A friendly receptionist looked puzzled when he mentioned that he was there on behalf of Ms. Sandifer.
“You mean Rebecca Sandifer?”
Excellent, a first name. “Yes, Rebecca. She’s my niece.”
“Our visiting hours are—”
“I don’t want to see her,” he said quickly. “I’m concerned about her financial situation.”
“Financial situation?”
“Her fees and so on.”
“Would you like to speak to our bursar?”
“That would be great, thank you.”
A few minutes later a pale man of about forty appeared in the reception area. “I’m Jay Forsling,” he said. “You have a question about fees?” Officious and a bit tense, he seemed inclined to hold what he expected to be a very brief conversation right there in the lobby.
“My niece, Rebecca Sandifer, is a resident here and I—”
“Rebecca Sandifer,” he said quickly. The name appeared to thaw him a bit. “Why don’t we talk in my office?” He led Zach down a long hallway lined with small offices. “Would you like coffee? Water?”
Zach declined and they turned into one of the exterior-facing offices, with a view of the parking lot and, beyond it, a large, well-tended lawn. Forsling sat behind his desk, which was covered with neatly stacked papers. Zach sat opposite him.
“You said you were Rebecca’s uncle?” Like his desk, Forsling was neat and unrevealing; he was slight, with pale skin and small features, a mole of a man.
“She’s my sister’s child,” he said.
“I wasn’t aware that the mother had any involvement in the financial arrangements.”
“Well, that’s really what I’m here about,” Zach said. “My sister doesn’t have a lot of financial resources. Her husband, my brother-in-law, William Sandifer, isn’t wealthy, either. Fortunately, I’m in a position to help out, but neither my sister nor Billy will even listen to my offers of assistance.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Forsling said, pushing his glasses up his nose.
“They’re proud people. I think they believe that if they were to accept help from me it would mean—”
“But surely they told you…” He shook his head and neatened a pile of reports.
“Told me what?”
“This is really a private matter.”
“We’re talking about the long-term care of my niece. If there’s any possibility of her not being able to remain here, then it’s very much my business.”
“But you must know that’s not even remotely an issue.”
“Why is that?” Another anxious shake of the head, another pile of printouts squared. “Look, Billy Sandifer isn’t exactly wealthy,” Zach said. “And this place isn’t exactly cheap, so if there’s a problem, I’d like to know about it. I’d like to know in advance so that my niece will not have to suffer.”
“Rebecca Sandifer will never have to leave the Newman Center.”
“How do you know that? What if her fees aren’t paid, what then? We’re talking, what, a hundred grand a year?”
Forsling stood up. “All I can say is, there is no problem, now or in the future. She will be a part of our community for as long as she, for as long as her parents want her to be.”
“But how—”
“That’s all I can say. I suggest you take this matter up with your sister, Mr.…did you tell me your name?”
“Who’s paying the tuition for Rebecca Sandifer?”
“I’m sure you understand we can’t divulge the identity of…well, it’s quite confidential.”
The identity. Would he have used that phrase if the fees were being paid by the girl’s parents? Zach stood up.
“How long has Julian Mellow been paying Rebecca Sandifer’s fees here?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Forsling said, circling the desk. “Which isn’t to say that he is paying the fees. In fact, that was rather a ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’ type of question. Quite unfair. I have things to do,” he said, pointing to the hallway outside his office. “If you’d like to visit with your niece, I’m sure it can be arranged.”
“It’s not visiting hours.”
“Yes, well, I think we can make an exception just this once.”
“Because of Julian Mellow?”
“Because we’re a caring institution,” he said through gritted teeth. He nudged Zach out of his office and closed the door behind him.
Zach felt that he’d found a key link in the chain that connected Julian Mellow to Billy Sandifer, the reason the ex-business basher was working for the ur-capitalist. On his way to the lobby he saw a long hallway leading away from the office area. It looked like a corridor in an upscale hotel. Patients’ quarters, he assumed. It occurred to him that he hadn’t seen a single resident or even an attendant since arriving at the Newman Center, but that was probably part and parcel of being in a top-of-the-line facility: the sense of privacy, the impression that this was a resort. Despite everything, he felt a momentary pang for Billy Sandifer, who seemed to have changed so dramatically, compromised so much, to keep his daughter in such a place. Then he saw the plaque, just to the right of the entrance to the long corridor. WELCOME TO THE NEWMAN CENTER’S MATTHEW MELLOW CHILDREN’S WING.
Chapter 27
Kamalia had become almost entirely isolated from the outside world since the coup. Major industries had been nationalized, causing most foreigners, who had once either controlled or worked in these industries, to leave. That had been the case with Amalgamated Cobalt. The government had tried to retain top managers after absorbing it, including Matthew Mellow, but without a strong profit motive (all profits went to Laurent Boymond and his cronies), few remained. There was still a sizable contingent of Americans; those not associated with the embassy were mostly engineers, who were paid substantially more than they could make in the States to keep Kamalia’s mining operations running smoothly. Mercenaries, is how Sophie viewed them. But the Americans kept to themselves, most living in a gated community on the outskirts of the city. Matthew had stayed on because he’d felt obliged to fight for the rights and safety of the company’s fifteen thousand employees, and he’d paid with his life when Boymond decided he was one corporate asset that could be safely liquidated.
