by David Zeman
“How’s she doing?”
“Not well. She’s got a lot of anger. She didn’t want him to get involved.”
“I don’t blame her.” The president shook his head. “God damn this thing,” he said. He himself sounded angry.
There was a pause. The four men in the room seemed oblivious to each other. Each was wrapped up in his own struggle.
“All right,” the president broke the silence. “We can’t delay any longer. We have to choose another man. We can’t leave it the way it is. The public will turn its back on us.”
Heads nodded in agreement. The president was clinging to office by a slender thread. The movement in Congress for a constitutional amendment mandating a special election was gaining strength by the day. Colin Goss was giving statesmanlike interviews to political journalists, for all the world like the presumptive president of the United States. There was no time to lose.
“Who shall we tap?” the president asked.
“Kirk Stillman,” the majority leader said. “He’s the best we have left.”
His choice of words was infelicitous. But he was right. Kirk Stillman was the only man the party had left who could help the president fight Colin Goss.
“I agree,” Dick Livermore said.
“Have you called him?” the president asked.
“I spoke to him last week, and again yesterday,” Dick said. “He understands the situation.”
“And?” the president asked.
“He’ll do anything that’s asked of him,” Dick said. “Anythingyou ask, anyway.”
Dick’s implication was clear. Kirk Stillman was getting on in years. The notion of a political war against Colin Goss—a war that might be unwinnable, and that might be hazardous to his own health—would not be to his liking. But Stillman believed in the president. He would sacrifice himself if necessary.
“Where is he now?” the president asked.
“Out for the evening,” Dick said. “I spoke to his wife. She’s expecting him home by eleven.”
The president looked at those present, one by one.
“Find out where he is,” he told Dick. “We can’t wait until eleven.”
As the president showed his visitors out of the Oval Office, Kirk Stillman was reluctantly taking leave of his longtime mistress in her Alexandria apartment.
She was a lobbyist for the tobacco industry, and had been Kirk Stillman’s lover for nearly twenty years. Her name was Gabrielle Arendt. A well-preserved woman in her late forties, she knew Kirk Stillman well, and knew how to satisfy the needs of his aging body as well as the chronic need for love that afflicts all political men.
Kirk Stillman had an idea of what was in store for him. He had been waiting for Dick Livermore’s call since he first heard the horrible news about Dan Everhardt. There was no doubt in his mind that Tom Palleschi had the same disease and was therefore probably down for the count. That put Stillman himself on the hot seat.
Kirk Stillman was frightened. Not for himself so much—after all, at age sixty-four he had tasted most of the glories and most of the pleasures available to any civilized man—but for the country.
The public knew Goss was a potential dictator. But fear was pulling the wool over people’s eyes, making Goss look like a savior instead of a menace. Voters were ready to follow Goss anywhere, like the children in the Pied Piper story.
Stillman had seen this happen before. He was in Congress in 1968 when Richard Nixon, his true colors already known to every American, managed to get into the White House anyway. It had taken Vietnam and Lyndon Johnson’s withdrawal to make the cards fall Nixon’s way. Two years earlier Nixon’s election would have seemed unthinkable. But it happened.
Today it was theCrescent Queen and the Pinocchio Syndrome that were spreading the fear, and Colin Goss who was the beneficiary. In the past this kind of blindness had caused world wars. In today’s world it could cause something worse.
Gabrielle sent Stillman off tenderly, having rubbed his back and drunk brandy with him after they made love. She was like a second wife to him now.
“Call me,” she said at the door.
“Tomorrow,” Stillman promised. Touching her cheek with a tanned hand, he smiled and moved away down the hall.
His Mercedes was parked in the lot across the street. He took the back stairs, grimacing slightly as the impact of the steps reminded him of the arthritis in his hip. He was not worried about muggers; this was a safe neighborhood.
He took the rear exit of the building and walked east. The night was still and cold. He breathed in the crisp air gratefully. A political man who spent most of his life in meeting rooms and offices, he did not get as much fresh air as he would have liked.
He was crossing diagonally to the tree-lined park when he heard the engine. It was being pushed hard, so hard that it sounded more like a small truck than a car.
By the time he turned to look into the headlights, the front bumper was already crushing his legs and hips. He fell to the pavement, the chassis of the car pushing him along the ground.
The car backed up and struck him a second time, then a third. The impact sounded like a chicken being deboned by an expert butcher. A man got out to check the pulse in Kirk Stillman’s neck. There was none. The car drove away, obeying the speed limit. The handful of witnesses to the accident would remember it as a large car of American build, dark in color.
No one saw the license number.
33
—————
Washington
January 22
THE DEATH of Kirk Stillman shook the executive branch to its foundations.
The president, who had been expecting a call from Stillman at any moment, was in his private study when the news came. Within an hour he met with the Secret Service and representatives of the FBI, and separately with the majority leader, the party chairman, and several key senators.
By 9A .M. the cover story was in place. Kirk Stillman had been killed in a freak traffic accident on a suburban Alexandria street. Stillman had been visiting friends in the neighborhood. He was killed instantly.
