Too Much Too Soon (61 page)

Obviously something big and nasty had hit the fan.

Joscelyn’s Saturday and Sunday passed in a haze of stale tobacco smoke—she had quit cigarettes cold turkey several years earlier, and her relapse gave her another ground for fury at the absentees. Her back itched, and by Sunday night, when Arthur Kohn called again, the area between her shoulders was scratched raw.

It was after nine on Monday morning when the key sounded in the lock.

Seeing Honora’s dark, sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks, Curt’s resplendent grin, Joscelyn was crushed between conflicting emotions,
but she ached to protect them from whatever perils Arthur Kohn was so anxious to discuss.

She glowered at her sister. “Where’ve you been?”

“In Virginia—” Honora started.

“You said you’d be back Sunday. You didn’t leave any number!”

“Joscelyn.” Curt crossed the room to jab off the bright, blabbering television. “This might come as a shock to you, but we don’t need your permission to take off.”

“Is it Lissie?” Honora asked anxiously.

“If it were, would I be here?” Joscelyn snapped. “It’s Arthur Kohn. Curt, he’s been trying to get you since Saturday morning.”

The tension lines showed around Curt’s deep-set eyes. “What’s with Arthur?”

“How should I know? It’s nothing he’d tell
me.
”

Curt was already dialing.

“Oh, and by the way,” Joscelyn said. “The hearing’s been postponed until two thirty.”

Arthur Kohn’s secretary told Curt that Mr. Kohn was away at a meeting, but that he would be at the hearing this afternoon—had anyone given him the message that the hearing would be at two thirty?

*   *   *

They got to the committee room a half hour early. Arthur Kohn was already waiting: the worried way his shoulders were hunched made his head seem yet larger. He and his partners drew Curt into the men’s room, the only place they could talk alone, without the press people.

Honora and Joscelyn took their seats in the committee chamber. Honora stared up at the portrait of a goateed, long-dead Speaker. The PR man had stressed that camera crews had a penchant for photographing anxious hands, so she hid her whitened, clenched knuckles under her new scarf.

When Curt came to sit next to her, he whispered into her ear, “Something’s up, but Arthur’s not sure what. He warned me to go over in my own mind and be ready for anything about Lalarhein that could be incriminating.”

Honora, positive that her expression blazed with alarm, smiled.

Before this, the subcommittee had straggled in through various entries: today, at precisely two thirty, they filed in from the anteroom together.

Morrell clenched his cigarette holder with his teeth as he rapped his gavel for silence. “The Committee will be in order. Today we have two new witnesses. Mr. Harold Fish and Lieutenant General Donald Tardikian. Mr. Ivory, we are firm in our belief that your cooperation will continue to be given freely and fully.”

Curt, taking this to mean he was to return to the witness table, pushed up from his chair.

Morrell let the jockeying cameramen record this rise before in orotund tones, “Let us start with General Tardikian.”

The general read a letter on behalf of the Secretary of Defense: the Department had no authority to reveal information in the security
classification having to do with United States military assistance.

Morrell called the next witness. Thrusting his pink, Rooseveltian jaw forward, he said into the microphone, “Mr. Harold Fish.”

Everyone peered around. A guard descended the few steps to the left of the tiered rostrum, knocking at the anteroom door. It opened. A pair of gray-suited men came up the steps, casing the hearing chamber as if antennae were affixed to their foreheads. After a half minute one turned toward the door.

Harold Fish waddled up the steps.

His swollen body was contained by a navy pin-striped suit nipped in at the waist; his jaw and fat cheeks had the bluish, powdery look imparted by a professional barber’s ministrations on a heavy beard; he might have been typecast for the role of prosperous mobster.

Joscelyn felt the breathless disorientation of being suddenly lifted by a great hand from this two-story hearing room on the third floor of the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill and deposited in a limbo where time and place lost meaning. Was she in 1976 Washington or 1965 Lalarhein? Was she a miserably bored, sometimes abused, sometimes cherished wife of a young engineer living in a prefab on the edge of the desert, or was she a vice president of a multinational company come to offer her support to her brother-in-law the boss? Was this Harold Fish or skinny Harb Fawzi with a naked pistol thrust into a double-wound belt?

