This the fourth or fifth book by distinguished novelist Ward Just that I have read. Most of those novels, though he has written probably fifteen, are set inside the workings of Washington, D.C. this time with an employee and eventually Ambassador for the State Department. Harry Sanders is a young foreign service officer, somewhere in Indochina (probably Vietnam) in the 1960's. He already realizes that the United States has lost its way, and will eventually be dragged into a war it cannot win. One cannot help but feel Just's book is influenced by our recent debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. The book begins with a love affair, between the young American and Seiglinde, a scarred German beauty, with a background so different from Harry's. They have a brief though passionate couple of weeks together, until she realizes the gulf between them, his innocence and optimism, her baggage from having grown up in Nazi Germany, are too much, especially the guilty that all German's carry. Thus, she leaves, without a note and Harry is devastated and hears little from her the rest of his life.
After she leaves, Harry is asked by the Ambassador to undertake a 'quiet mission,' to attempt a reconciliation with the enemy; if successful, they will be heroes, if failures, it could destroy their careers. He is blindfolded, taken to meet with an enemy agent in the jungle and finds them unwilling to compromise: they want the US to depart, period, no deals. Harry is then left alone, in the jungle, to fend for himself and find his way back to the city. Eventually, he is picked up by a mysterious Chinese merchant, and dropped off in front of the Embassy, but only after floundering and lost in the jungle.He also is forced to kill a young soldier who accosts him. This killing of the young soldier haunts Harry the rest of his life and becomes the Achilles heel of his career, as he's stereotyped as 'reckless, even dangerous,' a result of the failure of this mission. The Ambassador is transferred to Washington and Harry, too, moves on, to keep quiet, as the American troops begin their build up in this country. We also follow Seiglinde briefly, her leaving, her trying to find a life in Madagascar, then Northern Africa. She then disappears from the book/
Part II is brief; an introduction to May, Harry's wife, her introduction to the protocol of being the wife of someone in the State Department and we feel her unease. She, however, as a young wife, is game for a new life and looks forward to their many years together.
Part III, the last third of the book begins with Harry retired, living alone in France, on the southern coast after a fairly successful career. He thinks back about his various postings, the loss of his wife in a car accident a few years before he retired and the other single most pivotal event in their life, the loss of May's baby during child birth while posted in Africa, a loss she never quite recovers from, understandably. We get the sense that something was missing from their life together, even before this loss, perhaps the seriousness with which Harry took his job, its always coming first, leaving May at home, bored, often lifeless, though enduring. We also find that she takes a lover and are never sure if Harry knows about this, and wonder if he would care. He would certainly understand, I think.
The novel unwinds slowly, as he reminisces about their life together in various parts of the world. It ends with a yacht having moored just off the shore, just below the climb to Harry's cottage in France. An elderly women is rowed ashore, then climbs up the path, through the rocks to where Harry is sitting, outside in the sunny garden, with his cane. When she approaches him, he says one word: "You," and she answers, "Me," and the book ends. I liked it because I enjoy the inside look at how Washington works. For me, the most interesting part was the time spent in Indochina, as the Americans try to make sense of things and get sucked into a war they can never win. The looking backward at one's life is always somewhat depressing, as we tend to have scars that never completely heal, like Harry's killing of the young soldier, his wife's death or suicide.
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