Liar's Market

She’d worn a green silk wrap dress that Drum said turned her gray-green eyes catlike. Her long, coppery hair was clipped up in a loose twist impaled by a jeweled stick. There hadn’t been time to do much else with it, given the last-minute nature of this command performance. In any case, it had seemed the safest bet to survive the sleety rainstorm she’d had to brave to get over here from their Kensington town house. A few soft tendrils had shaken loose in the bluster.

“Don’t you agree, Carrie?” St. John asked out of the blue.

Carrie shifted her focus back and offered what she hoped was a convincing nod. She’d dropped the thread of the conversation, which seemed at the moment to consist of the usual complaints about the fickle French. Her two companions were so busy upping the ante of their mutual indignation that she knew they sought her input only as a matter of courtesy.

“No doubt,” she said. She had no idea what she’d agreed with, but it didn’t matter. They required only an appreciative audience.

Her gaze shifted back to her husband. She could have tried begging off this reception when he’d called at the last minute like that. She had work of her own to finish, pulling together the bibliography on her master’s thesis, which was almost ready to be shipped back to her advisor at Georgetown, if only she could quit her nervous tinkering. If he thought it was ready to defend, she’d finally complete the program she’d abandoned six years earlier when her son was born. And then…well, first finish the thesis, she told herself. One step at a time.

The lowering clouds outside had added another disincentive to coming out this afternoon, plus the fact that she liked to be home when the embassy van brought Jonah home from kindergarten. In the end, though, she’d done what Drum asked, as she always did. After all, this was an important occasion for him and it wouldn’t kill her to be amiable.

Like all intelligence officials abroad, he operated under cover in a milieu where “Spot the Spook” was the favorite game of bored diplomats. Officials in the know sometimes referred to Drum archly as the post’s “resident intellectual,” but his cover story said he was a commercial counselor. As his wife, Carrie was required to maintain that charade, while at the same time taking special precautions not to compromise his position or station operations. Most of the carefully selected guests to this particular reception, of course, knew what his real function was, but she’d long since learned that the safest path in all situations was to neither confirm nor deny anything.

The delegation of American politicians had arrived in London that morning, their first stop on a whirlwind fact-finding tour in the latest round of the war on terrorism. Drum would be leading them through their briefings with his intelligence contacts in MI-5 and MI-6, as well as the Foreign and Prime Minister’s offices and the Ministry of Defense.

His present companion across the room was the head of the delegation. An overweight, blustering power-house from Arizona, Senator Watkins was obviously in lecture mode at the moment, but Carrie knew there was no need to worry about Drum. He’d lived his entire life among powerful movers and shakers. Not only had his father been a five-star general and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the MacNeil family had been wealthy and influential Virginia landowners, businessmen and community leaders for generations. Drum could hold his own with anyone.

His body language now, as he leaned a shoulder against a leaded glass window frame, told Carrie he was just waiting for the senator to run out of breath. His bespoke Savile Row suit, a soft, dove gray pinstripe, draped his tall, lean body beautifully. His shirt and silk tie were likewise understated but elegant. His silver hair was slightly tousled, as befits a busy man, but it gleamed in the glow of the dropped crystal chandeliers that lit the high-ceilinged reception room.

Carrie knew from old photographs that Drum’s hair had once been nearly blue-black, but he was twenty years her senior and it had already been more salt than pepper when they’d met. They’d married after a whirlwind courtship in East Africa, where she’d been working with the Peace Corps and he’d ostensibly been an embassy aid official. It was only after they were married that he’d confessed his real profession.

Would it have made a difference if she’d known before? Carrie often wondered. Hard to say. She’d been a different person then, and Drum had seemed to exude a self-confident, protective strength sorely needed in that difficult period of her life. She wasn’t that frightened young girl anymore, however.

Still, there was no question that he was still, at forty-nine, a very attractive man, with a high forehead, even features, and intense, cobalt-blue eyes that seemed to mesmerize men and women alike. Watching the hint of a smile playing at the corner of Drum’s lips, Carrie knew that Senator Watkins was about to feel the full force of that determined Southern charm. She almost pitied the man. Before the evening was over, the senator would be spouting the MacNeil view of the world as if it were gospel, and he wouldn’t even know he’d been co-opted.

Through the tall windows behind Drum and the senator, the lights of London were already beginning to twinkle, daylight driven out early by the dark, heavy-laden clouds that had loomed over the city all week. Taking care not to spill her wine, Carrie took a discreet peek at the thin platinum watch on her left wrist. Five-forty-five. Surely this would be winding up soon. The congressmen would want to go back to their hotels and freshen up before the cars came to take them to the residence for the ambassador’s working dinner.

It was hours since she’d grabbed a quick apple in lieu of lunch. She was tempted to lunge when a tray of hors d’oeuvres passed her way, but there was a special corollary to Murphy’s Law that went into effect whenever she found herself at one of these embassy receptions—if she grabbed one of the tempting canapés, it was a sure bet that someone would choose that exact moment to stick out a hand to introduce themselves. And then, there was always the risk of ending up wearing the thing when this dull, alcoholic Brit beside her decided to move in and try to get a little cozier, as he inevitably would if she didn’t escape his clutches soon.

