The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 17

Representative Kendrick from Colorado's Ninth Congressional District sat at his office desk watching his stern-faced secretary as she kept chattering away about priority mail, House agendas, pre-floor position papers and social functions he really must attend, his chief aide's judgment notwithstanding. Her lips opened and closed with the rapidity of machine-gun fire, the nasal sounds emanating not much lower in the decibel count.

'There, Congressman, that's the schedule for the week.'

'It's really something, Annie. But can't you simply send out a blanket letter to everyone saying I've got a social disease and don't want to infect any of them?'

'Evan, stop it,' cried Ann Mulcahy O'Reilly, a very determined middle-aged veteran of Washington. 'You're being sloughed off around here and I won't have it! You know what they're saying here on the Hill? They say you don't give a damn, that you spent a bundle of money just to meet girls as rich as yourself.'

'Do you believe that, Annie?'

'How the hell could I? You never go anywhere, never do anything. I'd praise the saints if you got caught naked in the Reflection Pool with the biggest tootsie in Washington! Then I'd know you were doing something.'

'Maybe I don't want to do anything.'

'Damn it, you should! I've typed your views on a dozen issues and they're light years better than those of 80 per cent of the clowns here, but nobody pays any attention.'

'They're buried because they're not popular, Annie; I'm not popular. They don't want me in either camp. The few who notice me on both sides have pinned so many labels on me they cancel themselves out. They can't pigeonhole me sot hey bury me, which isn't very difficult because I don't complain.'

'God knows I don't agree with you a lot of the time, but I know a mind at work when I see it… Forget it, Congressman. What are your replies?'

'Later. Has Manny called?'

'I put him off twice. I wanted to get in my session with you.'

Kendrick leaned forward, his light blue eyes cold, bordering on anger. 'Don't ever do that again, Annie. There's nothing so important to me as that man in Colorado.'

'Yes, sir.' O'Reilly lowered her eyes.

'I'm sorry,' said Evan quickly, 'that wasn't called for. You're trying to do your job and I'm not much help. Sorry, again.'

'Don't apologize. I know what you've been through with Mr. Weingrass and what he means to you—how often did I bring your work to the hospital? I had no right to interfere. On the other hand, I am trying to do my job and you're not always the most co-operative boss on the Hill.'

'There are other hills I'd rather be on—’

'I'm aware of that, so we'll cross out the social functions; you'd probably do yourself more harm than good anyway.' Ann O'Reilly got out of the chair and placed a folder on Kendrick's desk. 'But I think you should look at a proposal from your senatorial colleague from Colorado. I think he wants to chop off the top of a mountain and put in a reservoir. In this town, that usually means a lake followed by high-rise condominiums.'

'That transparent son of a bitch,' said Evan, whipping open the folder.

'I'll also get Mr. Weingrass on the phone for you.'

'Still Mr. Weingrass?' asked Evan, turning over pages. 'You won't relent? I've heard him tell you to call him Manny dozens of times.'

'Oh, now and then I do, but it's not easy.'

'Why? Because he yells?'

'Mother of God, no. You can't take offence at that if you're married to a two-toilet Irish detective.'

'Two-toilet—?' Kendrick looked up.

'An old Boston expression, but no, it's not the yelling.'

'What, then?'

'A whimsy of humour he keeps repeating. He keeps saying to me over and over—especially when I call him by his first name—“Kid,” he says, “I think we've got a vaudeville act here. We'll call it Manny's Irish Annie, what do you say?” And I say, “Not a hell of a lot, Manny,”' and he says, “Leave my friend, the animal, and fly away with me. He'll understand my undying passion,” and I say to him that the TT cop doesn't understand his own.'

'Don't tell your husband,' offered Kendrick, chuckling.

'Oh, but I did. All he said was that he'd buy the airline tickets. Of course, he and Weingrass got drunk a couple of times—’

'Got drunk? I didn't even know they'd met.'

