A Hamptons Christmas Read online

  “But Franco was a fascist, having cocktails with Hitler and Mussolini,” I protested.

  “Yes, but the Madames are rarely swayed by public-opinion polls. They go their own way. And don’t forget, while clearly fascist, Franco’s nationalists were fighting the loyalists, who were burning churches, shooting priests, and raping nuns at a great rate. Why, in Salamanca alone …”

  I glanced over at my father, who looked more than uncomfortable. For all his bloody career in global espionage, he wasn’t accustomed to having ten-year-old girls discussing the rape of nuns. And it got him going again.

  “What kind of Brides of Christ are these?”

  “Emma never heard of this woman,” I pointed out. “She probably isn’t a Bride of Christ at all, but a fraud.”

  Emma thought for a moment.

  “There are affiliated convents, s’il vous plaît, mes amis. In St. Tropez, Bali, Monaco, St. Barth’s. So Sister Infanta may yet be genuine, while unknown to me. But Beecher could be on to something: After all, I use pseudonyms; why can’t the enemy?”

  “Got to like this kid’s thinking, Beecher,” Jesse Maine announced. “Won’t find Emma taking a lollipop from the dirty old man at the schoolyard.”

  “Merci beaucoup, Chief,” she said. “Most gracious of you. And, having been alerted, I shan’t go anywhere near the Pequot tribe.”

  “A wise and prudent decision,” he told her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Emma looked about as harmless and vulnerable as a scorpion.

  We lazed about in the winter sun on the front lawn of my father’s house, all of us, enjoying a frivolous morning warmth that could hardly last, when Doc Whitmore went by on Further Lane peddling hard atop his battered bicycle.

  “Look at that, Jane,” the Admiral ordered from the bridge, as if moving midshipmen and ensigns to action stations—and getting their names wrong. “That’s Doc Whitmore, the tree surgeon. Knows bloody all about trees and hedge. His brother a few years back gave a million or three to the local college. So there’s money in tree nurseries. Not that Doc bothers about it. Rides about all year on that old bike of his, whatever the weather. Got to be older than I am, at a minimum. My neighbor Dr. Barondess, who knows such things, says Doc’ll bury all of us with the cardiovascular system he’s got.”

  Emma watched the bicycle disappear with a farewell wave from Doc.

  “I don’t think Doctor Whitmore’s wearing socks. Is that possible?”

  “Famous for it. Winter, summer, never a sock. But you saw his earmuffs.”

  The girl thought for a bit.

  “In a Swiss winter, you wear socks. Even the peasants.”

  Leave it to Alix to break the impasse.

  “Suppose I drop by the American Hotel and chat up this Bride of Christ? You know, check to see if she’s wearing proper nun shoes, that sort of thing. Obviously we can’t send Susannah …”

  “ … Jane!”

  “ … I mean, Jane, Emma. Sorry.”

  “Not a bad idea,” the Admiral agreed. “A reconnaissance on the ground. Say what you will about satellites, U-2 planes and spies-in-the-sky, nothing beats a first hand re-con. Look the fellow in the damned eye, straight on. Sniff his breath, test the cut of his jib.”

  The Admiral was very stern when it came to the “cut” of someone’s jib, sniffing a man’s breath.

  Lady Alix had the Humvee warmed up in a moment, and I climbed in next to her. “Just for backup, darling,” I assured her. “The way Colin Powell went riding with General Schwarzkopf in the Gulf War.”

  “Of course.”

  The Admiral seemed relieved to be rid of us. Inga had our child guest in hand, and my father said he had calls to make. Sounded like business. And with him, “business” meant intelligence. Fine with me. Actually, I just wanted to be alone with Alix.

  Everywhere you turned around in my father’s house, there were calls from Suffolk County homicide and visits by Shinnecock chiefs or E-mail from Marcel the concierge and kids playing poker and in peril of being kidnapped. None of which was very helpful in managing a love affair. And it wasn’t just next door in my father’s place; people were forever coming into the gate house to say hello or to have a hearty little chat. I kept trying to get Her Ladyship undressed and into bed and couldn’t even arrange to be alone with her without a delegation of concerned citizens on hand.

