My friend Cerise insisted on treating us to Sunday brunch at the Hay-Adams Hotel, so I guess I must be doing something right. But no sooner than we sat down with our mimosa flutes and plates of delicacies, a familiar voice, in such a proper Received Accent you’d expect it to read you the BBC news, greeted me in a tone that unmistakably implied a desperate need for my advice. Become a consultant and dispense insight for a living; I assure you, Dear Reader, it’s inevitable – after a few years, you can tell, believe me.
“Tom, old boy,” proclaimed Bletchly, “so good to run into you here. Mind if I join you and your beautiful companion?”
“Of course not,” I responded cheerfully. Bletchly is with the British Embassy, and I get one hell of a lot of work from them.
“And who,” he continued, smarmy as an undertaker, “may I ask, is this lovely lady?”
“Cerise,” I told her, “this is Bletchly. He’s Associate Third Assistant Under Secretary Without Portfolio at the British Embassy here in Washington. Bletchly, this is my friend, Cerise.”
“Charmed,” Bletchly gushed, gently taking Cerise’s extended hand, shaking it politely. “I do hope you’ll forgive me interrupting your brunch with this fine gentleman, but when I saw him – well, Tom, there’s already a message on your voice mail requesting an appointment tomorrow, and I thought to myself ‘What a marvelous stroke of luck! Only the Fates Themselves could arrange for such a remarkable coincidence!’”
“No problem,” I genially lied, thus preempting any possibly truthful response from Cerise. “We would enjoy your company under any circumstances.”
Likewise, Bletchly obviously had no problem believing what I had told him, and made himself comfortable, sipping his own mimosa and subsequently clearing his throat ostentatiously.
“Her Majesty’s Government has recently been placed in a rather, ah, sticky position. You know the FIA, of course?”
“La Fédération International de l’Automobile,” Cerise chimed in, “the organization that oversees Formula One racing.”
“Yes, quite, quite,” Bletchly concurred, nodding vigorously. “Among other things. It’s headquartered in Paris. But the current president is, in fact, an Englishman, a fellow named Max Mosley. So,” Bletchly elaborated, “it seems that Mr. Mosley got into a bit of a rather, well, let’s say an embarrassing situation, and the French are pressuring Whitehall to, ah, convince Mr. Mosley to resign his post.”
“Has Her Majesty’s Government,” I pressed, holding Bletchly’s feet to the fire, “publicly asked Mr. Mosley to resign?”
“No,” Bletchly admitted, “as I am sure you understand, we’d rather not be seen doing that. The French, however, are adamant that Mr. Mosley must go.”
“What,” Cerise inquired, “exactly, did Mr. Mosley do?”
Bletchly smiled coyly, blushed red as a beet, chugged the remainder of his mimosa, cleared his throat again and began speaking, rather slowly and deliberately. “Mr. Mosley currently appears in a video posted on the Internet, which shows excerpts from a five-hour Nazi fetish, B-and-D, S-and-M full-costume sex orgy with several, ah, prostitutes.”
“Looks as though,” I observed, “you should never have outlawed fox hunting over there in England. Now that you have, it’s obvious your aristocracy simply don’t know what to do with themselves.”
“Costumes?” Cerise leaned across the table slightly toward Bletchly. “What kind of costumes?”
“Nazi concentration camp guards,” Bletchly gulped, turning red again, “and… inmates.”
“Good Lord Almighty,” Cerise indignantly exclaimed, “that’s totally sick! Tom,” she demanded, turning to me, “how in the name of all that’s holy and profane does somebody get that screwed up?”
“In Mosley’s case,” I speculated, “it might have been his parents.”
“What about his parents?” From the tone of her voice, it was abundantly clear that Cerise was not the least inclined to accept any whining stories about an unhappy childhood as excuses for the kind of behavior Bletchly had just described.
