The American Ambassador Read Online Free

cancer then of something neurological. And these were dangerous, sudden times. Two friends had died of heart attacks while jogging and each man was fifty exactly. Not forty-nine or fifty-one but exactly fifty and both had died immediately, on the spot. One had died in Beirut and the other in Rock Creek Park. And North had imagined them dying at an angle, arms stiffening, eyes glazing, and feet askew, the pavement rising up to meet them—and suddenly the moment freezing, like a film stopped in midframe. The last conscious thought would be an astonishment: a defiance of gravity. Al Murillo, dead on the Corniche in Beirut, had written a light piece for the
Foreign Service Journal
describing the perils of jogging in Lebanon, which sections were safe and which were not, and the signs to watch for. An amusing piece, everyone said so, though the slightest bit—supercilious. In Rock Creek Park near the P Street beach, Joe Deshler had been dead an hour before anyone found him, his body stripped clean as a Mercedes in Anacostia, his watch, wallet, and running shoes gone. He was found by a friend, and immediately identified, otherwise his body would have disappeared into the morgue, tagged John Doe.
    These two deaths had happened within a month of each other, part of the same equation, spiritually linked; someone sneezes in Tokyo, and a tornado changes direction in Kansas. They were good, close friends and when they died it was as if part of North’s own history had died; his memory was no longer subject to verification. Murillo, Deshler, and North had been members of the same Foreign Service class; all three had served in Africa. They had become specialists in the problems of the Third World or, more accurately, the problems of the United States in the Third World. They had corresponded frequently, long droll letters; nothing had been as expected. Their careers were so different from those of their heroes, Bohlen, Thompson, and Kennan. The Third World, always simmering on the back burner. Adlai had cared, but Adlai was dead. Things changed quickly: the Europeans withdrew, the Russians advanced. Batista fled, the Congo fell apart. Sukarno, Sihanouk, Nkrumah. There were new rules and when Kennedy died and the Vietnamese won their war, newer rules. These were events to which North had been witness—though, amazingly, he had missed Indochina, feeling at the time like a master musician playing Dubuque while the rest of the orchestra was at Carnegie Hall—and his memory, he knew, was no longer trustworthy. It was flabby and unresponsive, like an athlete’s body gone to seed. Too much junk food had gone into it, and it was nothing he could rely on in a crisis, or swear to in court. Of course there were the documents, but the documents—memorandums of conversations, action memos, National Security Council directives, CIA estimates, congressional mandates, various minutes of emergency meetings here and there—told only part of the story and often not the most important part, They were like obits. Vital statistics did not describe a life. What was it about Age Fifty, and a career in the government?
    How fragile we are, Elinor had said, but he had shaken his head: Not fragile, strong. But soon to be overwhelmed. He had said this under his breath at graveside at the most recent Washington funeral—Joe Deshler’s, his wife and daughters seated, stricken, on folding chairs—as the officiating Lutheran spoke of everlasting life, the divinity of Christ, and the pressures of government service.
    This was not a cheerful inventory, and it kept North awake. He, Murillo, and Deshler; in the early nineteen sixties, when they were in Africa together, they felt like pioneers. Their ambassadors were political appointees, well-traveled men, but new to diplomacy and ignorant of the Third World. Deshler’s ambassador was a man of charm and wit, a midwestern businessman of humane instinct. Son of a gun, he’s said