The Parnell Affair

by James, Seth

  Tobias thought she didn't want her first climax to come while still dressed and on his couch and so—with a look between bliss and urgency—made to lift her in his arms and carry her to his bedroom. Her look of apology, wreathed in nearly agonized disappointment, stayed him. He turned, collapsing at the shoulders and closing his eyes, and dropped back against the couch. He smiled as a crowd of words contended in his mind but said nothing. The only lucid thought he had was to wonder if this night were possible at all, while she was married.

  “I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she said, both hands on his leg, leaning toward him.

  He shook his head; he wouldn't say it's alright, not while he could feel his pulse beating. “So when does Lucy go off to college?” he asked casually, trying to make a joke. It was the only thing to do.

  Sally looked away for a moment and then flopped into the couch next to him, their shoulders touching. “Not soon enough,” she said for him, though a part of her mind said: too soon—too soon for my Lucy to leave me. Her thoughts were elsewhere, however. “It's not that,” she said. She turned to look him in the face, a little pain evident in her eyes. “I have to tell Joe. He told me before anything serious happened between him and Ms Fromsett. (Why don't I know that woman's first name?) He even gave me a veto. And he meant it, he would have lived by it. He's like you that way: his word means something. I have a lot of respect for that. I may not love him, in that way, the way I'm falling in love with you,” she said and felt as if her body was rising off the couch in response to her words. She'd not planned to say any such thing, it was simply the right place in the conversation. But when her active mind heard her subconscious say she was falling in love, she knew the truth of it and agreed. “But I have to tell him first. To tell him that I'm leaving the way he's left. It's the right thing to do.”

  “You're right,” he said at the end of a long exhale. He then grinned and added: “Damn it all. I suppose I don't really want Joe's aggrieved phantom standing at the foot of the bed—pointing!”

  “Gah!” Sally cried. She tried to think of a way to play along with his joke and after a moment of looking at Tobias and reliving the past few minutes over again, she threw herself to her feet. “God! I was an inch away,” she said, holding a hand to her forehead. “And god knows I've waited so long. I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “What? Now?” Tobias said. Even frustrated and without recourse, he still didn't want her to leave.

  “I feel like I want to cry,” she said. “Being this close and not. And that's just too pathetic. I've got to leave now or I won't have the strength to in a few minutes.”

  “Certain evil thoughts coming to mind,” he said, raising an eyebrow. She laughed, trying to push the tension away but it sounded hopeless and forced. “Lock door, lose keys.”

  “I'm sorry,” she repeated, smiling disappointedly and putting on her coat. “But I'm going to go and tell him right now.”

  “And then come back?” he said sounding hopeful but knowing better.

  “No. Lucy would know,” she said. “Tomorrow? I'll take off work!”

  “Can you take off from the CIA?” he asked walking her to the door, since she plainly meant to leave.

  “It's a desk job,” she said. “Forget it.”

  She stared intently at his face, her hand on the door but not opening it. He took her in his arms and kissed her; one last knockout kiss before sending her on her way. Her hands went to him but not around his neck as usual when they kissed.

  “Isn't there some sort of middle ground here we're not considering?” he asked, grinning, knowing there wasn't but using any excuse to keep her there another moment.

  “No, I've—I've got to go,” she said, staring now at his shoulders, groping behind her for the doorknob. “I've got to tell Joe.”

  “Hey, you could call him,” Tobias offered and laughed.

  “Look, I'm trying to do the right thing,” she said, wide half-frightened eyes finding his. “And I really am seconds away from losing it and—”

  “I won't let you,” he said calmly. He reached behind her and twisted the doorknob, sliding her aside so the door could open. “I love you too much for that.”

  He kissed her again but pushed her through the doorway. Or I'm going to lose it, he thought.

  “She leaves for school at seven,” Sally mumbled.

  She didn't say goodbye or hear him close the door as she flew down the stairs. At the foyer doors, she turned and, as if part of her controlled her legs and another part her arms, she walked back to the stairs but kept herself at arm's length of them for a moment before rushing out and to her car.

  She raced through the streets on her way home, at first, but calmed quickly and regained her composure as the task ahead—telling her husband—presented itself to her mind. There were so many things she'd never said to him—about herself, what she'd gone through at the end of their marriage, doubts about its beginning—that she had to organize them and discard for another time the extraneous. Simplicity, she told herself: ask him about Ms Fromsett and then—since he always leaves an opening in the conversation to introduce the subject of my taking a lover—tell him about Tobias. She surprised herself with feeling a desire for these two men in her life to like one another.

  Sally stopped along the way to change back into her office attire, simply slipping her skirt and blouse over her dress (which was so thin it went unnoticed or appeared to be a chemise if seen at her blouse button). She threw her Sable coat into her trunk—to retrieve after everyone left the next day—and took out her puffy down coat, though she was too hot to wear it. In a few more minutes, she was home. She had planned—if Lucy were in the living room—to call Joe upstairs with her. Upon opening the front door, however, she found Joe sitting in an armchair facing her with a look of smoldering fury on his face. Immediately she guessed he had somehow learned of where she had been and what she had done, and the hypocrisy of his anger ignited anger in her. She took a few steps into the living room and felt the urge to tear off her work clothes and again reveal her provocative dress, declaring in a motion what she'd done. He did not seem to notice her defiance.

