Murder on Embassy Row Read online

  The ambassador’s personal secretary, Melanie Callender, came up to Nigel Barnsworth and said, “Good show, heh?”

  Barnsworth ignored her.

  They were a contrasting pair. Barnsworth, whey-faced and frail, a tick in his left eye and a perpetual sneer upon his lips, was grudgingly admitted to be the best administrator in Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but had been denied an ambassadorship throughout his career because of his foul disposition.

  Callender, on the other hand, was tall and robust, a thirty-year-old from Liverpool, with cheeks the color of cherries, large, sparkling opalescent green eyes, and an irrepressible personality that could erupt into raucous laughter with minimal provocation. Because she was privy to many of James’s personal contacts and phone calls, she was constantly pressed by the household staff to provide juicy gossip about the ambassador. She steadfastly refused, although there were moments when she would comment upon his dour nature. She was more vocal about Nigel Barnsworth, often referring to him as “the git” or “a nasty little snail.” Never to his face, of course.

  “I said, ‘Good show,’” she repeated.

  “Codswallop,” Barnsworth said.

  “’Tis not,” said Callender. “I think it’s lively and lovely, just what the ambassador needs. Do him some good.” When Barnsworth said nothing, Callender asked, “Why do you hate him so?”

  Barnsworth cocked his head, looked up his nose, and said, “Be careful, Callender. You’re not liked here.” He left her and went to the main kitchen off the ballroom, where a dozen men and women were in a frenzy of activity. The head chef, who’d once created the acclaimed cuisine for London’s Savoy Hotel, was busy slicing salmon so thin it was diaphanous. A young woman created flowers out of raw carrots and radishes, another peeled jumbo shrimp to replenish a dwindling supply.

  The chef’s wife, Eleanor, a plump woman who managed the kitchen while her husband concocted the embassy’s daily bill of fare, leaned over to an assistant chef they’d brought with them from London and said, “Look who’s ’ere,” referring to Barnsworth. “Let’s cut ’im up and plop ’im in the soup.” They laughed. She turned to where a young woman was buttering thin, crustless slices of bread and said, “Get on with it, now. You know ’e hates it when the bread runs out for his caviar.” The girl finished buttering, arranged the slices on a tray that also contained unbuttered toast and a fresh supply of chopped egg yolks and onions, bustled past Barnsworth, and pushed through swinging doors.

  Barnsworth skirted a large butcher block cutting table and went to where Nuri Hafez leaned against a floor-to-ceiling wall of stainless steel refrigerator doors, some of which were padlocked. “What are his plans tonight?” Barnsworth asked the young Iranian.

  Hafez wore a white butler’s jacket over a blue shirt and maroon tie. He touched the genesis of a black mustache and shrugged.

  “Oh, come on, Hafez, you know. He tells you everything.”

  “I think they plan to be with their friends from London.”

  “The Palingtons?”

  “I am busy, Mr. Barnsworth. Excuse me.” Hafez slid along the refrigerator doors, picked up a tray heaped with orange and red vegetable flowers, and left.

  “Snotty bastard,” Barnsworth muttered.

  “Pardon?” said Eleanor, who’d come up behind him carrying a large, gleaming kitchen knife.

  “Nothing.” His eyebrows went up at the sight of the knife.

  “You wish something, Mr. Barnsworth?”

  “No. Make certain we don’t run out of anything out there.”

  “Yes, sir.” She smiled and turned away.

  Marsha James was standing with the Palingtons in front of a 1930s sixfold leather screen on which scenes of the Spanish Armada’s attempted invasion of England during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign were portrayed. “Of course we understand,” Sylvia Palington was saying. “The strain,” added Morris Palington. “He should have stayed in banking instead of all this diplomatic nonsense. We miss him at the club.”

  “We’ll just leave the old stick-in-the-mud home and go ourselves,” Marsha James said. “I’m not about to miss Robyn Archer.”

