Jealousy

Weeks turned into months. Months became a year then a second and a third. Nova Healthcare System passed into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and shareholders ultimately received distributions valued at a few cents on their invested dollar from the creditors' court appointed trustee. The scandal had rocked Medicare and Congress enacted sweeping reforms to rebuild public confidence in the entire federal healthcare system. The Congressional hearings brought the worst of partisan bickering to the television audience and numerous HHS officials were retired, several to federal prison for their acceptance of Jeffrey's bribes. The SEC investigation was the final straw that shattered the Goldberg empire and several of Jeffrey's senior lieutenants received sentences well over twenty years in length. Those that escaped imprisonment found their professional reputations ruined beyond repair.

The halcyon days of the Harrison's first few months of marriage were tarnished by an unfair public perception that Carol was somehow enmeshed in Jeffrey's corporate crimes even though no one could offer a shred of evidence to that effect. At the insistence of the board of trustees and with deep personal embarrassment, the university's president quietly suggested that her full retirement might be in everyone's best interest and her prior academic prominence slowly faded from memory. Her financial well being had been decimated.

Harrison's agent continued to market his availability for speaking engagements but they were increasingly difficult to obtain with reluctant sponsors. He penned a third book on America's Mideast quagmire but the subject had become overworked and sales were not encouraging despite an exhausting signing tour. One previous supporter was heard to say that the scandal surrounding Mrs. Ward had turned Harrison into something approaching damaged goods with persons of influence in international diplomacy. "It's a pity that another's actions often affect persons not at all involved," he sanctimoniously philosophized.

The Greenberg and Ward children returned to their professional lives and endeavored to repair the stained family reputation. By and large they were successful in their efforts but their careers had scattered them geographically and that prevented frequent visits with their parents in Washington. Realizing his State Department career had been dead-ended by the scandal, Harrison's eldest son left government service accepted a mid-management job with a manufacturing company in Milwaukee. His Marine son had been reassigned to a backwater supply billet in Okinawa and his future promotions appeared hopeless.

Carol and Harrison clung to each other as they tried to survive the hurricane that had consumed their private life for so long. To conserve their diminished funds, they sold the little-used Cape Cod cottage that had been the centerpiece of their retirement plans. Fortunately, they owned their Dumbarton Street home in Georgetown free and clear but lavish entertaining was a thing of the past. Slowly, they retreated into a modest lifestyle not unlike many aging people throughout America. Even more slowly, the grinding stress of their public humiliation eroded their deep love. They remained good friends but the furnace of passion that surrounded their early marriage had been replaced by a quiet companionship. They continued to value intellectual conversation between themselves and with the few old friends who occasionally visited. Although Carol had gained considerable weight and Harrison's face now carried a perpetual frown, their silver-haired appearance remained distinguished looking. The intimate smiles and tender words of endearment that were so much a part of their first year together became less frequent. Petty arguments became common. A glass of wine shared over dinner became several strong scotches in the afternoon. Their physical communion was infrequent and dispirited.

Four years later, the hostilities in Iraq had finally sputtered to their disillusioning conclusion for the United States and the legacy of terrorism continued throughout the Mideast. On a stifling July evening in Jerusalem, a relatively minor incident occurred that was duly reported in newspapers worldwide. One of the city's better restaurants had been the site of a suicide bombing that resulted in four fatalities, including the perpetrator, and nine injuries. Among the fatalities was Ira Kubrick, a gentleman in his late sixties who held joint Israeli-American citizenship and a young woman who was believed to have been his dinner companion. In London, Desmond Toomey showed the article to his long-term lover who happened to be the adulterous fourth wife of Jeffrey Greenberg. Because her solicitor had told her that Mr. Greenberg's money was so well hidden it would be a waste of time to chase a lucrative divorce settlement, she never bothered to rid herself of her unloved husband.  

Three months after the incident in Jerusalem, most readers in the United States missed a small newspaper article that reported the death of forty-six-year-old Aaron Goldberg, apparently the result of a self-inflicted drug overdose. The body had been discovered in an advanced state of decomposition by local teenagers in a deserted wooded area overlooking the Atlantic south of Ocean City on Maryland's eastern shoreline. The report correctly stated that Mr. Goldberg, a life-long bachelor, was the son of Jeffrey Goldberg, the disgraced head of the defunct Nova Healthcare System who had himself disappeared almost a decade earlier.