  “Our daughter was kidnapped today,” he said.

  “What!” Sally cried, her eyes starting out of her head, terror seizing her features.

  “She's upstairs now,” Joe said after brutally letting a moment pass. “She's packing; she's unhurt. Unhurt,” he repeated scornfully to himself, knowing that the experience must have left marks upon his seventeen-year old daughter, other than physical.

  Sally stifled another cry and impatiently brushed the tears from her eyes. She tried to fathom why Joe would tell her in this vicious manner but moved toward the stairs, needing to see Lucy first.

  “Wait a moment!” Joe shouted, coming to his feet.

  “How did this happen?” she demanded. “And why are you speaking to me this way?”

  “Those questions are one in the same,” he said, comporting himself. “And are answered very easily—as far as I have the answers,” he said with a significance Sally did not understand. “When Lucy left school this afternoon, six men,” Joe said, “openly carrying weapons, and with a badge of some sort, approached her as she walked to her car. They told her that she was in danger and must come with them. Their manner disturbed her but she could not resist—they laid hands on her! They forced her into a van and, to her surprise, brought her here. Here they waited. She was frightened, she said, although she could not say why: a menace existed in the room, though it could not be attributed to any action. The only answer they gave when she questioned them—when she dared—was that some unofficial operation of yours had made enemies of those who would resort to violence.

  “After six, I got home—and during those three hours she was kept seated in that chair, prevented from using the toilet, given no water, not allowed to user her phone!—and as I turned my key in the door, it opened and a man with a submachine gun motioned me inside. Only one of them spoke. He told me much the s
ame that he told Lucy. He said, 'We were very worried about your daughter. Thanks to your wife's ongoing and unofficial operation, we believed your daughter was in danger of being kidnapped so we escorted her home. Your wife's conduct is so dangerous after all, every precaution must be taken.' His tone and vulgar insinuation left no doubt who sent him and why. He and his men walked out, all of them leering, all of them saying excuse me as the knocked into me. The last thing was said to me at my back, before the door closed: ‘So dangerous, provoking brutal people—who knows what they would do to such a young, attractive girl.’”

  Joe choked on the last words, rage and fear and the desperate desire to maintain the clear head necessary to see no such brutal people again laid hands on his daughter, crafted an unreadable mask of his face.

  Opposite him, Sally had calmed as he told his story. For a moment only did she reproach herself for her professional mind taking over. But in truth it was her mother's instincts that demanded calm, calculation, and sat quietly in the corners of her mind ready to add their strength to the spy who found herself without a country and who must find an end to this threat against her child.

  “I'm sorry, Joe,” she said, intending to deny whatever he might imply as to an ongoing operation—she knew her house must be bugged.

  “Don't tell me you are sorry,” he said coldly. “They wronged you, wronged us both. Fine! But the proper recourse was through the courts!”

  “And the courts have been working well for you, have they?” she said, trying to fit what she said now with what she had said to John Wu, for the sake of whoever overheard.

  “That is not the point,” he said, coming close enough to shout in a whisper. He pointed up the stairs and said, “Whatever you've been doing has caused men to kidnap our daughter!”

  “I'm sorry, Joe, I'm sorry but I haven't been doing anything,” she said and it hurt.

  He turned away in disgust. He read the signals she'd made to indicate the room was bugged. His look was bordering upon hatred when he turned back. She let herself cry, quietly, and for a moment only; she had to let him see that she felt as much horror as he did at what had happened. But if there was a way to save her operation—particularly a way that would indicate she was not a threat and so reduce the danger to Lucy—she would pursue it.

  “It's all a stupid misunderstanding,” she said, leaving her voice to crack where it wanted. “It's horrible what they've done—and someone should be fired for it. But I can see now why they've come to the conclusion there's an operation. There isn't. That's not what I was doing. I'll tell you about what made them suspicious, but not now,” she said with shame in her voice that she did not feel. “Not why someone else might be listening.”

  Her relationship with Tobias was made to order as an excuse. She was not investigating anything, the argument ran, she was simply interested in someone who was. Her talking to John Wu was simply a lonely woman talking to an old college friend while her lover was away. But she felt she could not tell Joe at that moment: the idea that her lust had caused their daughter to be kidnapped might occur to him and then who knows what he'd say.

  Joe, however, had been Sally's husband for over twenty years and had had countless operational conversations with her while electronic surveillance captured every word. He could tell she was playing—at least in part—to the crowd and suddenly didn’t care what she was doing. He cooled to a sad calm.