  The Argentinian ambassador to the United States, who was surprised he’d been invited, considering the Falklands tête-à-tête, fumbled with a long, thin black cigarette in a holder as James approached. The Argentinian clicked his heels, extended his hand, and said, “Congratulations, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “For what, for heaven’s sake?”

  “For one year in this country.”

  “How long have you been here, Mr. Ambassador?”

  “Three years.”

  “Then congratulations are entirely more appropriate for you.” James heartily shook his hand and went to where Nuri Hafez was collecting empty glasses from a table. Although Hafez’s only official duty at the embassy was to serve the ambassador, he’d offered to help during the evening’s festivities. “I intend to leave soon, Nuri,” James said. “I’m not feeling well. Mrs. James and the Palingtons are going off to catch a show after the party, I’m told. Please drive them.”

  “All right,” Hafez said, continuing to put glasses on a tray.

  “After you’ve dropped them at the theater, come back here. I’ll be in my study. I might want to go out, although my plans are not firm. You needn’t mention that to Mrs. James.”

  “Whatever you say, Mr. James.”

  James narrowed his eyes at the form of address used by Hafez, looked over his shoulder, then said, “I plan to retire to my study in a few minutes after I’ve said good-bye to those who matter. I’d like a fire, caviar from the special stock, toast, lemon, and vodka, thoroughly chilled.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll tell you when.”

  The musicians launched into “A Foggy Day.” A young woman who’d had too much to drink shrieked with laughter, lost her balance, and fell into her date’s arms. Werner Gibronski winced and moved away.

  “Ah, Mr. Ambassador,” said a corpulent man in a doublebreasted tan plaid suit. He had a long, thick mustache that swooped down low, flared out, and was waxed to precise points. His name was Berge Nordkild and he was Washington’s most successful and famous purveyor of fancy imported foods. Most of the food for the party had been supplied by Nordkild, Ltd. He spoke with a Scandinavian accent. “Everything is to your satisfaction?”

  “Yes, quite.”

  “A fine party befitting a fine man,” said Nordkild.

  “And from the looks of things, it’s about to end,” James said, patting him on the shoulder and moving on. He found Marsha enjoying a joke being told by a young man from the State Department’s British liaison office. James waited patiently for the conclusion of the joke, which had a mildly risqué punch line. Everyone laughed except James. When the young man looked at him for a reaction, James smiled and said, “Quite good.”

  “Dear,” James said to Marsha, indicating with his finger that he wanted her to follow him. They moved away from the group and he said, “I’m going to my study for the evening. There are cables I must go over.”

  “Really?” A sardonic smile crossed her lips.

  “Yes, really. I’ll say good night and take my leave. Nuri will drive you and the Palingtons to the show and pick you up. And please, I don’t wish to be disturbed.”

  The smile never left her face as she said, “You really are a bastard, Geoffrey, and you become more of one every day.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Yes, in the morning.”

  The ambassador went to the kitchen, where he found Nuri Hafez. “I’m going upstairs now,” he told his valet. “Please bring me what I requested.”

  James left the kitchen. Hafez took a brass key fob from his jacket pocket, unlocked a padlock on one of the refrigerators, opened its door, and found what he was looking for, a dented tin with a lid secured by rubber bands. He removed the tin and a bottle of vodka, placed a silver bowl on a serving tray, filled the bowl with crushed ice, and
carefully nestled the vodka bottle in it. Next to the bottle went a small cut-glass cup. He spooned caviar from the tin into the cup and added four lemon wedges. “I need toast,” he told Eleanor as he replaced the tin of caviar in the refrigerator, secured the lock, returned the key to his pocket. “I’ll be back,” he said. He returned five minutes later. The toast was wrapped in a white linen napkin and was on the tray.

  Hafez crossed the ballroom and almost reached the twin limestone staircases leading to the upper floors when Marsha James intercepted him. “Nuri,” she said, “please bring the limousine around to the front. The Palingtons and I will be going to…”

  “I know,” he said sullenly.

