Windmills of the Gods (18 page)

Ionescu took Mary’s arm and led her off to a deserted corner. “You will find us Romanians interesting.” He squeezed her arm. “We are a very passionate people.” He looked at her for a reaction, and when he got none, he went on. “We are descendants of the ancient Dacians and their conquerors, the Romans, going back to the year
A.D.
106. For centuries, we have been Europe’s doormat. The country with rubber borders. The Huns, Goths, Avars, Slavs, and Mongols wiped their feet on us, but Romania survived. And do you know how?” He leaned closer to her, and she could smell the liquor on his breath. “By giving our people a strong, firm leadership. They trust me, and I rule them well.”

Mary thought of some of the stories she had heard. The arrests in the middle of the night, the kangaroo court, the atrocities, the disappearances.

As Ionescu went on talking, Mary looked over his shoulder at the people in the crowded room. There were at least two hundred, and Mary was sure they represented every embassy in Romania. She would meet them all soon. She had glanced at Harriet Kruger’s appointment list and was interested to see that one of her first duties would be to make a formal duty call on every one of the seventy-five embassies. In addition to that, there were the multiple cocktail parties and dinners scheduled for six nights of the week.

When am I going to have time to be an ambassador?
Mary wondered. And even as she thought it, she realized that all this was part of being an ambassador.

A man came up to President Ionescu and whispered in his ear. The expression on Ionescu’s face turned cold. He hissed something in Romanian, and the man nodded and hurried off. The dictator turned back to Mary, oozing charm again. “I must leave you now. I look forward to seeing you again soon.”

And Ionescu was gone.

To get a head start on the crowded days that faced her, Mary had Florian pick her up at six-thirty. During the ride to the embassy, she read the reports and communiques from other embassies that had been delivered to the residence during the night.

As Mary walked down the corridor of the embassy past Mike Slade’s office, she stopped in surprise. He was at his desk, working. He was unshaven. She wondered if he had been out all night.

“You’re in early,” Mary said.

He looked up. “Morning. I’d like to have a word with you.”

“All right.” She started to walk in.

“Not here. Your office.”

He followed Mary through the connecting door to her office, and she watched as he walked over to an instrument in the corner of the room. “This is a shredder,” Mike informed her.

“I know that.”

“Really? When you went out last night, you left some papers on top of your desk. By now they’ve been photographed and sent to Moscow.”

“Oh, my God! I must have forgotten. Which papers were they?”

“A list of cosmetics, toilet paper, and other personal feminine things you wanted to order. But that’s beside the point. The cleaning women work for the Securitate. The Romanians are grateful for every scrap of information they can get, and they’re great at putting things together. Lesson number one: At night everything must be locked in your safe or shredded.”

“What’s lesson number two?” Mary asked coldly.

Mike grinned. “The ambassador always starts the day by having coffee with her deputy chief of mission. How do you take yours?”

She had no desire to have coffee with this arrogant bastard. “I—black.”

“Good. You have to watch your figure around here. The food is fattening.” He rose and started toward the door that led to his office. “I make my own brew. You’ll like it.”

She sat there, furious with him.
I have to be careful how I handle him,
Mary decided.
I want him out of here as quickly as possible.

He returned with two steaming mugs of coffee and set them down on her desk.

“How do I arrange for Beth and Tim to start at the American school here?” Mary asked.

“I’ve already arranged it. Florian will deliver them mornings and pick them up afternoons.”

She was taken aback. “I—thank you.”

“You should take a look at the school when you get a chance. It’s small, about a hundred pupils. Each class has eight or nine students. They come from all over—Canadians,
Israelis, Nigerians—you name it. The teachers are excellent.”

“I’ll stop by there.”

Mike took a sip of his coffee. “I understand that you had a nice chat with our fearless leader last night.”

“President Ionescu? Yes. He seemed very pleasant.”

“Oh, he is. He’s a lovely fellow. Until he gets annoyed with somebody. Then he chops your head off.”

Mary said nervously, “Shouldn’t we talk about this in the Bubble Room?”

“Not necessary. I had your office swept for bugs this morning. It’s clean. After the janitors and cleaning people come in, then watch out. By the way, don’t let Ionescu’s charm fool you. He’s a dyed-in-the-wool son of a bitch. His people despise him, but there’s nothing they can do about it. The secret police are everywhere. It’s the KGB and police force wrapped into one. The general rule of thumb here is that one out of every three persons works for Securitate or the KGB. Romanians have orders not to have any contact with foreigners. If a foreigner wants to have dinner at a Romanian’s apartment, it has to be approved first by the state.”

