The Seersucker Whipsaw (6 page)

“You have a considerable reputation in your country, Mr. Shartelle,” Chief Akomolo told him. “My personal aide, Chief Dekko, has done a good measure of research on you. Some of your experiences are to be envied.”

Shartelle gave a courtly half-bow. “I am glad that you went to the effort to examine my credentials, sir.”

The Chief smiled. “It was not because I do not believe my good friend, Padraic, I assure you. He spoke most highly of you and your capabilities. It is only that in an undertaking of such import, I must know my allies and their capabilities. For you see, Mr. Shartelle, I consider myself not a statesman, but more of a politician. As a statesman, I could afford to make mistakes. As a politician, I cannot.”

“A fine distinction, and one which has the ring of experience,” Shartelle said. He walked over to Dekko and offered his hand. “I'm Clint Shartelle, Chief,” he said and gave the huge young man the Shartelle smile.

Dekko's impassive face did not change. He shook hands with Shartelle and made a small bow. “I am honored.”

“Now, then, everybody's met everybody,” Duffy said. “Shall we have a drink before lunch?”

Chief Akomolo smiled. “You know my preference, Padraic.”

“Lemon squash. Right?” The Chief nodded.

“You, Chief Dekko?”

“Bristol Cream sherry, if you have it.”

Padraic gave him a speculative glance. “Bristol Cream, of course.” There was no tone in Duffy's voice. It was just that the young man had made a mistake. He suddenly knew it and almost lost his placid expression.

“How about you, Clint? Martini?”

“Bristol Cream sherry,” Shartelle said blandly.

Before my better nature took over, I said: “Martini on the rocks. Make it a double.”

Duffy pushed a button and the agency waiter came in and took the drink orders. We stood in a group talking about the English weather and about the weather in Albertia. Duffy told us of his success in raising Poland China pigs and Chief Akomolo expressed interest in the possibility of raising heat-resisting Brahma cattle in Albertia.

“We drive our cattle four hundred miles down from the north to the abattoirs of the south. Many of them die along the way. All of them lose weight.”

“How many head in a drive usually?” Shartelle asked.

“Five hundred to a thousand.”

“And you walk them?”

“Yes, along the roads. It causes a traffic hazard, the cattle get sick, the drovers desert. It is a very haphazard business. We should come up with a new program.”

They talked on and I listened. It was much like the talk at the pre-luncheon session of the Lion's Club on Wednesday. The Chief talked about his country's economic problems, particularly the cocoa crop. Duffy talked about the eccentricities of a rival's client. Shartelle commented here and there, but spent most of his time in an unobtrusive study of Chief Akomolo.

After the lemon squash, and the Bristol Creams, and the martini we sat down to lunch at the round table. Duffy sat on the Chief's right; Shartelle on his left. The Chief sighed appreciatively as the bowl of groundnut broth was placed before him.

“Your thoughtfulness is sometimes overwhelming, Padraic.”

Duffy smiled. “I thought you might be growing weary of English cooking.”

“Not only of their cooking, but of the English themselves,” the Chief said. “In my heart, I try not to hate them. I try to live by the teachings of the Savior and my Baptist upbringing. Yet they are a cold people, Padraic, cold and unfeeling and vengeful. For three days now I have tried to get this matter of cocoa exports resolved, and for three days I have been going around and around in bureaucratic circles.”

“If I can be of any help—” Duffy began the offer, but was cut off by a wave of the Chief's hand.

“You have done too much already. No, they must learn that I am no small boy. When we deal with the top, we have no difficulty. It is only with the minor functionaries that I run into this wall of veiled contempt and bureaucratic inefficiency. ‘Of course, Chief Akomolo,'” he mimicked, “‘what you seek does require a certain amount of time.' That's what they fail to understand. That I have no time. That right now time is my most precious commodity.”

