(1989) The Guest of Honour

by Irving Wallace

  ‘Not yet. Do you want me to hold it off for any reason?’

  ‘Possibly. We’ll see. I want to look it over first.’

  It was ten minutes before Blake, hair freshly combed, necktie in place, schedule in hand, entered the First Lady’s Office.

  She was behind her polished desk in a quilted swivel chair, staring through the window at Lafayette Park.

  When she heard him, she came to her feet. She started across the room to the chintz sofa beneath the wildflower prints on the wall.

  As she signalled him to the down-filled armchair beside the sofa, he hesitated an instant to watch her walk.

  She was perfection. He had never in his life seen a woman more well put together, Alice was wearing a sheer white silk blouse, the lace brassiere visible underneath, and a short shantung skirt. Her long legs, in the flesh-coloured stockings, were breathtaking.

  Even his own wife, who had good legs and regular features, seemed somewhat less attractive, and even dowdy by comparison.

  Alice Underwood was seated on the sofa, crossing her legs, and Blake found himself hard put to remember what he was expected to do next. Then, with effort, he remembered and walked stiff-legged across the room to settle in the armchair beside her.

  ‘Paul,’ she said, ‘the president’s schedule - did you bring it?’

  He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled the schedule free, and unfolded it.

  She reached out impatiently. ‘May I see it?’

  He handed the schedule to her, and she quickly scanned it.

  ‘What I’m interested in,’ she said slowly, ‘is what the president had lined up after lunch. I see he’s having lunch with that woman from Lampang.’

  ‘Yes, Madame Noy Sang.’

  ‘What an odd name,’ said Alice absently. ‘Is this some kind of social lunch or what? I mean, is it a courtesy thing?’

  Blake could not see where she was going, but he decided to be forthright. ‘It’s somewhat more important than that. Which is the reason Ezra Morrison and I will be there, too.’

  ‘I see you’ve allocated two hours for it,’ said Alice. ‘Isn’t that a long time for lunch?’

  ‘The time isn’t set aside only for the lunch,’ said Blake. ‘First there will be the amenities, the usual process of getting acquainted. The really serious business of the meeting will take place after lunch, when we all move into the Yellow Oval Room.’

  ‘Does all that have to take two hours?’

  ‘Well, not necessarily,’ said Blake cautiously. ‘It could be compressed to an hour and a half.’

  Alice leaned toward him. It caused her breasts to jiggle, and Blake was momentarily disconcerted. Alice asked, ‘Can you compress it to an hour and a half?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Alice. What do you have in mind?’

  Alice spoke earnestly. ‘You remember when we came into the White House and you wanted me to have some do-good activity? We felt anti-drugs and anti-alcohol and help for retarded children had all been opted by previous first ladies. You were the one who suggested arts and education for me.’

  ‘I still regard it as a good choice,’ said Blake.

  ‘Okay, you know that among other things, I became very involved in the new Contempo Museum. Well, we’re having a high tea there as a fund-raiser, mostly for patrons. I’m expected to speak and I will. But I’m far less effective at that than Matt. I want him to join me at the Contempo and say a few words, too. Surely that’s as important as Lampang. I mean, he can still have his talk with that woman from Lampang, and find time to be effective at the Museum. Isn’t that possible?’

  Paul Blake hesitated. When he had got Alice into arts and education, he had specifically had in mind doing things for the poor and underprivileged. The patrons and backers of the Contempo Museum were hardly in that class. They could not be thought of as needy. The tea and the appearance of the president would merely be added icing on a cake that was already overly rich.

  ‘I-I don’t know, Alice -‘ Blake began.

  Alice was immediately on her feet. She had made an inroad, and did not mean to lose it. ‘Come on Paul, dear, you can do it, an itty bitty favour. Please.’ She bent over him and kissed him on the cheek, and in doing so one of her breasts brushed his uplifted hand.

  Shaken, Blake retreated. ‘Well -‘

  ‘Come on,’ Alice burst out. She hugged him, and he could feel both those magnificent breasts. ‘For me, for my cause.’

