“WHO ELSE KNOWS ABOUT the Hawthorne story?” Gini said to Nicholas Jenkins.
They were in the back of Jenkins’s chauffeur-driven Jaguar. The car, one of the perks of Jenkins’s job, was speeding south to the Savoy through wet streets. Jenkins seemed distracted and on edge.
“Come on, Nicholas. Someone else knows. Who? Daiches?”
“Will you give me a break? How many times do I have to say it? You, Lamartine, me. That’s it.” He stopped, then glanced at her sharply. “Why?”
“Because I’m getting the strong feeling someone does know, Nicholas. They knew before you even assigned Pascal and me to this.”
“Crap. You’re getting paranoid, Gini.”
“Look, Nicholas, just give me a straight answer, will you? Does Daiches know?”
“No, he bloody well does not. I know Daiches likes to imagine he’s rather better informed than God, but I have news for him. He isn’t.” He glanced at her again. “Why, was he fishing?”
“Not exactly. He made a few remarks about this dinner with Hawthorne tonight.”
“So? I don’t blame him. I made a few myself. Since when have you been so pally with our illustrious proprietor? Hand-delivered invitations—”
“Never mind that now, Nicholas. It’s not important. This is. If Daiches doesn’t know, did Johnny Appleyard? Had you heard any rumors about Hawthorne from Appleyard? Nicholas, did Appleyard give you this tip?”
“I don’t believe I’m hearing this! How many times do I have to spell it out? This is my story, one hundred percent. It has nothing to do with fucking Appleyard, God rest his soul and all that. This was my lead, via my source, and it’ll be my fucking exclusive if you and Pascal come up with the goods. If you actually make some progress. Are you making progress?”
“Yes, Nicholas, we are. I worked all damn weekend on this.”
“So? Big deal.”
“And what’s more, it’s a much bigger story than we originally thought.”
“It is?” Interest gleamed in his eyes, then he raised a finger to his lips. “Save the details for later.” He glanced at the glass screen between them and his driver. “After dinner, I’ll drive you home. We can talk then.” He stared out the window at the passing streets. Then he seemed to make an effort to improve his own mood; he turned back to her with a smile. “This should be useful anyway,” he said. “Gives you a chance to see Hawthorne’s public persona. …I must say, Gini, you’re looking very pretty tonight. It makes a change to see you in a dress.”
He eyed her legs as he said this. Gini put another three inches of leather seat between them. The car was slowing. Jenkins peered through the window again.
“Oh, I don’t believe it. What the fuck!”
Approaching Kingsway and Covent Garden, they came to an abrupt halt. Ahead of them, through jammed traffic, Gini could see police cars and flashing lights. They inched their way toward the melee. Security barriers were being erected. All the traffic was being diverted. In the distance a siren wailed.
“Fucking IRA,” Jenkins said. He leaned forward and opened the glass partition. “Just step on it, will you, Chris. Cut through the Garden and go down past the opera house.”
“That’s just what I am doing, sir. So is everyone else.”
“Then use your ingenuity,” Jenkins snapped. “That’s what you’re paid for. I don’t intend to be late.”
The dinner at the Savoy was a large one. It was being held in the River Room, and Gini estimated there were three hundred guests.
The security was tight—because of the current round of bomb scares, Gini assumed at first. Jenkins corrected her on this.
“Nothing to do with the Dublin cowboys,” he said irritably. “This was all laid on weeks ago, Melrose told me. We’ve John Hawthorne’s presence to thank for this.” He gestured toward the throng of people at the entrance to the River Room. Each person had to present a security pass; each pass was laboriously checked. When they finally reached the entrance, Gini’s small evening bag was opened and searched.
“Perhaps you’d like me to turn out my pockets,” Jenkins said in a blustering way.
“That won’t be necessary, sir,” replied a polite American. “Just run your hands under this scanner, front and back. …Thank you, sir. Ma’am.”
Gini held her hands beneath a device the size of a portable phone. A bluish light scanned the backs of her hands, then her palms.
Nicholas took her arm, and they walked through a discreet scaffold device erected in the doorway. Jenkins had keys in his pocket which triggered an alarm. Politely but firmly, he was taken aside behind a screen. He emerged flushed, and spent the next half hour boasting of his experiences there.
“The scanner?” he said jovially to right and left. “The scanner’s nothing. Believe me. I had the CIA grope. A testicular thrill. Best sex in years…”
The evening, as Gini had expected, was a high-powered affair. At the dais, some distance from where she and Jenkins were both seated, she counted four serving cabinet ministers, three press barons including Melrose, several well-known television news reporters, the head of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, and no less than four leading newspaper editors. When Jenkins observed these four, his expression became sour.