  She started to comment on his tone of voice, but was suddenly surrounded by a group of guests, including Werner Gibronski. “I must leave immediately,” Gibronski said. He turned and bumped into Hafez, who nearly lost his grip on the serving tray. He placed it on a walnut Queen Anne table. Marsha James looked down. A lemon wedge had fallen to the floor. Hafez bent over and picked it up, looked for somewhere to put it, then walked to the kitchen, where he angrily tossed it in a trash can. Gibronski was gone by the time Hafez returned and Marsha James was saying good-bye to lingering guests. Standing next to her were the Palingtons. As Hafez picked up the tray, she said to him, “Please hurry. I don’t want to be late.”

  Hafez went to the main hallway, a long, wide corridor with red walls and a checkerboard floor of white Vermont marble and black Pennsylvania slate. The official coronation portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II peered down at him as he slowly climbed the stairs to the next level, where the ambassador’s study was located. He paused at the door as he heard James’s voice say, “Not tonight… I am not in the habit of being asked to apologize to anyone. Good night!” The phone was returned to its cradle with considerable force. Hafez waited a few seconds, then knocked. “Come in,” James said loudly.

  The ambassador had removed his shoes, suit jacket and tie, and had slipped into a red cashmere robe and slippers. “A fire,” he mumbled as Hafez placed the tray on a crotchwood lyre card table decorated with brass rosettes. Hafez quickly arranged newspaper, cedar kindling, and four slender logs in the fireplace, ignited them, and stood.

  “That’s all,” said James. “I won’t be going out tonight. Drive them to the show and pick them up. Please don’t disturb me.”

  As Hafez was about to open the door, James said, “You know, Nuri, there is an old saying about not biting the hand that feeds you.” Hafez half-turned and cocked his head. “Don’t give me that confused expression you’re so bloody fond of adopting, Nuri. Just think about what I said. Good night.”

  ***

  Marsha James returned to the embassy at midnight. She was driven by two plainclothes members of the internal security staff who’d escorted her and the Palingtons to the Robyn Archer show. Mrs. James and her guests had been driven in the ambassador’s limousine by Nuri Hafez, with the security men following in an unmarked sedan. When Hafez didn’t show up at the end of the evening and a call to the embassy failed to locate him, Mrs. James had the guards drop the Palingtons at the Madison Hotel, then bring her home.

  She was furious as she entered the front door. “Where is Nuri?” she asked the household staff, who were still cleaning up after the party.

  “We don’t know, ma’am.”

  She went to the ballroom, picked up a telephone, and dialed Hafez’s room. There was no answer. She dialed the main garage. No answer there, either. She returned to the foyer and told a security guard, “Go around back and see if the limousine is there.” He returned a few minutes later and reported it was missing.

  “Thank you,” she said. “That will be all.”

  Marsha James hated Nuri Hafez and the staff was aware of her feelings. No one was quite sure why she felt as she did, although they did speculate. With few exceptions, Mrs. James ran the residence, including the hiring and firing of house staff. But Hafez was out of her reach, above her control. He “belonged” to her husband.

  Marsha knew her husband’s sexual tastes too well to suspect any taint of “the English vice”; it was as though Hafez was a pet dog who not only preferred her husband, but who disliked, no, tolerated her.

  There may have been a time when she envied the close relationship James and Hafez shared; lately she only resented it, and freely let it trigger and fuel the arguments the embassy household overheard too often.

  She went upstairs and stood in the hallway. To her left was the door to his private study. Her own study was next to it, and she often took tea there before retiring, usually with her social secretary, who would brief her on the following day’s activities.

  She went to her study, picked up a phone, and called the kitchen. “I shan’t have anything this evening,” she said. She returned to the hall and paused in front of their bedroom. A maid, on her way to her own bedroom on the floor above, asked, “Can I get you something, ma’am?”

  Mrs. James was startled by the maid’s appearance. “Oh, no, I think not,” she said.

  “Good night, ma’am.”

  “Yes. Good night.”

