Permanent Interests (4 page)

He sat slumped at a desk in the political section of the embassy, mulling this over, sipping a warm coke. Colleen McCoy, Ambassador Mortimer’s staff aide, entered to shred the day's classified traffic.

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"Hi, your cable went out okay. It was the last for the day," she said, more as small talk than to inform.

"Last and useless," Innes said sharply, regretting too late his sarcastic slip.

"What do you think, will this investigation get anywhere? You may as well see this now. It just came in."

She showed him a Nodis telegram from the Department.

Nodis -- No Distribution -- was the channel reserved for sensitive correspondence between the Secretary of State and his ambassadors. In actual practice, however, quite a number of bureaucrats had access to Nodises, but photocopies were strictly forbidden. Staff aides, like Colleen, as controllers of the information flow to their bosses, saw most everything they saw.

SECRET/NODIS

TO: AMEMBASSY ROME, IMMEDIATE

FROM: SECSTATE WASHDC

FOR SCHER

ALSO FOR CHARGE

SUBJECT: MORTIMER INVESTIGATION

1. SECRET - ENTIRE TEXT.

2. DEPARTMENT AND WHITE HOUSE REMAIN

CONCERNED OVER LACK OF PROGRESS ON THE

MORTIMER INVESTIGATION. HOUSE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FOREIGN OPERATIONS IS

PLANNING TO SCHEDULE HEARINGS. MEDIA ATTENTION CONTINUES TO BE STRONG.

PRESIDENT HAS DECIDED TO FORM AN

INTERAGENCY WORKING GROUP TO

RESTRUCTURE INVESTIGATION.

PERMANENT INTERESTS

29

3. FOR SCHER: IN LIGHT OF LACK OF EVIDENCE

AND APPARENT INABILITY OF GOVERNMENT OF

ITALY TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS CASE, YOU ARE INSTRUCTED TO PREPARE YOUR FINAL

REPORT AND RETURN TO WASHINGTON BY END

OF THE WEEK.

4. FOR CHARGE: IN LIGHT OF CONTINUING LACK

OF RESULTS, REQUEST THAT YOU RAISE USG'S

CONTINUING CONCERNS AT THE HIGHEST

LEVELS OF THE GOI. TALKING POINTS WILL BE

FORWARDED VIA SEPARATE TELEGRAM.

DENNISON

"The papers and the networks are all over the administration on this thing," Colleen said as she handed Innes the daily wireless file, a compilation of headline stories in the major U.S. papers.

"U.S. Envoy's Murder Still a Mystery," declared
The
New York Times
. "State Department Bungles Murder Investigation," announced
The Washington Post
.

Innes shook his head as he read. "This is bad, real bad.

But you know, they're right. This whole so-called investigation is a total farce. Both we and the Italians are barking up the wrong trees."

Colleen looked at him with a start, her ear-length chestnut hair falling forward on her cheeks. "Do you know something that the rest don't?"

"No. But they're going in the wrong directions. Scher seems to have some political agenda. In any case, he's obsessed by terrorists, and the Italians have Africans on the brain. Kobalski doesn't know what he's doing except to try frantically to cover his fat behind. If everybody is so well aware of Mortimer's meanderings, even though they've kept 30 JAMES

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some kind of conspiracy of silence about them, then why not just go to his haunts and start asking questions? The guy's dead, for Christ sake. Who cares about his reputation now?"

"Maybe that's just it. Maybe the Secretary and the White House are more concerned with keeping any whiff of scandal from the administration. Next year the President's up for re-election, right? Which headlines would you prefer if you were him? 'Al-Qaida Assassinated U.S. Ambassador' or 'Horny Envoy, President's Pal, Offed by Pimps'?"

Innes's haggard face broke into a smile, the first since he left D.C.

"Tell me this. Here you worked closely with Mortimer for a year. You must've known about his private life. Just the bits and pieces we heard in Washington, sounded like he was the Flying Walenda of the boudoir."

Colleen bit her lip, shifted her eyes as she contemplated. She gripped her left elbow with her right hand as she leaned against a low cabinet piled high with back issues of
La Stampa, Corriere della Sera
, and
International Herald Tribune
. She was clad in a smooth pink skirt ending just above the knee and a simple white blouse. At all of 24 years of age, Colleen McCoy, lost in thought, looked vulnerable and scrumptious.

"I don't know," she began uncertainly. "It's not like he was around all that much when you come down to it."

