Charles said. “You’ll be well looked after, meet a lot of good people. Those lakeside talks are always one of the highlights of the campout. Of course the alcohol’s first-rate, flows like water. You’ll drink some fabulous vintages, I promise you.”
“The ‘grove’?” I said. “What campout?”
Charles looked from me to Pépé. “Didn’t you tell her?”
“Eh … no.” My grandfather shook his head. “I wasn’t certain how much of what you told me was confidential.”
Until now I’d assumed Pépé had been invited to give a talk at some organization’s annual meeting, probably the featured speaker after a dinner of chicken with mystery sauce or dry roast beef with vegetable medley at a generic convention hotel.
Instead he was going camping. And Charles had arranged that, too.
“What’s going on?” I said. “Why all the secrecy?”
Charles’s smile was tolerant. “The Bohemian Grove is no secret, but it is private. The club, which is based in San Francisco, is probably the most prestigious gentlemen’s club in the United States. Been around since 1872. They’ve been camping each summer practically since that first year. After a while they managed to buy a couple thousand acres in a redwood forest on the Russian River so they’d have a permanent place to camp. They named it the Bohemian Grove.”
“The Bohemian Club is legendary,
“All these important men camp together in the woods, out in the middle of nowhere?” I asked. “What exactly do you do that you need so much privacy?”
“Please.” Charles waved a hand. “There’s been enough rubbish written about conspiracies and subterfuge or that the members are an elite ‘guild of illuminati’ getting together to plan their strategy on how they’ll rule the world—picking political leaders and manipulating financial markets. None of it’s true, I assure you. It’s strictly a social gathering.”
“Don’t tell me you spend your time roasting marshmallows and telling ghost stories,” I said. “Or do you?”
Charles pursed his lips. “Actually, I’m not a member. The waiting list is years, even decades, long. But I’ve been a guest there enough times to know what does go on. Obviously you meet … well, the right people. But it’s a couple of weeks to kick back and unwind with friends—get away from all the daily pressures.”
“And you camp in tents like the Boy Scouts?”
The idea of Pépé spending several nights on the ground in a sleeping bag at his age worried me.
“Some do,” Charles said. “Some of the camps are more rustic than others. There are about a hundred or so, scattered throughout the woods. Others would remind you of a European hunting lodge with artwork on the walls and beautiful furniture. Even a piano for the sing-alongs. Don’t worry, Lucie. Your grandfather’s staying in Knockabout, one of the more elegant, well-appointed campsites.”
He signaled for someone to refill our glasses. A striking dark-haired woman who looked about my age came over holding a bottle of champagne.
“Is everything all right, Ambassador?” she asked. “Can I bring you another martini?”
He nodded. “Jasmine, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.” She refilled Pépé’s and my glasses with an expert flick of her wrist. “I’ll be right back with your drink.”
“Are you leaving for California on Sunday as well?” I asked Charles.
“I’m not going on the campout this year.” His words were clipped, though he tried to soften them with a small smile. “But I’ve made all your arrangements, Luc. Ah, here’s my drink. Thank you, my dear.”
Jasmine glanced at Pépé and me as she handed Charles his martini. Her eyes met mine briefly and something flickered behind them. After she left, the three of us stood together in uncomfortable silence. We’d exhausted the topic of the Bohemian Grove and Charles had yet to explain why he’d really invited us tonight. By now, though, I suspected he’d figured out that we knew something was up.
He smiled and sipped his martini. “I’d like it very much if the two of you would join me for a drink after the other guests have left at the end of the evening. I have a small retreat, I guess you’d call it, on the property. There’s a bottle of Château Margaux waiting for us.”
A top-drawer bottle of wine.
Pépé glanced at me. “Thank you for the invitation, but it’s really up to Lucie. She’s the driver.”
“No worries about that,” Charles said at once. “One of the staff will drive you home in my car afterward. I promise your own car will be back at Highland House first thing in the morning.”
“Would this private drink have anything to do with Mick Dunne?” I asked.
I’d caught Charles by surprise and an annoyed look crossed his face. Then he recovered. “Ah, I see you two have spoken. As a matter of fact, indirectly it does have something to do with Mick. The California wine, yes?”
I nodded. “There’s more to it than that. It’s rather complicated and I prefer to discuss it when we’re alone.” He lifted his glass to his lips again. His hand shook and the drink sloshed over the rim and dripped on the sleeve of his velvet jacket.
“Damn.”
A waitress materialized and blotted the spot, taking his glass for a refill. Charles looked up.
“Promise me you’ll say nothing to Juliette about this.”
“We don’t really know what ‘this’ is,” I said.
“Please be patient. You will soon enough.” He dropped his guard and I saw fear in his eyes. “You see, my life’s in danger and I need your help, Lucie. Please don’t turn me down.”
Chapter 6
Charles clammed up after that remark, ending the cryptic conversation about needing my help and slipping into his jovial host persona as another couple joined our group. Pépé met my eyes, his message unmistakable: Let it go; we’ll find out later.
It wasn’t as though I had a choice. Whatever Charles was up to, it was clear that he’d gone to a lot of trouble to engineer this get-together. What was not clear, but becoming a looming possibility, was whether it might turn out to be an overblown melodrama that was much ado about nothing. Or, to give him a modicum of credit, about very little except an old man’s wish to see if he could still move players around on a chessboard.
Pépé had reminded me on the drive over to the Thiessmans’ that Charles had held high-ranking positions in administrations dating as far back as Dwight Eisenhower, dipping into consulting work when he wasn’t the political flavor of the moment. And of course, there was his ambassadorship to France during the Nixon administration. What Charles did fell into the need-to-know category, hush-hush stuff that utilized his background in science—chemistry, Pépé said—with an expertise that had been in demand by the Pentagon and elsewhere in the military establishment. I had asked if Charles was a spy or in intelligence, and Pépé had smiled enigmatically, saying he’d occasionally wondered about that himself.
Charles had retired a decade or so ago, but it must have been tough to relinquish the glamour and trappings that came with the rank of ambassador, or even ex-ambassador, the fizzy excitement of the social and diplomatic world he and Juliette inhabited. The seductiveness of Washington’s power surely must have called to him like a Siren, tempting him to take what he wanted—everyone else did it—as his due after so many decades of service. Was he having trouble moving off center stage, becoming a spectator rather than a player? Did he need proof that he still had what it took, that he hadn’t been sidelined by younger, more virile men—and, God forbid, women—who replaced him? Charles, I guessed, was something of a chauvinist.
I said no, thank you to more champagne from an attentive waitress who wanted to top off my glass, since it was already making me light-headed. Or else it was the slowly blooming feeling that I had stepped onto the set of an old black-and-white movie where the last scene of a story that began long before I was born was about to be
