Dragonfly
Page 17
Abby rolled her eyes. "Get to work, guv."
"Tilda, if there's a law on the books, which I am dead certain there must be, I'll enforce that law to keep our beautiful beaches decent for our families."
A very tall elderly man, his head bent as if from the weight of a helmet of brilliantly swirled white hair, said, "I was shurf of Varney County for twenty-three years. I'd be interested to know which side of the death penalty you come down on, Lucas."
"Ed, I still think the best justice is a hanging judge with a short attention span."
"If you're not a man after my own heart."
"Don't forget me, come next August."
Spence Lebeque said, "That's a good answer for a party, Lucas, but before you speak out in public on the subject of capital punishment, we need to formulate something a little less from-the-hip."
"I hear you, Spence. I know that sometimes I just can't resist going for a voter's tickle spot. But I don't intend to be stiff-necked on the stump, wasting energy devoting myself to keeping a civil tongue in my head. That's the trouble with politics today, and what do we get? Up there in Washington, government is nothing but a damned robot that builds other robots. Lord have mercy on us all. Who's pouring the bourbon around here?"
Lizzie said, "I'll get you another one, Luke."
"Thank you, Lizzie. What is that you've got on to night? Looks just like a squeeze of my toothpaste."
She cast down her eyes self-consciously. "It's a tube dress. What brand of bourbon are you drinking?"
"Just ask Bernard," Thomason said with a wave of his hand, and then, as if bored with carrying the conversation, he turned to Joe.
"There's a lot of polo up your way. Oak Brook, I believe. Do you play?"
"No. I've only seen the game on TV. I ride enough to respect the difficulties."
"Well, you know, it's not so much a matter of equestrian skills as it is the quality of your pony. I own a couple of surefooted little quarter horses, the kind they use for barrel-racing at the roDAYos. Those ponies will pick up the ball and run with it between their teeth, they love the game so much. Like for you to have a look-see, if you're going to be around very long."
"I haven't made any definite plans yet."
"Not anxious to be home, after spending all that time in the wilds of Africa?"
"Not really," Joe said, as Abby looked up quickly with a hopeful smile.
"Come ride with me in the morning, then. We'll get ourselves better acquainted. By the way, what was that hospital again?"
"My affiliation? North Shore, in Winnetka."
"Now I remember."
"Lucas, come over here and settle this argument for us, before Wilmer makes such a doggone nuisance of himself you got to show him the door!"
"Coming," Thomason said, with a temperate smile just beginning to show a little weariness. He nodded in a courtly manner to Joe, winked at Abby, glanced at Adele and walked away. Adele, having absorbed a message not apparent to the others, followed right behind him.
"Adele," Thomason said, when they were out of earshot of Joe and Abby, "call up the administrator of the North Shore Hospital in Illinois and see what he has to say about Dr. Joseph Bryce."
"Why do. I say I'm curious?" Adele asked with a covert glance at Joe.
"Just tell him you're with the State Board of Medical Examiners. Make up a reason, you're good at this."
"What do you want to know about Dr. Bryce?"
"Just enough to give me a high comfort level."
"Oh. Do you think Abby's got eyes for the doctor?"
"That's obvious, isn't it?"
"I'll get on it. First thing in the morning."
"No," Thomason said, with a jutting of his lips that might have been a pout, or a reprimand. "Call him tonight. Unless there's something more important on your schedule."
"There's not," Adele said promptly. "Let me double-check on Senator Harkness, who ought to just about be at the front gate, then I'll make that call."
Chapter Eighteen
Adele was waiting on the motor court when the limousine bearing the Hon. Miller Harkness, the senior senator from the Palmetto State, arrived from the Myrtle Beach Jet Port, accompanied by a woman who was not his wife.
It wasn't news that Harkness, his presidential ambitions abandoned for good, had finally worked out the details for a divorce from Alicia Harkness, to whom he had been married for thirty-three years, and was planning to marry for the second time. Adele was abnormally curious, even for someone of her profession, to meet his intended, who remained inside the limo while Adele introduced herself to the senator.
