'But you did find out,' said Varak firmly. 'And in your anger and embarrassment you sought other companionship. At the time you were convinced you couldn't do anything about your marriage, so you looked for surrogate comfort.'
'Is that what it's called? I looked for someone who could be mine.'
'And you found her in a hospital where you went to give blood during a campaign. She was a certified nurse from Ireland who was studying for her registry in the United States.'
'How the hell—'
'Old people talk.'
'Pee Wee Mangecavallo,' whispered the Speaker, his eyes suddenly bright, as if the memory brought back a rush of happiness. 'He had a little Italian place, a bar with good Sicilian food, about four blocks from the hospital. No one ever bothered me there—I don't think they knew who I was. That guinea bastard, he remembered.'
'Mr. Mangecavallo is over ninety now, but he does, indeed, remember. You would take your lovely nurse there and he would close up his bar at one o'clock in the morning and leave you both inside, asking only that you kept the tarantellas on the jukebox really quiet.'
'A beautiful person.'
'With an extraordinary memory for one of his age but without, I'm afraid, the control he had as a younger man. He reminisces at length, rambles, actually, saying things over his Chianti that perhaps he would never have said even a few years ago.'
'At his age he's entitled—’
'And you did confide in him, Mr. Speaker,' interrupted Varak.
'No, not really,' disagreed the old politician. 'But Pee Wee put things together; it wasn't hard. After she left for Ireland, I used to go back there, for a couple of years quite frequently. I'd drink more than I usually did because nobody, like I said, knew me or gave a damn and Pee Wee always got me home without incident, as they say. I guess maybe I talked too much.'
'You went back to Mr. Mangecavallo's establishment when she married—’
'Oh, yes, that I did! I remember it as if it were yesterday—remember going inside, no memory at all of coming out.'
'Mr. Mangecavallo is quite lucid about that day. Names, a country, a city… a date—of severance, you called it. I went to Ireland.'
The Speaker snapped his head towards Varak, his unblinking eyes angry and questioning. 'What do you want from me? It's all over, all in the past, and you can't hurt me. What do you want?'
'Nothing that you would ever regret or be ashamed of, sir. The most stringent background examination could be made and you could only applaud my clients' recommendation.'
'Your… clients? Recommendation…? Some kind of House assignment?'
'Yes, sir.'
'The horseshit aside, why would I agree to whatever the hell you're talking about?'
'Because of a detail in Ireland you are not aware of
'What's that?'
'You've heard of the killer who calls himself Tammy O'Sheary, the provisional “wing commander” of the Irish Republican Army?'
'A pig! A blot on every Irish clan's escutcheon!'
'He's your son.'
A week had passed and for Kendrick it was further proof of the quick passage of fame in Washington. The Partridge Committee's televised hearings were suspended at the request of the Pentagon, who issued dual statements that it was revising certain financial 'in-depth' records, as well as the fact that Colonel Robert Barrish had been promoted to brigadier general and posted to the island of Guam to oversee that most vital outpost of freedom.
‘One Joseph Smith of 70 Cedar Street in Clinton, New Jersey, whose father had been with the 27th in Guam, roared with laughter as he poked his wife's left breast in front of the television screen. 'He's been hosed, babe! And that what's-his-face did it! He's my buddy!'
But as all brief periods of euphoria must come to an abrupt end, so did the temporary relief felt by the representative of the Ninth Congressional District of Colorado.
'Jesus Christ!' yelled Phil Tobias, chief aide to the congressman, as he held his hand over the telephone. 'It's the Speaker of the House himself! No aide, no secretary, but him!'
'Maybe you should let the other “himself” know about it,' said Annie O'Reilly. 'He called on your line, not mine. Don't talk, sweetie. Just push the button and announce. It's out of your league.'
'But it isn't right! His people should have called me—’
'Do it!'
Tobias did it.
'Kendrick?'
'Yes, Mr. Speaker?'
'You got a few minutes to spare?' asked the New Eng-lander, the word'spare' emerging as'spay-yah'.