“Why’s that pompous fart from The Times up there?” he said. “And that Scots wanker. Great. Just great. Thanks a bunch, Melrose. …” He began to crumble his roll savagely. Turning his back on Gini, he launched into conversation with the woman seated on his other side.
“Correct. Up a hundred thousand, and still rising…” Gini heard.
She turned her attention back to the head table. John Hawthorne was seated at its center, flanked by Lord Melrose and the chairman of the BBC governors. There were no female faces, and Hawthorne was the youngest person there by at least a decade.
Compared to the powerful but aging men who surrounded him, Hawthorne emanated youth and authority. The later speeches were to be televised, and the lights in the room were already strong. They blanched the skin, and gave several of Hawthorne’s companions an appearance of fatigue. Not the ambassador, however, Hawthorne might have been wearing TV makeup—Gini was too far away to be sure. If so, it had been expertly applied. He looked even more tanned and fit than usual; the tan emphasized the blue of his eyes, the white Hollywood perfection of his smile.
Where were the security men? Gini studied the room. She could see the toastmaster, various waiters, a television crew just to the left of the dais, and another, more centrally placed, just below Hawthorne himself. A floor manager, with headphones, two soundmen…and then she saw them: that Malone man, immediately below the dais, and two more on either side. One was Frank Romero, the other a man she had not seen before.
As she looked she saw Romero turn, scan the room, glance back to the ambassador, then move across and speak to one of the waiters. The man nodded and disappeared. Frank Romero made a movement that was now becoming familiar to her: He raised his arm and appeared to mutter into his cuff. At a distance, the tiny wrist mike was invisible. Romero lowered his arm, made another quick, hard inspection of the room, then crossed to one of the tables nearest the dais. He bent and spoke into the ear of a white-haired man.
Gini stared. He was about forty feet from her, facing in her direction. He was unmistakable: It was the ambassador’s father, S. S. Hawthorne. He listened intently to Romero, then said something. Romero walked swiftly away.
Gini frowned: Hawthorne had told her that his father was coming over for that forty-eighth birthday party—a party that was still more than a week away. She was certain that was how he had phrased it. He had given no indication that his father was arriving this soon.
Strange. She surveyed the other tables. It was difficult to be sure, but she thought Lise Hawthorne was not present. So, the wife was absent, but the father was here: What could that mean?
She looked back at S. S. Hawthorne. She could now see that he was seated in a wheelchair. He was deep in conversation with the woman next to him. He looked much younger than his years. Like his son, he conveyed force and vitality. He had remained handsome; he looked vigorous. She would have put his age at little more than sixty-five, though she knew he was only a year away from his eightieth birthday.
“The Magus,” said the man seated to her left. He spoke suddenly, making Gini jump. Looking around, she saw that he had followed her gaze, and was also looking at S. S. Hawthorne. As she turned, he smiled. A short, gray-haired American, aged about forty. He glanced down at the place card in front of her.
“Genevieve, it is you. Sam’s daughter, right? I couldn’t believe it when I saw you. Last time we met—well, I guess you were around four, five years old.” He held out his hand to her. “You won’t remember. I’m Jason Stein.”
“I’m afraid I don’t remember meeting, but of course I know your name. The New York Times, yes?”
“Right. I’m head of the London bureau now. For my sins.” He grinned. “Nice to meet you again. So tell me”—he lowered his voice—“why the big interest in the Magus over there?” He nodded in S. S. Hawthorne’s direction.
“That’s what you call him, the Magus?”
Stein gave her a dry look. “It’s one of the terms. One of the more flattering ones, sure.”
Gini glanced back; S. S. Hawthorne lifted his head at that moment. Across the distance separating them he gave their table a hard blue-eyed stare. Gini looked quickly away. “No reason,” she said to Stein. “I was intrigued, that’s all. I’ve read enough about him, I just never saw him before.”
“I wonder what the heck brought him to London.” Stein had also averted his gaze from S. S. Hawthorne’s table. “These days he rarely leaves that place of his in upstate New York. At least, that’s what I always heard.”
“Maybe he’s here to play the proud paterfamilias. John Hawthorne’s the guest speaker, after all. It’s a pretty big occasion.”
