The Parnell Affair

by James, Seth

  “Yes!” Ben Butler said. “That's it, that's what we need. That'll keep all the indecisive hand-wringing bullshit out. And I know just the man to run it: Dutch Faith, my deputy. Good man, smart, loyal,” he said, looking at Paul. “I'll have Wolfson as nominal head, but Dutch will actually run it.”

  “Excellent,” Karl said. “I see it, Mr. President; we invite selected personnel from DIA, FBI, the military, NSA, and even CIA (we have a few trusted men in Operations, Paul). They will make sure a strong argument for war is presented to the Secretary of State and through him to the UN.”

  “And by keeping this other thing,” Paul said, “this executive order Wu will write and the 'Enhanced Interrogation Techniques' Ben's shrinks will develop, all under one roof at the Pentagon, we shouldn't have any leaks,” the VP said, smiling grimly. “I like it; secure. What'll we call it?”

  “How about the Office of Special Plans,” Karl said.

  “Of course; I'd forgotten we told her she could have her weekend curfew throughout the summer,” Joe Parnell said, pausing with a shoe in his hands as he sat on his side of the bed. “But it's still a school night for me,” he said over his shoulder. “And I know I’ll wake up when she unlocks the front door.”

  He spoke over his shoulder but didn't look. Another change that seemed to happen unnoticed one day only to be recognized as peculiar months later: Joe and Sally changed clothes for bed at the same time back to back each night, never seeing the other undressed. For the sake of appearances—to Lucy—they continued to share a bed, but their physical intimacy stopped there. Neither had taken the next step and begun changing in the master bath (as Joe did each morning, but with the excuse of not wishing to wake Sally); but that, perhaps, was only to avoid a discussion of its significance. Another reiteration of how goddamn reasonable we all are, Joe had thought on more than one occasion. Such discussions had happened, of course, and never with yelling or tears or blame. It was as if the marriage had died and they were now distant relatives, brought together to see to the arrangements, awaiting patiently for the day of their return trips back to from wherever they had come.

  Sally opened her mouth to suggest he didn't need to go into the office so early, particularly as it was his organization. But she caught herself—she knew he went to Ms Fromsett's each morning—and instead said, “I'll say something to her.” Sally slipped her bra off her shoulders with one motion and put a long t-shirt over her head on the return stroke. Though she occasionally fantasized about reaching out to Joe in the middle of the night, she never did and she didn't like to think of herself making any gestures which could be interpreted as an advance. It would feel too much like coming on to another woman's husband. I wonder if he's proposed to Ms Fromsett yet, she thought as she kicked off her jeans. “We had talked of a week away with the girls, once Anna comes back from Tahoe,” she said.

  “Last week in August,” Joe said, hopping where he sat on his side of the bed to take his trousers down without standing. When he hopped again, Sally would know it was safe to turn around. “I thought it was settled.”

  “We'd talked about it,” Sally said, “but the girl's didn't know their schedules yet.”

  “That close to classes beginning?” he asked. “They can't have anything too crazy planned. Anyway, they should make the effort: could be our last family vacation,” he said and froze in his dressing. Quickly, he added: “Anna's determined to see her friends in Frankfurt next summer. And then Lucy will be away at University and then we'll only likely see them at holidays.”

  And Lucy will be away at university, Sally thought, and we'll get divorced. Joe hopped on his pajama bottoms. Both swiveled under the covers and reached for a book. Joe opened his and then immediately closed it and replaced it on his nightstand.

  “Actually, there's something we need to talk about,” he said, looking at her for a moment and then at the foot of the bed, gathering his thoughts. She held her breath. “Side tracked by curfews and things,” he mumbled, playing for time. “You recall I had a meeting with the President and some of his staff last week,” he said.

  “Yes, I do,” she said, hiding her relief and suppressing her disappointment. “You told me how well it went.”

