The Parnell Affair

by James, Seth

  “Fuck, man,” Beeby squealed, feeling his drinks as well, which made him talk like a teenager. “I've heard of this chick—saw her on TV once, too—un-fucking-believable. I kind of hate you a little now.” They laughed, they toasted. The crowd milling around them went all but unnoticed during Wu's recitation, but Beeby caught sight of someone important passing by. “Whoa, hey,” he cried. “You got to tell Karl. Hey, Karl,” Beeby said with his usual familiarity with people he hardly knew. “Karl, come her a sec. Listen to this motherfucker. Guess who he's an inch away from tagging.”

  Karl Kristiansen never missed a function of the LeGris variety if he could help it. The cementing of relationships aside, the loose talk of his inebriated peers often revealed valuable personal details. He approached with relish the thought of this very dangerous lawyer—John Wu—offering him a lever.

  Careful to leave out any mention of wanting to see the Niger documents, Wu retold his story. Only his inner fantasies and the effects of his cocktails kept him from noticing the growing displeasure evident on Karl's face. Wu's punch line about showing her his boat sometime soon elicited no more slapping of backs. He finally noticed the unfriendly eyes boring into him.

  “Get lost: now!” Karl said quietly to Beeby. The suddenly white-faced lawyer melted into the surrounding revelers. “Come with me,” Karl told Wu and led him out of the function room and down a hall of the hotel. When reasonably alone, Karl stood so Wu's back was to the wall and said, “You are unbelievably simple. You will now tell me everything you left out of that story.”

  No obvious threat was necessary; Wu felt the mortality of his flesh as well as the tenuousness of his career join him and Karl in the conversation. Without reserve he related Sally's every word. He tried to emphasize her apparent desire to reconcile with the Administration, going so far as to suggest political gain could come from his contact with her.

  After a stony silence, Karl said, “Simple is too kind a word for you. Listen, you ignorant little fuck,” he hissed, taking Wu by the back of the head, his eyes bloodshot with barely controlled rage: “she is playing you. You are never to see her again—and I'll be watching. Now you get the fuck out of my sight before I tear your head off!”

  Not a man prone to losing his temper, Karl's features possessed the usual qualities inherited from a lifetime of self control—which made his visage unrecognizable and wholly terrifying when contorted by rage.

  Wu retreated, all but running down the hallway, as much in search of a men's room as an exit. Karl took a few deep breaths and then returned to the party. His first thought had been to leave for the White House, to tell the President, but upon reflection he knew the situation was one in which the President must take no part. He found Paul chatting conspiratorially with Mr. LeGris.

  “Mr. Vice President,” Karl said. Paul's alcoholic haze burned clear of his eyes instantly. “I need a moment.”

  Few were the possible reasons for Karl needing a moment with him, Paul knew. He extricated himself from his friends and followed Karl to a small secure room, already swept by Secret Service to be used in an emergency. This was not the emergency they'd imagined.

  “Let's have it,” Paul barked as he took a seat on a folding chair beside the room's only furniture, a desk with a secure landline.

  “Sally Parnell is conducting an investigation,” Karl said. “She is trying to obtain a copy of the Niger documents.”

  Paul heaved a great impatient sigh, devoured his lips, and slapped the table. It sounded like a gunshot in the tiny room.

  “How?” was all he said.

  “She approached John Wu,” Karl said. He related the relevant details, particularly Sally's access to the OSP personnel list—which indicated she didn't know who did what at the OSP or she wouldn't have contacted Wu—and her mentioning the Niger docs were at the UN.

  “The goddamn UN,” Paul mumbled. “And the CIA betraying us again,” he shouted.

  “It's only this operative,” Karl said, knowing he'd have to endure a tantrum before he could get the VP to sign off on an operation.

  “Is it?” Paul said. “Is it, really? Well, we'll see about that.” He picked up the phone and called the White House switchboard. Karl opened his mouth to object but remained silent when he heard Paul ask to be put through to the National Security Adviser, Claudy Lovett. “Claudy? Paul,” he barked a few minutes later; he had to be transferred to her home. “Listen, I need phone records and I need them yesterday. Send someone over to the Hilton who can do it quick and over the phone. I'll have one of my boys waiting in the lobby for him. Good! Thanks,” he mumbled and hung up. “Wondering what I'm up to, aren't you? I smell a conspiracy.”

