Paramour (16 page)

At 4 P.M. Marilyn Kasindorf came out and headed back across the park. Powers followed her back to the hotel. There she stepped on the elevator and the door closed.

Powers went into the lobby. Since he was maintaining the surveillance alone, he checked the hotel to find the rooms with the best view of the corridor leading from Marilyn's room. Then, because he thought it more discreet than contacting the hotel security man, he gave the head bellman a substantial tip to arrange moving him into one of the rooms. This way, during the night he would be able to monitor Marilyn's movements outside her room without sitting in the lobby all night looking like a hotel burglar.

As this matter was being taken care of, he lounged about the lobby keeping an eye on the elevators. Later, the bellman slipped him a key to his new room and informed him he'd moved his few belongings into it. Powers gave him another tip.

Shortly after 9 P.M., when Powers was beginning to think Marilyn was going to remain in her room as she had the previous evening, the elevator door opened and Marilyn emerged. She was wearing a jacquard dress in pink and gray and long dangling silver earrings.

Bellmen turned their heads as she walked to the dining room.

There, the maitre d', a short, well-fed man wearing a snug-fitting tuxedo, greeted her warmly. He had rosy cheeks, a full head of gelled hair combed straight back to the collar, and a smile revealing a gold incisor. Snatching a menu from a shelf under the podium, he led her inside.

Powers considered waiting in the lobby until she finished dinner, but decided against it because he'd be unable to see if she met anyone inside. Besides, he was starving, and the dining room was so big that she'd probably never even notice him.

Feeling conspicuous because of a day's growth of beard, Powers hurried to his room and shaved quickly. He put on the clothes he'd purchased at the gift shop and headed back to the entrance to the dining room.

Marilyn was sitting at a table near the window.

"Will you be dining alone, sir?" the maitre d' asked in a heavy German dialect.

"Yes. I'd prefer not to sit by the window," Powers said.

"Certainly."

The maitre d' led him inside. The tables in the immense well-lit chamber were covered with starched white linen and anchored with a tiny vase containing a single pink carnation. The thick wall-to-wall carpet was dark blue, and the only sounds in the room were of silverware touching dinner plates and subdued conversations in German.

The maitre d' seated Powers at a table in the comer, handed him a menu, and headed back toward the doorway.

Marilyn was at the opposite side of the room, still studying the menu. Setting it down, she stared out the window as if in deep thought. A young waiter approached and spoke briefly with her. He wrote down her order and moved to a nearby table.

A few minutes later another waiter, a lanky, middle-aged man with a high forehead, came to Powers's table. Powers ordered the dinner special, wild boar with spaetzle, a salad, and, since Uncle Sam was picking up the bill,
a full bottle of expensive Piesporter Goldtröpfchen wine. The waiter left the table and returned shortly. He uncorked a bottle and poured a little wine in a glass. Powers tasted the chilled, fruity wine and nodded. The waiter withdrew.

Marilyn had turned in her seat and was looking in his direction.

Powers felt naked. Rather than return her stare, he set the wineglass down and fiddled with the menu. Finally, she turned away. Powers had been on enough surveillances to know that people looking-even staring-at others wasn't all that uncommon, and the feeling that the subject of a surveillance was aware of the surveillant was a common one.

Nevertheless, Powers was concerned. He considered canceling his order and leaving the dining room but figured if she was suspicious of him he would only be drawing attention to himself. Waiting for his meal to be served, he avoided looking directly at her.

A few minutes later, Marilyn's waiter served her meal and, after wiping the mouth of the bottle with a linen towel, carefully filled her wineglass.

She turned in Powers's direction again-just a glance. And it was a glance. Her attention was drawn to him. Then she turned away, ignoring him as she ate.

Powers felt like crawling under the table. Finally, the waiter brought his plate. It was filled with a generous portion of the dark boar meat, which had a pungent, rich taste, and a large helping of spaetzle: strings of dumpling soaked in butter. He ate heartily, promising himself to jog extra miles to make up for the excess calories.

Marilyn, though having finished nearly half the bottle of wine on her table, seemed to be only pushing food about on her plate. Again, she glanced in his direction. Powers prayed she was only looking for her waiter rather than staring at him. She waved to get the waiter's attention and he came to her table. They exchanged a few words and he took a bill from his inside pocket. Setting it on the table in front of her, he handed her a pen. She was going to leave.

Powers breathed a sigh of relief. He decided to wait in the dining room until she'd left the room before trying to follow her.

She signed the check. The waiter picked it up and left the table. Then, in a deliberate fashion, Marilyn took her napkin from her lap and set it on the table next to her plate. She pushed her chair back and got to her feet.

Figuring she was heading for the door, Powers kept his eyes on his plate to avoid eye contact. Then he heard her footsteps on the carpet. Were they coming closer? The footsteps stopped. He looked up and caught his breath.

