Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [48]
Pauling watched his old friend disappear beyond the guard station, then slowly walked away. As tiring as the long trip from Washington had been, at that moment he felt no fatigue. The past year in Washington had been like retirement, the days predictable and tedious, the lack of action and challenge wearying.
It was different in Moscow, and he welcomed the difference. Here, there was the element of tension, indeed of danger, puzzles to be solved, individuals to outfox, a need to be quick on your feet when someone you turned on decided to turn on you. He’d drunk vodka with Russian killers, and frolicked among the hookers and influence buyers with crooked Russian businessmen, whose approach to doing business, and to life, was not much different than that of Russia’s organized-crime managers.
As he continued to walk, he thought of his most recent conversation with Doris about who he really was. He was glad he no longer felt the need to deny to his ex-wife that facing the challenges and dangers of his job was more satisfying than the challenges and, yes, dangers of a different sort, of being a husband and father. No more guilt, no more wondering whether something was wrong with him for not responding to family the way “normal” men were supposed to. Like Bill Lerner and his precarious need for Elena, Max Pauling needed something most “normal” men didn’t.
So be it!
He paused to peruse a display of cell phones in a store window. As he did, he saw a reflection in the window of two young men in suits, smoking, observing him from across the street. Or were they observing him? Like most people in his business, he’d developed an instinctive sense of when someone was paying him too much attention. Was he being followed so soon? Good to be back in business.
He drew a deep breath, stepped away from the window, and picked up his pace. Might as well get some exercise, he thought—for himself and whoever might be tagging along.
Chapter 15
A Few Days Later
The State Department
“… and so it is with the greatest of pleasure that I am able to stand here today, side by side with my able and honorable counterparts from the United States, to announce that after a long but pleasant round of negotiations, an agreement has been reached that is fair and equitable to both countries.”
The Canadian minister of trade went on to explain the details of an accord reached on what had been a contentious issue between the United States and Canada— direct access to U.S. ports and markets by Canadian fishing vessels. His remarks completed, the negotiator for the United States stepped to the podium and said the requisite nice things about the Canadian negotiators. A small gathering of press in the second-floor briefing room took dutiful notes while former secretaries of state— William Rogers, Dean Rusk, Cordell Hull—kept unmoving eyes on them from their framed portraits on the wall. When the briefing was concluded and press kits handed out, reporters for whom State was a regular beat went to their cubicles in the press court to file their stories.
Two hours later, fifty or so members of Canada’s embassy staff, led by the Canadian ambassador, traveled from the chancery on Pennsylvania Avenue to the State Department to join fifty invited American guests at a reception to celebrate the success of the negotiations. Roseann Blackburn, who’d been booked just that afternoon by her agent to provide background music for the occasion—“Johnny Johnson was booked but the jerk hurt his wrist in a tennis game this afternoon”—made sure she rehearsed “Canadian Sunset” before leaving the apartment, and had run through “New York, New York” after being told it was the Canadian ambassador’s favorite song.
“What, nobody ever write ‘Toronto, Toronto’ or ‘Montreal, Montreal’?” Potamos had said before she left for the job.
They’d argued that afternoon. Potamos, knowing he’d been less than a pleasant companion the past week, had planned to make it up to her that evening, starting with cocktails and the spectacular views of the