Darkness has fallen by the time I drop Speedy at Gloria’s and turn up the familiar driveway of my place in Ivandry. Razafy, a bandage around his head, gives me his customary tilt of the chin as I drive through the gate.
The house looks dark as a tomb. I enter through the kitchen, switching on the lights as I pass through each room. The few traces I’ve impressed on the house over my two years have been erased by the thorough clean-up, leaving it in the state I found it—anonymous as a waiting room.
A shriek from behind nearly pushes me across the living room.
“Hello, Jeanne,” I manage to say after my heart restarts.
“Oh, Monsieur Knott, I thought you were a ghost.”
“No. I tried my best, but here I am.”
More out of relief than merriment, she put her hands on her knees and laughs. “You’re right. A dead man would look better than you do.”
Until this moment I’d never seen anything more than her mask. For an instant, she has let it slip and I have a glimpse, a revelation, of who she really is. Smart, funny. I like her very much. I wish I had known her.
She must have caught a glimpse of herself in my eyes because she immediately reassumes her ironic pose, again becomes a servant. “Miss Gloria has called three times today. I think she’s very upset.”
“It’s all right. I just left her place.”
Gloria nearly jumped into Speedy’s arms when we came through the door, but managed to hold back, restraining herself until I left.
I asked her if anyone had been looking for me.
“Only everyone. Paul Esmer called, then the DCM, then the Ambassador. I don’t know why they’d think I knew where you were.”
“Because in fact you did.”
The look she gave me wasn’t pretty. “Not really, I didn’t. Anyway, everyone’s upset that Walt would take off like that.” Like a pair of teenagers, Gloria and Speedy keep glancing at each other, then quickly away. “They don’t know where he is.”
“He’s gone. With any luck he should be in Mauritius by now. And I suppose I’m toast for having helped him.”
“That’s the funny thing.” And I could see that by “funny” she meant infuriating. “Everyone knows the whole thing smells to high heaven, but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that you’re connected with it.”
“You’re kidding.”
“They have it from the Marine on Post One that he saw you in the monitor when you drove away. He says the others left in another car and in another direction. That’s all they know.”
I try to take it in. I’d hoped that the ruse with the cars would fool the cops outside the embassy. I hadn’t anticipated that it would fool the embassy too.
“I suppose the Malagasy government is displeased,” I said.
“Now they are madder than hops. They want someone’s head on a platter.”
“Mine, no doubt.”
“The only betting at the embassy is whether they’ll give you twenty-four or forty-eight hours to get out. And—What did you do to your hand?”
“Do you really want to know?”
She looked to Speedy for an explanation. The young man only smiled.
“Okay,” she said to me, hands on her hips. “Why don’t you just tell me that I’m too young to understand?”
“You’re too young to understand.”
“Anyway …” She shook her head at me as if I were a naughty child. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“I think you want to be addressing those words to Speedy, don’t you?” I said with a laugh. “Why, Ms. Burriss, I’ve made you blush.”
She glared at me and took me by the arm. “Time for you to go home.”
On the way out the door I turned and said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not saying anything.”
“Maybe it’s only because no one asked me exactly what I knew.”
“Yeah? Still, thanks.”
So I left, wishing Speedy—Dokoby—a better night than the previous one, and drove myself the half-mile to my house.
Jeanne busies herself in the kitchen and finds something to fix me for dinner. She offers to return the money I gave her when I left.
“No, you’d better hang onto it,” I tell her. “I don’t think I’ll be here very long.”
The sizzle of a pork chop and the smell of roasting vegetables make me realize how hungry I am even as a wave of weariness comes over me. I decide to lie down on the sofa for a few minutes before dinner.
I wake to the morning light streaming in the window. Still groggy with sleep, I throw off the blanket Jeanne laid over me and stump around the house a bit. I eat the cold pork chop and vegetables she left in the refrigerator and go out through the French doors into the back yard. Despite my throbbing hand, I feel good, the sun is warm on my face and I enjoy the peace of a Sunday morning after a storm.
