‘Yes, Congressman, it is. That’s our job.’
‘I respect that. I wish to hell you’d do it more often.’
‘What?’
‘One of the most respected members of my staff,’ continued Kendrick quickly, ‘explained to me that I should make a statement. That’s kind of awesome if you’ve never been asked to make a statement before—’
‘You did run for office, sir,’ interrupted another television reporter, very obviously moving her blonde hair into her camera’s focus. ‘Certainly statements were required then.’
‘Not if the incumbent represented our district’s version of Planet of the Apes. Check it out, I’ll stand by that. Now, may I go on or do I simply go out? I’ll be quite honest with you. I really don’t give a damn.’
‘Go on, sir,’ said the gentleman often referred to as Stan-the-man, a broad grin on his telegenic face.
‘Okay… My very valued staff member also mentioned that some of you, if not all of you, might be under the impression that I was grandstanding last week. “Grandstanding. “… As I understand the term it means calling attention to oneself by performing some basically melodramatic act—with or without substance—that rivets the attention of the crowds watching—in the grandstands—on the person performing that act. If that definition is accurate then I must decline the title of grandstander—if it’s a word—because I’m not looking for anyone’s approval. Again, I really don’t care.’
The momentary shock was dispelled by the congressman’s palms pressing the air in front of him. ‘I’m quite sincere about that, ladies and gentlemen. I don’t expect to be around here very long—’
‘Do you have a health problem, sir?’ shouted a young man from the back of the room.
‘Do you want to arm wrestle?… No, I have no such problem that I’m aware of—’
‘I was a collegiate boxing champion, sir,’ added the youthful reporter in the rear, unable to contain himself amid humorous boos from the crowd. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said, embarrassed.
‘Don’t be, young fella. If I had your talent, I’d probably challenge the head of Pentagon procurements and his counterpart in the Kremlin, and we’d solve everything the old-fashioned way. One challenger from each side and save the battalions. But no, I don’t have your talent and I also have no problems of health.’
‘Then what did you mean?’ asked a respected columnist from the New York Times.
‘I’m flattered you’re here,’ said Evan, recognizing the man. ‘I had no idea I was worth your time.’
‘I think you are, and my time’s not that valuable. Where are you coming from, Congressman?’
‘I’m not certain, but to answer your first question, I’m not sure I belong here. As to your second question, since I’m not sure I should be here, I’m in the enviable position of saying what I want to say without regard to the consequences—the political consequences, I guess.’
‘That is news,’ said the acerbic Stan-the-man, writing in his notebook. ‘Your statement, sir.’
‘Thanks. I think I’d like to get it over with. Like a lot of people, I don’t like what I see. I’ve been away from this country for many years, and maybe you have to get away to understand what we’ve got—if only to compare it with what others haven’t got. There’s not supposed to be an oligarchy running this government and yet it seems to me that one has moved in. I can’t put my finger on it, or them, but they’re there, I know it. So do you. They want to escalate, always escalate, always pointing to an adversary who himself has escalated to the top of his economic and technological ladder. Where the hell do we stop? Where do they stop? When do we stop giving our children nightmares because all they hear is the goddamned promise of annihilation? When do their kids stop hearing it?… Or do we just keep going up in this elevator designed in hell until we can’t come down any longer, which won’t make much difference anyway because all the streets outside will be in flames… Forgive me, I know it’s not fair, but I suddenly don’t want any more questions. I’m going back to the mountains.’ Evan Kendrick got off the desk and walked swiftly through the stunned crowd to his office door. He opened it, quickening his steps, and disappeared into the hallway.
‘He’s not going to the mountains,’ whispered Patrick Xavier O’Reilly to his wife. ‘That lad is staying right here in this town.’
‘Oh, shussh!’ cried Annie, tears in her eyes. ‘He’s just cut himself off from the entire Hill!’
‘Maybe the Hill, lass, but not from us. He’s put his not-too-delicate finger on it. They all make the money and we’re scared shitless. Watch him, Annie, care for him. He’s a voice we want to hear.’
* * *
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.