Authors: Susan Isaacs
“Go right in.” She pointed to a tall wooden door with a glass knob. When I lifted my knuckles tentatively to knock, she said, “No, go in, go in.”
On the plane, I’d decided that the instant I saw Ben, I’d give a hearty, “How are you?” and extend my hand. I wanted to insure against doing any embarrassing romance novel stuff, like feasting my eyes on him hungrily. I’d also warned myself not to recoil if he looked repulsive. He was now fifty-nine years old. That meant potential liver spots the size of quarters all over his face, or jowls that flapped around his collarbone. No matter what, I would show no surprise.
My “How are you?” came out as planned, but not so hearty; all I could manage was a polite smile —the sort you give to a clergyman not of your religion. Well, Ben Mattingly had not gone to seed. As he came around the side of his desk to greet me, I could see he still had an athlete’s body, maybe a little more spread out, as if he’d traded half his tennis time for golf. His face had more lines, sufficient to evidence character, though too few to connote wisdom. As always, his suit jacket hung on the back of his chair. His tie was loosened, the top button of the shirt opened, with the sleeves rolled twice, midway between wrist and elbow.
I could see he expected me to shake hands or maybe even try to give him a kiss on the cheek. I extended my hand and was relieved when I wasn’t overcome with passion from his body heat. His palm, in fact, was disagreeably dry. It made me remember what I’d completely forgotten: his hands had been so rough that during foreplay I’d sometimes felt more exfoliated than stimulated.
“You look good, Katie.”
“Thanks. You too.”
“You’ve really done well since the last time we met.”
“You too.”
That over with, he waited until I settled into the armchair he’d offered, then walked to his chair. As he sat, he wheeled back a couple of inches, perhaps concerned I’d vault over his desk to ravish him. “You wanted to talk about Lisa,” he said. Now he seemed comfortable. No tension in his body to indicate unease about seeing me. No sign of concern that something bad had happened to the woman with whom he allegedly had more of a marriage than a marriage, whatever that was.
“When Lisa called me,” I said, “she said it was about a matter of national importance. I told you that.”
“Right.”
“What she wanted was for me to put her in touch with someone at CNN or some other news outlet. She seemed to think that my having something to do with TV gave me entrée to everyone associated with it.”
“Do you know people in the news business?” Ben asked. I couldn’t tell if it was a polite question or if he wanted to know.
“No, except for a few entertainment reporters, and with one exception, they’re all print journalists.” I crossed my legs. I had forgotten that the last minute before I left, for some unknown reason, I’d switched my black linen pants for olive green ones. Had I just looked bewildered by my own clothes? Was my distress showing? What in God’s name had I thought I would accomplish with a face-to-face interview? I tried to pick a tiny piece of yellowish lint off my right knee, but it turned out to be part of the fabric. “I explained to Lisa that there really wasn’t anything I could do, especially since whatever she wanted to discuss had national importance.” He nodded and waited. I was the one who had requested this meeting. He didn’t seem inclined to do much to make it work. “When I called you,” I went on, “you said you would see if you could find out anything about Lisa’s whereabouts. Were you able to?”
“No.” He glanced at his watch. Oblong, gold, but not glitzy, brown alligator strap. No Rolexes for former CIA bright guys, unless it was part of their cover. If I’d been a Washington insider, I would have been able to read whether his watch-peeking meant he was checking the time surreptitiously, because he felt he had a million other things to do, or intentionally, because he wanted me to feel as if I was a burden and would therefore feel pressured to hurry up and get out of his life. “To be perfectly candid, Katie, I didn’t make any calls. I’m up to here” —he drew an imaginary line high across his forehead —“with work.”
It hit me that he was waiting for me to pardon him, to tell him that I understood perfectly that a man of his stature didn’t have the luxury of time for doing favors, especially not for people who had left the Agency under a cloud. What also hit me was that while Ben still looked good, with strong features and a rich man’s relaxed posture, he’d lost something. His magnetism. I’d expected to have to fight being inexorably drawn to him. There wasn’t even a tug. It wasn’t his being older, though once he sat down, there was enough overhead light that I could see his scalp through his hair. Jacques Harlow was even older than Ben, nowhere near as good-looking, had a C-minus in social skills, and was beyond odd in the personality department. Nevertheless, he’d had a manliness about him that could register on a Geiger counter.
