Authors: Jacqueline Briskin
“It was a ‘black account,’” he explained in
his accented monotone. “That is the name given to a strong box for money that is handed out without record.”
“Are you saying that the box was for corporate rather than private use?” inquired Congressman Hiroshi Kodama, Hawaii.
“That is exactly right, honored sir.”
“Then Mr. Ivory had knowledge of this box?” asked Kodama.
“I cannot say for certain, honored sir, however it
was
for company business.”
“Can you give us an idea of how much cash was kept in this, uhh, black account?”
“Sometimes in excess of fifty thousand dollars, but never more than a hundred thousand. I heard Mr. Peck explain to my employer that more than a hundred thousand would be detected by tax auditors.”
“Mr. Ivory,” Morrell stared at Curt. “The committee would like to hear from you again.”
Arthur Kohn whispered, Curt shook his head decisively, moving to the witness table.
“Can you enlighten us about this so-called black account?” asked Congresswoman Hergesheimer.
“I have no knowledge of it,” Curt said in a clear, firm voice.
“Then you are reluctant to provide us with information about your slush funds,” Hergesheimer persisted.
“Any further information I give you, Mrs. Hergesheimer, would be bleeped on television.”
Laughter.
Hergesheimer had the last word. “I can
certainly understand your reluctance,” she said. “The committee will subpoena the books in question.”
As the morning wore on, Joscelyn’s left eyelid began to twitch and her attempts to conquer the agitated muscle resulted in a sneerlike grimace that would show on a hundred million television screens. She had suffered a metamorphosis from Mrs.-Ivory’s-sister-Miss-Joscelyn-Sylvander-also-at-the-hearing to Mrs.-Joscelyn-Peck-the-widow-of-the-man-who-administered-the-Ivory-slush-fund. Her impolitic slurs against Fish and members of the subcommittee made the front pages, a prematurely gray young woman on the CBS team was assigned specifically to her, the old manslaughter case was disinterred from newspaper morgues.
At eleven thirty-five the clock’s second light went on: a recorded vote was being called for on the floor of the House.
Morrell rapped his gavel. “The subcommittee will recess and reconvene at two thirty.”
At the noon break they had been invited to use the private Congressional antechambers. Arthur Kohn and his partners had a lunch appointment with another client, as did the two PR men. A breezy young Congressional aide provided them with sandwiches from the cafeteria downstairs and coffee was available from an aluminum urn.
Curt took his paper plate to the large green wing chair, sitting with his ankle crossed over his knee, a relaxed pose belied by his hasty gulping of codeine before he ate.
Honora left her sandwich untasted, wandering to a window. Fish’s ugly, droning revelations, the subcommittee’s poison-tipped questions, the fetid, smoky air of the hearing room had taken away her appetite. Yet at this minute she was feeling a tentative happiness. Since she had arrived back at the hotel on Monday, her moods had swung up and down, a teeter-totter between joyous relief that she and Curt were back together and terror about her husband’s future. (
There’s a distinct possibility that Mr. Ivory could face a perjury trial
, Arthur Kohn had said, leaving unspoken the corollary that a jail term might ensue.)
Against the mild blue sky, the Capitol dome was an antique lace bell. Groups strolled on the Hill, fading in and out of dark pools of shade cast by brown-black copper beeches, tall ash, willow oak, ancient sycamore.
She said wistfully, “Even without the cherry blossoms, the trees on the Hill are spectacular.”
Curt came to stand next to her. “Let’s go take a look.”
“Sounds heaven,” she said. “But it’ll be us and the camera crews.”
“Five’ll get you ten that our buddies are lunching at the nearest bar. We’ve set a pattern, skulking in here.”
“I for one could use some air,” Joscelyn said, depositing her now cold hamburger in a metal wastebasket.
Honora’s smile at her sister was masked: she was abandoning her brief vision of an overage Romeo and Juliet wandering hand in
hand, alone.
As the trio waited at the Independence Avenue crosswalk, a reporter from the
Denver Post
charged up Capitol Hill in their direction, then halted, shrugging her thick shoulders as if to say:
Enjoy the sunshine.
* * *
All four Talbotts slept in.
Gid and Anne’s flight from New Guinea had arrived hours late in San Francisco yesterday, and the family—with Mitchell and Anina—had flown in the company Boeing 727 to Washington, arriving well after midnight at the spankingly trim red brick house in Georgetown.
