“Father Tunney, you want to eat.”
“No. In a little while, I’ll open the church. For Mass.”
“Father! You’re in no condition, why look at you, your hands are shaking.”
“We are priests,” he said. “We serve God.”
“And you’re men, just like any man is, and you can’t go staying up to all hours and doing labor without breakfast in you.”
“Mrs. Jones. The journal. You have to do this for me. Will you do it?”
“What?”
“In a little while, I know it, they’re going to come back—”
“The man who killed Father McGillicuddy?”
“No. But someone. They want this journal. I’ve hidden it from them because they want it… not to learn from it, but to destroy it. I see that now. For a long time, I didn’t understand that. When they had me in that room, when they talked to me. I didn’t understand why they wanted my secrets; and then, I understood. They don’t care what happened… in Laos, in… they don’t care about all the suffering. This is all they want.” He struck the table but his soft hand made little sound.
“Father Tunney, this—”
“You must do this. There’s no danger to you. Take this book. Please, now. It is all I could do. I stayed up all night to finish it. I know what they want me to say now; they are not so clever.” His eyes were wide, a little mad, very full of something like sorrow.
She understood after a moment and got up and put on her sweater and took her bag. He gave her the card that had been given to him. A name and address.
She put the journal at the bottom of her purse.
Quietly, she left by the side door and walked across the garden. It was another fine day. The sun was warm and the breeze blew away the humidity. The sky was cloudless and she felt almost light. Except for all that had happened; but one had to endure.
She crossed to the sidewalk and started down the pleasant, broad street framed with palm trees and a thousand varieties of plants growing in gardens. The police car was parked across the street from the church.
At Gulf-to-Bay Avenue, she waited for a bus because it would be a long trip and her legs weren’t what they had been. And because Father Tunney hadn’t said anything about taking a cab or given her extra money.
She would have to put this down to her accounts.
She didn’t mind doing it for him. He was so confused, he just rambled on and on like the Mister had done in his last days.
She rarely thought of the Mister anymore and was struck by the thought.
The bus stopped at the curb and the doors whooshed open.
She sat down near the front.
She held the purse very close to her.
27
The National Security Adviser declined the cigar. He was a grim man of fastidious appearance and he had long ago concluded that smoking was too dirty a habit for his taste; that the pleasure he took in his personal appearance, down to the custom-made shirts he changed twice a day, was greater than the pleasure he could ever derive from tobacco. He would explain this, tediously, from time to time to his wife who had endured twenty-five years of such explanations. She despised him and had for quite a long time but she was now too numb to do anything about it except not listen to him.
He had been offered the cigar by a man even more fastidious in his dress who, nonetheless, now lit a cigar of his own.
Sunday afternoon in the city. Sunlight glinted coldly off the towers of Manhattan arrayed beyond the windows. They sat in the library, which might have been part of an English country estate except for the spectacular view forty-one floors above the street. The room was oak-paneled and the shelves, which stretched from the floor to the thirteen-foot ceiling, were glass-enclosed. The books were all very old and unread for generations.
The whole room was designed to intimidate the rare visitor. It spoke of power and influence and tradition, all as much a part of the appearance of Henry L. Fraser as the books or the careful dress.
Fraser sat in a comfortable wing chair that was one hundred fourteen years old and worth several thousand dollars. He might have been a lord in his manor, addressing the foreman of the fields; or a duke, accepting the homage of the lord mayor and his council.
Fraser was a man of handsome dimensions that had not been altered by age. His full head of hair was silver and worn long; his nose was finely chiseled and when he smiled, which he did as often as society demanded it, the smile framed the sturdy handsomeness of his bearing.
“This has been a delightful afternoon,” the Security Adviser said.
“Yes. I think it went rather well,” Henry Fraser agreed with a slight nod of his head. “And I think we shall not be displeased by the results.”
“I’m sure,” the Adviser said. He reached for his glass of brandy and tasted it again: It was the finest brandy he had ever tasted, even better than that which he had been served at the White House.
“I was in touch with Ngo Ki this morning, before you arrived.” Fraser offered the information as a little surprise, like the sweets after a heavy dinner. “Matters are moving rapidly and all the… well, you understand, bureaucratic maneuverings can become tedious—”
“Especially in Oriental countries,” the Adviser said.
“Yes. He now expects full agreement on TransAsia by November fifteenth at the latest, which, given the circumstances, is rather good timing. Of course, they’re hungry for it and they realize we’re not such fools as to make the investment begin until the… safeguards are in place.” Fraser spoke slowly and chose words carefully, just as he chose neckties.
“As I’ve said,” the Adviser repeated in the same voice he used when quoting himself to his wife, “I much appreciate the opportunity—”
“And we have appreciated your cooperation. And the good wishes of the Administration. It was vital in order for TransAsia to work at all.”
For a moment, both men sat in silence, appreciating the brandy and the cigar and their shared sense of well-being. After all, it had all gone extremely well.
One analyst, noted for his pessimism on the future state of the economy, had said that TransAsia was the most brilliant new financial scheme since the Marshall Plan helped rebuild devastated Europe after the war and, incidentally, helped to keep the American economy humming in the bargain. TransAsia, the analyst said, was the first implementation of the “new realism” preached by such distinguished think tanks as the Tri-Global Committee. This, however, was not strictly true. In the late 1970s, the United States had begun cautiously to involve itself in the economics of the stable Eastern European countries, hoping to realize investment and market opportunities even as it weaned such nations from a strict dependence on Soviet subsidies. The Soviets, for their part, were happy to stand aside once it became clear that the American marketing strategy would not have any effect on actual Soviet dominance of those countries. One of the nations most prominently involved was Poland; trade had accelerated between the United States and Poland to such a point that, following the remarkable strikes of 1980, the Polish government felt confident enough of the relationship to request a three-billion-dollar economic loan from the United States.
TransAsia was a complex plan of capital investment involving a half-dozen companies and investment firms which would take advantage of the docile and underutilized labor pool in the “controlled countries” of Southeast Asia, starting with Vietnam. Fraser had been the key to the scheme in his three roles as unofficial presidential adviser, chairman of International Commerce Bank of New York (popularly called InterComBank) and vice-chairman of the Tri-Global Committee, the discussion and policy group that brought together key leaders in communications, politics, and economics.