"You mean he played hooky from the office?" Innes tried to shift nonchalantly in his chair in such a way as to conceal his hard-on. Colleen caught it and stifled a knowing smile. She folded her arms and took three paces in the direction of the ambassador's office which lay across a circular foyer. She stared at the office across the way.

PERMANENT INTERESTS

31

"You know, this has not been an ideal first tour. I've been in for a year and a half, I come to this huge embassy and end up working for a wild non-career ambassador who was a virtual stranger at the office and a public embarrassment." She swung around, arms still folded in front of her.

"I don't know. We really never knew where he would go off to after hours. Even during work hours we didn't know his whereabouts half the time. Joe has kept things on an even keel. Everybody went to Joe -- embassy folks, the prime minister, foreign minister, you name it. This place has been like a ship with a ghost captain. But somehow, we kept it on course."

Innes leaned forward at his desk and shot back the remainder of the stale Coke. He was now limp.

"In the Department we kept hearing rumors of wild parties at the residence and the ambassador carousing at all hours in town."

"He had friends -- outside friends. The drivers apparently know a little bit. They've whispered around that Ambassador Mortimer frequented several bars and other establishments in the red light areas. But it's strange. Since his son died in a car accident last summer, he was spouting off about repentance, 'Jesus loves us.' Religious stuff like that."

"So, the man was full of contradictions. What's his driver's name?" Innes asked.

Colleen looked into his eyes. "Pietro. Pietro Molinaro."

Catching on to Innes's thinking, she quickly added, "He's still here, I think. If we run, we might catch him before his quitting time." She took his hand and pulled him out of his chair with a forceful tug. The two raced through the foyer, down the gray marble staircase and out of the chancery toward the motor pool.

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They caught Pietro Molinaro just before he headed out of the embassy front gate.

"Signore, Signorina, I have worked for eight ambassadors. Some were good men. Some, not so good.

Most okay. Ambassador Mortimer, he was kind to me, always making the jokes. I don't think his heart was into this work, I will tell you frankly. He was not comfortable being America's ambassador. I think, after a while, he longed for people like he knew in America before coming here. His son's death, very bad. I drove him to church in the last few weeks. A Protestant church. He went there to pray." Molinaro, 55, gray, but still slim, obviously gave careful forethought to his statements.

"Pietro, can you tell us where he hung out when he slipped away at night?" Innes queried.

"Eh, you know, I did not drive him normally to unofficial things. Sometimes, he take a taxi, sometimes, friends pick him up. Even he drove himself at times."

Molinaro wiped his brow with his chauffeur's cap. "But two, three times, I drove him to a bar in the east of the city.

It is called…" He scratched his chin as he searched his brain. "Si! 'La Dolce Vita.' I think other drivers, they take him there too. You ask them."

"La Dolce Vita" was one of several dozen unextraordinary drinking establishments that catered largely to male German tourists, working class northern European visitors on the prowl and the occasional Korean or Japanese traveling businessmen with lots of money but zero sense of what constituted class on the European continent. A really bad jazz band boomed a barely recognizable Al Jarreau tune.

PERMANENT INTERESTS

33

Armed with a newspaper photo of the late ambassador, Innes and Colleen shouted above the din to the bartender and waitresses, asking if they had seen the man in recently.

The bartender, a bald middle-aged nonentity with a keenly honed sense of how to mind his own business, simply shook his frowning face as he idly wiped the bar. "No, non mai l’ho visto." Never seen him. Ditto with the waitresses.

Either they hit the wrong shift, or here was another kind of conspiracy of silence, or Mortimer had never patronized the place, or at least not frequently.

"Let's try some of the other joints nearby," Innes said.

Colleen checked her watch. It had been a long day. But with a deep breath of resignation and a quick shrug, she indicated, why not?

Same results at the "Il Gatto Nero," "La Casa Bianca,"

"Il Trovatore," "Dude's" and a handful of similar watering holes that Innes and Colleen wouldn't dream of stepping into under normal circumstances.

"Club Il Oriente é Rosso," "The East is Red Club,"

beamed down in hot pink fluorescent lights. Ersatz bamboo decked the front. In the window, Chinese parasols flanked an oversized balloon bottle of Tsingtao beer.

"Bob! Let's quit," whined Colleen as she slumped her arms forward in a gesture of exasperation. "I'm tired, it's late and this is getting to me."

