American Romantic (21 page)

Sit down, Harry said. Have a beer.

I will have coffee, Nikos said.

Do you know those four?

By reputation, Nikos said.

They are bad news, Harry said. You can tell by looking at them.

Juvenile delinquents, Nikos said.

Harry and Nikos sat awhile, not speaking. They watched a line form in front of the disco. Harry focused on a girl, her shuffle-walk, lithe. He could tell she was not of the country. By her dress and her looks and the way she carried herself, he knew she was European. She was unaccompanied, not the normal thing. From a distance she looked so much like Sieglinde that he rose from his chair and very nearly called out. When she turned around he saw that she was not Sieglinde. She looked nothing like Sieglinde. This was not the first time he had been fooled. Stung.

 

These many years later, in retirement, the ambassador was said to be in hiding, but that was surely malicious rumor. Anyone who wanted to find him could do so with scant effort, elementary detective work; and there was no evidence that anyone was interested. He had been retired for a decade and his moment of consequence had occurred many years before that. Moment of consequence—Basso Earle's ornate phrase, spoken dryly, his annoyance barely concealed. Basso said, We've broken dishes, Harry. We took a chance and the chance didn't work out. His accent thickened, curdling a little. Now comes the cleanup, always more hazardous than the event itself, more fraught. Not the steak, you see. The sizzle. Not the offense but the shadow of the offense. Not the facts of the matter but the perception of the facts of the matter. We live in dark times. Scoundrels abound. But you know the drill. The cleanup will take some little while—so many loose ends, so much drama—and for obvious reasons you can't be part of that except to be cooperative in the interview. Our cleanup will be tightly held in-house, a board of inquiry, the objective to tidy the record. Make certain that we're all on the same page and so forth and so on, and when our work is done the result will be highly classified because the material can be easily misunderstood. Your mission was not in search of a separate peace, as all those sunshine patriots in Congress would claim if they knew about it. So few people understand what we do and how we do it. Dead ends are part of our business. Dead ends are what we live with. That leaves you, and as it happens a solution is at hand. The Secretary has agreed to send you to a small embassy, head of the political section. How does Paraguay sound? Harry said, I speak no Spanish. Basso Earle said, Learn, adding, after a moment's pause, We'll not forget about you. I admire your work. I admire your discretion, your way of going about things. The Secretary agrees with me. Paraguay's nice. It's out of harm's way. Basso's Louisiana drawl thickened as he went along, the beat in two-four time.

He said, One last thing about the inquiry. Obviously you are an important witness. Remember to answer the question they ask, not the question they neglect to ask. Tell them the truth. Don't go beyond your brief. Understood? And in case you're wondering, I'm the first casualty of this affair. I'll be retiring sooner rather than later, reasons of health. You ever get to Nantucket, give me a call. Tell you something else, Harry. You're an adventurer just like me. It's OK, adventuring. Just don't go all the way every time.

 

The Department looked after Harry. After Paraguay he was posted to a central African nation. After an uneventful tour as a deputy assistant secretary, Harry was named ambassador to a noisy Mediterranean nation, and in the years to come three more embassies, and it had to be said that these embassies, though quietly important, were on the margins of crisis. They were not, in Department parlance, areas of critical concern. Harry's final posting abroad was a brief tour as ambassador to a bloodthirsty Balkan nation, a tour cut short by misfortune. Harry returned to Washington and the Department Secretariat, a position well behind the lines, as it were, the clock ticking toward early retirement. He knew at once that he was a stranger in the capital, too many years abroad, perhaps too many years as the senior man in the building, practicing his trade in his own way without serious interference. If a note was to be drafted for the Secretary's signature, Harry drafted it, occasionally without consulting the Secretary or anyone else. As ambassador he liked to travel far afield, taking as much time with the local opposition as with the regime, whatever regime it was; and now a trip outside the building meant an hour in a congressman's office or lunch with an important lobbyist. Washington was a greenhouse with the usual suffocating gases. He soon realized that he was a foreigner in his own country. Of course he was not alone. The Department was filled with former ambassadors assigned to this or that bureau. One often saw them taking a constitutional in the Department's wide corridors. They were clean-desk men. Nothing much to do except push paper from one box to another, waiting for lunch, and later in the day, a reception at one of the embassies near Kalorama where he hoped to find old friends, an evening of reminiscence and too much champagne. One year in, Harry took retirement at age sixty-three, happy enough to do so. He had never fit in at the Secretariat, any more than years before he had not fit in at Policy Planning. He saw himself as a man for today and perhaps tomorrow. He was not a prophet.

