The Wilson Deception

by David O. Stewart

  “For business, sir.”

  “For business. I shall tell one million mothers of one million poilus moldering in their graves that their sons died to make Frenchmen more rich. Boucher, it is not only your metaphors that are disgusting.” Clemenceau used a forefinger to stroke one side of his exuberant mustache.

  Boucher remained silent.

  “There is the matter of oil in Mesopotamia. It doesn’t go so well. Mr. Lloyd George is impossible. The man will say anything. We have sympathetic talks. He is charming. He is agreeable. But when I return here I realize I have gained nothing. So I stop having sympathetic talks. We argue. We shout. I return here and still I have gained nothing. Perhaps we must fight a duel.”

  Boucher smiled at the premier, who had survived a dozen duels and near-duels.

  Clemenceau made a face. “All right. No duel. Did you bring the map?”

  Boucher pulled from his briefcase a map of the now-defunct Turkish Empire. He spread it on the desk before Clemenceau. Both men leaned over as Boucher traced the route a pipeline might take between Mosul and Damascus, perhaps five hundred miles long, and then on to the Mediterranean.

  “My predecessors were stupid in that agreement with Sykes,” Clemenceau said. “We cannot give up Mosul. We must have part of the oil.”

  The two men straightened up.

  “There are advantages,” Boucher said, “to pursuing a commercial arrangement for the oil in Mosul, rather than a political one. We tell the English that we will build the pipeline for them and keep it safe across Syria and Lebanon, so long as they give to Frenchmen part of the oil of Mosul. Then we leave to England the pleasures of dealing with that country and its quarrelsome people.” He leaned over to point again. “It also allows us to confine ourselves to our historical claim for Syria and Lebanon, where the Christians are most dense. It would have the advantage of being consistent with what France has said before.”

  Clemenceau’s eyes fixed on Boucher without actually seeing him. “I wonder about this Gulbenkian and his Turkish Petroleum Company? We would use him for this?”

  Boucher shrugged. “Ah, the Armenian. When one lies down with dogs, one . . .”

  “Yes, yes, but the British have decided that fleas with petroleum are not so bad, and so do I.”

  Boucher shrugged again.

  “So, I shall haggle with this Armenian and Mr. Lloyd George over shares in the Turkish Petroleum Company on behalf of prosperous Frenchmen who despise me.”

  Boucher nodded.

  The premier waved for Boucher to remove the map. “The prince of Arabia was here yesterday. He is most impressive. He could be in the cinema. He spoke of this commission of Wilson’s to determine public opinion in Syria and Arabia.”

  “Yes, sir, the Americans continue to want that.”

  Clemenceau allowed himself a smile. “I told the prince that France would support a sort of independence for local communities in the area. No matter how that was translated into his language, it will commit us to nothing.”

  “We should be,” Boucher said, “concerned about that Colonel Lawrence. He is always buzzing around the prince. He didn’t come here with the prince yesterday?”

  Clemenceau shook his head. “We didn’t know where he was, which is troubling. Among the British and Americans, no doors are closed to Lawrence. He seems to cast a sort of spell over them.”

  “And the Jews are also troublesome over these scraps of desert?”

  “They, too, find no British or American doors closed to them.”

  Boucher plunged ahead. “You have not selected any French members for this commission of the Americans?”

  “No. I say confusing things. I marvel at the weather. The spring is beautiful, no?”

  “My office might have some suggestions for proper commissioners.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “That is well.”

  “Yes, I shall wait. The president and Mr. Lloyd George, they cannot stay in Paris forever, but we, Colonel Boucher, we live here.” Clemenceau smiled. “Only the British could muddle a situation so totally, confusing it with this Armenian and the saintly Colonel Lawrence. But they cannot quarrel with France over this bed of sand.” He pulled himself upright. “What do they care of Arabs or Jews? It’s sentimental nonsense. France will have Syria, Britain will have Mesopotamia, we will share the petroleum. The Arabs, they will have their cinema star. And the Jews will have the same nothing they’ve always had.”

