The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2003

Foreign Service officer of Class 1. The department had recently complimented the embassy, with some warmth, on its political reporting and analysis. Lang was satisfied with his first year as the counselor for political affairs. He had, however, encountered problems in the embassy. They did not include the ambassador. Her name was Sally Lamkin and for 10 years she had repre- sented a prosperous part of Connecticut in the House of Representatives — and had been a leading force among the Italian-American members of the House; her moth- er, who had raised her after Mr. Lamkin abandoned his family, was a Caracciolo from Calabria. Congresswoman Lamkin had been rewarded for her services to the Republican cause, by a Republican president who gave her the Rome embassy a year before John Lang arrived there. She came to Rome alone; she had had loves but never a husband. She quickly decided she liked Lang’s frankness, which seemed to be coupled with both a good understanding of Italian matters and a sort of cold objec- tivity that she had not often seen in Washington. The deputy chief of mission, Fred Dustman, was another matter. Dustman had been consul in Florence, Italian desk officer in the department, consul general in Milan — and he was going nowhere in Political-Military Affairs in the department when he convinced a friend in Human Resources to put him on the list of candidates for the job as Ambassador Lamkin’s DCM. He had more Italian experience than the others, so she picked him. For two years now he had sat in his large office in the Palazzo Margherita, administering an oversized embassy that contained attachés from 30 federal agencies. He complained audibly that his burdens were such that he had no time to get out and see Italians. He also made clear that he did not much care for Romans, although he was living in their city. Florentines and Lombards, he did not mind saying, were finer and more honest people. What he did not say was that his Italian was at best halt- ing, and that he had no more friends among Florentines or Lombards than he did in Rome. Dustman and his rather awkward wife liked best to stay home evenings and watch a video or two. Amb. Lamkin did not, Dustman knew, dote on him. At staff meetings he sometimes sensed that she was mocking, if always very gently, things he said. He was soon jealous of Lang, who had no wife; who spoke fine Italian; who, it seemed, had quickly gotten to know everyone who counted in the capital — and whom the ambassador clearly doted on. John Lang was no fool. He could suffer if he got caught between the ambassador’s liking for him and the DCM’s mistrust. After Lang had been in Rome for a cou- ple of months, Sally Lamkin began calling him into her office for information and advice. The approach to her office was through the large room where the ambas- sador’s secretary sat. The secretary was Marie Takala, who had served with Lang in Prague. She was a good friend ... and to the left of her desk a door opened into Fred Dustman’s office, and the door was usually open. If he liked, Dustman could see Lang going into Sally Lamkin’s office, and Lang had no doubt that Dustman did see. John Lang therefore took pains to keep the DCM well briefed on his conversations with the ambas- sador. At least he did so until one Friday afternoon in February. It was a dreary day for Rome, cold and cloudy. Lang walked into the ambassador’s opulent office, which had been a ballroom when, a century earlier, the palace had belonged to Margherita, Italy’s queen mother. “Good afternoon, Madame Ambassador. What’s up?” “Sit down, John, and tell me all I need to know about Italy’s relations with Korea. This instruction says I have to weigh in, in person, with the foreign minister. I would rather that you did so, but orders are orders. So tell me what I don’t know— but for God’s sake don’t tell me any- thing I don’t really need to know.” He talked for 10 minutes. Fine, she said; just what I needed; thanks. She looked at him, and he at her. Sally Lamkin, Lang thought, was a really beautiful woman. She was, he knew, just his age, 42. She was blonde, slim; not tall. When she smiled, and she was smiling at him now, she dazzled him. F O C U S 32 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 3 Peter Bridges entered the Foreign Service in 1957 and served in Panama, Moscow, Prague, Rome, Mogadishu and Washington. After his second tour of duty in Rome, as Deputy Chief of Mission in 1981-84, he was named ambassador to Somalia and served there from 1984 to 1986. Since retirement from government service, he has served as executive director of the Una Chapman Cox Foundation, manager for international affairs of Shell Oil Company and the resident representative of the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development in Prague. He has published two books, Safirka: An American Envoy and Pen of Fire: John Moncure Daniel , and around four dozen articles, some in the Foreign Service Journal.