In the Senate itself, Shearson Jones spent the morning smoking a large domestic cigar and gathering support for his emergency aid bill among Republicans and Democrats alike. He ate a heavy lunch with Wallace Terry of the Washington Post, and told him that he was leaning heavily on anyone who owed him a favour, and a few people who didn’t, ‘simply to rescue those poor beleagured farmers in Kansas.’
Shearson drew so much attention to his own state during the course of the afternoon that hardly any comment was passed by the media on those scattered reports coming in from Iowa and Oregon and Washington and California that outbreaks of blight were appearing everywhere. At the Department of Agriculture, the press officer was still talking about the crisis as ‘the Kansas wheat problem’ and sidetracking any press questions about similar blights in other states as ‘alarmist’ and ‘quite usual for the time of year.’
Two of Shearson Jones’s best speech-writers were working on a draft TV statement which the senator hoped to make to the press during the evening. Peter Kaiser had seen the first outlines, and he was particularly taken by a phrase which talked about ‘those earnest, honest, caring farmers who are still living the kind of American life that Saturday Evening Post used to celebrate on its covers.’
At three-thirty, Joe Dasgupta called back. Peter Kaiser was sitting in his chilly, beige-carpeted office, dictating a memo on how contributions should be followed up, accounted for, and banked. He waved his hand to Karen Fortunoff to leave him for five minutes while he talked.
‘Okay, Joe,’ he said, once Karen had left. ‘How’s it shaping up?’
‘So far, it’s fine,’ said Joe Dasgupta, in his distinctive Delhi accent. ‘I’ve advised Shearson to set up the Blight Crisis Appeal as a private foundation, with someone entirely nondescript as manager, and himself as president.’
‘You didn’t think we should try to form it as a federal corporation under an Act of Congress? It would’ve seemed like it was a whole lot more respectable.’
‘Well – that was the choice,’ explained Joe Dasgupta. ‘Respectability or practicality. As a private foundation, you can still persuade Congress to vote you money, yet you won’t have them breathing down your neck so hard. Also, you’ll have more room to manoeuvre with the IRS.’
‘Sounds reasonable,’ nodded Peter Kaiser. ‘How soon can we start collecting money? We have close on nine million dollars pledged so far.’
‘I’ll have the papers sent around to your office. All I need now is a couple of notarised signatures from Shearson and Alan Hedges, and you’re in the Blight Crisis business.’
‘You’ve done an incredible job, Joe,’ said Peter Kaiser. ‘Remind me to take you out to dinner real soon.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Joe Dasgupta told him, with polite disdain. ‘I’ll just send my invoice around with the papers.’
Peter Kaiser put down the phone, and pressed his desk buzzer for Karen to come back in. Karen Fortunoff was a petite, dark-eyed brunette, whose smart cream suit didn’t conceal a trim figure. She had come to Washington two years ago from Duluth, intoxicated with ambition and heady ideas about working in Congress. She had left behind her two bewildered suburban parents who still kept her room made up for her, with all her dolls and her Raggedy Andy books, and who still called her ‘Baby’ on the phone. She had worked as a secretary for a magazine printing company for a while, but then she had met a girl at a party who had helped with the catering at some of Shearson Jones’s fund-raising picnics. ‘Now, Shearson Jones is power,’ the girl had said. ‘Pure, naked, disgusting, unadulterated power.’ Karen had liked the sound of that. After all, power was the very magnet which had first drawn her to Washington. She had called Peter Kaiser the next morning.
‘Where were we?’ asked Peter, as Karen sat down with her steno pad and crossed her legs.
‘We’d gotten as far as Banking Procedures (ii),’ she said.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Peter. ‘Banking Procedures (ii). How to pay in corporate cheques, and the clearance of charitable funds.’
Karen said, ‘Don’t you ever take a break?’
Peter’s hands were clasped in front of his mouth, his elbows propped on his desk. He looked up at her, his eyes refocusing slowly, as if he were tired, or drugged.
‘A break?’ he asked, as if he didn’t know what the word meant.
‘Yes. Don’t you ever relax?’
