“Perhaps you’d like me to turn out my pockets,” Jenkins said in a blustering way.
“That won’t be necessary, sir,” replied a polite American. “Just run your hands under this scanner, front and back. …Thank you, sir. Ma’am.”
Gini held her hands beneath a device the size of a portable phone. A bluish light scanned the backs of her hands, then her palms.
Nicholas took her arm, and they walked through a discreet scaffold device erected in the doorway. Jenkins had keys in his pocket which triggered an alarm. Politely but firmly, he was taken aside behind a screen. He emerged flushed, and spent the next half hour boasting of his experiences there.
“The scanner?” he said jovially to right and left. “The scanner’s nothing. Believe me. I had the CIA grope. A testicular thrill. Best sex in years…”
The evening, as Gini had expected, was a high-powered affair. At the dais, some distance from where she and Jenkins were both seated, she counted four serving cabinet ministers, three press barons including Melrose, several well-known television news reporters, the head of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, and no less than four leading newspaper editors. When Jenkins observed these four, his expression became sour.
“Why’s that pompous fart from The Times up there?” he said. “And that Scots wanker. Great. Just great. Thanks a bunch, Melrose. …” He began to crumble his roll savagely. Turning his back on Gini, he launched into conversation with the woman seated on his other side.
“Correct. Up a hundred thousand, and still rising…” Gini heard.
She turned her attention back to the head table. John Hawthorne was seated at its center, flanked by Lord Melrose and the chairman of the BBC governors. There were no female faces, and Hawthorne was the youngest person there by at least a decade.
Compared to the powerful but aging men who surrounded him, Hawthorne emanated youth and authority. The later speeches were to be televised, and the lights in the room were already strong. They blanched the skin, and gave several of Hawthorne’s companions an appearance of fatigue. Not the ambassador, however, Hawthorne might have been wearing TV makeup—Gini was too far away to be sure. If so, it had been expertly applied. He looked even more tanned and fit than usual; the tan emphasized the blue of his eyes, the white Hollywood perfection of his smile.
Where were the security men? Gini studied the room. She could see the toastmaster, various waiters, a television crew just to the left of the dais, and another, more centrally placed, just below Hawthorne himself. A floor manager, with headphones, two soundmen…and then she saw them: that Malone man, immediately below the dais, and two more on either side. One was Frank Romero, the other a man she had not seen before.
As she looked she saw Romero turn, scan the room, glance back to the ambassador, then move across and speak to one of the waiters. The man nodded and disappeared. Frank Romero made a movement that was now becoming familiar to her: He raised his arm and appeared to mutter into his cuff. At a distance, the tiny wrist mike was invisible. Romero lowered his arm, made another quick, hard inspection of the room, then crossed to one of the tables nearest the dais. He bent and spoke into the ear of a white-haired man.
Gini stared. He was about forty feet from her, facing in her direction. He was unmistakable: It was the ambassador’s father, S. S. Hawthorne. He listened intently to Romero, then said something. Romero walked swiftly away.
Gini frowned: Hawthorne had told her that his father was coming over for that forty-eighth birthday party—a party that was still more than a week away. She was certain that was how he had phrased it. He had given no indication that his father was arriving this soon.
Strange. She surveyed the other tables. It was difficult to be sure, but she thought Lise Hawthorne was not present. So, the wife was absent, but the father was here: What could that mean?
She looked back at S. S. Hawthorne. She could now see that he was seated in a wheelchair. He was deep in conversation with the woman next to him. He looked much younger than his years. Like his son, he conveyed force and vitality. He had remained handsome; he looked vigorous. She would have put his age at little more than sixty-five, though she knew he was only a year away from his eightieth birthday.
“The Magus,” said the man seated to her left. He spoke suddenly, making Gini jump. Looking around, she saw that he had followed her gaze, and was also looking at S. S. Hawthorne. As she turned, he smiled. A short, gray-haired American, aged about forty. He glanced down at the place card in front of her.
