Paramour (17 page)

"If I had submitted an amended leave form requesting travel to a foreign country it would have taken two weeks to get the trip approved. By then my annual leave would have expired."

"You could
have speeded up the process," Powers said.

"The first rule of the CIA is to avoid drawing attention to oneself. It may be difficult for you glory boys in the Secret Service to understand, but it's a fact of life in the Agency. One doesn't ask for a vacation trip to Germany or any other foreign country without expecting the in-house people to start asking questions."

"Are you saying Agency personnel never travel to foreign countries on vacation?"

"My request to travel to Germany would have been immediately referred to the security section and I would have become the subject of an investigation."

"Do you have something to hide?" Powers said.

"No," she said, glaring at him. "But in-house investigations in the CIA give rise to rumors. And rumors cause people to lose chances for promotions. You know how it is in government: appearance is more important than reality."

Powers wished he hadn't been so assertive. "I understand," he said.

"May I have a little more wine?"

He filled her glass and motioned to the waiter for another bottle.

"You probably think I'm crazy for confronting you like this."

"Not at all," he said. She wasn't the power-seeker type he'd learned to recognize in DC, women who always seemed to show up at every party, every gathering where one could gain exposure to the White House circle: the fast talkers, masters of flirtation and currying favor, cultivators of Boston or Southern accents able to discuss any subject and take any side, to lobby any cause serving their interest, to conquer men of power. Also, she wasn't at all like the depressive Secret Service groupies he'd known. She was different.

He liked her.

The waiter came with the wine. There was an uncomfortable silence at the table as he took his time opening the bottle. Finally, he popped the cork, filled their glasses, and hurried away. They both sipped uncomfortably.

"I'm on vacation, and I'm not going to let the fact that I'm under surveillance bother me one bit. And because I know none of this is your doing, you needn't get in trouble by telling whoever sent you here that I burned you. I don't intend to tell anyone about this. Ever. Thanks for the wine." She got up and headed toward the door. As she passed the maitre d' he made a little bow and gave her an admiring glance. She turned left and headed toward the elevator.

Powers signed his bill quickly and hurried out of the dining room.

Marilyn stepped on the elevator and the doors closed. Powers moved through the lobby and into the garden. He looked up. The light in her room came on.

In his room, Powers dialed the White House operator and asked for Sullivan. Sullivan answered on the first ring.

"That person we're interested in. She went up against me. It's a burn."

"Shit," Sullivan said bitterly.

"There was nothing I could do."

"It's not your fault," Sullivan said after a long silence.

"What should I do now?"

"Stay on her."

"Stay on her even after she faced me off?"

"I'll talk to the powers that be, but we can't walk away. We need to know what she's doing over there," Sullivan said.

"This could get sticky."

"Just do your best to stay on her until I see how the interested party wants to handle it from here. Look, I understand the position you're in and I sympathize."

"That's a Roger."

"And one more thing, Jack. No more phone calls. It's too risky. Good
luck."

The phone clicked.

Powers stood there for a moment, then set the receiver down. He turned off the light. In darkness, he moved to the window and tugged the curtain back a few inches. The light in Marilyn's room was still off. To the right was a glass-enclosed second-floor walkway, the only way to reach the lobby or the outside from her room. Even if she was clever enough to slip out of her room without turning on the light, he would see her when she crossed the walkway.

Powers arranged a chair in front of the window and folded the curtain back a few inches. Sitting there, invisible in the darkness and with exhaustion from the long days of surveillance weighting his eyelids, he relived his conversation with her, concentrating on her expressions, her hand movements. What she said made sense, all right, but she was nervous, holding something back. Of course, everyone in the world was holding something back, he told himself, and who wouldn't be nervous under the same circumstances? He alternated between sitting, standing, and pacing at the window for the rest of the hours of darkness.

As the sun came up, he allowed himself a quick shower; then, headachy from lack of sleep, he trudged down to the lobby where he'd be able to follow her if she left the hotel.

Because of the morning rush of guests checking out at the registration desk and bellmen carrying luggage here and there, no one seemed to notice him wandering about the lobby. Shortly after 9 A.M., Marilyn stepped off the elevator dressed in a tank top and fluffy shirt of Madras plaid. Powers stepped behind a pillar to hide from her view.

She crossed the lobby and went out the front door. Powers followed at a discreet distance. She continued across the park and followed a gravel path leading to a small wooden bridge. After crossing the bridge, she entered the cover of some trees at the edge of the grounds of the exhibition hall.

She was out of sight so Powers picked up his pace. Hurrying along the path with the sound of the gravel crunching, he felt the full weight of his fatigue. On the art gallery side of the bridge, the path between the trees leading to the gallery was empty. Powers broke into a jog toward the exhibition hall.