  En route to the American Hotel and its resident nun, we lunched, so as to have a brief moment together, at Babette’s restaurant on Newtown Lane. Bill Clinton once stopped by the place, and they’ve been living off it ever since. In winter, in the Hamptons, you take lunch where you can get it.

  “Can we smoke here?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. But give it a try. If they accepted Clinton, why not the odd coffin nail.”

  “Mmm,” she said thoughtfully, half to herself. “I don’t have any. Should have borrowed a Gitanes from Emma.”

  She was inside the American Hotel less than an hour while I loafed about, whistling tunelessly and imitating your everyday innocent bystander, pretending to window-shop up and down Main Street.

  “Damn!” Alix reported on emerging. “This is murky business indeed. There’s been nothing like it in my reading since the Babington Plot of 1586 …”

  “Which was?”

  “ … a scheme to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and put Mary, Queen of Scots, on the English throne.”

  “Think of that,” I said, duly impressed. “So she wasn’t wearing nun shoes?”

  She ignored the question. “When I realized I wasn’t getting very far with her, I inquired how one went about enlisting in the Brides of Christ. Said I had a powerful mystical experience at Cap d’Antibes recently that suggested I might have a religious vocation. I’d always been a materialistic sort until now. How could I make amends? Where did I apply? Were there forms to fill out? Initiation fees? Letters of reference? Get Oxford to recommend me. Anything that would impress God. Or whoever it is that welcomes new nuns into the club. And so on.”

  “And?”

  “She was quite snippy. And in a superior sort of French accent. Said it helped if one were a Catholic.”

  “Sarcastic, was she?”

  “I even offered to convert if they let me take orders. That’s how enthusiastic I was. Love little children. Dying to tutor young minds. All that terribly sincere bosh …”

  “Which she wasn’t buying.”

  “Not a farthing’s worth. I felt quite deflated.”

  “What did you make of her? Beyond your suspicion she may not be a nun?”

  “Good. She’s very good. A professional of some sort. I can usually charm pensioners out of their chocolates. This one didn’t give an inch. Not a millimeter. Like you, Beecher, she’s a hard case.”

  I loved it when Alix called me “a hard case.”

  We were back at Further Lane about four. I had a wild notion about slipping back with Alix into my gate house for a bit of a romp before cocktails and …

  “Mr. Beecher!”

  It was my father’s housekeeper, Inga.

  “Yes?”

  “Tea, sir.”

  Uh-oh.

  Over tea Alix briefed us all on the American Hotel’s “nun.” But it was sufficient to set my father raging.

  “Despite my doubts, Admiral, I’ll concede a slim possibility she could be the genuine article, a Bride of Christ and all that,” Alix began. “When I told her how eager I was to become a Catholic …”

  “You didn’t!” the Admiral declared.

  “ … not in all sincerity, Admiral, no. A ploy of sorts.”

  “Well, then, that’s better …”

  “But she gave me this rosary, sprinkled me with holy water, and we prayed together. On our knees right there on the floor of the hotel room, much as Mr. Nixon and Dr. Kissinger did that night in the White House so long ago …”

  The Admiral wasn’t buying that, not without rebuttal.

  “Don’t believe everything you read, Lady Al
ix. The Washington Post is a decent paper and Bob Woodward a fine journalist. But he has a lively imagination when it comes to setting scenes he never witnessed. Did Nixon describe this fascinating moment, praying with Henry? Or did Dr. Kissinger speak of it later? Woodward cites no sources. Being an Oxford graduate with a skeptical mind, you must be aware of this.”

  I thought to myself, without siding with my dad and against Her Ladyship, that Alix did have a way of drawing on the damnedest allusions.

  Without conceding the point, Alix continued as if in the same breath. “ … and she urged me to renounce Satan. And all his works and pomps.”

  Even the Admiral looked impressed at that. Episcopalians like hurling defiance at the powers of darkness.

  “She just might be the goods,” he conceded.

