The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [41]
“You don’t mean to say you actually eat her food?” Mr. Moore said, setting out six glasses and filling each of them with gin, a little vermouth, and a dash of bitters: martinis, he called them, though I’ve heard bartenders label the drink a martinez, too. “Laszlo, you know what Russian cuisine is like,” he went on, handing the drinks around. “I mean, they only eat it over there because they have to.”
“I’m painfully aware of that, Moore, believe me.”
“What about the letter, Doctor?” Miss Howard asked as she sipped her drink. “What does our esteemed assistant secretary have to say?”
“Nothing good, I’m afraid,” the Doctor answered. “When I last heard from Roosevelt, he told me that he and Cabot Lodge had been spending rather a lot of time at Henry Adams’s house. Henry himself is in Europe at the moment, but that absurd brother of his seems to be holding court in his dining room while he’s away.”
“Brooks?” Miss Howard said. “You find that troubling, Doctor?”
“Surely you don’t think anyone actually listens to him,” Marcus added.
“I’m not entirely certain,” the Doctor replied. “I wrote to Roosevelt to tell him that I consider Brooks Adams to be delusional, perhaps pathologically. In this letter he says that he’s inclined to agree with me but that he still finds merit in many of the man’s ideas.”
Lucius’s eyes went round. “That’s a frightening thought. All that talk about ‘martial spirit’ and ‘warlike blood’—”
“Contemptible nonsense, that’s what it is,” the Doctor pronounced. “When men like Brooks Adams call for a war to reinvigorate our countrymen, they only reveal their own degeneracy. Why, if that fellow ever found himself near a battlefield—”
“Laszlo,” Mr. Moore said, “relax. Brooks is the fashion of the moment, that’s all. Nobody takes him seriously.”
“No, but men like Roosevelt and Lodge are taking his ideas seriously.” The Doctor stood and walked over to stand next to a large potted palm by one of the open French windows, shaking his head all the while. “They’re down there in Washington now, scheming like schoolboys to get us into a war with Spain—and I tell you all, such a war will change this country. Profoundly. And not for the better.”
Mr. Moore smiled as he drank. “You sound like Professor James. He’s been saying the same things. You haven’t been in touch with him, have you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the Doctor said, slightly embarrassed at the mention of his old teacher, who in fact he hadn’t spoken to for many years.
“Well,” Lucius said, trying to be evenhanded, “the Spaniards do have some reason to be resentful—we’ve called them everything from swine to butchers for their treatment of the Cuban rebels.”
Miss Howard displayed a puzzled smile. “How is it that a person can be a swine and a butcher?”
“I don’t know, but they’ve managed it,” Mr. Moore answered. “They’ve acted like sadistic savages, trying to suppress the rebellion—concentration camps, mass executions—”
“Yes, but the rebels have been vicious in return, John,” Marcus countered. “Captured soldiers massacred—civilians, too, if they won’t support ‘the cause.’”
“Marcus is right, Moore,” the Doctor threw in impatiently. “This rebellion is not about freedom or democracy. It’s about power. One side has it, the other side wants it. That’s all.”
“True,” Mr. Moore conceded with a shrug.
“And we appear to want some sort of an American empire,” Lucius added.
“Yes. God help us.” The Doctor wandered back over to his chair, then picked up the letter from Mr. Roosevelt and scanned it one more time. Folding it up as he sat back down, he put the thing aside with another noise of disgust. “But—enough of that.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “All right, then, suppose you all tell me what brings you here.”
“What brings us?” Mr. Moore made a show of innocence and shock that would’ve done any Bowery variety star