“I’ve assumed it’s because you’re beginning to have difficulty recalling my name.”
“It’s because someone like you could only have come from heaven. Beautiful, pure, and untouched by the wicked world. I’d be nothing without you.”
She laughed again and her face flushed slightly. “You are in a sentimental mood tonight, aren’t you? Rupert, you would’ve been a success no matter who you—”
“No. Not without you. And what’s more—I wouldn’t want it, without you.” He planted a kiss on the tip of her nose.
She pushed him away. “Oh, honestly. I think you get more foolish every day,” she protested, but without much vigor. “Now start putting your thoughts together for your speech. And please don’t tell that musty old story about when you were in the freshman moot court competition and the judge criticized your argyle socks. They’ve heard it more times than they’ve heard the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Judge Haskins had almost reached the point in the story where he notices the judge is staring at his ankles when he was rocked by an explosion from behind the podium. The first wave knocked him and the podium to the floor. He fell on top of it and immediately felt blood coursing from his nose. The second wave was even stronger—and hotter. He tumbled off the edge of the dais, falling sideways onto his left leg. It felt as if it might be fractured. But neither that nor the dozen other injuries he had suffered registered for more than a moment. His primary concern was the heat that continued to emanate from the kitchen behind him.
The ballroom was on fire.
Haskins slowly pushed himself to his feet, but he was sent reeling by someone rushing in the opposite direction. The sudden burst of flames had thrown everyone in the room into a panic. Husbands and wives were rushing across the ballroom toward the main entrance. The screams and shouts were deafening; some were calling the names of loved ones, others just screaming in abject panic. The heat was already unbearable. Haskins felt as if he’d been dropped into a deep-fat fryer. The lights exploded, plunging the room into darkness. Everyone was coughing, struggling to breathe. People were rubbing their eyes, or extending their arms to feel their way through the dense smoky gloom. There seemed to be a problem getting the doors open. The smoke was billowing up in the enclosed ballroom, making it almost impossible to get air.
“Margaret!” Haskins cried, as he pushed himself to his feet once more, ignoring the blood streaming down his face, the aching in his left leg. “Margaret!”
He felt her more than heard her, given the enormous confusion and tumult in the room. That was the advantage of being married to someone for twenty-seven years—he could literally sense her presence. Haskins fought his way across the crowded room, brushing shoulders and kneecaps with the hundreds of people rushing in every direction. His leg hurt so much that his knee buckled with his first step. A woman in a flaming ball gown flew past, knocking him back onto the floor.
This will never work, he told himself. I need to stay on my feet. My Angel is depending on me.
He pushed himself up again. The pain in his leg was excruciating, but he kept his knee rigid and continued walking. There would be time enough for pain later.
He found Margaret lying on the floor, half-hidden under one of the banquet tables. She was unconscious, maybe from the explosion, maybe from all the people who had kicked and trampled her after she tumbled to the floor.
There was only one thing to do; whether he felt able to do it or not. He bent over, his back screaming—it had never been the same since the disk replacement two years before—and cradled her in his arms. She felt three times heavier than she really was, but he put that out of his mind and headed toward the door. A crowd was gathering. A few of the men were making panicked, disorganized efforts to get the doors open, but nothing worked. Haskins guessed that the explosion had created a vacuum. Even though people on the other side must be trying to open the doors, they weren’t budging.
“Just a moment, Angel,” Haskins murmured, as he placed his wife gently into a nearby chair. He stood on a table and bellowed, hoping he might be heard over the tumult.
“Listen to me!” he shouted, not attracting much attention. It was hard to stand on such a rickety table, especially with a rickety leg. He drew in his breath, inhaled smoke, and went into a coughing spasm. Water streamed from his eyes, but he forced himself to try again.
“Listen! Can you feel that fire? Do you know how quickly fire spreads? We’ve got to get organized—or we’re all dead.”
“What can we do?” one of the young men shouted back.
Damn good question. What could they do? Waiting for help was not an option—the fire would consume them in minutes, maybe sooner.
