FrostLine Read Free Page B

had invented the fox trot before even she was born.
    King’s butler wore a swallowtail coat and a grimace for the sea of mud. He whisked me inside where it was warm and dry. Perhaps he saw in me a sympathetic spirit, or maybe he’d had a bad day, but he shuddered visibly and sighed, “‘The country,’” leaving no doubt where his preferences lay. “Welcome, Mr. Abbott. I’ll take you in to Madam, and the others.”
    Henry King and fourteen guests were still at the lunch table, in a heated sun porch that overlooked the valleys to the west. The butler led me to an empty chair, slightly below the salt, between a fellow about my age, who looked familiar, and a raven-haired woman who looked lovely.
    King, short and broad-shouldered, rose with a charming smile. He greeted me in a low, heavy voice and if he was miffed that I hadn’t come as early as Ms. Devlin had demanded, no hint escaped the thick brows that hooded his bright, deepset eyes. Everything in his manner seemed intended to suggest that a splendid lunch had just gotten better because I had arrived.
    â€œJust in time for coffee, Mr. Abbott. Let me introduce you.”
    His wife, a very nice-looking blonde who hosted a Washington TV interview show, smiled from the foot of the table. Her immediate neighbors, a younger Harvardy-Yalish bunch, looked like King Institute employees. King had kept the big guns for himself.
    At his right hand sat former Secretary of State Bertram Wills, whose Connecticut family had staffed the Foreign Service since the XYZ Affair. Even friendly biographers agreed that Henry King had emasculated him during negotiations with the Red Chinese.
    To King’s left was Josh Wiggens, a blandly handsome gentleman who could have had “CIA Station Chief” tattooed on his forehead. Another early retiree, unless I missed my bet, probably one of the many sacked for failing to notice turncoat Aldrich Ames driving a Jaguar with KGB vanity plates.
    Ex-diplomat Wills and ex-spy Wiggens might have been twins: lean, well-dressed patricians in the classic New England mold of long faces with fine bones, sandy hair (temples graying gracefully), and piercing blue eyes. Both had the big hands you get from a lifetime of horses, tennis and sailing. Both, the genteel cragginess that comes from active leisure out of doors. But where Secretary Wills appeared to be all dignified accommodation, Josh Wiggens looked like a man with a taste for naked force: Wills like a ceremonial saber, Wiggens a boarding cutlass—metaphors which could be misleading, as neither man, I suspected, was to be trusted in a dark alley.
    Way below the salt, down at Mrs. King’s end, was a writer from The New Republic who looked glad to be invited. King Institute staffers surrounded him like kitty litter sopping up an oil spill.
    Directly across from me sat an up-and-coming Connecticut congressman whose career I’d followed with interest. I asked for his father, who had given me my senatorial appointment to Annapolis Naval Academy. A look I knew too well glazed the congressman’s eye as he recalled how Ensign Abbott’s post-commission financial career had grounded on the shoals of insider trading.
    The fellow who looked familiar turned out to be Gerald Wills, Secretary Bert’s son, a gossipy genealogist, and an amazing snob for one so young.
    The raven-haired woman who looked lovely was Julia Devlin. She asked if I’d like dessert. The others had finished, so I said coffee would be fine.
    Pressed to classify Julia Devlin on a scale of cold to hot beauty, I’d have rated her a cool beauty. I pictured her on horseback five hundred years ago: aide de camp to a Spanish grandee, her father; their army harassing Moors—something about her dark eyebrows.
    A pretty velvet vest cinched her waist. A white blouse accented the faintest olive cast to skin I felt a very strong desire to explore.
    â€œMr. Abbott!” King called