Politika

THIRTY-FOUR

Come on, Boris. Wrestle me. Take me if you can!

Almost twenty-four hours after he had watched Delacroix’s antics on the floor of the Capitol building, Gordian could not get the scene out of his head. This was in part because it had been precisely the sort of sensational media lure he had expected it would be. Every network nightly news broadcast had led off with the story. CNN had done the same, and also made it their topic of discussion on Inside Politics, Crossfire, and Larry King Live, as well as their regular ten P.M. update on the Times Square bombing investigation. And this morning it was the lead story above the fold in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

He had to hand it to Delacroix, who had served two terms as mayor of New Orleans before making a successful bid for the Senate — he had brought a big, glittery suitcase full of Mardi Gras pizzazz to Washington with him, combined it with a sharp instinct for public relations, and turned it into a unique, and perhaps unmatchable, political asset.

Now Gordian tried to make himself comfortable in a commercial airline seat that even in first class wasn’t as comfortable as his own desk chair, and tried to take his mind off the possible ramifications of yesterday’s congressional session. But there was no retreat from his difficulties. What was the line in that poem? Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. He thought about the conversation he’d had with Ashley before leaving for Washington. She had been staying in their San Francisco apartment for the past month and wanted to take steps to “fix” their marriage. Until she left him on New Year’s Eve, he hadn’t realized it was broken. In need of a minor tune-up, maybe, but that was about it. And then she had gone away. And now he faced the prospect of sharing their deepest intimacies with a third party whose profession he mistrusted. Of laying himself open to a perfect stranger.

It all seemed to Gordian a painful and distracting waste of time. He and his wife had been married for nearly twenty years. They had raised a wonderful daughter. If they couldn’t make sense of their own lives, how could they expect someone else to do it for them? He recalled the therapists he’d seen after being freed from the Hanoi Hilton, the endless, unendurable decompression program he’d been required to undergo by the Air Force. It wasn’t a memory that gave him confidence. He supposed it had done a lot of good for some men, had little doubt it had, but he’d gotten nothing out of it. Zero.

Still, he needed to make a decision. And knew that the wrong one could result in Ashley leaving him forever.

The voice of the stewardess intruded on his reverie. “Ten minutes until takeoff, make sure your carry-on baggage is stored in the overhead compartment or under the seat in front of you.” Where the hell was Nimec? After receiving Pete’s late-night phone call in his hotel room, Gordian had exchanged his ticket for a nonstop return flight from D.C. to San Francisco, and gotten booked aboard a connecting red-eye at Kennedy Airport, in New York City. The same plane Nimec was flying on. Or was supposed to be, anyway. Pete had said he had something important for him, and wanted to present it in person. And as soon as possible. Had he always been this damned cryptic? Or, Gordian wondered, could it be that he himself had never felt so jangled and impatient? He knew Pete had been making tremendous progress in New York, and could hardly—

A plain manila envelope dropped onto Gordian’s lap and he once again lost his train of thought. He looked up and saw Nimec standing there in the aisle.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Airport traffic.”

“I wasn’t concerned,” Gordian replied, poker-faced. He lifted the envelope. “This what you said you had for me?”

Nimec nodded, pushed his bag into the overhead compartment.

“Can I open it now, or do I wait for next Christmas?” Gordian asked.

Nimec sat down. He had a local tabloid in his hand. There was a photo of Delacroix under the front-page headline.

“Not that long,” he said. “But I’d hold off till you’re back in your office.”

Gordian tapped the envelope against his knees. Took a deep breath.

“Okay, enough suspense, tell me what’s in it.”

Nimec smiled.

“Very good news about very bad people,” he said.