American Quartet by Warren Adler Read Free Book Online Page B

Irishman.”
    “So am I. That’s what I get paid for.”
    Even his laugh had a touch of brogue, reminding her of her grandfather, underlining once again the ethnic brotherhood. No one ever leaves Ireland, he had told her once when she was a young girl. How he would have envied her now, facing, almost touching Himself, the representative of the Old Sod?
    “To my grandfather, the Irish ambassador was more important than the pope,” she said. “Or at the least, the apostolic delegate.”
    “He’s over there,” the Irish ambassador said, indicating a man with a priest’s collar in the crowd on the lawn. “Tad collects diplomats, whatever the relationship between countries.” He pointed out the Russian and Saudi Arabian ambassadors.
    “I did my gig,” Bruce said, coming up to her. He chatted for a moment with the Irish ambassador, who soon disengaged. She noted how practiced they all seemed, making contacts, moving on, like summer insects around a candlelight, never quite close enough to the flame to get really burned.
    Several guests sauntered over to discuss the central topic of all political discussions, reelection.
    “Safe?” someone asked him.
    “Duck soup . . . if the President can hold our cranky Democrats in line.” He looked at her, showing a tiny tremor of anxiety. He is really scared to death, she thought.
    “If he don’t, we can all run for the hills,” the man replied, walking away.
    “What is he?”
    “An appointee,” Bruce replied. “One of nearly three thousand paranoids running around loose, hoping the President will win.”
    “The perils of democracy,” she snickered. He frowned, obviously in no mood to be further reminded of his plight. Meeting peers obviously increased his tension.
    “It’s the Washington zoo,” he whispered, trying unsuccessfully to remove himself from the pack. He ran with these bulls, somewhere in the middle, nondescript. What he wanted was to speed up and get into the lead.
    He spent the next half hour pasting titles on the guests. Senators, congressmen, ambassadors, socialites. It wasn’t quite the full “A” group, he told her with mock derision. Although Congress was in a short July Fourth recess, many of his colleagues had fled the oppressive Washington humidity. Each title was accompanied by a bit of gossip.
    “And there’s Tweedledee,” he whispered, pointing to an attractive woman in her forties. There was a nervous air of discomfort about her, as if she didn’t quite belong there and knew it.
    “Used to be one of Jack’s girls.”
    “Jack?”
    “Kennedy.”
    It was one of his affectations to call famous people by their first names. The Johnson landslide in ’64 had brought him his first term. But the photograph in his den of Bruce when he was an eager beaver Kennedy advance man gave him, she supposed, special rights.
    “He had two White House concubines. Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Just two kids in the typing pool. They serviced him when the wife was away, which was frequently.”
    There it was again. Closet lechery. A favorite Washington syndrome. The closet image brought back memories of poor Damato, festering in his Lolita fantasy. Had it really killed him in the end? She dismissed the speculation. Mysteries, she had learned, could spawn obsession.
    “Louise Padgett Sharp is her name,” he said. “Haven’t seen her in years.” He lowered his voice. “Can’t imagine what she’s doing here.”
    Suddenly he spotted someone behind her.
    “Good to see you, Mr. Ambassador.” He stuck out his hand to a large jolly man. It was the Soviet ambassador. He quickly introduced Fiona. The big man smiled graciously and moved on.
    “It’s a United Nations,” she whispered.
    “Just Remington doing his thing.”
    It was darkening and the guests had begun to crowd the buffet table, taking heaped plates of lobster, roast beef, salad and brie to tables on the lawn, decorated in red, white and blue. Waiters in black tie poured vintage wines.