by David Zeman
22
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Washington
December 2
KAREN’S AGENT exploded when he saw the article she proposed to publish.
“Are you out of your mind?” he asked. “Thousands of people getting sick because some sinister conspiracy is deliberately making them sick? Political candidates neutralized by a conspiracy? You’re insane, Karen.”
“Was it insane to speculate that Kennedy’s assassination was not the work of one man?” Karen asked. “Was it insane to connect the Watergate burglars with the Nixon campaign? How about Iran-Contra?”
“You’re mixing apples with oranges,” the agent said. “It’s one thing to report an outrageous thing when you have facts to back up your story. It’s another thing to feed the public innuendo and paranoia when you can’t prove what you’re saying.”
“I have facts,” Karen said. “Maybe not enough to send people to jail, but enough to make any reasonable person suspicious. The syndrome is not behaving like a normal disease. The illness of Vice President Everhardt, an isolated case in the middle of a big city, does not make sense. Not when the pattern of the other outbreaks is considered.”
The disease had now been reported in eleven states, with several thousand victims officially identified. It was common knowledge that the cause and cure were unknown. Yet in the Washington, D.C., area there was still only one victim, Dan Everhardt.
“Those may be facts,” the agent said. “But they don’t justify your conspiracy theory.”
“They are consistent with it,” Karen countered. “That’s the only point I’m trying to make. I’m not reporting the conspiracy as a fact, I’m just asking the reader to keep an open mind.”
“Listen, Karen,” the agent said. “It’s not just the content of your piece. It’s the climate out there. People don’t want to hear this just now. They’ve got friends and loved ones who are victims of the disease. They’re terrified for themselves and their children. This is the worst possible moment to start talking conspiracy.”
“Which would be worse?” Karen asked. “A mystery disease about which we can do nothing, or a conspiracy we can stop once we identify it?”
The argument went on for almost an hour. In the end the agent agreed to submit the piece to newspapers, but only for publication on the opinion page. He would agree to explicit disclaimers by editors who wanted to alert the public to the fact that the theory expressed in the article in no way represented the view of their newspaper.
Karen agreed. She knew her article was speculative in nature, and did not want people to think it was being presented as hard news.
She did not mention to her agent that she had been threatened. She kept that detail to herself.
She also did one important thing without her agent’s knowledge. On her own she leaked the article to several influential website proprietors who specialized in alternative news. She could be sure that the piece would be widely read. Her theory would be talked about. The authorities would have to comment on it sooner or later. They would be embarrassed, would feel pressured.
Karen was sure she was doing the right thing. The truth about the mystery disease was hidden behind a cloud of ambiguity, evasion, and perhaps misinformation. Sometimes the truth needs some help to see the light of day.
Karen intended to keep the pressure on.
23
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Georgetown
December 2
SUSAN WAS getting ready for her workout.
She tied her hair back in a ponytail, her breasts standing up under the support bra as she raised her arms. The spandex shorts hugged her hips and thighs, showing off a lean female body that lived up to the fantasies millions of men had about her.
Michael would be late again tonight. She had turned on the TV, intending to watch the news, but had changed her mind. The news shows were full of reaction to the selection of Tom Palleschi to replace Dan Everhardt as vice president. The president’s supporters were saying the selection was a stroke of genius. Colin Goss’s supporters were saying that the choice indicated desperation and proved the administration was desperate and intellectually bankrupt. According to their statements Palleschi was the very embodiment of “a party that lives in the past,” and the choice facing the American people was now clear.
The media were also devoting considerable time to the mystery disease, which had now claimed enough victims to make national headlines every day. Some of the outbreaks involved many hundreds of victims, some were inexplicably limited to a few dozen or less. Rumors were flying about more dramatic outbreaks abroad, and about bizarre and frightening physical symptoms that appeared late in the progress of the syndrome. Most of all people were terrified by the news—never confirmed officially by any health authority—that the disease was untreatable and always fatal.
Susan could not get Dan Everhardt out of her mind. It was an open secret in Washington that Dan was a victim of the disease. Susan had called Michael’s sister Ingrid earlier and chatted for half an hour. She confided her worries about Dan Everhardt and her fears for Michael’s safety. Ingrid, though sympathetic, did not seem worried. As a trained nurse she felt she had seen everything, medically speaking.
“It’s probably a stroke, or something functional like a nervous breakdown,” she said. “Don’t worry about Mike, he’s as strong as an ox. Except for that back problem he hasn’t had a sick day in his life.”
Ingrid was glad for the chance to reassure Susan. She enjoyed mothering her, and was as fiercely devoted to her as to Michael. They often went shopping together. Ingrid loved to help Susan pick out clothes, and insisted on doing the alterations herself. She understood Susan’s figure in its tiniest details, and got vicarious pleasure from seeing it graced by beautiful outfits. Susan’s somewhat fragile personality was a good fit for Ingrid’s maternal instinct. The two were close friends.
The phone conversation did calm Susan’s nerves, but its effect wore off after a while—like that of every reassurance she received these days.
