Potomac Telephone had long since given up chaining phone books to pay phones, but Club Chat Fouetté turned up, acute accent in place, in a weekend entertainment guide at a news box in the Metro station. The ad gave an address on New York Avenue, about four blocks from Bodies by Design, so Michaelson took the subway all the way to Federal Triangle instead of getting off at Foggy Bottom.
The place struck Michaelson as about two steps up the scale from the standard New York Avenue establishment. More typical of the neighborhood were the shop across the street advertising xxx video private booths and a place with opaque windows four doors down that slyly promised women’s clothes 90% off. Club Chat Fouetté’s vermillion facade wasn’t exactly a model of understatement, but the neon guitar decorating its window and its offer of “Live Music Nitely” seemed quaintly sedate by comparison to the rest of the block.
No one responded to Michaelson’s rap on the locked front door. The alley led to a side door with a buzzer, which he pushed. A thirty-second wait was rewarded with a lock snapping inside the door followed by a four-inch crack between the door and its frame.
“No delivery before noon, that the deal,” a male voice with a vaguely Slavic tincture said through the crack.
“No delivery, I need to talk to Mr. Demarest.”
“Can’t help you,” the voice said.
“You can, actually,” Michaelson said. “He does work here, you know. He gets official mail for the place, and he belongs to a health club within walking distance. If he’s in at the moment, why don’t you ask him if he’d like to chat with Richard Michaelson?”
“Can’t help you,” the voice repeated.
Michaelson had already braced himself to have the door slammed in his face when he heard an indistinct shout from deeper in the building. The Slavic voice yelled an approximation of “Michaelson” in response. Whatever came back must have been affirmative because the door opened wider. Michaelson went in.
The man who admitted him was slightly built, perhaps five-seven with a surprisingly fair complexion set off by black hair that seemed lacquered to his scalp. He wore Levis, Doc Martens, and an open-necked man’s button-down dress shirt over an olive drab T-shirt, as if undecided about whether to dress like a lumberjack or a lawyer on casual day.
Following him, Michaelson stepped into a surprisingly elegant saloon. Banquettes of plum-colored stuff that could pass for leather in the dim light lined the far wall. Taking up most of the floor were chairs with backs and arms of oxblood velveteen plush surrounding black tabletops as shiny as any floor Fred and Ginger ever waltzed on. The bar was white, making it look longer than it was. A mauve baby grand took up almost all of a tiny stage.
Demarest waited at the bottom of a stairway just beyond the stage. A buff-colored vest covered most of the peagreen tie knotted over his deep copper shirt. He was holding a green sport coat casually over his left shoulder. Once Michaelson had had five seconds to absorb the full impact of his ensemble, Demarest slipped the sport coat on.
“What is it you have for me?” he asked.
“Questions and advice.”
“I’m not in the market for either. But come on up anyway.”
Demarest effected an effortless pivot and briskly mounted the stairs. Michaelson circled the stage and by hustling a bit managed to reach the mezzanine at the top of the stairs in time to see Demarest step behind a shoulder-high partition in the most distant corner. When Michaelson reached the partition he saw Demarest standing at a scarred wooden desk, pouring chardonnay into a Styrofoam cup beside a twelve-function telephone console.
“Some for you?” Demarest asked.
“Not this early, thank you. Water will be fine.”
“Can do.” He filled a second cup with LaCroix water and put it in front of Michaelson. Then he raised his own drink.
“It’s definitely not too early in England,” he said, and took a generous swallow. “Which first, questions or advice?”
“I’d like to know how you met Catherine Shepherd.”
“Why?”
“Do you know who Jim Halliburton is?”
“Never heard of him,” Demarest said.
“He was a colleague of mine who once upon a time sent me a message. Avery Phillips was also once a colleague of mine, and he recently asked me a favor. The message Halliburton sent and the favor Phillips asked have Calvert Manor in common. The first and last time I saw the place you were the only non-Shepherd there, ostensibly because you know Catherine Shepherd. You two don’t strike me as people who travel regularly in the same circles. That’s why.”
Demarest smiled complacently and sipped some more wine.
“I don’t think you have a clue about the circles I travel in,” he murmured. “All you know is that I live in Alexandria and I’m the registered agent for a niche market nightspot.”
“On the contrary, I have far more information about you than I can properly digest,” Michaelson said. “I’ve already mentioned that you belong to a health club within walking distance of this nightspot but a long way from your home. Conclusion: You’re not just a registered agent for this place; you spend a good deal of time here on a regular basis. You take telephone messages here and not at your apartment. The woman who lives above you was alarmed but not surprised when a strange man appeared at your residence asking impertinent questions—indicating that today wasn’t the first time that had happened. She thought my asking after you was important enough to inform you about it immediately, because otherwise you wouldn’t have had any reason to believe I had something for you. Now, perhaps you and Ms. Shepherd met while discussing NAFTA and single malt scotch during intermission at a Kennedy Center chamber music concert, but I’m betting the other way.”
“You’re extrapolating rather aggressively from minimal data.”
“In the Foreign Service that was roughly half my job.”
