Part 13 (1/2)

'So! The haus...o...b..lieves that it is the su!' he cried: The bellows thinks it's the fire. I couldn't believe I always put up with this. 'Please do not forget who gave you a job! Do not forget who rescued you from-'

'The CIA,' I finished for him. 'But maybe you deserve a job at that other CIA the Central Intelligence Agency? Or how could you possibly have guessed that I'd left to attend a party? Perhaps you can explain why I had to race back so fast?'

This put Rodo off balance for only an instant. He quickly recovered and, with a snort, he s.n.a.t.c.hed off his red beret and threw it dramatically onto the floor a favorite technique whenever he was at a loss for words, which wasn't often.

This was followed by a torrent in Euskera of which I could pick up just a few words. It was directed with urgency toward the dignified, silver-haired concierge Eremon, just beside me, who'd said nothing at all since we'd entered.

Eremon nodded in silence, then walked over to the stove, turned off the gas, and removed the wooden spoon that Rodo had forgotten there in the chocolate pot. It looked a mess. After carefully placing it on the spoon holder, the concierge crossed back to the French windows that led outside. There he turned, as if expecting me to follow.

'I must take you back right now for the geldo,' he said, referring to the embers, apparently to prepare them for tonight's cooking. 'Then, after the men have finished cleaning the food, Monsieur Boujaron says he himself will return with the car and bring everything so you can help for tonight's private dinner.'

'But why me?' I said, turning to my boss for an explanation. 'Who on earth are these ”dignitaries” tonight, that there's all this subterfuge? Why's no one allowed even to see them except you and me?'

'No mystery,' Rodo said, evading my question. 'But you are late for the work. Eremon will explain anything you may need to know en route.' He vanished from the kitchen in a huff, shutting the inner door behind him.

My audience with the master now seemed to be at an end. So I followed the stately concierge out onto the terrace and got into the car on the pa.s.senger side, while he drove.

Perhaps it was my imagination, or only my limited knowledge of the Basque tongue, but I was fairly sure that I'd picked up two words that had run together in Rodo's recent diatribe. And if I was right, these specific words wouldn't make my mind rest any easier. Not at all.

The first was arisku, a word Rodo used all the time around the ovens: It meant 'danger.' I couldn't fail to recall that same word printed in Russian on a cardboard plaque that still lay, even now, in my pocket. But the second Basque word that had followed on its heels, zortzi, was even worse though it didn't mean 'beware the fire.'

In Euskera, zortzi means 'eight.'

As Eremon maneuvered the Touareg down River Road back into Georgetown, he never removed his eyes from the road nor his hands from the wheel, deploying the noncity dexterity of a driver who'd been negotiating hairpin mountain turns all his life as likely he had. But that fixated attentiveness wasn't going to stop me from what I knew I had to do right now: pump him for information as Rodo had evasively promised for 'anything I needed to know en route.'

I'd been acquainted with Eremon, of course, for as many years as I'd been apprenticed to Monsieur Rodolfo Boujaron. And though I knew much less of the consigliere than I knew of the don, there was one thing I did know: Eremon might play the silver-haired dignitary and chief factotum around Rodo's baronial estate. But away from his official job, Eremon was a dyed-in-the-wool Basque with all the implied traits. That is, he had an off-the-wall sense of humor, an appreciative eye for the ladies (especially Leda), and an inexplicable taste for Sagardoa that G.o.d-awful Basque apple cider that even the Spaniards can't drink.

Leda always said that Sagardoa 'reminded her of goats' p.i.s.s,' though I was never sure how she'd come to make that culinary judgment call. Nevertheless, she and I had ourselves both cultivated a taste for the cider, for an obvious reason: Drinking tumblers of bitter, sparkling fermented apple juice in Eremon's company, from time to time, was the only way we could think of to get the scoop on our mutual boss, the guy Leda liked to refer to as 'the Maestro of Menus.'

And trapped in a car for at least half an hour as I was now with Eremon I felt there was, as Key might say, no time like the present.

So imagine my surprise when it was he who broke the ice first, and in a most unexpected fas.h.i.+on.

'I want you to know that E.B. is not angry with you,' Eremon a.s.sured me.

Eremon always called Rodo 'E.B.,' short for 'Eredolf Boujaron,' a Basque 'in' joke that he'd shared with Leda and me on one of our very late ciderfest nights. Apparently there are no names or words in Basque that begin with R: hence Eremon's name Ramon in Spanish, Raymond in French. And Rodolfo seemed almost Italian. This linguistic flaw would seem to make Rodo something of a Basque Basqtard.

But the very fact that he could make quips about a tyrannical volcano like Rodo showed their relations.h.i.+p was closer than master and servant. Eremon was the only one I could think of who might have a clue as to what Rodo was up to tonight.

