Dark Ambition

by Allan Topol

  Grace was able to see Jennifer in an hour. While packing up her briefcase to head out to NIH, Jennifer stopped and stared at the flowers. The arrangement was quite magnificent. He was entitled to a thank-you. She checked her directory of government telephone numbers and dialed 284-2000.

  It was impressive to hear the operator announce, "This is the White House."

  "Jim Slater, please."

  A secretary picked up. "Mr. Slater's office. Who's calling?"

  "Jennifer Moore."

  "Please hold...."

  There was a long pause while the secretary asked Slater if he could take the call. It'll be just as well if he doesn't, Jennifer thought. I'll just leave the thank-you message with her and be done with it.

  But Slater picked up. "Well, hello, there, Jennifer. Great evening at the Kelsos'. What can I do for you?" He sounded relaxed and self-confident.

  "I want to know if you bought out the flower shop."

  Acting surprised, he laughed. "Oh, they came."

  "Jim, they're incredible. Thanks so much."

  "Happy to hear you like them. Nosegay does a great job."

  She wanted him to know how much she appreciated the thought. "They've certainly made my day."

  "Listen, I've got an offer for you. Tomorrow evening the Washington Opera's doing Luisa Miller. I could probably scrounge up a couple of tickets for the presidential box. How about that and a late dinner somewhere?"

  "How'd you know I like opera?"

  "Well, you are on the opera board. That gave me a hint."

  She was pleased that he was obviously doing some checking on her. Then she thought about Ann's advice that getting started with any married man, even one as attractive as Slater, was a mistake. She could tell him that she was supposed to see Luisa Miller next week, which was true, of course, because she had missed the performance last Saturday when Robert died, to spend time with Ann.

  From her silence, he sensed her hesitation. "It is Verdi. Nothing wrong with seeing it twice in a season."

  "Great. I'd love to," she replied.

  "I'll leave your ticket at the box office."

  * * *

  Chip Donovan sat at his desk and examined the message, now decoded, that Sherman had sent from Shanghai via the venture capital firm in San Francisco. Chinese troop movements had advanced. The President's warning to Liu yesterday, following the consensus reached at the meeting Donovan had attended with Hawkins, Cunningham, and Joyner, had done nothing to slow down the Chinese deployment toward the Strait of Taiwan.

  Let them keep coming, Donovan thought. Unlike Cunningham, President Brewster had balls. If the Chinese dared to attack Taiwan, and Donovan hoped they would, he was confident that Brewster would respond with force. Now was the time to fight that battle. The United States couldn't afford to wait much longer for the inevitable battle over Taiwan. Not at the rate the Chinese military machine was developing.

  But would the Chinese attack?

  That was why Operation Matchstick was so important. If Chen succeeded, and Donovan was confident he would, that would be the spark that would force the Chinese to attack.

  As Donovan reread Sherman's report, there was one fact in it that disturbed him. "Extremely nervous" was how Sherman described Chen. Jesus, I hope he doesn't bail out on me now, Donovan thought. Everything's in place. Don't let me down.

  * * *

  Jennifer briskly climbed the concrete stairs in front of building ten of the National Institute of Mental Health, one of the largest in the NIH complex in Bethesda. She averted her eyes from the sun reflecting off the black glass windows.

  Walking through the main corridor to the elevators, she passed a display heralding innovations in medicine and science. People were milling around in the lobby near the bank of elevators. One young doctor, in a white lab coat, after glancing impatiently at his watch, muttered something inaudible and headed for the staircase.

  On the fourth floor, she exited the elevator and followed the signs for the north hallway in search of 4N 257. Having never been in the building before, she was surprised at how small and close together the offices were as she walked down the long corridor. Here, the great scientific minds of the world were working in offices the size of closets.

  Finally, she reached her destination. A small sign with black block letters on a white background read Affective Disorders, Chief Grace Hargadon. She headed toward the left looking through open office doors until she spotted Grace. A tiny, slight woman in her late fifties, whose size concealed a powerful analytical mind, she was hunched over her computer ferociously typing. Reports as well as her various articles were piled haphazardly on the floor and a table that was too large for the room, giving the office a cluttered look. Before Jennifer could say a word, Dr. Hargadon wheeled around and curtly said, "I'll be with you in one second." She resumed typing to complete her thought.

