‘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.