"Last one, Colleen. Promise!" Innes grabbed Colleen's hand and pulled her along, her feet dragged like those of a child when being taken to the dentist.

Their eyes needed time to adjust to a murky interior in which a blue haze of smoke permeated the darkness. Dim bulbs enclosed in Chinese paper lanterns, which hung here and there from the low ceiling, provided the only light except for the tiny flickers of candles encased in red glass holders that sat atop minuscule round cocktail tables. A 34 JAMES

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panorama of a south Pacific beach served as backdrop to the long curved bar, itself sheltered by panels of rough thatch in what obviously was some interior decorator's adolescent vision of an exotic eastern locale. Hostesses, mostly Asian and decked out in red silk tunics, chatted it up with a male clientele that reminded Innes of extras from the movie "Good Fellas." Bethatched private cubicles lined the walls. A poster mounted next to the stage featured an enlarged photo of three grinning scantily clad Asian women, one wrapped around a saxophone, another caressing an electric guitar, the center one clutching a microphone with both hands. "The Gang of Three," shilled the advertisement. "Direct from Taipei!"

Colleen gaped wide-eyed and slack-jawed around her.

"They've got to be kidding. This must be somebody's idea of a bad joke," she said.

"Hello! Table for two?" asked a thirtyish Asian woman in English.

"Uh, yes," answered Innes. He signaled to a corner table.

"You like a drink?" asked the hostess as they were seated. "Special house cocktail is Kon Tiki Cooler. You Americans, huh?"

"How about a Ricard straight up and…"

"An Orangina," finished Colleen.

Innes answered her question, "Yes, we're Americans.

Do many Americans come here?"

"Oh, some in summer months," the hostess replied, obviously pleased to converse with Yanks.

Wasting little time, Innes pulled out the now fraying newspaper photo of Mortimer. "Ever seen this man in here?"

PERMANENT INTERESTS

35

"This man look familiar," she responded as she studied the picture closely. "I think Mikki know this man. I get her. You wait. Drinks come in a minute, okay?"

A Ricard, an Orangina and Mikki all appeared exactly eight minutes later.

"Hi, where are you from?" a tired Innes asked in a feeble stab at small talk.

"Thailand," answered Mikki, a diminutive female in her early twenties. Mikki fidgeted, eyes flitted nervously. She held her right wrist with her left hand.

"Well, er, do you know this…"

"Yeah," interjected Mikki. "I see him sometime. He come. Not too often. Only see. Nothing else."

Two tables away, a fat man with bushy black-gray hair snorted. "Eh, Mikki! Ven aca, Mikki! Che cosa stai facendo tu?! Eh!" he yelled, cranking his arm in a gesture to return. Innes recognized instantly the strong Sicilian accent.

Mikki looked anxiously over her shoulder. Her eyes said "I have to go."

Innes pulled out one of his cards and quickly scribbled his hotel and room number. "Give me a call. Please."

"Yeah. Maybe I do," she rejoined; she took the card and stuffed it into a side pocket of her red tunic.

As if on cue, Colleen and Innes looked at each other with raised eyebrows expressing "Bingo!"

It was showtime as the Gang of Three strutted out onto the small stage, clad only in teensy gold G-strings. A greasy emcee introduced them.

A wiry, beetle-browed man with a scowl affixed to his pock-marked face sauntered over from the fat man's table, held a menacing gaze on the Americans, then grabbed Mikki by the arm, abruptly turned and pulled her back.

"Bob, I really don't like this!"

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Innes was sold. "Yeah, let's go." He left some euros on the table and the two left.

Next day, the Mortimer investigative team slapped together a final report with a schizophrenic conclusion that shed more confusion than light. The team members were scheduled to catch the Friday afternoon Delta flight to JFK, connecting onward to Dulles. Most of them began breaking away for some rushed last minute shopping.

Innes was packing his bags, waiting for a phone call that didn't come. He had to give up. Mike Hammer he wasn't.

If Mikki wouldn't call, then so be it. And she didn't.

Innes killed time at Fiumicino browsing half-consciously among the usual displays of perfumes, Rolexes, silk ties, cognacs and whiskeys and overpriced kitsch at the duty free shops. He managed to escape from the rest of the team members, who, on the way to the airport, droned on and on about how the 'Skins would do this season. There was only one thing in the universe that Innes enjoyed doing more than prattling on about ball games and that was getting a root canal without an anesthetic.