David Ignatius: Agents of Innocence

“Yes, Mrs. Wigg.”

“Jane! We’re having a dinner next Saturday night! We’ll expect you at eight. See you then!”

She rang off without waiting for an answer. A social secretary from the embassy called an hour later to say that the affair would be black tie.

Jane Rogers was a sensible woman. She had attended a good private school and Mt. Holyoke College. She knew that when the ambassador’s wife calls in a post like Beirut, the world stops turning for a moment. So she did the sensible thing. She went out and bought a new evening dress, the fanciest she could find, from a designer on Hamra Street.

“A preemptive strike,” said Rogers when Jane told him about the invitation.

Rogers, who mistrusted ambassadors and their wives, resignedly took his tuxedo out of mothballs. He had bought it a decade earlier, when he graduated from the agency’s career training program, after a friend told him that a tuxedo was a must for a case officer overseas. Black-tie dinners were an ideal place to spot potential agents, the friend had advised.

That struck Rogers as preposterous, but he bought the tuxedo anyway. It was a beautiful suit, with crisp, notched lapels and a fine silk lining. Rogers had barely worn it in the years since. Intelligence work, he had happily discovered, had very little to do with attending dinner parties.

“You look smashing, my dear!” said Mrs. Wigg when she greeted them at the door. “Good for you!”

Her tone was that of a girls’ school principal, commending a new girl who has just scored a goal in field hockey.

“And Tom! How nice to meet you!”

Mrs. Wigg batted her eyelashes as she greeted Rogers. They were dark and crusted with mascara. She leaned forward slightly as she shook his hand, revealing a good deal of her bosom in the decolletage of her evening dress.

Rogers looked her squarely in the eye and thanked her for the kind invitation.

Ambassador Wigg emerged from the bar to greet them, holding a dark highball in his hand. He had bushy eyebrows and a deep, resonant voice.

“So glad you could come,” he said to Jane.

“Welcome to the family, Tom,” he said to Rogers with a wink. “In our embassy, I like to think that we are all one family.”

An ambassador who wants to be station chief, thought Rogers as he shook the ambassador’s hand.

“Let me introduce you around,” said Ambassador Wigg, escorting them into a huge living room.

“You know Phil Garrett, my deputy chief of mission, and his wife Bianca.” A flurry of handshakes.

“And Roland Plateau, the French charge, and his wife Dominique.” The Frenchman kissed Jane Rogers’s hand. His wife gave a flirtatious smile.

“And I am pleased to present General Fadi Jezzine, the chief of the Deuxieme Bureau of the Lebanese Army, and Madame Jezzine.” Nods and bows all around.

“Mr. Rogers is our new political officer,” said the ambassador, his eyebrows vibrating now at a very rapid pace. Everyone around the room smiled knowingly.

Rogers, who wasn’t eager to blow his cover the first month in Beirut, tried his best to look like a debonair member of the political section. He wished there was someone else from the station to lend moral support, but he was alone. Hoffman, it seemed, didn’t go to dinner parties.

Rogers’s discomfort eased as he saw the French diplomat’s wife ambling toward him. She was an attractive woman, dark-haired and sensuous, her age difficult to determine but somewhere in the long march between thirty and fifty. Her dress was open in the back, revealing a deep tan that was the product of months of determined sunbathing.

“Comme il fait beau aujourd’hui!” said Dominique Plateau, talking with very wide eyes about the weather. Yes, indeed, said Rogers. It was a beautiful day. He took a gin and tonic from a silver tray and decided to enjoy Beirut.

When the introductions were done, Mrs. Wigg gathered Jane and Mrs. Garrett, the DCM’s wife, and led them to a corner of the room. They sat on a couch beneath a large painting, donated by a wealthy Lebanese American, which illustrated scenes from Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet.

“Jane! What are your interests, my dear?” said the ambassador’s wife. The DCM’s wife, who seemed to be there in the role of vice-principal, nodded for emphasis.

“Reading, I suppose,” said Jane. The two ladies were stone-faced.

“And the children, of course.” They were glowering.

“And…tennis.”

“Hmmm,” said the ambassador’s wife. Jane seemed to have come up with an at least partially correct answer.

“Doubles?” said Mrs. Wigg.

“Yes, quite often I do play doubles. Though in Oman it was usually so hot…”

“Tomorrow morning, then!” said the ambassador’s wife, cutting her off. “Nine o’clock!”

Mrs. Wigg rose from the couch and smiled at Jane through clenched teeth.

“I’m so pleased,” said Mrs. Wigg, and with that, she departed to attend to other guests, leaving Jane and Bianca Garrett together on the couch.

Jane waited for the older women to say something, and when she didn’t pressed ahead herself.

“Bianca…,” Jane began.

“Binky,” the other woman corrected her. She was patting her hair, which was lacquered in place around her head like a helmet.

“Have you been in Beirut very long, Binky? We’ve only just arrived.”

“I must tell you that you’re very lucky,” said Mrs. Garrett.

“Oh yes,” said Jane. “We love Beirut.”

“I mean about the tennis,” said the older woman. “You needn’t worry about playing well, by the way. She’s terrible. But it’s a good start for you.” There seemed to be a hint of jealousy in her voice.

“And you aren’t even one of us, really,” added Mrs. Garrett.

“Excuse me,” said Jane. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Oh come now,” said the other woman, leaning toward Jane in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Everyone knows that Tom isn’t a foreign service officer. It’s no secret, and why should it be? You’re among friends.”

Jane blushed so deeply and suddenly that she felt as if her cheeks were on fire.

“You’re awfully lucky that Tom’s boss isn’t here. The fat one. Hoffman. He’s a toad. And his wife, Gladys, is even worse. They tell me she has a degree from a secretarial school. Nobody in our crowd likes the Hoffmans. He’s so loud.”

Jane cleared her throat.

“Say!” remarked Bianca Garrett to herself as if she had solved a riddle. “That’s probably why you’re here! Because Frank Hoffman isn’t.”

Jane Rogers, her discomfort increasing by the moment, signalled for a waiter.

“Let me tell you something, dearie,” said Bianca Garrett in a whisper. “I used to work for you-know-who myself once, as a code clerk, in Lagos and then in Addis Ababa. That’s how I met Phil.” She winked and took another drink from the waiter who had arrived with his silver tray.

“So don’t think I don’t know the score,” Binky continued. “And let me give you a word of advice. In a post like this, where socializing is half the fun, you really shouldn’t keep to yourself and your little crowd from the fifth floor. Don’t fight the ambassador. And for heaven’s sake, don’t fight his wife!”

Jane, who had never acknowledged to another soul outside the agency what her husband really did for a living, mumbled a few words and changed the subject.

“We’re looking for a good doctor for the children,” she asked sweetly. “Can you recommend someone?”

Binky, with one more wink, recited the list of acceptable practitioners.

Eventually the bell rang, signalling that it was time for dinner. As Binky Garrett rose from the couch, she leaned unsteadily toward Jane and confided a last bit of advice.