As Harold Fish approached the witness chair
he glanced at Joscelyn. Indisputably he was Harb Fawzi. She could not catch her breath, and without realizing what she was doing she tugged open the tie of her suit blouse.

“What is it, Joss?” Honora murmured.

“I knew him in Lalarhein,” Joscelyn whispered in a choked undertone. “Only his name wasn’t Harold Fish then. It was Harb Fawzi. He worked for Khalid, he was Khalid’s guard and chauffeur. He always came to the house with Khalid.”

Honora’s serene expression didn’t falter, but Joscelyn could feel her arm tremble.

“First of all, Mr. Fish,” Morrell intoned, “we thank you for being here. As you know, this committee is engaged in gathering information that will help us, on behalf of the public of the United States of America, and on behalf of morality and justice, to promulgate certain regulations for the conduct of American businesses in other countries. Mr. Ivory has been hesitant to give certain information about his multinational operation.” A lift of Morrell’s chin, a flash of smile. “That of course is understandable. And there is no legal obligation for him to place his company in a position of jeopardy.”

Curt’s brows drew together and one network’s camera caught his anger.

“Mr. Fish,” Morrell continued, “would you please explain to the committee what your work was in your own country?”

“Honorable sirs and lady, I am in the process of becoming a citizen of the United States. In
my
former
country, I was employed as a guard.” Fish/Fawzi’s heavily accented voice emerged with a sinuous slowness, as if a rope were being unwound from within his stout chest.

Had he always spoken in this peculiar monotone? Joscelyn couldn’t remember him opening his mouth. Her image of him was silently searching the house, then sitting at the door, Khalid’s lean and hungry hound.

“Will you please tell this committee the name of your former employer?”

“I have already explained to the chairman, honorable sir, that it would be most dangerous to give that information. Indeed, my presence here places me in grave peril, and I appear only because of my duty to my new country.”

“We are most grateful.” Morrell leaned back in his large, comfortable black leather chair, tapping off an ash. “Mr. Fish, will you please tell the committee your employer’s function for Ivory?”

“His services were as liaison between Ivory and the Lalarheini government. He advised Ivory in preparing proposals and explained these proposals to certain ministers.”

“Would you please explain that second duty more fully?” Hergesheimer asked.

“Certainly, honorable lady. It is impossible to be knowledgeable about every part of a three-hundred-million-dollar airport with electronic equipment capable of handling aircraft of a very sophisticated nature, and therefore the particular ministers my employer contacted relied totally on what he told them.”

“By sophisticated aircraft do you mean bombers?”

“Certainly bombers. And missiles and antimissile devices.”

“Were these of American make?”

“Absolutely. And much of the millions for the Daralam Airport came in the form of military aid from the United States.”

“To secure this contract did Ivory International make any payments to their Lalarheini consultant above his regular fees?”

“Yes, honorable sir. He received large sums that he passed on to the government ministers.”

Curt shook off Arthur Kohn’s restraining, long-fingered white hand, jumping to his feet. “That’s a lie! The Ivory representative in Lalarhein was and is Prince Fuad Abdulrahman, an American-trained engineer. He received only the routine payment for his services. And nothing above that!”

“Mr. Ivory,” Morrell chided.

“Will I have a chance to question this witness?”

“Mr. Ivory, let me reassure you that you aren’t on trial.”

“The hell I’m not! And I don’t care to be perjured or have my friends perjured.”

“Mr. Ivory, perjury is a strong word,” Morrell said.

“Not strong enough. The general told us Defense refuses to testify. So you’re going to rely on what this lying slime tells you.”

“It’s the committee’s task to sift through the evidence,” Morrell said. “Mr. Fish, you have
made a most serious charge. I trust that you have brought adequate documentation to back it up?”

“I have, in the specific case of the airport.” Fish’s plump fingers played with the gaudy lock of his new briefcase, and the lid sprang up. “These are copies of receipts that my employer wrote to Ivory International.” He took out a sheaf of clipped-together Xeroxes. “Shall I read them?”

Mrs. Hergesheimer said, “Please do.”

“‘I have duly received the one hundred thousand cans of peanuts—’”

“Peanuts?”

“It was code for dollars,” Fish retorted.

“Please continue.”

“Plus a landscape by a French painter called Sisley.”

