The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 19

Kendrick wandered the hot, torpid streets of Washington, his shirt open, his jacket slung over his shoulder, not having any idea where he was going, only to clear his head by putting one foot ahead of the other in aimless sequence. More often than he cared to count, he had been stopped by strangers whose comments were pretty equally divided but slightly weighted in his favour, a fact he was not sure he liked.

'Hell of a job you did on that double-talking prick, Senator!' 'I'm not a senator, I'm a congressman. Thank you, I guess.'

'Who do you think you are, Congressman Whatever-your-name is? Trying to trip up a fine, loyal American like Colonel Barrish. Goddamned left-wing bachelor-fairy!'

'Can I sell you some perfume? The colonel bought some.'

'Disgusting!'

'Hey, man, I dig your MTV! You move good and you sing in a high register. That mother would send all the brothers back to 'Nam for raw meat!'

'I don't think he would, soldier. There's no discrimination in him. We're all raw meat.'

'Because you're clever doesn't make you right, sir! And because he was tricked—admittedly by his own words—doesn't make him wrong. He's a man committed to the strength of our nation, and you obviously are not!'

'I think I'm committed to reason, sir. That doesn't exclude our country's strength, at least I would hope not.'

'I saw no evidence of that!'

'Sorry. It's there.'

'Thank you, Congressman, for saying what so many of us are thinking'

'Why don't you say it?'

'I'm not sure. Everywhere you turn someone's shouting at us to stand tough. I was a kid at Bastogne, in the Bulge, and nobody had to tell me to be tough I was tough—and damned scared, too. It just happened, I wanted to live. But things are different now. It's not men against men, or even guns and planes. It's machines flying through the air punching big holes in the earth. You can't aim at them, you can't stop them. All you can do is wait.'

'I wish you'd been at the hearing. You just said it better than I ever could with better credentials.'

He really did not want to talk any more, he was talked out and strangers in the streets were not helping him find the solitude he needed. He had to think, sort things out for himself, decide what to do and decide quickly if only to put the decision behind him. He had accepted the Partridge Committee assignment for a specific reason he wanted a voice in his district's selection of the man who would succeed him, and his aide, Phil Tobias, had persuaded him that accepting Partridge's summons would guarantee him a voice. But what Evan wondered was did he really give a damn.'

To a degree he had to admit that he did, but not because of any territorial claim. He had walked into a minor political arena an angry man with his eyes open. Could he simply close up shop because he was irritated by a brief flurry of public exposure? He did not wear a badge of morality on his lapel, but there was something inherently distasteful to him about someone who gave a commitment and walked away from it because of personal inconvenience. On the other hand, in the words of another era, he had thrown out the rascals who had been taking Colorado's ninth district to the cleaners. He had done what he wanted to do. What more could the voters of his constituency want from him? He had awakened them, at least he thought he had and had spared neither words nor money in trying to do so.

Think. He really had to think. He would probably keep the Colorado property for some future time as yet unconsidered, he was forty-one, in nineteen years he would be sixty. What the hell did that matter? It did matter. He was heading back to Southwest Asia, to the jobs and the people he knew best how to work with, but, like Manny, he was not going to live out his last years, or with luck a decade or two, in those surroundings Manny Emmanuel Weingrass, genius, brilliance personified, autocrat, renegade, totally impossible human being—yet the only father he had ever known. He never knew his own father, that far-away man had died building a bridge in Nepal, leaving a humorously cynical wife who claimed that having married an outrageously young captain in the Army Corps of Engineers during the Second World War, she had fewer episodes of connubial bliss than Catherine of Aragon.

'Hey.' yelled a rotund man who had just walked out of the small canopied door of a bar on Sixteenth Street. 'I just seen you! You were on TV sittin' on a desk! It was that all-day news programme Boring! I don't know what the hell you said but some bums clapped and some other bums gave you raspberries. It was you!’

