Shortly after noon, Carter Everett met Sarah in the lobby of the Foreign Service Institute. It was a fiercely cold day, the skies a glacial blue with puffs of white clouds scudding along before the wind. Pulling their chins down into their heavy coats, they braced themselves against the gale blowing up from the Potomac and walked briskly down the hill to the Key Bridge.
“The Bistrot Français,” Carter said. “We’ll go there.”
“What?” She raised her head and stared up at him.
“The Bistrot Français. It’s just across the bridge in Georgetown. On M Street.”
Sarah said nothing. With both hands she held the collar of her coat tightly around her ears. Her blond curls looked darker, Carter thought, chastened by a dour Washington winter.
In the restaurant when she shrugged off her coat, Carter was shaken by her thinness. Not drawn or gaunt, she looked instead almost diaphanous. She wore a black cashmere sweater and a white satin blouse with a broad shawl collar. Her cheeks, the tip of her nose, and her earlobes had been whipped into a rosy glow by the wind. Her beauty caused him so much pain that he felt light-headed.
“Carter?” she said finally, her huge, blue eyes watching him. “Is something the matter?”
“Just a guy who needs a drink. Ah, here comes the miracle man.”
The waiter swung his gaze expectantly from Sarah to Carter, then back again to Sarah.
“A white wine,” Sarah said.
“A gin martini. Extra dry. Really dry. Tanqueray gin. Don’t overdo the vermouth. Make it dry.” He folded his hands on the table. “Ah, wait a minute . . . wait a minute. On second thought, just give me a double Tanqueray on the rocks with olives.”
“Still taking no chances with your martinis,” Sarah said, and Carter thought that she tried to smile.
“Sarah, my dear, there are some things even a brave man does not take chances with.”
When their drinks arrived, Sarah raised her glass.
“Congratulations, Carter.”
“For what? For managing to lure you out of your cubbyhole for lunch?”
“For your promotion. Chief of Africa Division. Even I know what that means.”
Beyond the misted windows of the restaurant the dense, unrestful flow of traffic and pedestrians moved crabbily through Georgetown’s narrow streets. Around small tables pale men and earnest young women chatted and ate in a businesslike manner, periodically flicking their watches from their jacket sleeves. A handful of smartly dressed lunching ladies, maybe they had been unable to get reservations at the Jockey Club that day, sat at tables near the street. Carter and Sarah seemed strangely isolated from the noise and bustle of the restaurant and the muffled street sounds, lost in some peculiar kind of shared loneliness.
“So, with your new job you go back often then?” Sarah said finally, when the remnants of lunch had been taken away and they had moved on to coffee. “You go back . . . there.”
Carter watched her for a moment, then said, “Yes. There’s a lot going on now. None of it good. I have to make the rounds of my parish more often than I had figured. I see some of the old bunch. Your boss Phil Olmstead and Patty aren’t suffering too much out on Mauritius. Seems the ambassador is a bridge Grand Master.”
At that, Sarah laughed, a short, mirthless chuckle. “Oh, I’m glad, I really am. Good for him.” The brightness faded. She gazed down gravely at her hands. “He was awfully sweet, you know. Getting me back here in Washington after what happened . . . After that night.”
“I know,” Carter said. “And he has a better toupee.” But Sarah remained unsmiling. “You would have a hard time recognizing the place. Kinshasa, I mean. Everything’s burned, looted, gutted. The GM factory’s smashed, so is Goodyear and all the textile mills. There wouldn’t be any jobs to go to even if the economy were hitting on all cylinders. The day after the Old Man announced free elections somewhere around the corner, two hundred and forty-seven political parties popped up. Like poisonous mushrooms in a shady grove. And they just keep on popping. Boketsu’s heading up the Party of the Future of Zaïre. If he sees any future for Zaïre, he must know something we don’t know. Or else he’s smoking some pretty strong stuff.”
Carter lifted his cup of coffee. Sarah sat quite still, staring down at her hands.
“So? How’s the Hausa coming along?” Carter said.
“Oh, not too bad.” She lifted her eyes to look at him, but her round blue eyes looked dull and blank. “I keep putting one foot in front of the other. Then somehow I get there. I make some progress. I’ve become a plodder.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
She gazed past him toward the gray, chill street.
“Sarah?” He reached for her hand. “Why don’t you give it up?”
“Give up what?”
“The Turd World,” Carter said.
Sarah’s luminous face twisted slowly into a grin. “Poor old Marceau. Such a funny little man. So intense. I never could figure out what his problem was.”
“Well, for starters, Nicole jerked him around so much, he didn’t know which end was up. He’s still out there. Hitting the bottle. Gambling. In debt to the Lebanese. A year or so ago, Nicole up and left him, making a lot of noise about a pile of money that Marceau had promised would contribute to their married bliss. Then, Nicole hooked up with a Chevron executive. He’s divorced his wife of twenty-eight years and married Nicole. I suspect that Marceau got tripped up in the intricacies of a Swiss bank account. Tricky things, those Swiss accounts, especially if a Petro-France dragon is guarding the golden hoard.” Carter tapped her hand. “So, what I mean is, why don’t you chuck this assignment to Nigeria?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? Of course you can.”
“I must. I want to go back to Africa. I can’t leave him there. Alone. I have to do what I can. That’s where I belong.”
“Sarah. For God’s sake.”
The restaurant, almost emptied out now, had grown quieter. Their waiter smoked a cigarette in the doorway of the kitchen.
“It’s not what you think, Carter. I’m not the cotton-headed dreamer you think I am. I don’t have many illusions left. How could I?” Absentmindedly, she rubbed the small diamond of her necklace, but did not take her eyes off Carter. “You know, during the riots when it looked as if all hell would break loose at any minute, Jacques came in one day and said, ‘Sarah, we have to lower our sights now. The best we can do is to look after our people. Feed them, keep them well.’ Jacques was an idealist, full of pipe-dreams about Zaïre, most people would say, but he also knew how to get things done on a practical level, too.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means I’m going to Nigeria to teach.”
“Teach what? With USIA?”
“No. With AID. I’m going to teach native midwives some basic hygiene. The tribes in the north have an ancient custom of putting goat dung on the umbilical cords of newborns. The infant mortality rates are incredible. Naturally.”
“Naturally. Well, it’s basic, as you say, and practical.”
“And you want to laugh at me but you’re too polite,” Sarah said.
Carter said nothing. He lowered his eyes and pushed his coffee cup aside.
“It’s a practice that has a lot of complicated cultural roots. I’m not naive enough to expect to have blazing success. But I’ll try.” She stared out at the slick streets. “Everything used to seem so easy. The strong must help the weak. The rich must help the poor. It seemed so simple.”
“Nothing’s ever simple,” Carter said.