The Pinocchio Syndrome

by David Zeman

  Behind him loomed the house, its sixteen rooms sprawling under high ceilings, the bedrooms placed along the upstairs front with spectacular views of the Bay. Judd had bought it as a “summer cottage” when he was based in Baltimore, and had fallen in love with the place and moved in permanently. His children loved the beach, and Judd himself was a dedicated sailor and fisherman. His wife had died here. He still kept her bedroom exactly as she had had it when she was alive.

  His cardiologists would no longer allow him to sail a small boat alone, but he went out often on his yacht, theMargery , both to sail and to fish. He liked to conduct business meetings aboard the boat, and didn’t care if the colleagues who attended got seasick. He felt more lucid on the water, more free of the fetters of dry land.

  Judd Campbell was a self-made man, and liked people to know it. He came from an impoverished Scotch-Irish background and had made his mark on the business world as a textile manufacturer and importer before he was thirty. His patchwork empire of factories grew into a conglomerate that included everything from hotels to telephone companies. Though not a modern man by temperament, Judd saw the computer revolution coming in the 1980s and invested millions in the PC and software markets. By age fifty-five he was an institution in American business.

  But he was hardly a household name. And now that age and chronic heart trouble had forced him to retire, he knew he never would be.

  It was Susan who brought him the glass of dark ale. She and Michael were having dinner here tonight. Susan had arrived first, an hour ago, and was helping Ingrid in the kitchen. Michael was due before the meal was served.

  “Ah, here’s a face I can live with,” said Judd. “Thanks, sweetie.”

  “Ingrid is still muttering about your ration.” Susan smiled.

  “Let her mutter. Come here, look at your husband.” Judd gestured to the TV screen on which Michael’s handsome face was shown.

  “I’ve seen him before.” Susan patted her father-in-law’s shoulder. “Have to get back to work. How many times have you watched that thing?”

  “Never mind.” Judd went back to his TV as Susan left the room.

  Judd Campbell did not try to disguise the special feeling he had for Michael. Even as a toddler Michael had shown a kind of energy and strength that his two older siblings lacked. Judd had taken the child to his heart, teaching him to excel in everything he did. When Michael was learning to swim, to ride a bike, to throw a ball and swing a bat, Judd had repeated familiar anthems in his little ear.

  “Excellence without victory is like frosting without a cake.”

  “The man who finishes second is not a man. He is only a footnote.”

  And of course the legendary Vince Lombardi maxim.Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing . Judd took this as holy writ, and made sure his son heard it often.

  When the boy was very small he did not seem to understand these injunctions. But as he grew older, their deeper effect made itself felt. He attained success in everything he did. Though slight of build he was a natural and graceful athlete, a student to whom high grades seemed to come naturally, a handsome young boy to whom popularity came without being sought.

  When Michael became a national hero at the tender age of twenty-three for his courageous performance in the Olympics, Judd knew that the door of opportunity was open for the Campbells. Michael had all the equipment needed to make a mark on the world in a way his father had not. Michael had intelligence, ambition, guts, and—the one quality Judd lacked—charm.

  For a dozen years Judd had supported his favorite son in his political career with money, contacts, and advice. They made a strong combination. Michael’s political rise had been meteoric. Unlike Judd, though, Michael did not need to make the pursuit of success a grim crusade. He had no chip on his shoulder, like the one Judd had inherited from his impoverished immigrant childhood. Instead he had a talent for diplomacy that made him many friends among political men, including those who opposed his party and his views.

  It was this talent that allowed him to take in his father’s overbearing demands without being offended by them. He seemed to understand the vicarious commitment of Judd, a profoundly unsatisfied man, to Michael’s own career. He went from achievement to achievement easily, almost tenderly, as though he wanted to give his father a gift he knew Judd needed with all his heart.