  For Blake, any further resistance was gone. He tried to adjust himself to her face over his. ‘Well, I suppose it could be done.’

  ‘You’re a doll!’ Alice exclaimed, pressing her lips against his. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll rearrange the schedule.’

  ‘It’s easy,’ said Alice briskly, straightening up. ‘Matt hasn’t seen his final schedule yet. Mark in that Lampang woman from 12:30 to 2:00, and then have Matt drive over to the Contempo Museum with me by 2:30.’ She handed the schedule back to him. ‘Will you do it immediately?’

  ‘Immediately,’ he said, staggering out of the deep chair.

  Alice had him by the arm, and was leading him to the door. ‘I’ll expect Matt to pick me up at 2:30.’

  He was out the door and in the corridor. Alice had closed the door behind her.

  Blake knew that he had been manipulated.

  Those warm lips. Those soft breasts. They had been worth it.

  Starting away, Blake asked himself what did it matter? An hour and a half more or less with some woman from the South China Sea.

  Blake told himself the president might even be grateful to escape a half hour earlier.

  Forty minutes ago, Chief of Staff Blake had made another change in the president’s schedule and had sent out a special memorandum by hand to the interested parties.

  He had postponed the full cabinet meeting.

  He had been concerned with his failure to brief the president on Lampang earlier, and felt that the meeting in the Cabinet Room should concentrate on Lampang entirely, on what the president should be ready to give and expect to receive. With this concentration on the immediate subject of concern, there was no need to be burdened by the secretary of agriculture, the secretary of commerce, the secretary of transportation, the attorney general and other members of the president’s staff.

  Entering the Cabinet Room, Blake could see at a glance that the necessary officers had been alerted and were on hand. Blake greeted the secretary of state, the CIA director, the

  secretary of defence, the three officers of the National Security Council, and then he took the leather chair next to the president’s vacant one.

  ‘How did your pre-briefing go with the president?’ Morrison wanted to know.

  Blake grimaced. ‘Lousy.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Morrison asked.

  ‘It means lousy,’ said Blake. ‘The president didn’t give a damn about Lampang. He only wanted to speak of the heavyweight fight in Las Vegas later in the afternoon.’

  ‘Then our work’s cut out for us,’ said CIA Director Ramage.

  ‘Right you are,’ said Blake. ‘It’s got to be Lampang and more Lampang. That’s why I cancelled everyone else. I wanted to concentrate on what’s waiting for the president at lunch.’

  They began to discuss their briefing of the chief executive, when a door opened and President Underwood came into the room.

  Tall and erect, he appeared to be in good humour. He brushed back his hair, grinned at the assemblage, and said to no one in particular, ‘What’s been going on behind my back?’

  Making his way to his leather chair, he greeted everyone in the Cabinet Room by name.

  ‘We’ve been discussing your lunch with Madam Noy Sang,’ Blake told the president as he settled into place.

  ‘Is it going to be a long lunch?’ the president asked.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be,’ Morrison assured him. ‘After some get-acquainted talk with the Madame, you can wind up lunch and we’ll move into the Yellow Oval Room. That can
be strictly business.’

  ‘I just wanted to know because I didn’t want to miss the big fight,’ the president explained.

  ‘You’ll have plenty of time for that,’ Blake promised. ‘This lunch and meeting with Madame Noy Sang is scheduled to last one and a half hours. Then the first lady expects you to accompany her to the opening of the Contempo Museum, and say a few words, maybe five minutes worth about an important

  fund-raiser. That’ll give you plenty of time to get back for the fight.’

  The president surveyed the room. ‘I see a lot of our friends are missing and you’ve brought in only the big brass.’

  ‘Deliberate,’ said Blake simply. ‘Since you’re going to be bargaining with Madame Noy Sang, we wanted our full concentration to be devoted to a treaty with Lampang.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said the president. ‘This lady I’m lunching with - can anyone tell me what she’s like?’

  Secretary of State Morrison leaned forward. ‘We don’t know exactly. None of us have met her. You remember her husband was president of the island when he was assassinated. She was vice-president, as per custom in those parts. So she inherited his seat.’

