As astute readers of this Web log are aware, my birthday is coming up – on next Wednesday, to be precise – so Cerise bought us tickets to see Jil Aigrot at Lisner Auditorium Saturday night. For my readers who don’t know who Jil Aigrot is, she’s the singer who dubbed all of the songs Marion Cotillard performed in “La Vie en Rose (La môme).” For those of you who don’t know who Marion Cotillard is, she’s the French actress who won a BAFTA, a César, a Golden Globe and an Oscar for her performance in “La Vie en Rose.” For those of you who don’t know what “La Vie en Rose” is, it’s a motion picture about Edith Piaf.
And for those of you who don’t know who Edith Piaf was, I suggest you find out immediately, so people won’t conclude from your blank stare when her name is mentioned that you are some sort of hopelessly ignorant, woefully uncultured, embarrassingly lowbrow, shockingly unsophisticated philistine postmodern Babbit, such as those who can be seen at the Louvre, St. Peter’s Basilica or the Bayreuth Opera wearing Crocs, cutoffs, a Hooters T-shirt and a Microsoft Vista baseball cap, babbling self-importantly into, or furiously texting with an overpriced wireless telecommunications device. And since, after all, you do have enough class to read Tom Collins’ World Wide Web Log, that would, of course, be a mistake, wouldn’t it?
Ms. Aigrot, ably accompanied by Gino Samyn, Cyrille Gabet and Daniel Fabricant, gave a magnificent performance and favored the audience with three dazzling encores. If you are lucky enough to live in a city on her current US tour, Dear Reader, by all means, purchase some tickets before the hall sells out.
After the concert, Cerise and I stole away to the nearby Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Maryland Avenue, Southwest, for drinks and some excellent jazz in their cozy and well-appointed lounge. But not a minute had passed after Cerise left our table for a trip to the ladies’ room before a greasy, distinctly malodorous gentleman with bad skin, wearing an ill-fitting suit and a stained artificial silk tie slid into the booth.
He leaned over the table, close enough for me to experience the advanced ripeness of his rampant halitosis. “You are Tom Collins?”
“Yes,” I replied, quickly dipping into my coat pocket for a tiny tin of pathologist’s camphor, which I always carry, because in my line of work, one meets quite a few foreigners, not all of whom hail from societies where bathing, or brushing one’s teeth, for that matter, are held in particularly high regard. “I am,” I affirmed, taking care to breathe through my mouth as I smeared two lines of camphor under each nostril. “And you are, apparently, a diplomat from some place like Cuba, Albania, Libya, Kyrgyzstan, or…”
“Where I am from,” he interjected, “is of little consequence. Here,” he whispered, handing me an envelope, “is all the identification required.”
A peek inside confirmed his assertion – the envelope was stuffed with circulated, unmarked twenties, and no two serial numbers were sequential. A quick swipe on a few of them with the counterfeit identification marker I also always carry convinced me this memorably fragrant fellow was offering genuine remuneration for a legitimate ad hoc consultation. It’s common knowledge in Washington that I perform such services – for a slightly augmented fee. I’ve done them in parking garages, cemeteries, alleys behind nightclubs in Adams Morgan, and various other such locations in the DC metropolitan area. Hey, what can I say? It’s a living. “Very well, then,” I flatly stated as I slid the envelope into my jacket. “How can I help you?”
“Our mission here in the United States,” my interlocutor murmured in a secretive tone, “has been asked to obtain assessments as to the expected response of your military with respect to the actions of a third country.”
“And which country,” I inquired, “might that be?”
As he leaned even closer, I noticed Cerise returning from the ladies’ room. One look at the fellow talking to me, however, was enough to send her over to find an empty seat at the bar. She knows by now I sometimes receive impromptu consultation requests at odd moments, and that when such things happen, a discreet strategy is best for all concerned.
“North Korea,” he confided in a hushed, conspiratorial tone.
“You mean,” I surmised, “Pyongyang is worried about US reaction to their upcoming ‘scientific’ rocket launch?”
“That is,” he confirmed, “exactly the North Korean government’s concern.”
“Not that they would admit it,” I observed. “In public, they openly declare that they don’t care what anybody does.”
“Sure,” my reeking client shrugged indifferently, “that’s diplomacy, isn’t it?”
“For places like North Korea and whatever raggedy-butt place you came from, yeah, it usually is,” I agreed. “But what, specifically, are the North Koreans actually worried about here?”