Alexander rose the latest. It was noon when he jogged down the fanlit staircase. While he decapitated his three-and-three-quarter-minute coddled eggs, the others freshened their coffee, and Anne, smiling and patting the bulge of her pregnancy, helped herself to another pecan schnecke.
“Hey, Alexander,” Gid said. “We await final instructions.” Their “surprise” visit to the Morrell Subcommittee was planned for this afternoon.
“No changes from what I outlined on the plane. The four of us arrive; Morrell calls me right away. You watch while I wave Old Glory. Then we depart.”
“And that encourages business?” Gid asked. “I don’t see it.”
Crystal set down her Haviland cup carefully in its saucer. She had argued this identical point with Alexander until she was shouting
red-faced:
Don’t you hear one word? No earthly good can come of this idiotic appearance—and it could so easily rebound on us. Think of the damage, Alexander, think of the damage!
Alexander, as usual, had been able to erode her tenaciousness, but this morning her hands were as tremulous as Langley’s had been after a binge.
Alexander salted a spoonful of egg. “At this worldwide media event, prospective clients will learn that dealings with Talbott’s are on the up and up, they will learn that our company never will be Congressionally scrutinized, they therefore will entrust us with their major projects.”
“Yeah, well, I suppose that puts us ahead of Ivory,” Gid said dubiously.
“To demonstrate our corporate honesty, I plan to offer the committee our books.”
This was news to Crystal. She could hardly argue whether he was jeopardizing the buried Swiss accounts in front of Gid, his upright father’s son. She moved to the mantelpiece, shifting one of the pair of Revere bowls.
“Anybody watch this morning?” Alexander inquired.
The smooth silver bowl slipped in Crystal’s hands and she nearly dropped it. The television in her bedroom had been tuned to CBS as she dressed. She had not focused on the fat, greasy Arab, she had ignored the shots of the subcommittee, the close-ups of her enemy, Curt Ivory. Mesmerized, she had waited for glimpses of those two middle-aged woman that her sisters had been transformed into.
When Honora has that aloof look it means she’s dying inside
, Crystal
had thought.
Joscelyn’s scowling—she was a mean, tough little girl, always hiding her hurts under nastiness.
“We didn’t,” Gid replied. “Listen, there’s a couple of hours before we go to the hearing. What say we show Anne a few of the sights?” This was Anne’s first visit to Washington.
“This is hardly the time to play tourists,” Crystal snapped.
“Where’s your spirit, Mom?” Alexander asked, slipping on his dark glasses. “How can we let the kid be born ignorant of our national heritage?”
Anne laughed. “The embryo might consider lunch at the White House prenatal influence enough.” The Fords had issued an invitation for tomorrow, Thursday.
“A humbler embryo, maybe,” Alexander said. “But never one with Alexander the Great for an uncle.”
“Sometimes,” Anne said, “I have to pinch myself to believe this family.”
* * *
Curt in the middle, they strolled beside the Reflecting Pond.
“I should’ve mentioned Malcolm and Khalid to you, Curt,” Joscelyn said, and not for the first time. “I would’ve, except the whole friendship seemed so unimportant—and dumb. The James Bond way that Fawzi—Fish—cased the joint, then sat guard!”
“There was no way for you to guess what they were up to,” Curt said.
“I
was
aware Khalid was very hot for Lalarhein
to have a big new airport; he said right in front of me that he wanted the country to have a huge, modern, military installation. And Malcolm was dying to get the contract for you. Poor sweetie, he always wanted you to see him in a good light, and I’m positive he arranged this whole mess so some day he could walk in and surprise you with the information
he
was behind Ivory’s getting the contract for Daralam Airport.”
“Joss,” Curt said, “there’s no point beating yourself.”
“I should’ve caught on,” Joscelyn persisted. “The friendship always seemed a bit off kilter. I should’ve put two and two together and come up with the right answer—that Khalid was using Malcolm for his own ends.” Joscelyn’s
mea culpas
raced out in an unnerving squeak.
Honora fixed her professional attention on the small banana palms adorning the Capitol’s balustrade.
She noticed the young man standing on the balustrade because he was exceptionally tall and elegantly clad, different from the sloppily dressed, overweight tourists moving about him. The breeze ruffled his fair hair around his dark glasses and flapped his charcoal suit jacket.