As Sophie DuVal waited in line at the central post office in Villeneuve (home delivery of the mail having been curtailed shortly after the coup, an attempt to limit the flow of information as much as to reduce the national budget), she noted that at least two-thirds of the light bulbs in the overhead fixtures were burned out, casting a jaundiced gloom over the large, high-ceilinged room. Isolation was driving Kamalia into the past, a kind of reverse evolution. The pace of modernization that had once made Kamalia a model for the rest of Africa had at first slowed following the coup, then stopped altogether, and then started to creep in reverse. Electrical outages were an almost daily occurrence, so that people had begun to cook on wood fires in their yards, sometimes even when the power was still on, rather than risk disruption midpreparation. With little input from other countries, there was a sense that history had ceased: world leaders had changed since the coup, fashions had come and gone. But Kamalia was largely oblivious to it all.
During the interminable wait she read Aujourd’hui. She trusted not a word it contained, but scanned it most days to find out what the government wanted her to know. Online, she tried to read American newspapers, though most sites were blocked. A US candidate for president was mentioning human rights abuses in Kamalia in his speeches. That Kamalia had become a topic in the US election, at least for one long-shot candidate, was of course not mentioned in Aujourd’hui. Instead, the news for several days running was all about Claude DuMarier, or General Claude DuMarier, though it was unclear when or where or in what military he had ever served. DuMarier had long been a close friend of Le Père Boymond and, following the coup, had been appointed the head of Amalgamated Cobalt, effectively becoming Matthew’s boss. He knew nothing about runni
ng a business and, after Matthew’s murder, had taken Amalgamated from a profitable emblem of Kamalia’s future to a money-hemorrhaging symbol of its demise. As a reward for this performance he was being made head of “government security,” which meant, Sophie intuited from the elliptical and poorly written article that covered most of the paper’s front page, that he was in charge of protecting the presidential palace and all its occupants, including Boymond and his family. There was a large photo of DuMarier and Boymond on the front page, both dressed in ceremonial uniforms that bespoke a glorious military past that had never existed.
She tossed the paper into an already full garbage can and waited another forty-five minutes. Finally, she gave her name to the teller and was handed a small packet of mail. A letter from a childhood friend, who lived an hour away and used to communicate via telephone or email, back when such services were reliable. A few letters from friends in New York, all of them showing signs that they’d been opened. Her incoming mail was read by the government, she being a well-known “agitator,” the term applied to her and likeminded Kamalians by Aujourd’hui. It was ironic, really, since her American friends wrote about nothing weightier than the latest couture collections in New York, Paris, and Milan, about whose contract with which modeling agency or cosmetics firm had been renewed or dropped, about what new restaurant or club they’d been to. There was always an expression of concern at the situation in Kamalia, and an entreaty for Sophie to leave—but even the paranoid Boymond regime could find nothing sinister in that. And then there was her copy of Fashion Week, the bible of Seventh Avenue. Indispensable news of the rise and fall of hemlines and the hot color for the next year, photos of designers and models and fashion executives at shows and parties: it seemed a missive not from another place but from another time or even planet. It was the one foreign publication she subscribed to that the government didn’t bother to confiscate. She had no interest in it, of course, in fact it depressed her, since it reminded her of a time when clothes and parties had been the most important things in her life, and she missed that time—she mourned it, in fact, for it felt dead to her, long gone. She read Fashion Week because its owner, Pretium Publications, a group of dozens of very profitable trade publications, was owned by Masters Media, a conglomerate that included the largest collection of network-affiliated television stations as well as a film production company and numerous local newspapers, which in turn was owned by Mellow Partners, which was owned, of course, by Julian Mellow, who sent her a complimentary subscription.
She took the mail to a coffee bar on the rue de la Paix, the city’s grandest boulevard, lined with multistory apartment houses and limestone mansions that were once home to French foreign service officers and their families. Later they housed a wide range of foreigners who flocked to Kamalia following the end of colonial rule. Since the coup they were occupied mostly by Kamalians, but this wasn’t the happy ending it might have seemed, for the mansions and apartments had been chopped up into tiny apartments, most with shared bathrooms, and already a lack of maintenance in the tropical Kamalian climate had caused their facades to crumble and peel. Most of the nearby shops were boarded up.
At least the bar/tabac on the corner of rue Lafayette had survived. In fact, it was crowded at ten in the morning, filled with workers on a coffee break and the unemployed enjoying an affordable indulgence, a cup of espresso costing only ten francs—Kamalian francs, each worth about a US penny.
