Make Russia Great Again: A Novel Page 14

  “Of course, you have been to Rome before,” Ettore said, “since you are a monsignore. How good that President Trump has a member of the clergy for his chief of staff. I did not know. So, the drive will take us maybe some forty-five minutes. Your first event is… allow me to look”—he consulted his clipboard—“at eleven thirty, so you will have some few minutes to freshen up.”

  First event?

  “May I?” I asked, reaching for his clipboard. I read:

  Schedule of the Honorable Herbert Nutterman White House Chief of Staff and Counselor to the President of the United States

  11:30 A.M.: Greeting by Her Excellency Ambassador Clytemnestra Neuderscreech.

  11:45 A.M.: Meet with embassy staff. Brief remarks by AN and HN.

  I read the rest of the schedule with mounting panic: there was to be a luncheon with something called the Greater Mediterranean Security Conference. (“Remarks: twenty minutes, followed by Q and A.”) A tour of a leather goods factory, presumably in hopes of being exempted from the president’s new 50 percent tariff on luxury goods produced by NATO countries. Then back to the embassy for cocktails with the Knights of Malta. Dinner (“Black tie; decorations optional”). Attending: Ambassador and former Speaker Neuderscreech, Cardinal Maravilla, Cardinal M’Kwaampu, various other princes of the church, two members of the Italian Parliament, a former race car driver, an actress whose name I vaguely recognized and her husband, a tire magnate. (“Toast to the president of the United States, followed by brief remarks. Suggested theme: America First and Post-NATO Transatlanticism.)

  Some “unofficial visit.” Why didn’t they throw in “Fanfare for the Common Man”? Somewhere, something had gone very, very wrong.

  “I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” I said to Ettore.

  “Yes?”

  “It seems you were sent to meet Herbert Nutterman, the White House chief of staff.”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s not me. Sorry.”

  Ettore frowned, looked at the photo of me on his clipboard, then at me.

  “But…?”

  “Yes, we do look a bit alike. And the spelling is similar. But as you see, I’m with the church.” Should I add, for verisimilitude, that I was on a pilgrimage to atone for fondling altar boys? Might move things along.

  A look of panic came over Ettore.

  “You are… not chief of staff Erburt Nooterman?”

  “Alas.”

  Ettore spoke in machine-gun Italian to Massimo, who executed a U-turn that still haunts my sleep even after all these years. Twenty minutes later we were back at Leonardo da Vinci, Ettore grim-faced and perspiring. Massimo extracted my bag from the trunk and dumped it unceremoniously on the sidewalk. Ettore dashed back into baggage claim to locate the echt Signore Nooterman.

  I hoofed it to the taxi line. On the way in to Rome I called Judd and demanded to know why I’d been greeted with pomp and circumstance when I was here incognito. I had to be circumspect, as the purpose of my mission was known only to the president and myself. Even Miriam wasn’t in the loop; all she knew was that I was on a “private assignment for the president.”

  “Man, that is a mess,” Judd said. “The embassy must have gotten a bit overexcited about having the White House chief of staff in town. Take it as a compliment.”

  “Well, call them and tell them my visit got scrubbed. And that I won’t be attending dinner with the Knights of Malta and Brunella Piccatta.”

  “Brunella Piccatta? The actress?”

  “I think that’s the name. It was on the list, along with the thirty other people attending.”

  “Sure you want to bail on dinner with Brunella Piccatta?”

  “I’m not here to ogle movie stars, Judd. I’m on a highly sensitive mission.”

  “If you say so. But most people would kill to have dinner with Brunella Piccatta. Can you give me some idea why you’re in Rome? Is it some international conference on molybdenum?”

  “Just call the embassy,” I said, and hung up.

  * * *

  As rendezvous spots go, you can’t do better than the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square. There’s no ambiguity to “Meet me at the obelisk in the middle of St. Peter’s Square.” That said, it seems odd to me that a sixteenth-century pope put a 330-ton “representation of the erect phallus of the Egyptian god Osiris”—according to my guidebook—smack-dab in front of a church dedicated to Saint Peter. How do you say “Whatever” in Latin?I

  Oleg was there with a half dozen of his ex-Spetsnaz bodyguards. He took in my clerical garb.