  Emma looked dubious. “Admiral, at the convent they’re forever renouncing Satan. But then, don’t all decent people anywhere? No one goes around boasting he and Satan are like that, y’know. Doesn’t prove she’s a nun at all. Anyone can renounce Satan …”

  “ … and his works and pomps?” Alix asked. “Don’t forget those.” My father got up to pace a bit. “I’m calling Conklin. His instincts are pretty sound. Let’s see what he has to say.”

  When he reached the owner of the American Hotel, they spoke for perhaps ten minutes. As my father hung up, he turned back to us, his face thoughtful.

  “Ted’s a decent chap, a Protestant. Was skeptical at first. But he thinks your Infanta de Castille may indeed be legitimate. The LVIS, for one, has asked her to speak at their weekly lunch …”

  “The LVIS?” Emma asked.

  “Ladies Village Improvement Society. Very respectable local body. Mostly Protestants,” the Admiral explained. “But there’s more.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. Ted Conklin says 60 Minutes may be doing a story. Don Hewitt lives out here, and he heard about this Bride of Christ in the Hamptons. Thinks there’s a big story in her. A holy woman doing good works, counseling the local Baymen, assuring them that a man lost at sea, such as this fellow Reds Hucko, may not be lost at all. That they can pray him back to life. Or at least retrieve the corpse.”

  “That’s certainly rubbish!” I broke in. “Hucko was washed overboard Thanksgiving week in the North Atlantic. And a nun is telling East End Baymen he’s still alive? That they can pray him back into port?”

  The Admiral ignored my protest. He didn’t mind criticizing Catholics; he wasn’t attacking prayer. Then, he went on:

  “Ted Conklin says the 60 Minutes business has the media on its competitive toes. Tina Brown has a writer sniffing around the Montauk docks. Sister Infanta might be a story for Talk magazine. Or even a movie idea for the Weinstein brothers, you know, the triumph of faith in a secular age. And you know McLaughlin on Further Lane, the power behind Rush Limbaugh? He and Nick Verbitsky, who runs those Dick Clark radio stations, they’re underwriting a testimonial at Jerry Della Femina’s. While Steve Brill’s threatening to expose all of them as opportunists, exploiting Sister.”

  That’s all we needed, media tycoons!

  My father nodded, as if reading my thoughts. “Along with all that, Beecher, the Papal Nuncio is coming up from Washington for the testimonial dinner.”

  The Nuncio? The Vatican’s man in the States? It was impressive, but I wasn’t going to get all teary; I had a Rolodex of my own.

  “Whom are you calling?” my father asked.

  “Peggy Siegal in Manhattan.” Peggy might be the “flack from hell,” but she was wired. Peggy usually knew what was going on, had her sources in Rome and a pal who covered religion for Time. When I sketched out the position here, she thought for a moment.

  “You know the Vatican,” she told me. “They’re shrewd. If the Nuncio vouches for her, this woman is legit. Remember, during the war even Stalin was impressed. Asked, ‘And how many battalions has the Pope?’”

  “Golly,” said Her Ladyship, “sounds to me as if we’re a bit outgunned here. Poor Emma. The Pope himself and all those battalions on her case.”

  Emma Driver just sat there, sober and quiet in one of my father’s leather easy chairs, listening to all this.

  “I don’t think she’s a Bride of Christ at all,” she announced. “I think she’s a private eye hired to track me down.”

  Even my father protested.

  “But if the Ladies’ Village Improvement Society, as well as Peggy Siegal and the Catholic Church …”

  “Je m‘excuse. Don’t forget, maestro, my parents have utilized private eyes before, ‘all the better to kidnap you with, my dear,’” she recited, mimicking the wolf that ate Grandma.

  “But, Emma, not togged out as a nun, holding prayer meetings … ?”

  Deep inside the Admiral’s big old leather armchair, Emma fell silent, skinny legs tucked under her schoolgirl kilt, never looking younger, smaller, or more vulnerable. I found myself feeling absolutely protective toward the poor kid, this defenseless child. But then she grinned, as if delighted to be at the center of excitement, recalling earlier kidnappings, saddened by her parents’ mutual detestation and anger but otherwise enjoying the adventure: speeding cars, sinister figures lurking, disguises and midnight raids, private eyes and other hired guns.

