The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [31]
“You okay?” I whispered to Alex.
He touched a finger to his lips and pointed toward his father, not making eye contact. He reeked of stale alcohol. I made an effort to set aside my problems with Claire and focus on Alex.
“I met with your friend Theresa this morning. We need to talk.”
Walter tapped his glass more loudly, frowning in my direction. “If I could have your attention, please,” he said. “And if the serving staff would leave now.”
I settled back in my chair impatiently as half a dozen tuxedoed waiters finished straightening cutlery and scurried for the exits. Food was already on the table—a cold seafood salad for most, special dietary options for a few. The kosher meals came on disposable plates and were elaborately wrapped in plastic, like bouquets from an expensive florist.
“Gentlemen,” Walter said. “We have a number of guests today, none of whom require any elaborate introduction. Seated next to my son, our late arrival, Mr. Mark Wallace.”
I gave a small wave, figuring his only purpose in mentioning my name was to reproach me for being tardy. Walter was obsessively punctual. A few people clapped and gave me a thumbs-up for the Nord Stream scoop.
“On my left, Mr. Nikolay Narimanov.”
A frisson of interest crackled through the room, even the most determinedly blasé of the hedge-fund managers looking up from their BlackBerrys. Narimanov, a powerfully built man in his late fifties, attired simply in a black turtleneck and an expensive-looking leather jacket, was an oddity in this group—a nonfinancial guy who was every bit as wealthy and successful as his lunch companions but who’d made his money in the real world, like the proto-industrialists who’d dominated the American economy back when Wharton had written her novels. I’d wanted to meet him for ages. He sat motionless, enduring the scrutiny of the room impassively.
“Second to my right,” Walter continued, “the former assistant secretary of commerce, Mr. Clifford White.”
You could almost feel the temperature drop. White—Senator Simpson’s campaign manager—was a lawyer and a political fixer, exactly the kind of backroom Washington hack the hedge-fund types normally despised. His one brush with notoriety had occurred during his Poppy Bush–era confirmation hearing, when a Democratic member of the Banking Committee acidly inquired of the chairman precisely how many rocks the majority party had been forced to turn over before they’d found him. The ensuing ruckus had briefly made White a minor-league Republican cause célèbre, a Bork light. White smiled tightly.
“And finally, to my immediate right, our guest of honor today, Senator Joseph Simpson.”
The senator tipped his head to acknowledge a smattering of grudging applause. Most Wall Street conservatives are actually Libertarians, which means they loathe the Christian Coalition crap that Simpson and all the other Republican candidates feel compelled to pay lip service to. Pragmatic to the core, though, the conservative fund managers present knew that a candidate like Simpson—a Reagan-like proponent of free markets and minimal taxes—was probably the best they could hope to elect, regardless of his hectoring family-values cant. The applause terminated abruptly as White, not Simpson, rose to his feet.
“A point of order before the senator speaks,” White began. Someone to my left coughed the word “dickhead” loud enough to draw a reproving look from Walter. A handful of people laughed. White cleared his throat irritably.
“Senator Simpson would like to consider this a working session. To that end, he intends to explore certain policy positions that he hasn’t yet publicly advocated, and he is dependent on your discretion.…”
Yada yada yada. Senator Simpson was about to kiss the asses of the guys who could raise the really big bucks for him, and he wanted them to know