Windmills of the Gods (19 page)

“How’s my favorite ambassador?”

“I’m fine. How are you, Stan?”

“Aside from a forty-eight-hour-a-day schedule, I can’t complain. As a matter of fact, I’m enjoying every minute of it. How are you getting along? Any problems I can help you with?”

“It’s not a problem, really. It’s just something that I’m curious about.” She hesitated, trying to phrase it so he would not misunderstand. “I presume you saw the photograph of the children and me in
Pravda
last week?”

“Yes, it’s wonderful!” Stanton Rogers exclaimed. “We’re finally getting through to them.”

“Do other ambassadors get as much publicity as I’ve been getting, Stan?”

“Frankly, no. But the boss decided to go all out with you, Mary. You’re our showcase. President Ellison meant it when he said he was looking for the opposite of the ugly American. We’ve got you and we intend to flaunt you. We want the whole world to get a good look at the best of our country.”

“I—I’m really flattered.”

“Keep up the good work.”

They exchanged pleasantries for a few more minutes and said good-bye.

So it’s the President who’s behind this buildup,
Mary thought.
No wonder he’s been able to arrange so much publicity.

The inside of the Ivan Stelian Prison was even more forbidding than its exterior. The corridors were narrow, painted a dull gray. There was a jungle of crowded, black-barred cells downstairs and on an upper tier, patrolled by uniformed guards armed with machine guns. The stench in the crowded cell area was overpowering.

A guard led Mary to a small visitor’s room at the rear of the prison.

“She’s in there. You have ten minutes.”

“Thank you.” Mary stepped inside the room, and the door closed behind her.

Hannah Murphy was seated at a small, battle-scarred table. She was handcuffed and wearing prison garb. Eddie Maltz had referred to her as a pretty nineteen-year-old student. She looked ten years older. Her face was pale and gaunt, and her eyes were red and swollen. Her hair was uncombed.

“Hi,” Mary said. “I’m the American ambassador.”

Hannah Murphy looked at her and began to sob uncontrollably.

Mary put her arms around her and said, soothingly, “Sh! It’s going to be all right.”

“N-no it’s not,” the girl moaned. “I’m going to be sentenced next week. I’ll die if I have to stay in this place five years. I’ll die!”

Mary held her for a moment. “All right, tell me what happened.”

Hannah Murphy took a deep breath, and after a few moments she said, “I met this man—he was a Romanian—and I was lonely. He was nice to me and we—we made love. A girl friend had given me a couple of sticks of marijuana. I shared one with him. We made love again and I went to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, he was gone, but the police were there. I was naked. They—they stood around watching me get dressed and they brought me to this hellhole.” She shook her head helplessly. “They told me five years.”

“Not if I can help it.”

Mary thought of what Lucas Janklow had said to her as she was leaving for the prison.
“There’s nothing you can do for her, Madam Ambassador. We’ve tried before. A five-year sentence for a foreigner is standard. If she were a Romanian, they’d probably give her life.”

Now Mary looked at Hannah Murphy and said, “I’ll do everything in my power to help you.”

Mary had examined the official police report on Hannah Murphy’s arrest. It was signed by Captain Aurel Istrase, head of Securitate. It was brief and unhelpful, but there was no doubt of the girl’s guilt.
I’ll have to find another way,
Mary thought.
Aurel Istrase.
The name had a familiar ring. She thought back to the confidential dossier James Stickley had showed her in Washington. There had been something in there about Captain Istrase. Something about—She remembered.

Mary arranged to have a meeting with the captain the following morning.

“You’re wasting your time,” Mike Slade told her bluntly. “Istrase is a mountain. He can’t be moved.”

Aurel Istrase was a short, swarthy man with a scarred face, a shiny, bald head, and stained teeth. Earlier in his career, someone had broken his nose, and it had failed to heal properly. Istrase had come to the embassy for the meeting. He was curious about the new American ambassador.

“You wished to talk to me, Madam Ambassador?”

“Yes. Thank you for coming. I want to discuss the case of Hannah Murphy.”

“Ah, yes. The drug peddler. In Romania, we have strict laws about people who sell drugs. They go to jail.”

“Excellent,” Mary said. “I’m pleased to hear that. I wish we had stricter drug laws in the United States.”

Istrase was watching her, puzzled. “Then you agree with me?”

