Looking at Gerry as he agreed with her father about labour unions, she realized that the trouble with Gerry was that he was a bit dull.
She was being harsh, now. But it was true. Gerry was boring. She did not find him sexy. And he was not very supportive of her.
So what was left?
Pauline always faced the facts.
Did all this mean she no longer loved him?
She was afraid it did.
*
Next morning she had breakfast with Dad, just as she had when he was working and she was at the University of Chicago. They were both larks, up early. Pauline had muesli and milk while Dad ate toast and drank coffee. They did not say much: now as then, he was deep in the business section of the newspaper. But it was a companionable silence. With a twinge of reluctance she left him and went to the West Wing.
Milt had suggested an early hour for their appointment so that he could come to the White House on his way to church. Pauline would see him in the Oval Office. Its formal air was suitable for firing someone.
Milt arrived in a brown tweed suit with a vest, looking like a country gentleman. ‘What has James Moore done now, to require a meeting early in the morning of the Lord’s Day?’
‘This is not about James Moore,’ Pauline said. ‘Sit down.’
‘What is it about?’
‘Our problem is Rita Cross.’
Milt sat up straighter, tilted his chin and looked haughty. ‘What are you talking about?’
Pauline could not bear to listen to bullshit: life was too short. She said: ‘Don’t, for Christ’s sake, pretend you don’t know.’
‘It sounds like something that’s no one’s business but mine.’
‘When the vice-president is fucking a sixteen-year-old it’s everyone’s business, Milt – stop acting dumber than you are.’
‘Who’s to say it’s more than a friendship?’
‘Spare me the crap.’ Pauline was getting angry. She had thought that Milt would be realistic and mature about this, accept that he had been caught out breaking the rules and retire graciously. No such luck.
‘She’s not underage,’ Milt said, with the air of a card player who lays an ace.
‘Tell the reporters that, when they call to ask you about your relationship with Rita Cross. Do you think they’ll say that, in that case, there’s no scandal? Or what?’
Milt was looking desperate. ‘We can keep this secret.’
‘No, we can’t. Your bodyguards know, and they told Jacqueline, who told me and Sandip, all in the last twenty-four hours. And what about Rita? Doesn’t she have sixteen-year-old friends? What do they think she’s doing with a sixty-two-year-old man who gave her a ten-thousand-dollar bicycle? Playing Scrabble?’
‘All right, Madam President, you’ve got a point.’ Milt leaned forward, lowered his voice confidentially, and spoke as one colleague to another. ‘Leave this with me, please. I’ll work things out, I promise.’
The proposal was outrageous, and he should have known that. ‘Fuck you, Milt. I’m not going to leave anything with you. This is a scandal that will hurt every one of the people here who have been working so hard for a better America. The least I can do is minimize the damage, and to that end I will control when and how the news comes out.’
Milt looked as if he was beginning to see that there was no hope for him. He said miserably: ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Go to church, confess your sin, and promise God you won’t do it again. Go home, call Rita, and tell her it’s all over. Then write me a resignation letter, citing personal reasons – don’t lie and invent health problems or anything else. Make sure that letter is on this desk by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’
Milt stood up. ‘I’m serious about her, you know,’ he said quietly. ‘She’s the love of my life.’
Pauline believed him. It was absurd, but against her will she felt a twinge of sympathy. She said: ‘If you really love her, you’ll break up with her, and let her go back to the life of a normal teenager. Now go and do the right thing.’
He looked sad. ‘You’re a hard woman, Pauline.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘But I have a hard job.’
CHAPTER 14
On Monday morning Tamara began to suspect that the General was up to something. It might be trivial, but she had a bad feeling.
She was too euphoric, after Marrakech, to go straight to her desk, so she dropped her bag in her room and went to the canteen. She got a big cup of weak black coffee, American style, and a slice of toast, and picked up a copy of the government-subsidized French-language daily newspaper, Le Progrès.
It was when she turned to page three of the paper that an alarm bell rang faintly in the distant back of her mind. There was a photograph of the General, bald and smiling, dressed as if for sport in jogging pants and a warm-up jacket. He was pictured in the Atrone slum in north-east N’Djamena. News from Atrone usually focussed on delays in extending the city’s fresh water and sewage network. However, today there was a positive story. The General, pictured against a shanty-town background, was surrounded by a crowd of happy children and teenagers, and he was handing out free Nike trainers.
As she mulled over the story her mind kept wandering to Tab.
She had travelled discreetly. Tab had ordered cars from the French embassy to take them to and from the airport, where they used the private aviation terminal to board the Travers company jet. Tamara had filed the required notification that she would be out of the country, but had not included the information that she was travelling with Tab. Dexter never read that kind of paperwork anyway.
The weekend had been a success. They had been inseparable for forty-eight hours without getting irritated or bored by one another. Tamara knew that domestic intimacy could cause quarrels. Men were never as hygienic as you thought they should be, and they, in turn, accused you of being a fusspot. People had long-established habits that they hated to change. ‘We’ll tidy up in the morning,’ men would say, but they never did. However, Tab was not like the rest.
She kept reminding herself how badly she had judged men previously, especially the two she had married, immature Stephen and gay Jonathan. But surely she must have learned better? Jonathan had been an improvement on Stephen, and Tab was better still. Perhaps Tab was The One.
She thought: Perhaps? Bullshit. He is. I know it.
As they drove back into town on Monday morning, Tab said: ‘Now we have to get ready to pretend we’re not madly in love.’
She smiled. So he was madly in love with her. He had not used that phrase before. She was pleased.
But they now had a problem. Their countries were allies, but had secrets from one another just the same. In principle, there was no CIA rule that forbade her to have a relationship with an officer of the DGSE, and vice versa. In practice, it would blight her career, and probably his too. Unless one of them found another job . . .
She looked up from the paper and saw the ambassador’s secretary, Layan, carrying a tray. ‘Come and join me,’ Tamara said. ‘You don’t usually have time for breakfast.’
‘Nick’s having breakfast at the British embassy,’ Layan explained.
‘What’s he plotting with the Brits?’
‘We think Chad might be furtively doing business with North Korea, selling them oil in violation of sanctions.’ Layan spooned yoghurt over fresh figs. ‘Nick wants the Brits and others to pressure the General to sell his oil elsewhere.’
‘He probably gets a higher price from Pyongyang.’
‘I expect so.’
Tamara showed Layan the newspaper. ‘What do you think this is all about?’
Layan studied the page for a few moments. ‘It’s pretty good,’ she said. ‘For the price of a few hundred pairs of shoes, the General gets the whole nation thinking he’s Santa Claus. A cheap way to win popularity.’
‘Agreed, but why does he need to chase that kind of publicity? He doesn’t need popularity, he has the secret police.’
‘Maybe, up to a point. Being a beloved dictator is probably easier than being a hated dictator.’
‘I guess.’ Tamara was not convinced. ‘I’d better go to work.’ She stood up.
‘Um . . .’