Gavin Esler - Power Play

‘I love it here,’ she whispered in response to one of my questions, ‘partly for the music, partly because it is so … anonymous. Jazz in Washington is an unnatural vice. A taste of freedom. Or anarchy. A reminder that this is a black southern city, not the uptight place we work in. Everything else is so … controlled.’

‘You like being naughty?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

By the break in the set, past midnight, I was already slightly drunk. I think she was drunk too. We sat so close together I could feel her breath on my face and neck.

‘It’s late for you White House people. You turn into pumpkins after dark.’

‘Whatever you think of me, Alex, I am a California girl, and my body runs on California time. We wake up three hours after the rest of the country and never catch up.’

Her laughter tinkled over me. She asked me about my background and I told her.

‘I have all the lower-middle-class insecurities about never quite fitting in,’ I laughed. ‘That’s why I overcompensate by working so hard.’

‘Not fitting in? You’re a chameleon, Alex. You blend in everywhere.’

I shook my head. ‘Any time soon they will offer me a K, a knighthood–I’ll be Sir Alex. It comes with the job. Then, when I go back to London, I get the peerage–I’ll be Lord Price of Somewhere-or-Other. And yet… people like Fraser will never see me as one of them. Because, deep down, I’m not.’

The whisky was talking.

‘Does that matter?’ she said, laying a hand on my arm. ‘Your Lordship?’

‘I guess not,’ I shrugged and looked around the nightclub. ‘Not in this great democracy.’

She tactfully changed the subject.

‘The army must have been rough for a twenty-two year old,’ Kristina said. ‘Especially Northern Ireland.’ I nodded.

‘That’s why Spartacus gets to me,’ I said. ‘Because it’s like Northern Ireland for slow learners.’

‘Meaning?’

‘When an IRA sniper took out one of our boys we’d round up a few Republicans and beat the shit out of them. Show them who’s boss. Revenge was always a relief, but it didn’t help us as much as it helped them. It gave them another grievance and helped them recruit more to the cause.’

I drank my whisky.

Kristina was full of questions that night, I think because our relationship really had changed. She asked me directly about Fiona. I told her the whole story.

‘You hit Byrne! In the throat! So that’s why he sounds like a frog on acid!’

‘Shhh. Not so loud.’

She punched the air. ‘Yes! At last! On behalf of the government and people of the United States,’ Kristina shook my hand in mock seriousness, ‘thank you for silencing that major-league asshole. How about you break his typing fingers too, yes? Let me buy you a drink.’

‘So, what about you?’ I wondered. Herbie Hancock was walking back on stage for the rest of the set. ‘What are your secrets, Dr Taft?’

She was drinking a lot of vodka, but then I was drinking a lot of bourbon. I felt her leg shift next to mine as she leaned towards me.

‘I have no secrets,’ she laughed. ‘None. Blameless.’

Her grey eyes danced with amusement behind the cocktail glass.

‘But you do have a private life?’

She laughed again. ‘Yes, but it’s private, Ambassador. Private. Se-cret. It’s so private it’s a secret even from me. But I … I understand why Fiona used Byrne.’

‘Used?’ I was puzzled by the word. She shrugged.

‘Oh, come on. You must have heard the feminist joke? What’s the difference between a man and a vibrator? One is cold, mechanical sex. The other runs on batteries? For some women at some times, a man like Byrne is just something to fill the void–though I don’t know why Fiona would hook up with a guy who spends more time on his appearance than she does.’

‘The … void?’

Kristina looked at me impatiently. ‘You know the difference between the White House and a nunnery? In the White House you get to wear your own clothes. Otherwise, we get up in the morning, pray to God all day we’re doing the right thing, and go to bed late at night. Alone. The nunnery of Pennsylvania Avenue.’

‘Power’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac,’ I said.

‘Only for those who do not have it,’ she said. ‘For the happily married, the White House is a strain. For the rest, it’s death. Game over.’

‘So there is no one in your …?’ I blurted out.

She shook her head. The music started to grow louder. ‘Not any more. It ended when I accepted the job from the President. I’ll tell you about Steve sometime, but maybe not tonight.’

She turned away and we watched Herbie Hancock. Steve, I thought. Lucky Steve. We sat through to the end of the set, but I was less interested in the jazz than in her. We stood up to applaud and then sat back down to talk.

‘Okay,’ she said, as if steeling herself for what she was about to say. By now we had both drunk way too much. Kristina told me that before coming to Washington to talk about the Deputy National Security Adviser job, she had been dating a history professor from Stanford, Stephen Haddon. Haddon was an expert on Germany in the interwar years and the rise of Hitler. They had considered living together. At one point they even talked of marriage, until Carr’s people headhunted her to join his campaign team.

‘I couldn’t resist,’ she said. ‘But Steve could. Big time. Maybe if I had known how much I was going to get fucked over by Bobby Black …’

She did not complete the thought. Instead she explained that Professor Haddon refused to move east. He wanted nothing–absolutely nothing –to do with Washington life, the scrutiny it would bring, or the Carr administration.

‘Steve’s idea of heaven is to sit in the Public Record Office in Berlin and write about how decent people in a civilized country like Germany became so scared that they allowed their society to be hijacked by Nazis,’ Kristina said. ‘And who could blame him? Steve isn’t even a Republican. Why would he put up with this shit?’

‘You loved him.’

‘Yes,’ Kristina said. ‘Part of me still does.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I know the feeling.’ Blues Alley was closing and they wanted to clear up. We drained our glasses and walked out into the Georgetown air, which was warm and humid in the late summer heat.

‘I need to get a cab,’ she said. ‘I gave my adult supervision the night off.’

‘I’ll walk you back …’

‘There’s no need … oh, ‘kay, what the hell, a walk will clear my head.’ She laughed and took my arm. ‘I need it to be clear. It’s what I’m good at. Newspapers say I’m a Vulcan, ‘parently.’

We turned right on M. It was about a mile to the Watergate building. It must have been one o’clock in the morning. Washington is an early town, except for the tourists. The streets were empty.

‘I talk to no one about my private life,’ Kristina told me as we walked, raising an eyebrow as if the idea startled her. ‘And now I have talked to you, Ambassador Alex Price. It’s weird.’

‘Weird that you trust me?’

‘Yes. Even more weird that I want to.’

Her hair fell a little to one side. I put my hand on her, gently. She did not move away.

‘Sometimes, I just want to hold someone,’ I said softly. ‘To put my arms around a woman and hold on. But I … have something that keeps me back … A fear of failing again.’

We had stopped in the street where M forks towards Pennsylvania Avenue. Kristina looked at me and I felt her hand grasp mine with a quiet desperation.

‘Me too,’ she said, squeezing hard. ‘Me too.’

Her fingers were small, but her touch made my heart pump hard. We stared into each other’s eyes and said nothing, did nothing.