BOOK ONE                                            
DECEMBER, 1952

CASABLANCA

Foxx, after weighing his limited choices, decided on option A: a well-planned accidental meeting at the Fogg Museum opening. He made two seemingly logical assumptions. First, Tina, who he desperately wanted to see, would be at the Fogg. She had, after all, come all the way from London to help curate the show. And second, Arabella, who he did not want to confront, would not be there. She, after all, had made a point of despising museum art.

The opening was in the Fogg's Italian Renaissance courtyard, a venue that he particularly admired. Its sixteenth-century Florentine facade replicated the world in which Machiavelli had devised, The Prince, a book about the Game of Nations before they were nations. It had provided Foxx with many of the ideas for his Ajax Scenario. After checking his duffel coat and book bag, he found a strategic niche in the courtyard from which he could scan the arriving guests as they cued up at the bar for a drink. When he located Tina, he would choreograph the necessary steps to bring about the chance encounter.

The courtyard filled up dozens of people. He could see professors in their tweedy jackets with arm patches, straggly-dressed students and well-suited Brahmins from Boston, but not Tina. There goes assumption one, he thought, looking at his watch. It was 6:30 PM. Disappointed, he walked over to the bar and, crashing the cue, got a drink. Then, he saw his second assumption also was mistaken. Standing diagonally across the courtyard from him, wearing a sexy blue dress, with a slit that ran up to her thigh, was Arabella.

Arabella was pointing to a painting on the wall while talking to the man in a charcoal jacket and khaki pants. He could see that her dress, lashed around her, was much too tight. She seemed to be bursting through the slit. He wondered if she had borrowed it from her thinner sister. He then recognized who she was taking to. It was his obsequious student, Brixton Steers. Wasn't he supposed to be in Iran? He hoped they were not discussing his Pathological Politics.

Arabella and Steers moved towards the next painting. Then, turning towards the bar, she cocked her head suddenly, looked in Foxx's direction, and turned away.

Had she seen him? Foxx didn't wait to find out. Putting his drink down, he ducked out of Machiavelli's court, reflecting on, as he retrieved his coat and books, how even the best laid plans go astray.

He trudged through the snow on Quincy Street. Harvard Yard was almost empty. The caroling bells in Memorial Chapel reminded him most of the students had gone home for Christmas. He cut across the quadrangle, heading towards the Yard entrance to Widener Library. Tracy had told him Kim Roosevelt had written a monograph on diplomacy in the Levant. Foxx wanted to read before he returned to Washington for the third round of the Game of Nations. After making his way up the slippery steps, he found the door was shut. A sign instructed him to use the front entrance. Another reversal. He started back down and saw the white fur coat propelled by jean-clad legs crossing Harvard Yard.

He made an instant mid-course correction. Keeping a safe interval, hee followed the fur coat across Harvard Square, down Brattle Street.

Tina knew exactly where she was going. Casablanca. Cambridge's newest movie house, The Brattle, had just opened with a re-run of the nineteen-forties classic. She stopped to admire the poster showing Humphry Bogart in a trench coat kissing Ingrid Bergman. Then, she bought a ticket.

In hot pursuit, Foxx entered the lobby. He then paused. Better not rush in, he thought. He still wanted her to interpret their meeting in the dark as an accident of fate. He bought a large bag of buttered popcorn and waited ten minutes.

Tina was sitting in the middle of the second row in a near-empty theater. Her long legs were uninhibitedly draped over the row in front of her. Her fur coat occupied another seat. Why not, the theater was practically empty.

Foxx hesitantly shuffle down the aisle, pretending not to notice Tina, as he sat down two seats away. She seemed totally engrossed in the movie. He put the popcorn bag on his lap and tried to focus on the film he had seen a dozen times before.

On the screen, Rick's Cafe filled with an assortment of Moroccans in silk robes. Turks in fezzes. German officers with Swastikas, French Legionnaires. Everyone was plotting with everyone. Off- screen, he felt an intruder in his lap.

Tina had moved next to him and was dipping into his popcorn. He feigned surprise, "Tina? I thought you'd be at the opening."

"What for? I've seen the paintings," she said, scooping out another hand of popcorn. "I don't enjoy intellectualizing about them at openings. That's Bela's department."

"I need to speak to you about Arabella..."

"This in my favorite part. Ssssh." She raised her finger to her lips, first to command his silence, then to lick off the butter from the popcorn.

Back on screen, Bergman was confessing to Bogart, "If you knew what I went through! If you knew how much I loved you, how much I still love you!" Tina, without diverting her eyes from the screen, she reached over and scooped another handful of popcorn.

"Arabella was my best student..." he had carefully rehearsed his explanation in his mind.

"I'll bet," she said, her hand scraping the bottom of the bag for the last kernel of popcorn. Bogart gave Bergman a nineteen-forties style kiss. "Misunderstandings happen," he resumed his rehearsed speech.

She leaned over to his ear. "Will you shut up about Bela," she whispered. "What she wanted from you was an A, which I'm sure you will give her. "

"There also might have been some silly infatuation..."

"Infatuation? Maybe with her beau, Brixton. She's going off to Teheran with him for Christmas. Now can I watch the movie in peace," she said, turning away and leaning on the seat in front.

He shut up, doubly-crushed, watching Bogart walked off into the desert with a French policeman, saying it was the beginning "of a beautiful friendship." He didn't buy that ending. Tina slipped on her fur coat, without even looking at him.

"Bye, Tina," he began to leave. No response. "Small world. Quite a coincidence running into to you in Casablanca." He walked up the aisle alone.

"Small world? Coincidence?" she said, catching up with him and looping her arm though his arm. "You followed me here all the way from Harvard Yard. "You need to take a remedial course in spy-craft. C' mon, I'll take you to the Blue Parrot."

They had their giant cappuccinos in the Blue Parrot, the theater's cafe, which took its name and decor from Casablanca. They both sat in huge white wicker, as a waiter in a fez served them from a copper tray. Life imitating art, as it always does, Foxx concluded.

Foxx described his consulting work in Washington. He told her about the bizarre Gaming Center, the Ajax Scenario he had designed and the computer. "They even have a man search the Gaming Center for hidden microphones as if any would care?"

"I am fascinated by what men try to keep secret but can't," she said, listening with rapt attention.

"That could be a dangerous hobby."

"Don't I know it," she answered.

He could see she was intrigued. He described the machinations over chromium the mythical country called Zemblia in the Middle East. He spoke of his role with a touch of self-deprecating humor, which allowed him to brag without sounding immodest."Can you believe grown men, diplomats, no less, actually play out my mad scenario to get control of Zemblian chromium?"

"Chromium? In the Middle East?" Doesn't sound very likely."

"Its a fictional situation." He explained, as Tracy had explained to him, that hypothetical constructs were used teach crises-management. The idea was to exclude personal biases. The purpose was to prepare for an unforeseen event. He could see that she did not understand hypothetical constructs. He moved his hand on top of her hand. "Its only a game, Tina."

"Game?" she said, squeezing his hand. "Is it only a game? Maybe it's not chrome they are playing for."

"It could be any hypothetical commodity."

"Has it occurred to you, Jake, that they are after a real commodity and a real countr?." Foxx was willing to humor her. He saw the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

"Ah, intrigue," he smiled. "Ok, what do think it's all about?"

"Crude," she answered. "Millions of barrels of crude oil."

"But there is no oil in Zemblia," he said, taken back.

"Its not Zemblia. It's Iran."


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