“Glad you’ve learned to properly appreciate a well-made cocktail after all these years,” Linder teased, pointing to Denniston’s empty glass. “Celebrating a special occasion? Like handing in your resignation and telling the Agency to shove it?”
Denniston smiled blandly and shook his head.
“Actually, I wasn’t thinking of that at all. To tell you the truth, I’ve been fortifying myself to tell you about the visit I had from my Dad.”
“The Dad you haven’t seen since college?”
“None other,” Denniston answered darkly. “He looked me up in Dubai last month. He lives in London now.”
Linder recalled that Denniston had been born into a wealthy Louisville family whose history of bootlegging, political influence peddling, and tax evasion dated back to the Whiskey Rebellion. On his father’s side, his extended family owned interests in horse breeding, tobacco farming, and bourbon distilling. But his parents had divorced when he was a freshman in college in a contest so bitter that Denniston’s mother later snitched on her ex-husband to the IRS for tax fraud and testified against him at trial. Denniston’s father lost everything he owned and spent three years in federal prison. Then, when the IRS placed tax liens against property that otherwise would have gone to his wife and two sons in the divorce settlement, they were left penniless, as well.
Denniston managed to finish college through a combination of scholarships, handouts from his maternal grandparents, and student loans. Unable to finance graduate school or to find a private sector job, and unwilling to accept help from his father’s side of the family, he joined the Agency a year after graduation. Though his father had been saddened that Neil took his mother’s side in the divorce and severed contact, he let it be known that he approved of his son’s decision to join the Agency.
That had been more than a decade ago. As his father’s family was Republican, Denniston accordingly became a Democrat, though not so radical as to bar him from passing the Agency’s background check. Until now, Denniston had always seemed able to halt his risk-taking and rebellion just short of self-destruction.
“So how did it go?” Linder asked Neil about the meeting with his father.
“He’s still a liar and a crook. But my Dad told me something that caught me by surprise. I’m not sure if he meant it to ingratiate himself with me or to punish me for having shunned him for so long.”
Denniston had confided to Linder many times about his father over the years, generally only after heavy drinking. By Neil’s own description, his father was a born horse-trader, cardsharp, whiskey salesman, and land promoter who had lived on the edge and by his wits his entire life.
When Denniston was a child, his father had served as a Kentucky state legislator, earning a reputation as a political fixer who dabbled in small-scale graft and political favors. As Denniston recalled, local bureaucrats and party officials were always hanging around the house waiting to see his father privately after hours. During the formative years of his childhood, his father had built the foundation for his son’s street smarts, along with a deep antipathy toward big corporations, white-shoe lawyers, and Eastern bankers, whom his father distrusted as an article of faith.
While in Dubai on business earlier in the year, Denniston’s father had inquired about his son at the American Embassy, having heard from a family member in Washington that Neil had been doing counterterrorist work for the CIA in the Middle East. The father, having moved overseas during the nadir of the Events, was living in London on a modest income from sales commissions and consulting fees in the global whiskey trade, and from running a Thursday night poker game at a private club that existed to fleece hapless Brits and fellow American émigrés.
Upon learning of his father’s inquiry, Denniston had decided to meet him for lunch at one of the emirate’s sumptuous midday hotel buffets. At one point in the desultory conversation, Denniston had referred to the heavy burden of his student loan payments and his father had expressed surprise.
“Surprise that the government was stupid enough to lend that much to you or surprise that you were keeping up with payments?” Linder joked, trying to lighten the conversation’s tone.
“Surprise that I had any loans at all,” Denniston declared. “He told me that he had set up a college trust fund for my brother and me when we were little and appointed Mom as trustee. The thing is, she never told us about it. Her story all those years was that the IRS took everything and nothing was left for college.”
“That sounds awful,” Linder broke in. “Who are you supposed to believe when your parents have entirely different versions of the truth?”