“This?” Stein gave a dismissive gesture. “Hawthorne makes three speeches a week at equally prestigious gatherings. This is no big deal for him. Anyway”—he gave Gini a glance—“you watch. Hawthorne’s a good after-dinner speaker. He’ll have them eating out of his hand.”
“This audience?” Gini looked around her doubtfully. “So many journalists, so many media people? Not the easiest house to play.”
“Wait and see.” Stein paused while a waiter removed their first-course plates, and a second waiter bent between them to serve wine. Stein gestured to their wineglasses and smiled. “Call me cynical if you like, but one thing I’ve always noticed about any dinner where Hawthorne has to make a speech—you get very good wine. And plenty of it. Far more than usual. Try that claret, and you’ll see what I mean.”
Gini did so. The claret was excellent. She smiled. “Oh, come on. John Hawthorne isn’t even the host tonight….”
“Okay, you don’t believe me? Watch this.” He picked up his claret glass. “At most of these dinners—this many people, the waiters under pressure—they put the bottles on the table, right? So the guests can serve themselves. The standard ratio for a table like this—eight people—is four bottles initially, if you’re very lucky, five.” Gini looked at the bottles flanking the flower arrangement in the center of the table. There were eight of them. “Now, watch this.” Stein drank the claret in his glass. He put the glass back on the table but made no move toward the bottles. “I give it thirty seconds,” he said in a dry way. “I made a study of this a few years ago, when I followed Hawthorne on the campaign trail. I’m thinking of publishing it.” He smiled. “A time and motion study. How to win friends and influence people…Ah.”
The wine waiter had materialized at his side. He refilled Stein’s glass, and a couple of others at the table. He replaced the empty bottle with a full one.
“Right to the second,” Gini said.
“There you are. Now you know one of the reasons John Hawthorne’s speeches always go so well at these occasions. Attention to the tiny details.” He shrugged. “But then, that’s the mark of the man.”
“So tell me,” Gini said. “What’s John Hawthorne like on the campaign trail? Which of his campaigns did you cover?”
“Two. I covered his first senatorial campaign—that’s, what, around sixteen years ago. Then I covered his final one, when it looked like he’d be going for the Democratic candidacy in ninety-two. I put in the hours on the Learjet. And I can tell you his methods hadn’t changed. They’re impressive—and so is the stamina. John Hawthorne can get by on three hours sleep a night, I swear it. I was punch-drunk after three days of his schedule. But not him. Dawn at some godforsaken airstrip someplace, and Hawthorne’s there, fresh as a daisy, with the aides and the lists—all fired up and ready to go.”
Gini waited while the waiters served the second course. She glanced at Stein. “Lists?” she said.
“Local worthies, factory officials, fund-raisers, women’s groups, party workers, big wheels in the local police department…” Stein shrugged. “Whoever he’s meeting that day. They’re graded for him, by the aides. Level five get five minutes of his time, and—”
“—And level one gets only one minute?”
Stein laughed. “Sure, but a man like Hawthorne can clinch a vote in thirty seconds—that’s what the aides liked to say. The right handshake, the right questions, little bursts of charm. Hawthorne’s always briefed, always primed.”
“So what kind of questions would those be? It can’t be that easy, surely….”
“Listen,” Stein said, “Hawthorne never meets anyone of any use to him without knowing beforehand whether he’s met them before, how many kids they have, which football team they support, whether they have a dog or a cat, hell—what brand of cereal they have at breakfast, for all I know. It’s all printed out for him, by the aides. Hawthorne has an incredible memory. Best I’ve ever seen. He learns it on the way there, in the car or the plane. It works on rednecks and bank presidents. The aides call it CTC.”
“CTC?”
“Channeling the charm.”
There was a brief silence. Gini considered this. She ate a little of the food, which was excellent, and avoided the wine. Irrespective of other events, she was beginning to see that she had been wrong about her conversation with Hawthorne at Mary’s, and Pascal right. CTC, she thought. And I fell for it too.
Jason Stein had turned to talk to the woman on the other side of him; Nicholas Jenkins continued to cold-shoulder her. She did not mind this isolation, which at least gave her time to think. When the waiters removed their plates and began to serve dessert, Jason Stein turned back to her with a smile.
“So, you have a particular reason to be interested in Hawthorne?” he asked.
“No. No. Politicians interest me as a species, that’s all. I like to work out how they operate, what makes them run.” She paused, looking at Stein, whom she knew to be an excellent journalist, well informed, smart. “Do you think he’s really given up on U.S. politics now?” she asked. “You think he’ll ever try for a comeback, further down the road?”