Who knew? Maybe Ben still had magnetism coming out of his ears. Maybe it was I who’d changed. I’d had fifteen years to meet a world of men. Friends’ husbands, neighbors, publishing guys, TV guys, veterinarian and pathology guys, socialites at Wildlife Conservation Society events I went to with Adam. Among them were a small number of charmers — men whose eyes and body language said, You want me, and for good reason. Except after a while, I must have started to see that the reason wasn’t so good.
These hot guys may have liked sex, but they weren’t so crazy about women. When it came to “love ’em and leave ’em,” leaving brought these men far more pleasure than loving. That’s why they left so often, to find someone new, so they could leave again. They weren’t man enough to stick with a relationship with one woman: when that id voice cried, I want her, they lacked the balls to tell it, Tough shit. You can’t have her. And if they tried marriage, as Ben had, their wives would know what was going on, even if they pretended not to. And they’d know again and again and again. The other women weren’t just a source of pleasure; they were a weapon used to inflict pain.
“Do you have any idea,” I asked, “what Lisa was talking about? That matter of national importance?”
“No. I told you, I barely knew her.” The Agency trained ops to read body language, but I didn’t need formal instruction to know that Ben’s leaning forward in his chair meant he was on the verge of getting up to escort me out.
“You did tell me that.” I smiled. “What can I tell you? I write fiction.”
He clasped his hands and rested them on the edge of his desk. “Then why don’t you stay with fiction?” Ben may have come from a poor Arkansas family, but on his climb up the ladder, he’d picked up enough of the East Coast upper-class snottiness to know how to ask a nasty question in a congenial manner.
“Because Lisa called me,” I said agreeably. “She sounded terribly upset. I’m worried about her.”
“Then you should have called Personnel Security at the Agency. Or the D.C. Police if you thought she’d gone missing. With all due respect, Katie, I don’t see why you’re bringing me into this.” Maybe he was genuinely exasperated. Maybe he was feeling threatened and wanted me to feel unwelcome enough to go away and leave him alone. Naturally he was confident I’d respond to the cold shoulder. Ben would be positive that I’d carried the torch, flame ever-burning, for years. Well, I had. Or, to give him credit, maybe he was acting pissy because he didn’t want a sticky situation, like me throwing myself at him.
But my guess was he was somewhere between keeping his distance and pushing me away because he didn’t want to show how concerned he was over Lisa’s call to me and what I might know. (I knew this act-cold ploy: the TV business would go bust without it. The VIP feigns indifference or distaste at what you had to offer in order to induce desperation. With desperation come tactical blunders and concessions.) Ben wanted to make me desperate enough to say, Of course I’ll get out of here and drop this nonsense immediately.
“I’ll tell you why I’m bringing you into this,” I told him. “Lisa didn’t need me to get to the media. A few phone calls, a big, credible story to tell, and she’d be sitting across from Katie Couric. She came to me because I had something she wanted.” Ben sat back in his chair. If he was tense with anticipation, I couldn’t see it. Quite the opposite. CIA cool dude, his foot up on something, a wastebasket. He rocked gently back and forth while I continued. “What she wanted from me must have had to do with our work together.”
“‘Must have?’” he repeated.
“Yes. Look, Lisa and the truth weren’t always on speaking terms, as you may or may not know.” I withheld a knowing smile. Why confront him about his “more than a marriage” with Lisa, especially when all the proof I had was Maria Schneider’s allegation? “But Lisa wouldn’t call me and go on about a matter of national importance if all she wanted was for me to take her to the studio so she could watch Spy Guys being taped.”
“Maybe she had some other crazy reason. Maybe she was making up a story and then lost interest. That could be why she never called you back.”
“Possibly. Except she left the Agency a year and a half ago.”
“She told you that?”
“No.”
“Then how did you find out?” He was still casual, still rocking.
“Through some contacts who know people who know people.”
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?” I could hear a trace of his Southern accent in the way he broke hell apart, as though it had a diphthong in the middle. Usually, he spoke the standard, educated American English of a PBS announcer.
