The Wilson Deception (14 page)

He cleared his throat, an almost comic rendition of a man with some heavy burden to disclose. “Eliza, you remember Speed Cook from many years ago?”

“How could I forget him? That man nearly ruined our life together before it started. The lies he printed! Thank God no one believed him.”

“I never supported what he wrote, you know that. But neither were they lies.”

Eliza took a breath. She wasn't prepared for this. “Jamie, why must we go over this? Do you enjoy punishing me?”

“No, no, that's not what this is about. Let me start again. Speed's here in Paris.”

She sat back. “Ah, he wants money again. He can hardly think we'll pay him off again so many years later.”

“Eliza, that's hardly fair. He's never asked me for a dime.”

“Might I remind you of your investment in that terrible newspaper of his. You don't owe him anything. Nothing at all.”

“That's not true. You know it's not true.”

The waitress arrived with their order. With a sure feel for the moods of her customers, she set the items down as though mines lay beneath the table's surface. The interruption helped reduce the tension.

“So,” Eliza began again, taking a croissant from the wicker basket, “what does he want?”

The pastry was warm. It smelled of butter as she pulled it apart.

Fraser took his time with the story, explaining Joshua's military record, his acquittal, the inexplicable reversal by the commanding general. He floundered over the right description of how Allen Dulles arranged for the army to misplace Joshua, and then Joshua's current status. “You see,” he finished, “the situation is quite desperate. I must help them.”

Eliza took her time responding. The world wouldn't come to an end, she decided, if she had another croissant. “This has to have been going on with you and the Cooks for, what, a month?” She looked up from her roll.

He nodded over his own pastry.

“When were you going to tell me about it?”

He made a small face. “I thought the subject might be uncomfortable for you. Both because of the past, and because . . . well, I didn't know how things were going to go when you arrived.”

She sharpened her look. “Does this, you telling me now, does it mean it's gone well or badly?”

“It's been splendid. You've been splendid.” He assumed the earnest look she could remember from their first days together. “I want there to be no secrets between us.”

Eliza lifted her cup of chocolate and held it with both hands. “How can you trust someone so . . . different from us?”

“You mean because he's a Negro?”

“Yes, but not only that. Everything about him. What do you really know about him?”

“I know him. Oh, I haven't spent so much time with him, and not for a long time, but in days like the ones we shared, you get to know someone, what's inside them. Our worlds haven't been so very different. He grew up in the next town over from Cadiz.” He pursed his lips. “Sometimes you just know.”

She put the cup down. “So, it doesn't matter what I say. You're going to risk a great deal for this man and his son.”

“Eliza.” He put his hand on hers. “He's not ‘this man.' He saved my life.”

“My question was, are you going to be taking more risks?”

“I expect so. But I'll be sure that nothing touches you or Violet, of course.”

Eliza broke in briskly, shifting her silverware to avoid looking at him. “Stop it, Jamie. Just stop it.” She gave him a stern look. “Anything that involves you involves Violet and me. I won't have it any other way. Don't you know that's why I'm here?”

His face wore a mooncalf look that no man his age should have. She found it silly, but disarming. “Do you have more to tell me?”

“No, that's it.”

“No paramour squirreled away in some remote arrondissement, pining for the return of her American lover? No godmother serving you fine pastries and all the comforts of home? You never answered that the other night.”

He shook his head. “No.” He smiled slightly. “I suppose I lack the imagination for such things.”

“That's not terribly flattering, Major Fraser,” she snapped.

His smile dissolved into confusion.

She liked having him a bit confused, but this was too easy. It always had been. She took a moment. Impatience, she reminded herself, is not a virtue. “I suppose I've allowed you to feel that way.” She sighed. “This Speed Cook, it's odd how we seem wrapped up with him.”

“He was there when we first met, that time at Creston Clarke's.”

Eliza smiled. “You two were quite preposterous, pretending to be theatrical agents.” She reached for Fraser's hand and squeezed it. “Have you missed him all these years? Have I kept you two apart?”

“So much kept us apart. Black and white. The business about your family. Then his newspaper went bust, which it had to. But I'm glad to know him again.”

“I suppose I can try to like him, Jamie. I can't do more.” She placed her napkin on the table. “Violet may wake up any time. I should get back.”

