by Joseph Flynn
As sincere as those feelings were, they weren’t the only thing that kept Welborn sitting behind the steering wheel looking up at the hospital. He was thinking about James J. McGill and his ex-wife up there on the oncology floor, their hearts being crushed by the fear that they would lose their son.
God, how could anyone bear that?
Dear God, he thought, please don’t let Kira and me find that out. On the eve of his wedding, he was coming to understand what a leap of faith it took just to make a commitment to someone you loved. Seemed like it ought to be the easiest thing in the world. You loved a woman, she loved you, you got married. You lived happily ever after.
Except when you didn’t. When love turned out to be mere infatuation. You found out you weren’t nearly as well matched as you thought you were. Or you were meant for each other, but fate with its chill indifference struck one of you down. Just look at what had happened to the president’s first husband. To have him killed like that, damn. Welborn would … go after the killer like he intended to go after Linley Boland.
Maybe, though, you and your true love got by just fine, and the way the ledger sheet got balanced was one of your kids got cancer. Welborn had joked with Kira, saying they could name their children after Donald Duck’s nephews, but he wanted children, a son and a daughter at a minimum, if they could be that lucky. But what if that luck turned sour and —
A rap on the driver’s side window lifted Welborn out of his seat.
Then he saw Leo Levy smiling down at him. He lowered the window.
Leo said, “You so in love with these new wheels of yours, son, you just can’t bring yourself to leave them? You gonna sit in there all day?”
Welborn looked past Leo and saw McGill’s Chevy parked nearby.
The information he’d gotten from Edwina Byington that Mr. McGill was at the hospital visiting his son was good. Not that anyone should ever doubt Edwina.
“I need to see Mr. McGill,” Welborn said. “I was just trying to decide how I could know if the time was right.”
Leo’s expression became serious. “That’s a tough one, all right. Chances are the time won’t be right. Not for a while, anyway. But if you’re here on business, you just have to do like I do: your job. Being a pro is sometimes the only comfort available.”
Being a pro, Welborn thought. That was comforting.
Welborn raised the window, got out of his car, locked it, armed the anti-theft system.
Leo extended his hand and told Welborn, “In case I don’t see you tomorrow, my best wishes to you and Kira. You’re gonna do fine, the two of you. As a wedding gift, I’ll show you both how to really drive this little buggy of yours.”
Welborn embraced Leo and thought that was how you got through the tough times.
You made sure you had some true friends close at hand.
He entered the hospital to see if he could be one to James J. McGill.
Salvation’s Path Church, Richmond, Virginia
The Reverend Burke Godfrey found himself with a bad case of Pope envy. The Bishop of Rome was not only the leader of a billion congregants, he was also the head of state of Vatican City. He had a personal armed force, the Swiss Guard. You saw pictures of those boys in their striped outfits and ostrich-feather helmets, sometimes even armor looking like it was designed back in the Middle Ages, and you might think they were actors in some costume drama. But the red stripes on those uniforms symbolized the blood they had sworn to shed in defense of the Pope.
“I swear … should it become necessary to sacrifice even my own life …”
Now, there was a vow a man of God could appreciate in his followers.
The Pope was seen as both a spiritual leader and a temporal one. That was exactly the way Burke Godfrey thought it should be. Men like the Pope — and him — should hold sway in both spheres of existence. Mere politicians should tremble before them and follow their edicts with great haste and greater care.
The casual observer, Godfrey knew, might think the Swiss Guardsmen’s weapons were limited to ceremonial swords and halberds, but on a trip to the Vatican he’d learned different. They also possessed assault rifles and pistols and were trained in close-quarters combat. They were the last weapons-bearing military unit to represent the Church Militant.
Lord, but that phrase rang in his ears: The Church Militant.
The things he could do as the leader of such a body. He wouldn’t need to rule the whole country. There were parts of the United States he didn’t even care to visit. If his word were law in only the Commonwealth of Virginia, that would be enough.
If he were in such a position of power, he certainly would not be facing —
“Reverend? Reverend Godfrey?”
The pastor of the Salvation’s Path Church blinked and saw his lawyer Benton Williams sitting before him. It took him a moment to remember the man had come to discuss the legal strategy they would employ if — no, when — the FBI came to arrest him.
Williams was proposing to use his contacts in the Justice Department to negotiate the placement of a call to his office to demand Reverend Burke’s surrender. Burke would then make his way to Williams’ office and the two of them would proceed to the DOJ building without the media ever being aware of what was happening. They would go before a judge, request a reasonable bail amount, get it and pay it, and Godfrey would be back home before they released a statement to the press. A one-on-one interview would be granted to either WorldWide News or Fox and they would begin a two-pronged campaign, to get not just the evangelical right but a large portion of Middle America behind them, and to delay an actual trial until after the presidential election.
If Patricia Darden Grant were voted out of office, the new administration would, they all hoped, be more conservative and might drop the case out of hand.
In a rational corner of his mind, Burke Godfrey knew that this was the safest course.
