Читать книгу The Pinocchio Syndrome - David Zeman - Страница 7

Washington

November 16

An hour after the Washington Today broadcast, Vice President Dan Everhardt was in his EOB office, already laboring under a mountain of work.

It was a beautiful day outside. The Washington Monument thrust boldly into a sunny sky while the last of the fall colors daubed the trees along the Mall. A perfect Washington day, cool and crisp. The kind of day that DC natives dreamed about throughout the steam bath of summer.

This was football weather. It brought back pleasant memories of college games in which Dan had tested his strength against some of the toughest linemen alive.

Had he been looking out the window, he might have seen Karen Embry’s little Honda pass by on 17th Street. Karen was on her way to the Library of Congress. She had some medical research to do, and not much time to do it in.

But Dan Everhardt was looking at the list of appointments on his computer screen. The list was long. It was going to be a tiring day.

The phone on Dan’s desk rang. His secretary said the president was on the line. Hurriedly Dan sat down and pushed line two.

‘Mr President. Glad to hear from you.’

‘Danny, how are you?’

‘Fine, Mr President.’

‘I’m just calling to congratulate you on your performance on Washington Today. We all liked what we heard.’ The president’s voice had its usual composite tone, at once caressing and demanding. He was a man who knew how to get what he wanted from political men without browbeating them.

‘Thank you, Mr President. I’m glad Mike Campbell was there,’ Dan replied. ‘In all honesty, I’m not a genius at thinking on my feet. That sheep ranch bit of Goss’s had me thrown. But Mike jumped in and bailed me out.’

‘Michael is a good boy,’ the president said. ‘He’s bright, and he has the right instincts. I told him how much we appreciate his help. He says he’ll go anywhere for us.’

‘I’m glad,’ Dan Everhardt said. ‘We might need him. Have you seen the polls today, Mr President?’

‘Let me worry about the polls, Danny.’

The president’s reassurance was sincerely meant, but the fact remained that in the latest opinion polls the public’s approval of the administration was at an all-time low. Nearly fifty percent of registered voters told pollsters that if a special election for president were held today they would cast their votes for Colin Goss.

‘Frankly, Mr President, I’m worried that I didn’t do a good enough job,’ Dan said. ‘If it hadn’t been for Mike I would have looked like an idiot.’

‘You did fine, Danny. The choice before the people is clear. At the moment they’re expressing their worries about the future by flirting with Goss. But they’ll never take that into a voting booth. All we have to do is sit tight and keep doing our job.’

‘I hope you’re right, Mr President.’

They said good-bye, and Dan Everhardt let out the sigh of relief that had been trapped in his lungs throughout the conversation. Had he heard a hint of impatience in the president’s reassurances? The thought made sweat stand out on his palm as he replaced the receiver. No matter how ingratiating his manner, the president was still the president. His tolerance for malingerers was zero. Everyone knew that.

For a moment Dan sat thinking about Colin Goss. Not since McCarthy had an extremist of the Right worn so hateful a mantle. Dan Everhardt had done a senior thesis on Hitler at Rutgers. There were obvious parallels between Hitler’s anti-Semitism in Mein Kampf and Goss’s speeches about terrorism. The megalomania, the paranoia. The caricature of the opponent as a subhuman cancer cell eating away at the heart of the civilized world.

Obviously it appealed to something in the psyche of the voters. Since the Crescent Queen Americans were lining up by the thousands to hear Goss’s speeches, and writing letters to the editor of their local paper to say that he was the man to ‘save the country.’

To inflame the public further Goss had recently begun placing ‘public service’ ads in major newspapers and magazines, stressing the theme that it was ‘Time to Fight Back’ or ‘Time for a Change.’ Criticized by journalists and even advertisers for electioneering on behalf of himself at a painful time, Goss responded by placing some of the ads on television. It was not unusual these days to see commercials on cable and network stations featuring Goss, a fatherly expression on his face, talking about the ‘crisis’ America faced and the need for Americans to ‘make the tough choices’ at this critical time. Several of the ads showed Goss before a back-projection view of the Crescent Queen explosion.

Those who tried to keep the ads off the air were frustrated by Goss attorneys who cited their client’s right to free speech. The advertising managers of the television networks were loath to say no to Goss’s money, especially when the public seemed to be responding so positively to the ads.