'You must be mistaken,' said Kendrick hurrying down the pavement. Good Lord, he thought, the Cable News people had rushed to air the impromptu press conference in short order. He had left his office barely an hour and a half ago, someone was in a hurry. He knew that Cable needed constant material but with all the news floating around Washington, why him? In truth, what bothered him was an observation made by young Tobias during Evan's early days on the Hill. 'Cable's an incubating process, Congressman, and we can capitalize on it. The networks may not consider you important enough to cover, but they scan Cable's snippets all the time for what's off-beat, the unusual—their own fill. We can create situations where the C-boys will take the bait, and in my opinion, Mr. Kendrick, your looks and your somewhat oblique observations—’

‘Then let's never make the mistake, Mr. Tobias, of ever calling the C-boys, okay?' The interruption had deflated the aide, who was only partially mollified by Evan's promise that the next inhabitant of his office would be far more cooperative. He had meant it; he meant it now, but he worried that it might be too late.

He headed back to the Madison Hotel, only a block or so away, where he had spent Sunday night—spent it there because he had had the presence of mind to call his house in Virginia to learn whether his appearance on the Foxley show had created any interruptions at home.

'Only if one wishes to make a telephone call, Evan,' Dr Sabri Hassan had replied in Arabic, the language they both spoke for convenience as well as for other reasons. 'It never stops ringing.'

'Then I'll stay in town. I don't know where yet, but I'll let you know.'

'Why bother?' Sabri had asked. 'You probably won't be able to get through anyway. I'm surprised that you did now.'

'Well, in case Manny calls—’

'Why not call him yourself and tell him where you are so I will not have to lie. The journalists in this city cannot wait for an Arab to lie; they pounce upon us. The Israelis can say that white is black, or sweet is sour, and their lobby convinces Congress it's for your own good. It is not so with us.'

'Cut it out, Sabri—’

'We must leave you, Evan. We're no good to you, we will be no good to you.'

'What the hell are you talking about?'

'Kashi and I watched the programme this morning. You were most effective, my friend.'

'We'll talk about it later.' He had spent the afternoon watching baseball and drinking whisky. At six-thirty he had turned on the news, one network after another, only to see himself in brief segments from the Foxley show. In disgust, he had switched to an arts channel that showed a film depicting the mating habits of whales off the coast of Tierra del Fuego. He was amazed; he fell asleep.

Today, instinct told him to keep his room key, so he rushed through the Madison's lobby to the elevators. Once inside the room he removed his clothes down to his shorts and lay on the bed. And whether it was a symptom of a repressed ego or sheer curiosity, he turned on the remote control unit and switched the channel to Cable News. Seven minutes later he saw himself walking out of his office.

'Ladies and gentlemen, you have just seen one of the most unusual press conferences this reporter has ever attended. Not only unusual, but unusually one-sided. This fast-term representative from Colorado has raised issues of obvious national importance but refuses to be questioned as to his conclusions. He simply walks away. On his behalf it should be said that he denies “grandstanding” because he apparently is not sure he intends to remain in Washington—which we assume means government—nevertheless his statements were provocative, to say the least.'

The videotape suddenly stopped, replaced by the live face of an anchorwoman. 'We switch now to the Department of Defense where we understand that an under secretary in charge of Strategic Deterrence has a prepared statement. It's yours, Steve.'

Another face, this a dark-haired, blunt-featured reporter with too many teeth who peered into a camera and whispered. 'Under Secretary Jasper Hefflefinger, who manages to be hauled out whenever someone attacks the Pentagon, has rushed into the breach opened by Congressman—who?—Henry, of Wyoming—what?—Colorado! Here is Under Secretary Hefflefinger.'

Another face. A jowled but handsome man, a strong face with a shock of silver hair that demanded attention. And with a voice that would be envied by the most prominent radio announcers of the late thirties and forties. 'I say to the Congressman that we welcome his comments. We want the same thing, sir! The avoidance of catastrophe, the pursuit of liberty and freedom—’

He went on and on, saying everything but also saying nothing, never once addressing the issues of escalation and containment.

Why me? shouted Kendrick to himself. Why me? To hell with it! With everything! He shut off the television set, reached for the phone and called Colorado. 'Hi, Manny,' he said, hearing Weingrass's abrupt hello.

'Boy, are you something!' yelled the old man into the phone. 'I brought you up right, after all!'

'Stow it, Manny, I want out of this shit.'

'You want what? Did you see yourself on TV?