‘Karen,’ he said, ‘we’re on Banking Procedures (ii). If you want to talk about relaxation, you’ll have to do it in your own time.’
‘You’re not that much of a machine, surely.’
‘I’m busy. I have fifty-five other things to do before we close down for the night. That’s all. It’s nothing to do with being a machine.’
‘Don’t you even drink coffee?’
Peter sat back in his revolving leather armchair, but his fingers still tensely gripped the edge of his desk.
‘Karen,’ he said, ‘are we going to finish this dictation or not?’
‘I only asked you a question out of human consideration,’ she told him. ‘You work with people, you want to know what they’re like, what makes them tick. Well, I do, anyway.’
‘What makes me tick is irrelevant to Banking Procedures (ii). It is also none of your business.’
‘All right. I didn’t mean to be offensive. I simply said that—’
Peter pressed the buzzer on his desk. Almost immediately, the door opened, and Fran Kelly, Karen’s own assistant, stepped in.
‘Mr Kaiser?’
‘Bring a steno pad and a sharp pencil. We have two hours of dictation to do.’
Karen sat up straight. ‘What goes on here? Just because I asked you a simple personal question—’
Peter stared at her, hard. ‘I’ll tell you what goes on here,’ he said, in a level voice. ‘What goes on here is work. Not talk. Not personal consideration. Not fraternisation. But work.’
Karen, pale-faced, stood up. ‘Work, huh? I suppose feeling my fanny by the water-cooler is work?’
‘Just leave my office,’ said Peter. ‘Type up whatever notes you’ve made so far, and make sure I get them before five.’
‘You’re not going to fire me?’
‘Why should I? When you’re not interrupting me with ridiculous questions, you’re good at your job. And besides, I don’t particularly want all the time-wasting hassle of sorting out your compensation.’
Karen slowly shook her head. ‘You know something,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe you’re real. I just can’t believe that you’re an actual human being.’
‘I assure you I am. Now, are you going to go type those notes before I change my mind about firing you?’
Karen was going to say something else, something spiteful and absurd and angry. But she managed to check herself and take a deep breath instead. She didn’t want to lose this job, not really; and a small, sane voice inside her said that Peter Kaiser was too thick-skinned to care about insults. He’d only enjoy the spectacle of her making her a fool of herself.
She closed her steno pad, smiled shakily at Fran, and said, ‘It’s all yours.’
‘And man the telephone,’ put in Peter, as she left the office. ‘I don’t want to be disturbed for the next two hours.’ Karen nodded, with mock-graciousness, and closed the door.
Back in her own office, a small windowless cubicle along the hall, decorated with nothing more than two postcards from Mount Shasta, Karen put down her pad, and leaned against the wall. She shouldn’t have let Peter shake her up like that. He was only a political office-boy, after all, and a cold-blooded s.o.b. to boot. But she could never get used to his abruptness, and his total lack of feeling. As one of her friends had remarked, you didn’t really object to Peter Kaiser fondling your backside in the corridor, because it was no more interesting than accidentally walking into the handle of an electric floor-polisher.
I could quit, she thought. I could tear up his goddamned banking procedures and stalk out. But that was why women failed in busine
ss. They took it too personally. Karen wanted to make it up the tree to those creaking branches where the heavyweights like Shearson Jones were perched, and walking out on Peter Kaiser wasn’t going to help her do it.
Just say after me: One day, Peter Kaiser, I’m going to fix your wagon. Then take seven deep breaths. Then sit down, take the cover off your self-correcting IBM and start typing up his fucking notes.
She had inserted the paper and aligned it and was all ready to start, when the phone rang. She picked it up and said smoothly: ‘Peter Kaiser’s office. Who’s calling?’
There was a ringing noise on the line, as if the call was coming from a long way off, then a voice said, ‘Is Senator Jones there? I’m calling long-distance.’
‘Senator Jones is at his office in the Senate right now. Peter Kaiser is his personal assistant. He’s here.’
‘My name’s Ed Hardesty, from Wichita, Kansas,’ said the voice. ‘I spoke with Senator Jones last night about the wheat blight.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well – I have some more information on the blight. Some really important scientific stuff. Do you think you could give me the Senator’s number?’