They gave him a farewell party on the seventh floor with drinks and a fine buffet, clever speeches, and a medal for distinguished service. The current Secretary stopped by for a cocktail. No one was surprised that Harry was retiring and moving to France, where he owned a villa in the south near the sea. France was a museum and everyone joked that Harry would fit in nicely. He had never truly fit in at the Department, where political skills were paramount. A colleague once remarked that Harry Sanders liked the point of the sword, not its hilt. Washington was hilt-work. What was an ambassador anyway but a dapper messenger passing along the Line of the Day. A bit of a hotspur, Harry, at least in his younger days. A capable diplomat, better abroad than at home, better behind the scenes than in the footlights. He did enjoy overseas work, though his wife May was considered a liability—fragile was often the salient word, subject to multiple interpretations. Her health was dubious and she had not known what to expect as the wife of an American ambassador. Africa had been a trial and their subsequent postings—difficult for her. Harry was good with his counterparts and good with the press, arguably too good, too fond of droll stories when he had a glass in his hand. One could imagine Harry being surprised by his own reputation—lone wolf, say, or adventurer, when he considered himself steady and subtle, collegial when the situation called for it. He was very popular with embassy staff.

Of course his colleagues knew he had been, if not sidelined, put out of harm's way, the cause some obscure incident long past, part of the war's troubled legacy, a Rosetta stone no one cared to decipher. A diplomat's life was never an open book, except at the very top of the Department. Harry had killed a man and that set him apart. The exact circumstances were known only by a few. Had he acted rashly? That was the source of the remark that Harry liked the point of the sword. A serious diplomat avoided sword points. A serious diplomat sought common ground, understandings that might defuse a dangerous situation. But still, along with the tut-tut came some admiration. Whatever situation Harry Sanders had found himself in, well, that situation was surely perilous and he had lived to tell the tale—or not tell the tale, for he was known for his scrupulous discretion. Harry's war had broken the rules. There were pockets of silence all over the Department in those days, as if, Harry remarked, most everyone in it had something to be ashamed of.

It was too much to say that his colleagues were afraid of him; Harry was not a man to inspire fear. Instead, his colleagues kept their distance, wary of being identified as his good friend. His was not the sort of star a younger man hitched his wagon to, though he was popular among the women now beginning diplomatic careers. They were the ones interested in point-work and sought Harry's advice, and May's, too. So what good was point-work in South America? Or in frigid Scandinavia some years later? Harry was said to covet an embassy in the Middle East, Syria or Lebanon or Iraq. But those missions seemed out of the question, requiring as they did a steely temperament and exquisite political footwork—no glass in hand when speaking to the wretched press—and the patience of an ox. And then suddenly he was too old and contemplating retirement. As for a mission in the Middle East, some in the Department wished that for him but Harry never wished it for himself.

In any case, the moment of consequence was a dead letter, filed and mostly forgotten. It happened so long ago. The Secretary was dead, his senior staff all dead or in nursing homes. Basso Earle was dead, a long struggle with cancer, his memoir unfinished. Truth to tell, never really begun. A few months before Basso died Harry flew to Nantucket for a last conversation. He had heard that Basso was ill and wanted to pay his respects. They sat in Basso's gazebo at the end of the day, drinking martinis and watching sailboats maneuver on the Sound, a heavy chop owing to the north wind and an incoming tide. The old man's Louisiana accent had thickened over the years, a melodious gumbo that slid and sloshed in its cup. Harry had to lean close to catch the drift. They spoke of places where they had served. Harry's current posting was Oslo, and Basso had some fun at his expense. How're things in wintry Oslo? he said. One scandal after another, I'll bet. Much of a Red threat there? I heard they called Kissinger to straighten things out for them.