  She went to her husband’s study, where dim light squeezed through a narrow space at the bottom of the door. There was the smell of burnt cedar. She placed her hand on the doorknob and slowly turned it. The door slid open. She peered into a room rendered chiaroscuro by the light diffused by the green glass shade of a brass study lamp, and the waning orange glow from the embers of the fireplace.

  Silhouetted against this light, she saw her husband, Geoffrey James, the soft folds of his robe draped around him. He was slumped over the card table.

  She entered the room, closing the door behind her, and approached him.

  His right hand held a stemmed glass that was tipped over, its contents having whitened the table’s smooth finish. Toothpaste and cigarette ash; she thought automatically of one of her mother’s home-repair remedies. Geoffrey’s head had fallen sideways onto a silver bowl now half filled with melted ice water, a lemon wedge floating on the top.

  The cut-glass caviar cup was partially submerged, and the caviar still remaining formed a black crust over his nose.

  “Geoffrey,” she said softly, not touching him. Then she reached, hesitated, and felt the exposed side of his face. It was cold, with the flat, gray look of modeling clay. The eye she could see was open and distended and his mouth gaped in a rictus that was half smile, half scream.

  Marsha left the room, involuntarily wiping her hands on her skirt and went downstairs to the kitchen, where Eleanor was having tea with her husband. Marsha saw the plate of dainty sandwiches between them, the uneaten remains of that evening’s party.

  “Something wrong, ma’am?” Eleanor asked.

  Marsha heard her voice answer. “Yes, I would say there is.”

  3

  Salvatore Morizio, a detective captain in Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, sat hunched over a chessboard in the living room of his Arlington, Virginia, condominium. “Why the hell did you make that move?” he mumbled as he tried to devise a strategy to counter the unexpected placement of his opponent’s knight.

  The phone rang. He ignored six rings before getting up and answering it. “Yeah?” he said, still thinking about his next move.

  “Sal, Jake. I wake you?”

  “No. What time is it?”

  “One.”

  “Is it? It got late. What’s up?”

  Jacob Feinstein, chief of the State Department’s 1,000-officer police force, whose mission it was to protect the lives of the vast foreign diplomatic community in the District of Columbia, said, “The British Embassy. We’ve got a possible death of the ambassador, but I don’t have confirmation yet.”

  “Geoffrey James? What happened?”

  “Sounds like a heart attack. Nobody’s saying for sure over there.”

  “They had a party for him tonight.”

  “I know. We covered it. Want me to call when we firm it up?”
>
  “No, no need. I think I’ll… Sure, call me.”

  Morizio hung up and looked out the window. The view of the nation’s capital across the Potomac River always pleased him, especially at night. It was the view that had tipped the scales in favor of his purchasing this condo instead of others he’d seen. It wasn’t as spacious as he’d wanted and the sales agent had been a surly ignoramus, but there was the view, especially at night.

  He returned to the couch and looked down at the chessboard. The timer had run out. He reset it, thought for a moment, then made his move. Almost instantly the computer countered with a move that would put Morizio’s king in check down the road. “You bastard,” Morizio said. “It was the phone. I lost my concentration.” He often beat the computer, which he’d named Rasputin, in the first six levels of play, but had never been a winner at level seven.

  Jake Feinstein called again. He’d confirmed that Geoffrey James, British ambassador to the United States, was dead, the apparent victim of a coronary.

  “Too bad,” Morizio said.

  “Yeah. He wasn’t the warmest guy we deal with, but he was okay. His wife’s nice. Know her?”

  “I’ve met her.”

  “Well, just wanted to let you know.”

  “No question of cause?”

  “Evidently not. What are you doing up so late? You’re an early-to-bed type.”

  “I was playing chess.”

  “Really? Who is she?”

  “It’s a he, Jake. His name is Rasputin.”

  Feinstein laughed. “Whatever you say, Sal. See you at the meeting.”

  Morizio slept soundly, was up at seven, and watched “The CBS Morning News” while eating a breakfast of melon, eggs, and an English muffin. Ambassador James’s death was mentioned only in passing. He was sixty-one, Diane Sawyer said. Funeral arrangements had not been announced.