Waiting for the check after Eliza left, Fraser looked away from his reflection in the mirror. He didn't need to be reminded of his own aging. Yet behind that receding hairline, beyond the pouches under his eyes and the deep lines carved on either side of his mouth, his spirit still could frisk like a six-year-old, then careen like a sixteen-year-old, then sag like the man of sixty he would become all too soon.

Eliza had said she'd try to like Speed. Maybe she would try. Maybe she wouldn't. Married so long and he couldn't be sure. How could his feelings be so scrambled? He smiled at the waitress and nodded for the check. She ignored him.

Catching a glimpse of that smile in the mirror, he resolved to stop his endless woolgathering about Eliza. He was growing tired of himself. That was part of why he was glad to be working with Speed again. Speed didn't think himself into knots. He didn't wring those big, twisted hands in indecision. No, Speed got angry. Then he'd do something, say something, make something happen.

And so would Fraser.

 

C
ook had known a few saloons in ten years as an itinerant baseball player and another two decades banging around the world. He had certain expectations about them, including that Monday nights were slow.

But that rule didn't apply to the Hotel Crillon bar during the peace conference that seemed destined never to end, like a song where the composer couldn't figure out the final chord so he kept chasing the notes around the page. Indeed, the peace conference reminded him of something from a class he took in college, one of the few where he didn't daydream about baseball or girls. Some philosopher came up with this idea that if you travel half the distance to your destination, then half the remaining distance, then another half, you'll never actually reach it. It was a paradox, that's what they called it. It seemed to describe the peace conference, daily halving the distance to its target of a final treaty, yet never actually reaching it. Day after day, as the negotiators met in secret, the Crillon filled with ever more feverish journalists and expert advisers, supplicants and hustlers, and dubious-looking hangers-on who fell into no obvious category other than that of men who looked dubious. Happily for the Crillon's owners, they were all thirsty.

Behind the bar, Cook never hurried. Haste would set the wrong tone. With its dark wood and low light, this bar was a deluxe joint, not for the shot-and-a-beer crowd. Its leather chairs could accommodate drinkers of the most generous pretensions. When Fraser walked in and took a position at the near end of the bar, Cook didn't speed up. Fraser had nearly emptied the nut dish before Cook came by.

“Say, barkeep,” Fraser said with a smile, “I hear you've got a new cocktail here, called a box car?”

Cook's face showed no expression. “Do you mean the sidecar, sir?”

“Perhaps I do.” They shook hands. While Cook mixed the drink, Fraser eyed the three brazil nuts left in the dish. They looked like rocks. He decided against them. A group of three next to him spoke intensely in what sounded like Spanish. He tried to eavesdrop, but could make no sense of their talk.

“Don't even try,” Cook said as he slid the drink in front of Fraser. “It's Portuguese. Can't make hide nor hair of it. I think they're planning to buy Rio de Janeiro when they go home, after they peddle some bogus Brazilian bonds to a lot of French suckers.” He picked up the bills Fraser had left on the bar, then handed his change back to him. Fraser dropped the coins on the bar as a tip. The room key, which Cook had slipped to him with the coins, went into his trousers pocket.

“Lively night?” Fraser said.

“They all come here.” Cook started rinsing glasses in a sink under the bar. He had a good view of the lobby from that spot. He added, his voice covered by the enthusiastic Brazilians, “The Dulles boys went up an hour ago. Haven't seen them since. Could be anywhere in the building.”

“Well, I can't hang around tonight. I've got early morning rounds at the hospital.”

“You heard about Thursday?”

Fraser shook his head.

“May Day. Lots of chatter about it. The unions, the Bolsheviks, the anarchists, they're all planning some big whoop-dedo. You know, they couldn't raise hell during the war without getting shot, so they're itching to do it now. I hear it may get rough.”

“Sounds like that would be a good time for my project.”

Cook nodded.

“Maybe Joshua could arrange to make some report to Dulles the day before, make sure I find something good in Dulles' papers. Or maybe he could give Dulles something that he shouldn't have, then I find that.”

“I'll mention it to him.” Cook looked over Fraser's shoulder. “Or you can tell him yourself.”

Joshua approached them, still in his valet suit. “Another rush, Major Fraser. Admiral Grayson again, at the residence.”

“What is it?”

“Don't exactly know, but there's some grim faces back there.”

Standing to leave, Fraser said to Cook, “Let me know anything you hear about Thursday. I'll shoot for it.”