The waiter came in and removed the soup bowls. He brought in a large covered serving dish of silver, placed it in the center of the table, and removed its lid with a flourish. The chief's eyes sparkled behind the gold rims. “Padraic! Curried chicken.” He reached for the serving spoon and dumped a large portion on his plate, and began to eat hungrily, making small animal grunts and smacking his lips in appreciation. Dollops of brown grease and gravy spattered his blue
ordona
. Each of us served ourselves. I spooned a small portion onto my plate. As far as I was concerned it was paella with Tabasco Sauce. I shoved it around on my plate some and kept on drinking my martini, congratulating myself on the foresight that had caused me to order a double. Shartelle took a bite, chewed and swallowed. His mouth opened slightly and he reached for a glass of water. They had put all the peppers in. Duffy ate as hungrily as the Albertians. I decided he had no taste buds. Shartelle, I noticed, joined me in shoving his food back and forth across his plate.

The Chief mopped up the last morsel with a piece of bread, popped it into his mouth, and wiped his fingers on the table cloth. His napkin lay unused by his plate. He stretched and yawned hugely. “That was excellent, Padraic. Who cooked it?”

“A student at London University. From Albertia, of course.”

The Chief nodded his head. “Of course. The seasoning was just right. Did you enjoy it, Mr. Shartelle?”

“It has a distinct flavor, sir,” Shartelle said and smiled.

Duffy passed around cigars but nobody took one. The waiter brought coffee.

“Tell me, Mr. Shartelle, did you know the late President Kennedy?”

Shartelle nodded. “I knew him.”

“How well?”

The white-haired man smiled. “Well enough to call him Jack when he was a junior Congressman, Senator when he was Senator, and Mr. President when he was President.”

“Did you work for him in any of his campaigns?”

“Just in the Presidential, but I was more concerned with a Senator and a couple of Congressmen. I worked against him in 1956 at the convention when he went after the Vice- Presidential nomination. I was working with Kefauver.”

“He is dead now, too, isn't he?”

“Yes.”

“Did President Kennedy hold any animosity towards you for working for Mr. Kefauver?”

“A little, but he got over it. After Kefauver won the nomination, Kennedy came to see me. He said, ‘I could have had it with your Western states, Clint. I'll remember to look you up next time around.'”

“And did he?”

“He looked me up six months later, right after the election. We came to an understanding.”

“I am a great admirer of his. He represented the best of our times and of what your country has to offer. He was one of the few men from whom one could honestly say that one drew inspiration. His death was a personal sorrow to me.”

“It was to a great many,” Shartelle said. “He had the magic they were all looking for. Good magic.”

“Since you are an admirer of Mr. Kennedy, and since you knew him, perhaps you could explain something that has long been puzzling me?”

“I'll try.”

“Why wasn't Johnson arrested?”

Shartelle had his cup almost to his lips. He put it down carefully. “I beg your pardon, Chief?”

“What I'm saying is why wasn't Johnson immediately arrested after the assassination? He was obviously the one who would benefit from Kennedy's death. His arrest, it seems to me, should have been a matter of course.”

“By whom?”

“By your FBI and your Mr. Hoover,” Chief Akomolo said. “Perhaps in conjunction with your military.”

“You're not saying it was a plot on Johnson's part, are you?” Shartelle asked, gazing at Chief Akomolo with what seemed to be delight and admiration.

“Not at all. I'm just saying if I had been in your Mr. Hoover's shoes I would have clapped some chaps in jail—Johnson, your Mr. MacNamara, Rusk, perhaps the entire Cabinet.
I
would have
suspected
something and
I
certainly would have acted.”

“But the Vice-President becomes President upon the death of the holder of office,” Shartelle said.

“Exactly, and who's to say that Johnson didn't hire this Oswald? After all it happened in his home state of Texas. That is enough of a coincidence to arouse the suspicions of even the most naïve mind, Mr. Shartelle.”

