"Florence, the secretary of state had to personally apologize to the Indonesian prime minister."
"You're starting to sound like my boss. So what if the secretary of state had to apologize to the Indonesian prime minister. The strike destroyed a Qaeda chem-weap plant. They put it put it right next to the ambassador's residence, disguised as a 'chil
dren's prosthetic limb factory
' Good for him for calling in the strike. And shame on us for making him take the fall for it, just because some grandstanding senator running for president decided to make an issue of it. Sometimes I think th
e U.S. capitol is a giant Jell-O
mold."
Uncle
Sam sighed dramatically
and scrolled. "What about this? When h
e was station chief in Matar, h
e had an affair with the wife of the U.S. ambassador. What does that tell us?"
"That he was horny. That
sort of thing goes on all the t
ime."
"Not in my day. Not in my shop."
"It's of less importance that he was doing the Macarena with the ambassador's wife than that h
e was station chief in
Matar
, he must have the place w
ired seven ways from Sunday. Look at his file. Station chief Amo-Amas. three years. Deputy chief Kaffa, two years. Fluent in Arabic and
French. Look at these terrorist
renditions. He's the one who got Adnan Bahesh, arguably the worst human being on the planet. He's the o
ne who found out that Saddam H
ussein was plotting to assassinate Bush in '93
. Look at
his chest. Th
ree Bronze Stars, two Purple H
earts.
This
isn't good enough for you?" Florence closed the lid of the laptop, slid it away from her and crossed her arms over her bosom. "Search over."
"Fine. Fine." Uncle Sam said poutily. "But listen here, young lady, it would be disastrous to this entire operation if you had a personal liaison with this man."
"I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer."
"He's a southerner. It's all they think about—sex. And stock-car racing."
"I take it your ancestors came over on the
Mayflower,
or did they arrive earlier, with the Vikings?"
"May I suggest that you save some of this righteous indignation for when you get over there?"
THE
re
was
one
last person to recruit, and he would be the hardest. He arrived at the Alexandria safe house at t
he appointed time on the dot. h
e was always prompt.
"Firenze? What is all this? Oil my God, it's
foul
in here."
George looked around the apartm
ent, which had been furnished by
some color-blind gnome who worked in a subdivision of a subdivision of a sub-bureaucracy whose job was to furnish and decorate safe houses for U.S. intelligence agencies. The paintings, if they could be called that, had been bulk-purchased at Wal-Mart and were only one step removed aesthetically from paintings of bulldogs in visors playing poker.
George said. "I see you've been to Sotheby's."
"Do you want something to drink?"
"What are you pouring? Wine in a box? Malt liquor?"
"George, you and I together are going to accomplish something really big. Really, really big."
"Can I think it over? No."
"Don't you want to hear about it?"
"Not particularly. Is this where we slash the North Korean defectors? So they'll feel at home?"
F
lorence explained, insofar as it
could be explained, abo
ut U
ncle Sam. the PDB, the $1.0 million in gold, the operation, the carte blanche, the fact that he had been able to pull the strings that got George himself reassigned. George listened with deepening gloom
, uttering dismissive grunts: "U'm-um. Um-um
."
"George," she said, "do you remember the conversation we had about what if we were in charge for just ten minutes?"
"Vividly. You recall my saying that I didn't want to be
in charge for ten minutes? I w
ant to be left alone, Firenze."
"Thank you, Greta Garbo. Is that why you joined the
State
Department?"
"You know perfectly well why I joined the State Department."
"Because of one remark by your mother at a Thanksgiving dinner?"
George's great-great-uncle was Adler Fillington Phish, the American diplomat, then ambassador to Bogota, to whom President Theodore Roosevelt famously cabled in 1902:
secure isthmus by christmas
. This led to the "secession" of Panama from Colombia, the building of the canal and the further enrichment beyond wild dreams of Cleveland industrialist Mark Manna, New York financier J. P. Morgan and William Cromwell, founding partner of the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell. The gilded trio later expressed their gratitude to Ambassador Phish by retaining him as counsel in numerous transactions, inaugurating the Phish family fortune.
By the time George arrived, four generations later, the family fortune had dwindled to Phish House, a once handsome redbrick federal in Georgetown, now in dire need of maintenance. George's mother. Philippa Phish Tibbitts, had never gotten over the disappointment of not being richer, or the departure of her husband. Jameson "Bucky" Phish, for
an Argentine polo player named E
steban,
a close friend of the Kennedys
, which only made it worse. She had been nursing these grievances for many years with increasing dosages
of
vodka (now mixed with buttermilk). One particularly gruesome Thanksgiving dinner, she announced in front of all the guests that George, seated at the table and as usual staring glumly into his mushroom soup—trying not to lunge across the table and concuss his mother with the silver tureen (a gift from the newly installed governor of Panama, and the last item of any real value remaining in Phish House)—that her son would never have "the gumption" to join the Foreign Service: moreover, that he would
probably
end up "arranging flowers for a living." George signed up for the foreign Service exam the following Monday. Here he was, sixteen years later. It remained unclear who had won.
"George," Florence said, "you're one
of
the most brilliant men I know. You're wasted behind that desk. Look at this chance we've been handed. It'll never come this way again."
"You don't kn
ow the first thing about this U
ncle Sam."
"Now you sound like
my
mother. It's a chance to make history. Never mind actually helping eight hundred million Muslim women."