But the conversation always drifted back to their war and its discontents, its muddled legacy. Still, Basso said, we tried. We did what we could. It wasn't enough. Or, more to the point, it was too much. Our war turned into an ironist's feast, a smorgasbord of contradictions and false hopes. I always thought irony was small beer, an academic's substitute for action, force always balanced by counterforce. Something lame and exhausted about it, Basso went on, a lack of nerve. Don't you think, Harry? Irony doesn't god damn it lead you anywhere. You're stuck in an eternal rotary, what you gained on the turns you lost on the roundabouts. That's what we have, Harry. That's our inheritance. I'm sorry I got you into it but I'd do the same thing today. You play the hand you're dealt with the chips you're given, and irony doesn't come into it unless you're running some god damned seminar up at Harvard.

Fuck 'em, Basso added.

Twice over, Harry agreed, and then an old name flew into his head. He hadn't thought of her in years. He said, You never explained to me Adele's role in all this, if she had one. Adele, your wife's friend. The mischief maker. The Red.

Adele, Basso said, and grunted.

Adele, Harry said.

I'm glad you reminded me, Basso said. I'd've forgotten otherwise. Wait here, he said, and left the gazebo to walk across the lawn to his house. Harry refilled his glass and sat looking at the boats on the open water, the breeze freshening. All the boats had their spinnakers out, and not for the first time Harry wished he knew how to sail, had an appreciation of tides and wind, knew the difference between a yawl and a sloop.

Then Basso was back, easing himself into his chair with a theatrical sigh.

I'm not sure what happened to her, Basso said. I know she left the country, more or less disappeared. I haven't seen her from that day to this. She wasn't constructive, that's for sure. I don't know what else is for sure. One more unresolved memory. There are so many of them. Isn't it tempting to make a spy story out of it? Adele a kind of Mata Hari. People love spy stories involving women. But I think Adele was only a meddler, one of those who demand to be in the mix. For people like Adele, life outside the mix is no life at all, and if there isn't a mix she'll create one. Probably there's a little more to it than that, though. A few months ago I got this in the mail.

Basso handed Harry the gold compass, the one he thought would bring luck. The compass that was lost on Harry's trek in the jungle.

Harry turned it over and read the initials on the case:
B. E. III.

It's the genuine article, Basso said.

Yes, I think it is.

A short note from Adele came with it, Basso said. Postmarked London, no return address. One of her friends bought it at a jewelry store, the one around the corner from the Singapore Sling that specialized in secondhand items in gold and silver. Adele wrote that her friend knew at once whose it was. And sent the compass to her so she could send it to me. End of note. Best regards, Adele.

Harry pushed the button that opened the case and found true north. He handed the compass back to Basso.

No no, Basso said. It's yours. My gift.

Basso, it belongs to you.

Not anymore, Basso said.

It's from your wife—

I know, Basso said.

What am I going to do with it?

Basso had fallen silent. His eyes closed and for a quarter of an hour he snoozed. Harry sat with him, watching the boats toss about on the Sound. He drank the dregs of the martini pitcher, the gin watered. These days Harry limited himself to two drinks at a sitting. He moved his chair into the shade and looked again at the compass, its gold facing scratched from use. He didn't want it. The compass had not brought good luck. But he supposed he was stuck with it. Harry stared out to sea at the boats, spinnakers flying, water washing over the bows, the sun brilliant. Nantucket was a harsh environment, windswept, rocky, barren, the antithesis of humid overgrown Asia where tigers prowled, where the nights were nearly as warm as the days. Whenever he thought of the Asian war, which was often, he thought of Sieglinde. He did not dwell on where she was and what she was doing, whether or not she was married or continued her x-ray business. He remembered their brief time together and their misunderstandings. He remembered the silk-string hammock and wondered what had become of it. Probably it was a commissar's hammock now, spoils of war along with the American kitchen, the ficus tree, and the neighbor's cat. He did hope Sieglinde had found whatever it was she was looking for. Surely a man had entered her life, and Harry wondered who the man was and what he did and his nationality. He was not American. Of that Harry was entirely certain.