The Parnell Affair

by James, Seth

  Seeing the President had momentarily bellowed himself out of breath, Karl, speaking faster than his wont but nevertheless under control, said, “Pete, I know, I know it's disgraceful the way anybody—”

  “Anybody! Anybody! No anybody should ever question me!” Pete shouted, grabbing Karl by the lapels of his jacket and ejecting rage within an inch of the smaller man's face.

  The echoing of his passion had barely reached the hallway's end when the smallest of noises entered meekly upon the scene: like a young girl reluctantly walking in on a spat between her parents, the doorknob’s click sounded small and fragile from the door to Pete's rooms. Opened only far enough to strike this note, the door emitted no more and admitted no one.

  Pete stepped back from Karl instantly, smoothing the other man's jacket. “I'm sorry, Karl,” he said quietly, a flustered look of horror blinking his eyes onto and off of Karl's face. “I beg your pardon. I was completely out of line.”

  “Think nothing of it, Mr. President,” Karl said, silently passing his thankful thoughts through the wall to the discrete Mrs. Howland. “It has been a long tiring day, in a year of the highest stress any man has ever been asked to endure.”

  “Thank you,” Pete said, also thinking of Linda. “It still doesn't excuse my behavior. I shouldn't take out my frustrations on you, who have performed so well and whose loyalty I trust second only to my wife's.”

  “Now you are flattering me, sir,” Karl said, smiling.

  “No, it's the god's honest truth,” Pete said. “However, we do have a situation. What if Parnell does go to the press with what happened in the Oval Office?”

  “He cannot,” Karl said. “I believe he is too smart for that. After the leak of his wife's name, it would look as if he is taking revenge, by inventing scandal. Even if he did, we simply laugh,” Karl said and laughed. “We laugh, we look embarrassed for him and say, 'We have always had the highest respect for Ambassador Parnell and would not want to humiliate such a great man, as would be necessary if we responded to these charges.' He knows this,” Karl said, smiling like a Cheshire cat, “so he will not make them.”

  “Shouldn't have worried at all,” Pete said. He forced a grin and clasped Karl's shoulder.

  “No, Mr. President,” Karl said. “And I will take care of this reporter. Put the suspicion elsewhere. He covers the hill, usually,” he said. “Maybe I should have someone over there tell him a story.”

  “I'll leave it with you,” Pete said.

  They said good night and Pete walked down the hall and into his living room. He'd noticed his hands shaking with the residue of rage incompletely spent before he crossed the threshold. Entering upon the rooms Linda had made theirs, however, was like crossing into another world, that of their domestic life. The sheepishness he felt at his behavior melted from his features under the warmth of her greeting. She came from the dining room direct to his arms and his cheek for a kiss; unlike most evenings, she didn't ask after his day, already knowing. Knowing him through the passage of thirty-two years of marriage had imparted the intimacy of what is unsaid yet not withheld.

  “I'm sorry to say we've had a bit of trouble in the kitchen,” Linda said. Turning out of his arms, though letting her hand linger about his, she brought him to a couch with a low table in front. “Poor Clara,” she laughed, “she does her best—and no doubt tonight's dinner will be as successful as its predecessors—but she never allows for preparation time.” She closed her eyes in silent laughter. “It'll be at least twenty minutes before she's ready for us. And probably a half an hour. Never mind; we'll eat fashionably late tonight. In the meantime, I've asked her to whip up some of those stuffed mushrooms you like, for a little appetizer out here.”

  “Oh, don't worry about that,” Pete said. He took her hand resting on the cushion between them. “I'm not all that hungry and only really have an appetite for sitting here with you.”

  “Aren't you sweet,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Won't you have something, though? At least a drink? Might improve your appetite.”

  “Yes!” he said. “A drink; now, that's just what I need.”

  He started to get up but she put a hand on his knee and rose herself. “Stay right there,” she said, “and let me do.”

  “You hostess so often,” he said, still sitting in the attitude of rising. “Reckoned it was my turn.”

  “Those formal occasions are an honor,” she said over her shoulder from the cocktail cabinet. “This is a pleasure.”

  She brought him a scotch neat and then returned for her glass of sherry.

  Once seated beside him again, Pete told her, “It certainly is.” He put back half of his drink and looked at the color of what remained in his glass, quiet for a moment. When he realized Linda was watching him, he raised her hand to his lips.

  “Dear, may I ask you something?” she said. “Something to do with your work, I mean.”

  “Of course,” Pete said, still holding her hand.

  “Will there be another war?” she asked. With a smile, she added: “I'll understand if you can't tell me because of national security.”

  Pete rubbed the soft skin of her hand (usually the first place a woman shows her age, but not Linda) against his cheek above his five o'clock shadow, which in the past year had turned increasingly grey. “I couldn't keep anything from you even if I had a mind to,” he said. Dropping their hands to the cushions, though not releasing hers, he said, “Any secret I have would be safer with you anyhow.” He heaved a great sigh and considered his scotch again. “But yes, there probably will be another war. This man Saddam Hussein is plain evil. Killed his own people with nerve gas. Tried to build an atomic bomb. And if he ever succeeds in building or stealing one,” Pete said, shaking his head at Linda, “I don't believe he'd hesitate for one second to give it to Al Qaeda to use on us. I'll go to the UN,” Pete said with another sigh, “but I doubt they'll do anything. We'll have to. As always.”

