Little Green Men Read Free Page A

million in walking-around money.
    Jamieson was a humorless old grouper with bad breath and hairy-ears whom official Washington revered for reasons no one, if pressed, could really explain. He had advised President Roosevelt that Joseph Stalin was really, deep down, a decent sort. Another president had wittily put him in charge of the Vietnam peace negotiations, resulting in years of negotiations about the shape of the negotiating table and a peace that quickly went to pieces,
    Before Val entered his life, his houses in Georgetown and Virginia were temples of parsimony and gloom. Guests entering his dining room mumbled to themselves, 'Abandon hope, al l ye who enter here." The wine could have been mistaken for cough syrup; only the most determined alcoholic could swallow it without wincing. Over this grim mahogany domain, Jamieson Vanbrugh Dalhousie ruled, treating his guests to endless monologues on such riveting topics as Russia's projected uranium needs in the next century and Konrad Adenauer's struggle against fluctuations in the deutsch e mark during the postwar era. J amieson's untimely death at the age of eighty-eight, after stepping on a garden rake, was treated by the Establishment as the end of an era and the passing of a national treasure. In his eulogy at the National Cathedral, the president said how much he would miss his wise, dependable counsel.
    Val, by contrast, loved to spend money - by the fistful, by the armfu l. She practically used it to ma tch her Georgetown garden. She sent helicopters to fetch her guests for weekends at Middleburg, in Virginia. She hired Pavarotti to sing for them, fed them caviar and quail eggs, flew f oiegras and truffles from France. She spent money on presidential contenders the way others bet on horses at the track. One of them was bound to win, after all. One of her horses eventually came in, and with it an ambassadorial appointment to the Court of St. James's. You could hear Jamieson moaning at the expense in his grave. Thirty million? You could have gotten Italy for half the price.
    Val took Banion by the arm and led him into the parlor, bursting with peonies and reeking sweetly of perfumed candles. Banion scanned the room for his wife. It was a fairly typical Val Sunday brunch: two cabinet secretaries; several more former cabinet secretaries; one declared presidential candidate, one undeclared; a movie star (in town to testify before Congress against a stylish disease); Tyler Pinch, curator of the Fripps Gallery - ah, there was Bitsey, with him -a quorum of senators; the Speaker of the House, majority whip; the managing and foreign editors of the Post; ah yes - Banion was pleased to see these two: Tony Flemm and Brent Boreman, hosts of the other Washington weekend shows; a brace of Op-Ed pundits, one readable, the other un-; a husband and wife biographer team, a Nick and Nora pair, rather exotic; a former presidential mistress (several administrations ago) now heavily involved in the symphony; looming above them all, suave, immense, baritone-voiced Burton Galilee, lawyer, lobbyist, friend of presidents, who had turned down a Supreme Court appointment rather than give up, as he had actually put it to Banion, a confidant, "God's greatest gift to mankind - pussy." Who else? The State Department's new chief of protocol, what was her name, Mandy Something; the French ambassador, the Brazilian ambassador, the Canadian ambassador, the Indonesian ambassador, who was gamely trying to explain to the other diplomats his government's recent decision to "pacify" another ten thousand East Timorians; that architect and his wife Banion couldn't stand because she had announced to him that she never watched television.
    A butler appeared with a tray bearing Bloody Marys, champagne, white wine, sparkling water with limes. Banion chose a sparkling water and took up his position, waiting for the homages to begin. He waved away the watercress sandwiches; too awkward, receiving compliments with a