  “What of Mr. Wilson and his Fourteen Points? The promise of self-determination of peoples.”

  “Yes, the inscrutable Mr. Wilson. He’s like the heavens on a cloudy night. He opposes, he preaches, he opposes, he scolds, he grows ill, he recovers, he grows ill, he still opposes. And then—poof! He agrees.” Clemenceau spread his arms in mock wonder. “He is like a storm that moves on the wind. When the storm is done, ah, that is when the hedgehog scurries out and gathers up his berries.”

  The president stood before the window of his dressing room, feeling snug in his robe of deep blue flannel. Two blackbirds perched on the window sill, pecking at the crumbs of morning toast he had placed there. He thought they were the same two birds every morning.

  He smiled, thinking of the day before, how he had surprised the others, perhaps even shocked them. When that Italian popinjay, Signore Orlando, threatened to walk out on the peace talks, Wilson didn’t bat an eyelash. With the same frosty look he used while presiding over the university senate at Princeton, he had shrugged. “You must,” he had said, “ do what you think is best.” While the translator rendered his words into Italian, Lloyd George and Clemenceau exchanged one of their meaningful glances, the ones he wasn’t supposed to notice. They expected him to implore Orlando to stay. Fiddlesticks on that. Wilson had no obligation to stop a man from playing his hand badly, something the Italians excelled at. So out Orlando stalked. He would be back, sooner than Wilson would prefer. And the other two had been reminded that Woodrow Wilson does no man’s bidding.

  The president began to hum.

  Joshua knocked at the door, then entered with the president’s black-button boots, freshly polished. He set them down next to the closet.

  Still smiling, Wilson turned and began to sing, keeping time with his hand. “The Son of God,” he began in a low voice, “goes forth to war!”

  Joshua recognized the martial stride of the hymn. It had stirred him as a boy.

  “Barnes,” the president cried, “you know it! I see by your expression that you know it. Join in!” Wilson’s pure tenor launched into the second verse in a stronger voice. “That martyr first, whose eagle eye, could pierce beyond the grave.”

  Joshua picked up the tune, but the words were slow to come to his lips, a half beat late if at all.

  Wilson conducted the hymn through the third verse.

  Joshua remembered the final line of that one. He sang clearly, “They bowed their necks the death to feel, who follows in his train?” Memories of soldiers flooded Joshua’s mind. He felt his emotions crowd in.

  Wilson began to cough. Soon the cough was a full-fledged fit.

  Joshua, pushing back his agitation, stepped over to steady the president. He helped Wilson sit.

  When the hacking subsided, the president slowly regained his breath. Smiling, he patted Joshua’s arm. “Thank you, Barnes, for the song and the help. It’s a splendid tune. Makes the heart leap up.”

  “Yes, sir. It did start to come back to me. Shall I get Admiral Grayson?”

  Wilson stood a bit gingerly. “No, it was nothing. Grayson needn’t know everything.”

  Eliza winced from the sun’s glare off the gilt and mirrors of Angelina’s Café. After an evening at the opera, it felt very early. Jamie, who had to stay at the hospital most nights, had insisted they meet at 7:30 so he could still make his mid-morning rounds. That meant she had to tiptoe out of the hotel suite while Violet slept.

  Eliza couldn’t help envying her daughter’s talent for sleeping. Eliza woke three o
r four times most nights. Mornings usually arrived like a distant shore she had been swimming to for hours. She would feel a sort of relief that she didn’t have to struggle with sleep any more. An appointment at 7:30 in the morning wasn’t entirely civilized, but Jamie wanted to meet then, and she had come a long way to reconcile. No point arguing over smaller matters. Not now, anyhow.

