“So a few hours later... Aw, hell, Dick! I’m adding two and two and getting five. Isn’t that what I’m doing?”
“You’re saying the man upstairs killed our Electoral College feature?” Hunter asked.
“That’s about it,” Martens grunted.
“That’s news manipulation. That’s—”
“Aw, hell, Boy Blue! Grow up, will you? It’s nothing more than the voice of financial necessity. Half our advertisers are controlled directly or indirectly by the Donaldson empire. Anyway, nobody said anything about news. There’s no news in that Elector feature, and you know it better than anybody. The man says it would be stuffy and boring, and who knows? Maybe he’s right.”
“Meaning that you don’t want to fight him,” Hunter observed stiffly.
“Meaning I don’t think it’s worth losing my job over,” Martens replied sourly.
Hunter walked over to the window. “Do you think somebody could buy himself an Electoral College, Saul?”
Martens sighed. “No, I don’t. In a close race, maybe yeah. But hell, Younghart got sixty-two per cent of the popular vote. He carried forty states. A few maverick votes here and there in the College wouldn’t draw any great attention, but hell, I dare any man to try and tampering on the scale we’re talking about here. Well, it would just be too damned obvious; that’s all. Nobody’d be stupid enough to try it. Not even a... No, especially not a Brian Donaldson.”
“So we’re having pipe dreams,” Hunter said.
“It couldn’t be anything but,” Martens muttered.
“So why is the story being killed?”
“Because it’s dry, stuffy, and boring.”
“So we’re just going to roll over and play dead?” Hunter said.
“You picked the code word there, buddy-o. Play is right. You’re gonna follow up on this thing. You’re gonna bird-dog the billionaire’s aide who dallies with ward politicians. And you report directly to me, and only to me. Understand?”
Hunter grinned. He went to the filing cabinet and retrieved his hat, coat, and briefcase, then paused and turned back with one hand on the door. “God, Saul, what do you think they are up to?” he said.
“Maybe you just said it.”
“Huh?”
“God. Maybe that’s what he’s up to.”
“But you said—”
“Forget what I said. Just get the story. And get it before.”
“Before what?” Hunter let go of the door and turned full-face to his boss.
“Before December Sixteenth, ninny. That’s when these guys get together to cast their dummy votes, isn’t it?”
“What,” Hunter said soberly, “could anybody do about it if they suddenly decided to not be dummies; if they decided to vote as they damn well please.”
“Nothing,” Martens clipped back.
“Yeah. That’s what I just told myself,” Hunter said. “Get the story before.” He winked, in a not-too-convincing display of jocularity, and went out the door.
He was in a hurry to get back to Philadelphia. He had a feeling that he might just bump into a tall, exciting brunette who mixed mink and leather—if he could just beat her to the airport. And somehow he knew he would. The taste of destiny was now strong in his mouth, and it was too late, he knew, to spit it out.
3. THE REALISTS
Charles (Mac) Maxwell thoroughly believed in American politics. Indeed, he lived his life by them. Politics were Mac’s bread and butter, and he often quoted the immortal line, “Man does not live by bread alone,” to explain his dedication to “the dirtiest game in the world.” Mac was no Pollyanna, now. He didn’t look for silver linings or hearts of gold. He was interested in silver and gold all right, but in more durable forms than misty clouds and the perverse hearts of men. Mac was a realist. In fact, if you were to ask him to describe himself as briefly as possible, he would undoubtedly say, “I’m a political realist.”
Mac was a man who knew himself. And he knew politics. He knew them well enough to respect the awesome power that a smart politician wielded, and well enough to live in daily fear of the unsentimental destiny of a dumb one. “In politics,” Mac would say, “smart and dumb aren’t necessarily at opposite ends of the stick. Usually they’re nudging right in there side by side; same end of the stick, you see. Smart is keeping the voters happy, keeping the party happy, and keeping yourself on top all at once. Dumb is losing your footing on any of the comers of that triangle.”