A millisecond later she thought,
My God, it’s Alexander!
Alexander was pointing out an ornamental ironwork lamppost to a very pregnant redhead who held hands with a shorter, more stockily built young man.
The girl moved. Honora emitted a harsh little
grunt as she saw Crystal.
“Honora?” Curt’s fingers circled her wrist.
Honora opened her mouth, but no sound came.
The other two followed her gaze.
Curt’s fingertips dug convulsively into Honora’s pulse. “Oh, Christ, I should’ve known.”
Crystal had turned.
As she and Honora gazed at one another through the soft, yellow sunlight time collapsed and they were once again little English girls in lumpy navy tunics, the dark, dreamy elder sister, the shrewd and lovely younger, clinging together on a narrow dormitory bed, weeping at their half-orphaned state. They were again those innocent selves who could share grief and battle intruders who might laugh at their tears. They were the Sylvander girls.
Pulling from Curt’s grasp, Honora ran toward the Capitol’s marble stairs.
She met Crystal, halting on the step below her so they were the same height. Panting slightly, they stared at one another. Honora held out her arms. Their hug was charged with unequivocal, childlike love.
Pressing her face to Crystal’s warm, perfumed cheek, Honora whispered, “Oh Crystal, Crys . . . . How I’ve missed you.”
“Me you.”
Joscelyn had followed Honora up the steps, and now she reached her lanky arms around both her sisters. She was confounded by the electrifying charge of affection for Crystal, cruel tormentor, the envied beauty of the family.
Who would have predicted that she, Joscelyn Sylvander, would fall victim to this tribal sentimentality?
Crystal pulled away, her large blue eyes misty. “You’re both so much younger than you look on television—but Joss, you are letting yourself go gray.”
A prickle of irritation adulterated Joscelyn’s pleasure in the reunion. “You’re the one,” she said with a hint of her old truculence, “who’s about to be a granny.”
Crystal tossed her bright, exquisitely coiffed head, a gesture reminiscent of her childhood tantrums, but she was smiling. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she said sweetly, waving to her family to come.
While Gid matched his pace to the slow off-balance gait of his heavily pregnant wife, Alexander jogged lightly down to them.
“Hello, Aunt Honora, how great to see you again.”
Honora’s face burned and she could not look into the dark glasses. Did he sleep in them? Did he glue them to his face to hide Curt’s eyes from himself? “And you, too, Alexander.”
“Is this rubbing salt in wounds? You’ve been a class act on the tube.”
She smiled stiffly. “What brings all of you to Washington?”
“A Presidential invitation,” he replied before Crystal could speak. “How’s my little coz?”
“Not so little anymore; she’s almost five feet,” Honora said. “She still talks about you.”
“As gorgeous as ever?”
“
I
think so. Joss, let me introduce our nephew. Alexander, this is your Aunt Joscelyn.”
“Joscelyn Sylvander, the famous lady engineer, all right!” he said, his enthusiasm perfect, not the least overdone.
Gid and Anne had approached and were waiting behind Crystal—a minor display of solidarity that touched Honora although their familial loyalty was directed against her.
After the introductions, Gid said with guarded courtesy. “It’s good to finally meet you, Aunt Honora, Aunt Joscelyn.”
As the stilted family greetings made the rounds, Honora glanced down at Curt. He had not moved from the edge of the Reflecting Pond, and was watching them with his usual air of casually leashed energy, but to her he seemed stiff, stonelike, as though an invisible but weighty burden had descended on his shoulders.
As they returned through the Capitol gardens, Honora and Joscelyn, both shaken by the meeting, talked rapidly. Honora said that Anne seemed like a terrific person, warm, intelligent, and Joscelyn agreed, pointing out that she limped, a charge Honora denied—“It’s being pregnant”—but they concurred on the freckles. Joscelyn grudged that Gid seemed a very decent young man, but didn’t Honora think that
Crystal’s beauty was a bit jelled—you know, as if she’d had work done on her face?
Neither mentioned Alexander.
Curt walked in silence a step ahead. With a long stride, Honora caught up, reaching for his hand: her clasp lacked the pressure of palms, there were no pornographic second-honeymoon vibrations. Her linkage of fingers comforted silently.
“What are they doing here?” he asked.