“I know that a lot of people do rotten stuff and then blame their parents,” I conceded, “but Max’s Mater and Pater, Sir and Lady Oswald Mosley, were real pieces of work. They headed up the British Union of Fascists, just before World War II. I kid you not – Adolf Hitler was a guest at their wedding, which they held at Joseph Goebbel’s home. So after the Nazis invaded Poland, the British government locked both of them up. Then, when the war ended, Max became very active in the Union Movement, a thinly-veiled British neo-Nazi group.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Cerise interjected, “you mean, everybody in Formula One racing knew this Mosley character was some kind of Nazi-loving, neo-Fascist lunatic, and he got to be president of the FIA anyway?”
“He got to be Secretary of the Oxford Union Society anyway,” Bletchly revealed, “so why not president of the FIA? Acutually, some people in Formula One racing insist the chap’s not all that bad, I hear. He’s come out in favor of ‘green technology’ in Formula One racing, for example.”
“An environmentally concerned neo-Nazi?” Cerise sniffed as a waiter freshened up her mimosa, “does he favor organically generated compost methane for ethnic-cleansing crematoria, then?”
“I know it’s difficult to fathom,” Bletchly patiently chided, “but in spite of his, ah, unorthodox political philosophy, he has been quite popular with the FIA membership. Why, when he announced his intention to retire in 2001, the FIA Senate called on him to stay. And he did,” Bletchly sighed, “which means he’s not likely to step down over this sex orgy flap.”
“Frankly, what I don’t understand,” Cerise told him, “is, when the FIA not only let a neo-Nazi run their organization, and apparently loved the guy, how come now they want him to resign over a sex orgy? That’s completely bass-ackwards, if you ask me. Are we, the public, supposed to believe that none of the other filthy rich, decadent idiots involved in Formula One racing has had sex with more than one woman at a time? Oh, yeah, sure – they’re fine and dandy with someone who advocates bogus class distinctions, discredited eugenic pseudo-science, white supremacy and mass murder, but let him get caught with his pants down, waving his tiny British woody…”
“Bent over in front of a camera,” Bletchly interjected, “getting caned by a whore dressed up in an SS uniform.”
“Okay,” Cerise allowed, “he got caught with his pants down, waving his tiny British woody, bent over, doing really kinky stuff in the company of women in Nazi costumes. So what? Come on, the FIA must have had the brains to figure out this guy’s a weirdo, and they elected him anyhow, didn’t they? Besides, what kind of sex fantasy could they expect from a dyed-in-the-wool neo-Nazi? An upstairs maid Victorian pantomime? Full frontal Freudian diapers in the nursery? Dungeons and Dragons fancy costume sword and sorcery, maybe? Corn-fed Iowa college co-ed football cheerleaders in saddle shoes and letter-sweaters? Nauseatingly skinny Twiggy-clone retro-Carnaby Street mod birds in go-go boots? Cadaverish Berlin heroin alley maidens wrapped in cellophane, deconstructing the Valkyries? Hell and damnation, how about some hookers dressed in unisex orange and black Milan jumpsuits, like an extreme Formula One pit crew? Gimme a break – couldn’t the King of Formula One at least think of something like that, for Christ’s sake? And I mean, really, what the hell is the matter with those morons in the FIA? Didn’t they realize that fascists have absolutely no imagination whatsoever? After all, that’s one of the things that makes their political philosophy such a ridiculous historical failure, isn’t it?”
“Madame, I must say, you definitely have a point,” Bletchly ventured, attempting to get a word in edgewise while a woman is speaking her mind. I could have told him he was wasting his time.
“And, what’s more, it seems to me that I recall a member of the Royal Family dressing up like Hitler for a costume party, and not so very long ago, really.” Cerise looked at me, clearly expecting a display of my fabled edactic memory.
“Essentially,” I affirmed. “It was Prince Harry. He went to a costume party wearing a Nazi uniform and a swastika arm band. But he didn’t go as Hitler, though, just an ordinary Nazi.”