Stein shrugged. “Hard to say. A year ago, when he accepted me posting here, I thought he’d thrown in the towel. God alone knows why—I mean, it was way out of character. But recently, I’ve heard a rumor or two, just straws in the wind. Hawthorne always had very powerful backers, you know, in the Democratic Party and elsewhere. There’s a whole lot of very influential people, and pressure groups—and from what I hear, Hawthorne’s still their favorite son.” He smiled. “It depends. I don’t have a crystal ball. But if you asked me, would I rule Hawthorne out as a future presidential candidate, even as president, I’d have to say no.”
“I guess you’re not going to elaborate on those rumors?” Gini gave him a sidelong glance.
Stein smiled. “You’re damn right, I’m not. Not to a reporter on the News, even if she is Sam Hunter’s daughter. Look at it this way, Genevieve”—he nodded toward the head table—“the man’s forty-seven. He looks thirty-seven. He’ll stay here in London how long? Maybe two, at most three years. I’d give it two. Then, before you know it, he’s back in the States, rebuilding that political base of his. Meantime, in any case, he can rely on the Magus. I will tell you one thing. I hear—and I hear it from very good sources—that old S. S. never gave up. This is a blip as far as he’s concerned. Back home he’s busy wheeling and dealing the way he always was. He’ll keep John Hawthorne’s seat nice and warm.”
Gini glanced across at Hawthorne’s father. He was speaking, she saw, to Frank Romero again. She turned to Stein. “You see that guy over there, the man talking to Hawthorne’s father?”
“I see him, sure.”
“He’s one of Hawthorne’s security people?”
“He’s one of his father’s security people, that I do know.” Stein’s expression hardened. “I forget his name, but I know him. He goes way back. He was always around, drafted by the father, making sure that when John Hawthorne was campaigning, he stayed on the straight and narrow. Oh, and making sure he didn’t get killed, of course. That too. S. S. knows how to protect his investments.”
“You mean that?” Gini stared at him. “You mean the father hired the bodyguards—”
“—And they doubled as Daddy’s spies?” Stein grinned. “Sure.” He hesitated, then frowned. “Way back, in the early days, before John Hawthorne became as tight-lipped as he is now, he used to talk about it. Joke about it even, late at night, after a day’s campaigning, over a drink or two. His version was, the father was just a tad overprotective, like he wired his son’s room at Yale, had his lady friends investigated, that kind of thing…”
“You’re joking. Hawthorne himself talked about that?”
“Sure. I heard him myself, once or twice. Like I say, he’d pretend to be amused, tell the story in this dry, droll kind of way. Make light of it.” Stein shrugged. “He’s an interesting man, Hawthorne. A complex man. What I said earlier—I didn’t mean to belittle him. He’s tough now, hard—that’s inevitable. But I used to like him.”
“And you don’t like him now?”
“I don’t like his politics, that’s for sure. Do you?” He gave her a sharp glance.
Gini said, “You mean, all things to all men?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. But that’s what brings in the votes, Genevieve, and the donations.” He began to count off items on his fingers. “Pro-civil rights, so he brings in the black vote, the Latinos. Pro-Israel, a real Zionist in public but an anti-Semite at home. No Jews at his dining room table. No blacks or Latinos either, I can tell you. Hell.” Stein gave an almost angry shrug, and broke off. “So, he’s not a man of principle. He could have been, but he isn’t. So, he’s a politician. What’s new?”
“Then it’s not just his politics? You don’t like the man?”
“I never met a politician I did like.” Stein grinned. “Snakes in the grass, every goddamn one of them.”
He leaned back in his chair. Coffee was being served, and liqueurs. Stein took one of the cigars being offered around the table, as did Jenkins. Through a haze of aromatic smoke, Gini saw the microphones being positioned. The full television lighting was switched on.
Lord Melrose stood and began his speech of introduction. It was elegant but overlong. He had not, Gini thought, made Hawthorne’s task as main speaker any easier. The audience might be well oiled, but there was restlessness in the room.
As John Hawthorne rose to his feet, the cameraman moved into position. Hawthorne waited until there was silence. Then he gave an easy smile, a Hollywood smile, and he threw the switch. Gini could sense him do it, just as he had done briefly at Mary’s party. Whatever charisma was, that elusive, hard-to-define quality, Hawthorne had it. She could feel its force in the room.
“Privacy and the press…” Hawthorne looked around his audience. “What an opportunity. Here I am, and I can give you my views, secure in the knowledge that when I get to the end, I won’t have to take one single question….” His tone had become dry. “And let me tell you, when facing the British press corps, that’s very good to know….”
