Power Play

‘Mr Feingold? Alex Price.’

‘I would rather deal with your attorney, Ambassador Price,’ he said smoothly.

‘I’m sure you would, Mr Feingold,’ I replied. ‘But you’re going to have to deal with me. I regret that Mr Byrne has a voice problem.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes, I regret it so much that I intend to drive over to his home later today to talk things over with his wife and family. I’ll apologize to Mr Byrne and explain matters in detail to his wife and four-year-old son, and then to his editor at the Washington Post.’ I heard Feingold suck in air. ‘In particular I will explain to his wife and child why I am reluctant to pay Mr Byrne financial compensation for fucking my wife in the main guest bedroom of the British Embassy residence.’

Feingold coughed into the telephone. He apologized and said he suffered from allergies. Then he said that before I did anything that could be construed as ‘harassment’ of his client, he would like to talk to Mr Byrne.

‘Of course,’ I said. Two hours later, Feingold called me back.

‘Ambassador Price, good news, Mr Byrne accepts your apology,’ he said, his voice full of defeat. ‘Everything is now resolved between you. No further action on your part is necessary.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and put down the telephone. Fear, as Bobby Black says, works.

SIX (#ulink_a0d3285b-bd0b-5462-9e20-d2966384c556)

In the days following our breakfast meeting, I thought a lot about Dr Kristina Taft. When you are the British Ambassador in Washington, when your marriage is breaking up, and your wife is the sister of the Prime Minister, you have to ask yourself whom you can trust, and the answer is almost no one. But from the start I trusted Kristina. Maybe it was a matter of instinct. There was also an obvious attraction, though we kept it hidden. Perhaps at first we even kept it hidden from ourselves. I was intrigued by her intelligence and I particularly liked her observation that Fiction is by definition always a Lie but it only works because it is also a kind of Truth. It hit a chord.

My father ran out when I was a child. My mother found a job, but I was raised mostly by my grandparents and there was never much money. I won a scholarship to a private school where I was always the kid who could not afford to go on the foreign trips, despite my talent for languages. To help pay my way through university I became an officer cadet in the British Army. I studied languages and linguistics, and at first I thought that humans invented stories to show off their language skills. Gradually I came to realize that it is exactly the opposite. Humans invented language because we are bursting with stories to tell, and because that is the way we make sense of, control, and organize our world. We invent stories to play god. In the beginning was the Word. Luntz was right too. Everyone complains about political ‘spin’, but a coherent Lie is much more valuable than an incomplete Truth. That’s why governments need people like me, like Luntz and Johnny Lee.

And so I began meeting Kristina regularly. We never called it ‘dating’, though that was what it became. Sometimes we met formally at White House meetings, semi-formally at dinners or cocktail parties, and occasionally we met in her apartment for a working breakfast. We shared confidences, gossip, and ideas–at least up to a point. She never told me any secrets, she never betrayed anything that would have compromised her position or the Carr administration, though we did frequently consider what we should do about our mutual problem with Bobby Black. Then came the night I drifted into Blues Alley, and our relationship took a different turn. It’s a jazz club near where Wisconsin meets M Street in Georgetown. As the name suggests, it is down a back alley, though being Georgetown it is a well-kept, bijou back alley. Once Fiona left, I entertained less often and drifted into Blues Alley a little more, always alone, for the late show and a few beers.

I could guarantee that I would never see anyone I knew. The Washington workaholics–which is most people–are, like Kristina, at their desks at six or seven in the morning, and that means they are in bed by ten. If they happen to be jazz fans, they might take in the early 7.30 p.m. show, but you never see them at anything that finishes after midnight. As for me, I no longer seemed to need much sleep. Jazz past midnight was just fine.

The night I met Kristina in Blues Alley, it’s difficult to say which one of us was the more surprised. It was a Friday. Herbie Hancock was playing, and the late show began at 11 p.m., way too late for the kind of people I like to avoid. I was wearing a dark shirt and black jeans and I sat at the corner of the bar in the back with a bourbon on the rocks and a beer. Kristina was already there when I arrived, also alone, at a corner table. I did not see her, but she watched me for a while as I sat at the bar. She said she worked on the same logic as I did–that with a show past midnight, no one she knew would be there. During the second or third Hancock number I felt a movement by my side.