The announcement would be made by a District of Columbia police spokesman. No one in the White House would comment, except to praise Stillman for his many valuable contributions to the party and the nation over the years.
Thankfully, Stillman’s selection as vice president had not been made public before his accident. The pattern of death haunting the administration was already a national scandal. The death of a third nominee would have been the final straw.
The First Lady was with Stillman’s wife at her Maryland house, waiting for the Stillman children to make their way home from the cities where they lived. The children were all grown, and had given Kirk Stillman and his wife seven grandchildren.
At noon the president met with Dick Livermore in the Oval Office. Both men’s faces were grave.
“Are you sure he was run down intentionally?” the president asked.
“There’s no doubt about it. The car must have been waiting for him when he left the apartment building.” Dick looked at a note in his hand. “Whoever it was knew when Kirk visited his lady friend, and what time he would come out. It seems they used street grime to obscure the license plates. All anyone could say was that the car was black.”
“What about physical evidence on Kirk’s body?” the president asked.
Dick shrugged. “The D.C. police chief told me they have forensics people working on it. They’ll probably find traces of paint and other things. But if the car was hot, they’ll never trace it.” He looked at the president. “I suspect it was hot. This was no accident. They ran him over three times, to make sure.”
Dick breathed a long sigh, his eyes closed. Then he looked up to see the expression of defeat on the president’s face.
“I’m beginning to doubt we can hang on after all,” the president said. “These misfortunes are too big a negative.”
He stood up and went to the window. Gazing out at the
morning sky, he spoke as though to himself. “I never thought it was really possible, but I begin to see Colin Goss in this office, behind this desk.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” Dick said.
“So do I,” the president agreed. “But things are out of control. Maybe it’s too late to stop them.” His lips curled in a grim smile. “Shakespeare had it right. The gods play cruel games with us sometimes. They kill us for their sport.”
Dick seemed pensive. Noticing his troubled look, the president asked, “Is something on your mind, Dick?”
Dick looked out the window at Pennsylvania Avenue. “Has it occurred to you that the talk about a conspiracy might be right?”
The president raised an eyebrow. “You mean that reporter, and all that noise on the Internet?”
Dick nodded. “I wouldn’t have said anything if it hadn’t been for Kirk. But Kirk’s death is too much. And it was obviously intentional. Someone wanted him out of the way. Anyone who knows our party would have known that after Palleschi we would choose Kirk.”
“You mean someone made Dan and Tom sick?” the president asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Dick sat on the arm of the heavy sofa. “I’m not saying anything for sure. But it doesn’t feel right. There are only two victims of the Pinocchio Syndrome in Washington. One was your vice president, the other your first choice to replace him. And now, the last realistic choice . . .”
He shivered at the thought of so much death in proximity to this office.
“But we have no evidence that the Syndrome can be caused deliberately,” the president said.
“And no evidence that it can’t,” Dick replied. “That’s my point. It’s as though someone fed us Danny and Tom in order to provoke us and to test us. They knew we would leave no stone unturned in our effort to find out what made them sick. And we have. Without success. We just don’t understand the Syndrome.”
“To test us,” the president said. “But also to hurt us. To drive us out of office.”
Dick nodded, perplexed. “I know. It sounds crazy. It’s insane. Who would have such power? And why would they want to?”
He sighed. “Perhaps we should do something drastic. Declare a state of martial law . . . while the situation is investigated.”
The president shook his head. “No. We can’t allow the whole country to be held hostage by our own problems. Life has to go on. This is a democracy, and I’m sworn to keep it that way.”
Both men were silent. They were thinking about the arduous campaign that had put the president in the White House five years ago. A highly respected leader who came from an old political family, he had nevertheless been an underdog in that campaign. It had taken more than just hard work to get him elected. A combination of political circumstances had been necessary—as it is for every man who becomes president.
And now a combination of circumstances, bewildering in its violence, was threatening to destroy his presidency.
The president looked at his old friend.
“I love this country, Dick,” he said. “It’s done a lot for me, and I’ve done what I could in return. I believe it’s the greatest country in the world. My instincts tell me it’s in trouble. The worst trouble in a hundred years, maybe the worst in our whole history.”
Dick Livermore nodded. The president turned to look into his eyes.
“Are you afraid?”
Dick was silent. He had never been so frightened in his life.
“Well . . .” The president shrugged. “They think they can make us curl up and play dead. We’re not going to. We’re going to fight back.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
The president sat down. On the desk before him was a list of names. Dick could not read them upside down, but he could see they had all been crossed out. Except one.
“The way I see it,” the president said, “we have only one realistic choice left.” He looked at Dick. “Do you know who I’m talking about?”
Dick nodded. Then they both pronounced the same name, in one voice.
————
MICHAEL CAMPBELL had canceled the remainder of his speaking tour of California when he received Dick Livermore’s call about Kirk Stillman. Summoned by Dick to meet with him and the president, Michael arrived at the White House just after dawn. The meeting was held in Dan Everhardt’s empty office.