'My fault—to my undying regret. It was when you flew to Denver about eight months ago—'

'I remember. The state conference, and Manny was still in the hospital. I asked you to go see him, take him the Paris Tribune.'

'And I brought Paddy with me during the evening visiting hours. I'm no centrefold, but even I'm not walking these streets at night, and the TT cop's got to be good for something.'

'What happened?'

'They got along like a shot and a beer. I had to work late one night that week and Paddy insisted on going to the hospital himself.'

Evan shook his head slowly. 'I'm sorry, Annie. I never knew. I didn't mean to involve you and your husband in my private life. And Manny never told me.'

'Probably the Listerine bottles.'

The what?'

'Same colour as light Scotch. I'll get him on the phone.'

Emmanuel Weingrass leaned against the formation of rock on top of a hill belonging to Kendrick's 30-acre spread at the base of the mountains. His short-sleeved checked shirt was unbuttoned to the waist as he took the sun, breathing the clear air of the southern Rockies. He glanced at his chest, at the scars of the surgery, and wondered for a brief moment whether he should believe in God or in Evan Kendrick. The doctors had told him—months after the operation and numerous post-op checkups—that they had cut out the dirty little cells that were eating his life away. He was clean, they pronounced. Pronounced to a man who, on this day, on this rock, was eighty years of age with the sun beating down on his frail body. Frail and not so frail, for he moved better, spoke better—coughed practically not at all. Yet he missed his Gauloise cigarettes and the Monte Cristo cigars he enjoyed so much. So what could they do? Stop his life a few weeks or months before a logical ending?

He looked over at his nurse in the shade of a nearby tree next to the ever-present golf cart. She was one of the round-the-clock females who accompanied him everywhere, and he wondered what she would do if he propositioned her while leaning casually against the boulder. Such potential responses had always intrigued him but generally the reality merely amused him.

'Beautiful day, isn't it?' he called out.

'Simply gorgeous,' was the reply.

'What do you say we take all our clothes off and really enjoy it?'

The nurse's expression did not change for an instant. Her response was calm, deliberate, even gentle. 'Mr. Weingrass, I'm here to look after you, not give you cardiac arrest.'

'Not bad. Not bad at all.'

The radio telephone on the golf cart hummed; the woman walked over to it and snapped it out of its recess. After a brief conversation capped with quiet laughter, she turned to Manny. 'The congressman's calling you, Mr. Weingrass.'

'You don't laugh like that with a congressman,' said

Manny, pushing himself away from the rock. 'Five'll get you twenty it's Annie Glocamorra telling lies about me.'

'She did ask if I'd strangled you yet.' The nurse handed the phone to Weingrass.

'Annie, this woman's a letch!'

'We try to be of service,' said Evan Kendrick.

'Boy, that girl of yours gets off the phone pretty damned quick.'

'Forewarned, forearmed, Manny. You called. Is everything all right?'

'I should only call in a crisis?'

'You rarely call, period. That privilege is almost exclusively mine. What is it?'

'You got any money left?'

'I can't spend the interest. Sure. Why?'

'You know the addition we built on the west porch so you got a view?'

'Of course.'

'I've been playing with some sketches. I think you should have a terrace on top. Two steel beams would carry the load; maybe a third if you went for a glass-blocked steam bath by the wall.'

'Glass-blocked…? Hey, that sounds terrific. Go ahead.'

'Good. I've got the plumbers coming out in the morning. But when it's done, then I go back to Paris.'

'Whatever you say, Manny. However, you said you'd work up some plans for a gazebo down by the streams, where they merge.'

'You said you didn't want to walk that far.'

'I've changed my mind. It would be a good place for a person to get away and think.'

'That excludes the owner of this establishment.'

'You're all heart. I'm coming back next week for a few days.'

'I can't wait,' said Weingrass, raising his voice and looking over at the nurse. 'When you get here, you can take these heavy-breathing sex maniacs off my hands!'