'That's why I want out. Forget the glassed-in steam bath and the gazebo down by the streams. We'll do it later. Let's you and I head back to the Emirates—by way of Paris, naturally—maybe a couple of months in Paris, if you like. Okay?'

'Not okay, you meshuga clown! You got something to say, you say it! I taught you always—whether we lost a contract or not—to say what you believed was right… Okay, okay, maybe we fudged a little on time, but we delivered!. And we never charged for extensions even when we had to pay!'

'Manny, that has nothing to do with what's going on here—’

'It's got everything. You're building something… And speaking of building, guess what, my boy?'

'What?'

'I've started the terrace steam bath and I've handed over the plans for the gazebo down by the streams. Nobody interrupts Emmanuel Weingrass until his designs are completed to his satisfaction!'

'Manny, you're impossible!.'

'I may have heard that before.'

Milos Varak walked down a gravelled path in Rock Creek Park towards a bench that overlooked a ravine where offshoot waters of the Potomac rushed below. It was a remote, peaceful area away from the concrete pavements above, favoured by the summer tourists wishing to get away from the heat and hustle of the streets. As the Czech expected, the Speaker of the House of Representatives was already there, sitting on the bench, his thatch of white hair concealed by an Irish walking cap, the visor half over his face, his long, painfully thin frame covered by an unnecessary raincoat in the sweltering humidity of an August afternoon in Washington. The Speaker wanted no one to notice him; it was not his normal proclivity. Varak approached and spoke.

'Mr. Speaker, I'm honoured to meet you, sir.'

'Son of a bitch, you are a foreigner!' The gaunt face with the dark eyes and arched white brows was an angry face, angry and yet defensive, the latter trait obviously repulsive to him. 'If you're some fucking Communist errand boy, you can pack it in right now, Ivan! I'm not running for another term. I'm out, finished, kaput come January, and what happened thirty or forty years ago doesn't mean doodlely shit! You read me, Bom?'

'You've had an outstanding career and have been a positive force for your country, sir—also my country now. As to my being a Russian or an agent from the Eastern bloc, I've fought both for the past ten years, as a number of people in this government know.'

The granite-eyed politician studied Varak. 'You wouldn't have the guts or the stupidity to say that to me unless you could back it up,' he intoned in the pungent accent of a northern New Englander. 'Still, you threatened me!'

'Only to get your attention, to persuade you to see me. May I sit down?'

'Sit,' said the Speaker as if addressing a dog he expected to obey him. Varak did so, maintaining ample space between them. 'What do you know about the events that may or may not have taken place some time back in the fifties?'

'It was 17 March 1951 to be exact,' replied the Czech. 'On that day a male child was born in Belfast's Lady of Mercy Hospital to a young woman who had emigrated to America several years before. She had returned to Ireland, her explanation, indeed, a sad one. Her husband had died and in her bereavement she wanted to have their child at home, among her family.'

His gaze cold and unflinching, the Speaker said, 'So?'

'I think you know, sir. There was no husband over here, but there was a man who must have loved her very much. A

rising young politician trapped in an unhappy marriage from which he could not escape because of the laws of the Church and his constituents' blind adherence to them. For years this man, who was also an attorney, sent money to the woman and visited her and the child in Ireland as often as he could… as an American uncle, of course—’

'You can prove who these people were?' interrupted the ageing Speaker curtly. 'Not hearsay or rumour or questionable eyewitness identification but written proof?'

'I can.'

'With what? How?'

'Letters were exchanged.'

'Liar!' snapped the septuagenarian. 'She burned every damned one before she died!'

'I'm afraid she burned all but one,' said Varak softly. 'I believe she had every intention of destroying it, too, but death came earlier than she expected. Her husband found it buried under several articles in her bedside table. Of course, he doesn't know who E is, nor does he want to know. He's only grateful that his wife declined your offer and stayed with him these past twenty years.'

The old man turned away, the hint of tears welling in his eyes, sniffed away in self-discipline. 'My wife had left me then,' he said, barely audible. 'Our daughter and son were in college and there was no reason to keep up the rotten pretence any longer. Things had changed, outlooks changed, and I was as secure as a Kennedy in Boston. Even the la-di-das in the archdiocese kept their mouths shut—'course, I let a few of those sanctimonious bastards know that if there was any Church interference during the election, I'd encourage the black radicals and the Jews to raise hell in the House over their holy tax-exempt status. The bishop damn near threw up in apoplexy, screaming all kinds of damnation at me for setting a hell-fire public example but I settled his hash. I told him my departing wife had probably slept with him, too.' The white-haired Speaker with the deeply lined face fell silent. 'Mother of God,' he cried to himself, the tears now apparent. 'I wanted that girl back!'