Mary felt a shiver go through her.

“A Romanian can be arrested for signing a petition, criticizing the government, writing graffiti…”

Mary had read newspaper and magazine articles about repression in Communist countries, but living in the midst of it gave her a feeling of unreality.

“They do have trials here,” Mary said.

“Oh, occasionally they’ll have show trials, where reporters from the West are allowed to watch. But most of the people arrested manage to have fatal accidents while they’re in police custody. There are gulags in Romania that we’re not allowed to see. They’re in the Delta area, and in the Danube near the Black Sea. I’ve talked to people who have seen them. The conditions there are horrifying.”

“And there’s no place they can escape to,” Mary said, thinking aloud. “They have the Black Sea to the east, Bulgaria to the south, and Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia on their other borders. They’re right in the middle of the iron curtain.”

“Have you heard about the Typewriter Decree?”

“No.”

“It’s Ionescu’s latest brainstorm. He ordered every typewriter and copy machine in the country registered. As soon as they were registered, he had them confiscated. Now Ionescu controls all the information that’s disseminated. More coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

“Ionescu is squeezing the people where it hurts. They’re afraid to strike because they know they’ll be shot. The standard of living here is one of the lowest in Europe. There’s a shortage of everything. If the people see a line in front of a store, they’ll join in and buy whatever it is that’s for sale while they have the chance.”

“It seems to me,” Mary said slowly, “that all these things add up to a wonderful opportunity for us to help them.”

Mike Slade looked at her. “Sure,” he said, dryly. “Wonderful.”

As Mary was going through some newly arrived cables from Washington that afternoon, she thought about Mike Slade. He was a strange man. Arrogant and rude, and yet:
“I’ve arranged for the children’s school. Florian will deliver them mornings and pick them up afternoons.”
And he really seemed to care about the Romanian people and their problems.
He may be more complex than I thought,
Mary decided.

I still don’t trust him.

It was by sheer accident that Mary learned of the meetings going on behind her back. She had left the office to have lunch with the Romanian minister of agriculture. When she
arrived at the Ministry, she was told he had been called away by the President. Mary decided to return to the embassy and have a working lunch. She said to her secretary, “Tell Lucas Janklow, David Wallace, and Eddie Maltz that I would like to see them.”

Dorothy Stone hesitated. “They’re in a conference, ma’am.”

There was something evasive in her tone.

“In a conference with whom?”

Dorothy Stone took a deep breath. “With all the other consulars.”

It took a moment for it to sink in. “Are you saying that there’s a staff meeting going on without me?”

“Yes, Madam Ambassador.”

It was outrageous! “I gather that this isn’t the first time?”

“No, ma’am.”

“What else is going on here that I should know about and don’t?”

Dorothy Stone took a deep breath. “They’re all sending out cables without your authorization.”

Forget about a revolution brewing in Romania,
Mary thought.
There’s a revolution brewing right here in the embassy.
“Dorothy—call a meeting of all department heads for three o’clock this afternoon. That means
everybody.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mary was seated at the head of the table, watching as the staff entered the conference room. The senior members seated themselves at the conference table and the junior members took chairs against the wall.

“Good afternoon,” Mary said crisply. “I won’t take up much of your time. I know how busy you all are. It has come to my attention that senior-staff meetings have been called without my knowledge or sanction. From this moment on, anyone attending such a meeting will be instantly dismissed.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dorothy taking
notes. “It has also come to my attention that some of you are sending cables without informing me. According to State Department protocol, each ambassador has the right to hire and fire any member of the embassy staff at his or her discretion.” Mary turned to Ted Thompson, the agriculture consular. “Yesterday, you sent an unauthorized cable to the State Department. I’ve made reservations for you on a plane leaving for Washington at noon tomorrow. You are no longer a member of this embassy.” She looked around the room. “The next time anyone in this room sends a cable without my knowledge, or fails to give me full support, that person will be on the next plane back to the United States. That’s all, ladies and gentlemen.”

There was a stunned silence. Then, slowly, the people began to rise and file out of the room. There was an intrigued expression on Mike Slade’s face as he walked out.

Mary and Dorothy Stone were alone in the room. Mary said, “What do you think?”

Dorothy grinned. “Neat, but not gaudy. That’s the shortest and most effective staff meeting I’ve ever seen.”

“Good. Now it’s time to enlighten the cable office.”