"A lot
of those women are perfectly content, you know. I'll bet half of them
like
wearing the veil and being put on a pedestal." "Some pedestal. I low would you like it?"
"Living in a society that considered me a second-class citizen and restricted my rights? Let me get back to you on that."
" 'All that is required for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.' Edmund Burke."
" 'If you run away, you live to run away another day.' Mel Brooks."
"1 can't do this without you. George. It's going to be fun."
"No. It's going to be a nightmare. And I'm going to be in it."
HANDS ON HER HI
PS.
Florence studied her dinner table. Uncle Sam had proposed the Alexandria safe house for the first group meeting, but she'd decided instead to cook them a good Italian meal at her little house in Foggy Bottom. She wasn't sure what the chemistry would be among them, but she did know there are few occasions in life that can't be improved by
a delicious dinner of bresaola,
risotto—crawfish and fava beans, her o
wn recipe— chocolate-raspberry t
iramisu. espresso and bottle after bottle of Barolo. She wore a black cashmere turtleneck. pearl stud earrings, toreador pants, heels and a flouncy apron that made her look even sexier, in a 1950s way.
The first one to arrive was Bo
bby Thibodeaux. the CIA guv. H
e rang the bell live minutes before eight. CIA people always show up early. They like to be in control of the situation. George arrived punctually at eight. Rick Renard arrived twenty minutes late, complaining of having been made so by a congressman "who wouldn't shut up."
Florence served flutes of iced Prosecco. The three men faced one another awkwardly. She found herself watching Bobby Thibodeaux's face as he took in his two new colleagues.
Bobby was in his late thirties, powerfully built, with short blond hair and hooded eves that gave him a skeptical expression just shy of cool hostility. He moved economically, as if conserving his energy. His first word to her was "ma'am." She greeted him in Arabic and suppressed a smile when he returned her "Salaam" with an Alabama a
ccent. I le caught her look. H
e was not the sort of person on whom anything was lost. Florence found herself blushing.
"Well." she said, holding out her glass of Prosecco and clinking it against theirs in turn. "To Aqaba."
"Aqaba?" Renard said.
George and Bobby looked at him. Bobby said. "You'd be the PR guy?" "Strategic communications," Rick said.
A mirthles
s grin crossed Bobby's face. He turned to George. "So,
would you be with the
State
Department?" CIA people overseas tended to refer to
State
Department personnel as "embassy pukes."
Florence thought she'd better jump in. "I've been to Aqaba. It's quite Lovely and cool. The king of Jordan maintains a small palace there."
"Where you been posted?" Bobby asked George.
"I've been here, actually."
Bobby's eyes drooped. "H
ow long
you
been with State?" "Sixteen years."
"You been in Washington for sixteen years?" "Sixteen and a half."
Bobby turned to Renard. "How long
you been strategically communi
catin'?"
"I've had my own firm for four years." Rick said. "You spent much time in the Middle Fast?" "I get to Dubai pretty regularly."
"What d'y
a think of the new airport?" Georg
e tried to catch Rick's eye. "it
s... nice. Fine." Bobby grinned. "What's so funny?"
"There is no new airport in Dubai." George said. "Shall we eat?" Florence said.
The Barolo and risotto with crawfish and lava beans look some of the edge off. George helped Florence clear the main course and, in the kitchen, whispered to her. "Where did you find him? Killer
s R Us? His knuckles touch the f
loor."
"We need him."
"You know h
e's the one who called in that cruise missile strike in Dar?" "It was a good target."
"I'm all for bombing foreign ambassadors, but just because some redneck thinks he smells paint thinner.. ."
"George, it was a Q
aeda chem-weap factory."
"Whatever. I think we'd better have another bottle of wine."
"Gel back in there and protect Renard."
"He walked right into that one. A hit man from Dogpatch, a PR hack and a
queer
foreign
Service officer.
Quite the A-Team you've assembled,
Firenze.
They
'll be writing ballads about us,
and thank God I'll be dead."
Florence came in with another bottle of Barolo.
Bobby was te
lling Rick. "In Vietnam. Navy SEAL
s. when they'd killed a VC cadre, they'd cut out the liver, take a bite out of it
and throw it down by the body.
According to Buddhist theology, you can't enter heaven unless you're whole. Put a major freak on em."
Rick
paled
and put down his knife and fork.
"You gonna finish that?" Bobby said.
‘U
h. no."
"Mind?" Bobby took Rick's plate. He said to Florence, "This is quite excellent, ma'am. I never had bugs with risotto before." "Bugs?"
"Crawfish, where I come from." "Why don't you call me Florence?" "Florence.
Okay.
Florence of Arabia."
"J
ust Florence will
do." She raised her glass. "So,
to Aqaba. then?" Bobby raised his glass. "What the hell. To Aqaba."
"It's a metaphor," George said to Rick. "It means we're going to die before we get there."
'"If
the camels die. we die.'" Bobby
quoted. "And the camels will start to die in twenty days."
CHAPTER
SIX
he emirate of Mat
ar (pronounced, for reasons unclear, "Mutter") consists
of a ten-mile-wide, 350-mile-long strip of sand that runs along the western coast of the Gulf of Darius. Its northern boundary begins i
n the mosquito marshes of the U
m-katush. Fr
om there it runs on a generally
south
-
eastern course for several hundred miles, to the Straits of Xerxes, where it curves gently wes
tward until it terminates at Alf
atoosh, on the sparkling shore of the Indian Ocean.