There wasn’t much to eat back at their flat, though. Grocery shopping had been on her list of things to do later that afternoon, before Drum had called and changed her plans. She’d left soup and peanut butter sandwiches for the housekeeper to give Jonah when the van brought him back from his kindergarten class at the American International School, but if Carrie wanted dinner, she was going to have to pick it up on the way home.

She was just debating how soon she could make her escape when she felt an arm slip around her shoulders and turned to find an old friend at her side.

“Tom!” she cried, genuinely delighted. “I didn’t know you were coming!’

She and Tom Bent exchanged kisses on either cheek. “Came to herd the senators,” he said, “though to be honest, it’s a bit like herding cats.” He leaned in closer and whispered in her ear, “I spotted you as soon as I walked in. You look beautiful, Carrie. You also look like you need rescuing, poor thing.”

“Oh, God, yes,” she whispered back, glancing at her two companions, who had abandoned their pontificating long enough to show an interest in the new arrival.

The Bostonian obviously knew him. “Tom! I wondered where you’d disappeared to after the ambassadors’ meeting.” He turned to the Brit beside him. “Nigel, this is Tom Bent, the CIA’s Director of Congressional Liaison. He’s the man who decides which secrets those nasty spooks will share with their political masters. Tom, Nigel St. John from the British Foreign Office.”

“Sin-jin,” the Brit corrected as he held out his hand. “How do you do?”

“I do wetly, thank you,” Bent said, shaking.

“Excuse me?”

“I snuck out for a quick run over to Harrod’s.”

He retrieved his hand and smoothed down his poker straight hair—unnecessarily, since it was perfectly gelled in place, as always. Despite the fact that Tom was Drum’s age, his hair was still nut brown, only his temples running a little to gray, lending just a hint of mature gravitas. Carrie suspected the color was maintained by an artful stylist, since Tom was very careful about his appearance—and, she suspected, a little vain about his thick head of hair.

It didn’t detract in the least from her affection for the man. Unlike most of her husband’s old crowd, Tom had welcomed her warmly right from the start after she and Drum had come home from Africa, and he’d always gone out of his way to be kind. Maybe it was because he, too, had come from humbler roots and “married up,” as Drum’s mother like to say. Whatever the reason, Tom was always a ray of sunshine for Carrie, and never more so than on this gloomy day.

“My wife made me promise to bring her back some Oxford marmalade,” Tom was saying, “orange, extra chunky. Swears only Harrod’s has the real McCoy, so off I went. The senators have such a tight schedule, I didn’t think I’d have another chance if I didn’t do it this afternoon. But Lord, it’s not a fit day for ducks out there!’

He had a pleasant, always-smiling face, with warm, coffee-colored eyes and an air of scrubbed earnestness, his cheeks flushed and glowing. Carrie knew it was mild rosacea and not the weather that put those blooms there. Regardless of the season, Tom always looked like he’d just come back from taking a brisk autumn constitutional in his impeccable Brooks Brothers finery.

Tom and Drum had been friends since their days at Yale, although Carrie had the impression that this hardworking West Virginian, a coal-miner’s son on a full scholarship, had never been the hell-raiser her husband was reputed to have been back then.

“You should have called me,” Carrie said. “I would have picked up whatever you needed.”

“Well, I would have, darlin’, but to be honest, I needed to get away from all this hot air, even if just for an hour.”

“Are you traveling with the delegation?” St. John asked.

“For my sins, alas, I am. Somebody needs to keep an eye on ’em, you see, make sure they don’t alienate our friends and give comfort to our enemies—and don’t you repeat that to your boss, young Daniel,” he added, shaking a finger at the aid to the senator from Massachusetts.

Daniel! Daniel Boone? No…Brown, that’s it, Carrie suddenly remembered.

As she glanced over toward the windows once more, she caught Drum watching them soberly. She gave him the smile he expected, and he cocked an eyebrow. She looped her hand through Tom’s arm.

“Would you excuse us?” she asked the other two.

“You’re abandoning us?” St. John asked plaintively.

“Sorry, Nigel. Duty calls. I think my husband would like to talk to his old friend, Tom, here.”

“Good to meet you, Nigel,” Tom added. “Dan, catch you later.”

“I wish I’d known you were coming,” Carrie said as they detached from the others and drifted across the floor.

“It was a last-minute decision. Things are incredibly hectic back in Washington, what with all the new anti-terrorism legislation on the table and the military situation dicey as it is right now. But the Oval Office wanted somebody along to keep an eye on these cowboys. I got drafted.”

“How’s Lorraine?”

Tom had been married for twenty-five years to the daughter of the Right Reverend Arthur Merriam, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, based at the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, also known as the National Cathedral.

“She’s just fine,” Tom said. “Helping her mother most of the time, running one committee or another.”

“Her mother must be getting on.”

“She’ll be seventy-six in August, but don’t let her hear you suggest she’s elderly. The women in Lorraine’s family live to a ripe old age. Her grandmother lasted to ninety-one and was still playing bridge three times a week. Liked her gin and tonics right up to the end, too.”

“Ah, well, that’s the secret ingredient, I guess.”

Tom rolled his eyes. “Must be. God knows, Lorraine and her mother swear by them.” He stopped and turned to Carrie. “How about you and Drum, darlin’? How are things?”

“All right. We’re going home this summer, you know.”