Kitabı oxu: «Soldier And The Society Girl»

Chapter One

“No,” said Lieutenant Derek McKenna.

He looked around the swank State Department corner office. The men he addressed hadn’t quite absorbed the word he had uttered, but their baffled expressions suggested their brains were working feverishly. Derek would be patient—after all, no wasn’t a word any of these men heard all that often.

Any right-thinking soldier would be scared to tell the gathering that he wasn’t going along with their carefully laid plans. Who was Derek McKenna to say no to the general at the helm of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two congressmen, several State Department officials and somebody from the White House who had been identified as the undersecretary of the undersecretary of the chairman of something that had been lost in the rush of handshakes and salutes that had started this meeting?

But Derek had spent two years in hell and wasn’t scared of a few suits or a chestful of medals.

“No,” Derek repeated, in case anyone in this room still didn’t get it.

They didn’t

Just stared at him, the congressmen from New York worrying a pencil with his teeth, a bubble of dribble erupting on the open mouth of the congressman from Arizona, the State Department official whose office this was rubbing his glasses on his tie.

“Did you say no, son?” the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asked.

“Yes, sir. I mean, that was a no, sir,” Derek said. And then he lifted his chin, challenging the general to disagree. He was going back to the farm. No more of this see-the-world, broaden-your-horizons, more-to-life-than-this for him.

Kentucky was just fine.

“I said no and, with all due respect, General, I meant it,” Derek said. He shoved the appointment calendar off his lap. An aide rushed to pick it up. “I’m not doing any of this.”

“But, soldier...”

“General, I didn’t dream every night in my prison cell about going on Barbara Walters or hitting the rubber chicken lecture circuit or even having dinner at the White House and getting a photo op with the first family. I didn’t dream of shaking hands, parades or even giving stump speeches to the League of Women Voters.”

Actually, Derek had spent most of his daydreams back in the green, lush fields of Kentucky. Planting and replanting in his head the plot of land that belonged to his father. Feeling the soft tender shoots in his hands. Smelling the heavy, damp air of morning. Hearing the cicadas’ nighttime mating call and the creak of the rocking chair on the front porch.

Sometimes his dreams had been so real, so fresh, so vibrant that he had thought the hellish prison cell was itself the dream and that he could awaken. A deep and brooding loneliness would overtake him when he would realize the truth. That he couldn’t awaken, he could only endure. And find a way out.

The fact that he was in Washington was proof enough to these men that he had indeed found a way out.

But Derek knew they were wrong.

And that’s why he had to say no.

“Besides,” Derek added, bringing out his trump card with a devilish smile. He had figured this one out about six months into his captivity. “General, you can’t tell me what to do because my enlistment expired while I was away.”

A bespectacled suit who had been seated in a folding chair next to the ficus plant pulled a yellow legal pad out of a briefcase.

“Joe Morris, Justice Department,” he introduced himself. “Lieutenant McKenna, a soldier may be called back to active duty or held back from a discharge under special circumstances.”

Morris glanced at his notes.

“The case of Green versus Grant is most instructive on this point,” he said. “And I’ll just read you a quote from the Supreme Court opinion. Justice Thomas, writing on behalf of the court, states that—”

“I don’t think we need the legal mumbo jumbo at this point,” the general interrupted. Joe Morris looked crestfallen, having lost his moment to show off what he had produced in a week of research into legal lore. “Just give us the bottom line.”

“The bottom line, sir?”

“Yes, the special circumstances.”

Morris swallowed and then looked at Derek.

“All it takes is a request from the President to reinstate you, Lieutenant. And he can actually reactivate the request repeatedly, for as long as he feels that your services are required for the national interest. In other words, as the Supreme Court stated—”

“Get the President on the phone,” the general told his aide, slyly adding another cube of sugar to his coffee.

Derek lifted his hand. The aide hesitated, a slim, manicured hand held aloft at the phone.

“All right, fine, I’ll give you two weeks if you don’t call,” he said.

“Three months,” the general countered.

“A month.”

“All right, a month, but we’re going to shuffle this schedule so that it’s heavy. Very heavy. That means appearances every day.”

Winston leaned his head back and signaled to his aide.

“Get an alternate schedule produced stat.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll have it by tomorrow, sir.”

“No, you’ll sit down at my desk right now and put it together while we wait. A month divided into three-hour appearances, four a day, comes out to...”

“Fairchild, even combat soldiers get some rotation time,” Derek said.

“This isn’t war,” the general said archly. “This is a pleasure.”

“A pleasure in which I’m not so sure I want to indulge,” Derek said, leaning back in the comfortable pillows on the couch. He lifted his boots, noting with joyful mischief that they carried just a few drops of tar from the recently repaved streets of Washington. “I’m willing to start next week.”

“Tomorrow, soldier.”

“Three days from now.”

“Hey!” Winston exclaimed. “You can’t put your feet there. That table was purchased by the wife of Martin Van Buren! It’s a national treasure.”

The upper-floor offices of the drably modern State Department building had been recently refurbished with elegant furniture, rugs, paintings and fixtures from the early 1800s.