“Oh, right,” Cerise volleyed back at me, dripping sarcasm, “why get upset about that? He was ‘just an ordinary Nazi,’ huh? Is that like, ‘just an ordinary serial killer cannibal, not Jeffrey Dahmer,’ or ‘just an ordinary pedophile, not a Catholic Archbishop?’”
“Essentially,” I yielded, now regarding Bletchly with an air of expectancy. Seeing that, it finally dawned on him the lady was done speaking, and he could, if he were quick enough to seize the opportunity, start talking, provided, of course, he managed to do so before the lady thought of something further about which to speak her mind.
“Ah, um, uh, yes, well,” Bletchly stammered, gamely charging into and holding his ground, all the while trying desperately to think of something to say, “Prince Harry apologized profusely for what, in the ultimate analysis and the fullness of time, at the end of the day, proved to be an admittedly regrettable, ill-advised incident of extremely bad taste. Be that as it may, however, what I want to discuss with you, Tom, is options for Her Majesty’s Government, should Mosley persist in his stubbornness.”
“So, you think he’s going to hang in there,” I asked, “fighting off all the calls for his resignation, come what may?”
“Yes, we rather expect so,” Bletchly lamented.
“What for?”
“Why,” Bletchly declaimed, in a slightly astounded tone, “the principle of the thing, of course!”
“The principle?”
“Yes, definitely,” Bletchly nodded, sternly repeating, “the principle of the thing.”
“As in,” I proposed, “when a dilapidated, fifteen year old, five hundred dollar sedan with eight illegal immigrants pulls in front of your car on the Beltway and then comes to a screeching, tire-smoking stop, for no apparent reason, causing a rear-end accident that they subsequently sue your insurance company for whiplash to the tune of ninety-five large, and you feel like you ought to fight it? You mean that? You mean ’It’s not the money, it’s the principle of the thing?’”
“Exactly,” Bletchly beamed, satisfied that I now fully understood his point.
“And which principles,” I politely but firmly demanded, “are those?”
Bletchly thought for a moment, carefully composing his reply. “The principles which hold, in the United Kingdom, any adult person may express unpopular views without sanction; and, furthermore, is free to pursue consensual sex with other adults without being punished for it.”
“And Mosley’s arguing that?”
“Evidently. He says what happens in those videos is nobody else’s business,” Bletchly stated morosely. “And we don’t think he’s going to back away from that position; no, not one iota.”
“Well,” I pointed out, “haven’t the major Formula One engine builders already refused to meet with Mosley?”
“Absolutely true, old boy,” Bletchly assured me. “BMW, Ferrari, Honda, Toyota, Mercedes Benz, Renault; all of them refused to meet with him.”
“And didn’t Setsuo Tanaka, president of the Japanese Automobile Federation, also publicly demand that Mosley quit?”
“Yes, Tom, he certainly did.”
“And the German government, they pitched a fit, didn’t they? And the Israelis, they’re screaming for his head, aren’t they? Even the King of Jordan won’t speak to him anymore, right?”
“Correct.”
“And the Prince of Monaco, isn’t he snubbing Mosley completely, too?”
“No doubt about that, Tom, the Prince is not at all pleased.”
“And isn’t there an FIA vote on Mosley scheduled for the third of June?”
“Right again.”
“So how come this can’t wait until then?”
“Oh, we would be perfectly willing to wait until June third,” Bletchly confessed. “But, you see, Tom,” he went on in a slightly nervous whisper, “it’s not at all certain that the FIA vote on June third will actually… ah, depose him.”
“This huge hoopla, this world-wide brouhaha, this thundering Sturm und Drang,” I implored, “and you aren’t sure the FIA will throw him out? What’s up with that?”
“Many of the members,” Bletchly confided, “are worried that if Max is ousted, his long-time ‘friendly nemesis’, Bernie Ecclestone, who already controls Formula One commercial rights, will step in and become president of the FIA to boot!” Bletchly took a moment for a dramatic frown. “Because of that, there are rumors. Rumors of a one-vote majority in favor of Max; credible rumors, Tom; credible rumors.”