'Well, of course, Mr. Speaker, if you think it's important.'
'I wouldn't call a shit-head freshman direct if I didn't think it was important.'
'Then I can only hope that a shit-head Speaker has a vital issue to discuss,' replied Kendrick. 'If he doesn't, I'll charge my hourly consultation rate to his state. Is that understood, Mr. Speaker?'
'I like your style, boy, We're on different sides but I like your style.'
'You may not when I'm in your office.'
'I like that even better.'
Astonished, Kendrick stood in front of the desk staring in silence at the evasive eyes of the gaunt-faced, white-haired Speaker of the House. The old Irishman had just made an extraordinary statement, which should have been, at the very least, a proposal but was, instead, a bombshell in Evan's path of retreat from Washington, DC. 'The Subcommittee on Oversight and Evaluation?' said Kendrick in quiet anger. 'Of Intelligence?'
'That's it,' answered the Speaker, glancing down at his papers.
'How dare you? You can't do that!'
'It's done. Your appointment's announced.'
'Without my consent?
'I don't need it. I don't say you had the clearest sailing with your own party leaders—you're not the most popular fella on your side of the fence—but with a little persuasion they agreed. You're kind of a symbol of independent bipartisanship.'
'Symbol? What symbol? I'm no symbol!'
'You got a tape of the Foxley show?'
'It's non-history. It's forgotten!'
'Or that little rhubarb you pulled in your office the next morning? That fella from the New York Times did a hell of a column on you, made you out like some kind of—hat was it? I reread it yesterday—“a reasoned voice among the babel of mad crows”.'
'All that was weeks ago and nobody's mentioned anything of substance since then. I've faded.'
'You just sprang back to full flower.'
'I refuse the appointment! I don't care to be burdened by secrets involving national security. I'm not staying in government and I consider it an untenable position to be placed in—a dangerous situation, to put it bluntly.'
'You publicly refuse and your party will wash you out of its hair—publicly. They'll call you a few names, like a rich mistake and irresponsible, and revive that jackass you buried with your money. He and his little machine are missed around here.' The Speaker paused, chuckling. 'They beavered away for everybody with nice little perks like private jets and fancy suites from Hawaii to the South of France owned by the mining boys. Didn't make a damn bit of difference what party you were with, they just wanted a few addendums on legislation—couldn't care less where they come from. Hell, Congressman, you refuse, you could be doing all of us a favour.'
'You really are a shit-head, Mr. Speaker.'
I'm pragmatic, son.'
'But you've done so many decent things—'
'They came from being practical,' interrupted the old pol. 'They don't get done with buckets of vinegar, they go down easier with pitchers of warm syrup, like sweet Vermont syrup, get my drift?'
'Do you realize that with one statement you just condoned political corruption?'
'The hell I did! I just condoned the acceptance of minor greed as part of the human condition in exchange for major legislation that helps the people who really need it! I got those things through, shit-head, by blinking my eyes to incidental indulgences when those who got 'em knew my eyes
weren't closed. You rich son of a bitch, you wouldn't understand. Sure, we got a few millionaires around here, but most aren't. They live on yearly salaries that you'd piss away in a month. They leave office because they can't put their two or three kids through college on what they make, forget vacations. So you're goddamned right, I blink.'
'All right!' shouted Kendrick. 'I can understand that, but what I can't understand is your appointing me to Oversight! There's nothing in my background that qualifies me for such an assignment. I could name thirty or forty others who know a lot more than I do—which isn't hard because I don't know anything. They follow these things, they love being on the inside of that dumb business—I repeat, I think it's a dumb business! Call on one of them. They're all salivating at the chance.'
'That kind of appetite isn't what we're lookin' for, son,' said the Speaker in his now heavily pronounced down home, Down East accent that belied decades of sophisticated political negotiations in the nation's capital. 'Good healthy scepticism, like what you showed that double-talking colonel on the Foxley show, that's the ticket. You'll make a real contribution.'