Mac was not, of course, speaking of statesmanship or of patriotism or of dedication to democratic ideals. Or was he? “It’s a little bit of carney, and a little bit of evangelism, and a little bit of humility, and a little bit of Patrick Henry. Smart politics is saying the right thing at the right time, backing the right man in the right situation, and God-oh-God always being on the side of the little people—the underdogs, you see—while always keeping stride with the top dog—the winner, you see. It’s a delicate thing, all the time a delicate thing, that balance between smart and dumb in politics. There’s really no such thing as an honest or a dishonest politico. All politicians are honest-honest to politics, you see. Only some are smart and honest, and some are dumb and honest. That’s the only real difference.”
Mac had forever tried his best to be a smart politician. And he’d done okay, too. His home was valued at a million, wasn’t it? His kid had attended the most expensive university in the East, there were a Cadillac and two sports cars in his driveway every night, he kept his money in three different banks, and the income tax he should have paid every year would amount to more than the median income in his state. Mac had done okay.
But there comes that time in every man’s life when he feels the need to pause and take stock. Mac had given his life to politics, yet he had never held an elective office. He was a machine man—one of that vast gray background of faceless figures who keep the machinery oiled and running; a political pro who moved and breathed and found his being in the party’s underground nonentity. And Mac was a man given to pondering the future, and what that future held in store for a dedicated nonentity who lived well when times were good and who could perish in the backwash of one misplaced step of the party’s standard-bearers. Mac was given to worry about such things. He had done okay so far, sure; but a guy really couldn’t have any faith in the whims of the people. Mac didn’t live by faith. He trusted nothing so much as his nimble brain and his political instinct, and both of these had been telling him for some time that his destiny had fallen into the hands of a dumb politician.
Mac had never been overly sure of Jim Younghart; not even when he’d begun to take on the image of the certain front-runner, back before the convention; not even when he’d been thundering down the stretch of the election campaign. As a Senator, sure, Younghart was okay; even as a President, in someone else’s district. But by God, not here; not in Mac’s district. Younghart had managed to identify with just about everybody except Mac’s people. He was big with the campus set, sure; but college kids didn’t feed and house Mac Maxwell. Hell no. He was big with the blacks, and he’d drawn a lot of labor’s support—even from the hunkies and the other ethnic groups, which was a tribute to Younghart’s dexterity, because the ethnic groups were scared of the blacks and vice versa. But hell, so what if the miners and the civil servants and the blacks and the hunkies had voted for Younghart? What the hell good did that do for Mac Maxwell and his comfortable middle-class suburban district? Huh? The lawyers and the doctors and the dentists and the businessmen...these were the people who fed and housed Mac Maxwell, and what would old Mac be with no patronage and no patrons? Huh? He’d be a damn dumb politician; that’s what he’d be. Unless Younghart came up with something totally unexpected, the next local elections would see Mac’s party disintegrate in this district.
Yes, old Mac was a worried pro. He was fearful of the future, and a man of 55 doesn’t take too well to fear of the future. At 55, a man doesn’t want to face the possibility of beginning again; he isn’t fond of the idea
of maybe giving up the big house and the expensive cars; he doesn’t like to think of losing the feeling of power between his fingers. These are things a man will fight for. The problem was, for Mac, who and how to fight? Politics had taken an entirely different complexion, a baffling and troubling swing and mixture of ideologies. There had been a time when “party” meant something. Not any more. Here was Mac, a big gun in local politics—a leader, by God—occupying a place he had carved out for himself through years of diligent application of party politics...and now here he was at 55, running a party that probably wouldn’t even exist in his district in the next election. It was anarchy, he decided, or something very close to it. And anarchy is a politician’s hell.
