Boomsday

by Christopher Taylor Buckley

  “I’m trying to formulate our position. If you’d just be quiet for a second.”

  “Well, formulate fast, the limo’s pulling up. Oh, hell. There’s a mob of them. Vultures.”

  “Tell Corky to drive around the block.”

  “Too late. Here they come.”

  “You’ll be issuing a full statement tomorrow morning.”

  “Why can’t I just-”

  “You’re going to…consult. You’re going to consult with…theologians. That’s it. Religious authorities.”

  “Which theologians?”

  “I don’t know! Thomas Aquinas. St. Jerome. Thomas More. Just stonewall.”

  Cass hung up. She let out a breath and said to Terry, “Do we know any theologians?”

  “On K Street?”

  JEPPERSON CALLS VATICAN THREAT “A LOAD OF BULL”

  Cass stared at the headline. She had already seen a dozen online versions of it throughout the night. She was tired. She found herself wishing that she had lived before the age of the Internet and cable TV, when news arrived twice a day instead of every fricking second.

  Terry walked in. He looked as if he hadn’t slept much, either. He glanced at the front page of the Post. “I see our boy stayed on message.”

  Cass looked up gloomily. “I guess I’ll be spending more time on the road with the candidate. Hurling myself between him and the nearest reporter.”

  The phone rang. Randy.

  “Well, if it isn’t the Antichrist,” Cass said.

  “I’m a god in Minneapolis!” he said. “Have you seen the papers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They lapped it up!”

  “Randy. They’re Lutherans. Before you go nailing any more theses to the front door of the cathedral, let’s see how this plays in small cities like, you know, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Baltimore, Los Angeles. Other little villages where they actually like the pope.”

  “He’s French.”

  “Randy, he’s the pope.”

  “Well,” Randy sniffed, “he fired the first shot. I know how you and Terry hate it when I actually have an independent thought, but I have a strong feeling in my gut about this.”

  “So do I. Like a cramp.”

  “Americans don’t like being bossed about by foreigners.”

  “Let’s hope for the best. Meantime, please try to avoid the subject. I really don’t want to pick up Time magazine next week and read that you called the Virgin Mary a slut.”

  The phone at the papal nunciature had not stopped ringing. Every major media outlet in the country wanted to interview Monsignor Montefeltro. Even the late-night comedy shows wanted him. A New York City tabloid put him on the front page with the headline RAGING BULL!

  The papal nuncio, Montefeltro’s nominal boss, was a bit put out that Rome had bypassed him and asked his number two to be Vatican point man. As for Montefeltro, he wanted to crawl under his desk. He was hoping against hope that Ivan the Terrible and the jezebels Tolstoy and Dostoevsky hadn’t watched TV yesterday or seen a newspaper. Or a magazine. Or the Internet. Or…Dio mio.…?Maybe they’d all gone back to Russia. Maybe they’d all died of venereal disease or in a gun battle over drugs. Maybe-

  “Monsignor? It’s a Mr. Ivan for you. He says you know him. And a Ms. Katie Couric from the television called again, twice.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Everywhere you are on television. I think you will be pope someday. So, am calling for donation to orphans. Donation should be more now that you are such big important man in church. I think…one hundred thousand dollars. Orphans will be very happy. God will be very happy.”

  Montefeltro wondered if the Swiss Guard had a secret assassination unit. He sighed. “I don’t have one hundred thousand dollars. Why don’t you call Mr. Pine. He is very rich.”

  “We called him. He was very happy to hear watch is located. There is Mercedes SL 550 parked outside your office. Is very nice car. Why you are not donating that to orphans? Humble priest should not be driving one-hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes-Benz. Jesus did not drive in Mercedes. He drive on donkey.”

  Gideon was indeed very happy to hear that his gold watch and fob had been located, though that was not the sum of his reaction.

  It is unpleasant to be blackmailed at any time, but especially inconvenient when you are launching a presidential campaign, and worse yet if your name carries the prefix Reverend. Yet for all that, Ms. Tolstoy sounded quite friendly over the phone and made no mention of money.