Reason, however, didn’t predominate in his thinking. He wanted to show both Patti Grant and Erna that no woman would best him. Now or ever. More than that, though, he wanted to resurrect the idea of the Church Militant. If he were able to succeed, other evangelicals would be certain to follow, and they would have to credit him with leading.
He would become to Christian conservatives what Martin Luther King, Jr. had become to the civil rights movement. Why, someday there might even be a monument to him placed on the National Mall … not that he wanted to get shot to gain that honor.
So he told his lawyer, “We’re going to do something a little different, Benton.”
He was never going to surrender to Washington. Not just the churchman that he was but the Virginian in him rebelled at that notion. What he had in mind was Waco. The standoff with the Branch Davidians. Only this time his side would win. He was sure of it.
He might have felt less certain if he’d known Galia Mindel was also a student of that tragedy in Texas.
Rodman/McFee, Washington, D.C.
Barrett Rodman, senior managing partner of the lobbying firm that bore his name, was planning the fall campaign for his troops. Congress may have been in recess for the month of August, but he worked every day of that month, including Sundays, right up to the Labor Day weekend. Each of the five hundred and thirty-five members of the legislative branch of the federal government was assigned a pecking order number. So were each of their chiefs of staff. Every one of those one thousand and seventy human beings had been studied more closely than subjects in clinical drug trials. Their biographies were detailed to the extent that they could have been published in hardcover; some of them would have even made good reading for the general public. A few would have caused such outrage as to become best sellers. But for the purposes of Rodman/McFee, the information provided an intimate knowledge of which buttons to push for every name on the list, and the times when pushing those buttons would produce the quickest responses.
When the exhaustive and exhausting exercise was complete, Rodman jetted down to Saint Bart for three days and n
ights with two ladies who flew in from Paris and explored his every nerve ending. Each year brought a new pair of ma’amselles with new tricks to show him, and anticipating what they might get up to carried him through his Herculean labors.
Everyone in the firm knew better than to interrupt him during his August marathon. So when his phone rang he looked at the instrument without comprehension, as if the device itself were the source of treachery. Surely, his executive assistant, Horatius, would never —
The damn thing rang again. So it hadn’t been some fool calling his number by mistake, letting it ring once before realizing in horror what he’d done and quickly hanging up. Rodman debated letting the phone ring again, but responding quickly to stimuli was one of his buttons. He couldn’t hold back.
Grabbing the receiver, he asked in a deadman’s voice, “What?”
“Mind your manners, Barrett,” he was told.
There were only two people who had ever had the nerve to tell him that, and his mother was dead.
“Mister Speaker,” he said. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“Much better,” Derek Geiger said.
As intent as he was on his work, Barrett Rodman didn’t miss a beat in keeping up with both the news and the gossip that circulated day and night through the nation’s capital. Chatter was part of the intelligence that got fed into his calculations. He knew of the speaker’s impending divorce; Gerald Mishkin was bearing the lance for Harlo Geiger. The speaker had yet to retain counsel. In the larger world, the president had trampled Geiger’s sandcastle by revealing his Super-K plans to the public.
Rodman was glad of that. He didn’t like the idea of any politician getting self-righteous about taking money from special interests. The thought of public financing of elections — and he was sure that was where Patricia Grant’s proposed reforms would lead — was the stuff of nightmares. But if the lobbying community couldn’t drive a stake through that vampire’s heart it deserved to be drained bloodless. No, what pleased Rodman was that the death of Super-K meant he wouldn’t have to kowtow to Geiger’s new toady.
It had already brightened his day that Brad Attles had managed to get himself done in. He’d never liked Attles, but it was so difficult to express dislike for a black man these days without exposing yourself to opprobrium. Damnit, you should be able to dislike individuals whatever color skin they featured.
He was sure that idea was implicit in Dr. King’s words.
The speaker told him, “I’m looking for Putnam Shady. Can you help me locate him?”
And right there he had the answer to why Geiger had called.
Geiger must have tabbed Putnam to replace Brad Attles, and then the brassy young SOB had betrayed the speaker and sided with the goddess of sweetness and light, the president.
Poor Putnam, Rodman thought. He’d had such high hopes for that young man, had even thought he might make a worthy successor one day. But of late he’d shown disturbing signs of developing a conscience. That, of course, was a fatal flaw in a lobbyist, the beginning of the end. If carried to extremes, it could lead to the penitent going off to join an order of contemplative monks. Rodman knew of two such cases.
Putnam was still bringing in clients, making rain for the firm, so his growing ennoblement had been tolerated. But soon his zest for enriching the firm would flag and from there it would be a swift fall. So while Geiger’s own prospects of remaining a center of power looked sketchy, Rodman felt he was a better bet than Putnam.
That made betraying a productive employee a simple choice.
Without feeling a twinge of regret.
Rodman was careful to stifle any hint of having a conscience of his own.
“After having his home shot up,” Rodman said, “Mister Shady decided to relocate to a local hotel, the name of which he declined to tell me or anyone else.”
The boy might be going soft, Rodman thought, but he had shown no sign of losing his wits.
“You allowed that?” Geiger asked.
