The Switch

48

A minute?” Will said.

Senator Susan Robbins was sitting in her office, meeting with their legislative director. Her office door was open, which meant she was doing routine work she didn’t care if everyone knew about.

Today’s suit color was amethyst, which he’d learned was not the same thing as purple. It also meant she was trying to cheer herself up on Dull Committee Work Day. All of her suits were Elie Tahari, or Tahari-style, but this was one of the older ones in the rotation, a few frays here and there.

She looked up from a sheaf of papers she was holding in both hands. Her death stare over her Benjamin Franklin reading glasses. “Urgent?”

He thought: Do you really think I’d interrupt you if it wasn’t something urgent? He nodded. “I’d say, yeah.”

“Samantha,” Susan said, “can we pick this up a little later on? All right, Will, come on in. Sam, could you close the door behind you?”

On the left of her desk was the big American flag, furled, and on the right was the Illinois flag, also furled. Between the two flags was a painting of the Chicago skyline by some renowned Chicago painter, done in a sort of pointillist, Georges Seurat manner. No family photos on display — which was a subject of disagreement between the two. She insisted that women politicians should always downplay the family thing.

As soon as the door closed, Will said, “Have they interviewed you yet?”

“Who?”

“OSS.”

“The... OSS? The old spy agency?”

“Office of Senate Security.”

“What’s this...?”

“They haven’t yet. Good.” He didn’t think she’d been interviewed yet. She’d have come to him first.

“Interview? What’s this about?”

He inhaled slowly. “The documents.”

“The laptop? This is about the goddamned laptop? They know?”

“No, they don’t know about the laptop. Not as far as I know, anyway.”

“Then what the hell are they interviewing for?”

“They believe that classified information was downloaded.”

He could see the tension, the worry, crease her face. She shook her head, which seemed to mean I don’t understand.

“A reporter called around asking about some NSA program.”

“CHRYSALIS?”

“Probably.”

“How is this going to lead to me?”

“It won’t.”

“But what happens when the guy in Boston gives my laptop to WikiLeaks or one of those websites, you know—”

“That won’t happen.”

She lowered her voice to an urgent whisper. “But you don’t have the laptop! Where is it?”

“I’m working on something that you don’t need to know about.”

“And what’s my strategy when they interview me? Just deny, deny, deny?”

“You don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“But don’t they have some computer way of finding out who used the computer at a certain time? A log or whatever?”

“I’m not sure what they know. But here’s the thing: if they knew it was me, they wouldn’t have let me off as easily as they did. They wouldn’t have let me go.”

“So you think they have no idea who did it?”

“Someone on the committee; that’s all they know.”

“But Gary doesn’t know, does he?”

“I would never tell him.”

“You... trust him?”

And then Will had an idea. “I’m not sure, actually. Maybe... it might be worth mentioning his name in your interview.”

“Gary’s?”

He nodded. “It’s not far-fetched that he might have done it.”

“But there’s no grounds for the accusation—”

“You’re just wondering. That’s all. Vague speculation. Coming from you, they’ll take it seriously.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Interesting.”

“It might deflect suspicion. Send them barking up the wrong tree. While I get the laptop back.”

There was a long moment of silence. Will didn’t want to break the silence. He knew she was thinking, considering the idea. Let her mull it over.

“That’s an interesting idea,” she said.

He smiled and nodded. He knew what that meant. He didn’t want to push too hard. She was on board.

It was, Will knew, a game of chess. You sacrificed pieces to avoid checkmate. You always had to take the long view. That was a lesson Will had learned the year he first became Senator Robbins’s chief of staff.

He’d made a trip back home to Greenville to visit his ailing mom. While he was there he got a call from an old friend of his mother’s, Mrs. Karabell. She wanted his help.

She told him that the town was using its powers of eminent domain to take away her flower farm and transfer the property to the Carmichael Corporation, the chemical giant.

Will was outraged and told Mrs. Karabell he’d take care of it.

When he was in grade school, he was a sort of latchkey child — both his parents worked, and his mom sold houses on the side — and he used to hang out a lot at Mrs. Karabell’s house. He didn’t have a lot of friends. Mrs. Karabell was like his second mom. He always did his homework on her kitchen table. There was always a slice of chocolate cake waiting for him, with a glass of cold milk, when he got there. In the winter she made the best hot chocolate Will had ever tasted. He loved Mrs. Karabell.

So when he got back to Washington, he walked into the boss’s office and told her he needed a favor. He needed her to help out Mrs. Karabell’s flower farm.

He would never forget her reply.

Susan Robbins said, “You’re right. I could make a call and save those four acres of petunias. But let me give you the bigger picture. Everything is connected, Will. When I make that call to your town, I’ll save the flowers and earn Mrs. Karabell’s vote — and also the everlasting enmity of the Carmichael Corporation. And you know what’s going to happen?”

Will shook his head, nearly hypnotized by the senator’s direct gaze, her deep blue eyes.

“My next primary, I’m suddenly going to discover that I have a surprisingly impressive, well-funded opponent. Now, I’ll probably defeat him, or her, but then another well-funded opponent will pop up in the general. And who knows if I keep my seat. Maybe I do. My coffers will be depleted, and I’ll be like a bird with a broken wing. A target for all sorts of political opportunists.”

“Okay,” Will said, but the boss was not yet done.

“In two years I’m up for reelection. And I want you to think about all the great things we want to get done, every legislative achievement that we could realize that’s never going to happen because I did a good deed — and then I want you to think about Mrs. Karabell’s four acres of petunias. Do you really want me to make that call, Will?”

The next time Will went back to Greenville, he went to see Mrs. Karabell. Wonderful Mrs. Karabell, with her walker and her breast cancer, who was now ruined. She said, “I don’t understand.”

And Will looked straight at her, unconsciously aping Senator Robbins’s direct gaze. And he lied. He spun some fable. And he felt like crap.

He knew he’d done the right thing. But that didn’t make the shitty feeling go away.

That was the stink of power. Sometimes doing the right thing could make you feel lousy.