“Okay. There’s no need to tell someone who works inside the Beltway about the power of credible rumors,” I relented. “Does the fact that Bernie Ecclestone is Jewish have anything to do with it?”
“I cannot comment authoritatively on the motivations of FIA members, Tom,” Bletchly incanted gravely, “but I would speculate, that yes, the Nickel Nose Factor may well be at work here.”
“You mean, some of the voting FIA members just might be afflicted by a case of the heebie-jeebies?”
“Let’s just say, they don’t look forward to all-kosher catering at their future official functions.”
“Heard and understood,” I responded stoically. “So, I take it, the French are offering Her Majesty’s Government an adequate incentive to ensure that Max leaves the FIA presidency, should your paranoid scenario about Ecclestone prove to be, as paranoid scenarios in world capitals often do, the actual course of history?”
“I’m sorry, Tom, but I cannot either confirm or deny that the French have offered the British anything in return for using our Government’s power to oust Max Mosley from the FIA presidency.”
“And Ecclestone’s not behind this, is he?”
“Again, Tom, aside from the immediate issue of Max Mosley, I am not at liberty to say, one way or the other, whom Her Majesty’s Government favors and whom it does not. Suffice it for me to note that Bernie owns quite a bit of Old Blighty, if you catch my drift.”
“Sure. So, if the FIA doesn’t expel this neo-Nazi Mosley by June third, you want me to suggest a strategy that will get him out anyway, thereby allowing Ecclestone, backed by the French, to make his power play for total control of Formula One racing.”
“Essentially,” Bletchly acknowledged. “Please keep your voice down.”
“It’s mighty convenient,” I noted, “that this Nazi sex orgy video surfaced when it did.”
“To be sure, Tom,” Bletchly agreed, “it certainly is.”
“And would either of us be surprised,” I japed with a knowing wink, “should it later be revealed that the prostitute who spilled the beans to the London tabloids was working for MI5?”
“Bless your heart, Tom Collins,” Bletchly lauded, albeit reluctantly, “you are extremely shrewd, for an American.”
“Okay,” I declared, in my best business voice, “you’re my client, not Max Mosley, and I know that if I send a consultation invoice to the British Embassy, they’ll pay it in full. So, given what I know about Mosley, the man has craved acceptance and approval his whole life, while doing his best to make sure practically nobody in Britain approves of or accepts him. Therefore, the best, surefire, bulletproof way to get him to quit the FIA is to offer him a knighthood.”
“A knighthood?” Bletchly could scarcely believe his ears, I think.
“But Mosley’s father was a knight,” Cerise asked, somewhat puzzled, “so isn’t he one, too?”
“No,” I clarified, “British knighthoods are not hereditary. That only starts with peerages, the lowest of which is Baron.”
“A knighthood?” Bletchly repeated, apparently unable to make progress past that particular concept.
“That’s what I said,” I confirmed confidently. “Mosley’s a member of the English Upper Class, a person of the ‘right sort,’ a graduate of Oxford and, consequently, even if he’s a Nazi fetish sex pervert, he’s still a man of his word. You get him to agree, on a handshake, that as soon as he quits the FIA presidency, Her Majesty the Queen will knight him, and I guarantee he’ll give you what you want faster than a Wall Street banker can steal a blind widow’s fortune. What’s more, if he doesn’t quit or get voted out before June third, and you make him that offer, should he not accept it and resign the FIA presidency as agreed, then I will refund every cent of today’s consultation fee. Plus, I will take you and a guest of your choice out to dinner with me and Cerise at any restaurant between here and Boston in which you can get reservations for four.”
“Tom,” Cerise confided quietly as she squeezed my hand, “I’ve never, ever wished you’d lose a bet before, but I can’t help wishing it now!”
“Fair enough,” I cooed, kissing her lightly on the cheek, “but just for that, if I do lose, after we have that fancy dinner, you have to dress up like Imma Sumack and sing Puccini.”
“Okay,” she purred softly in my ear, “but only if you promise to spank me.”