“I hope you did the other half better,” Demarest said. “You’ll be embarrassed at how badly astray you’ve led yourself. Catherine and I met through the Stuart Restoration Society.”
“Which is what?” Michaelson asked.
“A small group dedicated to restoring the Stuart dynasty to the English throne. We believe that James the Second was the last legitimate English monarch, that the grotesquely misnamed Glorious Revolution in 1688 was an unprincipled usurpation, and that the churlish balls-ups achieved by the current so-called royals are exactly what you should expect from a bunch of horse-faced German interlopers—which is what they happen to be.”
“I can see where a project like that could turn into a fulltime job,” Michaelson said dryly.
“Our efforts in support of the cause so far have been discreet and restrained. We gather occasionally to cheer against the College of William and Mary if it’s involved in an athletic contest that anyone cares about. We send press releases to Majesty magazine. We maintain a Web site. We sell men’s ties with the Stuart crest. We talk endlessly about organizing a tourist boycott of England until the rightful heir—happens to be a woman, and we have her identified—is recognized.”
“Very ambitious.”
“And, of course,” Demarest concluded, “we hold a high tea on Restoration Day—the anniversary of Charles the Second resuming the throne. That specifically is how I met Catherine.”
“While she was discussing the Bloody Assizes with Judge Jeffreys over Earl Grey and scones?”
“Not exactly,” Demarest said after a long moment’s silence. Shifting his eyes abruptly from Michaelson, he stared into the middle distance, as if he were lining up a six-iron shot. “I approached her about permission to use Calvert Manor for the Restoration Day tea. The place dates from the time of James the Second, you know. She had never heard of us, but the idea charmed her right out of her navy blue flats. Her concentration at Bucknell was the literature and history of seventeenth-century England. She’s an SRS natural.
The rest is basically Love Story without the leukemia and foul language.”
“How long ago was this first charmed encounter?”
“Roughly thirty seconds before Cindy started hating my guts.”
“I was thinking more in terms of months or years.”
“Tell me something,” Demarest said, suddenly resuming eye contact with Michaelson. “What in the world does that have to do with whatever it is about these Halliburton and Phillips guys that has you bothered?”
“If your offer is still good,” Michaelson said instead of answering the question, “I’ll take you up on some of that wine.”
“Sure,” Demarest said.
He quickly produced another Styrofoam cup and decanted chardonnay into it. Michaelson lifted his cup six inches off the desk, caught Demarest’s eye, and then said with almost liturgical solemnity, “To the queen.” He passed his wine cup deliberately above the top of the water cup and waited expectantly. Demarest again looked blank for a second or two.
“To the queen,” he stammered then.
“The answer to your question,” Michaelson said, “is that I don’t know what the timing of your first meeting with Catherine Shepherd has to do with what I’m looking into. If anything. I do know, however, that the Stuart Restoration Society is an elaborate cover story, suggesting that you’re a bit sensitive about how your two paths actually crossed.”
“The Stuart Restoration Society is perfectly genuine,” Demarest said. “You can check it out.”
“I’m certain it is. I’m equally certain that no one deeply involved in such a group would be baffled by an allusion to Judge Jeffreys and the Bloody Assizes, when the streets ran red with gore from unfortunates who had rebelled prematurely against the Stuart monarchy. A true Stuart partisan would condemn the very term ‘Bloody Assizes’ as Whig propaganda.”
“I was trying to be diplomatic,” Demarest said.
“And what were you trying to be when I offered the classic toast of Stuart loyalists?” Michaelson asked. “After the Stuarts went into exile, their supporters in England always had both wine and water at dinner. When someone toasted King William or his successors, they’d join in, to avoid appearing disloyal. But they’d pass their wineglass above their water glass so that their toast would actually be ‘To the king over the water’—in other words, to the exiled pretender. I have a quite emphatic impression that you didn’t know a thing about that until this moment.”
“It’s a bit esoteric,” Demarest said.
“Translation: It wasn’t in your briefing book.”
“This conversation is beginning to bore me,” Demarest said.
One of the most underappreciated weapons in a diplomat’s arsenal is the simple truth, brutally stated. As Demarest pulled a black-and-orange vinyl carrying bag onto the desktop and began checking impatiently through it, Michaelson decided to use that weapon.
“You’re in over your head,” he said, not unkindly.
“Thank you for sharing.”
“You’re not in Avery Phillips’ league. Few people are. You’re not going to scam him and you’re not going to outwit him.”
“I hadn’t even heard his name until you mentioned it a few minutes ago,” Demarest said as he zipped the gym bag shut.
“You don’t have to admit anything. Just absorb what I’m saying and think about it. If you think you’re using him, the chances are that he’s using you. If you double-cross him, you’re in trouble, and if you play along with him, you’re out in the cold as soon as he’s gotten what he wants from you.”
Demarest made sure all the desk drawers were locked, then offered Michaelson a tight little smile.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Of course,” Michaelson said. “Tell me what’s actually going on. I’m not looking for money or a piece of the action. I just want to know the story behind a piece of paper that I got from someone I worked with long ago. What’s in it for you is that with the help I can give you you might stand a chance against Phillips.”
“Have a good life,” Demarest said, turning the smile off. He strode quickly away, toward the stairs.