Derek crossed his boots comfortably on the priceless table. A globule of tar was dislodged from the sole of his right boot and dropped onto the leather writing pad of the congressman from Arizona before he could snatch it away. Ignoring the elected official’s distress, Derek snagged a soda can from a hospitality tray next to the couch.

“Can I borrow your pen?” he asked the Justice Department lawyer. Joe Morris held out a Mont Blanc.

“My mother gave it to me as a graduation present,” he explained.

Derek rejected it in favor of a disposable ballpoint in the hands of the undersecretary.

He turned the pop can over and stabbed the pen’s point into its bottom. Then, holding the can aloft so that the tab was scant inches from his open mouth, he popped it open and removed the pen. The soda shot downward in a violent stream. Derek’s Adam’s apple bobbed only five times as he swallowed the entire contents of the can.

He had had two years to practice this chugging method, learned in college but then fallen into disuse. But the Iraqis love American colas and chess. Coached by his men, Derek had become a master of the latter in order to bargain for the former. He and his men had been living on sodas, smuggled-in food and a strong solidarity. The small pleasures and fun they created daily had been their salvation in a hell that civilization forgot.

Still, he could be a gentleman if he wanted.

But for his purposes, being a gentleman didn’t suit.

After emptying the can, he put it on the hospitality tray. He returned the pen.

And then he let loose a burp.

Not a grotesque burp, but loud, clearly satisfying and utterly unrepentant.

“Mr. Fairchild, are you sure you want me to continue working on this calendar?” the aide said.

Her words hung in the air. Winston stared in horror. Derek shifted his crossed legs just a bit so that another drop of Washington street tar divebombed onto Mrs. Martin Van Buren’s precious coffee table.

“Don’t you think it would be a mistake to send me anywhere?” he asked, letting loose another burp. Resisting the urge to put his hand over his mouth.

“General, maybe this isn’t such a good idea. After all, he’s not housebroken,” the representative from Arizona pointed out. “He could do anything out there.”

“I could,” Derek agreed and burped for emphasis.

“He does that once on Larry King Live and we’ve got a real situation,” the undersecretary said.

The congressman from New York gnawed at his pencil.

The general glared at Derek, willing him into an embarrassed apology.

“Soldier,” he warned.

“General,” Winston Fairchild said, leaning forward in his seat. “If I might offer a possible solution...”

“What?” the general snarled.

“Call Protocol,” Winston said to his aide. “Get Chessey Banks Bailey on the phone. Gentleman, this man needs the functional equivalent of Mary Poppins.”

On the other side of the building, in a basement office of an annex to an annex with a single six-inch-square dusty window near its ceiling, Chessey Banks Bailey arranged ten linen envelopes on her gunmetal government-issue desk. Each proper and perfect envelope had her name on it, and each one posed a problem.

Chessey was a Banks Bailey of the Banks Baileys whose ancestors crossed over on the Mayflower, the same Baileys that had made a fortune in diamonds or furs or maybe it was farming—but it was so far in the past that no one could remember. However, the family members were pleased with the way their money doubled and tripled and quadrupled over the years. Banks Bailey women appeared regularly in the pages of Town & Country . Their husbands were featured in Forbes and Fortune. Their homes in House Beautiful and their pets in Pedigree.

It would have been a surprise to the columnists of any of these papers to learn that none of the Banks Bailey money had ended up in Chessey’s purse.

The linen envelopes were this June’s invitations to family weddings and christenings and dinner parties. For each and every one of them, Chessey would come up with something to wear and something to give. The former was not too much of a problem, because her cousins were quite generous about last year’s clothes. Although the Chanel suits and dresses by Dior ran short because Chessey inherited her legs from her mother, Chessey kept these hand-me-downs neatly mended and pressed. She was quite confident that she’d manage to have something appropriate to wear for every occasion she was duty-bound to attend.

The second problem, what to give, was more daunting. Her cousins had, in quite rapid succession upon reaching their twenties, married men of highly developed pedigrees and portfolios. Chessey was always thrilled by love matches and considered the fact that every cousin had married a millionaire a wondrous statistical oddity. Still, weddings required a gift and millionaires marrying Baileys expected more than a toaster from the local housewares store. And christenings—well, something engraved was always nice. She snuck a peek at her checking account balance.

In a toss-up between eating and presents, she’d pick presents. Besides, she could always make up for her choices by eating well at the parties. She made a list of the RSVP’s she’d have to return, the presents to select and the times of all these events.

She picked up her phone on its first ring. “Good morning, Chessey Banks Bailey, Protocol.”

“Get up to the eighth floor, stat,” a voice snarled and then hung up without waiting for a reply.

She recognized the trademark charm of her boss’s aide.

“Good morning to you, too,” she said to the dial tone. “I’m just fine, and how are you?”

She put down the phone.

A summons to Winston Fairchild’s office. She made a quick check of her lipstick, satisfied that none of it had ended up on her teeth. Then she grabbed her briefcase, on impulse throwing in her clutch purse.