  He smiled quickly at her and then returned to contemplating his feet through the duvet. “I didn't tell quite everything that'd happened. Apart from demanding I reverse myself on Niger's capacity or Iraq's overtures—”

  “Which still blows my mind,” she said. “The facts are so plain—obvious! It's like standing firm about the sun orbiting the earth.”

  “That's an apt way of putting it,” he said. “After they made their demand and I refused it they—they threatened to expose your undercover status at CIA.”

  NOC officer Parnell straightened on her side of the bed. “Why didn't you tell me this earlier?” she asked quietly.

  “Because if I had, you would have had to tell the Agency,” he said. “Who's the DCI over there now? Lodge?” he asked in an aside.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Good man, and capable of some subtly,” Joe said, “but he would have had to say something. Apart from it being entirely illegal to reveal a covert operative's identity, he'd think of its effect on morale—and you. And in saying something—even referring to an unrelated though similar matter or a hypothetical—the White House would interpret any counter-stroke as an attack. Especially someone as stupidly vicious as Paul Kluister.”

  “You should have told me,” she said without anger. “Tell me now,” she said, over Joe's attempted response. “Tell me how this threat took place, word for word if you can.”

  Joe reiterated the Chief of Staff's pitch nearly verbatim, adding comments about body language, tone of voice, and the like at Sally's prompting. Twenty years with State, Joe had been debriefed before.

  “I quite lost my temper, I admit,” Joe said. “Stupid, unprofessional some would say, but hardly uncalled for.”

  “It sounds ugly enough,” Sally said, rising and walking to the thermostat on the wall to turn up the air conditioning. “I wonder, though, if it was premeditated. Look, they may have only seen my report the day before, somehow learning of my identity. So it was on their minds. Or on his mind, the Chief of Staff, Karl Kristiansen. Why do I think his middle name begins with K?” she asked facetiously, leaning against the bureau next to the TV.

  “Probably something to do with the nasty parts of their campaign in the south, I expect,” Joe mumbled.

  “Well, they're not subtle people,” she said. “Cunning? Certainly, but not subtle. My guess would be that my name was on his mind, he got angry when you refused—and probably by the way you refused: let me guess, you always spoke to the President? Kristiansen would say something or ask you a question but you always looked and spoke to the President.”

  “I suppose I did,” Joe said.

  “He probably wanted to say something to ruffle your feathers,” she said. “He was probably just shooting his mouth off.”

  She returned to bed, sitting above the covers.

  “I thought as much,” Joe said. “However, this afternoon they had someone approach me again. To see if I had changed my mind, presumably. I was at lunch at Scotch Steak—that restaurant in The Four Seasons—when one of Senator Perkin's sons asked to have a word with me at the bar.”

  “Not the younger one,” she said, smiling.

  “No, not the drunk driver,” Joe said. “He'd have been under the bar; it was nearly two, after all. In any event, Perkins asked if I'd 'had a change of heart about what the President asked of me.' He then, without waiting for my answer, launched into what sounded like a well-rehearsed speech about how a country is like a family and how we sometimes have to do things we don't like for the good of our family. He laid particular stress on the word 'family' and then said there was nothing, for instance, that he wouldn't do for his wife.” Joe looked at Sally. “I managed to restrain myself and not hit him,” he said.

  “What did you say?” she asked, fee
ling oddly touched by Joe's protectiveness.

  “That I'd kill for my wife,” Joe said. “And that if he ever came round with poorly veiled threats again, I'd start with him.”

  “Joe!” she cried.

  “Hard to believe I was an ambassador,” he said. “Maybe all those pent-up emotions from years of controlling myself are spilling out the cracks,” he said, thinking thoughts of guilt-paying and the debt of gratitude he felt toward her that neither taking or giving a life could repay. “Nevertheless,” he said. “I don't believe we can dismiss their threats as spur of the moment.”

  Sally sat quietly for a few seconds and then shook her head, as if returning to the present. “I appreciate the sentiment, Joe,” she said, touching his arm for a moment. “But I can't believe they'd actually go through with it. It couldn't possibly help their position.”