"Obviously you've been told to continue the surveillance," Marilyn said.

Powers stopped and turned.

Marilyn stepped from behind a tree. "Do you like contemporary art?"

"Pardon me?"

"Do you like contemporary art?"

He realized he was slightly out of breath. "Not particularly."

"Well, that's what I'm going to do for the rest of the day: wander around the gallery and the grounds enjoying the show. There's no need for you to be discreet any longer. I know you're following me and I accept it. Now that you know my itinerary, you can go back to the hotel and relax. As a matter of fact, you look like you could use some rest."

"I have to stay with you."

"Get serious. What kind of surveillance is it when the subject knows you're watching?"

"A useless surveillance. But be that as it may, where you go, I have to go."

"It's unnerving."

"Just ignore me. I won't bother you."

"Look, goddammit, I'm not going to have someone creeping around after me for the entire week I'm here."

"Sorry, but I have my instructions."

"The President's man, eh? Following orders whether they make sense or not. How typical of you Secret Service types. Glorified door shakers. A bunch of second-rate presidential bellhop G-men. That's what you are."

"We're not smart enough to get involved in LSD experiments or plan Bay of Pigs invasions like you Agency geeks."

She glared at him. Then, as if coming to a decision, she bit her lip. "I'm sorry," she said regretfully. "I didn't mean that. I know you're just doing your job."

"And I apologize
for the geek remark.'

"If we're going to be stuck together, let's cut the intrigue. I'm here to see an art show, and I don't want someone shadowing me all day."

"I don't think-"

"It's foolish for you to follow fifty feet behind. If we're stuck together, so be it. Can't we just cut the cat-and-mouse act?" She stood there for a moment staring at him. Finally, she shook her head in frustration, turned, and headed toward the exhibition hall.

Play It by Ear, Powers told himself, was the unofficial motto of the Secret Service. The phrase implied that no two situations are alike. On any given day, an agent might be required to tackle and handcuff a screeching, biting lunatic on his way over the White House fence ... and an hour later diplomatically escort a drunk United States Senator out of a White House cocktail party. Rather than pass the buck like the law enforcement bureaucrats of the FBI and CIA, who were guided by the dictum Cover Your Ass, the culture of the Secret Service was for operatives to act independently to accomplish the mission. This stemmed from the incontrovertible fact that if the President was assassinated, no plea or explanation in all the world would suffice for the agent who failed in his assigned mission. He or she would enter the enduring annals of American history as the man who allowed the President to get killed.

Playing it by ear, Powers joined Marilyn and they walked the rest of the way to the exhibition hall without saying a word to each other. At the door, they both bought tickets and went in.

Inside the carpeted auditorium, which Powers estimated as the size of two football fields, the crowd was heavy. A maze of room dividers on which paintings of all sizes were displayed covered the entire hall. He realized it would have been nearly impossible to follow her all day in such a crowd.

"Do you know much about contemporary art?" she said.

"Never thought much about it."

"Then you can learn something today."

After moving along a line of canvases bearing only slashes and spots of color, Marilyn stopped for a minute or so in front of a five-foot-square white canvas. There was nothing on it other than a spot of yellow directly in its middle, as if the artist had touched the canvas only once with a loaded brush.

"What do you think?" she asked.

He shrugged.

"Seriously, what do you think?"

"Spare. Very spare."

"You think this is nothing, don't you? A sham."

"Now that you mention it, yes. I don't consider a dab of paint on a canvas to be anything but just that. This work might be the result of the artist dropping his brush."

She shook her head. "It all depends on what we see," she said.

"I see a glob of yellow on a blank canvas."

"The artist sees something else."

"I'll tell you what he sees. Dollar signs."

She shook her head for a moment. She tried not to smile, then gave up and began to chuckle. There was a devilish sparkle in her eye. They both laughed.

For the next couple of hours, he accompanied her from exhibit to exhibit, past mobiles fashioned from nuts and bolts and birds, collages of matchbook covers and ice cream sticks pasted onto newspaper, pseudo-primitive nudes carved with oversized genitals, canvases of formless color, uneven geometric design, slashes, marks, spots, and stains-shapes Powers considered, at best, hasty projects of the uncreative and, at worst, factory-line pseudo-art bullshit. But as the hours passed and he could see her continued deep fascination with the exhibits, the strain between them lessened.

In the middle of the day, they took a table at an outdoor café overlooking the park adjacent to the gallery. It felt good to sit down.

"You must be exhausted from the surveillance," she said matter-of-factly as the waiter served them plates of sauerkraut and a thick white sausage called weisswurst. "I know how it is to follow someone."