  Looking at the scientist, Jennifer couldn't help but smile. Unlike most casually dressed researchers, who wore slacks, shirts, and white jackets, Dr. Hargadon was, as usual, dressed in a Chanel suit—this one in pinks and muted greens. Having inherited a fortune from her father, who owned a score of cable TV stations in the Pacific Northwest, she could easily afford to wear three-thousand-dollar suits. Jennifer had first met her several years ago when Jennifer was still at the Justice Department, and a defense lawyer used Grace as his expert to persuade a jury that the defendant's abusive behavior toward women was so compulsive that he should be deemed to be temporarily insane rather than prosecuted. Dr. Hargadon was simply the best psychiatric witness Jennifer had ever encountered. After the trial, Jennifer made it a point of getting to know her. Over lunch at the prestigious Cosmos Club, where the scientist was a member, they found they shared another interest—opera. Since Grace's husband, a physician, found it boring, she and Jennifer had taken a subscription to the Washington Opera each of the last several years.

  Dr. Hargadon finished typing, spun around in her chair, and pushed her brown designer glasses up on her head. "You missed a good opera Saturday. It was the best Luisa Miller I've ever seen."

  "I didn't want to leave Ann until her daughter got there."

  "How's she doing?"

  "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Ann leaned on me to defend Clyde Gillis, the gardener who—"

  "I know who he is," she said in her brusque professional tone, one that bore no resemblance to her friendly manner when she was off duty. "With all the media attention the case is getting, I'd have to be living on the moon not to know." She suddenly stopped. Something hadn't computed. "Most widows don't hire a defense lawyer for their husband's alleged killer."

  "This isn't a typical case."

  Grace refilled the large mug on her desk from a sterling silver thermos and pointed to the chair next to her desk. Jennifer sat down.

  "You've got my attention."

  Jennifer didn't hesitated to talk to Dr. Hargadon. She knew the scientist would keep everything in confidence. "Our distinguished former secretary of state had some problems. He had a compulsive sexual desire, an abnormal sexual drive."

  Dr. Hargadon smiled. "Aren't I supposed to be the one making the diagnosis?"

  Jennifer laughed easily. "Good point."

  "You stick to the symptoms. Tell me what you mean by abnormal?"

  "There was an underside to his behavior. Whenever he traveled, which was often, he arranged for call girls. Sometimes more than one. To me, that's abnormal behavior."

  "So he liked women. Lots of men do. Why do you think it's abnormal?"

  "It made him the target for blackmail."

  "But even if that's the case, how does that help you?"

  "I want to understand him. I'm hoping that I'll be able to find the key to who killed him."

  "What else do you know about him?"

  "He was AC/DC as well."

  "You know that for sure?"

  "On Saturday afternoon, the day he was killed, a man visited him. He came for sex with Winthrop."

&n
bsp; Dr. Hargadon raised her eyebrows. "A man?"

  "His name was George Nesbitt."

  "How do you know the visitor came for sex?"

  "A detective observed fluid on the front of Winthrop's pants. It wasn't urine. Money was thrown around."

  The scientist scratched her head in puzzlement. "I think I'd better talk to your friend Ann. When can I see her?"

  Jennifer glanced up at the clock on the wall. "I thought you'd never ask. I wanted some time alone to give you the background. She'll be here any minute."

  "You're one step ahead of me, as always."

  Sure enough, they heard footsteps in the hallway and Ann appeared in the doorway. The two women had met a couple of times before at Jennifer's house.

  Dr. Hargadon plunged right in with her usual directness. "I want to help if I can, but we'll have to talk frankly about your husband and your sex life with him. Can you handle that, Ann?"

  "With pleasure," Ann quickly replied.