  “Sir?” Karl said.

  “The UN!” Paul shouted and slapped the table again. “Your memory going? Only the other week you tell me and the President that some cocksucking reporter knew the Niger documents were fake. The IAEA knows; they must have told him. El Saada will play ball, though,” he said to himself: “He knows we could crush him. So now this traitor CIA bitch is trying to fuck them out of that gook lawyer? Why? Because she knows they're fake!”

  Karl nodded his head, impressed. It changed nothing of what he thought must be done but his respect for the VP increased.

  “Now go tell one of my boys to watch the door for someone from NSA,” Paul said, looking around the little room for his drink. “And then go find Ben; he's around here somewhere—or upstairs. If he is, send one of his boys to get him. I have a notion of what you'll want done about this whole thing and Ben has a man who can do it.”

  Karl, though unused to taking the VP's orders, complied. In half an hour, Ben Butler had joined them—disheveled but happy/angry—and a tech from the NSA had arrived. Paul had the tech contact someone who pulled Sally's phone records.

  “Patriot Act,” Ben Butler said with a nod of his head and proud smile.

  “Do you want them printed out, sir?” the tech asked Paul.

  “No, just tell me how many times she called or was called by a—damn, what's his name, the reporter?” Paul asked Karl.

  “Tobias Hallström,” Karl said. “We want just the last two weeks of October and first week of November.”

  The tech spoke into the phone and listened. “Thirty-fire times, sir,” the tech said.

  “Thank you, that'll be all,” Karl said and ushered the tech out.

  “It's goddamn treason,” Ben Butler said.

  “It is a situation that has to be handled with the proper balance of subtlety and vigor,” Karl said. He related a plan to the two seated men.

  “I have the perfect man for the operation,” Ben Butler said.

  Senator Rhowe finally told his story late Monday night: Tobias was on the earliest train from Boston to DC Tuesday morning. He wrote up the sordid tale of Senator Rhowe's escapades during the train ride. Having let his ME know he was coming back with the story, Tobias was greeted with handshakes and hurrahs by not only his managing editor but by the Chief as well. The Chief loved a scoop more than anything. Tobias—as graciously as he could muster—accepted this congratulations as he dropped off his story at the copy desk and then departed, leaving any revision and polishing of the story to his ME. He had nothing to fear in doing so: only someone of Tobias's reputation for fairness could have obtained the story and his editors knew it only too well; they would change or add or embellish nothing in the original text lest they harm their golden boy. Tobias's philosophy had always been that you cannot dress up a story of that sort, you cannot add more scandal, all that can be done to improve its impact upon the reader is to tell it as honestly as possible. At the moment, however, Tobias had other things on his mind—such as where in the hell could he find kumamoto oysters in DC in the middle of December!

  The night before, he'd told Sally of his impending return and she'd said she'd find a way to come to his place that night. Her excuse to Lucy and Joe for the past three months had been that she was taking a night course in cooking at George Washington University (it
provided the perfect cover as, inevitably, if she met Tobias, food would be involved; so if asked she would have a menu to call upon). Tobias called her to confirm as he took a cab to an upscale gourmet shop—whose staff he hated almost as much as their prices—but her phone went direct to voice mail, which meant she was deep in the vault at Langley where she couldn't get a signal. Having taken so much time off—often with little notice—and long lunches to stakeout John Wu et al, Sally was trying to put in some normal hours.

  At about 5:00, she called Tobias as she fought her way through Washington's infamously bad rush-hour traffic, mitigated only very slightly by her going into rather than out of the city. All was ready and he anxiously awaited her. She took as a good omen—and laughed at herself for doing so—that she found a parking space exactly in front of his building. A quick touch up in the rearview mirror and then up to his apartment, the beating of her pulse along her throat outpaced her jogging feet.