Susan put on her running shoes and set the treadmill’s timer for forty-five minutes. More and more, in the last few years, she had taken to using exercise as a way to control anxiety. When she got on the treadmill or the exercise bike, earphones on, an old videotaped movie on the VCR—never a talk show—she felt insulated from the real world. Her long exercise routines took away her desire to take a tranquilizer.
Today she was watchingForce of Evil with John Garfield. It was a slow, overly talky movie, but she loved Garfield. When she watched his movies, or those of Bogart or the young Ray Milland, she wished she could get into a time capsule and go live in that world. Wisecracking heroes in suits and fedoras, beautiful women with sleek hair and dark lipstick who talked in sensual drawls, menacing bad guys with cigars and gutter slang.
The evil in those movies was so much more straightforward, so much moreclean, than the evil in the real world. Evil in the real world was complicated, hard to grasp. Today’s villains came with friendly smiles, soothing words, and fine résumés that proved competence and expertise. Gone were the days when George Raft and Edward G. Robinson telegraphed their bad intentions with snarling grimaces.
Susan had been told more than once that her beauty was akin to that of the great film stars of the past. She had been compared to Grace Kelly and Catherine Deneuve, among others. A special photo layout inVogue had exploited this quality, showing Susan in slinky dresses and dramatic hairstyles. One of the photos hung upstairs. Michael had insisted on having it framed, because it had captured an aspect of Susan’s charm that was normally kept in the background.
The TV was on, John Garfield was on the screen, and Susan was just fitting the earphones when she heard the phone. She ran to pick it up, thinking it was Michael.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Susan.” It was the voice again. Susan turned white.
“What do you want?”
“Just you.”
There
was a strange intimacy to the voice. A confidence, almost a trust. Now she heard the modulations better. She guessed the caller was a woman older than herself. Fortyish perhaps.
“Please,” Susan said.
“It’s all right, Susan. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m on your side.”
Susan thought for a moment. She could see herself in the large mirror on the wall of the walk-in closet where the treadmill was kept. In her tight leotard she looked almost naked. Childishly defenseless, her eyes frightened and guilty.
“Please,” she heard herself say. The cordless phone trembled in her hand.
“You know about Palleschi, of course,” the caller said.
“Tom Palleschi. Yes.” Susan hated to encourage the caller by responding, but she couldn’t help it.
“He will not be the vice president, Susan.”
Oh, my God.
“What are you talking about?” Susan said aloud. “Of course he will. It’s been announced.”
“Michael will be the president’s choice. Not Palleschi.” The husky voice sounded pitilessly omniscient, yet still there was that undertone of sympathy.
“You’re crazy,” Susan said.
“I understand how you feel,” said the voice. “The truth can be very painful.”
“But it’snot true.” Susan grimaced to hear herself debating with this crank, but she could not listen to these things without protest.
“Give it time.” The caller sounded calm. “One of the peculiarities of the truth, Susan, is that it comes slowly. It insinuates. You can’t be ready for it in advance. But once it arrives, it’s like a forbidden fruit that you’ve already tasted. It’s too late to stop it.”
The caller let these words sink in before saying, “In any case, when Michael is chosen, I’ll be there for you. You’ll know that I was right, and you’ll need a friend, Susan. That friend will be me.”
Susan sighed. “Why are you doing this?”
The caller said, “At some time in our lives, Susan, we are called upon to stand up and fight for who we are. Your time is coming. When it comes, you won’t be alone. I’ll be there to stand beside you and give you strength.”
“Strength for what?” Susan asked.
“To stop him.”
“Who?”
“Michael Campbell, of course.”
Susan sighed deeply. “You’re crazy,” she repeated, a bit more weakly.
Then, gritting her teeth, “What happens if I don’t answer the next time you call?”
“You’ll answer,” the voice said. “You’ve already answered. The truth is inside you, Susan. You can’t unhear it.”
Susan gritted her teeth, fighting to gain control of the situation.
“You’re wrong,” she said. “You’re wrong about all of this.”
“When Palleschi is removed, you’ll know I wasn’t wrong. In the meantime there is something you can do that will help.”
“Me? What do you mean?”
“Ask your husband one small question, Susan. Ask him what happened at Harvard.”
“At Harvard? What are you talking about?”
“When he answers, watch his eyes.”
The line went dead.
24
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Hamilton, Virginia
December 3
PERHAPS THE only person who disapproved of the selection of Tom Palleschi as Dan Everhardt’s replacement was Judd Campbell.
Judd regarded Palleschi as a fine public servant but a political nonentity. Palleschi was a born follower, not a leader. In a fight against Colin Goss, the president needed a much stronger man. Someone with talent and guts, someone with proven appeal to the public, and with the ability to become president himself if the need arose.
Someone like Michael Campbell.
Tonight Judd was sitting in an easy chair on the heated porch of his house on the Chesapeake Bay. His daughter Ingrid brought him a bottle of Guinness stout and a glass.
“You know,” he said as she bent to put the ale on the table, “it’s no wonder the president is in so much trouble. He’s badly advised, and he doesn’t have the guts to do the aggressive thing.”
“Uh-oh,” Ingrid smiled. “Here we go again.”
