"Dr.
Foxx, Professor Tracy is waiting for you in the library.
Please follow me." The white-haired porter whispered
just loud enough for Foxx to hear him. The Brook was
a club that prided itself on its exclusive quiet. Its
heavy stone walls and shrouded windows were meant to
keep out all the street noise of midtown Manhattan.
Foxx walked a few paces
behind the porter up a carpeted staircase, then down
a mahogany-paneled corridor. On the walls were oil portraits
of the Vanderbilts, Morgans, Wideners, Roosevelts, and
other founding members of the Brook. Foxx felt slightly
intimidated by the gauntlet of domineering faces. The
library, with its floor-to-ceiling rows of dusty books,
was a welcome relief.
Bronson Tracy was standing
on a small fenced-in platform on top of a ladder, absorbed
in his search for a missing volume. He turned around
abruptly as he sensed a visitor, and gestured with a
hand motion that he would be right down.
Foxx noticed that even
the rungs of the library ladder were padded with carpeting
as Tracy climbed down it with long strides. From his
craggy face, he guessed that Tracy was in his mid-fifties.
Though he was quite tall, Tracy did not seem conscious
of his height.
"Sorry to drag you
here, Foxx," Tracy said in a cultivated accent that
distinguished him as a Boston Brahmin. "Just wanted
to finish some work before dinner, and with the traffic,
I didn't know what time you'd get here."
"It's quite an impressive
library." Foxx found himself whispering, though there
was no one else in the room. "Do you spend much time
here?"
"The Brook is my working
habitat in New York. So quiet you can hear a pin drop.
You should think of joining, Foxx.
"I don't get to New
York that often," Foxx demurred. He was not a joiner,
and anyway he doubted that he would be accepted. He
had only met Tracy a month before, at the colloquium
on "Political Succession in the Age of Bureaucracy"
at Pierson College at Yale. Tracy was the only political
scientist there that seemed to understand the distinction
he tried to make between the traditional army putsch
and the modern coup d'etat. Foxx was quite surprised
by his quick grasp of a problem that he himself had
been laboring over for months. Despite his trendy appearance
and impeccable credentials as a traditional political
scientist, Tracy seemed to appreciate his ideas on the
mechanics of power better than most of the postwar generation
political scientists. He must have impressed Tracy as
well, since Tracy had invited him to attend his present
seminar on "Praetorian Politics in the Nuclear Age,"
which was being sponsored by the Council on Foreign
Relations.
"Understand you spent
some time in Venezuela working for Rockefeller," Tracy
murmured as he lit his pipe.
"In a manner of speaking.
I was sent to Venezuela at the beginning of the war
to do political analysis for the Office of Information.
Rockefeller was Coordinator of Information, but I didn't
have much time to see him..."
"Spent the whole war
there?" Tracy was adept at eliciting information.
"From 1942 through
1947."
"My understanding is
that Rockefeller was doing a bit of psych-ops warfare---or
whatever they call it."
"He called it that.
All I was involved in was writing news releases. We
fed them to the wire services. They reported them as
news."
"Aren't you being a
bit modest, Foxx? I understand you received a personal
commendation from Rockefeller?"
"The stories were,
of course, designed to provoke a reaction against the
Nazis in South America..." Foxx hesitated, wondering
how Tracy knew so much about his wartime service record.
He and his small staff in Caracas not only had written
more than 90 percent of the "hard" news in South America,
they had carefully designed it to manipulate the actions
of every country on that continent. The ease with which
this sort of disinformation could be put onto the news
wires had given him many of his ideas on the vulnerability
of government to coups.
"Yes, of course," Tracy
said, cutting short his inquiry. "Let's have something
to eat."
The oval dining room,
like the club itself, was small and intimate. Rather
than individual tables, there was a common table. Tracy
quietly introduced Foxx to the other members at the
table. Their names all sounded like endowed buildings
at Harvard.
A waiter wheeled over
a cart with a side of roast beef on it. Tracy nodded,
and the waiter cut off an end piece for him. "Do you
like your beef rare, or well done, Foxx?" Tracy asked.