  “Cardinal Nutterman! Eminence! I was going to come as Orthodox patriarch, but there was not enough time to grow the proper beard.”

  The strain of the flight and the morning was such that I needed to sit. But the Catholic Church, in its wisdom, does not provide amenities in St. Peter’s Square proper. I proposed that we step a few feet outside of sovereign Vatican territory, to a sidewalk café.

  Oleg assented. His myrmidons set up a perimeter. We ordered espressos and biscotti.

  “The president is very disappointed in you, Oleg. We’re doing everything we can to repeal the Glebnikov Act. And you release that video?”

  “She’s talented, Miss Sri Lanka. That thing where she rotate—”

  “Oleg, I didn’t come here to review the movie.”

  “Pity. Wait till you see Miss Okinawa. You will say, ‘Banzai!’ ”

  “I’m sure. Look here, Oleg,” I said forcefully. “You seem not to realize that humiliating the president of the United States will only mean that he won’t have another term. Then where will you be?”

  “Where I am now. Not in America.”

  “Do you think a Democrat president is going to make Glebnikov Act repeal a priority of his first hundred days?”

  “No. This is why we must do repeal now. Before election.”

  “But, Oleg…” Sisyphus on his worst day was not more frustrated than I.

  Then suddenly: pop-pop-pop-pop. I thought it was firecrackers or backfire farting from a passing Vespa. But there was another sound, of shattering glass. I looked and saw holes in the front of the café. These were gunshots.

  Oleg’s private army was on him like a rugby scrum. I was knocked aside, to the ground. Vehicles screeched up, one nearly running me over. Oleg and his protective carapace disappeared into them and off they roared.

  I lay on the pavement as a crowd gathered around. Exclamations, gasping, people crossing themselves. I wanted to get up and make an exit but couldn’t seem to get my limbs organized. Shock, probably, and no wonder. I don’t generally expect a hail of bullets with my espresso and biscotti.

  I felt a tug at my armpits. Someone was lifting me up. An American voice said, “Let’s get you out of here, Padre.”

  Wailing police sirens now joined in the general hubbub. Another vehicle screeched up out of nowhere. My savior shoved me into the back seat and off we went.

  He began to grope me.

  “What are you doing? Stop that!”

  “Relax. Checking to see if you got hit.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Director Jones asked us to keep an eye on you.”

  “CIA?”

  “Whatever.”

  “What the hell happened back there?” I said.

  “Not sure. One possibility is someone tried to take you and your Russian pal out.”

  At this point I—I don’t want to say “fainted”—succumbed to shock and passed out. When I came to, I was on a private jet, on my way back to Washington. The flight was a significant improvement on the one over.

  I. Quisquis.

  26

  “Miriam said you got into some kind of fuckup over there,” the president said. “Next time, be more careful. So, did you talk sense into that Russian prick?”

  Mr. Trump is not one to waste time comforting an employee who’s just narrowly escaped assassination.

  “I made a strong argument against releasing seventeen more videos,” I said.


  “And?”

  “I think I was making progress until our conversation was complicated by gunfire.”

  “Miriam says they don’t know who it was. But she never knows. Totally useless. I’m considering firing them all and starting my own CIA. Then if I asked questions? They would have answers, believe me.”

  I wasn’t looking forward to the next part.

  “Unfortunately, sir, the incident seems to have had a”—I didn’t want to say “disastrous”—“deleterious impact on our relations with Oleg.”

  The president frowned, as only Donald Trump can frown. His face scrunches into itself and becomes a gargoyle. You expect water to spout from its mouth. Mr. Trump must have come out of the womb frowning and muttering, “Disgusting.”

  “Oleg left a message on my cell phone. If you’d care to hear it…”

  The president gestured for me to play it.

  “You fucking try to fucking kill me, you piece of shit? Fuck you. And fuck your motherfucker boss.”