‘I could have him call you back. What did you say your name was?’
‘Hardesty. Ed Hardesty. Senator Jones used to be a friend of my father. Tell him it’s Dan Hardesty’s son.’ Karen could hardly hear Mm. ‘Do you have a message for Mm?’ she said, loudly.
‘The message is that the wheat blight is probably a virus of some kind… and that it’s attacking crops all over the country… the same kind of virus…’
‘Wait a moment,’ said Karen, ‘I just broke the point on my pencil. Now, what did you say about a virus?’
‘It’s the blight,’ repeated Ed. ‘The blight is spreading all over the country. Not just on wheat, but on com, and soybeans, and everything. The agricultural laboratory here in Wichita has already made tests… Dr Benson says the whole nation’s food supply could be at risk…’
‘Dr Benson? How do you spell that? Like Benson in Soap?’
That’s right. Like Benson in Soap. Now, do you think you could please pass that message on to Senator Jones, and have him call me? It’s very urgent.’
‘Okay,’ said Karen. ‘I’ll try.’
There was a fizzing sound, and then the call was cut off. Karen said ‘hello?’ a couple of times, but there was no answer, and she put the phone down. She glanced at the scribbled notes she’d made, and then she typed a message for Peter Kaiser.
‘Mr Ed Hardesty called from Wichita, Kansas, at three forty-five p.m.… he said that the wheat blight was probably a virus… and that it’s spreading all over the country on com, soybeans, everything. Dr Benson in Wichita has made tests, and says whole nation at risk.’
It was only when she had finished typing it that she realised the implications of what she had just written. She tugged the notepaper out of the IBM and re-read it. That was what the man had said, wasn’t it? ‘The blight is spreading all over the country. Dr Benson says the whole nation’s food supply could be at risk…’
The way Karen had heard the blight story on the news, it was nothing more than a minor seasonal problem affecting a few farms in the depths of Kansas. And who on earth ever worried about what went on in Kansas? But now, this Ed Hardesty had called to say that everything was blighted. Not just wheat, but everything. Karen suddenly felt unreal, and cold, and she read the memo over again, and couldn’t stop herself from shivering.
She was still looking at it when she heard a slight movement at her doorway. She looked around, and there was Peter Kaiser, leaning against the door-jamb, watching her. His face was expressionless, but the way he was standing, with one hand on his hip, somehow told her that he was more relaxed than usual.
‘I’m, er – I’m just starting your typing now,’ she said, looking away.
‘That’s all right,’ he told her. ‘I’ve come to tell you that
I’m sorry.’
‘You’re sorry? Why should you be?’
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’re Peter Kaiser, nicknamed “The Machine”, and you’re the most efficient administrative executive in the whole of the Republican party organisation, bar none, and any stupid chit of a secretary who wastes your precious time by asking fatuous questions about coffee and time off – well, she hardly deserves an apology, does she?’
Peter smiled. ‘I like you,’ he said. ‘You’re spunky.’
She turned and looked at him. ‘The last time anybody said that to me, I was seven years old, and I’d just come last in the egg-and-spoon race at school, and managed not to cry.’
‘You’ve changed since then,’ Peter said.
‘In some ways. I still don’t cry.’
‘All right,’ he grinned, ‘I’ll allow you that. Will you come out to dinner this evening?’
‘Where are we going? The nearest Exxon station?’
‘I don’t understand.’
She shrugged. ‘The way you’ve been acting, I thought you only fed on gasoline.’
‘Karen,’ said Peter, ‘I am a human person. I do have feelings. If you cut me, do I not bleed?’
‘I don’t know. You might ooze a little grease.’
He laughed. It was an odd laugh, strangely high-pitched. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to say I’m sorry, and I’m sorry. So will you still let me take you out to dinner?’
Karen thought for a moment. One voice said: no. tell him to go screw himself, or even his mother. But the other voice said: if Peter Kaiser likes you, he’ll introduce you to Senator Jones, and if Senator Jones likes you… the sky’s the limit. Or at least the dome of the Capitol’s the limit. It’s what you came to Washington for. You political groupie, you.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Invitation accepted. What time do we eat?’