'You're wrong, Mr. Speaker, because I have nothing to contribute, not even the slightest interest. Barrish was using and abusing generalities, arrogantly refusing to talk straight, only talk down. It was entirely different. I repeat, I have no interest in Oversight.'
'Well, now, my young friend, interests change with conditions, like in the banks. Somethin' happens and the rates go up or down accordingly. And some of us are more familiar than others with certain troubled areas of the world—you certainly qualify in that regard. As that beautiful book says, talents buried in the ground don't do anybody a cow dung's worth of good, but if they're brought up into the light, they can flourish. Like your new flowering.'
'If you're referring to the time I spent in the Arab Emirates, please remember I was a construction engineer whose only concerns were jobs and profits.'
'Is that so?'
'The average tourist knew more about the politics and cultures of those countries than I did. All of us in construction kept pretty much to ourselves; we had our own circles and rarely stepped outside them.'
'I find that hard to believe—damn near impossible, in fact. I got the congressional background report on you, young fella, and I tell ya it blew my good New England socks off. Here you are right here in Washington and you built airfields and government buildings for the Arabs, which certainly means you had to have a hell of a lot of conversations with the high mucky-mucks over there. I mean airfields; that's military intelligence, son! Then I learn you speak several Arab languages, not one but several!'
'It's one language, the rest are simply dialects—'
'I tell you you're invaluable, and it's no less than your patriotic duty to serve your country by sharing what you know with other experts.'
'I'm not an expert!'
'Besides,' broke in the Speaker, leaning back in his chair, his expression pensive, 'under the circumstances, what with your background and all, if you refused the appointment it'd look like you had somethin' to hide, somethin' maybe we ought to look into. You got somethin' to hide, Congressman.' The Speaker's eyes were suddenly levelled at Evan.
Something to hide? He had everything to hide! Why did the Speaker look at him like that? No one knew about Oman, about Masqat and Bahrain. No one would ever know! That was the agreement.
'There's not a damn thing to hide, but there's everything to let hang out,' said Kendrick firmly. 'You'd be doing the subcommittee a disservice based on a misplaced appraisal of my credentials. Do yourself a favour. Call one of the others.'
'The beautiful book, that most holy of books, has so many answers, doesn't it?' asked the Speaker aimlessly, his eyes once again straying, 'Many might be called, but few are chosen, isn't that right?'
'Oh, for God's sake—’
'That might well be the case, young fella,' broke in the old Irishman, nodding his head. 'Only time will tell, won't it? Meanwhile, the congressional leadership of your party has decided that you're chosen. So you're chosen—unless you've got something to hide, something we ought to look into… Now, skedaddle. I've got work to do.'
'Skedaddle?'
'Get the fuck out of here, Kendrick.'
The Icarus Agenda
Chapter 20
The two bodies of Congress, the Senate and the House, have several committees of matching purpose with similar or nearly similar names. There is Senate Appropriations and House Appropriations, the Senate Foreign Relations and the House Foreign Affairs, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, this last with a powerful Subcommittee on Oversight and Evaluation. This counterpartism is one more example of the republic's effective system of checks and balances. The legislative branch of government, actively reflecting the current views of a far wider spectrum of the body politic than either an entrenched executive branch or the life-tenured judiciary, must negotiate within itself and reach a consensus on each of the hundredfold issues presented to its two deliberative arms. The process is patently frustrating, patently exasperating, and generally fair. If compromise is the art of governance within a pluralistic society, no one does it better, or with more aggravation, than the legislative branch of the United States government with its innumerable, often insufferable and frequently ridiculous committees. This assessment is accurate; a pluralistic society is, indeed, numerous, usually insufferable to would-be tyrants, and almost always ridiculous in the eyes of those who would impose their will on the citizenry. One man's morality should never by way of ideology become another's legality, as many in the executive and the judiciary would have it. More often than not these quasi-zealots grudgingly retreat in the face of the uproars emanating from those lower-class troublesome committees on the Hill. Despite infrequent and unforgivable aberrations, the vox populi is usually heard and the land is better for it.