  Underwood nodded. ‘Yes, I remember. I’ve seen her picture in the press. She doesn’t look too formidable.’

  Ramage entered the conversation. ‘She isn’t, Mr. President. Our station head in Lampang, Percy Siebert, says she’s a small, gentle woman, and was in shock and retreat a long time after her husband’s death. In effect, she gave it a year of mourning and the entire year to learn her job for herself.’

  ‘And now that a year has passed,’ said Morrison, ‘Noy San is coming out of seclusion. Her first trip abroad is this one to the United States. I suppose mainly because she needs us.’

  ‘Money, I’m sure,’ said the president.

  ‘There might be a little more,’ said Blake, ‘and it could be sentimental. Noy Sang has been in America before. Some while ago. She spent four years doing undergraduate work at Wellesley.’

  The president seemed to perk up again. ‘That’s where Dianne is at school,’ he said proudly. ‘She’s now in her senior year.’

  Everyone was supposed to know, and did know, that Dianne Underwood was his twenty-one-year-old daughter.

  ‘That’ll give you something in common to talk about,’ said Blake, ‘before you settle down to the nitty-gritty.’

  The president nodded. ‘All right, what’s the nitty-gritty?’

  Morrison had been busy drawing a map on the page of a

  long yellow pad. He tore it loose and came around the table to the president. Addressing Curtis Cannon, the secretary of defence, he said, ‘Curtis, take my seat and give me yours. This will make it easier for me to explain a map of the South Pacific and beyond that, which I’ve been drawing.’

  The exchange was made, and Morrison squirmed into the chair beside the president and placed the yellow sheet before him.

  ‘What’s this?’ the president wanted to know.

  ‘A crude drawing of the Far East highlighting our major air bases that help us contain any over-enthusiam that may occur in North Korea, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia.’ Using his pen as a pointer on the map, Morrison resumed. ‘As you can see, Mr. President, our Pacific Air Force has three major wings. Not counting Hawaii, which is Pacific Air Force headquarters for the 15th Air Force, we have three large air bases. Here’s our air base in Japan for the 5th Air Force. Here’s our air base in South Korea for the 7th Air Force. Here’s our air base in the Philippines for the 13th Air Force. Do you see anything unusual about my map?’

  The president shook his head. ‘Not especially.’

  ‘Well, look down here. What’ do you see?’

  The president stared at the map. ‘An island, a large island and two small ones.’

  ‘Lampang,’ said Morrison. ‘We have no air base there.’

  ‘And you want one there?’

  Morrison raised his head and met the president’s eyes. ‘We not only want one there, we must have one there. That would give us a base a stone’s throw from Cambodia, Vietnam, China, all communist.’

  ‘I see. How do we get it?’

  ‘By depending on your own power of persuasion and undeniable charm to reduce Madame Noy Sang to a compliant puddle,’ said Morrison. ‘We’ll outline what we want from her, and what we can give her in return.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said the president.

  Morrison looked down the table. ‘Curtis,’ said Morrison to the secretary of defence, ‘let’s trade seats again.’

  They did so.

  Firmly settled beside the president once more, Cannon said, ‘Mr. President, I’m going to tell you exactly what we want from Madame Noy Sang. You don’t have to commit it all to memory. I have our demands typed out on several cards for you. You can refer to these when you and Madame Sang get down to hard business.’

  He drew several cards from a pocket and passed them to the president, who placed them in his own pocket.

  ‘Okay, go on,’ said the president.

  ‘What we want is an air base on roughly 130,000 acres in Lampang. About 10,000 of those acres will be needed for various buildings and other facilities. There should be room for 10,000 Air Force personnel, and about 15,000 native civilians and contract employees.’

  ‘What about the airstrips?’ inquired the president.

  ‘There’ll be plenty of room for two vital runways,’ said the secretary of defence. ‘One long one will take about fifty fighter planes - F-5s, F-4Es, F-4Gs, and maybe room for twelve F-5Es.’