“The one who produces documents,” Denniston replied coldly. “Dad had copies of bank statements. No doubt about it, Mom withdrew the money. The moment I got back from Dubai, I flew home and confronted her. At first, she denied it, but when I showed her the withdrawal records, she admitted that she spent it all on living expenses. Half a million dollars, can you believe it? Of course, she had her reasons, but if she was so damned sure she was doing the right thing, why did she have to lie about it and blame everything on Dad? If she hadn’t ratted on the guy in the first place, the IRS wouldn’t have been able to grab all their money and leave us high and dry.”
Denniston’s quavering voice and the unsteady hand with which he lifted his glass to down the dregs of his second martini attested to the devastating impact of his father’s revelation. After more than a decade of despising and shunning his father and idolizing his mother, he had discovered that his mother had stolen his birthright. If Denniston had not been a total cynic already, one might have forgiven his loss of faith in humanity.
Another round of drinks arrived.
Linder noticed Denniston’s faraway look assume a hard and menacing aspect and decided to change the subject fast. So, he asked Denniston how the idea of leaving the Agency to join the Department of State Security had come to him.
In the blink of an eye, Denniston regained his composure.
“You won’t believe this,” he began, suddenly reenergized. “But I actually started to explore the idea last fall before the elections, long before anybody had an inkling of the President’s pullout scheme. I had been taking some flak from Headquarters and, around that time, it reached the point where I worried my career might take a nosedive.”
“What could they possibly complain about?” Linder interjected, pretending to be unaware of the disciplinary action against Denniston. “Hell, they promoted you last year and you’ve already racked up a couple more recruitments since then. What more could they want?”
“That’s kind of how I felt, too,” Denniston agreed, “but they did some kind of financial audit and dinged the Base for recycling captured property back into an off-budget ops fund.”
Linder noted that Denniston seemed to watch his reaction closely and appeared to sense that Linder harbored doubts about his story.
“Heck, it’s done all the time,” Denniston offered with a broad wave. “Routine budget shenanigans. It’s not as if we blew it all on booze and women.
Here Denniston paused, perhaps expecting Linder to agree, but the latter offered him no such satisfaction.
“Never mind,” he went on. “Once I transfer to the DSS, the whole episode will go away and I’ll start with a clean slate. Which is all I care about at this point. Hell, the President says we’ve made the world safe for democracy, so why not forgive and forget, eh?”
Denniston let out a deep sigh and grinned as if he didn’t have a care in the world, but Linder could see that he did care. If there was anything Denniston could not tolerate, it was being judged.
When the waiter returned, the two men ordered dinner while continuing to reminisce about old times in the Agency as if their tenure were already at an end. Then they moved on to the President’s unilateral withdrawal order, his claims of a growing threat of domestic insurgency, and the sort of action that might await them in the DSS if they made the transfer.
While they ate
, a ten-piece Latin dance band began to set up on the platform at the front of the restaurant, complete with piano, xylophone, horns, bass, and a full percussion section including congas, bongos, timbales, and maracas. A dark-haired woman in a sequined dress set up a microphone and adjusted it to the proper height before testing the volume.
The two men had barely finished their entrees when a tall, leggy blonde with a low voice and high bosom approached the table and slithered onto the seat next to Denniston. Like most of the girls at the club, she wore a simple black dress with very little jewelry and even less makeup. The look was fresh, youthful, and enticingly modest.
“I saw your name on the reservation list, Neil Boy” she opened slyly. “I was hoping you’d come back, but you must like us even more than I thought for you to come all the way down from Washington so soon,” she said in a soft Tidewater drawl.
“I hope you realize I dropped absolutely everything to be here,” Denniston deadpanned.
The blonde dismissed him with a smile and turned to Linder.
“Who’s your good-looking friend?” she asked Denniston without taking her eyes off Linder. “Are you going to introduce us?”
Denniston performed a proper introduction as requested.