“Genevieve, it is you. Sam’s daughter, right? I couldn’t believe it when I saw you. Last time we met—well, I guess you were around four, five years old.” He held out his hand to her. “You won’t remember. I’m Jason Stein.”
“I’m afraid I don’t remember meeting, but of course I know your name. The New York Times, yes?”
“Right. I’m head of the London bureau now. For my sins.” He grinned. “Nice to meet you again. So tell me”—he lowered his voice—“why the big interest in the Magus over there?” He nodded in S. S. Hawthorne’s direction.
“That’s what you call him, the Magus?”
Stein gave her a dry look. “It’s one of the terms. One of the more flattering ones, sure.”
Gini glanced back; S. S. Hawthorne lifted his head at that moment. Across the distance separating them he gave their table a hard blue-eyed stare. Gini looked quickly away. “No reason,” she said to Stein. “I was intrigued, that’s all. I’ve read enough about him, I just never saw him before.”
“I wonder what the heck brought him to London.” Stein had also averted his gaze from S. S. Hawthorne’s table. “These days he rarely leaves that place of his in upstate New York. At least, that’s what I always heard.”
“Maybe he’s here to play the proud paterfamilias. John Hawthorne’s the guest speaker, after all. It’s a pretty big occasion.”
“This?” Stein gave a dismissive gesture. “Hawthorne makes three speeches a week at equally prestigious gatherings. This is no big deal for him. Anyway”—he gave Gini a glance—“you watch. Hawthorne’s a good after-dinner speaker. He’ll have them eating out of his hand.”
“This audience?” Gini looked around her doubtfully. “So many journalists, so many media people? Not the easiest house to play.”
“Wait and see.” Stein paused while a waiter removed their first-course plates, and a second waiter bent between them to serve wine. Stein gestured to their wineglasses and smiled. “Call me cynical if you like, but one thing I’ve always noticed about any dinner where Hawthorne has to make a speech—you get very good wine. And plenty of it. Far more than usual. Try that claret, and you’ll see what I mean.”
Gini did so. The claret was excellent. She smiled. “Oh, come on. John Hawthorne isn’t even the host tonight….”
“Okay, you don’t believe me? Watch this.” He picked up his claret glass. “At most of these dinners—this many people, the waiters under pressure—they put the bottles on the table, right? So the guests can serve themselves. The standard ratio for a table like this—eight people—is four bottles initially, if you’re very lucky, five.” Gini looked at the bottles flanking the flower arrangement in the center of the table. There were eight of them. “Now, watch this.” Stein drank the claret in his glass. He put the glass back on the table but made no move toward the bottles. “I give it thirty seconds,” he said in a dry way. “I made a study of this a few years ago, when I followed Hawthorne on the campaign trail. I’m thinking of publishing it.” He smiled. “A time and motion study. How to win friends and influence people…Ah.”
The wine waiter had materialized at his side. He refilled Stein’s glass, and a couple of others at the table. He replaced the empty bottle with a full one.
“Right to the second,” Gini said.
“There you are. Now you know one of the reasons John Hawthorne’s speeches always go so well at these occasions. Attention to the tiny details.” He shrugged. “But then, that’s the mark of the ma
n.”
“So tell me,” Gini said. “What’s John Hawthorne like on the campaign trail? Which of his campaigns did you cover?”
“Two. I covered his first senatorial campaign—that’s, what, around sixteen years ago. Then I covered his final one, when it looked like he’d be going for the Democratic candidacy in ninety-two. I put in the hours on the Learjet. And I can tell you his methods hadn’t changed. They’re impressive—and so is the stamina. John Hawthorne can get by on three hours sleep a night, I swear it. I was punch-drunk after three days of his schedule. But not him. Dawn at some godforsaken airstrip someplace, and Hawthorne’s there, fresh as a daisy, with the aides and the lists—all fired up and ready to go.”
Gini waited while the waiters served the second course. She glanced at Stein. “Lists?” she said.
“Local worthies, factory officials, fund-raisers, women’s groups, party workers, big wheels in the local police department…” Stein shrugged. “Whoever he’s meeting that day. They’re graded for him, by the aides. Level five get five minutes of his time, and—”
“—And level one gets only one minute?”
