The Last Day of the War by Judith Claire Mitchell

Author:Judith Claire Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307428875
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

His You’re Welcome

CRUCIFIXION as opposed to circumcision. The two diplomats are still laughing at that one. All right, Dub thinks, and he smiles so they won’t think he’s a sorehead, a man who can’t take a little good-natured ribbing. He refuses the coffee, downs the last of his wine, and counts the lessons he’s learned at the table. From Lindsey, the lesson of passing the buck. From Hamilton—from Trev—the lesson that the British are going to do nothing. In other words, he’s learned nothing he didn’t already know.

Dub feels dizzy and defeated. Like his Armenian brethren repeatedly seeking European promises, he is someone who needs to have the same lesson repeated over and over before it will sink through his skull. Apparently he learned nothing from his time in St. Petersburg, the European betrayal he witnessed then. I’m such a fool, he thinks. He counts all the mistakes he has made just this one day alone. That wretched poulet. Going to the Quai d’Orsay. Attending this dinner. Opening his mouth. If, as Trev says, un bon diplomat n’ouvre la bouche que pour boire, what would he say about a bad diplomat? Un amateur n’ouvre jamais la bouche, for God’s sake.

His biggest mistake, of course, and the one he’s tried not to think about all evening, was trusting little Miss Yes. Damn her hide, he thinks, as he looks at his watch. She is an hour overdue.

He stands, and the floor seems to stand with him. “Oh, don’t run off, Hagopian,” Hamilton says, the voice coming at him distant and tinny. “It’s nothing personal. One does the best one can. And Lord Calthorpe’s written to the Grand Vizier complaining about the triumvirs lamming it in Germany, so perhaps there will be some arrests. That would cheer you, I presume. Besides, we’ve a splendid Château d’Yquem coming.”

Out on the street, Dub leans against the Majestic’s onyx walls and pats his coat pockets, feeling for his cigarette case. Damn, he thinks. He must have left it on the dining-room table. Another mistake, it upsets him as much as the others. He feels tears of frustration and shuts his eyes until he’s certain they’ll be dry when he opens them again.

He is drunk enough now to review not only the mistakes of this day but the mistakes of his entire life. He’s engaged to a woman he doesn’t love. He’s best friends with a man he doesn’t like. And what of the fact that he is carrying a 1908 Luger beneath his tunic so he might, if so directed, shoot a man he doesn’t know? If he should ever get the order and the courage to actually kill that man, will the assassination turn out to be the worst mistake of his life? Or will it be something glorious, a deed that changes him, completes him, actually saves him?

How will he ever be sure? He supposes, with something like that, you just do it and see what happens next. You hope for the best.

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