It was shortly past 10:00 pm when Milos Varak walked down the deserted hallway in the House Office Building. He had been admitted by pre-arrangement, a late night visitor of one Congressman Arvin Partridge of Alabama. Varak reached the heavy wooden door with the brass plate centred in the sculptured panel and knocked. Within seconds it was opened by a slender man in his early twenties whose eyes looked out anxiously from large tortoiseshell glasses. Whoever he was, he was not the gruff, savvy chairman of the Partridge 'Gang', that investigative committee determined to find out why the armed services were getting so little for so much. Not in terms of $1,200 toilet seats and $700 pipe wrenches; those were too blatant to be taken seriously and might even be correctable diversions. What concerned the 'Birds'—another sobriquet—were the 500 per cent overruns and the restricted degree of competitive bidding in defence contracts. What they had only begun to uncover, of course, was a river of corruption with so many tributaries there weren't enough scouts to pursue them in the canoes available.

'I'm here to see Congressman Partridge,' said the blond man, his Czech accent not lost on but conceivably misconstrued by the slender young man at the door.

'Did you…?' began the apparent congressional aide awkwardly. 'I mean when you saw the guards downstairs—'

'If you're asking me whether or not I was checked for firearms, of course I was, and you should know it. They called you from Security. The congressman, please. He's expecting me.'

'Certainly, sir. He's in his office. This way, sir.' The nervous aide led Milos to a second large, dark door. The younger man knocked. 'Congressman—'

'Tell him to come in!' ordered the loud Southern voice from inside. 'And you stay out there and take any calls. I don't care if it's the Speaker or the President, I'm not here!'

'Go right in,' said the aide, opening the door.

Varak was tempted to tell the agitated young man that he was a friendly liaison from the KGB, but decided against it. The aide was there for a reason; few phone calls came to the House Office Building at this hour. Milos stepped inside the large ornate room with the profusion of photographs on the desk, walls and tables, all in one way or another attesting to Partridge's influence, patriotism, and power. The man himself, standing by a curtained window, was not as impressive as he appeared in the photographs. He was short and overweight, with a puffed, angry face below a large head of thinning dyed hair.

'Ah don't know what you're sellin', Blondie,' said the congressman walking forward like an enraged pigeon, 'but if it's what I think it is, I'll take you down so fast you'll wish you had a parachute.'

'I'm not selling anything, sir, I'm giving something away. Something of considerable value, in fact.'

'Muleshit! You want some kind of fuckin' cover-up and I'm not givin' it!'

'My clients seek no cover-up and certainly I don't. But I submit, Congressman, you may.'

'Bull! I listened to you on the phone—you heard something, somebody mentioned drugs and I'd better listen—so I made some damn clear inquiries and found out what I had to know, what I knew was the truth! We're clean here, clean as a 'Bama stream! Now, I want to find out who sent you, what thief in what larcenous boardroom thought he could scare me with this kind of crap?'

'I don't think you'd want this kind of “crap” made public, sir. The information is devastating.'

'Information? Words! Innuendo! Rumours, gossip! Like that black kid who tried to indict the whole gawdamned Congress with his lies!'

'No rumours, no gossip,' said Milos Varak, reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket. 'Only photographs.' The Czech from Inver Brass threw the white envelope on the desk.

'What?' Partridge went instantly to the envelope; he sat down and tore it open, pulling the photographs out one by one and holding them under the green-shaded desk lamp. His eyes widened as his face went white, then blood-red in fury.

What he saw was beyond anything he might have imagined. There were various couples, trios and quartets of partly and fully naked young people using straws with white powder strewn on tables; hastily taken blurred shots of syringes, pills and bottles of beer and whisky; finally clear photographs of several couples making love.