  “I don't give a damn who's listening,” he said. “Let them. I want them to hear this. Lucy is packing her bags. I've packed mine. I've called Anna and told her to take only the things she needs and go to Siegfried Luntz's house (it's only blocks from Colombia). He'll look after her until we get to New York. Jason has a plane, you know: he is waiting to fly us there. Once in New York, we'll take the first flight to Paris. Anna will just have to finish her undergraduate at the Sorbonne. Jean will put us up in Paris.” He took a deep breath. “This was a scare,” he said clearly and slowly. “That's all that was intended. And it has worked. We both know you were outed only because we showed their WMD arguments to be hollow. If they want to start a war on false pretenses, I don't care anymore. I won't risk my children.”

  Sally stepped back in disbelief, but nowhere in his features—which she knew as well as he did hers—did she see dissimulation. The scare had worked. She nodded without knowing it. “Alright, Joe,” she breathed. “I'll catch up to you in a few days or a week.”

  “What?” he cried.

  “You don't want me next to you on the plane, not once you know what I've really done,” she said: he did not understand but thought she was lying for sake of the bugs. “And someone also has to close up the house. And I have my job to think of. I'll resign, but that can't happen overnight. I'll catch up. I have to see Lucy,” she said and walked to the stairs.

  Halfway up the staircase, she was running and by Lucy's door her mother's instincts pushed to the front, tearfully demanding she hold her daughter.

  Chapter 7

  Tobias was not surprised that he received no call from Sally Tuesday evening, though he listened for the phone sleeplessly for most of the night. The next morning he rose and prepared for her return, somewhat dubious of the proper mood returning with her no matter how long they'd waited. To keep busy in the meantime (having prepped a light breakfast for them), he checked his email. He had one from Sally, sent the night before. With a vague anxiety tempered by hope, he opened the message to find: “Can't come tomorrow morning, no matter how desperately I want to. I'll try to call you in the afternoon.” She'd closed the email with “Love, Sally.” His disappointment was sweet. He imagined—not knowing how accurately—that something to do with Lucy prevented her from coming over: perhaps she was home sick. He threw out the breakfast and left for the office.

  DC rarely gets snow and so Tobias frequently biked to work year round. He, in fact, preferred biking in the winter because the cool temperatures kept him from sweating on the way in. In any event, it was not a long journey. About halfway along it, when he took to the sidewalk to avoid some emergency road construction (looked like a water main), he noticed a bundled-up runner at the mouth of an alley. It was Sally. She caught his eye and then ducked down the alleyway.

  Thinking at first this was some kind of romantic rendezvous, Tobias followed her in. But as he coasted to a stop, swinging one leg over his bike and standing on one peddle, he noticed the look on Sally's face. Serious and immobile, she had the look of a professional whose work was violent and had spent all night in its employment. Once he stood before her, however, a small iota of her icy demeanor melted: she reached up and brushed his lips with hers. He waited; the jackhammer in the street sent echoing peels down the alleyway.

  Sally told him what had happened, about the kidnapping. She left nothing out and—despite the noise of the jackhammer, which she deliberately endured so it would foil any surveillance that had followed Tobias—she found herself speaking faster and faster, relating everything she felt. When she'd ground to a halt, Tobias took her in his arms. She returned his embrace with all the surprising strength her lithe body possessed but not for long. She disengaged them as if she would not allow herself that comfort, though she had still to stand very close to make herself heard over the jackhammer. The question now—with the Administration aware of their interest in obtaining a copy of the Niger docs—was how should they proceed, if they could.

  “Are you sure you want to continue?” Tobias asked.

  “I can't give up the operation,” she said. “If I did I think I'd fall to pieces. Throw myself in the Potomac.” She saw a flash of worry on Tobias's face. She smiled bravely, defiantly: no such impulse was present in her person, there had been no room left for giving up, when Sally was created. “I won't,” she said. “I won't give up. I'm still on the job, I still serve my country though her leaders are now criminals—she needs us to defend her more now than ever. In the military, they take an oath to defend the constitution: from within the government or without, that's my oath as we
ll—to defend the constitution from all enemies, foreign or domestic.”

  Tobias could see she was talking to herself as much as to him. Though he thought he understood this sort of nationalist sentiment, he'd never experienced it. It surprised him to see such fervent allegiance in so down-to-earth and rational a person. But perhaps she needed a pep talk and knew what she needed to hear. True leaders can lead themselves.

  “No matter what you choose, I'm with you,” he said. “I'll continue the investigation even if you decide you have to call it quits. Don't worry about that. Just be sure you think it's worth it, risking—” he didn't enumerate whose lives were at risk.

  “Worth it to stop a war?” she asked. She shook her head. “My children were in danger every day of their lives because of my job. They're safer now that Joe has taken them to Paris than they've ever been.” She stared off into space for a moment. “She comforted me,” she said so quietly Tobias could scarcely hear her words: he knew she meant Lucy. “I had to let her. I had to fall to pieces and let her comfort me and hear her say, 'Let's just forget it,' so she wouldn't ask questions in her room, which was as likely to be bugged as mine. What a wonderful mother I am: couldn't even let my daughter be scared and expect comfort.”