 

Grayson met Fraser in the third-floor corridor. He looked tense and tired. “I suspect,” he began, “it's some recurrence of the flu.”

Fraser adopted a stern look. “From what I've read in the newspapers, the president hasn't even begun to take the sort of rest that I prescribed, the sort of rest that's crucial for recovery.”

“Look here, Fraser,” Grayson snapped, “Woodrow Wilson is not some infantryman from Des Moines who can go off and rest in a hospital for weeks on end. Need I remind you who he is and what he's trying to achieve right now?”

Fraser choked back a retort about how dead men can't achieve anything at all. Grayson spun and led him into the president's room.

A nurse rose from the president's bedside, making room for Fraser. Mrs. Wilson remained in her chair on the other side of the bed. Wilson was propped half-upright on a stack of pillows. His skin was gray, his breathing labored, his eyes closed behind his glasses.

Taking his pulse, Fraser asked, “Can you tell me, sir, what happened?”

Wilson opened his eyes. “Ah, Doctor. You will form the impression that I'm frail.”

“The strongest fall sick, sir. Did this spell come upon you as it did last time?”

“No, not at all.” Wilson's voice was hoarse. He struggled to clear it. “I couldn't hold my pen. My hand, you know. It's happened before, years ago. I can write with either hand, well enough, anyway. It's sort of a parlor trick.”

Fraser concentrated on his patient's voice and appearance.

“This time, I lost some vision.”

“Which eye?”

“The left.” He pointed with his right hand.

“How is it now, the vision?”

“The same. I can see you, and of course my sweet Edith.” He smiled slightly.

“And you could walk? No limping?”

Wilson took a breath. “Yes, though I was awfully tired. Really too tired to walk.”

Fraser completed the examination with one-word instructions to the patient. His concern deepened and his anger with Grayson mounted.

When he stood up and exhaled noisily, Wilson asked, “Your verdict is?”

Fraser was forming a sentence in his mind when Grayson spoke. “Please, Mr. President. Allow me to consult with Dr. Fraser. We'll be back in a moment.”

Following Grayson out of the room, Fraser thought the top of his head might blow off. When Grayson closed the door behind them, he burst out. “If that's the flu, I'm the queen of Sheba. You must know the last wave of flu has subsided throughout the city. And you also must know that the president has suffered a stroke, very likely not his first. From all appearances, this may be a damaging one.” When Grayson said nothing, he added, “He's very sick.”

For a moment, Grayson avoided Fraser's eyes. He looked alarmed. Then he drew himself up. He clasped his hands behind his back and looked Fraser in the face. “You don't know Mr. Wilson's constitution as I do. I've treated him for many years. He's not showing symptoms of a stroke, but rather a recurrence of flu. I'm shocked, and not a little disappointed, that you don't see it.”

“Good God, Grayson, a medical student would recognize this as a stroke. You must tell the patient the truth. He needs rest, a great deal of it, and we have no idea the effect this episode will have on his faculties. His judgment, his personality, they could be altered. If they are, heaven help us and the nation.”

“You misunderstand, Major Fraser, the role of being physician to the president.”

Fraser could think of nothing to say that he hadn't already said. Hitting Grayson probably wouldn't help the president.

“Barnes!” Grayson called to Joshua, who was standing at the head of the staircase, awaiting any assignment. “Please arrange a car to deliver Dr. Fraser wherever he needs to be next.” With a sharp nod at Fraser, Grayson stepped back into Wilson's room and closed the door behind him.

Fraser considered following him into the room and speaking directly to Wilson, but decided against it. He had been summoned to consult with Grayson, not to take charge of the president's care. And the president must be able to tell that this bout was nothing like the flu he had suffered weeks before. And even if he was too sick to realize that, then certainly Mrs. Wilson must. Very likely Grayson's misdiagnosis was exactly what the Wilsons wanted. Well, Fraser would be no part of such duplicity.

Frustrated, Fraser began to walk toward Joshua. As he reached the end of the corridor, the younger man unexpectedly lifted a tray holding a pitcher, then turned quickly and collided with Fraser, spilling water over both of them.

“Son of a bitch!” Fraser exploded.

Joshua grabbed a towel from a nearby table and began to dab at Fraser's suit. He insisted that they step into a side room where he could dry Fraser's jacket and trousers.