'I'm sure you're not referring to your wife.'

'You know exactly whom I mean, Mr. No-name! But she couldn't do it. A decent man had given her a home and our son a name for nearly fifteen years. She couldn't leave him—even for me. I'll tell you the truth, I kept her last letter, too. Both letters were our last to each other. “We'll be joined in the hereafter heaven,” she wrote me. “But no further on this earth, my darling.” What kind of crap was that? We could have had a life, a goddamned good part of life!'

'If I may, sir, I think it was the expression of a loving woman who had as much respect for you as she did for herself and her son. You had children of your own and explanations from the past can destroy the future. You had a future, Mr. Speaker.'

'I would have chucked it all in—’

'She couldn't let you do that, any more than she could destroy the man who had given her and the child a home and a name.'

The old man pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes, his voice suddenly reverting to its harsh delivery. 'How the hell do you know about all this?'

'It wasn't difficult. You're the leader of the House of Representatives, the second in line for the presidency, and I wanted to know more about you. Forgive me, but older people speak more freely than younger ones—much of it is due to their unrecognized sense of importance where so-called secrets are concerned—and, of course, I knew that you and your wife, both Catholics, had been divorced. Considering your political stature at the time and the power of your Church, that had to be a momentous decision.'

'Hell, I can't fault you there. So you looked for the older people who were around at the time.'

'I found them. I learned that your wife, the daughter of a wealthy real estate developer who wanted political influence and literally financed your early campaigns, had a less than enviable reputation.'

'Before and after, Mr. No-name. Only I was the last to find out.'

'But you did find out,' said Varak firmly. 'And in your anger and embarrassment you sought other companionship. At the time you were convinced you couldn't do anything about your marriage, so you looked for surrogate comfort.'

'Is that what it's called? I looked for someone who could be mine.'

'And you found her in a hospital where you went to give blood during a campaign. She was a certified nurse from Ireland who was studying for her registry in the United States.'

'How the hell—'

'Old people talk.'

'Pee Wee Mangecavallo,' whispered the Speaker, his eyes suddenly bright, as if the memory brought back a rush of happiness. 'He had a little Italian place, a bar with good Sicilian food, about four blocks from the hospital. No one ever bothered me there—I don't think they knew who I was. That guinea bastard, he remembered.'

'Mr. Mangecavallo is over ninety now, but he does, indeed, remember. You would take your lovely nurse there and he would close up his bar at one o'clock in the morning and leave you both inside, asking only that you kept the tarantellas on the jukebox really quiet.'

'A beautiful person.'

'With an extraordinary memory for one of his age but without, I'm afraid, the control he had as a younger man. He reminisces at length, rambles, actually, saying things over his Chianti that perhaps he would never have said even a few years ago.'

'At his age he's entitled—’

'And you did confide in him, Mr. Speaker,' interrupted Varak.

'No, not really,' disagreed the old politician. 'But Pee Wee put things together; it wasn't hard. After she left for Ireland, I used to go back there, for a couple of years quite frequently. I'd drink more than I usually did because nobody, like I said, knew me or gave a damn and Pee Wee always got me home without incident, as they say. I guess maybe I talked too much.'

'You went back to Mr. Mangecavallo's establishment when she married—’

'Oh, yes, that I did! I remember it as if it were yesterday—remember going inside, no memory at all of coming out.'

'Mr. Mangecavallo is quite lucid about that day. Names, a country, a city… a date—of severance, you called it. I went to Ireland.'

The Speaker snapped his head towards Varak, his unblinking eyes angry and questioning. 'What do you want from me? It's all over, all in the past, and you can't hurt me. What do you want?'

'Nothing that you would ever regret or be ashamed of, sir. The most stringent background examination could be made and you could only applaud my clients' recommendation.'

'Your… clients? Recommendation…? Some kind of House assignment?'

