet, good manners dictate that others pretend he just happens to be standing in a lower spot. This presents problems when he has to meet guests at the airport and cross the wide tarmac apron, so he makes a point of always waiting inside the terminal. Which constitutes no particular breach of protocol as long as the visitor isn't of equivalent rank—but foreign heads of state never come here anyway.

No, the respective heights of Cornelius and himself are not the issue. More to the point are those unresolved mysteries:
Why was the great man so nice to him? Why should he have invited Matías into the independence movement, then given him the nod to be his successor?
These doubts have niggled at Matías for over a decade, questions he's turned over in his mind hundreds of times. When Cornelius and he first met, Matías was just a supermarket owner with an honorary seat on an administrative hearing committee, which he attended purely as a matter of form since he had no say. Sure, Matías had financial connections, his share of acquaintances overseas, and maybe that made him someone of consequence in others' eyes. But political ambitions? None to speak of. Of course, Cornelius was not yet president, though he personified Navidad's hopes of breaking away from America. As Matías turns a corner in the corridor, he swears he can almost see Cornelius standing there at the far end. The huge double doors to the grand hall are shut, but the goings-on inside are clear as day: there's President Cornelius, and all around him the many formally attired guests, officials, and dignitaries, outer island leaders in their traditional robes, women in their finery attending the first-ever National Day celebration. Well, the great man was right after all. No one else could have fit the job description for president with all his qualifications. Not even Tamang, an Illinois University graduate who spent years in Washington as personal assistant to a certain lobbyist from Hawaii. If Cornelius had been coming in as third-term president, he'd never have gone digging up dirt about his predecessor. What a dumb thing to do! An invitation to chaos, a meaningless gesture to a handful of do-gooders. Nothing any self-respecting politician ought to do.

Tamang was always surrounded by his crowd. He and his pro-America pals, a real ruckus of a democratic party, deciding everything by noisy consensus. Still, he himself stood head and shoulders above the lot of them, and when they lost him, his followers ran out of steam. Despite intimations about a strong leader somewhere in their midst, not one of them took up the reins. Matías knows they hold a grudge against him, but who among them has the stuff to really oppose him in the political arena? Cornelius provided for Matías Guili as his successor; Tamang lined up no next generation. He had just taken office; maybe he hadn't planned that far ahead. At this thought, Matías stops in his tracks.
And what about me? Ever considered who's to come after me?
Times change, generations change, new ideas displace old truths—Cornelius knew a thing or two about social mechanics. He recognized that when the time came to step down, he should step down. He understood politics as it plays out over decades. Different though they were, Cornelius died believing Matías a worthy successor. Is there no one equally worthy to whom Matías can pass this heavy chalice? That someone must be out there, waiting in the ranks of officialdom. Maybe some game young entrepreneur on the way up. Or is he just kidding himself? That executive secretary of his, for instance, Jim Jameson, will he ever be president material? Or what's-his-face, the deputy head of the Home Office? Only time will tell, but that time has not yet come. He'll just have to carry on, the dynamo of the nation. The country's still not ripe for handing over. A crafty old leader for an immature country, a fresh young leader for an old country—that's how it works.

After several trips up and back along the corridors back, he realizes he's deliberately burying his head in the past and future in order to ignore the problems at hand. Nothing good can come of this. He's decided to summon that maid, and that settles that. Not that he intends to put her to menial work. Say he puts her in his private quarters, nominally under Itsuko, what use is he to make of her? What will Angelina's reaction be? What's the girl got hidden inside her? Nothing but unknowns. He'll just have to wait. Better go downstairs and get back to work.