Unintended Consequences - By Stuart Woods

5





LaRose’s eyes passed slowly over the crowd, not pausing to recognize Stone. His appearance was distinctly different from the other men in the room: his tuxedo was not custom-made, but perhaps rented, draped on his thin frame as if on a hanger; his shirt collar was half an inch too big; his bow tie a clip-on; and his haircut of barber-college quality. Still, he seemed oddly at ease in the group, chatting easily with whoever came to hand.

Stone took LaRose’s lack of attention to him as deliberate and did not go out of his way to greet the man. He thought he must surely be here in his professional capacity.

Finally, LaRose was handed off by an uninterested knot of people to Stone and Helga. Stone introduced them both; LaRose spoke a few words to Helga in a language he did not recognize, then returned to English.

“Your Swedish is very good, Mr. LaRose,” Helga said.

“Thank you. I spent some time in our embassy there.”

“Are you a diplomat?”

“I am the commercial attaché at our Paris embassy,” he replied, glancing at Stone as if to see if he caught his drift.

“What does that mean?” Stone asked, as if he were really interested.

“It means that I work to promote commerce between the United States and the country in which I am serving,” LaRose replied smoothly.

Helga looked across the room and spotted a woman waving at her. “Please excuse me for a moment,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

“Richard,” Stone said quietly, “if you’re going to mix with this crowd, ostensibly on embassy business, you should find yourself a good tailor at once.”

“You have a point,” LaRose said. “I was unprepared for the invitation and had to rent this suit. Can you recommend a tailor?”

“Charvet is very good, if your employer is paying.”

“They’ve offered me a clothing allowance, but I haven’t taken advantage of it.”

“Tomorrow would be a good time,” Stone said. “European tailors work at a deliberate pace. Charvet makes shirts and ties, as well.”

“The people with whom I mixed at my previous postings were not so demanding,” he said. “What clothing should I have made? It’s a serious question.”

“Half a dozen suits, a dozen shirts, not all of them white, and, by all means, a tuxedo. Then a navy blazer and a couple of tweed jackets for less formal occasions.” He looked down. “And shoes, though they need not be custom-made. Try Berluti.”

LaRose was taking notes on a jotter. “I’m grateful to you,” he said. “My only other avenue of advice would be the ambassador, but he’s too far above my pay grade.”

“And find somebody who has a good haircut and ask him where he got it.”

“Good idea,” LaRose said, making a note. “I’ve been cutting it myself.”

“What are you doing here, Richard, if I may ask?”

“It’s Rick, and I’m here on business.”

The butler’s voice rang out. “Ladies and gentlemen, my lords and ladies, dinner is served.”

The group began streaming out the doors and across the hallway to the dining room, where a long table had been elegantly set. Stone estimated twenty-four chairs. He found his place card near the center, next to his host, and a moment later, Helga took his other side. “I’m sorry to have stuck you with that rather strange gentleman,” she said. “There was someone I just had to speak to. Who was that man?”

“Richard LaRose, commercial attaché at our embassy. He was more interesting than you might have thought.”

“He was dressed rather oddly.”

“His luggage was lost, and he had to make do.”

“Ah,” she said, nodding. “His Swedish was commendable, though. I don’t think he could have learned it simply by working in the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm.”

“I imagine he went to a rather good language school,” Stone said.

“I suppose the State Department has such a school,” Helga said. “That hadn’t occurred to me.”

It hadn’t occurred to Stone that Helga was Swedish, not German.

“Are you from Stockholm?”

She shook her head. “From a small town north of there, on the Baltic.”

“Do you live permanently in Paris?”

“My legal residence is in Monaco, for tax reasons, but I keep a flat here in a hotel.”

“What do you do, Helga?”

“I was married for a living for some years. Now I’m divorced for a living.”

Stone smiled. “Congratulations.”

She shrugged, emphasizing her cleavage. “The work suits me.”

The waiter poured Stone some white wine, and he caught sight of the label: Le Montrachet, with ten years in the bottle. He sipped it, rolled it on his tongue.

“Do you like the wine?” Marcel duBois asked.

“As we say in New York, ‘What’s not to like?’ Le Montrachet would be my favorite white, if I had it often enough to remember.”

“The secret to drinking good wine is to buy it on release, or in futures, then lay it down until it’s ready to drink. You can save hundreds of dollars a bottle by doing that.”

“Very good advice,” Stone replied. “I have a cellar in my house, but I’m a bit slapdash about stocking it on any regular basis.”

“Then you are condemned to drink wines of the second and third rank,” duBois said. “Find yourself a good wine merchant in New York and place some standing orders with him.”

“Perhaps you’re right. I’ll mend my ways.”

DuBois laughed. “I hope so for your sake.”

“Marcel, I’d like to thank you for seating me with Helga. She’s absolutely spectacular.”

“There was a time when I would have thought it dangerous to introduce you to her, but now she’s happily and profitably divorced, so she’s no longer a threat to your net worth, though perhaps to your liquidity.”

Stone laughed. “Was she really so predatory?”

“She arrived in Stockholm from some rural village and knocked the town on its ass, as you Americans would say. She attracted the industrialist son of a very big industrialist father, who had the grace to die in his sixties and leave the boy a very large fortune, comfortably tucked away in various tax havens. When she’d had enough of him and requested a divorce, he was reportedly so grateful to her for establishing his reputation as a ladies’ man that he wrote her a very large check as a farewell gift—rumor has it for forty million euros, which hardly dented his fortune.”

“An enterprising woman,” Stone said. There was a tap on his shoulder, and Stone turned to find Helga looking at him curiously. “Are you two talking about me?”

“Only in the most admiring terms,” Stone replied.

A waiter heaped a large portion of beluga caviar on their plates, ending their conversation. Stone observed that the table was much quieter while the diners contemplated their good fortune.