Читать книгу War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence - Ronan Farrow, Ronan Farrow - Страница 18

A WEEK AFTER the ceremony in the Ben Franklin Room announcing Richard Holbrooke’s role in January 2009, Holbrooke and Husain Haqqani sat in the Hay-Adams hotel’s Lafayette dining room—an airy, light-filled hall with cream-colored walls and wide views of the White House. The property was once home to career diplomat and Secretary of State John Hay, and the legendary salons he and neighbor and political scion Henry Adams hosted for DC’s intellectual elites. In the 1920s, their homes had been razed to make way for the elegant, Italian Renaissance complex where Haqqani and Holbrooke now lunched. Holbrooke had passing encounters with Haqqani over the course of their overlapping diplomatic careers. The two had struck up a rapport in 2008, when Haqqani became ambassador to the US and Holbrooke, who was at the time chairman of the Asia Society, began making trips to build up his bona fides in the region. The day his new role was formally announced, he had called Haqqani and suggested they have lunch. Someplace where they’d be seen, he’d said wryly but pointedly. The Hay-Adams was hard to top for visibility. Yet such a consideration also captured Holbrooke as a creature of another era, when being seen at a prominent locale sent a signal, and when there was a clique of interested power brokers and observers ready to receive such a transmission. The truth is, nobody was paying attention.