'Cameras come in so many sizes these days,' said Varak. 'Microtechnology has produced them as small as buttons on a jacket or a shirt—’

'Oh, Jesus Christ!' cried Partridge in agony. 'That's my house in Arlington! And that's—'

'Congressman Bookbinder's home in Silver Springs, as well as the houses of three other members of your committee. Your work takes you out of Washington a great deal of the time.'

'Who took these?' asked Partridge, barely audible.

'I won't answer that except to give you my word that the person is thousands of miles away without the negatives and no chance of returning to this country. One could say a university exchange student in political science.'

'We've achieved so much and now it's all down the goddamned drain… Oh, God!'

'Why, Congressman?' inquired Varak sincerely. 'These young people aren't the committee. They're not your attorneys or your accountants or even senior aides. They're children who've made terrible mistakes in the headstrong environment of the most powerful capital in the world. Get rid of them; tell them their lives and careers are ruined unless they get help and straighten out, but don't stop your committee.'

'Nobody will ever believe us again,' said Partridge, staring straight ahead as if speaking to the wall. 'We're as rotten as everyone we go after. We're hypocrites.'

'Nobody has to know—’

'Shit!' exploded the congressman from Alabama, pouncing on the phone and pressing a button, holding it down beyond the point where his call was answered. 'Get in here!' he screamed. The young aide came through the door as Partridge rose from the desk. 'You fancy-school son of a bitch! I asked you to tell me the truth! You lied!'

'No, I didn't!' yelled back the young man, his eyes watering behind the tortoiseshell glasses. 'You asked me what's going on—what is going on—and I told you nothing—nothing is going on! A couple of us got busted three, four weeks ago and it scared all of us! Okay, we were dumb, stupid, we all agreed, but we didn't hurt anyone but ourselves! We quit the whole scene and a hell of a lot more than that, but you and your hotshots around here never noticed. Your snotty staff works us eighty hours a week, then calls us dumb kids while they use the stuff we feed 'em to get in front of the cameras. Well, what you never noticed is that you've got a whole new kindergarten class here now. The others all quit and you never even noticed! I'm the only one left because I couldn't get out.'

'You're out now.'

'You're gawdamned right, Emperor Jones!'

'Who?'

'The allusion would grab you,' said the young man, dashing out of the door and slamming it behind him.

'Who was that?' asked Varak.

'Arvin Partridge, Junior,' replied the congressman quietly and sat down, his eyes on the door. 'He's a third-year law student at Virginia. They were all law students and we worked their asses off around the clock for spit and little thanks. But we were giving them something, too, and they betrayed the trust we placed in them by giving it.'

'Which was?'

'Experience they'd never get anywhere else, not in the courts or in the law books, nowhere but here. My son split legal and grammatical hairs and he knows it. He lied to me about something that can destroy all of us. I'll never trust him again.'

'I'm sorry.'

'It's not your problem!' snapped Partridge, his reflective voice suddenly gone. 'All right, trash boy,' he continued harshly, 'what do you want from me to keep this committee together? You said no cover-up, but I suppose there are a couple of dozen ways of saying it without saying it. I'll have to weigh the pluses and the minuses, won't I?'

'There are no negatives for you, sir,' said Varak, taking out several folded sheets of paper, then unfolding them and placing them on the desk in front of the congressman. They comprised a resume, a small identification photograph in the upper right-hand corner of the first page. 'My clients want this man on your committee—'

'You've got something on him!' broke in Partridge.

'Absolutely nothing compromising; he's above reproach where such matters are concerned. To repeat, my clients seek no cover-ups, no extortion, no committee bills sent out or blocked for passage. This man does not know my clients, nor do they personally know him, and he's completely unaware of our meeting tonight.'

'Then why do you want him with me?'

'Because my clients believe he will be an excellent addition to your committee.'

'One man can't do a damn thing, you know that, don't you?'

'Certainly.'

'If he's planted to get information, we're leak-proof Partridge glanced at the snapshots under the green-shaded lamp; he turned them over and slapped them down on the desk. 'At least we were.'