“As long as he does his job, that’s all I care about.”
Rodman waited to see if Geiger was smart enough to ask one last question, the one that would make betrayal inevitable.
Geiger was. “Do you know of any place Shady might turn up when he’s not at his hideaway?”
“He’ll be at the wedding of the vice president’s niece tomorrow at the Naval Observatory grounds. You’ll need a password to get in.”
“A password?”
Rodman told him what it was. His sources of gossip were the best.
“Thank you, Barrett.”
Rodman didn’t say the speaker owed him one, but owe him he did.
“Always happy to be of service, Mister Speaker.”
The senior managing partner put his phone down.
Pleased he felt no sense of shame or regret.
Most of his attention returned once more to his work.
A small corner of his mind focused on his upcoming menage à trois.
GWU Hospital
McGill and Carolyn took turns comforting each other, reassuring each other that Kenny would come through his ordeal and live a long, happy life, and at other moments they simply murmured prayers. Then Kenny’s chief oncologist, Dr. Jones, appeared and she had both Abbie and Caitie with her. Seeing the three of them together almost stopped McGill’s and Carolyn’s hearts as they feared the worst.
Dr. Jones held up a cautioning hand.
“Please,” she said, “don’t let your imaginations run away with you. Nothing unexpected has happened with Kenny.”
Abbie sat next to her mother; Caitie sat on McGill’s lap.
The better to launch herself at any displeasing development.
McGill, knowing his daughter, wrapped his arms around her.
Dr. Jones said, “I wanted to have all of you here together because tomorrow afternoon will be Day Zero for Kenny. That’s what we call the transplant day.”
“The day Kenny starts getting better, right?” Caitie asked.
She still looked as if she wanted to hit someone or something.
“That is what we are working very hard to achieve. Before Kenny receives his transplant, he will be given a very high dose of chemotherapy and a radiation treatment as well. This will be very hard on him.”
“But you have to do it?” Abbie asked.
“We do. The chemotherapy and radiation will destroy the diseased cells in Kenny’s body. He will receive the new, healthy cells in a manner very much like a blood transfusion. Those are the mechanical aspects of the process. What we’ve come to think in recent years is that it’s very important for the patient to go into the procedure with the most positive outlook possible. To that end, as you are such a close family, I would like all of you to visit Kenny in his room. You will have to scrub first and be masked, capped and gowned, but you will be able to stand next to Kenny and speak directly to him.”
“Can we touch him?” Caitie asked.
“I’m sorry, no. Kenny’s immune system is all but gone. We can’t take any chances. Also, and you must be completely truthful with me now, has any of you experienced any infections lately. A cough, a fever, anything. Is your throat scratchy? Is your nose running. Are your eyes scratchy or your ears painful? If so, you may not enter the room.”
The McGills all declared themselves healthy. Dr. Jones gave each of them a thorough visual scan looking for any signs of contradiction. Finding none, she nodded.
“One last caveat. The idea here is to give Kenny both hope and reason to live, to pull through whatever discomfort, whatever pain, he is going to experience. All of you have to be strong and loving. You may show neither fear nor anger.”
Dr. Jones turned to Caitie.
“Kenny will pick up any negative emotion as easily as he would bad germs. Do you understand?”
Caitie blinked away tears and nodded. “I’ll be good.”
“All right then, please come with me.”
Carolyn and Abbie entered Kenny’s room first, a
nurse already inside opening the door for them. McGill followed with Caitie, father and daughter walking hand in hand. They all stood on the same side of Kenny’s bed so he wouldn’t have to turn his head. Seen up close, they all saw the toll the disease and its treatment had taken on Kenny. His normally high color was gone, replaced by a hue of faded parchment. His hair had thinned and what remained look brittle. His muscle tone had dissolved to gelatin.
But there was a spark of humor in his eyes that was unchanged.
Untouched by what he’d experienced and the prospect of what lay ahead.
He said to his family, “Just like old times, huh?”
Caitie laughed first and the others followed.
Kenny asked Abbie how college was so far. He asked Caitie if she was missing her friends. Was his mother surviving on the hospital food? He told them that Liesl Eberhardt had to get back to Evanston for the start of school but she’d promised to email him every day. He wouldn’t have access to a computer but Dr. Jones said the emails could be printed out and read to him by a nurse.
Kenny then asked his father, “How’s the case with Sweetie going?”
“Making progress,” McGill said. “It ought to be over soon.”
Kenny smiled and gave a small nod, as if he’d expected nothing less.
Then an added measure of joy filled his eyes.
“Hey, look,” he said.
The McGills turned and saw more visitors had arrived and were standing on the other side of the room’s viewing window. Sweetie was there with Welborn Yates and Francis Nguyen. Standing behind them, towering over the others, was Congressman Zachary Garner.
McGill was uneasy for a moment seeing Garner, until he saw that Kenny was glad the man was there. Then he thought, whatever works. Everyone expressed their love for Kenny. Caitie told him that she and Abbie were going to throw a party for him when he got out of the hospital.
“Try to get the kind of cake and ice cream I like,” he told his sister.