“Absolutely. Anyone who sells drugs deserves jail. Hannah Murphy, however, did not sell drugs. She offered to
give
some marijuana to her lover.”

“It is the same thing. If—”

“Not quite, Captain. Her lover was a lieutenant on your police force. He smoked marijuana too. Has he been punished?”

“Why should he be? He was merely gathering evidence of a criminal act.”

“Your lieutenant has a wife and three children?”

Captain Istrase frowned. “Yes, of course. The American girl tricked him into bed.”

“Captain—Hannah Murphy is a nineteen-year-old college student. Your lieutenant is forty-five. Now who tricked whom?”

“Age has nothing to do with this,” the captain said stubbornly.

“Does the lieutenant’s wife know about her husband’s affair?”

Captain Istrase stared at her. “Why should she?”

“Because it sounds to me like a clear case of entrapment. I think we had better make this whole thing public. The international press will be fascinated.”

“There would be no point to that,” he said.

She sprang her ace. “Because the lieutenant happens to be your son-in-law?”

“Certainly not!” the captain said angrily. “I just want to see justice done.”

“So do I,” Mary assured him.

According to the dossier she had seen, the son-in-law specialized in making the acquaintance of young tourists—male or female—sleeping with them, suggesting places where they could trade in the black market or buy dope, and then turning them in.

Mary said in a conciliatory tone, “I see no need for your daughter to know how her husband conducts himself. I think it would be much better for all concerned if you quietly released Hannah Murphy from jail and I shipped her back to the States. What do you say, Captain?”

He sat there, fuming, thinking it over. “You are a very interesting lady,” he said finally.

“Thank you. You’re a very interesting man. I’ll expect Miss Murphy in my office this afternoon. I’ll see that she’s put on the first plane out of Bucharest.”

He shrugged. “I will use what little influence I have.”

“I’m sure you will, Captain Istrase. Thank you.”

The following morning a grateful Hannah Murphy was on her way home.

“How did you do it?” Mike Slade asked, unbelievingly.

“I followed your advice. I charmed him.”

The day Beth and Tim were to start school, Mary got a call at five
A.M.
from the embassy that a NIACT—a night action cable—had come in and required an immediate answer. It was the start of a long and busy day, and by the time Mary returned to the residence, it was after seven
P.M.
The children were waiting for her.

“Well,” Mary asked, “how was school?”

“I like it,” Beth replied. “Did you know there are kids there from twenty-two different countries? This neat Italian boy kept staring at me all through class. It’s a great school.”

“They’ve got a keen science laboratory,” Tim added. “Tomorrow we’re going to take some Romanian frogs apart.”

“It’s so weird,” Beth said. “They all speak English with such funny accents.”

“Just remember,” Mary told the children, “when someone has an accent, it means that he knows one more language than you do. Well, I’m glad you had no problems.”

Beth said, “No. Mike took care of us.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Slade. He told us to call him Mike.”

“What does Mike Slade have to do with your going to school?”

“Didn’t he tell you? He picked us up and drove Tim and me there and took us in and introduced us to our teachers. He knows them all.”

“He knows a lot of kids there too,” Tim said. “And he introduced us to them. Everybody likes him. He’s a neat guy.”

A little too neat,
Mary thought.

The following morning when Mike walked into Mary’s office, she said, “I understand that you took Beth and Tim to school.”

He nodded. “It’s tough for youngsters trying to adjust in a foreign country. They’re good kids.”

Did he have children? Mary suddenly realized how little she knew about Mike Slade’s personal life.
It’s probably better that way,
she decided.
He intends to see that I fail.

She intended to succeed.

Saturday afternoon Mary took the children to the private Diplomatic Club, where members of the diplomatic community gathered to exchange gossip.

As Mary looked across the patio, she saw Mike Slade having a drink with someone, and when the woman turned, Mary realized that it was Dorothy Stone. Mary felt a momentary shock. It was as though her secretary were collaborating with the enemy. She wondered how close Dorothy and Mike Slade were.
I must be careful not to trust her too much,
Mary thought.
Or anyone.

Harriet Kruger was seated at a table alone. Mary walked over. “Do you mind if I join you?”

“I’d be delighted.” Harriet pulled out a package of American cigarettes. “Cigarette?”

“Thank you, no. I don’t smoke.”