“You look lonely,” she told Linder bluntly, bringing her face close to his. “You know, I could fix that. I have a friend I think you might hit it off with. Would you like to meet her?”
Linder glanced past Sheila to Denniston, who rolled his eyes.
“She’s a sorority sister of mine,” Sheila went on. “Do you like redheads?”
“How did you ever know?” Linder answered with feigned surprise. “I have an appalling weakness for redheads. You’ve simply got to bring her over here.”
“You know, I like decisiveness in a man,” Sheila replied earnestly as she rose from her chair, offering a generous view of her cleavage. “We’re all going to get along just fine, Warren. I can see that already.”
A few minutes later, Sheila arrived with her friend in tow. She was a stunning redhead with sparkling green eyes and freckles from head to toe, nearly as tall as Sheila, and dressed in a green silk sheath that fit her like a glove.
Linder wasted no time in introducing himself and, when their eyes met, he felt good things start to happen. Her name was Nora, and she had a playful, outgoing manner that hinted at intelligence and wit. Sheila then introduced Nora to Denniston and, to Linder’s surprise, Denniston gazed at the redhead as if he had never seen anything like her in his life. He was obviously smitten with her, but when he tried to start a conversation with her, she fended him off politely, as if territorial boundaries had been set and Denniston was off limits.
Linder broke the ice by asking the women what they would like to drink, knowing full well that their job was to induce the men to drop as much money on alcohol as possible.
“Oh, you’re so kind to ask, Warren,” Sheila replied. “Let’s see, what drink works both as an aperitif and an after dinner drink?”
“I see where you’re going with this,” Nora observed, shaking her head and laughing.
“Really, don’t y’all think we ought to celebrate?” Sheila continued. “I think a bottle of champagne would be perfect for that. After all, it’s Warren’s first visit. And I’m so delighted that Neal Boy remembered me fondly enough to come back again.”
“You’re absolutely right, Sheila darling. Besides, how could I refuse when I know the bubbly is your favorite drink?” Denniston replied.
Linder waved a summons to José, who happened to be standing close by, and asked him to bring the wine list. Rather than entrust the choice to Denniston, who was already showing signs of brain fog, Linder ordered a modestly priced bottle of domestic sparkling wine from the bottom of the list. The waiter returned with four flute glasses and a chilled bottle in a silver-plate ice bucket.
At Linder’s signal, the waiter opened the bottle to shrieks of delight from Sheila and Nora and a chorus of approval from the girls at neighboring tables.
“To our lovely companions,” Denniston announced.
Before anyone could respond, the band struck up its first tune, one with a compelling syncopated Latin beat that Linder identified at once as meringue. Sheila listened and nodded, swaying to the music, and proposed that they all get up and dance.
Linder took the cue to reach for Nora’s hand and lead her onto the dance floor. Sheila rose, as well, but to Linder’s puzzlement, Denniston appeared to resist her urgings and remained glued mulishly to his seat. Wrong move, Linder muttered to himself, and turned his full attention to Nora.
“How’s your meringue?” he asked playfully.
“I think it was one of the dances I learned in high school, but I don’t exactly remember. If you know the steps, I’m sure I can follow once I catch the beat,” she answered bravely.
“Terrific,” Linder answered. “I think I know enough to get us started. Let’s give it a shot.”
The moment Linder took Nora’s right hand in his and placed his right hand on her hip, he sensed that she would be a clever dance partner. Her hips began to sway in rhythm with the beat and she became totally focused on following Linder’s moves. He began with the basic meringue step, bending knees left and right to force the hips to follow. Then, he led Nora in an underarm turn to the side, a left circle, a reverse with twin turn, and a rocking step.
From there, intuition and deep muscle memory took him through a series of other meringue steps that he had practiced so many times in his father’s dance classes. By the end of the song, he felt suffused with a warm glow but his heart rate had barely risen. Nora, by contrast, was nearly out of breath. But the look in her eyes said that she would gladly follow Linder again, anytime and anywhere.