"I'm Dr. Thomason's press secretary. Welcome to the Barony, Senator Harkness."
He was a man of medium height, bespectacled, quite casual yet stately air of one long accustomed to the deference of the people he served. He looked from Adele to the facade of the mansion with approval and a hint of Old South nostalgia. His accent was as thick as peach butter.
"I've heard many stories from my stepmother's half-brother, who of course was a Thomason, the McClellanville Thomasons, about the great days of Chicora Plantation. It does my heart good to see the old place revived and flourishing. Would you allow me—?"
He stooped half inside the limousine again, emerged holding the gloved hand of the woman who was currently the love of his life.
Adele wasn't impressed. She'd expected a Washington lawyer or social firecracker in her late thirties, perhaps, one of those women for whom grooming is a sacrament, as vivid as the senator was plain. But the woman to whom she was introduced was also plain, on the stout side, probably around fifty, and seemed to be a little cowed by her sudden eminence as the next wife, someday, of Senator Miller Harkness. Or maybe she just didn't travel well.
"So very nice to meet you, Ms. Birdsall. I hope the flight down wasn't too rough."
"The smaller jets seemed to get tossed around more when there's turbulence," Harkness said. "Flora was just asking, if there's a room available to freshen up in and change—"
"Helloooo!"
Jesus, Adele thought, but her smile didn't flicker as she turned toward the front door and a vision of Charlene Thomason, blond enough to make the sun look dingy, gold bracelets flashing in the light from the entrance gallery behind her as she waved to the new arrivals, then came down the outside steps to greet them. At least she didn't have a drink in one hand, Adele thought. But Charlene could put an antic spin on things very quickly. Adele knew that Senator Harkness was attracted to the vapid, the artificial and the ridiculous like a mongoose is attracted to a cobra.
"Senator Harkness, I'd like to introduce you to—"
"But we've met!" Charlene interrupted, extending her hand, the artificial nails too red for her pale skin—by moonlight it looked as if she had been careless with a cleaver at a chopping board. "At the Kennedy Center, last February! The black-tie tribute for the composer, what's-his-name—damn. I just don't know a thing about music, and care less."
"Oh, yes," said the senator, who probably spent a hundred nights a year at black-tie rites of tribute or charity, "so nice to see you again—"
"Mrs. Thomason," Adele said, with discreet emphasis, "I'll just send one of the boys to let Dr. Thomason know his guests have arrived from Washington."
"Wonderful, thank you, Adele," Charlene gushed while holding fast to Harkness. Charlene's disturbingly high spirits, along with the prominence of the new moons under her dark, starry pupils was one indication to Adele, who had a history of substance abuse herself, that Charlene was coked.
"Mrs. Thomason, this is Flora Birdsall."
"Hello!" Charlene ran Ms. Birdsall's appearance through the status-perceptive neurons of her brain and concluded with a hopeless faux pas: "Do you work for Senator Harkness?"
Flora Birdsall smiled glumly and shook her head, at the senator rather than Charlene.
Adele stepped in and said, "Charlene, Ms. Birdsall was wanting to freshen up after her trip, so I thought I'd take her upstairs now and—"
> "Oh, use my bedroom, please! I know you'll love it, if you like Louis the Fifteenth." She added, with a touching lack of assurance, "The French king?"
Flora Birdsall found her voice. "Thank you, that's very kind, Mrs. Thomason."
"Charrr-lene," said the third Mrs. Thomason, tripping over a giggle.
"Charlene."
"Borrow anything you see in my closet that you like."
Flora nodded pleasantly, overlooking the implication that she was a snoop. To Adele Flora said, "I have an overnight bag in the car."
"I'll see that it's brought up to you. Lonnie?"
He was one of the young men parking cars for the guests. "Yes'm."
"If you'll come this way, Ms. Birdsall? Oh, Lonnie, would you also run and tell Dr. Thomason that the senator is here? I believe he's on the veranda with Abby."