  She had learned—a bit late, to be sure—the dark side of her husband’s level disposition. At first, she found his even demeanor irresistible after years of accommodating the extravagant personalities and egos of her own family, not to mention the theater world where she’d worked so long. But equanimity had its own risks. It took her years to figure out that when Jamie talked about something that was very important to him, he looked and sounded very much as he did when saying something he cared little about. Perhaps a shrewder woman could perceive some telltale sign of the different intensity of his feelings, but Eliza still struggled to sort him out. She had misjudged his preferences all too often. It seemed such a basic aptitude, one that should have been natural in any loving marriage, or at least one she should have developed in nearly twenty years with the same man. Yet she had not. She found him as difficult to read now as in their first year of marriage.

  Through her recent lonely days in New York, she had resolved to address the problem directly. She would simply humor him when at all possible, whether his preference turned out to be based on whimsy or passion. She applied that resolve to this request to see her at 7:30. A man could do worse things than insist on seeing her.

  Listening to Eliza’s clumsy French, the hostess looked severe. She swiftly walked to a table in the rear of the café, where Fraser rose. Eliza was glad he wore the dark blue double-breasted with the gray stripe. It made him look like a distinguished Englishman, not another stodgy American with a vest straining to cover an ample middle. Because he’d lost weight in France, the suit fit well.

  After ordering hot chocolate and croissants—Angelina’s specialties—Eliza described the Verdi opera of the night before. Jamie started to speak, then stopped. She offered an opinion on the soprano, who Violet had much admired. Jamie started to speak again. He stopped again. She decided against filling this silence.

  He cleared his throat, an almost comic rendition of a man with some heavy burden to disclose. “Eliza, you remember Speed Cook from many years ago?”

  “How could I forget him? That man nearly ruined our life together before it started. The lies he printed! Thank God no one believed him.”

  “I never supported what he wrote, you know that. But neither were they lies.”

  Eliza took a breath. She wasn’t prepared for this. “Jamie, why must we go over this? Do you enjoy punishing me?”

  “No, no, that’s not what this is about. Let me start again. Speed’s here in Paris.”

  She sat back. “Ah, he wants money again. He can hardly think we’ll pay him off again so many years later.”

  “Eliza, that’s hardly fair. He’s never asked me for a dime.”

  “Might I remind you of your investment in that terrible newspaper of his. You don’t owe him anything. Nothing at all.”

  “That’s not true. You know it’s not true.”

  The waitress arrived with their order. With a sure feel for the moods of her customers, she set the items down as though mines lay beneath the table’s surface. The interruption helped reduce the tension.

  “So,” Eliza began again, taking a croissant from the wicker basket, “what does he want?”

  The pastry was warm. It smelled of butter as she pulled it apart.

  Fraser took his time with the story, explaining Joshua’s military record, his acquittal, the inexplicable reversal by the commanding general. He floundered over the right description of how Allen Dulles arranged for the army to misplace Joshua, and then Joshua’s current status. “You see,” he finished, “the situation is quite desperate. I must help them.”

  Eliza took her time responding. The world wouldn’t come to an end, she decided, if she had another croissant. “This has to have been going on with you and the Cooks for, what, a month?” She looked up from her roll.

  He nodded over his own pastry.

  “When were you going to tell me about it?”

  He made a small face. “I thought the subject might be uncomfortable for you. Both because of the past, and because . . . well, I didn’t know how things were going to go when you arrived.”

  She sharpened her look. “Does this, you telling me now, does it mean it’s gone well or badly?”

  “It’s been splendid. You’ve been splendid.” He assumed the earnest look she could remember from their first days together. “I want there to be no secrets between us.”

  Eliza lifted her cup of chocolate and held it with both hands. “How can you trust someone so . . . different from us?”

  “You mean because he’s a Negro?”

  “Yes, but not only that. Everything about him. What do you really know about him?”

  “I know him. Oh, I haven’t spent so much time with him, and not for a long time, but in days like the ones we shared, you get to know someone, what’s inside them. Our worlds haven’t been so very different. He grew up in the next town over from Cadiz.” He pursed his lips. “Sometimes you just know.”

  She put the cup down. “So, it doesn’t matter what I say. You’re going to risk a great deal for this man and his son.”

  “Eliza.” He put his hand on hers. “He’s not ‘this man.’ He saved my life.”