  Dr. Hargadon picked up a white pad. With the Cross pen on her desk, she jotted a few notes. "Let's talk about Robert during a defined period of time," she began. "Say the last three years, since you moved to Washington and he was secretary of state."

  Ann nodded.

  Dr. Hargadon continued, "Describe his mood."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Was he sometimes irritable and sometimes euphoric?"

  "More of the latter. For several days at a time he would be wildly euphoric, gloating to me and others about all the great things he was accomplishing at the State Department. Once I accused him of taking uppers. He laughed at me and called me a sullen bitch."

  "Focus on these periods of emotional high. What else did he do that was unusual?"

  There was a long silence. Ann was thinking.

  While waiting, Dr. Hargadon doodled on the pad, which she frequently did. Jennifer had always had a vague urge to have another psychiatrist analyze those markings.

  Ann looked up. "He had almost unlimited energy during these periods, and he rarely slept. He'd sleep three hours, play tennis, and run everybody ragged in the office with all sorts of brilliant new ideas."

  "What about sexual activity?"

  "He'd go after me like a wild man for days at a time. Then he'd settle down to two or so times a week. When he was in a high like that, he'd want me as much as five times in a twenty-four-hour period. He didn't care that I wasn't getting a thing out of it. In jest, I once told him to go stuff it somewhere else. Obviously, he did just that."

  "How often did he have these euphoric states?"

  "More in the last year. Near the end, almost on a weekly basis."

  "Did he ever indicate that he felt larger than life?"

  Ann thought about the question for a minute. "I don't know if this is what you mean, but he always seemed to think that he was invincible. He would dream that he was president. He would even tell me what the reporters would write about—how incredible he was. Again, I usually tuned him out when he went into this routine. I thought his ego was super inflated. He sounded like such a jerk." A look of skepticism came over Ann's face. "Is any of this relevant to Robert's death?"

  "Bear with me a little longer," Dr. Hargadon replied, pausing to make a note. "To your knowledge, was he taking any drugs or medication?"

  "He hated taking an aspirin, let alone any mood-altering substances. Increasingly, he was against putting foreign substances in his body."

  Dr. Hargadon stopped talking and looked over her notes.

  "Where are we, Doctor?" Ann asked her.

  Dr. Hargadon took a deep breath and said, "Your husband probably had what we call hypomanic episodes."

  "In English, please."

  "It's a mood disorder. With more severe behavior, he would be manic. But in contrast, hypomanic episodes aren't severe enough to cause impairment in social or occupational function or to require hospitalization. But they're still a problem. With counseling or even, if necessary, medication, we might have been able to control it."

  "And the sex with prostitutes?"

  "That's all part of the hypomanic profile. Typically, hypomanic people have periods of time when they are full of energy and euphoric, involving themselves in pleasurable activities, with sex usually being at the top of the list."

  "Should I feel better that my husband was a nut instead of being a philanderer?"

  "The characterization doesn't matter. The bottom line is that you've confirmed what I suspected while talking to Jennifer. Robert was engaged in self-destructive behavior that he may not have been able to control."

  Ann retorted, "But none of that psycho stuff is particularly helpful now. Is it?"

  Jennifer caught Dr. Hargadon's eye and silently mouthed the words, "George Nesbitt."

  "There's one other matter. Jennifer has the idea that somebody named George Nesbitt showed up for a homosexual encounter with your husband on that Saturday afternoon."

  Ann looked at Jennifer incredulously. "That's ridiculous. Robert wasn't gay."

  "How can you be sure?" Dr. Hargadon said. "Plenty of wives—"

  "He was homophobic, for God's sake."

  "How do you know that?"

  "When he was at Exeter, another boy once came into his bed when he was sleeping and began fondling him. Robert woke up and punched the kid so hard that the boy's face was a bloody pulp. It took seventeen stitches to sew him up. If Philip Brewster in the next room hadn't intervened in response to the screams, then Robert probably would have killed him. The other boy was expelled and the incident was hushed up. Robert told me about it with pride."

  "How did the subject happen to come up?"