Stein laughed. “Sure, but a man like Hawthorne can clinch a vote in thirty seconds—that’s what the aides liked to say. The right handshake, the right questions, little bursts of charm. Hawthorne’s always briefed, always primed.”
“So what kind of questions would those be? It can’t be that easy, surely….”
“Listen,” Stein said, “Hawthorne never meets anyone of any use to him without knowing beforehand whether he’s met them before, how many kids they have, which football team they support, whether they have a dog or a cat, hell—what brand of cereal they have at breakfast, for all I know. It’s all printed out for him, by the aides. Hawthorne has an incredible memory. Best I’ve ever seen. He learns it on the way there, in the car or the plane. It works on rednecks and bank presidents. The aides call it CTC.”
“CTC?”
“Channeling the charm.”
There was a brief silence. Gini considered this. She ate a little of the food, which was excellent, and avoided the wine. Irrespective of other events, she was beginning to see that she had been wrong about her conversation with Hawthorne at Mary’s, and Pascal right. CTC, she thought. And I fell for it too.
Jason Stein had turned to talk to the woman on the other side of him; Nicholas Jenkins continued to cold-shoulder her. She did not mind this isolation, which at least gave her time to think. When the waiters removed their plates and began to serve dessert, Jason Stein turned back to her with a smile.
“So, you have a particular reason to be interested in Hawthorne?” he asked.
“No. No. Politicians interest me as a species, that’s all. I like to work out how they operate, what makes them run.” She paused, looking at Stein, whom she knew to be an excellent journalist, well informed, smart. “Do you think he’s really given up on U.S. politics now?” she asked. “You think he’ll ever try for a comeback, further down the road?”
Stein shrugged. “Hard to say. A year ago, when he accepted me posting here, I thought he’d thrown in the towel. God alone knows why—I mean, it was way out of character. But recently, I’ve heard a rumor or two, just straws in the wind. Hawthorne always had very powerful backers, you know, in the Democratic Party and elsewhere. There’s a whole lot of very influential people, and pressure groups—and from what I hear, Hawthorne’s still their favorite son.” He smiled. “It depends. I don’t have a crystal ball. But if you asked me, would I rule Hawthorne out as a future presidential candidate, even as president, I’d have to say no.”
“I guess you’re not going to elaborate on those rumors?” Gini gave him a sidelong glance.
Stein smiled. “You’re damn right, I’m not. Not to a reporter on the News, even if she is Sam Hunter’s daughter. Look at it this way, Genevieve”—he nodded toward the head table—“the man’s forty-seven. He looks thirty-seven. He’ll stay here in London how long? Maybe two, at most three years. I’d give it two. Then, before you know it, he’s back in the States, rebuilding that political base of his. Meantime, in any case, he can rely on the Magus. I will tell you one thing. I hear—and I hear it from very good sources—that old S. S. never gave up. This is a blip as far as he’s concerned. Back home he’s busy wheeling and dealing the way he always was. He’ll keep John Hawthorne’s seat nice and warm.”
Gini glanced across at Hawthorne’s father. He was speaking, she saw, to Frank Romero again. She turned to Stein. “You see that guy over there, the man talking to Hawthorne’s father?”
“I see him, sure.”
“He’s one of Hawthorne’s security people?”
“He’s one of his father’s security people, that I do know.” Stein’s expression hardened. “I forget his name, but I know him. He goes way back. He was always around, drafted by the father, making sure that when John Hawthorne was campaigning, he stayed on the straight and narrow. Oh, and making sure he didn’t get killed, of course. That too. S. S. knows how to protect his investments.”
“You mean that?” Gini stared at him. “You mean the father hired the bodyguards—”
“—And they doubled as Daddy’s spies?” Stein grinned. “Sure.” He hesitated, then frowned. “Way back, in the early days, before John Hawthorne became as tight-lipped as he is now, he used to talk about it. Joke about it even, late at night, after a day’s campaigning, over a drink or two. His version was, the father was just a tad overprotective, like he wired his son’s room at Yale, had his lady friends investigated, that kind of thing…”
“You’re joking. Hawthorne himself talked about that?”