It was perfectly judged, Gini thought. The delivery was good, the timing was good, the smile was good—and he got the response he wanted. There was a ripple of amusement from the audience, and a collective relaxation. The moment of tension that always precedes any speech had been quickly overcome. Having relaxed his audience, Hawthorne then proceeded to wind them in.
He spoke without notes, clearly and concisely. He kept his speech light initially, then turning to the central question—the freedom of the press versus the protection of the individual—he began to take a tougher approach. He put the case for each side with scrupulous exactitude, like an attorney. Gini waited to see which side he would come down on. With this audience there could be no fudging of the issues: Would he take the liberal or the conservative line?
Pausing, Hawthorne fixed his audience with a cool blue stare. “Several years ago now,” he continued, “when I was still a United States senator, I made a long tour of Middle Eastern Arab states—something I guess I couldn’t risk now. While I was out there, I learned firsthand what it was like to live in a society where ordinary men and women had no access to the truth. Where newspapers and television had been corralled by the state. Where journalists like yourselves had to print and promulgate propaganda, or risk imprisonment and death.” His blue gaze raked the room.
“I’ll say this—I was probably naive. I had every reason to understand what those societies were like, and how they operated—I could read Western newspapers, after all. But to read those accounts and actually to experience that kind of state propaganda were two very different things. I learned a lot from that trip, and one of the chief things I learned was fear. The techniques being used in those countries weren’t new ones, you see. They’d been perfected at the time of the Third Reich, in Nazi Germany. Fifty years later, when the cold war was ending, I could see propaganda methods first used by Joseph Goebbels. They had worked then—and they worked just as effectively, and just as damnably, right now.”
He paused, and gave his silent audience a long, cool look. “Now, of course, all of us here tonight are fortunate. I am, you are. We live in Western democracies. We have a free press. We can look back over our own recent history, and we can point specifically to historic changes we owe to those freedoms. That isn’t exaggeration. It isn’t hyperbole. I’m thinking about events such as Watergate. I’m thinking, in particular, about the Vietnam War, and the journalists who risked their lives to bring back the truth from a war zone. Those men and women changed America. They turned a whole nation around. And in the final analysis, it was they, and their influence, that brought an end to that war. Now”—he paused again, and lightened his tone—“I have to admit, all reporting isn’t of that magnitude—I feel that exposing the sexual peccadilloes of British cabinet ministers, or investigating the private lives of the monarchy, may not rank on quite the same scale as bringing home the truth about a war. When people say to me that kind of coverage is intrusive or morally wrong, I have to admit I have a certain sympathy with their view.” He smiled. “I’ve suffered press investigations in the past, I’ve had those lenses trained on me and I know exactly how unpleasant it can feel…. However”—his tone became serious again, and the smile disappeared—“I do believe this. Those of us who enjoy privilege, and those of us granted power—we have to remain accountable. For the public figure there can be no truly private life. That is the price paid. Politicians, presidents, and—yes—even princes, have to face press scrutiny. After all, if they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear. That”—he stabbed the air—“that is how we preserve a free society. And if we don’t like it, we can always go someplace where those in power are better protected.”
There was a ripple of response and Hawthorne cut it short. “So,” he continued, and Gini could see he was winding down now, “I believe we should all continue to fight for press freedom. We should oppose censorship. We should oppose other more insidious curbs, freedom of the press is the bedrock of democratic society—even when, for those on the receiving end, it feels like a bed of nails.”
He lifted his glass. “Lord Melrose, ladies and gentlemen, I give you a toast. The freedom of the press. May the fourth estate continue to flourish, especially its many representatives here.”
The applause began and mounted. Hawthorne’s audience cheered. At several tables, people rose to their feet. Others followed their example.
“The claque’s here,” Stein said irritably. “They always are. Where they lead, others follow. Jesus Christ—Vietnam. Is there any string that man wouldn’t pull?”
“Well, he did fight there,” Gini began.
“Precisely my point.” Stein gave her a hard look. “While America was changing, he wasn’t there. He was out in Nam, killing Vietcong. Take a look at his war record sometime, Gini. He was decorated three times—and it wasn’t for winning hearts and minds. Hawthorne didn’t speak out against that war until around 1985, long after it was safely over. He was a hawk right through the seventies and beyond.”