Well, he’d play the thing as cool as possible, from the very beginning. He’d sat on the fence throughout the primaries, and even all the way through the third ballot at the convention, relying on that intuitive hunch of the smart politico to tell him when and on which side to climb down. He had played it right there, too. That fourth ballot had brought the bacon home for Younghart, and though Mac had been dismayed by the turn of events, he’d been right there slapping the new standard-bearer on the back at the moment of victory. Nobody could blame Mac for getting the nomination for Younghart, but the game wasn’t played for blames. The game was played for power, and whatever hopes Mac had held out for a Younghart swing to practical politics during the campaign were finally dashed on that bitter Tuesday. Younghart carried the state, but he sure as hell lost Mac’s district. God did he lose it! Not only Younghart, but all of Mac’s district races as well.
To add to the irony of the situation, Mac had been designated a federal elector—pledged, of course, to the Younghart slate—and even though Jim hadn’t carried Mac’s district, he had definitely carried the state, and the entire slate of electors would go to the capital on December 16 and make it official for Younghart. Mac would vote Younghart into the White House, and he’d be voting himself into oblivion. It was a bitter pill for a smart politician to swallow.
Then one day in mid-November, Elector Mac received an unexpected visitor. He didn’t recognize the face, the figure, or the name, but she was quite a looker, and she carried very impressive credentials—impressive enough to cause Mac to usher her into his study with a fluttery flourish.
One hour and twenty minutes later, Mac’s caller took her leave. Mac stood in the open doorway, a huge grin washing the worry from his face as he watched the lovely person depart. Then he closed the door, exhaled noisily, and pounded the wall lightly with a softly balled fist. “To hell with politics,” he said to nobody at all.
The doorbell sounded immediately. Mac wrenched the door open, thinking his visitor had returned with some afterthought or instruction. But a youngish, lank man stood framed in the sudden rush of sunlight. “I’m Dick Hunter, of Weekly Magazine,” the new caller announced. “I’d like to interview you in connection with an election story we’re doing.”
Mac motioned the man inside, his mind leaping ahead to the possible drift of the interview. But Hunter remained where he stood, and turned to glance over his shoulder toward the street. “The gorgeous doll who just left,” he said, “she’s familiar, but I can’t place the face. Would you mind telling me who she is?”
“I couldn’t say,” Mac replied positively. He smiled, arching his eyebrows for effect. “I was in the bathroom. By the time I got up here to answer the door, she was walking away. Selling something, probably.” He chuckled. “Ah, well. My loss, eh? Come on in Mister, uh... Mister... ?”
Hunter handed him a business card. “Thank you, Mr. Maxwell,” he said curtly. “I’ll have my office set up the interview. Thanks so much.”
Mac’s mouth was open to assure the young reporter that he was ready right now, but the fellow spun about and was halfway down the steps already. Mac stood in the open doorway for a moment, then smiled and closed the door again. Interview? Ha! Fuck the interview! Mac had, in effect, resigned from politics one hour earlier. He allowed his eyes to roam about the interior of the mansion that politics had built—and that high finance would perpetuate.
“Very nice young lady,” he told his mansion. “And smart! A smart businesswoman!” Mac knew the side of his bread whereon the butter was placed. Forevermore.
4: THE WEB
The uniformed guard at the gate offered no challenge to Hunter’s entrance. The Porsche rolled through and moved smoothly along the macadam drive toward the house. It was set on a high ground deep within the carefully landscaped Connecticut estate, and the driveway seemed to have been engineered with deliberate attention to scenic effect. At no time during the approach did Hunter lose sight completely of the sprawling two-story mansion, though the route was definitely circular, through wooded copses, rolling terrain, and involving three crossings of the same stream. The drive ended at the south side of the house in a gravel parking area. He pulled up beside a glistening Continental, tucked his briefcase under one arm and stepped out onto the gravel. He tried to estimate the number of cars in the lot, quickly settled for “about thirty,” briefly scrutinized the car Paula Mannclift had come in, then headed for the main entrance to the home of Joseph Libwitz.