Winston Fairchild III. Everything a woman could want in a man. Intelligent, refined, cultured. A Harvard graduate. Distinguished family. He was exactly the kind of man her family would welcome for Sunday dinners, holiday weekends. So suitable that she might even be considered a normal Banks Bailey were he escorting her. Even her grandmother had asked her why she didn’t invite him to the family compound.

Chessey allowed herself the briefest of fantasies. A fantasy involving classical music, reading the hefty Sunday New York Times together, drinking cappuccino.

Completely unattainable, Chessey concluded, knowing that she was not like any other Banks Bailey cousin and therefore Winston Fairchild had a habit of looking at a point just above her head, far, far away, whenever they passed each other in the hallway.

Chessey knocked first on the wood paneled door and, on hearing a vague response, entered the corner office. She had only been summoned once before, two years ago for Winston Fairchild III’s one-minute “glad to have you on board at the State Department, fill out your withholding form at my secretary’s desk” talk. She noted that the ficus in the enamel planter still looked dead.

The office was more crowded than she remembered.

The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two congressmen and a Defense Department undersecretary. Chessey quickly recovered from her gee-whiz reflex. She held out a slim, manicured hand to introduce herself to the general, Winston having conceded the duty with a vague you-know-everyone-here wave.

As she exchanged introductions with the New York representative, she saw what looked to be a circus performer with his feet up on the table.

He slouched against the cushions of the chintz couch and reared his head back to catch the peanuts he threw in the air. He never missed. After four such dazzling feats, while explaining to the horrified congressman from Arizona that he once did this two hundred times in a row, the performer did a double take in her direction. A peanut landed in his lap.

He was breathtakingly handsome—but only if you went in for strong, primitive types. The kind with hard, square jaws. Frankly appraising blue eyes. Sharply defined muscles. Coarse, callused hands. Incongruously boyish smiles.

Which Chessey didn’t.

She stood a little closer to Winston, whose scent was familiar because she had smelled it just the day before on a scent strip in Town & Country magazine.

“I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you,” she said, holding out her right hand to the stranger. “Chessey Banks Bailey.”

Rather than shake, he gave her the once-over—twice—and then howled.

“Whooee! I knew there was something I’ve been missing for the past two years!”

His words were delivered with an inappropriate leer. Chessey bristled and then gaped first in reproach and then astonishment.

“You’re Lieutenant Derek McKenna!” she exclaimed.

“One and the same, darlin’,” he said. He uncrossed his ankles, dropped his boots to the floor and rose to take her into his arms.

Before she could marshal a protest, he kissed her. Full on the lips, enduring her small fists against his chest as he would an annoying but helpless fly. His mouth possessed hers, claimed her as the spoils of a conquering hero and when he abruptly let her go, she felt strangely bereft, as if she were a doll cherished and then discarded by a child.

She steadied herself with a hand on the back of the wing chair in which Winston sat.

If she had been given time enough to hope that Winston would come to her aid with gentlemanly rebuke, she was to be disappointed.

He said nothing.

Kisses like this didn’t happen to Baileys.

Nor, she would suspect, to Fairchilds.

She wondered if Winston might harbor the ridiculous notion that she had provoked the lieutenant. If she were at fault for this appalling behavior. The other men were shocked—shocked!—but they gave her no mind. Indeed, their eyes followed Derek, who sprawled on the couch.

Winston, on the other hand, shook his head disapprovingly.

“Totally untrainable,” Lieutenant McKenna announced. “Not suitable for American audiences. Bound to cause more trouble than I’m worth.”

“Soldier,” the general said sternly.

Chessey touched her chest to still her galloping heart. Shock was being replaced with outrage, outrage that was all the more potent because it contained the niggling iota of attraction. McKenna barely noticed her, which made her outrage spiral upward like a tornado.

He had no right, no right at all!

“You don’t want me, General,” Derek pleaded. “First time I land a kiss like that on a Junior League matron, you’ll have to hide your head in shame for having set me loose.”

“Soldier,” the general repeated. “I’ve had enough of this nonsense.”

“I’m telling you, send me home,” McKenna said, with enough pleading in his voice that some of the men looked at their shoes, a single spark of decency within them realizing the unfairness of asking a man who had given so much for his country to simply do more.

And Chessey’s outrage deflated into a puddle of bewildered pity. He was clearly suffering. A man in pain. All that he went through... Whether from some kind of posttraumatic disorder or the simple and honest longing homesickness, he simply wasn’t in possession of his senses.

But he kissed me! Her outrage whimpered. He humiliated me in front of these men! And in front of Winston!

The general nodded in her direction.

“Ms. Banks Bailey, you deserve an apology for that behavior,” he said. “But I suspect this soldier isn’t going to give it to you. So I will. I am very sorry. He’s acting like a savage.”

“That’s why we need Chessey,” Winston said.

Need me? Chessey sat on the oak captain’s chair beside Winston. He handed her a briefing folder. The aide behind the desk passed her a calendar covered with pencil scribbles.