Charles Mccarry: The Tears Of Autumn

Sybille, sitting on the arm of Christopher’s chair with her legs crossed, pointed a finger at Webster, who never gave any sign that he heard the things she said about him.

Webster tapped the report. “This is hotter than a firecracker,” he said. “Do you think Diem and Nhu are really in touch with the North?”

“Why not? They sure as hell don’t trust Washington anymore.”

“What was Nhu like at the party?”

“Polite. I didn’t ask him to his face what he was planning. Wolkowicz didn’t like that.”

“Screw Wolkowicz. All he wants to do is clean out was-tebaskets.”

“Well, he’s expected to know everything that happens in Vietnam,” Christopher said. “He doesn’t see any sense in the things I do, running people like Luong. It upsets the police liaison. In a way, he’s being logical. What good is building democratic institutions to Wolkowicz? Diem and Nhu don’t like it, and they know who’s doing it.”

“What about Luong?” Webster asked. He drained his glass and held it out to Sybille to be refilled.

“Nhu is going to pick him up and kill him. They’ll torture him a little first for appearances’ sake.”

Webster stared at Christopher for a second, then took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Did you warn him off?”

“I was instructed not to,” Christopher said.

Webster put his glasses back on his nose and resumed reading.

Sybille brought them another drink. “It surely is difficult for me not to overhear some of the things you two say to each other,” she said. “Paul, do you want to play tennis with me tomorrow?”

“I’m going to Rome tonight.”

Sybille raised her hands in protest. “But dinner!” she cried.

Christopher told her that his plane didn’t leave until two in the morning, and Sybille went on with what she wanted to say as if he had not spoken to her. He wondered how Webster had found a way to propose to her; Sybille sometimes answered questions a day or a week after they had been asked.

“You don’t know what a coup you’re going to witness,” she said. “Tom has invited Dennis Foley, the President’s right-hand man. And I remembered that Harry McKinney is out of town, so I asked his lovely wife, Peggy, who thinks she’s the counselor to the embassy instead of her husband. Peggy thought that about herself even when we were at Sweet Briar together. It’s going to be a treat, Paul.”

Webster put Christopher’s report into his briefcase and locked it. “Foley’s brother and I used to put the shot together,” he said. “The brother’s all right. I don’t know this one.”

“You’ve been to lots of meetings with him all week,” Sybille said. “The entire embassy has been meeting with him. Foley came to Paris to tell de Gaulle who’s really running the world. President Kennedy thought he ought to know-only de Gaulle won’t give Foley an appointment. Wonderful JFK! Oh, that man is so sexy. He squeezed this little hand when he was here with the First Lady and I said, ‘I, too, think you’re absolutely irresistible, Mr. President.’”

“What did he say to you, Sybille?”

“He said, ‘How nice to see you,’ and sort of flung me down the reception line toward Jackie. Then she said the same thing and flung me again. They shake hands like a couple of black belts.”

Webster grasped Sybille’s chin. “Sybille,” he said, “let’s not have any of this Southern-belle chatter when Foley gets here. He doesn’t know you.”

“Oh, we’re all going to be very respectful, Tom. I do think this administration has raised the whole tone of American life. Why, Peggy McKinney has been reading Proust in the original French and learning the names of all those new African countries. She says the people of Zimbabwe want rice and respect. I always thought they wanted money.”

“Sybille, how about making this your last martini?” Webster said.

“I have to do something while you and Paul talk about betrayal and torture.”

“We don’t enjoy it,” Webster said.

“Oh,” said Sybille, “I think it makes you happy enough.”

Dennis Foley, arriving with Peggy McKinney, did not have the air of a man who expected to have a good time. He nodded to Sybille and to Christopher when he was introduced, but did not offer to shake hands. Foley was a bony man who had played basketball in college, and he had still the manner, self-aware and faintly contemptuous, of the athlete. He had a habit of touching his own body as he talked, running a hand over the waves of stiff black hair on the back of his head, unstrapping his large gold watch and massaging his wrist. His eyes, pale blue with tiny irises, looked beyond the person with whom he was conversing. His face, which changed color rather than expression when he was pleased or annoyed by something that was said to him, was roughened by acne scars. Foley wore a two-button suit with a tin PT-109 clasp on a Sulka tie. Like President Kennedy, he drank daiquiris without sugar and smoked long, thin cigars. He had been talking to Peggy McKinney when he arrived, and he moved her across the vast room, away from the others, to continue the conversation. As Sybille and Christopher watched, Peggy lit Foley’s cigar for him with a table lighter.

“Observe his gestures, listen to his voice,” Sybille said. “He’s turning into a JFK. All these New Frontier people are like that, have you noticed? It must be some royal virus. The closer you are to the throne, the worse the infection. Poor Peggy McKinney-see how she’s trying to get everything just right? Way over here in Paris, all she can do is read Proust and take up touch football. She plays left end in the Bois de Boulogne every Sunday.”

Across the room, Foley nodded brusquely, as if Peggy had told him everything he was interested in hearing. He brought his empty glass to Sybille.

“This is quite a place,” Foley said. “How did you find it?”

“Oh, the French have this idea that Americans will rent anything,” Sybille replied.

Foley’s glance ran like an adder’s tongue over Sybille’s face and body, and a corner of his mouth lifted, as if he were rejecting a sexual invitation. “I’ll bet you’re the wittiest woman in Paris,” he said. “I’d like some soda water. Just plain, with an ice cube.”

Sybille took his glass and went to the bar. Foley turned to Christopher. “Webster tells me you’re just back from Saigon,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I understand you talked to Diem and his brother.”

“I saw them at a reception Nhu gave. It was more a matter of overhearing what they said to others.”

Foley took the glass Sybille handed to him and turned his back on her. “I’ve read some of your stuff in the magazine,” he said. “I had a feeling you were holding back. Don’t you write everything you know?”

“Usually. I don’t write what I don’t know.”

“Look, let’s cut the crap. I’ve got eyes-you work with Webster.”

“Do I?”

“I can confirm it in thirty seconds if I have to. You’re fresh from Saigon. You seem to circulate at pretty high levels out there. I’d like to hear your reactions. If they’re worth it, I’ll pass them on to the boss when I see him tomorrow,”

The others overheard. Webster fell silent and put a cold pipe between his teeth. Peggy McKinney’s face, as smooth as an ingenue’s, was suddenly alight with curiosity; though she saw his name listed in the front of a great magazine and read his articles, she had never believed Christopher’s cover story.

“The Americans are talking to themselves,” Christopher said. “The Vietnamese say that the U.S. is working up to a coup to remove the Ngos.”

“We know that the ruling family, and Nhu and his wife especially, are rabidly anti-American. What about that?”