“A person can’t live in this country without cigarettes,” Harriet said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Kent soft packs make the economy go around. I mean—literally. If you want to see a doctor, you give the nurse cigarettes. If you want meat from the butcher, or a mechanic to fix your automobile, an electrician to fix a lamp—you bribe them with cigarettes. I had an Italian friend who needed a small operation. She had to bribe the nurse in charge to use a new razor blade when she prepped her, and she had to bribe the other nurses to put on clean bandages after they had cleansed the wounds, instead of using all the old bandages again.”

“But why—?”

Harriet Kruger said, “This country’s short on bandages, and every kind of medication you can name. It’s the same everywhere in the Eastern bloc. Last month there was a plague of botulism in East Germany. They had to get all their antiserum from the West.”

“And the people have no way of complaining,” Mary commented.

“Oh, they have their ways. Haven’t you heard of Bula?”

“No.”

“He’s a mythical character the Romanians use to let off steam. There’s a story about people standing in line for meat one day and the line was barely moving. After five hours, Bula gets mad and says, ‘I’m going over to the palace and kill Ionescu!’ Two hours later, he comes back to the line and his friends ask, ‘What happened—did you kill him?’ Bula says, ‘No. There was a long line there too.’”

Mary laughed.

Harriet Kruger said, “Do you know what one of the biggest black-market items here is? Videocassettes of our TV shows.”

“They like to watch our movies?”

“No, it’s the commercials they’re interested in. All the things we take for granted—washing machines, vacuum cleaners, automobiles—those things are out of their reach. They’re fascinated by them. When the movie starts again, they go to the john.”

Mary looked up in time to see Mike Slade and Dorothy Stone leave the club. She wondered where they were going.

When Mary came home at night after a hard, long day at the embassy, all she wanted to do was bathe and change clothes and shed the day. At the embassy every minute seemed to be filled, and she never had any time to herself. But she soon found that the residence was just as bad. Wherever Mary went, there were the servants, and she had the uncomfortable feeling they were constantly spying on her.

Late one night she got up at two
A.M.
and went downstairs to the kitchen. As she opened the refrigerator, she heard a noise. She turned around, and Mihai, the butler, in his robe, and Rosica, Delia, and Carmen were standing there.

“What can I get you, Madam?” Mihai asked.

“Nothing,” Mary said. “I just wanted a little something to eat.”

Cosma, the chef, came in and said in a hurt voice, “All Madam had to do was tell me she was hungry and I would have prepared something.”

They were staring at her reprovingly.

“I don’t think I’m really hungry. Thank you.” And she fled back to her room.

The next day she told the children what had happened. “Do you know,” she said to Tim and Beth, “I felt like the second wife in
Rebecca
!”

“What’s
Rebecca
?” Beth asked.

“It’s a lovely book you’ll read one day.”

When Mary walked into her office, Mike Slade was waiting for her.

“We have a sick kid you’d better take a look at,” he said.

He led her to one of the small offices down the corridor. On the couch was a white-faced young marine, groaning in pain.

“What happened?” Mary asked.

“My guess is appendicitis.”

“Then we’d better get him to a hospital right away.”

Mike turned and looked at her. “Not here.”

“What do you mean?”

“He has to be flown either to Rome or Zurich.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Mary snapped. She had lowered her voice so the boy would not hear. “Can’t you see how sick he is?”

“Ridiculous or not, no one from an American embassy ever goes to a hospital in an iron curtain country.”

“But why?”

“Because we’re vulnerable. We’d be at the mercy of the Romanian government and the Securitate. We could be put under ether, or given scopalomine—they could extract all kinds of information from us. It’s a State Department rule—we fly him out.”

“Why doesn’t our embassy have its own doctor?”

“Because we’re a ‘C category embassy. We haven’t the budget for our own doctor. An American doctor pays us a visit here once every three months. In the meantime, we have a pharmacist for minor aches and pains.” Mike walked over to a desk and picked up a piece of paper. “Just sign this, and he’s on his way. I’ll arrange for a special plane to fly him out.”

“Very well.” Mary signed the paper. She walked over to the young marine and took his hand in hers. “You’re going to be fine,” she said softly. “Just fine.”

Two hours later, the marine was on a plane to Zurich.

The following morning when Mary asked Mike how the young marine was, he shrugged. “They operated,” he said indifferently. “He’ll be all right.”

What a cold man,
Mary thought.
I wonder if anything ever touches him,