But there are some committees on Capitol Hill where voices are muted by logic and necessity. These are the small, restricted councils that concentrate on the strategies formed by the various intelligence agencies within the government. And perhaps because the voices are essentially quiet and the members of these committees are examined in depth by stringent security procedures, a certain aura descends over those selected to the select committees. They know things others are not privileged to know; they are different, conceivably a better breed of men and women. There also exists a tacit understanding between the Congress and the media for the latter to restrain themselves in areas concerning these committees; a senator or a congressman is appointed, but his or her appointment does not become a cause celebre. Yet neither is there secrecy; the appointment is made and a basic reason given, both the act and reason stated simply, without embellishment. In the case of the representative from the ninth district of Colorado, one Congressman Evan Kendrick, it was put forth that he was a construction engineer with extensive experience in the Middle East, especially the Persian Gulf. Since few knew little or anything about the area, and it was accepted that the congressman had been an executive employed somewhere in the Mediterranean years ago, the appointment was considered reasonable and nothing unusual was made of it.
However, editors, commentators and politicians are keenly aware of the nuances of growing recognition, for recognition accompanies power in the District of Columbia. There are committees and then again there are committees. A person appointed to Indian Affairs is not in the same league with another sent to Ways and Means—the first does the minimum to look after a discarded, basically disenfranchised people; the latter explores the methods and procedures to pay for the entire government to stay in business. Nor is Environment on a par with Armed Services—the former's budgets are continuously, abusively reduced, while the expenditure on weaponry reaches beyond all horizons. The allocation of moneys is the mother's milk of influence. Yet, simply put, few committees on the Hill can match the nimbus, the quiet mystique, that hovers over those associated with
the clandestine world of intelligence. When sudden appointments are made to these select councils, eyes watch, colleagues whisper in cloakrooms, and the media is poised at the ready in front of word processors, microphones and cameras. Usually nothing comes of these preparations and the names fade into comfortable or uncomfortable oblivion. But not always, and had Evan Kendrick been aware of the subtleties, he might have risked telling the crafty Speaker of the House to go to hell.
However, he was not aware, and it would not have made any difference if he had been; the progress of Inver Brass was not to be denied.
It was six-thirty in the morning, a Monday morning, the early sun about to break over the Virginia hills, as Kendrick, naked, plunged into his pool, trusting that ten or twenty laps in the cold October water would remove the cobwebs obscuring his vision and painfully spreading through his temples. Ten hours ago he had been drinking far too many brandies with Emmanuel Weingrass in Colorado while sitting in a ridiculously opulent gazebo, both laughing at the visible streams rushing below the glass floor.
'Soon you will see whales!' Manny had exclaimed.
'Like you promised the kids in that half dried-up river wherever it was.'
'We had lousy bait. I should have used one of the mothers. That black girl. She was gorgeous!'
'Her husband was a major, a big major, in the Army Engineers. He might have objected.'
'Their daughter was a beautiful child… She was killed with all the others.'
'Oh, Christ, Manny. Why?'
'It's time for you to go.'
'I don't want to go.'
'You must! You have a meeting in the morning, already two hours ahead of us.'
'I can skip it. I've skipped one or two others.'
'One, and at great harm to my well-being. Your jet is waiting at the airfield in Mesa Verde. You'll be in Washington in four hours.'
As he swam through the water, each length faster than the last, he thought of Oversight's morning conference, admitting to himself that he was glad Manny had insisted he return to the capital. The subcommittee's meetings had fascinated him—fascinated him, angered him, astonished him, appalled him, but most of all fascinated him. There were so many things going on in the world that he knew nothing about, both for and against the interests of the United States. But it wasn't until his third meeting that he understood a recurring error in his colleagues' approach to the witnesses from the various intelligence branches. The mistake was that they would look for flaws in the witnesses' arguments for carrying out certain operations when what they should have been questioning were the operations themselves.
The Icarus Agenda Page 34