  Mr. Trump frowned more deeply.

  “He thinks you tried to kill him?”

  “I took his meaning to be collective. As in the US government tried to kill him. He seems to think it was a trap, with myself as the bait.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “Motive-wise, I suppose to keep him from releasing further movies.”

  “What a crock. I didn’t order a hit on Oleg. At this point, I would. But not with you sitting next to him.”

  “Thank you, sir. Greatly appreciated.”

  “You and I are the only ones who know about the thumb drive, right?”

  “Correct, sir.”

  “Not even Miriam? Miss Know-Nothing?”

  “She only knew I was going to Rome on a private mission. She wanted to have her people look out for me. And thank God she did, or right now I’d be explaining myself to some Italian prosecutor. You saw what they did to that poor American girl, Amanda Knox.”

  Mr. Trump snorted. “So now what? I star in seventeen more movies between now and the election?”

  “I agree that the optics are not optimal, sir,” I said.

  “I’d say very far from optimal, Herb. This is completely disappointing.”

  I rather boldly proposed that there might an upside.

  “As you yourself said, sir, you could shoot people on Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for you. No one’s getting shot in these movies. For all we know, your base might…”

  “What?”

  “… enjoy them. The male portion, at any rate.”

  The president considered.

  “Make America Hard Again. Why not?” I could hear the turbines of his stable genius humming. “What about the women?”

  “It might raise an eyebrow or two. But with a little spin by Mr. Colonnity and Mr. Fartmartin, the ladies might be persuaded that you were just being a thorough judge. You were doing in-depth interviews. The contestants couldn’t resist your magnetism. And before you knew it, they were hurling themselves at you and taking appalling liberties.”

  The president nodded. “They do throw themselves at me. You can’t blame them. Drives Melania nuts.”

  “I imagine it does, sir. But I’m sure that Mrs. Trump understands. After all, she herself found Donald Trump irresistible, did she not?”

  “What about my evangelicals?”

  There had been cracks in our evangelical support. But hairline cracks, nothing to shake the foundations. One holier-than-thou evangelical journalist had written a snarky editorial calling Mr. Trump “the Antichrist.” He changed his tune after the Aryan Soldiers of the Almighty Evangelical Brotherhood tried to stone him to death.

  “We’ll want to get Pastor Norma’s thoughts,” I said. “But these folks think you walk on water, sir. Your support among white evangelicals is something—I say this with respect—that Jesus Christ himself would envy. Now, if some of them want to quibble about your ministry to the Miss Universe contestants, our message should be: ‘People love Trump. And Trump loves people back. Is that a sin?’ Okay, fine. Donald Trump cops to not being one hundred percent perfect. But what Trump is also not is a radical, left-wing, gun-confiscating, fossil-fuel-banning, transgender-promoting, war-starting, Mexican-hugging socialist who hates America.” I added, “I’d love to get Katie’s thoughts on this.”

  The president considered.

  “Or we just say the videos are fake. Cleaner. And frankly, Herb, I’m getting tired of having to bend over backward for these assholes.”

  “The…?”

  “Evangelicals. I mean I love them, but they creep me out. They come in here to pray over me and touch me. I hate that.”

  “I think that’s part of the whole evangelical thing, sir. Touching. The so-called laying on of hands.”

  “Yeah, well, I hate it. From now on, you tell them before they come in: ‘It’s great that you want to pray over him. But Trump doesn’t like to be touched.’ ”

  “I’ll make a note to do that,” I said.

  “Meanwhile, you and Buttplug can quit with the Glenikov Act repeal.”

  “Are you sure, sir?”

  “If Oleg’s going to be an asshole, why should I spend political capital trying to convince everyone we’re facing a mollinum…”

  “Molybdenum.”

  “Whatever. Crisis. He can take his precious metal and shove it up his Russian ass.”

  “Sir,” I said, “Oleg is already in a rage. Bad enough he thinks we’re trying to kill him. But if he sees that we’re giving up on repeal… who knows what he might do? Surely it’s better to have a Russian oligarch inside the tent pissing out, than outside the—”

  “Fuck Oleg. I’m done with him.”