  “You look cute on TV,” she said. “I don’t think that you kill your mother. You are too nice-looking. Why you not come to my apartment? We will have party, with Champagne. Watch sexy movies. I am wery wet for you.”

  Gideon shifted in his chair. He was almost fifty years old, and no woman, ever, had purred to him this way, much less asked him to come party with her. I am wery wet for you.

  “If I,” Gideon croaked, “come, you will return me my watch?”

  “Oh, yes. But,” she said, “first you must find watch. I have many hiding places. Mmmm. Hurry, Gidyon. I so wery wet for you, I am having to change my panties.”

  She gave him an address in Arlington.

  It occurred to Gideon, poor Gideon, that it was Sunday, the Sabbath. What was it Stonewall Jackson had said after he asked the surgeons if he was dying and they told him yes? “Good. I always wanted to die on a Sunday.”

  No. Mustn’t. Madness. Then he thought, The watch. He must retrieve the watch. He would retrieve the watch and leave. Maybe, just to be friendly, he’d stay for just one glass of Champagne.

  Gideon slipped out of campaign headquarters unnoticed.

  Chapter 35

  Randy was feeling cocky, having been proved right in the matter of the bull. Polls were running overwhelmingly against the Vatican. His own tracking polls showed a gain of four points after telling Rome to butt out. Americans, it appeared, did not welcome divine intervention.

  Gideon Payne was strangely silent on the matter, even absent. The media were clamoring for his comments, yet he was nowhere to be found. His press secretary said that the candidate was “down with a bad cold” and had to cancel his schedule. The truth was, Gideon had dropped off the map. He wasn’t at home. He wasn’t answering his cell. He had last been seen Sunday night, the night of the 60 Minutes broadcast. And it was now Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon.

  “Where the hell is he?” Teeley demanded. No one knew. “He can’t just disappear! We’re in the middle of a goddamn presidential campaign!”

  Cass, meanwhile, had conceived the idea that Randy should use the word fuck at a campaign event. The genius of this strategy was not immediately apparent to the candidate. Or, for that matter, to Terry, who usually was on the same bandwidth as Cass.

  “It’s how this generation talks,” she said to them. “If you want to get their attention, you have to sound like them. They’ll get it.”

  Randy stared. “Ask not what the fuck your country can do for you? Four score and seven fucking years ago? For God’s sake, Cass. The FCC would fine me. And the FEC.”

  “Fuck ’em,” Cass said. “We’ll make headlines.”

  “As long as we’re at it,” Terry said, “why not a wardrobe malfunction during the debates? He can go over to Peacham and rip off his shirt. Tweak his nipple.”

  “I’m serious about this, guys. If you just subtly slipped it in-”

  “Subtly?”

  “-at precisely the right moment, it would be monster. Huge. Tectonic. I can’t even discuss it. No presidential candidate has ever said the f-word before.”

  “Didn’t some vice president tell a senator to go fuck himself?”

  “Not on live TV. That was just some corridor grab-ass in the Capitol.”

  “No,” Randy said. “I said no. No. Fucking. Way.”

  “We’ll spike five points with U30,” Cass said. “That would put you ahead.”

  “Yes, and we’d lose every other voter.”

  “Throw long.”
<
br />   “I’ll think about it,” Randy said. “Did you have in mind any particular script for unleashing this little bon mot?”

  “Yes, in fact.”

  Randy went off to cast a vote.

  Terry said to Cass, “I wish you hadn’t planted that idea in his head.”

  “Hey,” Cass grinned. “Got to think out of the box.”

  Gideon Payne was a happy man.

  He had not known such happiness was possible.

  He was so happy, in fact, that it was only by a superhuman exertion of will that he departed Tatiana’s (Ms. Tolstoy had a first name, it turned out) apartment, a perfume-candle-scented bower of bliss in Arlington improbably overlooking the Iwo Jima Memorial.

  “Darrling Gidyon,” she purred, twirling his hair with a finger as he nuzzled her right nipple, “don’t you must be in presidential campaign? It’s two days already you are here.”

  Two days, a case of Champagne, thousands of dollars in ATM withdrawals, God knew how many condoms. He’d lost track.