“Well, maybe.” Gini hesitated. “But it was a good speech, of its kind. I agreed with his arguments—”
“Sure. You’re a reporter, like nearly everyone else here. He gave the right speech for this audience. Perfect pitch. Nazis, Goebbels? He didn’t miss a trick.”
“That wasn’t irrelevant. It’s germane.”
“Sure. It’s also emotive. I should know…” Stein shrugged. “Forget it, Gini. I guess I’m biased, but then, I’m one of those Jews Hawthorne would never invite to dine.”
After the remaining toasts, guests began to circulate between tables, as the evening drew to a close. On the dais, Hawthorne and Lord Melrose stood talking. Gini looked around for Nicholas Jenkins. When she finally located him, he was deep in conversation with one of Melrose’s assistants. A few minutes later she saw Melrose himself join them. He drew Jenkins aside, into a lobby and out of sight.
John Hawthorne, she saw, had now made his way down from the dais into the throng. He was surrounded by well-wishers and by security men on all sides.
She sat down at the now-empty table to wait for Jenkins’s return. She stared at the tablecloth, fiddled with the cutlery. She did not want to admit it to herself, but Hawthorne’s speech had touched a nerve. Even now, after all Pascal’s arguments, after all that had happened, she still felt a residual resistance to the idea of Hawthorne’s involvement in these events. Earlier that day, at the escort agency, or when she had been speaking to his wife the previous evening, she had almost been able to accept the idea of his guilt. Now, again, it seemed so unlikely. A failure of imagination, perhaps, she told herself, but she could not imagine the man who had made tonight’s speech making a series of appointments with hired blondes, or authorizing killings.
“Gini…it is Gini!”
She looked up to find Hawthorne and his entourage had reached her table. He was standing by her side. She rose and took the hand he held out to her. His handshake was brisk and impersonal; people were milling around on all sides. Nevertheless, she could read something in his face and in his eyes. It might be wordless, but she could see that it was directed at her and her alone, and it looked like an appeal.
“I wanted to thank you,” he said. “Taking Lise out yesterday evening. That was a very good idea of yours.”
Gini did not correct him. “Lise is not here tonight?”
“No. No.” He hesitated slightly. “She had a migraine.”
“I hope she feels better soon.”
“I’m sure she will. They don’t usually last that long. I—”
He stopped, and Gini realized it was the first time she had seen him betray awkwardness; it was as if he were off guard. Just for one passing instant she saw that beneath the pace and energy he looked desperately tired. He looked, she realized, as Mary had described, as if at heart he was in despair. Already he was beginning to turn away to the next table, the next group of admirers and friends.
“Give my love to Mary,” he said, and he was gone. Gini watched him leave the room, table by table. At the door, the security men bunched. She saw Frank Romero’s burly figure, and that reminded her. She turned back, but she had missed the departure of Hawthorne’s father. His table was now deserted, and S. S. Hawthorne had gone.
She went in search of Nicholas Jenkins and found him eventually, on the far side of the room, still in conversation with Melrose. Jenkins was flushed and sweating. As she glanced across, she saw him pull out a handkerchief and mop his brow.
She was about to move quietly to one side until this conversation was over, but Jenkins caught sight of her. He beckoned her over.
“Henry, here she is now. Gini, that was very good timing. We’ve been talking about you.”
“Among other things,” said Melrose with a little smile.
Jenkins looked flustered at this. He performed the introductions clumsily, and his proprietor brushed them aside.
“I do know who Miss Hunter is, Nicholas.” He turned back to Gini. “I’ve read her stories. And admired them too. I wonder…” He drew Gini a little to one side. A tall man, aged about sixty, elegantly dressed; he had a courteous manner. “I wonder,” he repeated, “I give these luncheons occasionally, Gini—may I call you Gini?—for my writers, some of my editors, that kind of thing. Very informal. Just to toss ideas back and forth, you know. What kind of stories we should be covering, how we cover them, whether the paper can be improved…”
He paused. Gini said nothing. She had heard of these lunches, and had never expected to attend one. More senior journalists than she lobbied hard to be invited, since they knew the lunches were the path to promotion. She knew Jenkins had attended in the past, and that the ambitious Daiches had never made the grade, though he continued to try. “I generally have one a month if I’m in London,” Melrose was continuing, “and I have one planned for the News next week. I’d like you to attend. I’ll ask my assistant to contact you shortly. You’ll be free? Good, good. So glad to have met you.”
He wished Jenkins good evening briefly, then drifted away. Jenkins gave her an angry look. He was now clearly in a bad temper, and in no mood to disguise it.