  "About two years ago I learned from a news source that under Robert, there was an unwritten rule at the State Department—don't hire any men who seem gay. It was illegal as hell. Once I confronted him with it. Publicly, he said, of course, he would deny it if anyone put it into print, but privately he confirmed it was true. He told me about the Exeter incident and said gays were unreliable and could be blackmailed by foreigners, which is pretty hypocritical given what happened to him. He was a liberal on just about every topic except gays. But there you are. My husband wasn't a very nice man, which is why I'm damn happy he's dead."

  Jennifer decided to break in. "Couldn't this loud expression of homophobia have been a cover for his latent homosexuality?"

  Grace looked at her thoughtfully. "In my opinion, clearly not on the facts Ann just told us. He seemed too repulsed and acted too violently for that."

  "But George Nesbitt was a man."

  "Really? What makes you so sure George Nesbitt was a man?" Dr. Hargadon said flatly.

  "What?" Ann blurted out. "The guards in front of the house said he was a man."

  Jennifer, too, was flabbergasted. "Run that by me again."

  "My opinion," Dr. Hargadon said slowly but confidently, "is that George Nesbitt was a woman disguised as a man. Actors do it to play a part. The two of you certainly know that. It was a great way for a woman who arranged to have sex with Robert to gain access to him in the house."

  "You really think so?"

  "Go back to the lab people. Have them check the house and all of Winthrop's clothes. Maybe you'll find a woman's hair somewhere that's not Ann's or the maid's. And maybe it came from George Nesbitt."

  "What makes you think so?"

  "Let's assume that Winthrop was compulsive about sex with call girls, which you've told me is a fact. He can't have a prostitute show up at his house Saturday afternoon. So he tells her to dress like a man."

  "And she kills him."

  "Maybe."

  "Why? Because he didn't pay her enough?"

  "Quite the opposite. She was probably paid plenty by somebody else to kill him."

  "And that somebody knew how to gain access to Winthrop."

  "Precisely."

  Jennifer immediately thought of the Chinese ambassador. Winthrop wouldn't resign, so had Liu arranged to kill him? "Now all I have to do is find that somebody."
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  "Find out who supplied Winthrop with prostitutes. There's your missing link."

  * * *

  In the parking lot at NIH, as they were separating, Jennifer told Ann, "Pull together every letter, personal paper, cancelled check, or any other document that belonged to Robert and pile them up in one of the second-floor rooms in your house. Also, go down to his office at State. Clean out his desk and personal files."

  "I'll have it all by tomorrow afternoon."

  "Great. When it's ready, call a young lawyer in my office, Louise Jenson. She'll hustle out to your house."

  "But why do you want all that stuff?"

  "Dr. Hargadon may be right. Whoever supplied Robert with prostitutes might be the key we're searching for."

  With her cell phone, Jennifer called Detective Campbell. He was located at Theodore Roosevelt High School on 13th Street, where a sixth-grader had just gunned down a classmate who tried to steal a pair of sneakers from his locker. Campbell was too angry about the high school case to talk to her on the phone. "Write me a letter," he barked loudly and hung up.

  She raced across East-West Highway, hoping to reach Roosevelt before Campbell left. She narrowly succeeded. The detective was getting into his car, notepad in hand, when she pulled up in front of the school. He climbed back out of his car and slammed the door.

  "Sorry I was rude to you," he said. "It's not your fault."

  "I need your help," Jennifer said meekly.

  He paused to pull on his cigarette. "You've got a poor memory. I checked out of the Winthrop case."

  "Clyde Gillis needs your help."

  He gave her a curious look. "That's right. I heard you were representing him. The whole thing's got me a little puzzled."

  "Don't try to figure it out. Just help me."

  But Campbell was still replaying the events inside the school. "That crazy fucker was only twelve years old," he exclaimed. "He bought the gun himself with money he made hustling drugs. All that for a pair of Nikes. Goddamn, what are we going to do? When I played basketball at Georgetown, I didn't care what kind of shoes I had. Now these punks need the best shoes to waltz up and down the street. What will the next generation be like?" The detective looked back at Jennifer and sighed. "What do you need, Miss Moore?"