Libwitz was a millionaire industrialist whose several firms were all prominent on the government’s list of defense contractors. His first business venture—little more than a basement workshop where he and two associates developed critical electronic components—had begun its ascent during the Reagan administration with a small research and development contract in solid-state physics. He now presided over a financial empire that would seem to have risen far beyond any dependence upon partisan patronage, its tendrils reaching into the economies of three continents. Libwitz was somewhat of a living legend, in the best American tradition of rags to riches.
The man who answered Hunter’s ring was obviously no butler. Hunter noted a slightly lopsided effect to his jacket, denoting the presence of hardware.
Hunter gave him no time to make a decision; he flashed his Weekly identification, an impressive little card with the familiar embossment, said, “Looks like I’m a bit late,” and walked in. The security man hastened to catch up, beat Hunter to a set of double doors, opened them with a smile, and the newsman became part of the controlled insanity that characterizes a mid-afternoon cocktail reception.
Actually, Hunter wasn’t crashing the party. It had been billed as a “thank-you” party to celebrate the Younghart victory and recognize the campaign efforts of those in the party’s higher echelons. Hunter had written the campaign efforts of those in the party’s higher echelons and an editorial favorable to the Younghart candidacy; he had been asked to attend the reception by telegraph-invitation, although he was on the scene purely as a result of his “bird-dogging” of Paula Mannclift. He was now experiencing a mildly chafing letdown, the result of the mental chastising he’d been inflicting on himself since the moment the girl’s car had entered the Libwitz grounds.
The arched ballroom in which Hunter found himself was a happy, gibbering mass of men and women in various states of near-intoxication, not all of which could be directly attributed to the free-flowing alcoholic beverages. There was something about “victory,” Hunter recognized, and particularly a celebration thereof, that was more inhibition-releasing than the bubbly juice itself.
He moved into the jubilant atmosphere, immediately had a cocktail tipped into his breast-pocket as another appeared magically in his hand. He ignored the one nearest his heart and raised the other for a brief taste, then smiled his way through clusters of animated celebrants toward a door on the far side of the room.
The door opened, as he had hoped, into a library, and moments later had the ear and voice of his managing editor.
“Well, I guess you can scrub another great journalistic romance,” he told Martens.
Martens’ tone was tired and seemingly disinterested. “Where are you, Dick?”
“I’m at the Libwitz place in Connecticut. So’s Paula Mannclift.”
“Yeah. I wonder if I should have my thyroid checked. Didn’t it ever dawn on you, either, that Donaldson could have been in the Younghart camp?”
“I thought about it,” Martens admitted softly. “But?”
“But it just doesn’t ring, unless Younghart’s a tin-plated phony. The two are poles apart—philosophically, that is. Listen, Dick...you’d better let go of this thing, just the same.”
“What’s wrong?” Hunter asked. “You sound, uh... You don’t sound good.”
“Something’s brewing around here.” Martens’ voice was beginning to blend into the electronic hum of the connection. “The board of directors are in a special meeting right now. Something’s coming off. Have you been digging into Donaldson’s past or something?”
Hunter experienced a sudden chill. He sipped the forgotten cocktail, then said, “I’ve been doing some asking around. And I have Research putting a package together for me.”
“You did have Research putting a package together,” Martens came back quickly. “That package is now lying on the desk of the man upstairs. And the board’s in emergency session. The whole bunch is up there—the legal eagles, the corporate policymen, the entire boodle. Last time I saw a gathering like this was when Pennington hit us with that fifteen-million-dollar lawsuit.”
“Oh, shit,” Hunter said dismally.
“What’ve you been up to?”
“Nothing like that, for damn sure.”
Martens’ heavy sigh rushed across the connecting wires. “I have a Doomsday feeling,” he said. “Listen, you’d better... No. No, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“I was going to tell you to get your fanny back here, but keep it right where it is. Something stinks, Dickie boy. You hang in there with Donaldson’s playmate and find out where the stink’s coming from, eh?”
Don Pendleton's Science Fiction Collection, 3 Books Box Set, (The Guns of Terra 10; The Godmakers; The Olympians) Page 34