  “Crass people on television and in the papers,” Linda said, “and young people parading around the streets, won't make it easy for you. But I know you'll make the right decision, dear; your heart will take you in the right direction.” Pete's attention snapped back to her and for perhaps not the first but no more than the third time in the whole of their marriage, Linda mistook the thoughts behind her husband's blue eyes. “It's what first attracted me to you—other than those shoulders,” she said, leaning toward him and playfully kissing the edge of his jacket: “You have such a good heart.”

  Phase two, Pete thought, Karl said Gitmo's facilities were now prepared for phase two. Lodge said SOG teams are in the hills of Waziristan; the FBI has agents assisting local Pakistani police in the cities; they'll find somebody. What did Karl call him? A suitable subject. A subject. A man they'll capture and send to Gitmo and subject to—what did Ben call it? Reverse engineer the SERE school: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. A school the Army has to prepare soldiers to resist torture. Torture. Reverse engineer the SERE school. Gitmo facilities are ready to receive an appropriate subject. Give the order, Mr. President! Subject that man to—you have such a good heart.

  “I can see it has been another long day of hard decisions,” Linda said, squeezing Pete's hand with all her might until his mind came back into the room and his eyes returned to hers. “I don't want to know the grisly details faced by those at war,” she said. “I have my President for that.” He tried to smile mechanically, barely hearing her over the conversations, reports, and briefings replaying in his mind. “Just tell me this: will the country be better off?”

  In a flash, thirty years of thoughts murmured in the lonely watches of the night, passionately orated to crowds of thousands, and cabalistically affirmed in drunken rites with Paul Kluister came flooding into his mind, inundating and drowning his earlier doubts. Even god would allow a murdering terrorist to be put to such punishment, he thought. The country is safest when led by the most capable President; he that takes power is greater than he that must have power
granted to him; for if one man must have power and authority given to him and yet another can take it from the first, who is the stronger? To whom should we entrust the safety and prosperity of the nation? If I can take it, then I am the most capable. It'll take some hard decisions to get there, Pete told himself, but that's how it is.

  Pete tossed back the rest of his scotch, set the glass down firmly on the table, and said, “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!”

  With the strength honed as a fullback at Yale, which thirty-four years had left ripe enough for the task, Pete scooped Linda off the couch and into his lap. Used to these sudden bursts of exuberance, she deftly placed her sherry on the table as she passed.

  “But enough of that kind of talk,” he said, smiling at her surprised but pleased expression. “Something was said about my shoulders. It reminded me of—”

  Clara knocked and entered backward into the room with a tray of stuffed mushrooms. When she turned around to find the First Lady atop the President's knees, she colored subtly but deposited her burden before them without incident.

  “Thanks, Clara,” Pete said. “Listen, when you've finished up with the dinner, just put it on the table under some covers and then head off for the night.” He looked deep into Linda's eyes and added: “We'll get to it later on.”

  Clara nodded and tried not to bolt from the room as she left.

  Linda stood, swatted Pete on the shoulder, and straightened her dress. “You embarrass her when you talk so frank,” she said in a hushed tone, a little embarrassed herself but, like many half-neglected wives of men consumed by their jobs, was not about to stifle so rare a mood.

  “To hell with such delicacy,” Pete said with a chuckle. “She'll be fine, forget her. You were right about that drink, though,” he said and inched down the couch toward her; she dodged back, smiling. “That and staring at you has increased my appetite all out of proportion—it still has nothing to do with food, though.”

  He made a grab for her but she stepped back again.

  “Now behave yourself and wait until Clara leaves,” Linda said, unable to subdue her smile, “Mr. President.”

  “That's no way to calm me down!” Pete said, rising off the couch as if at the snap of the ball.

  Chapter 4

  The network news, and several newspapers, picked up the story of Sally Parnell's outing and the Administration's response. For nearly two weeks it occupied the second or third story position, a good filler when no human interest piece could be found. But the lack of information from the White House and the wait-and-see attitude of the Justice Department made any progress impossible. By the end of August, the networks were concentrating on the upcoming first anniversary of September the Eleventh. Not a few commentators and editorialists noted the appearance of WMD in the press releases concerning the event. “Is war inevitable?” became a frequent topic on Sunday morning television.