“Sure. I heard him myself, once or twice. Like I say, he’d pretend to be amused, tell the story in this dry, droll kind of way. Make light of it.” Stein shrugged. “He’s an interesting man, Hawthorne. A complex man. What I said earlier—I didn’t mean to belittle him. He’s tough now, hard—that’s inevitable. But I used to like him.”
“And you don’t like him now?”
“I don’t like his politics, that’s for sure. Do you?” He gave her a sharp glance.
Gini said, “You mean, all things to all men?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. But that’s what brings in the votes, Genevieve, and the donations.” He began to count off items on his fingers. “Pro-civil rights, so he brings in the black vote, the Latinos. Pro-Israel, a real Zionist in public but an anti-Semite at home. No Jews at his dining room table. No blacks or Latinos either, I can tell you. Hell.” Stein gave an almost angry shrug, and broke off. “So, he’s not a man of principle. He could have been, but he isn’t. So, he’s a politician. What’s new?”
“Then it’s not just his politics? You don’t like the man?”
“I never met a politician I did like.” Stein grinned. “Snakes in the grass, every goddamn one of them.”
He leaned back in his chair. Coffee was being served, and liqueurs. Stein took one of the cigars being offered around the table, as did Jenkins. Through a haze of aromatic smoke, Gini saw the microphones being positioned. The full television lighting was switched on.
Lord Melrose stood and began his speech of introduction. It was elegant but overlong. He had not, Gini thought, made Hawthorne’s task as main speaker any easier. The audience might be well oiled, but there was restlessness in the room.
As John Hawthorne rose to his feet, the cameraman moved into position. Hawthorne waited until there was silence. Then he gave an easy smile, a Hollywood smile, and he threw the switch. Gini could sense him do it, just as he had done briefly at Mary’s party. Whatever charisma was, that elusive, hard-to-define quality, Hawthorne had it. She could feel its force in the room.
“Privacy and the press…” Hawthorne looked around his audience. “What an opportunity. Here I am, and I can give you my views, secure in the knowledge that when I get to the end, I won’t have to take one single question….” His tone had become dry. “And let me tell you, when facing the British press cor
ps, that’s very good to know….”
It was perfectly judged, Gini thought. The delivery was good, the timing was good, the smile was good—and he got the response he wanted. There was a ripple of amusement from the audience, and a collective relaxation. The moment of tension that always precedes any speech had been quickly overcome. Having relaxed his audience, Hawthorne then proceeded to wind them in.
He spoke without notes, clearly and concisely. He kept his speech light initially, then turning to the central question—the freedom of the press versus the protection of the individual—he began to take a tougher approach. He put the case for each side with scrupulous exactitude, like an attorney. Gini waited to see which side he would come down on. With this audience there could be no fudging of the issues: Would he take the liberal or the conservative line?
Pausing, Hawthorne fixed his audience with a cool blue stare. “Several years ago now,” he continued, “when I was still a United States senator, I made a long tour of Middle Eastern Arab states—something I guess I couldn’t risk now. While I was out there, I learned firsthand what it was like to live in a society where ordinary men and women had no access to the truth. Where newspapers and television had been corralled by the state. Where journalists like yourselves had to print and promulgate propaganda, or risk imprisonment and death.” His blue gaze raked the room.
“I’ll say this—I was probably naive. I had every reason to understand what those societies were like, and how they operated—I could read Western newspapers, after all. But to read those accounts and actually to experience that kind of state propaganda were two very different things. I learned a lot from that trip, and one of the chief things I learned was fear. The techniques being used in those countries weren’t new ones, you see. They’d been perfected at the time of the Third Reich, in Nazi Germany. Fifty years later, when the cold war was ending, I could see propaganda methods first used by Joseph Goebbels. They had worked then—and they worked just as effectively, and just as damnably, right now.”
Lovers and Liars Trilogy Page 40