  Michael was the only Campbell child to possess this instinctive ability to “handle” Judd. Stewart, his older brother, had attained a life of his own only at the price of leaving the family and cutting off all contact with his father. Temperamentally unsuited to the world of ambition that Judd lived for, Stewart had locked horns with Judd as a teenager. After his mother’s death their conflict had escalated into open war. Stewart stayed away after college, paid his own way through graduate school, and got a doctorate in history. Today he was a professor at Johns Hopkins. Though he lived only forty miles from Judd, he had not visited in fifteen years.

  Ingrid, less willful, had remained at home, renouncing a husband and children of her own in order to care for Judd in his waning years. She was Judd’s emotional slave, though she affected the role of stern caregiver as she rationed his intake of alcohol and fought against his addiction to cigars. She also devoted herself to Michael and to Susan, whom she treated like an adored younger sister.

  Judd had been ruthless as a businessman, walking over those who stood in his way and browbeating even his most loyal employees. His great downfall had been his tendency to do the same in his family. It had lost him Stewart’s love, and had reduced Ingrid to a shadow of what she might have become. But somehow Michael had survived and even flourished under his father’s stern aegis.

  The only untoward incident in Michael’s otherwise normal childhood was the spinal curvature that began to afflict him in his mid-teens, a severe scoliosis that threatened more than his youthful athletic career—it actually threatened his ability to lead a normal life.

  But it was precisely this challenge that brought out the killer instinct in Michael, making him into an all-American swimmer and then an Olympic champion. As an additional silver lining, it was during his convalescence after the second surgery that he began courting Susan Bellinger, a heartbreakingly pretty Wellesley freshman who came from a broken home and was working her way through college as a model.

  Susan helped him recover from the surgery and watched in wonder as he went back to swimming and slowly, relentlessly pushed himself back into Olympic form. She fell in love with Michael as a weak, pain-ridden young stranger about whom she knew next to nothing. Three years later she was married to him as a celebrity. And she herself, as his attractive young wife, soon became a celebrity too.

  A brilliant law student, Michael became editor of theLaw Review and joined a prestigious Baltimore law firm upon his graduation. He ran for the House of Representatives four years later, and was elected to the U.S. Senate before he reached the age of thirty. The leaders of his party quickly identified him as a rising star and even a potential standard bearer. Michael’s future looked every bit as stellar as his past.

  Judd Campbell got up from his chair and stood before the TV with the remote in his hand. Judd was tall, at least six three in his stockinged feet. His hair was thinning now, with only a few touches of the old russet among the gray. His emerging forehead, high and strong, made him look as vibrant as ever. Not a few friends and colleagues had remarked over the years on his resemblance to the actor Clint Eastwood. He was a handsome man. Chronic heart disease had done nothing to dim his sex appeal.

  He froze the image of Michael long enough to call into the kitchen, “Susie, would you bring me a bowl of peanuts?” Susan appeared at the doorway. “What, Dad?”

  “Peanuts,” Judd repeated. “Unsalted peanuts, for an old man.”

  “Coming up.” She moved away along the hall. Judd’s smile lingered as he heard her light steps.

  Judd loved Susan more than any woman except his late wife. When Michael had first brought her hom
e to him—Michael still on crutches at that time, and Susan more a confidante than a love—Judd had taken to her immediately. Her delicacy reminded him of Margery. Under her sunny blond looks there was a ruminative, somewhat depressive streak that made him want to protect her. And also a sweet, maternal quality that made her an ideal nurse for Michael during the most painful times.

  And there was her extraordinary beauty, hardly a thing to go unnoticed by a red-blooded man like Judd. He admired her looks, and he also cannily reflected that she would be an ideal mate for Michael in his political career.

  The greatest tragedy to befall the Campbell family had come when Margery, Judd’s doting wife of twenty-six years, committed suicide. No one had seen it coming. No one had thought Margery capable of such an act. Michael was seventeen at the time, Stewart twenty-four, Ingrid twenty-two.