This was going to be a tough battle, Dan Everhardt realized. Goss was throwing everything he had into the effort to force the president out of office. The political situation was meeting Goss halfway. People’s fear of another nuclear attack, possibly on American soil, was greater every day. The status quo was a continual state of terror. More and more voters wanted a change at any price.

Dan was glad Michael Campbell was on board. Mike was hugely popular in his own right, and every word he said in the media got listened to.

Michael would probably run for president himself eventually. His natural ability, combined with his good looks and the huge profile brought by his Olympic victories, would make him a strong candidate for the White House. His wife’s beauty didn’t hurt, either. The only slight negative was their childlessness. But no doubt in the next few years that problem would be solved.

In the interim, Dan Everhardt was vice president of the United States. He had no presidential ambitions for himself. He was loyal to the president and determined to help him stay in office. In this tempestuous time the country needed a sane, wise leader more than ever.

Dan Everhardt looked at his watch. Twenty minutes remained before his conference call with the majority leader.

He stood up and stretched. His back gave him a twinge, a reminder of his football days. He also had a trick knee, the result of surgery on the anterior cruciate ligament. But mostly he felt tired. The stress he had been under recently was taking its toll.

He reached for the intercom.

‘Janice?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I’m going to take a quick shower. Take messages for fifteen minutes, will you?’

‘Certainly, sir. Did you want to return Senator Buerstin’s call?’

‘After I get out.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Dan Everhardt noticed himself in the mirror as he moved toward the bathroom. His bulk was beginning to sag, he noticed with some displeasure. The heavy-plated lineman’s armor was taking on the look of a middle-aged man’s spare tire. He wished he could find more time for workouts. But these days so many things kept pressing in on him. One less martini at night would help too – but that was not an option either. His nerves were strung too tight. Things hadn’t been going all that well with his wife. They hadn’t really talked in a long time. As for lovemaking, that was a sore point.

He went into the bathroom and peeled off his clothes. He would put on a fresh shirt after his shower, as always. He sweated a lot.

He draped his jacket over the hanger that hung from the hook on the wall. He threw the shirt into the little hamper, then took off his pants and folded them. He turned on the shower, waited for the water to warm, and got in. A wave of sudden weakness stole through him. He worried briefly about his heart. He was over fifty now, and not in the best of shape.

He felt empty. He thought of Pam, lying in bed when he said good night to her last night. She had looked so lonely. He wanted to reach out to her. But so much water had run under the bridge. Like the water ceaselessly disappearing down this drain, even as it pounded down on him from above. All of life, slipping through our fingers, he thought. Nothing permanent.

He recalled the graduation speech he had given at Rutgers last year. He had had that thought at the time – ‘Nothing is permanent’ – but he had not had the heart to express it to all those fresh-faced graduates. They would find it out in time. Why spoil their happy years by bringing it up now? Better to be gentle.

Depressed thoughts like these did not come naturally to Dan, who was an optimist by temperament. But just at this moment they seemed cogent and inescapable. The whole world was like a house of cards, ready to crumble at the slightest touch.

A house of cards … He was thinking of these words when a greater weakness came over him. The soap fell to the floor of the shower with a splat. He made to bend down toward it, but his arm didn’t move.

Something was wrong. He had sensed it a moment ago, perhaps even earlier. But he had ignored it, decided it was nothing. And that was the opening it had come through – his own obliviousness.

His body seized up, frozen like an engine thrown into reverse at full throttle. The room was yellow, then red. A sound like screeching trumpets was in his ears. He didn’t even try to reach for the walls. He sought only to get out the cry that would bring help. But his throat was locked tight, nothing would come out.

Pam. It was the last word in his mind, but it never came near his lips.

He sagged against the wall of the shower. That was where he would have remained, had it not been for the slippery soap under his feet. He fell to the tiled floor with a crash, his bulk forcing the shower door open. His head emerged from the cubicle, water dripping from his hair onto the floor. The bar of soap lay innocently on the drain.

His hands were clenched at his sides. His eyes were wide open. He looked as though he were preoccupied by something beyond this water-soaked room, something terribly urgent and transcendently important.

He tried to make himself move. It was impossible. He lay staring straight ahead, as he would be when they found him.