  And when she grinned at such secret memories, Emma looked about as harmless and vulnerable as a scorpion.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Bill Gates? A nerdy guy in glasses. Invented the laptop or something …”

  “I don’t really care if the wretched woman is a genuine nun or not,” the Admiral declared. “Unless someone convinces me of error, I have no intention of sending this child back to such charlatans. Child prostitutes on the streets of Manila. ‘Henri Dansant,’ indeed, ‘light in his loafers.’ Religious habits being sewn up by the Maison Dior. Nuns skiing in the Alps, negotiating discounts on their lift tickets. The ramifications of a convent school being operated along such lines are simply staggering.” Then, looking Emma directly in the face, he declared adamantly, “With all due respect, young lady, you won’t find Episcopalians carrying on so.”

  “I suppose not,” conceded Emma amiably. She wasn’t terribly fierce on proselytizing for Rome.

  Having gotten that off his chest, the Admiral shifted gears in a very curious way:

  “Emma?” he began.

  “Jane, sir,” she said, sensing the Admiral preferred working with aliases.

  “Yes, Susannah. Do you by any chance know who Bill Gates is?”

  The child answered right away, though why did it matter?

  “A nerdy guy in glasses. Invented the laptop,” she said. “Or a search engine or portal or something. He’s awfully rich. My father speaks of him in awed tones, which he does of very few, and almost never of nerds.”

  “Why do you ask, father?” I couldn’t resist putting in.

  The Admiral gave me a mischievously jolly look, amused by my having fallen for his move, much as he enjoyed sucking an opponent into a trap at chess and crying “checkmate!”

  “Simply want to know how up on current events are the middleform girls of the Couvent de la Tour Sacrée.”

  I got him aside later.

  “What was that Bill Gates business all about?”

  “I’ve made some calls. I’m not quite sure what’s going on. But there’s a bit of a stir at Microsoft. No question of a hostile takeover or even a proxy fight, of course. Gates has firm control. It would take someone with the resources of Gates’s former partner, Paul Allen, and then some, to make a serious run at Microsoft. But with these various lawsuits going on and the federal government harassing him, Mr. Gates is believed to be looking over his shoulder with more than the usual caution.”

  “ … at Emma?” I said, not masking incredulity.

  “Don’t be impudent,” he advised me. “I’m not sure. Just that my sources tell me there’s a bit of concern about very large blocs of Microsoft shares on the loose. Not answerable to this clique or that, or nailed down by anyone, neither th
e Board or an insurgent slate. Just out there, under the control of vague trust funds managed by who knows whom. Gather sufficient of those blocs of shares and sooner or later, you’ve got yourself a substantial position in Microsoft stock.” He paused. “I don’t follow the gossip columns as closely as you do, and I should, but even a cursory reading of the Driver v. Driver divorce hardly speaks well of her parents. Coldblooded and selfish. You suspect it’s not beyond them to cheat young Susannah …”

  “ … Emma.”

  “Oh, damn! Can’t the child settle on one name or another?”

  “You were saying?” I asked, trying to get him back on track.

  “Yes, yes. What little I know of her parents, I wouldn’t put it past either of them to cheat her out of the holdings of Microsoft, all that stock Jake Marley supposedly settled on her. Not actually steal the shares but vote them one way or another, leveraging control of the child’s property to their own advantage.”

  “Her trust funds.”

  “Yes, Beecher. Emma’s situation is hardly unique. Millions of blue-chip shares in the names of minor children. Left to them in wills. Or signed over at birth.” My father paused briefly. “You’ve heard of such things, haven’t you? In your journalistic endeavors and inquiries?” Oh, he could be sarcastic, having never quite forgiven me for going directly from Harvard to work at the Boston Globe as a cub reporter, rather than becoming a banker. Or joining the CIA.

  The Admiral issued no additional enlightenment until, as I wrestled with the possibilities, Her Ladyship joined us again in my father’s den.

  “My ward Jane wants to know if anyone’s in the mood for a hand of poker?” Alix asked amiably.

  The Admiral’s bluntly growled “No!” was shocking in its vehemence. He must have seen Alix’s stunned reaction and my face. As for me, I wondered if his hearing had suddenly gone, and as old men do, didn’t realize he was yelling.