‘Like to join me at my table, Ambassador?’ Kristina whispered in my ear, so close I could feel the heat of her breath. I was shocked to see her. She giggled with pleasure at my surprise, then I moved over with her and took a seat. She was wearing dark clothes, a black dress and heels. She had let her hair fall down her face and had a touch of jewellery and make-up.

‘You look … different,’ I said lamely. ‘You look very nice.’

She smiled and touched my arm. ‘I like to remember I am a woman,’ she replied. ‘Sometimes.’

I signalled for another round of drinks: beer and bourbon for me; vodka tonic and a glass of water for her. We listened to the jazz together with only a few whispered conversations between numbers, though she glanced at me and smiled as if to check that I was enjoying things as much as she was. We had to sit close to talk, and her hair brushed my face. I was aware how good she smelled.

‘I love it here,’ she whispered in response to one of my questions, ‘partly for the music, partly because it is so … anonymous. Jazz in Washington is an unnatural vice. A taste of freedom. Or anarchy. A reminder that this is a black southern city, not the uptight place we work in. Everything else is so … controlled.’

‘You like being naughty?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

By the break in the set, past midnight, I was already slightly drunk. I think she was drunk too. We sat so close together I could feel her breath on my face and neck.

‘It’s late for you White House people. You turn into pumpkins after dark.’

‘Whatever you think of me, Alex, I am a California girl, and my body runs on California time. We wake up three hours after the rest of the country and never catch up.’

Her laughter tinkled over me. She asked me about my background and I told her.

‘I have all the lower-middle-class insecurities about never quite fitting in,’ I laughed. ‘That’s why I overcompensate by working so hard.’

‘Not fitting in? You’re a chameleon, Alex. You blend in everywhere.’

I shook my head. ‘Any time soon they will offer me a K, a knighthood–I’ll be Sir Alex. It comes with the job. Then, when I go back to London, I get the peerage–I’ll be Lord Price of Somewhere-or-Other. And yet… people like Fraser will never see me as one of them. Because, deep down, I’m not.’

The whisky was talking.

‘Does that matter?’ she said, laying a hand on my arm. ‘Your Lordship?’

‘I guess not,’ I shrugged and looked around the nightclub. ‘Not in this great democracy.’

She tactfully changed the subject.

‘The army must have been rough for a twenty-two year old,’ Kristina said. ‘Especially Northern Ireland.’ I nodded.

‘That’s why Spartacus gets to me,’ I said. ‘Because it’s like Northern Ireland for slow learners.’

‘Meaning?’

‘When an IRA sniper took out one of our boys we’d round up a few Republicans and beat the shit out of them. Show them who’s boss. Revenge was always a relief, but it didn’t help us as much as it helped them. It gave them another grievance and helped them recruit more to the cause.’

I drank my whisky.

Kristina was full of questions that night, I think because our relationship really had changed. She asked me directly about Fiona. I told her the whole story.

‘You hit Byrne! In the throat! So that’s why he sounds like a frog on acid!’

‘Shhh. Not so loud.’

She punched the air. ‘Yes! At last! On behalf of the government and people of the United States,’ Kristina shook my hand in mock seriousness, ‘thank you for silencing that major-league asshole. How about you break his typing fingers too, yes? Let me buy you a drink.’

‘So, what about you?’ I wondered. Herbie Hancock was walking back on stage for the rest of the set. ‘What are your secrets, Dr Taft?’

She was drinking a lot of vodka, but then I was drinking a lot of bourbon. I felt her leg shift next to mine as she leaned towards me.

‘I have no secrets,’ she laughed. ‘None. Blameless.’

Her grey eyes danced with amusement behind the cocktail glass.

‘But you do have a private life?’

She laughed again. ‘Yes, but it’s private, Ambassador. Private. Se-cret. It’s so private it’s a secret even from me. But I … I understand why Fiona used Byrne.’

‘Used?’ I was puzzled by the word. She shrugged.

‘Oh, come on. You must have heard the feminist joke? What’s the difference between a man and a vibrator? One is cold, mechanical sex. The other runs on batteries? For some women at some times, a man like Byrne is just something to fill the void–though I don’t know why Fiona would hook up with a guy who spends more time on his appearance than she does.’