Varak leaned over and took the photographs. 'Do it, Congressman. Put him on the committee. Or, as you said, so much down the drain. When he's in his chair, these will be returned to you along with the negatives. Do it.'

Partridge's eyes were on the snapshots in the blond man's hand. 'As it happens, there's a vacancy. Bookbinder resigned yesterday—personal problems.'

'I know,' said Milos Varak.

The congressman looked up into his visitor's eyes. 'Who the hell are you?'

'Someone devoted to his adopted country, but I'm not important. That man is.'

Partridge glanced down at the resume in front of him. 'Evan Kendrick, Colorado's ninth,' he read. 'I've barely heard of him and what I did hear doesn't raise any pimples. He's a nobody, a rich nobody.'

'That will change, sir,' said Varak, turning and heading for the door.

'Congressman, Congressman! yelled Evan Kendrick's chief aide, racing out of the office and running down the House corridor to catch his employer.

'What is it?' asked Evan, pulling his hand away from the elevator button and looking bemused as the breathless young man skidded to a stop in front of him. 'It's not like you to raise your voice above a very confidential whisper, Phil. Did Colorado's ninth get buried by a mud slide?'

'It may have just been dug out of a longstanding one. From your viewpoint, that is.'

'Do tell?'

'Congressman Partridge. Alabama's Partridge!'

'He's rough but a good man. He takes chances. I like what he does.'

'He wants you to do it with him.'

'Do what?'

'Be on his committee!'

'What?'

'It's a tremendous step forward, sir!'

'It's a lousy step backward,' disagreed Kendrick. 'His committee members are on the nightly news every other week, and they're “fill” for Sunday mornings when our newest congressional comets aren't available. It's the last thing I want.'

'Forgive me, Congressman, but it's the first thing you should take,' said the aide, calming down, his eyes locked with Evan's.

'Why?'

The young man named Phil touched Kendrick's arm, moving him away from the elevator's gathering crowd. 'You've told me you're going to resign after the election and I accept that. But you've also told me that you want a voice in the appointment of your successor.'

'I intend to have.' Evan nodded his head, now in agreement. 'I fought that lousy machine and I want it kept out. Christ, they'd sell every last mountain in the south Rockies as a uranium mine if they could get one government exploration—leaked, naturally.'

'You won't have any voice at all if you turn Partridge down.'

'Why not?'

'Because he really wants you.'

'Why?'

'I'm not sure, I'm only sure he doesn't do anything without a reason. Maybe he wants to extend his influence west, build a base for his own personal advancement—who knows? But he controls a hell of a lot of state delegations; and if you insult him by saying “No, thanks, pal,” he'll consider it arrogance and cut you off, both here and back home. I mean, he is one macho presence on the Hill.'

Kendrick sighed, his brow wrinkled. 'I can always keep my mouth shut, I guess.'

It was the third week after Congressman Evan Kendrick's appointment to the Partridge Committee, a totally unexpected assignment that thrilled no one in Washington except Ann Mulcahy O'Reilly and, by extension, her husband, Patrick Xavier, a transplanted police lieutenant from Boston whose abilities were sought and paid for by the crime-ridden capital's authorities. The reasoning behind the chairman's action was generally assumed to be that the old pro wanted the limelight focused on him, not on the other members of the committee. If that assumption was correct, Partridge could not have made a better choice. The Representative from Colorado's ninth district rarely said anything during the twice-weekly televised hearings other than the words 'I pass, Mr. Chairman when it was his turn to question witnesses. In fact, the longest statement he made during his brief tenure with the 'Birds' was his twenty-three-second response to the chairman's welcome. He had quietly expressed his astonishment at having been honoured by selection, and hoped that he would live up to the chairman's confidence in him. The television cameras had left his face midway through his remarks—in precisely twelve seconds—for the arrival of a uniformed janitor who walked through the chambers emptying ashtrays.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' said the hushed voice of the announcer, 'even throughout such hearings as these, the government does not overlook basic precautions… What?… Oh, yes, Congressman Owen Canbrick has completed his statement.'

