Chapter 4: Victor

“HEY, TOOTSIE, what’s up?”

She smiled. I always got a smile from her, not sure why. It wasn’t an instant friendship but I think I showed her I had no particular agenda, none at all, with respect to the ambassador. She’d been with him for years, including his term as governor of an important state that had voted for the incumbent president. The president, shortly after taking office, named him ambassador to our host country.

Career diplomats, many of them, hated political appointees. Sometimes they had good reason when the newly appointed ambassador turned out to be an idiot. It happened, but not as often as some claimed. Especially not in this country, a major trading partner with the U.S. Another reason was purely selfish, in the sense that career officers regarded themselves as the guardians of the bilateral relationship, conveniently ignoring the cabinet department they served and a Congress that had its own ideas about foreign policy. So all political appointees were by definition interlopers, which meant they had to be watched and, if possible, controlled. Besides, every political ambassador meant one less slot open to career officers.

This ambassador was no fool. Anyone who’d paid the slightest bit of attention to his tenure as governor and his success at bringing his state out of deficit and into a period of sustained growth, an achievement accomplished at great cost and with a lot of hand-wringing by members of his own party and a state legislature that had no desire to face up to reality, realized that.

“Tootsie,” real name Charlotte, had grilled me early on about a visa case the ambassador was interested in. It wasn’t a big deal, a question of asking his counterpart in another country where the embassy was having difficulty handling the crowds to give expedited visa service to a couple of friends of local VIPs, which meant his request was going require some special attention by folks who were already burdened. I gave it to her straight, yes and no, plus and minus.

The ambassador clearly didn’t have an agenda himself, at least back then I didn’t think he did, and I only wanted to play it straight with him as well. Tootsie and I even dated a couple of times. It was just fun, nothing was really going to happen, but she was good company outside of the office, even if she was ten years older than me.

“Hi Michael. Go on in, he’s waiting for you.”

The ambassador didn’t ask me to sit down.

“Good morning, Mr. Ambassador.”

“Michael, I had a call this morning from the Minister of Defense.” He paused but he wasn’t waiting for me to say anything, I knew that. “You refused his grandson’s application for a visa last week. Why?”

I remembered the case. One of the line officers had brought it to me. She was unhappy and undecided. Normally we’d just send this kind of visa right through. Kids like him had any number of ways to stay as long as they wanted to in the U.S. without really bending any laws much less breaking them.

When there was any real doubt or the case was a borderline one, that’s where I earned my exalted salary to balance competing interests and come up with a good solution. Or, to put it another way, a solution that didn’t cause too much heartburn for anyone. Sometimes, to tell the truth, it meant holding one’s nose and issuing the visa.

I probably shouldn’t talk about it, but now and then there were happier cases or at least ones that were easier to approve. Usually they involved beautiful women. “Gene pool” visas, we called them.

Not this kid. Jackass. I mean, how stupid do you have to be to include the employment letter, the one that tells you to apply for a visitor visa “and avoid the hassle” of a work visa, in with your application and passport.

I outlined this quickly for the ambassador. He was not pleased.

“Look, issue that visa. Just do it.”

Here’s the moment, another one, where I earn my salary.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Ambassador, but that is not an instruction I am permitted to accept.”

“What?” He began to sputter, then realized what he’d said and what I’d said. “You know what I mean, just...” Here he paused again. “Give it every consideration.”

“Yessir.”

With that I turned and walked out. I passed Tootsie with a wave. I don’t know if she knew what the subject had been. She probably did. I’d heard the ambassador’s single condition for taking the job was to bring Tootsie with him, he trusted her that much and needed her that much. I had no interest in testing where she stood on this. I knew already and it didn’t really matter anyway.

A visitor visa was out of the question. The only remaining issue was how much help we wanted to be to the kid to get him straightened out and flying right. Later that day the kid showed up as I’d asked him to. I thought I saw a glimmer of intelligence. I was about to put that proposition to the test.

“Victor, good to meet you.”

“Yes.”

This wasn’t going to go well, I knew that already, but this was one of those occasions whether we did it my way or not would decide a lot of things.

“Victor, your grandfather, the minister, and my ambassador have asked me to review your application and to give it full consideration.”

His smirk suggested he knew I was going to cave. He was going to be disappointed.

“Unfortunately, we cannot issue you a visitor visa because you’re going to work in the U.S. Even if we were to issue you the visa, and we won’t, I must make that perfectly clear, our immigration inspectors at the airport would refuse you entry. Your trip would be for no purpose.”

I watched Victor closely. He seemed to be paying attention.