She said that to him knowing there would be no appearance by the Ambassador, that it would not be McHenry Brown who’d pay him a visit, and in the full knowledge Sir Anthony knew it too.
After checking the morning duty roster, she called the ranking American official on the premises. “Harry,” she said, “can you come over to the Ambassador’s office right away? There’s something very important you need to do.” Harry Levine was no stranger to diplomatic speech. In that peculiar language, very important clearly meant it’s not important at all. Important alone, used by itself minus the adjective very, meant important. If something was indeed very important, it was referred to as vitally important. Should there be a potential for danger attached to the matter at hand, then it would be spoken of as gravely important. And if the danger was immediate, if the threat was clear and present, then it would be a matter of critical importance. Not only did Harry understand this, he knew Elizabeth Harrison did too.
The table of organization at the Embassy, that long list of deputies, assistants, attaches and their assistants, plus all the other titles, each accompanied by their job descriptions-both the politicals as well as the Foreign Service people-listed her simply as an Administrative Assistant. No matter, Harry was certainly aware Elizabeth Harrison was the embassy’s de facto Chief of Staff. She spoke with the full weight of the Ambassador. Nowhere in the Foreign Service manuals was it written, or listed anywhere among the rules and regulations that govern diplomacy, but it was not at all unusual for the same circumstance to exist at other embassies, all over the world. Especially American ones. Powerful American men, private as well as public, had a habit of depending on and trusting in their female assistants. A French diplomat, perhaps more intimate with his mistress than his wife, once told Harry he suspected American men spent their entire lives looking for their mother, seeking her approval. “So, what’s wrong with that,” replied Harry, to which his French friend just laughed.
Harry’s own place on that list was well down the chain of command. He was designated as Deputy Ambassador, Trade (Legal Section). Deputy Ambassador was a heady title only to those outside the loop. Harry Levine was one of two dozen such in London alone. His was not a political position. He was Foreign Service, a true representative of his country, not merely his government. His job was to provide the legal guidance necessary for American business and American businessmen to prosper in England. It was a technical post, one which mainly involved helping American interests operate within the framework of English law. A compatible legal heritage combined with a common language to help make this easy work. Despite its often-mundane aspects, he loved it as much as he loved England. He was smart enough to forego an ambition he had little of to begin with, together with career advancement he had no desire for, in exchange for a permanent place in London. He was a great success. He did a good job. American businessmen, prominent men in their fields, many with substantial political influence, liked him. When the time came, Harry was not timid about asking some of them to help him remain in his comfortable spot. After a few years he was safely immune from the fears and irregularities of Foreign Service rotation.
Whatever Elizabeth Harrison had in mind for him, no matter how unimportant it might be, Harry was ready and willing. He was, Saturday joke or not, the senior man on the premises. It was what he was there for.
“I’ll be right there,” he said.
Harry took a cab instead of an embassy car to Herndon, Sturgis, Wells amp; Nelson. Usually, he walked wherever possible. He liked London better than any city in the world. It was a city for walkers. The safety and friendliness of its streets ranked high among the many reasons he preferred it to other capitals. It wasn’t that the streets of Roswell, Georgia or Atlanta didn’t hold warm memories for him. They did. New Orleans too, of course. He frequently missed being there. Philadelphia he could take or leave. It hardly mattered. Law school had been more of a bore than he expected, a necessary experience but not one he’d like to do a second time. London was what he had been looking for. Of course, he didn’t know it until he got there.
When he joined the Foreign Service, Harry got a first-class introduction to cruel city streets. His initial posting was to Ankara, Turkey, where he spent two difficult but interesting years. Then he was sent to Cairo where he stayed another two years. When he was reassigned from Egypt to the Embassy in Paris, Harry Levine had survived four years in, if not the Third World, something close to it. Out of sheer necessity he had become expert in navigating their crooked, often nasty alleys. Being in France was so different-like being on holiday. Everything was so clean, including the Frenchmen he encountered in carrying out his duties. Unlike the Turks and Egyptians, the exchange of money was not a requirement of a routine transaction. Not all of them, anyway. And then, when he was posted to London, for the first time as an adult, he felt at home.