  Though coming directly from work, she wore the same nearly transparent black dress which had tempted John Wu to treason. She had bought it expressly for Tobias; that is, hopeful for the gratifying sensation of being desired all the more by him when he saw her in it. She'd changed into it along the way back from Langley. Now, climbing the steps to his apartment, she readied her coat to reveal it with a flourish. She knew what she was doing with such a maneuver: she wished to affect him, to feel beautiful and sexy and thus sexual. It was less hesitation than trepidation that prompted a pause upon the landing and a hitch in her step as she approached his door: she wanted this night deeply, her body pleaded with her mind to bring to an end this two-year absence of human touch. But in her mind, she also felt that sating her passion, after revealing so much to Tobias that she had told no one else, that to enjoy this final untouched intimacy would be to definitively leave her marriage. Loveless—at least as the lover in her perceived—as her marriage was, despite her husband moving on with another woman, she left her marriage not without regret.

  Nevertheless, she was not disappointed when Tobias opened the door at her knock. She waited until the door was in motion to unfasten the last and lowest button of her coat and then raised her eyes to his face, watching his reaction as she revealed herself. He appeared to stop breathing. A moment passed. Her thoroughly gratified wish to affect him gave way to some slight embarrassment—for him.

  “Tobias,” she said, elongating each syllable with a laugh in her voice.

  “Hello, Tobias speaking,” he said absently and then shook his head. Knowing the moment for a debonair remark had slipped passed, he fell back on humor. She laughed—partly in amusement, partly in release of tension—so hard she bent double. “Hang on, that's not right,” he said, pretending to get a hold of himself. “Wrong greeting. Hello, welcome—stop that laughing!” he added playfully.

  She stepped passed him and he closed the door.

  “A writer failing to find the proper words,” he mumbled. “But there has always been only a single word—however inadequate—in my mind at the sight of you, and more so tonight: beautiful.”

  They kissed but did not give way to their passion, not with so many hours before them. He hung her coat by the door as she noticed the subtle signs of an apartment recently cleaned, top to bottom. She smiled at his effort.

  “Well,” he said, noticing. “I had the whole day. I thought you'd come straight from work, though: I'm not dressed to accompany an amazing outfit like that.” He wore simply a fitted button-down shirt, which accentuated his thin waist, and chinos.

  He made a motion as if to go and change. “No, you're fine,” she said, staying him with a hand. “Handsome as always. Do you like this dress?”

  “Almost as much as its contents,” he said. He paused, again looking at her and then drew a slow breath.

  “Oh,” she said, rolling her eyes impatiently, though not because of him. “I'm enjoying the way you're looking at me—maybe a bit more than is good for me—but I did have a couple of things about work I wanted to tell you first.”

  “That's fine,” he said. “I admit I'm quite curious about how things went.”

  She stepped close to him and up on her toes to whisper in his ear.

  “Do you really think my place is bugged?” he asked, albeit in a whisper, though clearly dubious.

  She gave him a significant look and then placed one hand behind his ear to shield her words while the other stroked his cheek. They stood so close together that he naturally put his arms around her as if they were dancing. Both could feel the other's body react at first but Sally's debrief of her meetings with John Wu kept passion at bay. A few whispered minutes passed and then she kissed his cheek and stepped back.

  “Interesting,” he said. “And what will you do if—” he said, leaving unsaid: if he takes you to his boat to show you the Niger docs and wants something in return.

  Tobias had not forgotten their phone conversation from his time at the UN, when he balked at the idea of sleeping with Marion Dupree in return for the Niger documents. As Sally's investigation of John Wu had begun to look fruitful, Tobias had tried to keep at bay the memory of her saying—if their positions had been reversed—she would not hesitate to trade sex for the documents. Given the high stakes for which they played, perhaps her view was rational—certainly more than his—but he could not help feeling an overpowering aversion: more than a lover not wanting to share bliss, not exactly thinking of her as a victim, no intellectual rebuke of a human being reduced to a mechanism for sating urges. No such words occurred to his mind, only a single word, repeated with equal parts plea and resignation: no no no no no.

  Sally had remembered their conversation, too, and saw it replaying behind his suddenly un-shuttered eyes. She smiled reassuringly and said in a slow, sultry voice, “If he's stupid enough to meet me, just the three of us—me, him, and them—all alone on his little boat,” she ended her sentence by raising a clenched fist under Tobias's chin and brandishing it menacingly.