“Here they are picking a nobody like Palleschi to replace Everhardt, just when things are going bad. And the man who can save the day for them is right in front of their noses.”
“Dad, your ambition is showing.”
Ingrid stood looking down at the father she loved. Judd was a strong man, but his fatal weakness was his utter inability to bend. Once he got an idea in his head there was no reasoning with him. And no idea was more fixed than his desire for Michael to become president of the United States.
Ever since Michael entered politics Judd had always counseled the most ambitious course for him. “Why waste more than one term in the House when you can run for the Senate right now?” he advised. “Why languish on lesser committees when you can get the majority leader to give you Appropriations?” And again, “Why serve on committees when you can head your own?”
Judd wanted Michael to be on the fastest track possible toward high national office. “You’ve got what it takes to run this whole country,” he said. “As much as people like Kennedy or Johnson or Nixon, and a hell of a lot more than Carter or Bush or Clinton. Why sit around waiting twenty years for what you can have now, if you just reach out and take it?”
Michael tolerated his father’s imprecations because he knew they contained a grain of truth. It was important to be ambitious. There was no denying that Judd’s philosophy had had positive effects on Michael over the years. How else, indeed, could his Olympic victories be explained? No man was likely to accomplish great things in this world without being driven by the need to excel.
But Judd pushed too hard. Michael had been forced to learn the subtle art of seeming to agree with his father while secretly going his own way. It was not an easy task, and it was getting harder as Michael’s stature grew among his political colleagues.
“Palleschi is a good man, Dad.” Ingrid thought highly of Palleschi, as did Michael and Susan. “He’s dedicated and he’s honest.”
“There are good men everywhere,” Judd retorted. “We need something more than a good man. We need theright man.”
Ingrid sighed. “Go on. Turn the record over and let me hear the other side.”
“Goss is up in the polls because of theCrescent Queen and this Everhardt business,” Judd said. “He’s trying to ride the people’s fear right into the White House. And if he gets in, it will be impossible to get him out. That’s what the voters don’t understand. They’re flirting with dictatorship.”
Father and daughter were silent as the waves crashed against the beach outside. The emptiness of the house loomed behind them, a painful reminder of happier days when the busy Campbell clan filled the place with noise and activity.
It was in this house that Judd’s wife had died. He still kept her bedroom exactly as she had had it when she was alive. He never let a week go by without entering it to sit by the window in the rocking chair and to murmur a few loving words to Margery. The chair was too small—it had been built for her body—but it made him feel close to her.
Judd looked past Ingrid at the wind-whipped bay. He was thinking that he had his own reasons for hating Colin Goss.
Nearly thirty years ago Judd’s conglomerate had locked horns with the growing Goss drug empire. Colin Goss wanted to take over a nationwide chain of pharmacies that had financial links to Judd’s own network of companies. For a while there was talk of an amicable partnership between Goss and Judd. The two men even had a series of dinners together. One of these included their wives. Judd was shocked by the way Colin Goss looked at Margery, who at that time was an auburn-haired Irish beauty barely out of her twenties. Goss did not even try to conceal his covetousness. He flirted blatantly with Margery, who seemed embarrassed by his attentions.
A jealous husband despite his own infi
delities, Judd saw red. He used his superior financial leverage to cut Goss off at the ankles, and acquired the pharmacies himself. The deal set Goss back by at least a year in his rise to supremacy among pharmaceutical giants. Goss and Judd never spoke again.
In later years Judd had watched with contempt as Goss went into politics and made himself a national figure. The very notion of a scoundrel like Goss in the White House was outrageous. Not only was the man a blatant racist; there were sexual skeletons in his closet—ugly ones—that the public knew nothing about. He would be a national disaster as president. But he was a fighter, and a patient one. He had endured three electoral defeats, knowing that some day the right circumstances could give him a chance to slip into power.
Now, by a twist of fate, his chance had come. And Michael was one of those who stood between Goss and his goal. Once again it was Campbell versus Goss.
Ingrid was gazing through the jalousie windows at the choppy bay. She wore her usual spinsterish outfit, a dark skirt and a sensible jersey with heavy low-heeled shoes. She seemed even more massive and stolid than usual. Her eyes, at rest, were ineffably tired and sad. She was a woman who had long since surrendered her own identity to her devotion to others. She had never had a boyfriend. Judd suspected she was a virgin, even now.
“Well?” Judd prodded. “Am I right?”
“It’s beside the point,” Ingrid said. “Palleschi is the man. And even if he wasn’t, the president wouldn’t ask Michael. Michael is too young, and that’s all there is to it. He’s only thirty-four.”
“JFK was only thirty-eight when he campaigned for vice president in 1956,” Judd said. “Nixon was thirty-eight in 1951. Dan Quayle was only thirty-three when he ran with Bush.” Clearly Judd had done his homework on the ages of past vice presidents. “And if the president serves out his term Michael will be thirty-seven when he becomes president. That’s plenty old enough.”
“You know what would happen if the president picked Michael,” Ingrid said. “Goss would say he was wet behind the ears and that the administration was desperate. That might make things even worse than they are now.”