  If you say so, sir, I thought. But is Oleg done with you?

  27

  Over the following days I kept a nervous, vigilant eye on the media coverage. My CIA guardian angel had gotten me out of there before any of the gawping tourists and passersby managed to tape viral-quality iPhone videos of me. Oleg’s handlers, too, had done efficient work, bundling him off before some sidewalk Zapruder immortalized his presence. In yet another miracle, the CCTV security camera near the café was out of order at the time. Nice as it would have been to have a picture of our assailant, I was content to leave well enough alone.

  The Italian authorities were interviewing witnesses. A number of them said that one of the people involved was a monsignor. People who lurk about St. Peter’s tend to be the type who recognize clerical garb. The hunt was on for “Il Misterioso Monsignore”—The Mystery Monsignor.

  Miriam—bless her—performed two mitzvahs: she got her people to get Italian immigration to “lose” the photo taken of me on entering the country and to plant a story in La Bestia Eterna, a leading Vatican newspaper, quoting an anonymous colonel in the Swiss Guard that the shooting was “a quarrel about papal infallibility that got out of hand.” That triggered a cyclone of competing conspiracy theories on social media, including a plot to blackmail the pope for siring a love child by my almost dinner partner Brunella Piccatta. Dan Brown’s next blockbuster Vatican thriller. That might have been the end of it had it not been for the US embassy in the Holy See. Holy See, Holy do.

  * * *

  I was in my office watching Katie Borgia-O’Reilly on Fox. She was swatting away media questions about Oleg’s latest video release, this one featuring the future president enacting Kama Sutra positions with Miss Myanmar. We were now up to episode four of what Democrats, the liberal media, and Never Trumpers were calling The Apprentice Does Moscow.

  Again I was in awe of Katie’s skills. There are spin doctors, and there are centrifuges. Iran should hire Katie to centrifuge their uranium. She’d spin those isotopes into enough uranium 235 to blow up Israel and the world.

  Once, during a meeting where we were morosely anticipating the possibility of a second impeachment, Katie, without batting an eyelash, came up with: “How many presidents can claim the distinction of having been impeached
twice?” It took my breath away. It almost made me wish we’d had a second impeachment. Thankfully, we were spared that when Attorney General Barr audaciously invoked his theory about the “Divine Unitary Executive Right.”

  Now here she was, Trump’s La Pasionara, in full voice. Not only was Katie denying the authenticity of the videos, she was suggesting that the Democratic National Committee had made them. And that the Miss Universe contestants were actually “human trafficked sex slaves.”

  I was so absorbed in this bravura performance that I didn’t hear Caramella buzz me. She had to come into my office to tell me that Blyster Forkmorgan, chief White House counsel, was on the phone.

  “Herb. Sorry to bother you. Listen, I just got a call from the head of the FBI’s DC field office. By any chance were you in Rome last Tuesday?”

  Not good, I thought.

  “Rome,” I said. “Rome… Italy?”

  “Yeah. That Rome.”

  “Hm,” I said. “Let’s see. Last… Tuesday, you say? Even with Alzheimer’s you’d think I’d remember something like that.”

  Yes, yes, I know: cracking wise about progressive mental deterioration was in questionable taste, but I was a bit rattled.

  Switching gears, I said, “Why do you ask, Blyster?”

  I sensed that Blyster, easily the busiest member of the Trump administration, was losing patience.

  “Well, Herb, it seems they’re following up on a report out of our Holy See embassy. Did you happen to hear about that incident in St. Peter’s? A shooting? Involving some mystery monsignor?”

  “Good heavens. St. Peter’s, you say? Is the pope all right?”

  “Yes, Herb. The pope is fine. He wasn’t involved. It was a shooting outside St. Peter’s.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Now that you mention it. Been a bit busy…”

  “Well, someone at our embassy there told the cops he thinks he met the mystery monsignor. And—this’ll sound crazy—but that it was you.”

  “I gave up the Catholic drag scene years ago.”