  “Ha, ha, that poor bastard,” Tobias said, relief washing over him: he would believe her even if it killed him, though their long wait for this evening made it easier. “Though I'd say he already doesn't know what hit him. Oh, man. Well, that's good news. And although those were some of the least sexy things ever whispered into my ears—”

  “Oh!”

  “—I, well,” he trailed off. “Would you like to sit down?” he asked, indicating a small round table with a cloth and two settings that occupied the half of the dining area closer to the kitchen (a couple of enormous record-filled bookshelves and stereo gear inhabited the other half of what was meant to be a dining room).

  “Hmm, elegant,” she said, touching the silverware and noticing the two champagne flutes beside each setting. She waved him away from holding her chair.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I just hope we don't taste the silver polish on them.”

  She laughed and he went into the kitchen. The kitchen entrance lie not three feet behind Tobias's chair; Sally could see him reach for the refrigerator door but stop to check a simmering pot first.

  “Ah! I'm going to need a minute or two,” he said, picking up a wooden spoon, intent upon the pot, “before I bring out the hors d'oeuvres.”

  Sally rose and joined him in the kitchen. Looking around his shoulder, she said, “What's cooking?”

  “Lobster bisque,” he said, giving her a quick sidelong smile.

  Leaning over the pot of rich limpets and lobster, she said, “Oh, that smells wonderful! Is that our first course?”

  “The soup,” he said. “I thought we'd have oysters first. I planned the whole meal so it could be accompanied by champagne.”

  “Aww, that's fantastic,” she said. “I love it.” She wrapped both arms around his waist, standing behind him.

  “I'm glad—and hope it all comes out well,” he said, returning his attention to the meal.

  He drew out the two claws (all the lobster meat was out of its shell) and set them on a plate atop a bowl filled with i
ce. He then took a plunging blender and emulsified the remaining lobster into the bisque.

  Behind him, Sally unconsciously moved her face between his shoulder blades and inhaled deeply, her eyes closing. Breathing him had become “being with him” more so than even her embrace. His smell had become a knowable thing.

  Tobias put aside the blender and dropped the flame on the bisque to a smolder and then rotated within Sally's arms, returned her embrace, and they kissed. Slow and lingering, they knew they had the entire night before them and wanted the enjoy every rising moment.

  They returned to the table, Tobias bringing a dozen oysters on a plate of ice and a bottle of brut champagne in a silver bucket, which he set on a low bookshelf near the table that served as a sideboard. After the oysters and the lobster bisque came a risotto prepared with bay scallops and purée of celery; then a main course of Sole Normande, garnished with crab, a mix of shitake, chanterelle, blue, and oyster mushrooms, deglazed with champagne, and finished with butter rather than cream; a salad of endive—with what remained of the lobster, now cold—followed; and then for dessert, a peach Melba, which Tobias was forced to make with jarred peach and IQF raspberry because of the season, though it suffered little for them and the excellence of the demi-sec champagne made up for all.

  It must be admitted, despite the skillful preparation and careful arrangement of flavors, the two lovers often ignored what they ate or forgot it on their plates. Yet the courses quickly passed, as did nearly two bottles of champagne, amid talk of having missed each other while he was away, sudden kisses across the table, and warm looks that seemed to imply that, despite the extravagance of their dinner, the time spent at table was depriving them of some greater sustenance.

  Before coffee, they took another glass of the sweet demi-sec and sat together on the couch. Tobias had also arranged the music, and so Bill Withers sang softly behind them as conversation became a pretense and the entwining of legs gave way to a slow searching embrace. Hands wandered into regions as yet unexplored—and if they hesitated upon the path, other hands would appear to guide them firmly to their destinations. The mingling of lips and tips of tongues gave way to mingled breath, breath panted and breath felt, as Tobias's hand descended; and if he lingered about curves through the silken dress, he was compelled into motion by the hand that accompanied his. Now, cleaving to one another thus, held but not still, vigor unnecessary after so long an absence where the slow caress of a lover's touch can overwhelm, Sally's mind withdrew from her extremities, consumed by the growing waves within her that responded to the rhythm without. Her back arched as her breath quickened but then she suddenly pushed his hand down her thigh, sat forward, and said, “Wait.”