'Yes, sir.'

'The horseshit aside, why would I agree to whatever the hell you're talking about?'

'Because of a detail in Ireland you are not aware of

'What's that?'

'You've heard of the killer who calls himself Tammy O'Sheary, the provisional “wing commander” of the Irish Republican Army?'

'A pig! A blot on every Irish clan's escutcheon!'

'He's your son.'

A week had passed and for Kendrick it was further proof of the quick passage of fame in Washington. The Partridge Committee's televised hearings were suspended at the request of the Pentagon, who issued dual statements that it was revising certain financial 'in-depth' records, as well as the fact that Colonel Robert Barrish had been promoted to brigadier general and posted to the island of Guam to oversee that most vital outpost of freedom.

‘One Joseph Smith of 70 Cedar Street in Clinton, New Jersey, whose father had been with the 27th in Guam, roared with laughter as he poked his wife's left breast in front of the television screen. 'He's been hosed, babe! And that what's-his-face did it! He's my buddy!'

But as all brief periods of euphoria must come to an abrupt end, so did the temporary relief felt by the representative of the Ninth Congressional District of Colorado.

'Jesus Christ!' yelled Phil Tobias, chief aide to the congressman, as he held his hand over the telephone. 'It's the Speaker of the House himself! No aide, no secretary, but him!'

'Maybe you should let the other “himself” know about it,' said Annie O'Reilly. 'He called on your line, not mine. Don't talk, sweetie. Just push the button and announce. It's out of your league.'

'But it isn't right! His people should have called me—’

'Do it!'

Tobias did it.

'Kendrick?'

'Yes, Mr. Speaker?'

'You got a few minutes to spare?' asked the New Eng-lander, the word'spare' emerging as'spay-yah'.

'Well, of course, Mr. Speaker, if you think it's important.'

'I wouldn't call a shit-head freshman direct if I didn't think it was important.'

'Then I can only hope that a shit-head Speaker has a vital issue to discuss,' replied Kendrick. 'If he doesn't, I'll charge my hourly consultation rate to his state. Is that understood, Mr. Speaker?'

'I like your style, boy, We're on different sides but I like your style.'

'You may not when I'm in your office.'

'I like that even better.'

Astonished, Kendrick stood in front of the desk staring in silence at the evasive eyes of the gaunt-faced, white-haired Speaker of the House. The old Irishman had just made an extraordinary statement, which should have been, at the very least, a proposal but was, instead, a bombshell in Evan's path of retreat from Washington, DC. 'The Subcommittee on Oversight and Evaluation?' said Kendrick in quiet anger. 'Of Intelligence?'

'That's it,' answered the Speaker, glancing down at his papers.

'How dare you? You can't do that!'

'It's done. Your appointment's announced.'

'Without my consent?

'I don't need it. I don't say you had the clearest sailing with your own party leaders—you're not the most popular fella on your side of the fence—but with a little persuasion they agreed. You're kind of a symbol of independent bipartisanship.'

'Symbol? What symbol? I'm no symbol!'

'You got a tape of the Foxley show?'

'It's non-history. It's forgotten!'

'Or that little rhubarb you pulled in your office the next morning? That fella from the New York Times did a hell of a column on you, made you out like some kind of—hat was it? I reread it yesterday—“a reasoned voice among the babel of mad crows”.'

'All that was weeks ago and nobody's mentioned anything of substance since then. I've faded.'

'You just sprang back to full flower.'

'I refuse the appointment! I don't care to be burdened by secrets involving national security. I'm not staying in government and I consider it an untenable position to be placed in—a dangerous situation, to put it bluntly.'

'You publicly refuse and your party will wash you out of its hair—publicly. They'll call you a few names, like a rich mistake and irresponsible, and revive that jackass you buried with your money. He and his little machine are missed around here.' The Speaker paused, chuckling. 'They beavered away for everybody with nice little perks like private jets and fancy suites from Hawaii to the South of France owned by the mining boys. Didn't make a damn bit of difference what party you were with, they just wanted a few addendums on legislation—couldn't care less where they come from. Hell, Congressman, you refuse, you could be doing all of us a favour.'

'You really are a shit-head, Mr. Speaker.'