  Tobias's crowding tactic yielded little result; the Administration would not rise to the bait. He received no more phone calls from Don LeGierz and no little birdie whispered to him the names of Les Vonka's secret sources. Tobias nevertheless kept asking questions whenever he could and kept in constant contact with Sally. Nearly every day one would call the other with some news, usually a disappointment: Justice said, with the AG in the Hospital, they're going to wait for the completion of the President's investigation before determining if a special prosecutor is called for; we found a good lawyer to lead our civil suit against the government but a judge threw out our case, telling us we'd have to wait and see if the usual avenues addressed our claim, does that even mean anything; my editor called me into his office to ask about my pissing contest—his phrase—with Vonka and I asked if he'd try to get Vonka's source only to receive the flattest “no” the man has ever delivered (I usually get a “we'll see”). Increasingly in their calls, Sally and Tobias spoke more about their frustrations and bewilderment at the investigation's lack of progress rather than the substance of whatever new development prompted the call.

  Tobias found it harder and harder to deny to himself the anticipation he felt prior to one of Sally's calls, which—he also could not deny—had nothing to do with her story. Whatever the pleasure at hearing her voice, he could not escape a subtle feeling of dread: she was married, after all, and yet he was not blind to her interest or to her concealment of it. Too many of her phone calls ended abruptly or took place with the sound of walking outside in the background. And she had begun to hint at meeting him somewhere. It's only a matter of time, he thought; will you have the character not to go through this again with a married woman? Christ, how many beautiful women are there out there? And she was beautiful, and it affected him deeply, but he had only talked to her over the phone the past couple weeks, not seen her.

  So she's intriguing, he admitted to himself one day while riding to the Russell Senate Office Building. She's a spy, of course she's intriguing, he told himself; there are probably whole courses at CIA about being intriguing. And she's sharp as a tack, he went on as he threw one leg over his seat and coasted while standing on one pedal. And we have the same sense of humor and she doesn't talk like she has some secret agenda and I know there are a lot of pages to read in her book and wouldn't I like to do just that with a bottle of wine curled up in bed or in a Jacuzzi or wherever this goddamn metaphor is going but she's still fucking married you stupid moron, he fumed internally.

  He lost himself to the meditation so much that he tossed his bike roughly against the pole to which he intended to lock it. This act of unwarranted violence against his innocent and beloved bicycle brought him back to the present. He knelt and silently apologized to it before carefully threading a padded chain through the wheels and around the frame and into an eyelet under the seat (which prevented the seat from being stolen).

  Though another story had brought him to the Russell Building, he found the Parnell affair awaiting him in the hallway. Accosted by a staffer of Senator Perkins, Tobias found himself ushered into the plush and paneled sanctum of one of the most senior Senate Republicans. Despite all his years covering Congress, Tobias had only spoken with the Senator twice; the aid through which he'd relayed messages occasionally was now a judge back in his home state. An oil man from an old oil family, Senator Perkins was a strong and verbal proponent of top-down, fresh-water economics. He'd reacted to Newt Gingrich's '95 shutting down of the government through withholding the budget—in an attempt to force the then Democratic President to sign a bill slashing Medicare—with a Senate bill to immortalize the House Speaker on Mount Rushmore. The bill was not passed. Senator Perkins viewed all forms of regulation as tyranny and all forms of government support as Communism—except farm subsidies (he owned significant stock in a large agro-corp). He found Tobias's form of journalism inherently deceitful, considering it satanic seduction to lure staff to discuss the business of their superiors, though he wholeheartedly approved of going off the record to say whatever he wished without it showing up in the paper.

  Once installed in his red leather chair, Tobias was treated to a short congenial speech about federal funding for an education bill (which would provide money to religious schools). Tobias took notes for the sake of form (he'd already read the proposed bill), he could always use the quotes after all. After the Senator competed his pitch, he asked Tobias about what sort of support he thought it would enjoy; he took the time to compliment Tobias's universal access to other Senators and deep insight to their motivations, influences, and handicaps (both golf and otherwise). Tobias let the Senator run through his set pieces, prompting him like a stage manager when necessary. He knew very well he hadn't been summoned to an audience to discuss support for an education bill (which Dems could never vote against if they hoped to survive the next election). He let Senator Perkins have his excuse, however, knowing more would slip out if the Senator felt he controlled the situation.

  Tobias said he thought the bill would pass easily and then ran through a few Senior Democratic Senator's contributor
and PAC considerations, speaking in the character the Senator had cast him. There, Tobias thought, you have your pretense for dragging me in here, now what did you really want to talk about?

  Senator Perkins thanked him but admitted he'd had an ulterior motive.

  “I was very gratified to hear the Intelligence Identities Protection Act taken so seriously,” he said. His hands, having rested on the arms of his chair beside his paunch, seemed to rise of their own volition to meet fingertip to fingertip. Senator Perkins flexed his fingers thus for a second before noticing this posture and quickly interlaced his fingers. It was a tell, Tobias figured, but he knew enough not to appear to notice, whatever it indicated. “I assisted the sponsors with some of the drafting,” the Senator continued. “I've always been very proud of that bill, little noticed though it was. Interesting, I must say, to hear it quoted by a journalist instead of to one—it was intended to keep leaks, such as this one to do with Mrs. Parnell, from reaching the press.”

  “Yes, ironic that someone in the Administration violating your law should excite the interest of the press, rather than stifle it,” Tobias agreed. You're not a source, he thought. What's with the line of bull?