'So if he's not angry with me,' I pointed out, 'then why all the burnt chocolate, the beret on the floor, the snit in the Euskeran tongue, the slammed door, the instant ejector b.u.t.ton for moi?'

Eremon shrugged and smiled enigmatically. All the while, his eyes still clung to the road like Velcro.

'E.B. never knows what to do with you.' He warmed to his theme. 'You are different. He isn't used to dealing with women. At least, not professionally.'

'Leda's different, too,' I said, counterpointing with his favorite girl violincello. 'She runs the entire c.o.c.ktail operation. She works like a dog. She makes Sutalde a fortune. Surely Rodo wouldn't slight her that.'

'Ah, the swan. She is magnificent,' said Eremon, his eyes wavering just a bit. Then he laughed. 'But he always tells me, with her, I am barking on the wrong horse.'

'I think the expression is ”Barking up the wrong tree.”'

Eremon hit the brakes. We'd come to the stoplight at River Road and Wisconsin. He looked over at me.

'How can one ”bark up a tree”?' he asked, quite sensibly. Unlike my friend Key, I'd never actually given such sayings any thought. So much for folk wisdom.

'So maybe we'd say you're barking at the wrong swan,' I agreed.

'One does not bark at swans, either,' said Eremon. 'Especially not a swan that you are in love with. And I am in love with that one, I really think.'

Oh no. This chat wasn't exactly the one I'd been hoping to have.

'I'm afraid that, when it comes to observing human nature, Rodo may be right just this once,' I told Eremon. 'The swan prefers female companions, I believe.'

'Foolishness. That is just some how do you say it? phase of a moment. Like those wheels she likes to wear on her feet. This will change this need for the success, this power over the men. She doesn't need to prove things to everyone,' he insisted.

Ah, I thought, that popular chestnut: 'She's never known a man like me.'

But at least I had Eremon talking, no matter what got him hooked. As the traffic light changed, he started paying a bit more attention to me than to the road. I knew this might be my last opportunity, in the few miles before we reached our destination, to learn what was really going on behind the scenes.

'Speaking of proving things,' I said as casually as possible, 'I wonder why Monsieur Boujaron didn't ask Leda or anyone else to work tonight's boum. After all, if these guests are so important, wouldn't he want to prove himself? To make sure things run like clockwork? We all know what a perfectionist he is. But he and I can hardly cover all the bases by ourselves, replace a full restaurant staff. If the amount of food I just hauled up to Kenwood is any indication, we must be expecting a pretty good-sized crowd.'

I'd been probing as casually as possible until I noticed that we'd just pa.s.sed the Georgetown Library to our left. We'd be arriving at Sutalde at any moment. I decided to turn up the heat. But luckily, it wasn't to be necessary.

Eremon had forked down a side street, avoiding Wisconsin traffic. He stopped at the first four-way stop sign and turned to me.

'No, at most a dozen will be there, I believe,' he told me. 'I am told that this is a command performance, that many demands were made of E.B. that the very highest level in haute cuisine was instructed, with many special dishes commanded in advance. This is why we have had to make all these preparations up at Euskal Herria under E.B.'s supervision. This is why he was so anxious to be sure you were here in time, that the fires were properly established last night so we could start the Meschoui.'

'The Meschoui?'

I said, amazed. It took at least twelve hours to roast a Meschoui a spitbasted, herb-stuffed goat or lamb turned on a rotisserie, a highly coveted dish in Arab lands. They could only cook something like that in the big central hearth at Sutalde. Rodo must have had a crew down there before the crack of dawn to get it going in time for tonight's dinner.

'But who are these mystery dignitaries?' I demanded once more.

'Based on the menu, I believe they must be some kind of high-level officials from the Middle East,' he told me. 'And I have heard many preparations for security. As for why you are the only staff in attendance tonight, I cannot say. But E.B. a.s.sured us that everything tonight is only what has been commanded.'

'Commanded?' I said, uneasy at the repeat of that word. 'Commanded by whom? What kind of security?'

Though I was trying to act unruffled, my heart was pounding like a steel-head drum. It was all too much. Dangerous chess games with mysterious moves, Russian a.s.sa.s.sinations and familial disappearances, mysterious Middle East dignitaries and invasions of Baghdad. And me with less than eight hours' sleep in the past forty-eight.

'I don't know for certain,' Eremon was saying. 'All the arrangements were made through E.B. alone. But with so much security above the normal, one could guess. It is my suspicion that this dinner was arranged by the Oval Office.'

A White House command performance? Not b.l.o.o.d.y likely. That really was the last straw. What further difficulties was my already difficult boss 'commanding' me into? If the idea hadn't been so absurd I might've been genuinely angry.

But as Key would say, 'If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.'

I thought I was about to step into the very kitchen that I'd heated up myself, fewer than ten hours earlier. But in the foggy drizzle, as I descended the steep stone steps to the ca.n.a.l bridge, I couldn't help notice that some things had changed since my visit here earlier this morning.