After Demarest’s head disappeared beneath the top of the stairwell, Michaelson took a handbill from the desk. It advertised a return engagement the following week for “C-Sharp and the Nasty Boys.”
Michaelson waited ten minutes before he walked to the squat, chrome-and-glass office building whose fourth floor sheltered Bodies by Design. He went there to see if the gym bag Demarest had been flashing around was a red herring or if he actually had just gone to the place.
He had. In the midst of a sales pitch from a husky young man who looked like he had a pulse rate of about sixty, Michaelson spotted Demarest cruising around the oval running track, swiveling his head for a long, appreciative gaze each time he passed the aerobics area. And when the aerobics class ended and the swivel gazes continued, Michaelson surmised that Demarest had been ogling neither the men nor the women in their formfitting spandex, but the mirror.
***
“Patrice Helmsing is confirmed for three o’clock tomorrow afternoon,” Marjorie told Catherine Shepherd an hour or so later.
“Well, that’s good news. I’ll let Wilcox know. Cindy and I will both be here. And of course you’re welcome to come if you can take the time from your store. This is really your party.”
“I probably will stop by,” Marjorie said. “With the snow we’ve only had three customers today, and unless there’s a sudden thaw, I don’t expect tomorrow to be any better. Have you had any luck getting a plowing service out there for the driveway?”
“No,” Catherine said, “they’re all swamped. And I guess it could be a problem, couldn’t it?”
“Your driveway does dip a bit in the middle. If it’s acting like a bobsled run tomorrow afternoon, you may end up with an alienated prospect and a brace of unexpected weekend houseguests.”
“Well, Cindy and I will just have to take care of it ourselves, that’s all.”
“That sounds a bit ambitious,” Marjorie said. Delicately. At least in Cindy’s case, any commitment to manual labor struck Marjorie as insanely implausible.
“Thank you for expressing your skepticism so tactfully,” Catherine said, a suggestion of joshing laughter coloring her voice. “Cindy already brought the idea up, actually. She said she’s so anxious to unload this place that she’d do anything except change diapers. Not a job for princesses, I grant you, but Cindy and I between us should be able to handle it. We’ve agreed we’ll be out here in our grubs by noon tomorrow if we haven’t arranged for commercial plowing by then.”
“Good luck, then,” Marjorie said. Catherine sounded confident, but Marjorie would believe it when she saw it.
***
“Sorry it took so long to get back to you,” Cecilia Hamisch said over the phone to Michaelson at exactly four o’clock. “The European Union’s not at the top of anyone’s list right now. But I finally got some calls returned and I have an answer for you.”
“Which is what?” Michaelson asked.
“Someone’s kidding you. The EU has options on about eighty thousand square feet in downtown Washington. They got a couple of hints from us early on about available space. They were thinking very low profile—handful of secretaries, a few number crunchers, and a face-man to pat fannies over at Commerce. They’re definitely not in the market for anything like Calvert Manor.”
“So they say, at any rate,” Michaelson offered.
“They’re putting their money where their mouth is. Those options didn’t come cheap.”
This was easier than the New York Times Monday crossword, Michaelson reflected, with some misgivings. Why would Avery Phillips bother with a phony story that he had to know Michaelson could explode with a phone call or two?
“Thank you very much,” Michaelson said.
“There’s one more thing,” Hamisch said. “My E-mail inquiry stimulated wider interest than I expected. Someone named Connaught called me from one of the national committee offices. Alumnus. I don’t remember him, but he seemed to know you and a lot of other people who’ve worked here. He didn’t know anything about the European Union, but he wanted to learn everything I could tell him about Calvert Manor. Which wasn’t much.”
“That’s interesting,” Michaelson said. “Thank you.”
After hanging up Michaelson pulled an old copy of the studbook off a bookshelf behind him. This was the Foreign Service Personnel Directory, with a capsule biography of all serving FSOs. Connaught, Corbin (James), AB (History) Brown 1965, was credited with service as an attaché for cultural affairs in Belgrade from 1969 to 1974, a science and technology attaché in Prague from 1979 to 1981, and a chargé d’affaires for special assignments in Budapest from 1987 to 1990. No indication of how he’d passed his time during the rather noticeable gaps between these tours of duty.
In other words, Corbin James Connaught was a spook. Or had been. A CIA officer who sometimes used State Department cover. Now ostensibly no longer in government service but claiming to earn his shekels working for one of the political parties. Cecilia Hamisch, model civil servant that she was, had been careful not to say which one.
Michaelson felt a bit silly now about lecturing Demarest on his naïveté. Phillips’ fairy tale about the European Union made no sense as a story to fool Michaelson for long. It made very good sense, however, as a device to send a signal with Richard Michaelson’s credibility behind it to Washington’s foreign policy, national security, and political establishments. A signal that somebody had an interest in Calvert Manor that they were trying to disguise. Which was exactly what Michaelson had just done.
Chapter Six
This is above and beyond, Marjorie,” Patrice Helmsing said as the airport retreated in Marjorie’s rearview mirror late Friday morning. “You’re running a bookstore, not a taxi service.”
Collateral Damage Page 4