It’s nearly ten by the time I get into the office the next morning.
“Where have you been?” Cheryl calls as I come down the hall. “People have been looking for you all weekend. They even called me—as if you’d be at my house.”
I can’t think of a suitable reply.
“Isn’t it just beautiful out today?” she says, “Oh, did you know that Mr. Sackett just up and left Friday night?”
“No kidding.”
“But I’m glad all those police are gone from around the embassy. I didn’t like the way they looked at me.” She glances at her notepad. “Paul Esmer says the government finally put the hammer down over the weekend and the riots stopped.” Her eyes fall on my bandage. “What did you do to your hand?”
“Cut myself shaving.” She doesn’t laugh. “So, what’s in the papers today?”
“Oh, there’s a big story. In the Midi. Le Matin, too. They finally got that man who had been stealing kids. You’ll never guess who it was.”
It’s a page one, above-the-fold story in all the papers, complete with photos of both Andriamana and Picard. A few breathless paragraphs describe how the intrepid policeman cornered the monster who had abducted dozens of children. In curiously identical terms that carry a whiff of government prose, the stories relate how Captain Andriamana attempted to arrest the kidnapper, but the degenerate vazaha fired at Andriamana, striking him in the leg. Ignoring his own wounds, the policeman stood like a rock and fired back, killing the brute, earning the thanks of a grateful nation and marking himself for greater things.
There are a few more paragraphs, but I stop reading.
“And that Mr. Picard sounded so nice over the phone.” Cheryl shakes her head. “Oh, the DCM says you’re to go to the Ambassador’s office”
“Did he say why?”
“Some news he says he needs to break to you.” She lowers her notebook. “I hope your posting to Ouagadoodoo didn’t fall through.”
“Heaven forfend.”
I meet Gloria in the hallway. She’s been called into the meeting, too. I had expected it would be Trapp from Econ taking my place. He has the experience to fill in as political officer until my replacement arrives. I guess someone decided he has enough on his plate already. So it’ll be Gloria. The irony doesn’t amuse me.
Ambassador Herr sits behind her desk like a judge ready to hand down sentence. Pete Salvatore slumps in an armchair, his hands between his knees. Gloria and I take the sofa.
After a surprisingly warm welcome the Ambassador says, “As I’m sure you both know, we wish this weren’t happening. We took a stand on protecting an American citizen and accepted the risks. But having one of our officers declared persona non grata is just wrong.” She grits her teeth as if she can’t bear to go on.
I’d have thought that having me thrown out of the country would put her in a better mood.
“I got the call at home last night,” she continues. “The government of Madagascar will send over a Diplomatic Note this morning. Is that right, Pete?”
Her deputy nods.
She puts her hands flat on the desk. “Personally, I can’t tell you how much I regret this. The embassy is losing a fine officer, one of whom I’m personally fond.”
A valedictory is fine, but laying it on too thick robs it of even faked sincerity.
“Now, Robert, you already know most of the editors in town, yes?”
An odd question. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“And I think you know Gloria’s staff pretty well.”
“Yes, ma’am. But what’s that got to do with me getting PNG’d?”
Ambassador Herr looks at Pete Salvatore. “They just now got to the embassy,” he says to her, then turns to me. “It’s Gloria.”
After the trials of the last few days, my shock absorbers are wrecked and I can’t take it in. “What?”
“It’s Gloria. She’s the one they’re throwing out.”
Gloria looks at me, then the Ambassador. “Me?”
Ambassador Herr takes a breath. “The Malagasy government has made some trumped-up charge.” She casts a baleful look at me. “They’re saying that the events leading to Mr. Sackett’s escape were precipitated by the story about the burglars. And they claim Gloria was the source of that story, when we know it was you, Robert. And they say that she helped a Malagasy criminal escape from prison. It’s all … all so …” She gropes for the word. “… mendacious. But they claim they can back it up with witnesses, whom they’ve no doubt coerced into saying whatever they’re told.”