“Your Admiral Mullen,” he pointed out, “is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he has said he is afraid that the North Korean missiles can reach Hawaii.”
“Well,” I conceded, “Admiral Mullen may have remarked that the Taepodong 2 might be capable of reaching Hawaii, but it will be a cold day in Hell when any American warrior is afraid of North Korea, be they an admiral or a buck private.”
“Okay, perhaps,” he softly hissed, “I have put words in his mouth. But how about your Admiral Timothy Keating, who leads your Pacific Naval Command? Didn’t he say that the United States will shoot down North Korea’s rocket?”
“What he said,” I clarified, “was that the United States armed forces are prepared to shoot it down if ordered to do so.”
“Okay again,” my uninvited companion continued with another indifferent shrug, “such talk makes the North Koreans wonder whether it’s safe – if you know what I mean – for them to launch their research satellite.”
“Interesting,” I mused. “Did they tell you what kind of research their satellite will be performing?”
“The same kind of scientific research,” he declared with a cynical smile, “that the satellites the United States launches from Cape Canaveral do. Surely, Mr. Collins, you know that the most efficient trajectory for achievement of orbital velocity lies along a trajectory from west to east, do you not? And if that necessitates launching a rocket over Japan, well, what can North Korea do about that? Japanese territory stretches along the eastern horizon of Korea for thousands of kilometers.”
“So it does,” I agreed. “And I suppose that if the North Koreans hadn’t been doing charming things like kidnapping Japanese citizens, threatening Japanese sovereignty and developing nuclear weapons for the last sixty years, they wouldn’t care about a few North Korean rocket components falling out of the sky into Japanese waters. Also, I might note, if rats had bushy tails and lived in trees, they’d be squirrels.”
“Mr. Collins,” he admonished, “I can assure you, the North Korean government has nothing against squirrels.”
“If so,” I shot back, “then squirrels are the only thing to which the North Korean government is not currently opposed. Now, see here sir,” I scolded, “it’s obvious that your friends in Pyongyang aren’t particularly astute, if they can’t figure out that our Secretary of Defense will be on Sunday morning television tomorrow proclaiming to the world that the United States will not, under any circumstances, interfere with North Korea’s upcoming missile launch.”
“On the contrary,” he slyly replied, “I am certain that they fully expect such a course of action. What I want from you, Mr. Collins, is a frank and, shall we say… informed assessment as to whether or not, should the United States military decide to shoot down that North Korean rocket, they will succeed.”
“In that case,” I challenged, “what’s your definition of ‘success?’”
A long moment passed as he considered my question, during which a waitress approached and asked us about buying some drinks. This made perfect sense, since buying some drinks is more or less de rigueur at that particular venue, because there’s no cover charge. “I’ll have what he’s having,” my short, swarthy and distinctly stinky guest told the waitress, and her response was a quick expression of relief followed by a swift retreat. She, of course, had no pathologist’s camphor. Finally, he gazed at me intently and spoke. “My definition of ‘success,’ Mr. Collins, is that the United States hits that rocket’s payload and destroys it.”
“Only God Almighty,” I sneered, “could possibly know for sure if a United States anti-missile missile annihilated a North Korean missile, and/or its payload, in the upper stratosphere over the Pacific Ocean… or not. So, are you asking,” I persisted, “if, based on what I know, should the United States take appropriate action, would it look like the United States had succeeded?”
He pondered, he squirmed, he made a weird sucking sound with this half-rotten teeth. “Okay. Would it?”
“Who controls the world motion picture and television entertainment industry?”
“The Jews in Hollywood.”
“Damn right about that, they do. Who controls world news television and news wire services?”
“The Jews in New York.”
“Damn right about that again. Who controls the United States military industrial complex?”
“The, how do you call them – the WASPs from the Ivy League on Wall Street.”
“Hat trick on the ‘damn right about that,’” I assured him. “So, regardless of what really happens, what do you think the world is going to perceive happened?”
The waitress arrived with his drink, but my temporary client didn’t touch it. “Thank you, Mr. Collins,” he muttered as he stood up and walked away. Not that I expected him to shake my hand, of course. Or, frankly, wanted him to, either.
Seeing that, Cerise walked back over and sat down where he had been, but not for very long – she got right back up and sat down next to me, nuzzling close to my ear.
“Snookums,” she purred, “can I have some of your pathologist’s camphor?”