‘Nine, nine-thirty. That’s not too late for you, is it?’
‘I should have just about digested my Big Mac by then. By the way, here’s a message for the senator, when you talk to him next.’
Peter took the memo and quickly looked it over. Then he read it again, more slowly, and frowned.
‘Three forty-five?’ he asked. ‘Just a couple of minutes ago?’
That’s right.’
‘And is this all he said? Nothing else?’
‘That’s all,’ shrugged Karen. ‘The blight is some kind of a virus, and it’s spreading. Kind of creepy, isn’t it?’
Peter forced another grin. ‘Just one of those crackpot messages you always get when this kind of thing happens. I won’t be surprised if we get more in the next few days. Viruses… death-rays from Mars… punishments from Heaven… you’ll get used to it.’
‘It frightened me, as a matter of fact,’ said Karen. ‘The man sounded so sane.’
They always do,’ Peter assured her. ‘Now – do you think you can put me through to Senator Jones?’
‘Whatever you want. Particularly since you’re buying dinner. And particularly since I seem to have escaped two hours of solid dictation.’
‘Okay,’ said Peter. ‘I’ll take it in my office. And – well, I’ll see you later.’
Karen picked up the phone and dialled through to Senator Jones’s office. It was almost a minute before anybody answered, and then she heard Della McIntosh’s voice, slightly out of breath. ‘Yes? Senator Jones’s office?’
‘Mrs McIntosh? I have Peter Kaiser for the senator. I think it’s pretty urgent.’
‘Hold on,’ said Della, and Karen heard her put the phone down on the table. In the background, she picked up the distinctive rumble of Senator Jones saying, ‘What does that frosty-faced asshole want now? Right in the middle of—’ Then Senator Jones, louder and closer, said, ‘Yes? Is this Peter?’
‘I’ll put you through. Senator,’ said Karen, and she connected him to Peter; but at the same time she held her hand tightly over the mouthpiece of her own phone, and listened in.
‘Peter?’ growle
d Senator Jones. ‘I hope you realise you’ve called me at a goddamned awkward time.’
‘I’m sorry. Senator, but I’ve had an urgent message from Ed Hardesty, in Kansas. I thought you’d want to hear it straight away.’
‘Hardesty? That blackmailing son-of-a-bitch? His daddy’s whelp, that’s all he is. What the hell has he got to say that justifies your interrupting my personal rest-period?’
Peter Kaiser took a long, steadying breath. ‘He says he’s had some results from the research people in Wichita. They seem to believe that this blight is caused by some kind of virus, although they don’t seem to have put a name to it yet. The worst thing is, though, that they’ve definitely connected the virus with those corn and soybean blights in Iowa. In fact, all those reports on fruit and vegetable diseases that Dick Turnbull’s sent us over the past couple of days… it seems like they’ve tied up the virus with those blights, too.’
Senator Jones said, ‘Virus? What are they talking about?’
‘I don’t know specifically. Senator,’ Peter told him. ‘But Hardesty did say that someone called Dr Benson had made tests and reckoned that the whole of the nation’s food supply was at risk.’
‘Benson? I remember Benson. A goddamned drunk. He came to Fall River once and spewed all over my Cherokee rug. I thought they’d kicked his ass right out of Kansas after that.’
‘It seems like they didn’t,’ said Peter, patiently. ‘And if he’s right, we could be in big trouble with the Blight Crisis Appeal. Benson only has to tell the press that the entire country’s crops are going down the sink and nobody’s going to feel like allocating anything to two dozen Kansas farmers.’
‘How are the federal analysts doing?’ asked Senator Jones.
‘I haven’t called them yet. But I checked with Professor Protter this morning, and he said their progress was strictly limited.’
‘In other words, they haven’t gotten anywhere at all. That’s typical, isn’t it? One alcoholic quack in the middle of Kansas can analyse a disease, but a whole team of agricultural supermen in Washington can’t work out the difference between wheat and birdseed. Get on to Protter again, and tell him to work faster, or I’ll kick his ass from here to next week.’
Famine Page 9