“Come on, Ben. You know what it means. Somebody gave me a little information and in return I gave my word that I’d keep the source to myself.”
I could see he was trying to read between the lines, except he couldn’t figure out where the lines were. I was an outsider; who could I possibly know? “What has Lisa been doing since she left?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s some great source you’ve got.” When I didn’t respond, he continued: “I’m still trying to understand where I fit into your story.”
“I’ll get to it. But I do believe Lisa came to me for a reason rather than as a matter of whim.”
“Why?”
“Why not? I don’t see the potential for any grand scam here. A friend from the past calls, says she’s in trouble, sounds like she’s in trouble. I didn’t sense a practical joke or that she was overdramatizing.” I still wasn’t willing to tell him that she’d offered to trade her knowledge for my assistance. “If I track her down, I can find out if she still needs my help —or if she’s full of shit.”
Ben put his head against the high back of his chair and gave me what I assumed was The Look, the Agency cold stare that would supposedly turn your bones to marshmallow and make you babble on and on in a futile attempt to ingratiate yourself.
I didn’t bother staring back. I knew not to: instead of one of those self-proclaiming Tshirts that said BORN TO RAISE HELL, mine would say BORN TO BLINK FIRST. “I asked myself what Lisa and I could have worked on together that could possibly have ramifications today. That’s where you come in. I worked for you. There’s nothing I did that you didn’t request that I do, and nothing that you didn’t check.”
“Do you expect me to be able to” —he snapped his fingers —”go like that and come up with what particular reports you wrote? And out of those reports, am I supposed to tell you which ones Lisa had something to do with? Because if that’s what you want…” He shook his head. “Katie, I’m blessed with a good memory. But do you have any idea how many cases I worked on over the years, how many reports I wrote myself or supervised?”
“Probably thousands,” I conceded. “I’m just asking: Does anything ring a bell? Something that Lisa and I might have done together in eighty-nine or ninety?”
If he considered my question at all, it took him about a second and a half. “Nothing.”
“One report sticks out in my mind,” I told him.
No reaction, although by the same token, I couldn’t imagine him gasping and shrieking, Oh my Gawd! “What’s that?” he inquired casually.
“The report on those three East Germans we brought over here.” No reaction here either. Yet I sensed, or maybe imagined, a change. For all I knew, it could have been atmospheric, the way some dogs can forecast a thunderstorm. “Do you remember them?”
“Yes. Why those three in particular?”
“Because I only dealt with Lisa on a couple of matters and out of those, this was the only one important enough that it could possibly have repercussions fifteen years later.”
“Germany was officially reunified in 1990,” Ben said. “October third, 1990.” Did he expect extra credit for the exact date? “What possible meaning could any of those three have now?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Does your contact who has contacts have any ideas?”
“Well, I was able to find out some interesting information.”
“Am I supposed to play games with you or are you going to tell me?” He spoke in the same even tone and without moving even the tiniest muscle to change his bland expression. Maybe that’s why it seemed menacing, even when he did not.
“Of course I’m going to tell you. Two out of the three are dead.”
“Go on.”
“Manfred Gottesman, aka Richard Schroeder, died from a rare fungus. Rare, but it can be found around the Ohio River. I don’t know if you remember, but we settled him in Cincinnati.”
“Your contact told you that?”
“No. I was able to trace it myself. Do you remember the other two?”
He nodded slowly. “I don’t have the names on the tip of my tongue. And even if I did, I couldn’t give them to you. You know that. And let me tell you, whoever your contact is — ”
“ — is guilty of a mortal sin and violation of section 798 of the U.S. Code for disclosing classified information. I know. I’m sure my contact or contacts know it too. Anyway, I, personally, find it discomforting that a guy dies from an obscure fungus that’s so hard to diagnose that by the time the doctors figure out what’s killing him, he’s dead.”
“So you’re imagining someone pouring a vial of fungus into Gottesman’s car?”
Now I sensed he wanted to be complimented on his allusion to Hamlet, and in the old days I would have. Instead I said, “The second guy was Hans Pfannenschmidt. He was way up in the SED, liaised between the party and the criminal justice system.”