Michael had been here before. He recognized the photos that documented Dan’s college football career, his marriage to Pam, and the growth of his three children. There were also photographs of Dan with various party luminaries and foreign heads of state, and a couple of tasteful reminders of awards Dan had won.
Dick Livermore came to the door himself to usher Michael inside. The president was standing by the window.
“Mike, how are you?” he said, coming forward to shake hands. “How’s Susan?”
“We’re fine,” Michael said. “Worried, I guess, like everyone else. How is Johanna Stillman?”
“The news hit her hard, but she’s bearing up well,” Dick said.
“It’s a terrible thing,” Michael said. “Kirk Stillman was a hero to me.”
The president shook his head. “This is a dark time. I can’t think of a moment as painful as this since—well, since Kennedy died.”
Michael had not thought of it in that way, but he saw that the president was right. The Kennedy assassination had brought multiple disasters in its train. First the accession of Lyndon Johnson, a legislator with no executive experience, to the presidency. Then the escalation of the Vietnam War, which really happened because Johnson didn’t know how to say no to the Kennedy eggheads who remained in his cabinet. Then Johnson’s refusal to run in 1968, and the election of Nixon. Then Watergate. Then the oil crisis, then the inflation. And on and on.
Most observers believed that if Kennedy had served out his eight years, none of those things would have happened. Kennedy might have escalated in Vietnam for a while, but he would have seen the Viet Cong doing to his American boys what the Viet Minh had done to the French ten years before. Kennedy was a historian. He would have seen history repeating itself. And he would have gotten out.
But Johnson was no student of history. Johnson was a backroom politician who knew how to get out the vote, but not much else. That was why Vietnam destroyed Johnson.
Of course, other disasters might have come on the heels of a successful Kennedy presidency. Disasters perhaps worse than Vietnam. The Russians, for example, rattled by American superiority in the arms race, might have lost their heads and pushed the nuclear button.
That was the essence of fate, wasn’t it? The burden of wondering whether our own tragedies were the only tragedies possible.
“Michael,” the president said, “Dick and I have asked you here today because Kirk Stillman left a big hole in our plans, and we’re out of time. We have to pick up the pieces right now. If we don’t, Colin Goss might succeed in forcing a special election. If that happens, this whole country could go down the tubes.”
“I understand,” Michael nodded.
“Michael, I want you to take over as vice president,” the president said without further ado.
He was looking steadily at Michael, who seemed stunned.
“Me?” Michael asked. “I—what brought you to that decision?”
The president sat on the edge of his desk, both legs dangling. It was an oddly childlike posture for such a dignified man. “Mike,” he said, “we feel that you’re the best man for the job.”
“I don’t see how you figure that,” Michael argued. “I’m too young, Mr. President. I don’t have the right—well, the right image.”
Between them was their own silence about Stillman, a man of stature who would have looked the part of a respected vice president, and who was dead, perhaps for that very reason.
“We have spin people who can handle that,” Dick said. “Mike, the president and I have thought a lot about this. You’re young, that’s true. But you can do the job. You unde
rstand the issues. You have a superb voting record. Most importantly, perhaps, you know how to fight Goss.”
Michael was shaking his head slowly.
“I’m not a match for Goss. He’ll use me as an issue, Dick. He’ll say I’m wet behind the ears, a punk . . . and, in a way, he’ll be right.” He looked at the president. “I’ll hurt more than I’ll help.”
“Let me be frank about image,” Dick said. “True, you’re young. But you’re a hero to a lot of people. No one has forgotten the Olympics. You have terrific name and face recognition. You’re thought of as a competent person, and as a physically courageous one. We need that now.”
The president added, “Those things will outweigh the age factor. Also, Susan is well liked and admired. People will accept you as vice president. You look the part. And don’t forget that I’m not an old man. I’m not going to drop dead of a heart attack in the next couple of years. People aren’t going to make that connection.”
“They will if Colin Goss makes it for them,” Michael objected.
There was a brief silence as all three men thought of the Pinocchio Syndrome. Two important men had already fallen victim to the dreaded disease. Why not the president? Unthinkable as it seemed, such a thing was possible.
Dick Livermore broke the spell by changing the subject. “Mike, you’re a perfect partner for the president. You’re competent, you’re popular with women as well as men. And you’ve got guts. That’s the main thing.”
Michael was chewing his lip nervously.
“I appreciate your confidence,” he said. “But I don’t know if I can do it.”
“You can do it.” It was the president who said this.
Frowning, Michael said, “Susan is going to split a gut.”
Dick nodded. “Susan will be upset, naturally. But she’ll come around. She knows what is at stake.”
Michael looked skeptical. “You may have to talk to her yourself,” he said. “She may not accept this coming from me.”
“You underestimate her, Mike. She’ll be fine. As you will be.”
Michael looked from the president to Livermore. “You really think it’s that important,” he said to both of them.