Joscelyn was gulping now, forcing air into the passages to her lungs. That cold winter morning in the Place de la Concorde; she and Malcolm admiring the single exhibit in the exclusive gallery’s window, then going inside to ask the price. It had seemed one of the games that lovers play in Paris. But it hadn’t been.

Malcolm, oh, Malcolm, those boyish, clubby hints of your work on the airport contract turned out to be true. But you only wanted Curt to think you were a great guy, a real genius, not to destroy him.

“Here are other receipts.” Fish held up typed sheets. “They add up to more than five hundred thousand dollars, and are dated in the same
week of April 1965, a few months previous to the Lalarheini government’s approval of the Ivory designs for the airport.”

“Mr. Fish,” said Morrell benignly, “we have only your word for the documents’ authenticity.”

Fish said, “Mr. Ivory’s late brother-in-law, Mr. Malcolm Peck, wrote from Paris to my employer suggesting the French painting as a gift to one of the ministers.”

The exertion of breathing made Joscelyn’s blouse cling to her back, which had begun to itch again. Where had the money come from to buy Impressionists, to make payoffs?
The profit center
, she thought. Yes, the profit center had operated independently, with its own payroll. Malcolm, as a project manager, had complete charge of everything, including the cash flow. Khalid, even then considered by some of the fellahin to be the voice of the Prophet, must have convinced his followers to take jobs at very low wages so Malcolm would have large sums left over.

“Mr. Peck’s widow is here,” said Morrell. “Possibly she will verify the signature.”

“Leave her the hell alone,” Curt growled, again on his feet.

“Mr. Ivory, if you interrupt the proceedings again, you’ll be held in contempt of Congress. Mrs. Peck?”

“Miss Sylvander. I had it legally changed back.” Joscelyn’s words without amplification trickled out thin and high.

Cameramen edged forward, crouching and
kneeling to focus on Joscelyn. Sinking into wood still warm from Fish’s fat rump, she felt exposed, ugly and helpless. How had Curt borne this hour after hour?

“Miss Sylvander, will you examine the letter in question?” asked Congresswoman Hergesheimer after Joscelyn was shown in.

Joscelyn glanced at the yellowing, crumpled sheet, shivering as if her husband’s dead hand were touching her as she scanned the large, childish scrawl:
Do you think that X5 would respond to a small Sisley? If not, I’ll keep looking.

“Can you tell the committee if this is your late husband’s handwriting?” Again it was Hergesheimer.

“I’m an engineer, not a handwriting expert,” Joscelyn retorted, glaring not at the committee but at the elderly Congressional Recorder, who was clicking away to the left of the witness table.

“We appreciate that, Mrs. Peck—”

“Miss Sylvander,” Joscelyn corrected.

“I’m sorry, Miss Sylvander. The Committee realizes the evidence cannot be conclusive. Does this signature
appear
to be your late husband’s?”

“It has been many years.” Her voice shook. “I cannot say.”

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

Joscelyn had no idea how she got back to her seat. She did not hear Harold Fish say he had met Miss Sylvander, at that time Mrs. Peck, numerous times at her home in Lalarhein.

CBS and CNN televised Tuesday’s hearing in its entirety: ABC was running promo for a two-hour Sunday Special: “Northrop, Lockheed, Paloverde Oil and Ivory: the Overseas Scandals.” Lalarhein, last week unknown to nine hundred and ninety-nine Americans out of a thousand—and to the remaining soul a splotch on the map of the Persian Gulf—was suddenly a household word.
Time
ran a story on the Abdulrahman “dynasty.”
Two leaders have emerged. Prince Fuad, a Berkeley-trained engineer, intimate of Curt Ivory, is a pro-American liberal interested in educating his people. His nephew, Prince Khalid, is the
éminence grise
of the militaristic, Islamic fundamentalist radical wing.

Security was tightened. Guards patrolled the corridors and garage of the Rayburn Building: the entering swarms passed through metal detectors while Capitol police opened purses and briefcases. Lines formed outside the third-floor chamber where the Morrell Subcommittee met.

Wednesday morning, Fish again occupied the witness seat, opening his pristine briefcase to produce a photocopied receipt proving that Malcolm had paid for a safe deposit box in the Bank of Lalarhein.