Topaz - Leon Uris [17]
With a side glance André could see Nicole at the dressing-room table, pondering into the mirror in deep concern over a wrinkle that had not been there yesterday, and astutely applying the bottled and boxed beauty.
Michele came in in her robe and fingered through her mother’s cosmetic assortment, and they chatted rapidly as the hour of truth approached.
Matched book ends, André thought. Michele was her mother twenty years ago. He sipped his bourbon and watched them help each other in the hairdo ritual.
That oaf, that clod, that stupid ass Tucker Brown IV would soon be clomping up the steps for his date. What made Tucker palatable was the hundred-million-dollar Brown shipping fortune. Yankee traders or some such. Tucker Brown IV, crewcut yachtsman, Princeton, State Department career man. If he were on my staff, André thought, I wouldn’t trust him to zip his own fly.
But ... Michele loves him. Or rather, finds him decent enough to marry.
If Tucker Brown IV applies himself diligently and the family donates enough money to enough political campaigns, he might make it as ambassador to some island kingdom in ten years or so.
Now my Michele. There’s a catch! French! Impeccable taste. Magnificent hostess, multilingual. Chic! When this girl dresses!
Maybe it’s not such a bad match. God forbid anyone think me a snob, André acquitted himself. Only, some times I wish Michele would find a boyfriend I could converse with. The terrible thought passed through him that Michele Devereaux would fall in love with a poor intellectual. Maybe I am a snob. A few years with Tucker, a child, a divorce and a good settlement! What the devil am I thinking of! After all, a man only wants what’s best for his daughter. What a little charmer.
“André.”
“Eh?”
“Start to get ready, darling.”
He went to the safe in the closet floor and deposited the contents of his briefcase, then made for the bathroom. A cordless razor, a new gadget, zipped over his face. So damned clever, these Americans, he thought. How in the hell do they manage to produce clods like Tucker Brown IV?
He shaved in meditation of his own hot situation. Words with Ambassador René d’Arcy were becoming more and more acid. D’Arcy belonged to the President, General Pierre La Croix. Once he, André, had been a La Croix man, but he had joined that narrowing circle of independent thinkers in top diplomatic positions. André had stretched his pro-American attitudes to the limit and watched the constant slide of relations with France, helplessly.
Yet André Devereaux held a position of unique strength within the Embassy. His integrity as a Frenchman was beyond question. Conversely, he was held in great esteem by the Americans. For SDECE to tamper with André’s office would be to further sour relations with the Americans. He still had great use to Paris as the honest broker.
He entered the shower.
The business with Kuznetov was again placing him squarely in the middle of an uneasy situation. How much longer could he go without reporting his knowledge of the defector to headquarters?
Every time he had made the decision to send the cable to French Secret Service he remembered the Russian’s warning and he justified another delay.
He emerged from the shower.
His mind suddenly switched to that sound of music he usually heard when he entered the compound of Camp Patrick. Tamara Kuznetov. What a difference between daughters.
The Russian girl was rough-hewn and without an ounce of sophistication. On the other hand, she desperately devoured books and lived deeply in her music and dreamed to be able to teach or to play in a symphony orchestra. Lack of nonsense in that girl. A life of constructive contribution. Perhaps his little Michele had much to learn from her.
In the end, what would Michele’s life be? A good marriage to a wealthy man and to continue life in the world of drones. Lord help her if she had to do an honest day’s work. But I am to blame. Nicole and I. This is the way we created Michele. What is her sense of values? Where will her iron come from in the crisis?
He grumbled