When they returned to the table, Linder saw that Sheila was putting on a brave face while Denniston was sulking. Though the bottle of champagne was three-fourths empty, he poured himself yet another glass. Then Linder remembered: Neil Denniston hated to dance.
This had been a point of contention between them more than once in the past. Though at times it seemed to Linder that his friend’s only ambition in life was to pick up women for one-night stands, Denniston generally avoided nightspots with a dance floor. To Linder, it seemed that Denniston’s pickup technique was limited to chatting up ordinary-looking, chirpy, impressionable bar hoppers, whom he considered easy prey, and then investing inordinate amounts of time and money in plying them with alcohol.
Though Denniston seemed to favor bringing Linder along on his nighttime forays, because Linder tended to attract a better class of women, by night’s end Denniston always seemed to begrudge the ease with which his friend found hookups when he often hadn’t made it to first base.
Linder understood full well that his brooding dark looks didn’t appeal to every kind of girl, but enough seemed to favor the strong, silent, and dangerous type of man that he rarely found himself out of luck. Yet what truly set him apart on the nightlife circuit was his skill at dancing. It was more than an equalizer; it was a secret weapon. It allowed him to bypass the kind of perky, bubbly, chatty girls that Denniston so often chased, and zero in on the sultry temptresses who harbored dark secrets of their own.
Now, seeing the same scenario play out once again, the thought occurred to Linder that Denniston’s animosity toward him might go deeper than mere pickup envy and might amount to a broader and deeper resentment based on hidden feelings of inadequacy. For while both men had attended the same college, worked in the same government agency, and enjoyed identical rank and income, Denniston had lost the status he once enjoyed growing up in an old-money family while Linder had risen from the working class. And now, if what Jack Moran said was true, Denniston risked disgrace and an end to his Agency career even without regard to the President’s global pullout.
Linder had long been aware of a simmering tension between them that dated back to their college days. He had noticed that Denniston seemed to resent that Linder had attended an elite New
England boarding school, albeit as a scholarship boy. Even after visiting the Linder family’s modest bungalow in Lyndhurst, Denniston somehow could not give up the preposterous notion that his friend Warren had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Denniston also seemed annoyed by Linder’s academic success, which he ought to have known was based as much on hard work and determination as on talent. Had Denniston applied himself similarly, rather than play cards and drink several nights a week, he might easily have matched Linder’s grades.
Linder recalled his friend once aiming a dig at him for having been accepted at Columbia Business School, where Denniston had been rejected, and another dig at Linder’s landing a pharmaceutical sales job, which seemed to aggrieve Denniston because he had been unemployed for over a year. What Denniston did not appreciate was Linder’s own disappointment at failing to land a job on Wall Street after graduating in the top third of his class at Columbia. In Linder’s view, there had been plenty of disappointment to go around.
In the end, Linder thought that Denniston harbored his most toxic resentment toward him for the unpardonable sin of having surpassed Denniston in social status. For though Denniston had been born into a venerable and wealthy Kentucky family while Linder was a third-generation immigrant, Denniston felt certain he had lost his social standing through his father’s financial losses and felony convictions. What set Denniston’s teeth on edge most, it appeared, was to see his lowborn friend acquire some of the polish and confidence of the wealthy during years of close mingling with them at Exeter, Kenyon, and Columbia. Yet, here, too, the irony was that Linder had never felt accepted in the circles that his friend presumed he had joined.
The difference between them, Linder realized, was that he never considered himself to be in competition with Denniston. In his view, he and Denniston were separate spirits, each following his own path. While their journeys might coincide from time to time, and while Linder valued Denniston’s high-spirited companionship, the two men were fellow travelers bound together by common experience, not intimates, and he trusted Denniston only within the limits of his nature. True friendship was something else, and in his heart of hearts, Linder wasn’t sure that either of them had an abundance of that quality to offer.
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