  ‘Do we have to buy all this property?’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare to suggest that, even if it were possible,’ Secretary of Defense Cannon said. ‘The base itself, excepting planes and buildings, would be owned by Lampang. What I foresee, and what Madame Noy Sang will undoubtedly want, will be a mutual agreement between Lampang and ourselves. We get a long-term lease on the base - perhaps ninety years, if you can swing it - in return for substantial aid to Lampang in American dollars.’

  ‘What’s substantial aid?’ the president asked.

  Cannon looked across the cabinet table at Morrison. ‘Have you got a figure, Ezra?’

  ‘I have two figures,’ said Morrison. ‘These are based on inquiries I’ve made of my Far Eastern experts. Alan Ramage has also been helpful and given me a lot of input from the CIA. The first figure is the low figure. It may work, because Noy Sang is so desperate. Play around with that figure, Mr. President.’

  ‘How much is it?’ Underwood asked.

  ‘$125,000,000.’

  ‘That sounds substantial enough to me,’ said the president.

  ‘To you, sir, but it may not to the president of Lampang,’ said Morrison. ‘While she might not be too sophisticated, she’s been in office a year and has an idea of what we need. She knows her ace in the hole is the air base. She knows its importance to our national defence. So she may be a little hard-nosed about all this and bargain for more.’ Morrison considered what he wanted to say next. ‘The fact is, Mr. President, you can go for more. Put on the appearance of being a good guy and go for the higher loan.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘We could go for a loan of $150,000,000 - that much, but not a dime more. Then it becomes too costly considering our outstanding loans to other countries. Oh, Madame Sang may ask for more. They always do. Those little countries are impoverished and feel Uncle Sam has bottomless pockets. But we don’t have that much to fling around, especially on a relatively obscure place like Lampang. You can be a hero and go up to $150,000,000, but I repeat, that’s the limit.’

  ‘What if she says no?’

  ‘Then you say goodbye to the lady. We’ll hunt elsewhere for another base and a more reasonable trader.’

  The president frowned. ‘But I thought you were saying we really must have this Lampang base?’

  ‘We want it, no question,’ said Morrison. ‘Yet, there are limits to what we can give. We can’t allow ourselves to be blackmail
ed.’ He smiled at Underwood. ‘You can do it, Mr. President. Just turn on the old charm. We’re lucky Lampang’s head of state is a woman. A few words from you, a generous smile, and she’ll melt. Diplomacy often comes down to that.’

  Underwood seemed uncertain. ‘I hope so.’

  ‘You’ll pull it off,’ said Morrison. ‘I don’t have a doubt in the world. You’ll come up a winner.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said the president, and with that the meeting in the Cabinet Room was adjourned.

  In the heart of the capital city of Visaka on the island of Lampang, Noy Sang sat in her husband’s office in Chamadin Palace behind her husband’s oversized desk, signing papers into law before her departure for the United States.

  The office and desk were still, even after a year of her occupancy, her husband’s office and his desk. He had been brutally killed here, and buried in the ground after great ceremony, but for Noy Sang her husband Prem was not entirely dead. It was as if he had simply gone away on a long trip, without saying goodbye. Some memories of him had faded, details mostly, and in recent months she had felt less alone because she had been busy with her work.

  But the office and desk were Prem’s. She could not be disloyal. Everything she had learned and knew - well, almost everything — had come from Prem, and she could not completely believe that she was her own person.

  What brought all this to mind as she signed her papers was that the mourning period was over, and she was about to leave Lampang on her first official trip abroad.

  Truly she now was - would be - President Noy Sang of Lampang.

  Noy peeked at the dial of her gold watch. It was time for young Den to depart for school. She wondered where he was. Then she realised that her own departure for the airport and the flight to the United States with Chief of Foreign Affairs Marsop Panyawan would take place in a half hour, and that she had better finish signing her papers.

  She resumed scribbling her signature by pen, and had just finished with the last document, when she heard the clatter of footsteps on the staircase that led down from the family apartment.

  Little Den bounced into the office, hastily followed by Noy’s sister Thida. Den was dark-haired and dark-eyed with a pug nose, and small (even for his age). Noy’s sister Thida was three years her junior, taller and slimmer than herself, with