“Bloody man,” he said with some vehemence once Melrose was out of earshot. He took Gini’s arm. “Christ, what an evening. Let’s go.”
In the Jaguar, driving north, Jenkins was preoccupied, speaking only to his driver, and then only to tell him curtly to take the quickest route.
When they reached her apartment, Jenkins saw her as far as the top of the steps. There he hesitated, then said, “I’ll come in if I may. Just for five minutes.”
In her living room Jenkins did not sit down or remove his coat. He stood in the center of the room, looking ill at ease. He refused Gini’s offer of coffee or a drink.
“Look,” he said in an abrupt way. “I’d better get this over with. I’ll come straight to the point. I’ll talk to Lamartine in the morning, but you may as well know now. The Hawthorne story is off.”
There was a silence. Gini looked at him. “The story’s off?”
“That’s right.” Jenkins shifted from foot to foot “It’s dead. Killed. I’m killing it. You leave it alone from now on, both you and Pascal. You’ve got that?”
There was another silence. Gini let it run on. She removed her coat.
“You want to give me a reason, Nicholas?”
“I could give you several. One will do. I was misinformed. McMullen told me a pack of lies. We’re not going to make this story stand up.” Jenkins shifted his eyes away from her face. His normally pink complexion became suffused with a dark flush. Gini looked at him for a moment, measuring his discomfiture. It was considerable.
She sat down and stared across the room. Of course: It was so obvious. Every little event of the evening replayed itself, the conversations she had seen between Hawthorne and Melrose; Melrose’s subsequent conversation with Jenkins: She had been caught in the middle of a power play, she realized. Both the carrot and the stick were being used here, the classic approach.
She looked back at Jenkins. “I see,” she said. “Melrose told you to pull the story.”
“It’s fucking well nothing to do with Melrose.” Jenkins lost his temper at once. “It’s my decision. Just do what I fucking tell you, Gini, for once.”
“Give me a break, Nicholas.” Gini rose. She gave a furious gesture, and realized she was suddenly very angry. “Do you think I’m some kind of idiot? Dear God—we sit there tonight, we listen to Hawthorne, and all that rhetoric about the freedom of the press. I even damn well start to believe the rhetoric—and then what happens? Hawthorne has a quiet word with his old buddy Melrose, and the next thing is—the story’s off. The hell with it, Nicholas. I thought the whole point of being an editor was that when someone leaned on you, you stayed standing up.”
Jenkins’s face darkened further. “Gini, I’m going to forget you said that. I’m telling you, Melrose has nothing to do with it. He doesn’t even know about the Hawthorne story.”
“Come on, Nicholas. Don’t give me that crap. Melrose knows. If you didn’t tell him, his friend John Hawthorne did.”
“Listen,” Jenkins rushed on, paying no attention, “I’ve been reconsidering our overall editorial policy. We have to watch all these sex and scandal stories, that’s all. The News relies on its middle-class readership….”
“Don’t tell me. We go too far and we alienate them. You know I’ve heard that same view very recently? And you know who from? The U.S. ambassador, that’s who. He fed it to me, he fed it to Melrose, and Melrose bought it. Plus, of course, he’s delighted to intercede on his friend Hawthorne’s behalf, so he leaned on you, and you promptly collapsed. Great. Do you usually alter your entire editorial policy, Nicholas, over dinner, during a fifteen-minute speech?”
“Just cut it out, all right?” Jenkins turned away, tight-lipped. “Forgive me for saying so, but that’s a woman’s response—a typical woman’s response. You see male conspiracies, Gini, everywhere you look.” He gave a curt gesture. “Anyway. I might just remind you. I don’t have to explain my editorial policy to my reporters. You don’t like it, you know what you can do.”
“Resign, Nicholas? Oh, I don’t think I should do that now, do you? After all, my damn proprietor has just invited me to one of his famous lunches. That’s a big break for me, Nicholas—except I get the feeling there’s a few conditions attached to that invitation. Like I agree to be a good little girl. Like I drop the Hawthorne story, and play ball. If I don’t do that, I suspect that lunch invitation might be canceled rather suddenly. Who knows, I might even get fired. Dear God! The whole thing makes me sick—”
“Look, look. No one’s talking about firing anyone….” Jenkins seemed suddenly alarmed. He switched to a pacifying tone. “We don’t want to lose you, Gini. I don’t want to lose you—”
“Oh, sure. You’d just hate me to take this story elsewhere. Which, come to think of it, is one hell of a good idea.”