  The loss had been devastating. It was probably the real cause of the rift between Stewart and his father, though the pretext was Stewart’s determination to follow an academic career. It also brought on Judd’s first serious heart attack. And it was certainly the proximate cause of Ingrid’s spinsterhood, for Ingrid began devoting herself to her father’s needs after he became a widower.

  Judd never got over the loss of Margery. It was not until Susan came along that he started to live again. True, he was living through Susan and Michael, and Michael’s career. He sensed this obscurely, but buried the knowledge under his ambition for Michael and his tenderness toward Susan.

  Susan went into the kitchen, where Ingrid had interrupted her work to watch a news report on the little TV that was kept on the counter.

  “Ing?” Susan asked. “Where are Dad’s peanuts?”

  Ingrid didn’t answer. Susan moved to her side and looked at the little screen. A reporter was shivering against the background of a frozen farm field while the graphic “Mystery Disease” was shown.

  “The public health people say they’re trying to get the situation under control,” the reporter said. “That means hospitalizing all the victims, probably under quarantine, and cordoning off the affected areas. None of the officials would comment on what the disease is. Sources have told us it seems to be a genuine mystery.”

  “What’s going on?” Susan asked.

  “Some sort of epidemic.” Ingrid turned to face Susan. “Probably the flu. The media are hyping it as usual. Where’s Dad?”

  “Watching his tape of Michael. He wants peanuts.”

  “No way. I’ll handle this.”

  As Ingrid was moving toward the living room Susan heard the front door open. Her eyes lit up as she went to greet Michael. He gave her a long hug and kiss.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Watching you on TV.”

  “Again? Doesn’t he ever get enough?”

  She watched him hang his coat in the closet. He had changed clothes at his office, and wore slacks and a light sweater. A breath of the outside air had come in with him, and his cheeks were cool against her lips.

  “I talked to Stew today,” he said.

  “How is he?” Susan asked.

  “Great,” Michael said. “He sends you his love.” He was hanging back, not moving toward his father’s den, because he could not let Judd hear him mention the name of his older brother in the house.

  “Did he see you on TV?” Susan asked.

  Michael nodded.

  “Was he favorably impressed?” she asked.

  “If he wasn’t, he probably wouldn’t have told me.”

  As the oldest of the Campbell children Stewart commanded Michael’s respect. Stewart was at the opposite end of the political spectrum from his father. If Judd was a stern judge of Michael’s ambition, Stewart was the judge of his integrity. Stewart hated politicians but made an exception for Michael, whom he considered a huge cut above the rest in character and brains.

  Susan and Michael exchanged a brief look. They were both sad that Stewart could not be here tonight. Even though Michael’s career was a common link between Judd and Stewart, the rift between the two was too deep for Michael to bridge.

  “Hey, Ing,” Michael greeted his sister, hugging her around her broad shoulders.

  “Hey to you, big shot.” Ingrid smiled. “Nice work today.”

  As Susan watched, Michael went to the door of the den and looked in at his father. Judd had not heard Michael’s arrival and was glued to the TV, watching his son’s image. Michael went forward and, with an odd gentleness, put his arm around his father and kissed his cheek.

  “Ah. Here you are.” Relief joined with an almost painful devotion in the father’s voice as he held Michael’s arm. Strangely, Judd did not turn his eyes away from the TV. He remained focused on the abstract image of his son while holding Michael’s hand to keep him from getting away. Susan dared to reflect that this schizoid intimacy was part and parcel of Judd’s love for his son.

  Michael glanced back at Susan with an understanding smile, as though to say, “You know what Dad is like.” Nodding, Susan turned away.

  In the kitchen Ingrid was whipping the potatoes. The news report on the situation in Iowa was over, eclipsed by a story about violence in the Middle East.

  “Sweetie,” Ingrid said to Susan, “would you finish this for me while I get the roast out?”

  The phone rang. Since both women were busy Michael answered it. His face clouded as he listened to the caller.

  “When did this happen?”

  Susan turned to look at him. She knew that voice. It meant something serious.

  “Where is he now?” Michael said into the phone.