  “Revenge,” he said. “A delicacy for the stupidly vicious.”

  “More trouble than it's worth,” she said. “It wouldn't help convince anyone that Saddam has or wants uranium,” she counted off, “it would spark an investigation, which would in turn make them appear to be suppressing evidence counter to their claims, and they'd wind up looking like they're—like they're trying to start a war for no reason. It's an ugly threat,” she said, “but it must be an empty one.”

  “You're right, I suppose,” he said with a sigh. “Still, for them to be so obstinately against the facts—” he paused, shaking his head, “maybe they are. Trying to start an unnecessary war.”

  Across town, on Pennsylvania Ave, the President sat in a chair near his wardrobe handling a left wingtip shoe. He sat in his light blue pajamas, his feet bare. He'd been on his way to putting his shoes in the closet when he'd noticed the sole coming away from the side of one toe.

  “If they mean that much to you,” Linda Howland, the First Lady, said, “send them out to be mended.”

  She sat across the room in front of her mirror applying face cream. One of the beauties of the Texas town where she and Pete had grown up, she was generally held by the press as the most deserving of the title 'First Lady' since Jackie Kennedy. Elegant without pretension; poised but visibly moved to pity, commiseration, respect, and forgiveness; only once had she ever been pressed by a reporter, treated as a hostile witness. And then she had responded with patience, never surrendering civility or acknowledging poor manners, until she had—in the space of two minutes—converted the reporter to an admirer before the entire press room. The reporter wrote a glowing editorial about her that Sunday, enumerating the many charities she had founded or managed, both with her father's enormous oil wealth (as one of Big Oil's biggest and oldest families) and with her husband's more modest oil revenues. Pete had stood off to one side during that press conference, almost two years ago, out of sight, and had chuckled to himself when the reporter had launched his first salvo. He knew what the man was in for.

  “I guess I'd better,” he said, never as careful about his accent when the two of them were alone. “Why this'll be flapping like a sandal before long,” he said, pawing at the loosening sole. “Just as well we're heading home tomorrow: I wouldn't know a good cobbler from a bad baker in this town.”

  “The porter would take care of that, dear,” she said, closing her jar of face cream. “Just leave it with him.”

  “Oh, right,” Pete said. “I guess he would, at that.”

  Linda turned in her chair to smile at him. “Always so independent,” she said. “Though I suppose the Presidency demands such spirit.”

  Pete set his shoes in the closet and then crossed the room to get into bed, kissing Linda's hair as he passed. “I could use a different sort of spirit altogether, right now,” he said.

  “Oh, should I get you something?” she asked, all concern.

  “No, no,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I'm just fussing. Independence? I suppose so, back when I ran my little oil company amongst the giants of Texas.”

  “I wish you wouldn't describe it that way to me,” she said, leaving her dressing table. “Why, sometimes I almost think you resent daddy. He had generation after generation preceding him, while you've had to start all but from scratch.”

  “No, I don't resent your father,” Pete said. “After my father passed, why, your father sort of stepped into the breach: just as wise and with just as much to teach.” Pete smiled; he always felt generosity of sentiment easier, more natural when talking to Linda. Even having her behind him while giving a speech had the effect—one that Karl had noticed, insisting on her presence for domestic issues and banning her from any room where foreign matters were discussed. “I was just saying how much easier it is to go it alone amongst a crowd,” Pete said, “than to stand up here alone, because there's no one in the world in the same position.”

  “What's bothering you?” she asked after climbing into bed next to him.

  “Oh, nothing,” he said.

  “Dear,” she demanded gently, taking his hand.

  “Nothing specific,” he said, smiling and leaning toward her. “It's just, some days require more of the kind of decisions I'd never had to make before. It was easy—nothing at stake but money and pride—to go in with Paul's company into some rough Central American fields. There's some of that independence for you: everyone said we were fools—including your daddy, in his way—but they've all followed us in now.” Pete heaved a big sigh and patted Linda's hand. She knew when he was half making a speech to himself, needed her as his audience, and let him have the floor.