Jenkins opened his mouth to make some angry retort, then shut it again. If he had fired her then and there, Gini would not have been surprised, so it was interesting—and revealing, she realized—that he continued, with some effort, to take a conciliatory tone.
“Listen,” he said, “you’re overreacting. There’s no need for this to be a resignation issue. You have to learn to face facts, Gini. All right, so this story didn’t pan out. There are other stories, you know. You remember we talked about Bosnia? Well, now maybe we could take a look at that idea again, and…”
He talked on in this vein while Gini watched him coldly, with increasing disgust. If he were prepared to go as far as discussing Bosnia again, he must really be desperate, both to get her off this story and to prevent her from taking it elsewhere. She looked away from him, around the room, and suddenly remembered the possibility of its listening walls. In her anger she had completely forgotten this factor, but now she saw it was one she should turn to her own advantage: If someone outside was listening in, why not tell them what they most wanted to hear? She let Nicholas Jenkins continue talking. When he finally finished, she gave a shrug and a sigh.
“Okay, okay,” she said carefully. “Maybe you’re right, Nicholas. I guess I was overreacting. It was sudden, that’s all.” She paused. “You really mean that about Bosnia?”
“Sure, sure.” Jenkins beamed. “Get it into your head, will you, Gini? I really value your work at the News. A woman’s byline on reports from Bosnia, maybe a photograph of you—yes, it could work out very well.”
“Well, I guess if that was really a possibility…”
“It is a possibility. It’s more than a possibility. Look, Gini, you’ve got that lunch with Melrose sewn up. You and I can talk new stories, next week maybe. This could all turn out well for you. Don’t screw up now.”
“But I’d have to agree to drop the Hawthorne story?”
“Yes. And no more garbage about swanning off with it elsewhere.”
“Okay.” She gave him a decisive smile. “You’ve sold me on it, Nicholas.” She paused. “Actually, I didn’t want to say this before, but I wasn’t making a whole lot of progress with it anyway. There were a lot of leads, then they all turned out to be dead ends. I could have worked on this for months and gotten nowhere. Pascal feels the same. I don’t want to do that—marking time. And if there was a serious possibility of Bosnia—”
“Gini, it’s as good as fixed. Say no more.”
“The only thing is…” She gave him a little glance. “I’m pretty exhausted, Nicholas. The Hawthorne story really took it out of me. I don’t want to go into details now, there’s no point, but it was getting pretty scary. I could do with a break—just a short one. And I am owed some vacation time. …”
“Take it. It’s yours. You deserve it. A week, two weeks?”
“Two weeks would be amazing. You’re sure, Nicholas?”
He thought he had won, and he now bubbled with benevolence. Crossing the room, he put his arm around her shoulders. “Two weeks. Done. Go get some sun. Forget about work. Forget about the office. I don’t want to see or hear from you, Gini….” He smiled broadly. “You know how you are. Well, this time I want to forget I employ you, okay? Then come back, with a good suntan, and we’ll start lining up the work for you. Or maybe fit in the Melrose lunch, then take off. It’s up to you.”
“I think I will fit in the Melrose lunch. Then I’ll fly off somewhere exotic. God, what a great idea. Sun, after all these months of rain.”
Jenkins patted her shoulder, then moved to the door. “I knew you’d see it my way,” he said. “Well done, Gini. Smart girl.”
When he had gone, Gini went to bed, and lay there turning the components of this story back and forth. She was tense, because she feared that her telephone might ring, that she might hear the whispering muffled male voice once more. But there were no calls that night. When she woke in the morning she wondered if it was her conversation with Jenkins that had won her that reprieve.
She hoped that, at eight, Pascal might telephone to let her know if he was returning to London, but Pascal did not call. This was a disappointment, but it probably meant only that he distrusted her phone. She would call him, she decided, from a pay phone later that day. Meanwhile, she had that appointment with Lise Hawthorne in Regent’s Park.
She sat for a while, preparing herself for this meeting, even though she thought Lise might be unable to keep the appointment She stroked Napoleon, who was curled on her lap. He purred, and narrowed his eyes with pleasure. She traced the pink elegance of his paw pads, and the delicate patterns of his marmalade fur.
Shortly before nine she left her apartment and set off through the rain and the morning rush hour, taking a roundabout route until she was reasonably certain that she was not followed. Then she headed south. She parked at some distance from her destination, continuing her journey on foot. Fifteen minutes ahead of the appointed time, she entered the gates of Regent’s Park.