Behind the closed door, Fraser continued to sputter. “For Christ's sake, Joshua, there had to be another way to pull me aside. I'm drenched.” He wrenched the towel from Joshua's hand so he could use it himself.

“Sorry. This is what came to mind.”

“So you heard?”

“I figure they could hear you out on the street.”

“And you understood.”

“Not real complicated, is it?”

Fraser gave the towel back. “Use it on yourself. You're as wet as I am.”

“The thing is, do I tell this to Dulles? To Boucher? I'm supposed to see both of them tonight, and this is real dynamite.”

Fraser took a breath. “I don't know.” He tried to think. “Oh, hell, no, you can't tell them, certainly not Boucher.” He drew his lips into a tight line. His trousers felt clammy against his skin. “Based on what Grayson says, I suppose we have to assume that the president wants to conceal his true condition. And you”—he pointed his finger at Joshua—“work for the president.”

“I work for a lot of people. And even if I work for him, is he in his right mind? Should his instructions be followed?”

“Right.” Fraser leaned back against the door frame. “Right. I'm sorry. I don't know how I can help you with that.”

“How about you—what are you going to say to Boucher? You work for the president, too, as a soldier.”

Fraser pulled his trousers away from his skin. “Damned if I know.” He made a quick face. “Oh, I suppose I do know. I certainly won't bring it up.”

“And if Boucher does?”

“I suppose I'll lie. It's quite the fashion right now.”

 

Two men began to rise from a table of four in the dining room of the Hotel Majestic, where the British delegation was headquartered. One turned to the smaller of two men who remained seated. Holding out his hand, he said, “I'm afraid my conversation didn't interest you much.”

Colonel Lawrence ignored the outstretched hand and replied in a low voice. “It didn't interest me at all.”

The other seated man, solidly built and jowly, tried to cover the moment by bidding a matey farewell. When the others were gone, he finished the champagne in his glass and nodded to a nearby waiter for more. He turned a bemused look on Lawrence. “Throwing over that career in diplomacy, are we?”

Lawrence leaned forward on his elbows. “Mr. Churchill, nothing good will come of this diplomacy here in Paris. Not for Palestine or for Arabia or for Britain.”

“How can you be so certain? Most of the known universe is here in Paris, all expecting great things of this conference.”

“President Wilson, I'm afraid, is like an amiable host, endlessly prattling on about the League of Nations while the guests pilfer the silver. And the PM, well, he's simply unable to focus on anything beyond the next edition of the
Times.
”

“You're most unfair,” Winston Churchill said. “Mr. Lloyd George often plans his strategies so they anticipate several consecutive editions of the newspapers.”

Lawrence leaned even further forward. “You must understand. Clemenceau is irresistible, a force of nature. Bullets in flight turn away from him in terror.”

Churchill took a moment to light a long, fat cigar, then spoke again. “What do you wish me to do? Mr. Lloyd George is my leader. I am but a modest Minister of War for a nation no longer at war.”

Lawrence hated the cigar smoke. He tried to ignore it. “Get him to stall. He must delay. He's very good at that. He can stop and tie his shoelaces, go out for a drink of water, or call in sick with indigestion. Mark my words, Churchill. No wise agreements will be reached here. Arabs, Jews, British, all will be better served by agreements reached somewhere else. Anywhere else. We must cut our losses.”

Churchill held his cigar out and stared into the dining room. “The game, Colonel, is over Mosul and its oil fields. The Royal Navy must have them. It would be frightful to watch them fall into French hands.”

“To block the French, we can use the Americans.”

“Ah, the Americans,” Churchill said. “My mother's people.” He puffed on his cigar, then picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue. “They can seem innocent at first blush, but it's a tiresome ruse. They know rather too well what to do with oil fields.”

Lawrence shrugged. “But don't you see, the Americans' interest would be strictly commercial—they wouldn't disturb us politically, nor get in Prince Feisal's way.”

“If you're serious about this, Lawrence, you must be able to solve this equation. How can we help the Americans just enough in this business to make it worth their while to stand with us, while setting up Feisal and our Jewish friends?” He placed the cigar back in his mouth and waved for the bill. “That's what you must identify. The PM has been extremely good on this issue. He grasps that we must have those oil fields. And you may be assured that I will be watching very closely to make sure that the British position doesn't weaken.”