"May I join you?" Marilyn said. She was standing in front of his table. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, perhaps from the wine she'd been drinking. "Since you're following me, it'll make things easier for you."

****

ELEVEN

Powers felt his stomach muscles tighten. His temples throbbed and his mouth felt dry. As he saw it, he had three choices: he could remain mute, lie and hope she would believe him, or, accepting the fact that he'd blown the surveillance, simply get up and leave the table. But from the look in her eye and the confidence in her voice he could tell it would do no good. The cat was out of the bag. Damn!

He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, but I don't know what you're talking about." It sounded lame the moment the words came out of his mouth.

"I said, may I join you?"

He found himself standing and pulling a chair back for her.

She sat down. "I first spotted you on Scott Circle near my apartment," she said as Powers returned to his seat. "I could tell you were watching someone who lived in the apartment house. Then I walked out to go shopping and there you were, right behind me."

Powers's face and hands were tingling with chagrin.

Marilyn eyed the wine.

Taking the hint, he slid an empty wineglass in front of her and, hoping she didn't notice the nervous tremor in his hand as he poured, filled it nearly full.

"I want to compliment you on your surveillance abilities. Very professional. "

"Obviously not professional enough."

She picked up the glass. "I ran the license plate of your car and found out it registers to the Library of Congress. A friend in the FBI told me Secret Service uses the library as a cover registration for its vehicles. I was relieved." She sipped the wine.

As the full impact of what was happening hit him, the dining room suddenly seemed bigger and colder. He was sitting across a table from the target of his surveillance. His mission had failed. He was burned, made; the case was over.

"Relieved?"

"I was relieved to learn you weren't a foreign spy or a sex fiend."

She ran her finger around the rim of her wineglass, and it made a squeaking sound. "Someone ordered you to follow me ... to investigate me. Well, what could be better than getting the information direct from the source? Go ahead. Ask me any question you want. I have nothing to hide."

They stared at each other for what must have been half a minute.

"Look, it's inappropriate for me to talk with you," Powers said.

"But it's not inappropriate for you to surveil me twenty-four hours a day?" she said angrily. "To follow me halfway around the world? Look, fella, I have a top-secret clearance just like you." There was a tear welling at the corner of her right eye. She brushed it away with the back of her hand and glared at him. "Don't just sit there and act like you don't know what's going on." Her chin quivered, but she controlled herself quickly. Wiping at another tear, she opened her purse and foraged for a handkerchief. "If you won't admit who you are, I'm going to get up right now and make a telephone call to the Director of the United States Secret Service."

"Okay." Powers reached into his inside jacket pocket for a clean handkerchief. "I'm a Secret Service agent assigned to the White House Detail," he said, feeling off balance. He handed the handkerchief to her.

She hesitated for a moment and then accepted it. "I'm usually not emotional, but I've been under a lot of pressure recently," she said, dabbing at her eyes. "That's why I had to get away from DC." She opened the handkerchief and blew her nose.

"I'm just doing a job."

"I knew working in the White House meant being under a lot of scrutiny, but I didn't think it would go so far as actual surveillance. "

She picked up her wineglass.

"They must have given you some reason for following me. What did they tell you, that I was a potential presidential assassin?"

"No. Actually ... it's just a routine surveillance. Everyone working in the White House is surveilled now and then."

"I've never heard that."

"Even the White House barber is tailed now and then," Powers lied. "But you're the first one to have left the country."

She gazed at him with a puzzled expression. "I guess that would look suspicious."

Powers sipped wine and set the glass down on the table, trying to hide his nervousness. "Why did you fly here?"

"I'm interested in art.... Look. Lately the stress of working in the White House has been getting to me. I began losing sleep ... and weight. "

"I guess that would be a cause for some concern," Powers said, trying to lighten the conversation.

"So I requested two weeks' vacation. It was routinely approved. The first day of my vacation I realized I was under surveillance. Don't blame yourself. You did an excellent job, but I make a habit of looking for it."

"Just some free Secret Service protection."

"What's your name? Forgive me for being inquisitive, but you know my name. I'd like to know yours."

"Jack. Jack Powers."

"Jack. I really did think you were a hostile intelligence agent of some kind-"

"So you decided to save yourself from the hostile intelligence operative following you and fly to Germany," he said.

"I'd always wanted to attend the Documenta-Documenta is the art show you followed me to today. I just went down to a travel agency and purchased a ticket."

"A spur-of-the-moment decision?" he said sarcastically.

"Though it's really none of your business, I'll be happy to explain: Like all us government drones, I don't make a lot of money. I had talked myself out of going to the Documenta three years in a row because of the cost. The spur-of-the-moment decision was to spend the money. I just said the hell with what it cost and put it on my credit card. So here I am."

"Unauthorized foreign travel is in violation of the rules of your agency. "