"No need to bother, he's coming with me right now!" Charlene was at the senator's side, a hand inside his elbow to implement this act of social arrest. To Harkness she said, "I guess the grand tour will have to wait,because supper should have been ages ago. But before you leave I want to personally show you everything I've done to restore the Barony! When I first set eyes on it, pigeons lived inside. It was disgusting. Now I'll bet we wouldn't take two million for this house."
Adele escorted Flora Birdsall inside.
"I want to apologize," Adele said as they went up the curving stairs. "Charlene looks delicate, but—" She smiled wryly, girl to girl. "—socially she can be a Porsche without brakes."
"I found her very—agreeable," Flora said, refusing to be unkind. She glanced at the trompe l'oeil paintings that added depth and perspective to the gallery. "Are these Mrs. Thomason's ideas? It's a wonderful-looking gallery; such clever use of space."
"Well, with the counsel and guidance of thirteen different decorators Charlene did accomplish all this."
"The old saying about a book and its cover."
"Would you like for me to have something sent up, a glass of wine?"
"No, thank you, Adele. I'm afraid wine would put me straight to sleep. If I could have some tea—"
"Right away." Adele showed Flora to the door of Charlene's room, knocked once, prudently, then opened it. "Here we are."
"Oh, my."
"And here we have the bath—" Adele closed the door to Lucas Thomason's room, looking with disfavor at Charlene's side of the bath: glob of toothpaste on the golden bill of one of a pair of swan's-head faucets,snarls of platinum hair like little tumbleweeds on the sink top. She gathered up a handful of discarded towels from the floor, and some of Charlene's slightly gamy underwear, all of which she dumped into a hamper. She took fresh towels from a cabinet, and a folded terry robe with a makeup stain on one sleeve the laundresses hadn't been able to remove. But it wasn't too noticeable. These things she laid out on a padded bench for Flora Birdsall, in case she wanted to bathe.
"Thank you, you've been awfully kind," Flora said, taking the trouble to make eye contact and sound as if she meant it. Her eyes were her best feature: they were like fine English china in a rather ordinary cabinet.
Adele knew that she was tired and wanted to be alone long enough to collect herself before facing a gang of her husband-to-be's cousins and constituents, but Adele's curiosity bump needed massaging.
"Do you live in Washington, Ms. Birdsall?"
"Near there."
"The reason I asked, your name is familiar. Not from a political family, are you?"
"Well—my grandfather was a federal judge in Philadelphia, where I was born. My father was a co-founder of the Central Intelligence Agency. Andrew Birdsall"
"That may be why I know the name."
Flora smiled patiently and volunteered nothing more. Adele excused herself and went downstairs to the library. She was dying for a smoke, a guilty act in this house where none of the others craved cigarettes and Charlene, defending the purity of her carpets anddrapes, deplored a smoldering butt as an act of crimmal negligence. So when she was caught at it Adele felt as if she'd been masturbating. Outdoors she could relax and practice her spicy smoke rings, her aimless thoughts also eddying in the honeysuckle air, ripples of brain gas floating home to the primordial stars. But there was something she needed to do first.
Charles M. Froelich, Jr., was at home in Highland Park,Illinois, helping his ninth-grade daughter cope with first-year algebra, an effort that usually had her in temperamental tears (it was the age, he kept reminding himself), when the business phone in his study rang. There was no machine on that phone; he had to be available to the hospital at all hours.
"You don't want to fight it," he said soothingly to Kristi. "The problem is, you're closing your mind to the whole idea of algebra."
"Because I hate it," Kristi said, with a vehemence that forced more hot blood into her cheeks.
"When you carry on like this, you're only reinforcing a negative progression: I don't like algebra, so that means I can't do algebra. But we both know you're a very bright girl, so—"
"So?"
"What we have to do is find a reason for liking algebra."
"God! I just told you—"
"Let me pick up the phone, and I'll be right back."
"I'm going outside."
"Kristi, you're not going outside. Wait for me right here."
He got up from the floor of the great room, favoring the knee that was aching from raquetball that afternoon, and limped into his study.
"Mr. Froelich?"
"Yes."
"My name is Adele Franklin. I'm co-chairperson for the Nominating Committee of Pandora's Bay Regional Hospital here in South Carolina?"
