The Touch of Innocents. Michael Dobbs

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СКАЧАТЬ the woman as breadbaker, not these endless arguments about where and when they might be able to meet and who should do what and screw whom.

      It was killing his self-esteem. Now it was on the point of killing his career.

      ‘Joe, we have a problem,’ Erskine Vandel, the president of Fox Avionics, pronounced in a manner which left not a shred of doubt that it was not he, but Michelini, who had the problem. They were in the presidential suite overlooking a wind-lashed Potomac, the early bite of winter adding exaggerated emphasis to the overcast atmosphere within the room. The president was seated in considerable pomp and splendour on one side of the desk, leaving the planning director stranded in space on the other, entombed in a chair that was deliberately four inches lower. It made Michelini feel uneasy, inferior, by design.

      ‘You know that the MP-Double-A means everything to this company,’ the president continued. ‘To you, Joe. To everyone else who works here. Without it we’re about as much use as a fart in a wind tunnel.’

      Vandel had a strong anal orientation – ‘I’m a seat-of-the-pants guy,’ he would explain to new female acquaintances. ‘You get no bullshit from me. Nothing but the real thing.’ Yet behind the foul mouth there was an astute technologically based mind which had managed to build one of the most successful component supply businesses in the military aviation industry. It was scarcely his fault that the industry itself was less than half its size of Cold War days and was threatened with being permanently grounded. ‘Know how to run a successful small business?’ he would offer to any Congressman within hearing. ‘Build a successful big business, like avionics. Then let the Government piss all over it.’

      ‘So we have this problem, you see, Joe.’

      Joe didn’t, not yet.

      ‘Wilbur Burns, that half-ass who owns WCN, has got it into his mind he wants to run for President. Not one of us, Joe. He’s the sort of moralizing bastard who’ll step out of the shower just to take a piss. Intends to use his station to trail his conscience like a stuck pig trailing guts and, so’s he can establish his credentials, wants to offer up a sacrifice. Us. The MP-Double-A. You. Me. The whole show. And all the while pretending that the funds needed to develop it will pay for the dreams and votes of every mother between here and hell. Horse shit,’ the president snapped.

      Like an affectionate father he began stroking a gold-plated model of the Duster which occupied pride of place on a desk top littered with executive toys and silver-framed portraits of his three daughters. ‘Joe, how long you been with this company?’

      The voice was softer now and Michelini felt the prickle of sweat beginning to foregather on what used to be his hairline. He’d entered difficult territory and did not yet know which way to jump.

      ‘Nearly twelve years,’ he muttered.

      ‘Eleven years and eight months on Friday,’ his president stated. ‘And in all that time no one has ever had cause to question your loyalty. Done a damn fine job for Fox Avionics. That’s why I made you planning director. Gave you a great salary and an expense account twice as big as my own. Surprised you haven’t put on even more weight than you have.’

      ‘I work it off. On your business,’ Michelini responded defensively.

      ‘Never any doubt. You kiss ass over on the Hill like those Senators have got mistletoe dangling from their belts, and get laid so frequently I sometimes think you must be running for President yourself. Eh, Joe?’ He started a laugh which echoed around the large office, but in return Michelini could offer only a taut smile.

      ‘Never any doubt, Joe.’ Vandel was leaning forward across his desk, the humour gradually subsiding. ‘Until now. Trouble is, there’ll be split loyalties. You here at Fox, and your wife the flavour of the month at WCN. Likely to get her own show soon, I understand.’

      ‘Crap!’ Michelini responded. ‘Erskine, there’s no way I would …’

      But already the president was waving down his protest.

      ‘Exactly what I said when some of the boys raised the matter with me. Capital K-R-A-P. Not old Joe, I said. But …’ He flapped his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘This is too big to take any chances. They said. WCN’s the opposition and we can’t afford the risk of having one of our top executives hanging out with them. Sleeping with the enemy. It’s not as if this is the sort of job you can leave behind in the office every night, it’s a twenty-five-hour-a-day commitment.’

      Michelini bit into his lip, angered. ‘If you know what’s going on at the station you’ll also know that my wife is currently based on the other side of the world. This is ludicrous.’

      ‘And every three weeks she flies back here for … well, I guess, a marital update?’ Vandel countered, trying for once not to take the coarse line before quickly abandoning the unfamiliar approach. ‘Shit, Joe, it’s not as if she’s just another one of your casual pick-ups you can fuck and forget. Chrissakes, she’s your wife.’

      Michelini began to laugh through his nose. A hollow, scornful sound. Pillow talk! They were worried about pillow talk! Hell, what was he going to tell them? That he and his wife hadn’t made love – had scarcely even slept together – since the moment she knew the second kid had been conceived. That the baby had been a last and desperate attempt by her to glue back the pieces of a marriage which had been falling apart. That it turned out to be a lovely baby, and a pathetic mistake. The marriage would never be put back together, and now there was an extra child to complicate matters.

      ‘You don’t need to worry, not about my wife,’ he said.

      ‘But I do, Joe, I do.’

      ‘I don’t even know where the hell she is. You do not need to worry. The chance of me and my wife having a meaningful conversation about anything other than the kids is absolute zero. Believe me.’

      And then he knew it for certain.

      ‘There’s something you should know, Erskine. Tomorrow I file for divorce.’ There. It was out. Already he felt better, in control. ‘From now on, the only talking me and my wife are going to do is through lawyers.’

      

      London was in for a meteorological mugging. Bursts of cold November rain from off the North Sea squabbled their way up the Thames estuary, annoying the seagulls and blowing them inland where they cartwheeled and complained before settling on the turbulent water, only to be disturbed once more by the river taxis forcing passage upstream against the ebb tide. The persistent rain had made the river angry; it scowled at the great city along its banks as it passed. A day for cancelling appointments, for crosswords, for drying out socks. A day when even Detroit seemed to have its attractions.

      In his new office overlooking the Thames, Paul Devereux sat content. While others had been battered by the changing winds, he had flourished. He had the gift which all politicians crave yet which is accorded only to the few, that of luck. Others might have his natural abilities, some of them might even work as assiduously, but none in the last few years had enjoyed the favours of the press and the preferment of the Prime Minister as had he. From insignificance to Secretary of State for Defence in less time than it had taken even his own father.

      He spun the ornate antique globe at his side, another Whitehall reminder of a bygone era with its profusion of exotic and extinct countries ablaze with the distinctive imperial red which coloured the old empire, the world of his stamp-collecting school-days. Gossip had it that this was the globe the private secretary had used to explain to СКАЧАТЬ