Pete gives us the details. The Malagasy government is giving Gloria seventy-two hours to leave the country. The embassy has already communicated with Washington. The Department will lodge a protest with the Malagasy embassy and consider expelling a Malagasy diplomat in return. Other than that, there isn’t much we can do.
The Ambassador adds that Gloria needn’t worry about what this might do to her career. She’ll be fine.
Like someone who has been told of a terminal illness, Gloria looks from one to the other of us. “If I’m going to be so fine, why do I feel so bad?”
The mystery of Walt’s whereabouts is resolved that afternoon when a cable comes from the tiny American embassy in Mauritius, stating that a man claiming to be an American citizen has turned up on the doorstep with a young Malagasy woman whose relationship to him is unclear. They say they want to go the United States as quickly as possible. Neither has any identification, baggage, or money. The little embassy’s perplexity rises like fog from the brief cable, which concludes with a pathetic plea to “Please advise.”
Lynn sits in my office, pen in hand, waiting for me to give her some notes for the cable to Mauritius she’s been tasked with writing. I run my hands through my hair. “Well, I guess you can tell them that Walt’s an American citizen who escaped imprisonment here—from jail or from the embassy, however you think it plays best.”
She eyes me for a long time. “You had something to do with their escape. I’d bet my mortgage on it. And that’s why you disappeared over the weekend.”
“How much do you really want to know?”
“I haven’t decided yet. And would you tell it to me straight if I asked?”
“I’ve never been rich enough, good-looking enough, or smart enough to stick to the truth.”
The admin officer leans back in her chair and puts her pen down. “I’m not out to get you, Robert. That’s going to be someone else’s job. I want a lot of things for you. I want to see you kicked out of the foreign service. I want to slap you in the face. I want to see that you’re not hurt. I want to take you to bed.”
“But you’re not going to do any of those things.”
“Probably only one of them.”
“Who gets to pick?”
She sighs. What a trial I must be.
“What do we tell them about the girl, Nirina?” she asks.
“Tell them that if they send her back here she faces imprisonment for helping an American citizen escape persecution. The USG should consider allowing her asylum in the United States.”
“Just remember that you can’t ask for the same thing for yourself. Everyone’s tired of your act, Robert. Shape up, or you’re going to be the next one out of here, and it will be the Ambassador who throws you out, not the Malagasy.”
With that, she gets up to leave. Halfway across the room she relents and smiles back at me. “Hey, come here,” she says.
When I get within arm’s reach, she slaps me in the face.
Suspicions of misconduct swirl around my head throughout the following days, all the stronger for remaining unproven. I come up with a story of going down to Antsirabe for the weekend. No one can prove me a liar, but no one buys it and I’m cast once more into professional darkness. My phone has stopped ringing and no one comes by my office. Only Cheryl has anything to say to me, and then mostly to regret Gloria’s departure, saying from time to time, “She doesn’t deserve this.” I don’t miss the unstated implication that I do.
These lamentations hit a peak when, just before the close of business, Gloria stops by.
After Cheryl has finished making a fuss over her, I look up from the crossword in the International New York Times.
“I came by to say goodbye,” she says.
“You may be the last person on earth still speaking to me,” I tell her.
“I noticed there wasn’t a line down the hall congratulating you on your great weekend.” She leans in the doorway regarding me with a half-smile that suggests equal parts dejection and self-assurance.
If in very short order you take up your first major post, fall in love, decide to keep a dark secret from the embassy, and then get booted out of the country, maybe you gain a stronger sense of yourself.
She tells me, “I’m leaving tonight. I don’t need seventy-two hours to pack out. You’ve seen my place. I never really unpacked. I’ll be in Washington by tomorrow morning.”
“Do yourself a favor. This time stay the night in Paris on the way. It’s within the regs. Take yourself out to dinner or something.”
She smiles and gives me that assertive nod of hers. “Maybe I will.”
As she starts to go, I call after her. “Hey.”
She turns in the doorway.
“Tell Annibal to just meet you at the airport. I’ll drive you out.”