He heard the back door slam, and frowned in annoyance.
"Yes, how can I help you, Ms.—"
"Well, now that funding is complete for our new Pediatrics Department, we're considering candidates to head the department. We feel it's important that our choice be in on the ground floor, so to speak, involved with the actual planning and construction of the Pediatrics Wing."
"I see. That might be a good idea."
"In our discussions, the name of Dr. Joseph Bryce has come up more than once. And that's why I'm calling you."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"There is a Dr. Joe Bryce on the staff of North Shore Hospital, isn't there?"
"Would you excuse me for just a moment, please?"
Charles M. Froelich, Jr., lowered the receiver of the telephone, holding it cupped against his chest where his suddenly accelerated heartbeat might have been picked up by a pair of sharp electronic ears, who knew how many thousands of miles away? For that matter, how could he possibly know how many others might be listening to this conversation, alert to any hint of duplicity in his reaction to a seemingly harmless inquiry? He snatched the receiver away from his chest, looked past it at the books on the built-in shelves of handsome cherry veneer, which he'd carpentered himself in his basement workshop. Novels by Fleming, Forsyth, Follett, Ludlum, Greene. And especially Le Carré, the modern master of the spy novel.
So the moment had arrived. His moment. They'd told him it might happen, but not how: that a woman on the telephone with a cheesy Southern accent (not nearly good enough to fool him) would be asking for validation of the false identity of a covert agent of the CIA. Who was she, anyway? Iranian? Iraqi? Korean? Or a terrorist of no specific nationality, a gun for hire, telephoning him from the international shadowlandsof violence and treachery? All he knew was, somewhere the life of a man, a double agent, perhaps, depended on him. It was not too farfetched to assume that the future security of the United States was resting on his shoulders right now.
He took a deep breath, tugged at the middle drawer of his desk with his free hand but remembered that the envelope was locked in the middle drawer of his other desk, in his office at North Shore Hospital. The envelope containing the bona fides of the fictitious CIA agent, Joseph Bryce. And a photograph. It had been brought to him by a prominent vascular surgeon in themidwest, chief of his service at Chicago's m
ost prestigious hospital. And, it became obvious, a man with ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. You could have knocked Charles over with a goose quill. Everything he'd read about interlocking alliances of powerful individuals in all walks of life, secret confederations of movers and shakers, was embodied by the personable, graying, renowned surgeon in a two-thousand-dollar suit. Asking a favor of him, Charles M. Froelich, Jr., a personal favor, although they'd never met. It was a matter of patriotism, really. Charles was assured that neither he nor his family would be at risk. He was reminded that it took a man of moral integrity and deep love for his country to step up when needed. Lastly he was assured by the surgeon, a man of unquestioned integrity himself, that he never forgot a favor.
"Hello, Mr. Froelich? Are you there?"
"Oh—sorry. I thought I heard—one of my kids crying outside. What were you asking about—about Joe? The fact is, he's been on a leave of absence from his practice for the past couple of years. I believe he's still in Africa. I received a nice letter from him, I think it was about four months ago."
"Africa? I wonder if we're talking about the same Joe Bryce, I may be confused here. He's about five-six, going bald—"
"Oh, no. Obviously there's some confusion. Joe's tall, at least six-two, and the last time I saw him, he had a full of head of hair."
"Well, I feel foolish. So there must be twoJoe Bryces in the medical profession."
"More than that, I'm sure. Why don't you check with the AMA?"
He wasn't so sure that he should have volunteered this suggestion. But if the Agency was thorough in setting up a false identity, then they probably had means of inserting "Joe Bryce" into the medical association's computer file.
"Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Froelich."
"Well, purely for selfish reasons, I hope you don't locate our Joe Bryce. He's a wonderful doctor, and we'd like to have him back at North Shore."
When he hung up, his heart was pumping blood hot enough to sear his cheeks; his scalp tingled. He'd done well, he knew that. He'd carried off his moment, and he could only hope that "Joe Bryce," whoever he was, wherever he was, would be successful in completing his own vital mission.