  “Not the same as President,” Pete said. “I've sent boys to their deaths in Afghanistan.”

  “But, dear, you had to,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “I know. But nonetheless, I said 'go' and they went to the other side of the world and they died. Not the same in business: a town dies because the oil dries up, you can always tell yourself—looking at the sad folks leaving their old lives behind—there's another town and another house and a new challenge for them to find.” He shook his head, seeing nothing, or rather something not in the room. “You can't say that in Arlington.”

  He must have received casualty reports today, Linda thought. I wish I could go to Arlington cemetery for him, instead of simply with him.

  “Oh, it's a terrible thing to ask anyone to do,” she said. “To order young men to war and death. That must be why the country asks the best man it can find to make that kind of decision. And maybe,” she said, a hand on his cheek guiding his eyes toward her, “maybe it should plague you to make such decisions and give such orders. That's how you know it's right! You'll know you're doing wrong if orders you give on tough decisions don't hurt you.”

  Pete's eyes saw her again and he smiled. “The country missed, then,” he said, “by one person, if they were looking for the best. They found the right bed,” he said, patting her thigh. “Just the wrong side of it.”

  “Oh, you rascal,” she said. “I'm glad I can help you feel better sometimes.”

  “Every time,” he said and kissed her. “You're right, of course, I've had some tough questions, some decisions that have been plaguing me but good. Decisions that are right in the long run, better for everyone, maybe the whole world. But god bless it, I've—I've never had to keep my eye on the ball like this before,” he said.

  Linda thought she saw what rarely crept into her husband's eyes, what she'd only seen a few times surrounding a bout of ill health in her or one of her daughters: she saw fear.

  “Well, I know you have to deal with those things,” she said, “when those men down stairs bring you all these problems. And it may hurt and may be a struggle, but when the day is through, you can put those things aside and leave them for tomorrow and come up here and rest. You can stand it, I know you can, you have while defending our country. But at night, you can come up here with me and just rest.”

  Pete took her in his arms and laid his cheek against her hair. It could have been 1972, by the way he felt: she'd had the knack for stilling his mind when troubled, ca
lming his nerves before an impending adversity, all the long years of their life together but only once before did he know he faced a sleepless night despite her best efforts. In '72, when he'd taken an Under Secretary position in Nixon's cabinet (a thank you for all his hard work during two campaigns), his father had called him with a bad feeling. He told Pete it would be best to come home and made it clear he knew things he could not relate over the telephone. Linda was, as it happened, pregnant at the time, so Pete hinted at complications when he resigned. At the end of '72, lots of bogus reasons were being given for leaving the Nixon government. A year later, it fell. Linda had secured Pete a job as VP of 'compliance' in her father's Oil Company. But on the night Liddy and the Watergate burglars were convicted, no consolation from her or job security or coming joy at the birth of his daughter could calm Pete. Thirty years later, he had another sleepless night.

  Tobias sat on the edge of Constance Samanski's desk, alternating between explaining Senate procedure—which she could have learned in five minutes online—and diving into the aggressive flirtation they enjoyed, which resembled a verbal dogfight. Jazelle Dubois interrupted with a sticky note folded around a key.

  “You're sure you don't mind?” she asked Constance. Jazelle never lost her Creole accent and ran up an enormous phone bill each month talking to her family, maintaining it.

  “No, it's totally cool, babe,” Connie said. “Poopy and I will get along great.”

  “Poupée, Poupée,” Jazelle said. “Like toupée.”

  “Oh right,” Connie said. “I forgot to ask: hey, does Ms Poupée like other dogs? 'Cause if so, Jackfrost is so laid back—my Sheppard,” she said to Tobias, “I could just bring her home with me.”

  “Oh my god,” Jazelle said. “You've never met Poupée, have you? You have to be careful when you walk her, stay away from children, and—you're familiar with Tazers, right?”