  “My question was, are you going to be taking more risks?”

  “I expect so. But I’ll be sure that nothing touches you or Violet, of course.”

  Eliza broke in briskly, shifting her silverware to avoid looking at him. “Stop it, Jamie. Just stop it.” She gave him a stern look. “Anything that involves you involves Violet and me. I won’t have it any other way. Don’t you know that’s why I’m here?”

  His face wore a mooncalf look that no man his age should have. She found it silly, but disarming. “Do you have more to tell me?”

  “No, that’s it.”

  “No paramour squirreled away in some remote arrondissement, pining for the return of her American lover? No godmother serving you fine pastries and all the comforts of home? You never answered that the other night.”

  He shook his head. “No.” He smiled slightly. “I suppose I lack the imagination for such things.”

  “That’s not terribly flattering, Major Fraser,” she snapped.

  His smile dissolved into confusion.

  She liked having him a bit confused, but this was too easy. It always had been. She took a moment. Impatience, she reminded herself, is not a virtue. “I suppose I’ve allowed you to feel that way.” She sighed. “This Speed Cook, it’s odd how we seem wrapped up with him.”

  “He was there when we first met, that time at Creston Clarke’s.”

  Eliza smiled. “You two were quite preposterous, pretending to be theatrical agents.” She reached for Fraser’s hand and squeezed it. “Have you missed him all these years? Have I kept you two apart?”

  “So much kept us apart. Black and white. The business about your family. Then his newspaper went bust, which it had to. But I’m glad to know him again.”

  “I suppose I can try to like him, Jamie. I can’t do more.” She placed her napkin on the table. “Violet may wake up any time. I should get back.”

  Waiting for the check after Eliza left, Fraser looked away from his reflection in the mirror. He didn’t need to be reminded of his own aging. Yet behind that receding hairline, beyond the pouches under his eyes and the deep lines carved on either side of his mouth, his spirit still could frisk like a six-year-old, then careen like a sixteen-year-old, then sag like the man of sixty he would become all too soon.

  Eliza had said she’d try to like Speed. Maybe she would try. Maybe she wouldn’t. Married so long and he couldn’t be sure. How could his feelings be so scrambled? He smiled at the waitress and nod
ded for the check. She ignored him.

  Catching a glimpse of that smile in the mirror, he resolved to stop his endless woolgathering about Eliza. He was growing tired of himself. That was part of why he was glad to be working with Speed again. Speed didn’t think himself into knots. He didn’t wring those big, twisted hands in indecision. No, Speed got angry. Then he’d do something, say something, make something happen.

  And so would Fraser.

  Chapter 21

  Monday, April 28, 1919

  Cook had known a few saloons in ten years as an itinerant baseball player and another two decades banging around the world. He had certain expectations about them, including that Monday nights were slow.

  But that rule didn’t apply to the Hotel Crillon bar during the peace conference that seemed destined never to end, like a song where the composer couldn’t figure out the final chord so he kept chasing the notes around the page. Indeed, the peace conference reminded him of something from a class he took in college, one of the few where he didn’t daydream about baseball or girls. Some philosopher came up with this idea that if you travel half the distance to your destination, then half the remaining distance, then another half, you’ll never actually reach it. It was a paradox, that’s what they called it. It seemed to describe the peace conference, daily halving the distance to its target of a final treaty, yet never actually reaching it. Day after day, as the negotiators met in secret, the Crillon filled with ever more feverish journalists and expert advisers, supplicants and hustlers, and dubious-looking hangers-on who fell into no obvious category other than that of men who looked dubious. Happily for the Crillon’s owners, they were all thirsty.

  Behind the bar, Cook never hurried. Haste would set the wrong tone. With its dark wood and low light, this bar was a deluxe joint, not for the shot-and-a-beer crowd. Its leather chairs could accommodate drinkers of the most generous pretensions. When Fraser walked in and took a position at the near end of the bar, Cook didn’t speed up. Fraser had nearly emptied the nut dish before Cook came by.