However, on Tuesday of the fourth week a most abnormal thing happened. It was the morning of that week's first televised hearing, and interest ran higher than usual because the primary witness was the representative of the Pentagon's Office of Procurement. The man was a youngish, balding full colonel who had aggressively made a name for himself in logistics, a totally committed soldier of unshakeable convictions. He was bright, fast, and blessed with an acerbic wit; he was Arlington's big gun where the snivelling, penny-pinching civilians were concerned. There were many who could not wait for the clash between Colonel Robert Barrish and the equally bright, equally fast and, certainly, equally acerbic chairman of the Partridge Committee.

What was abnormal that morning, however, was the absence of Congressman Arvin Partridge of Alabama. The chairman did not show up and no amount of phone calls nor a platoon of aides rushing all over the capital could unearth him. He had simply disappeared.

But congressional committees do not revolve solely around chairmen, especially not where television is concerned, so the proceedings went forward under the lack of leadership provided by a congressman from North Dakota who was nursing the worst hangover of his life, a most unusual malady, as the man was not known to drink. He was considered a mild, abstemious minister of the gospel who took to heart the biblical admonition of turning swords into ploughshares. Hew as also raw meat for the lion that was Colonel Robert Barrish.

'… and to finish my statement before this civilian inquisition, I state categorically that I speak for a strong, free society in lethal combat with the forces of evil that would rip us to shreds at the first sign of weakness on our part. Are our hands to be shackled over minor academic fiduciary procedures that have only the barest relationship to the status quo ante of our enemies?'

'If I understand you,' said the bleary-eyed temporary chairman, 'let me assure you that no one here is questioning your commitment to our nation's defence.'

'I would hope not, sir.'

'I don't think—’

'Hold it, soldier,' said Evan Kendrick, at the far end of the panel.

'I beg your pardon?'

'I said wait a minute, will you, please?'

'My rank is colonel in the United States Army, and I expect to be addressed as such,' said the officer testily.

Evan looked hard at the witness, momentarily forgetting the microphone. 'I'll address you any way I like, you arrogant bastard.' Cameras jolted, bleeps filled audios everywhere, but too late for the exclusion. '… unless you've personally amended the Constitution, which I doubt you've ever read,' continued Kendrick, studying the papers in front of him, chuckling quietly as he recalled his meeting with Frank Swann at the State Department before he went to Masqat. 'Inquisition, my ass.'

'I resent your attitude—’

'A lot of taxpayers resent yours, too,' interrupted Evan, looking at Barrish's service record and remembering Frank Swann's precise words over a year ago. 'Let me ask you, Colonel, have you ever fired a gun?'

'I'm a soldier!'

'We've both established that, haven't we? I know you're a soldier; we inquisitorial civilians are paying your salary—unless you rented the uniform.' The congressional chamber rippled with quiet laughter. 'What I asked you was whether you had ever fired a gun.'

'Countless times. Have you?'

'Several, not countless, and never in uniform.'

'Then I think the question is closed.'

'Not entirely. Did you ever use a weapon for the purpose of killing another human being whose intention was to kill you?'

The subsequent silence was lost on no one. The soft reply was registered on all. 'I was never in combat, if that's what you mean.'

'But you just said you were in lethal combat, et cetera, et cetera, which conveys to everyone in here and the audience out there that you're some kind of modern-day Davy Crockett holding the fort at the Alamo, or a Sergeant York, or maybe an Indiana Jones blasting away at the bad guys. But that's all wrong, isn't it, Colonel? You're an accountant who's trying to justify the theft of millions—maybe billions—of the taxpayers' money under the red, white and blue flag of super patriotism.'

'You son of a…! How dare you—' The jolting cameras and the bleeps again came too late, as Colonel Barrish rose from his chair and pounded the table.