She ordered a double espresso and took an inside table under a large, anemic ceiling fan. The news from friends in New York was predictably upbeat and irrelevant. Was there really a place where clothes and makeup and getting into the hottest nightclub was so important? Had she really lived in such a place? Her grade-school friend, in contrast, wrote of shortages and strategies for dealing with them, and reminisced about happier times. Finally, she opened Fashion Week, turning immediately to the last page, the employment ads. She scanned it quickly, expecting, as always, to find nothing relevant, and almost dropped the tiny espresso cup when she came to the small ad in the lower right corner:
Position available immediately in Paris. Candidate must have substantial fashion experience. English and French speaker required. Apply by January 31. Qualified candidates will be contacted. MM Enterprises. Care of this paper, box 77949988.
She was being summoned to Paris. With her mail intercepted, her phone calls, when they miraculously got through, tapped, and email mostly nonexistent, the employment page of Fashion Week was the only reliable and secure way to contact her. Each week for two years she’d dutifully waded through the publication; only twice before had she actually received a message, each time a summons to Paris. Travel to and from Kamalia was virtually suspended, but there were still daily flights to Paris, and the government allowed them since it needed some channel for currency exchange, and because the French government was, shamefully, a backer of the corrupt Boymond regime. This time she was to be there on January 31, where she would dial a specified number. The call would be answered by Julian Mellow.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 29
Chapter 28
“Why aren’t you in New Hampshire?” Julian said as Marcella Lightstone was shown into his office. Those were the first words from his mouth, and his none-too-subtle humiliation of a society grandee and, more recently, potential (if unlikely) First Lady, in front of his assistant, Stacy Young, had its desired effect. Her face, porcelain pale and preternaturally unwrinkled, flushed a livid crimson, and her monied voice, once the office door was closed, grew uncharacteristically strained.
“I’ve left a number of messages with your girl,” she said.
“Stacy is my secretary, not my ‘girl.’ And ‘assistant’ is even more appropriate.”
As she cooled her heels in front of his Josef Hoffmann desk, Julian once again marveled at what money, if judiciously spent, could do for a person. He liked self-created women. Caroline was one. Marcella was another. She’d had no lack of funds from the beginning, but she’d not been blessed with Caroline’s beauty or charm, and so had to recreate herself using not only inherited wealth but a resolute belief in herself and a bracing dose of discipline. He knew all about self-creation, and admired it in others, particularly women.
“Harry has to be in Washington today for an important vote. If he misses it the negative publicity will be horrendous for him.”
“The Arms Appropriations Omnibus Bill. The vote is expected to be very close.”
“Whatever. I’m not happy about—”
“Nevertheless, your presence is not required in Washington. I think Harry can figure out how to vote on his own.”
“You’d be surprised,” she said without cracking a smile, and he felt a sexual stirring. Her ruthless objectivity was breathtaking. He glanced away from her. “This is a losing proposition,” she went on. “Rooney’s a shoo-in in New Hampshire next week, and after that it’s all over. I don’t plan to break my neck campaigning in South Carolina just to show that we’re not giving up. I detest that sort of pointlessness and hypocrisy, smiling bravely and saying things like ‘Our cause is not over’ and other banalities. I won’t be part of that.”
“You’re not the one running for president.”
“Neither are you, Julian. This Kamalia nonsense you insist on Harry spewing, it’s making him a laughingstock. I understand your son died there, but—”
“He was murdered.”
“I’m sure you could pay someone to go over there and kill whoever was responsible. Wouldn’t that be easier?”
As if a single death would balance the scales. He wanted—needed—much more than that.
“You always assume there’s someone you can pay to do whatever it is you want,” he said.
“It’s been my experience, yes.”
He sighed. “What is it you want now, Marcella?”
“We need something dramatic to turn the tables. I want Harry to announce that Constance Strickland is his choice for vice president.”
“Ou
t of the question.”
“She’s wildly popular with women, she’ll help to temper his abortion and gay positions, which are perceived as extreme.”
“I had no idea you were so politically oriented.”
“I despise politics. As do you. I want the White House.”
As if it were a piece of art being auctioned, or chairmanship of a top-drawer charity dinner.
“Congresswoman Strickland has not been vetted.”
“We can have her vetted in twenty-four hours.”
“We’re not talking about hiring a new maid.”
“Maybe someday you’ll explain the difference to me.”
“If we bring Connie Strickland on board, and she turns out to have a skeleton in her closet—perhaps she neglected to pay the social security taxes for her maid, or burned her bra in the sixties, or Googled something inappropriate—it will sink Harry’s chances. It’s the biggest decision of the campaign, and it has to go perfectly.”
“I don’t see that we have anything to lose,” she said. “All this nonsense about Kamalia…we need a dramatic gesture.”
“Leave the drama to me.”
She studied him for a few moments. “You’re planning something,” she said. Julian shrugged. “You wouldn’t get into this without some sort of plan.”
The phone console on his desk chimed and he gratefully picked up the receiver.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Mellow, but you asked me to tell you when Mr. Franklin called.”
“Yes, thank you.”
He hung up and engaged his private line, the number of which not even Caroline had. He held a finger up to Marcella, and dialed Billy Sandifer’s cell.
“Mr. Franklin, this is Julian Mellow,” he said when Billy answered.
“Yeah, so listen, I got a call from the Newman Center today.”
Julian felt a tightening in his abdomen, his inevitable response to impending bad news. “What about?”
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