He found a flat in Soho, just off Regent Street, within walking distance of the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. He spent much of his free time casually strolling about in the small streets of London’s neighborhoods, among the ancient buildings that had withstood the centuries and the bombs. Often, he would lazily browse the stacks at Foyle’s or Blackwell’s bookshops in Charing Cross Road or the tiny, crowded stores in Berwick Street near Oxford Circus that featured old and rare recordings. Harry came to think of London as his city, a place where he felt as eternal as Westminster Abbey, as strong as the ancient Tower and as stable as Buckingham Palace. It was the only city in which he was ever truly serene.
When transportation needs meant a ride was absolutely necessary, when walking was out of the question, he liked to take cabs, not embassy cars. Taxis held a special place in Harry’s life, in his sense of himself and his maturity. As a young man in Atlanta and later in New Orleans, as well as during those three cold years in Philadelphia, a taxi meant freedom and privacy. He could get in a cab, tell a stranger where to go, then sit back, alone, undisturbed and unperturbed. In those years, he recalled, there was no other place in his life where he exercised such total control, enjoyed such liberation and felt such anonymity, momentary and temporary as it may have been.
He brought that aspect of his character overseas. In Turkey and Egypt he was thought foolhardy for rejecting embassy cars in favor of local taxis. At a hotel, restaurant or cafe, he frequently hailed a passing cab and off he went. More than once he was told how dangerous this behavior was. One senior official in Cairo actually accused Harry of “putting all Americans in Egypt in jeopardy” just by taking a cab ride. He never did figure that one out. It wasn’t until Paris that his liking for cabs went unnoticed. Of course, everything about Harry Levine seemed to go unnoticed at the American Embassy in Paris. Now, finally in London, getting from place to place was simply not an issue.
The cabbies of London were like the grown men who drove cabs in the big cities of America many years ago. It was a real job, one for men with wives and families. If not a profession, it was a full-time occupation, something you could be proud of, if that’s what you did. Harry liked it that London’s cabbies were polite- “Where to, sir?” they would ask. If they offered conversation at all, it too would be polite. Not like the cab drivers in America. Harry remembered them well. So many were Africans, men with poor language skills and no sense of direction. If they were white and spoke English, chances were all they talked about was “the fucking niggers” this, or “the fucking niggers” that. When they finished those filthy diatribes they always had to add something like “you know what I mean?” and Harry would be forced to reply, “Just drive.” England provided him many wonders, not least among them the return of his freedom, privacy and the sense of independence and security that waited for him in the back seat of a London taxi.
Arriving at Herndon, Sturgis, Wells amp; Nelson, Harry found the small side door to the old five-story building and presented himself at Sir Anthony’s office exactly at ten o’clock. “Come in,” said Sir Anthony. “Please be seated. Do pour yourself some tea. I am Sir Anthony Wells.” He spoke with simple ease, aware that no one to whom he introduced himself could have been unaware. “And,” he said, “while I’ve not met you, I am pleased to see the duty officer was not a young lady. I hope that doesn’t offend you. I’ve nothing against young ladies. Quite the opposite in fact. It’s just…” and then he seemed to drift off, his attention sort of floating away on a gentle breeze, or maybe caught on the tide of some unseen ocean. His eyes even got kind of watery.
Sir Anthony’s office was smaller than Harry expected, older and darker too. All the light in the room was provided by a single lamp on his desk. The building which housed this venerable law firm was probably three hundred years old, but the offices were new and modern, some obviously renovated recently. Not Sir Anthony’s. His suite of rooms was probably as it had been for a century or more. The outside office, his secretary’s, was by any reasonable description, tiny. Her desk-Harry pictured Sir Anthony’s secretary as an older, very proper woman-took up nearly all the available space. Behind that desk, hung upon the shiny oak paneled wall, was a large oil portrait of Sir Charles Herndon, the firm’s founder. Sir Anthony had actually seen him once in the summer of 1927 when Sir Charles, then in his late eighties, paid a final visit to “my place” as he called it. He died a few years later, just before Christmas. To Harry’s right, as he stood in the outside office, was what should have been the office used by Sir Anthony’s clerk. The door was halfway open and it appeared unoccupied, unused. No doubt, he had no need for a clerk any longer. To Harry’s left was Sir Anthony’s office. His walls, also oak from floor to ceiling, were completely