'The committee is adjourned! yelled the exhausted chairman. 'Adjourned, goddamn it!'

In the darkened control room of one of Washington's network stations, a grey-haired newscaster stood in a corner studying the congressional monitor. As most of America had seen him do countless times, he pursed his lips in thought, then turned to the assistant beside him.

'I want that congressman—whoever the hell he is—on my show next Sunday.'

The upset woman in Chevy Chase cried into the phone, 'I tell you, Mother, I never saw him like that before in my life! I mean it, he was positively drunk. Thank God for that nice foreigner who brought him home! He said he found him outside a restaurant in Washington barely able to walk—can you imagine? Barely able to walk! He recognized him, and, being a good Christian, thought he'd better get him off the streets. What's so insane, Mother, is that I didn't think he ever touched a drop of alcohol. Well, obviously I was wrong. I wonder how many other secrets my devoted minister has! This morning he claimed he couldn't remember anything—not a thing, he said… Oh, my sweet Jesus! Mother, he just walked in the front door—Momma, he's throwing up all over the rug!'

'Where the hell am I?' whispered Arvin Partridge, Sr., shaking his head and trying to focus his eyes on the shabby curtained windows of the motel room. 'In some rat's nest?'

'That's not far off the mark,' said the blond man, approaching the bed. 'Except that the rodents who frequent this place usually do so for only an hour or two.'

'You!' screamed the representative from Alabama, staring at the Czech. 'What have you done to me?'

'Not to you, sir, but for you,' answered Varak. 'Fortunately, I was able to extricate you from a potentially embarrassing situation.'

'What?' Partridge sat up and swung his legs over the bed; although not yet oriented, he realized he was fully clothed. 'Where? How?'

'One of my clients was dining at the Carriage House in Georgetown where you met the congressman from North Dakota. When the unpleasantness started, he called me. Again fortunately, I live in the area and was able to get there in time. Incidentally, you're obviously not registered here.'

'Wait a minute!' yelled Partridge. 'Muleshit! That meeting between the holy roller and me was a set-up! His office gets a call that I want to meet him on urgent committee business and my office gets the same. We got that Pentagon prick, Barrish, coming in the morning, so we both figure we'd better see each other. I ask him what's going on and he asks me the same!'

'I wouldn't know anything about that, sir.'

'Hogshit!… What unpleasantness?'

'You overindulged.'

'Rabbitshit! I had one fuckin' martini and the sky padre had lemonade!'

'If that's the truth, you both have odd tolerances. You fell over the table and the minister tried to drink the salt.'

The chairman of the Partridge Committee glared at the Czech. 'Finns,' he said quietly. 'You dosed us both with Mickey Finns!'

'Before last night I never set foot inside that restaurant.'

'You're also a liar, a hell of an experienced one… Good Christ, what time is it?' Partridge whipped his wrist up to look at his watch; Varak interrupted.

'The hearing is over.'

'Shit.'

'The minister was not terribly effective, but your new appointee made an indelible impression, sir. I'm sure you'll see portions of his performance on the evening news, certain words deleted, of course.'

'Oh, my God,' whispered the congressman to himself. He looked up at the Czech from Inver Brass. 'What did they say about me? About why I wasn't there.'

'Your office issued a statement that was perfectly acceptable. You were on a fishing boat on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The engine failed and you had to drop anchor a mile from the marina. It's been substantiated; there are no problems.'

'My office issued a statement like that? On whose authorization?'

'Your son's. He's a remarkably forgiving young man. He's waiting outside in your car.'

The red-haired salesman in the Saab showroom fairly glowed in astonishment as he signed the papers and counted out ten one-hundred dollar bills. 'We'll have the car ready for you by three o'clock this afternoon.'

That's nice,' said the buyer, who had listed his profession on the finance-loan agreement as a bartender, currently employed at the Carriage House in Georgetown.