  “Ummmph.”

  “Come. I make you coffee and you go.”

  “No. I’m staying. I’m never leaving. Never ever ever. Mummmmph.”

  “Darrling. My boozum. It hurt. You are wery hungry boy. You come back. But for now you must go. Come on, I make you nice hot bath with bubble.”

  She got him into a bubble bath. He starting singing, “Glory, glory hallelejuah…”

  Strange boy, she thought. And she could swear that this was the first time he had ever been with a woman.

  Olga Marilova (Tatiana was not her first name, nor was Tolstoy her surname) had not anticipated this. She’d had Kulchek (Ivan) standing by, concealed in the apartment, armed, in case Gidyon Pine showed up with his own security people. Presidential candidates could be expected to be a bit hostile about being blackmailed. But when she opened the door, there he was alone, and with such an expression like a child’s.

  He came in. They sat. She told him the watch was in a safe place. She would give it to him for a “donation to orphanage” of…$100,000. She braced for a furious reaction, ready to summon Kulchek. And then Gidyon Pine said, “Yes, I think that would be reasonable. And it’s a good cause. I have always been partial to orphans. I will have the money for you tomorrow.” She hardly knew what to say. Then he said, “Now, my dear, didn’t you say something about a glass of Champagne? I would be happy to pay for that right now.” And one thing led to another. And he wouldn’t leave. Well, she thought, confused, okay, it’s biznis. Good biznis.

  Wery good biznis, as it turned out. The next day, Gidyon tore himself away from her lovely breasts long enough to make a phone call to someone named Sidney, and a few hours later a short man with a look of alarm knocked on her door and handed over a steel briefcase containing $100,000. This was the easiest bit of biznis Olga had ever conducted. And she was no novice at the client shakedown. Gidyon didn’t even ask for the watch! He just wanted her to get back into bed. He was…insatiable. A little steam engine of carnality. At one point, he asked her to marry him. She had to get him out of the apartment. She had appointments, with important clients. Regulars. Two ambassadors and a deputy secretary of state…

  “Jesus Christ, Gideon-where have you fucking been?” His press secretary, Teeley, was livid.

  Gideon had a grin. He murmured, “Actually, it’s the other way around.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I needed a rest, that’s all. I am most heartily sorry. I hope y’all were not too inconvenienced.”

  “We’ve got a goddamn debate tomorrow!”

  “And I am ready.” He began humming “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” and walked off.

  Teeley said to the campaign manager, “Is he on drugs? If he is, I need to know now. I don’t like surprises.”

  “Ugly fucking state,” President Peacham said, looking down on the frozen landscape from Marine One, the presidential helicopter. The president was in his usual frame of mind, not helped by the latest tracking polls showing him several points behind-Senator Randolph K. Jepperson. The only good news was that with so many candidates running-there were now over a dozen in all, including the candidate of the Free Immigration Party-no one was a clear front-runner.

  “Well, Mr. President,” Bucky Trumble said, sounding as bright and upbeat as he could, “New Hampshire certainly loved you four years ago. And they’re going to love you tonight.”

  President Peacham grunted. “Doesn’t look one damn bit picturesque. Might as well be New Jersey, with snow.” He went back to his debate preparation book. He had not wanted to come and debate his challengers, but Bucky told him he must. His plan was to take out Jepperson here with a crippling blow. If they could beat him in Iowa and New Hampshire, the two early decisive points of the campaign, they might be able to force him to run as an independent.

  They were going to hit him on Bosnia. Their polling showed that was his Achilles’ heel.

  It was somewhat delicate, since this meant collaterally going after Cassandra Devine, whose father, Frank Cohane, was now Peacham’s campaign finance chairman, sitting just a few seats away on Marine One. Frank Cohane had said he had no objection. “Do what you have to.”

  The candidates had separate greenrooms, in trailers parked outside the hall.

  An aide with an earpiece radio scurried up to Cass and said, “Ms. Devine-Reverend Payne has asked to see you.”

  Cass looked over at Terry. He shrugged and said, “Know thy enemy.”

