Gavin Esler - Power Play

I laughed. ‘Harry Truman also said that if you tell someone to go to hell you should be able to see that he gets there. An observation which is lost on the Vice-President, I think.’

‘Does the Fiona thing affect your relations with the Prime Minister?’

‘No. At least I don’t think so.’

‘That’s good.’

We kissed each other goodbye, on the cheek, chastely, European style.

‘Let’s do this again,’ she said.

‘Definitely,’ I replied.

It was by now seven thirty on a Monday morning and by her standards Kristina Taft was already late for work. I wanted to see her again, even if the reasons why were jumbled up in my head. I caught a cab from the Watergate up Embassy Row, my mind buzzing from the meeting, wondering whether I should call Kristina back and if so when.

I had no time to take a decision because the moment I arrived at my desk I received a hand-delivered letter from a lawyer employed by James Byrne. I suppose I should have expected it. If anything, after I hit him, I had expected something even worse. I am not sure how he left the residence that day. After the punch to the throat he would have needed medical treatment. I assumed that he might call the police and cite me for assault, but he didn’t. What Byrne did do was to get his lawyer, Dan Feingold, to write a threatening letter. It said that I had caused ‘laryngeal trauma’. His smashed voice box, according to a specialist’s report that the lawyer had helpfully included, meant Byrne faced a permanent impairment in his ability to speak. I confess it made me laugh out loud. The lawyer’s letter said Byrne had been ‘forced to give up a lucrative career’ on the Sunday TV talk shows and would be seeking ‘punitive damages’ from me. I stared at the letter for a while and when I calmed down, I called the lawyer on the telephone number at the top of the headed notepaper.

‘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.

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.