All messages sent from embassies in Eastern Europe are encoded first. They are typed on a special typewriter, read by an electronic scanner in the code room, and automatically encoded there. The codes are changed every day and have five designations: Top Secret, Secret, Confidential, Limited Official Use, and Unclassified. The cable office itself, a barred, windowless back room filled with the latest electronic equipment, was closely guarded.

Sandy Palance, the officer in charge, was seated in the cable room behind a cage. He rose as Mary approached. “Good afternoon, Madam Ambassador. May I help you?”

“No. I’m going to help vow.”

There was a puzzled look on Palance’s face. “Ma’am?”

“You’ve been sending out cables without my signature. That means they’re unauthorized cables.”

He was suddenly defensive. “Well, the consulars told me that—”

“From now on, if you are asked by anyone to send a cable that does not have my signature on it, it is to be brought directly to me. Is that understood?” There was steel in her voice.

Palance thought:
Jesus! They sure had this one pegged wrong.
“Yes, ma’am. I understand.”

“Good.”

Mary turned and walked away. She knew that the cable room was used by the CIA to send messages through a “black channel.” There was no way she could stop that. She wondered how many members of the embassy were part of the CIA, and she wondered if Mike Slade had told her the whole truth about it. She had the feeling he had not.

That night, Mary made notes of the day’s events and jotted down the problems that needed to be acted upon. She put them at her bedside, on top of a small table. In the morning she went into the bathroom to shower. When she was dressed, she picked up her notes. They were in a different order.
You can be sure that the embassy and the residence are bugged.
Mary stood there for a moment thinking.

At breakfast, when she and Beth and Tim were alone in the dining room, Mary said in a loud voice, “The Romanians are such a wonderful people. But I have a feeling they’re far behind the United States in some ways. Did you know that a lot of the apartments our embassy staff live in have no heat or running water and that the toilets don’t work?” Beth and Tim were looking at her strangely. “I suppose we’ll have to teach the Romanians how to fix things like that.”

The following morning, Jerry Davis said, “I don’t know how you did it but there are workmen all over the place, fixing up our apartments.”

Mary grinned. “You just have to speak nicely to them.”

At the end of a staff meeting Mike Slade said, “You have a lot of embassies to pay your respects to. You’d better get started today.”

She resented his tone. Besides, it was none of his business; Harriet Kruger was the protocol officer, and she was away from the embassy for the day.

Mike went on, “It’s important that you call on the embassies according to priority. The most important—”

“—is the Russian embassy. I know that.”

“I would advise you—”

“Mr. Slade—if I need any advice from you about my duties here, I’ll let you know.”

Mike let out a deep sigh. “Right.” He rose. “Whatever you say, Madam Ambassador.”

After her visit to the Russian embassy, the rest of Mary’s day was taken up with interviews, a senator from New York who wanted inside information about dissidents, and a meeting with the new agriculture consular.

As Mary was about to leave the office, Dorothy Stone buzzed her and said, “There’s an urgent call for you, Madam Ambassador. James Stickley from Washington.”

Mary picked up the telephone. “Hello, Mr. Stickley.”

Stickley’s voice came burning over the wire. “Would you mind telling me what in God’s name you’re doing?”

“I—I don’t know what you mean.”

“
Obviously.
The secretary of state has just received a formal protest from the ambassador of Gabon about your behavior.”

“Just a minute!” Mary replied. “There’s some mistake. I haven’t even
talked
to the ambassador of Gabon.”

“Exactly,” Stickley snapped. “But you talked to the ambassador of the Soviet Union.”

“Well—yes. I made my courtesy call this morning.”

“Aren’t you aware that foreign embassies take precedence according to the date they presented their credentials?”

“Yes, but—”

“For your information, in Romania, Gabon is first, the Estonian embassy is last, and there are about seventy more embassies in between. Any questions?”

“No, sir. I’m sorry if I—”

“Please see that it doesn’t happen again.”

When Mike Slade heard the news, he came into Mary’s office. “I tried to tell you.”

“Mr. Slade—”

“They take things like that very seriously in the diplomacy business. As a matter of fact, in 1661 the attendants of the Spanish Ambassador in London attacked the French ambassador’s coach, killed the postilion, beat up the coachman, and hamstrung two horses just to make sure that the Spanish ambassador’s coach arrived first. I would suggest that you send a note of apology.”

Mary knew what she would be having for dinner.
Crow.

Mary was disturbed by the comments she kept hearing about the amount of publicity she and the children were getting.
There’s even been an article in
Pravda
with a picture of the three of you.

At midnight Mary placed a call to Stanton Rogers. He would just be getting into his office. He came onto the line immediately.