  Through the dining room Susan could see Judd, who was still absorbed in his videotape. Michael hung up the phone.

  “What’s the matter?” Susan asked.

  “Danny Everhardt,” Michael said. “He was taken sick late this morning. They took him to Walter Reed.”

  “Sick in what way?” Susan asked.

  “Something strange,” Michael said. “He can’t move, can’t talk. His secretary found him on the floor of the bathroom, half in and half out of the shower. He hasn’t said a word since.”

  Susan looked at Michael. The TV still murmured in the kitchen. Outside the house a gull shrieked, once, and was gone over the waves.

  5

  —————

  Walter Reed Army Medical Center

  Gaithersburg, Maryland

  8P.M.

  DAN EVERHARDT was discovered by his secretary ten minutes after the onset of his illness. Alarmed by his failure to emerge from the still-running shower, she opened the door and saw him lying under the spattering water, his eyes still open.

  Within the hour the vice president was taken to Walter Reed, where he was placed under observation in the intensive care unit. His vital signs were normal, but he continued to display symptoms of a massive disturbance of function whose precise characteristics were difficult to pin down.

  The night of his admission his primary physician received a visit from a Secret Service agent named Joseph Kraig.

  “Dr. Isaacson,” Kraig said, shaking the physician’s hand. “Thank you for making time to see me.”

  “We received a call from the White House asking us to cooperate with you in every way possible,” the doctor said, not looking very happy about Kraig’s presence. “It seemed only reasonable to go along.”

  The doctor studied Kraig, who was a deceptively ordinary-looking man in a dark suit. Kraig looked to be in his late thirties, prematurely gray at the temples, with shoulders and arms that bespoke good physical conditioning. He had quiet eyes whose neutral expression suggested a coiled inner force kept carefully hidden. Something about him was frightening; something else was reassuring. It was hard to tell the difference.

  “What can you tell me about the vice president?” Kraig asked.

  “Well,” said the doctor, “it’s very ambiguous. At first we suspected a stroke. There is a rather dramatic impairment of mental function. But the tests we’ve done so far—EKG and so forth—don’t i
ndicate any circulatory problem. I’m leaning toward the functional, but I’m far from sure.”

  “Functional?” Kraig asked.

  “By that I mean a mental or emotional disturbance without a physical basis,” the doctor said. “Of course, it’s too soon to say.”

  “Could you show me?” Kraig asked.

  “I’d rather not,” the doctor said. “It wouldn’t be appropriate for anyone outside the family . . .”

  “Has the family seen him?” Kraig asked.

  “Only his wife. She didn’t think it would be good for the children to—”

  Agent Kraig moved closer to the doctor and spoke in a low voice.

  “I understand your concerns, Doctor. But it is important that I get a clear view of the situation right away. Would you like me to have the head of the Secret Service call you?”

  The doctor sighed. “No, let’s get it over with. Let me see if he’s awake first.”

  The doctor left Kraig to wait in the corridor and disappeared into the hospital room. After a couple of minutes he emerged.

  “Come on in.”

  Kraig followed the doctor into the room. Vice President Everhardt was propped up in the hospital bed, looking at the television screen on the ceiling. Not for the first time Kraig noticed the vice president’s size. He had the bulk of a football player.

  “Mr. Vice President, I’d like you to meet someone,” Dr. Isaacson said. “This is Agent Kraig. He’s with the Secret Service.”

  Everhardt looked at Kraig. There was something wrong with the expression in his eyes. Kraig could not put it into words, but the gaze didn’t seem lucid. The eyes seemed elsewhere.

  “That’s Kraig with a ‘K,’ Mr. Vice President,” Kraig said, moving forward to extend a hand.

  Everhardt ignored the outstretched hand. He kept looking at Kraig for a few seconds, then looked back at the TV screen, on which an old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie was playing.

  “You can call me Joe if you like,” Kraig said. “Everybody does.”

  Everhardt gave no sign of having heard the remark.