Foxx pointed to the
rare side of the beef. The waiter smiled indulgently,
as though Foxx had made an extraordinary request, and
cut him a blood-red piece. He garnished it with a small
baked potato. Decanters of red wine were already on
the table. Foxx noticed that although the members of
the Brook sat around the same table, they made a point
of not talking to, or even looking at, each other. They
might as well be seated at separate tables, he thought.
"I've been involved
in something that I thought might be of interest to
you," Tracy began.
"At Yale?" Foxx asked.
He had heard that Tracy was being considered as the
next master of Pierson College there.
"No, in Washington.
I've taken a temporary leave from Yale to work out a
problem for the State Department."
"What kind of problem?"
"The State Department
is concerned that its diplomats are not prepared for
the sort of crisis that might occur these days. We're
attempting to design a few simulated crises. It's a
sort of board game for diplomats."
"Board game?" Foxx
had always been intrigued by games. He had basing a
seminar on one. The idea of the State Department using
them to simulate the real world piqued his interest.
"Well, it's not exactly
like Monopoly," Tracy explained, slowly pouring a glass
of wine for Foxx. "It's called the Game of Nations.
The diplomats who play the game are each assigned some
special role. For instance, they might play a king,
an intelligence chief, or what-have-you. They have to
respond to a hypothetical crisis that we design for
them. It's all adjudicated by a computer."
"Fascinating..." Foxx
began.
Tracy interrupted:
"Does your teaching contract at Harvard allow you to
consult?"
"Yes, as long as it's
only part-time."
"Then why not try your
hand at designing a scenario for us. The pay is probably
better than at Harvard." He added precisely, "One
hundred dollars a day and travel expenses to Washington."
"What kind of crisis
would you want?"
Tracy nodded good-bye
to one of the men who was sitting across the table from
him. Then he turned back to Foxx. "You teach a course
on coup d'etat, don't you?"
"It's really on political
pathology, but it includes analyzing coups." Foxx looked
around. The dining room was empty, except for himself
and Tracy.
"What about designing
a coup? I would, of course, give you the basic parameters.
You could work it out in, say, thirty-six moves. The
game is based on thirty-six moves."
Tracy looked at his
watch with some concern. "I had no idea of the time.
I hope you don't mind if I rush off."
After leaving the Brook,
Foxx walked from Fifty-fourth Street up Madison Avenue
to Eighty sixth, peering into the galleries along the
way. He looked at paintings, sculptures, furnishings,
carpets, and advertisements, as well as at other window
shoppers. It was a visual feast for him.
He stayed that night
at the Croyden Hotel. In the morning he had to wait
fifteen minutes for the receipt for his breakfast, which
he needed in order to get reimbursed by the Council
on Foreign Relations. Then he rushed to get to La Guardia
Airport to catch his plane.
During the bumpy flight
back to Cambridge, Foxx reflected on Tracy's offer.
Designing scenarios for some State Department game sounded
like a fairly juvenile idea. But the consulting fee
Tracy had offered him would help him finance the research
he needed for his book. And, with the Arabella situation,
he might need alternative employment. In any case, organizing
these hypothetical scenarios would also give him a chance
to work out some of the theories he had been developing
on coup d'etat. The most important consideration was,
however, the connection. Tracy could be very helpful
in finding him a job at Yale if Harvard failed to promote
him.
He had decided to accept
the offer even before his plane landed on the runway
at Logan Airport.
When he got back to
his office, he found two notes slipped under his door.
Both were from wayward students. The first, Brixton
Steer, wrote:
"Dear Professor Foxx,
I have a problem. Would it be possible to write a paper
for you in lieu of taking the Midterm exam on December
16? My father wants me to be with the family in Teheran
for Xmas (which would mean leaving Cambridge December
15). If this would be permissible, I would like to write
a paper on the 'Politics of Usurpation in the Middle
East,' and do research on it over the Xmas recess."
Foxx could see that
young Steer already knew how to get a leverage out of
being the Ambassador to Iran's son. "Excused from exam.
Look forward to reading your paper," Foxx scribbled
on the bottom of the note.
The second note was
from Arabella. "You missed our tutorial. When can I
have a make-up assignment, I'm will do whatever you
suggest (Pathological Politics, if that is what you
want to call it). Can't wait. Can't Wait. Can't Wait.
Arabella."
Three "cant waits!"
He realized how much trouble he was in now.
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