I'm pragmatic, son.'

'But you've done so many decent things—'

'They came from being practical,' interrupted the old pol. 'They don't get done with buckets of vinegar, they go down easier with pitchers of warm syrup, like sweet Vermont syrup, get my drift?'

'Do you realize that with one statement you just condoned political corruption?'

'The hell I did! I just condoned the acceptance of minor greed as part of the human condition in exchange for major legislation that helps the people who really need it! I got those things through, shit-head, by blinking my eyes to incidental indulgences when those who got 'em knew my eyes weren't closed. You rich son of a bitch, you wouldn't understand. Sure, we got a few millionaires around here, but most aren't. They live on yearly salaries that you'd piss away in a month. They leave office because they can't put their two or three kids through college on what they make, forget vacations. So you're goddamned right, I blink.'

'All right!' shouted Kendrick. 'I can understand that, but what I can't understand is your appointing me to Oversight! There's nothing in my background that qualifies me for such an assignment. I could name thirty or forty others who know a lot more than I do—which isn't hard because I don't know anything. They follow these things, they love being on the inside of that dumb business—I repeat, I think it's a dumb business! Call on one of them. They're all salivating at the chance.'

'That kind of appetite isn't what we're lookin' for, son,' said the Speaker in his now heavily pronounced down home, Down East accent that belied decades of sophisticated political negotiations in the nation's capital. 'Good healthy scepticism, like what you showed that double-talking colonel on the Foxley show, that's the ticket. You'll make a real contribution.'

'You're wrong, Mr. Speaker, because I have nothing to contribute, not even the slightest interest. Barrish was using and abusing generalities, arrogantly refusing to talk straight, only talk down. It was entirely different. I repeat, I have no interest in Oversight.'

'Well, now, my young friend, interests change with conditions, like in the banks. Somethin' happens and the rates go up or down accordingly. And some of us are more familiar than others with certain troubled areas of the world—you certainly qualify in that regard. As that beautiful book says, talents buried in the ground don't do anybody a cow dung's worth of good, but if they're brought up into the light, they can flourish. Like your new flowering.'

'If you're referring to the time I spent in the Arab Emirates, please remember I was a construction engineer whose only concerns were jobs and profits.'

'Is that so?'

'The average tourist knew more about the politics and cultures of those countries than I did. All of us in construction kept pretty much to ourselves; we had our own circles and rarely stepped outside them.'

'I find that hard to believe—damn near impossible, in fact. I got the congressional background report on you, young fella, and I tell ya it blew my good New England socks off. Here you are right here in Washington and you built airfields and government buildings for the Arabs, which certainly means you had to have a hell of a lot of conversations with the high mucky-mucks over there. I mean airfields; that's military intelligence, son! Then I learn you speak several Arab languages, not one but several!'

'It's one language, the rest are simply dialects—'

'I tell you you're invaluable, and it's no less than your patriotic duty to serve your country by sharing what you know with other experts.'

'I'm not an expert!'

'Besides,' broke in the Speaker, leaning back in his chair, his expression pensive, 'under the circumstances, what with your background and all, if you refused the appointment it'd look like you had somethin' to hide, somethin' maybe we ought to look into. You got somethin' to hide, Congressman.' The Speaker's eyes were suddenly levelled at Evan.

Something to hide? He had everything to hide! Why did the Speaker look at him like that? No one knew about Oman, about Masqat and Bahrain. No one would ever know! That was the agreement.

'There's not a damn thing to hide, but there's everything to let hang out,' said Kendrick firmly. 'You'd be doing the subcommittee a disservice based on a misplaced appraisal of my credentials. Do yourself a favour. Call one of the others.'

'The beautiful book, that most holy of books, has so many answers, doesn't it?' asked the Speaker aimlessly, his eyes once again straying, 'Many might be called, but few are chosen, isn't that right?'

'Oh, for God's sake—’

'That might well be the case, young fella,' broke in the old Irishman, nodding his head. 'Only time will tell, won't it? Meanwhile, the congressional leadership of your party has decided that you're chosen. So you're chosen—unless you've got something to hide, something we ought to look into… Now, skedaddle. I've got work to do.'

'Skedaddle?'

'Get the fuck out of here, Kendrick.'