Shartelle gazed at the African with open admiration, a wide white grin on his face. “Chief,” he said, “you and me are going to get along just fine. Yes, sir,” he said and nodded his head, still smiling. “Just fine.”

Chapter

5

Albertia is shaped like a funnel and its spout is Barkandu, the capital city. Along the thirty-three-mile strip that forms its claim to the sea are some of the finest white sand beaches in the world and some of the most treacherous undertows. In the middle of the strip of sand is a natural deep sea harbor that divides the city geographically and economically. To the north, towards the interior, are the city's fifty square miles of squalor where the Albertians live on their ninety-sixdollar-a-year average incomes. To the south are the broad boulevards, the neat green lawns, the Consulates, office buildings, hotels (there were four good ones that year), night clubs, foreign-owned shops, department stores, and the Yacht Club.

The site of the Yacht Club was, in the early nineteenth century, the makeshift dock from which a busy slave trade loaded its cargo. The British put an end to the trade—legal trade, anyway—in 1842. The dock fell into disrepair until 1923 when the Yacht Club was built. There were no yachts then, but the name had a nice ring and the district officers could get a cool beer when they came down out of the bush to Barkandu on their semi-annual visits to civilization. The first Albertian was admitted to membership in 1953. He was a doctor who had studied at the University of Edinburgh.

Paul Downer, the Downer in Duffy, Downer and Theims, Ltd., met us at the airport in a chauffeur-driven Humber Super Snipe. He was sweating, even in the air-conditioned comfort of the airport. He wore a white linen suit, already soaked at the armpits, a white shirt, blue knit tie and black shoes. He smoked incessantly.

We shook hands all around. “You know each other, I take it,” I said to Shartelle.

“Sure, Paul and I know each other. We were in the war together, right, Paul?”

“It's good to see you, Clint,” Downer said.

“You staying long?” Shartelle inquired.

“I'm going back on the evening flight. I got a call from Padraic. He said there's too much doing in London. He has to have some help. I couldn't really afford to take the time to come down here—not really. I just did it to help. Politics is not my dish of tea—you know that, Clint.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, I've booked you in at the Prince Albert. I thought we'd go there, have lunch, I'd give you a briefing, and then we'd go over to the Consulate and have a chat with Kramer.”

“Who's Kramer?”

“The Consul General,” I said. “Felix Kramer. He's been bouncing around Africa since Dulles was Secretary of State. They sidetracked him here in the early 1950's because he spoke excellent Chinese, Japanese, and a few other Oriental languages.”

“Logical. But I'm not sure I want to meet Mr. Kramer, Paul.”

Downer smiled wisely. “But he wants to see you. Don't forget, both State and Whitehall are vitally interested in this thing.”

“Now, Paul, old buddy, you and me had better get something straight. I don't care if the Secretary of State himself wants to cozy up. I'm down here to run a political campaign, and I don't think Mr. Kramer has too many votes.”

Downer blushed. He had a pink face and it turned a deeper red. He did it all the time. Sometimes he would blush if you asked him for a match. “Goddamn it, Clint, I've been smoothing things over for you for the last two weeks. State isn't too happy about Americans taking a hand in the internal affairs of another country—especially an African one.”

Shartelle drew out his package of Picayunes, took out the last one, looked at the pack regretfully, crumpled it, and tossed it away. “I'm going to miss those,” he said.

“Try the local brands,” I said. “One is called Sweet Ariels. I've been told they're almost as bad.”

Shartelle turned to Downer. “You did say you're catching the evening plane?”

“That's right.”

“Well, I tell you what. You just drop us off at the hotel and I'll call Mr. Kramer and Pete and I'll go on over there and pay our respects. Now I know you probably got a million things to do before you get on that plane so don't worry about taking us to lunch or anything and I'll explain things to Mr. Kramer. I imagine he's a smart old boy and he'll be able to fully appreciate your situation. And you can tell Pig when you get back that I won't say anything that will embarrass the firm, or him, or the United States Government, or the D.A.R.”