  Cass and the aide left the Jepperson trailer and walked across a crusty snow parking lot to the Payne trailer. The Payne aides-most of them evangelicals-regarded her coolly. To them, she was Joan of Dark. A door was opened, and there was Gideon.

  “Come in, come in out of the cold,” he said heartily.

  They shook hands. He held hers with both of his. “You are very kind to have come, my dear girl, very kind.”

  She hadn’t seen him in person in some months. He looked well. He’d lost weight, his skin had color, his hair was no longer oily.

  “Good to see you, Reverend,” she said. “How’ve you been?”

  “Very well indeed. You didn’t use to call me that.” He smiled. “Sit, sit. Just for a moment, I know you must attend to the senator. There’s something I wanted to say to you.”

  Cass sat.

  “I wanted to say,” Gideon said, “that I personally never thought you had anything to do with that lunatic Arthur Clumm. Or that anything untoward took place in that minefield in Bosnia. I know we have our disagreements. Profound ones. But we’ll have a vigorous debate on the issues. I just wanted you to know that allegations will have no place in my arguments. On that you have my word, Cassandra.”

  She nodded. “All right. Fair enough.”

  “Good, then.”

  “Reverend-”

  “Gideon. Please.”

  “I saw the thing on TV. I know that you didn’t…”

  “Kill my mother?”

  “Yes. But I can’t help thinking that something else happened. That it didn’t happen quite the way you said it did. It’s none of my business.”

  He looked at her. “Someday you and I will take a walk together, and I will tell you a long story. But now let me say, for myself, I don’t believe for one minute you really want Americans to kill themselves just to fix a budget problem.”

  Cass smiled. “No, not really.”

  “You’re just trying to make a point, aren’t you?” He wagged a finger at her. “Well, I must say, young lady, that you have certainly made it. Even if you do set a mean agenda.”

  Cass looked at her watch. “I have to go.”

  They stood. He patted her hand. “Good luck to you, Cassandra Devine. Go forth”-he smiled-“and spin no more.”

  She was crunching on snow across the parking lot when she heard a voice call out, “Hello, Cass.” She turned and saw her father. It had been many years since she’d seen him.

  “Hello, Frank.”

  He moved forward as if
to kiss her. She held back.

  “Look at you. You’re all grown up.”

  “Look at you. All rich.”

  “I did try.”

  “Try what?”

  “To make it up to you. The check. The one you tore into pieces.”

  “Oh,” Cass said, “well, we’re even. I have to go. Good luck in the debate.”

  “Oh, fuck it,” Frank said angrily, and turned on his heel.

  “Nice talking with you,” Cass muttered. “Dad.”

  “What did he want?” Terry said when she got back to the Jepperson trailer.

  “Who?” Cass said, somewhat dazed.

  “The second coming.”

  “We seem to be fanning each other with olive branches.”

  “There’s a whole lot of love going on in this campaign. Come on, showtime.”

  They went into Randy’s dressing room. He was standing in front of a mirror, gesturing.

  “Should I limp when I walk out onstage?”

  “Why don’t you just hop?” Cass said. She brushed off his jacket. “You ready, Senator?”

  “Alons, enfants de la pa-trie…”

  “Fuck off.”

  Bucky’s plan was to wait for closing statements, when it would be too late for a counterassault, for Peacham to say, “I think a man who drives a young woman into a minefield in the middle of a war zone for immoral purposes should not be allowed within a hundred yards or a hundred miles of the nuclear button.” Not a bad line, but Peacham never got to say it.

  It happened sixty-four minutes in. The president had just recited a string of somewhat abstruse economic indicators suggesting that the U.S. economy might actually grow its way out from under the crushing deficit.

  The moderator, John Tierney of The New York Times, turned to Randy and said, “Senator Jepperson, you have ninety seconds to respond.”

  “Thank you, John, but I don’t need ninety seconds to respond. I can respond to what the president just said in four words: Shut the fuck up.”

  Chapter 36

  The incident posed a challenge to news organizations-namely, how to report, verbatim, that a candidate for president of the United States told the incumbent president to “shut the fuck up”-without incurring fines by the Federal Communications Commission. The cautious evening network news shows bleeped the word.