“Let’s grab the podium,” he said. “You and you and you.”
Haskins and the three men he had chosen at random ran back to where the podium lay on the floor. It was mostly intact, although its proximity to the fire had made it extremely hot. Haskins touched one end, then jerked his hand back.
“We have to do this,” he muttered. “Use your clothes to protect your hands!”
Together the men tore off their jackets and shirts and used them to insulate their hands. It was not a complete fix—Haskins still could feel his flesh searing—but it at least made it bearable in the short term. On his cue, they lifted the podium and carried it toward the nearest door.
“We have to work together,” he shouted, coughing and choking with every word. “On three!”
Haskins delivered the countdown, and together they used the podium as a battering ram against the door. It buckled but did not break.
“Again!”
They rammed the door one more time. The plastic molding splintered, creating a narrow opening. People streamed forward, desperately trying to escape the unbearably intense heat. Haskins hoisted his wife back into his arms and carried her through the threshold, barely a few steps ahead of the flickering flames.
“Is everyone out?” he shouted, once he had his wife to safety and made sure she was breathing. “Is everyone safe? Buddy up. Make sure you can account for everyone you came with. Look for the people at your table who were—”
The next sound he heard, barely discernible over the buzz of the crowd and the power of his own voice, shook him even more than the explosion, even more than the sight of flames slowly consuming the room.
A baby was crying.
“No,” he whispered, under his breath.
He raced back toward the doors, but one of his fellow federal judges stopped him. “Don’t be a fool, Rupert. You can’t survive in there. The firefighters should be here any moment. Let them—”
Haskins didn’t wait for the end of the sentence. He returned to the center of the inferno.
He had one advantage the firefighters would not have—he knew where the baby was, or at least where it had been. The problem was, visibility was now almost zero. He felt his way forward, using the walls and the tables to thread his way back to his former seat, even though everything he touched was red hot.
Haskins heard the baby cry again. That helped. Even with flames crackling all around him, he could zero in on that heart-wrenching sound.
The baby was still in her carrier, but her face was completely covered in black. The plastic molding of the carrier had begun to melt.
Haskins lifted the baby into his arms, wiped the smoke and soot from her face, and held her close. “Breathe, child. Breathe.”
Now he had a bigger problem—how to get back. A trail of flames cut across the center of the room, separating him from the main entrance. He knew he didn’t have the strength to get another door open. Already he was feeling faint. Must be the thinness of the air, he thought. Most of the oxygen had been burned out of the room. His knees wobbled. This couldn’t be the end. Surely he hadn’t gone through all this just to have the poor child die in his arms.
Like a ray of light piercing the darkness, Haskins saw a white arc stream through the flames. It hit him in the face—and it was wet.
A moment later he saw uniformed firefighters crossing the room. One of them took the baby and immediately put an oxygen mask over its tiny nose and mouth. Someone threw a blanket over Haskins and escorted him to the outside corridor. Just in time. His brain was as smoky as the room; it was getting very hard to think clearly.
“If you ever get tired of judging,” he heard one of the men say, “we’d be honored to have you join the Firefighters Brigade. You’re a hero, Judge. A real-life hero.”
He didn’t want to appear rude, but he felt sick and tired and had no stomach for compliments. “Angel,” he whispered.
“Your wife is over here,” another voice said. “She’s fine.”
Haskins allowed himself to be led to her side. Her eyes were open, though streaked with soot and tears. Even though his clothes were hot and filthy, he threw his arms around her and hugged her tightly.
“Looks like we’ll be around for our twenty-eighth, Angel,” he said. He heard nothing back from his wife. But he could feel tears of joy cascading down his cheek, renewing him, making him feel young all over again.
1
Ben Kincaid rushed into the magnetic train in a blind panic. He knew he shouldn’t have taken a meeting with that woman from the foreign-policy think tank, but she’d told him that it was urgent, that American civil rights might crumble into dust if he didn’t meet her at Jimmy T.’s, a favorite hangout for senators and lobbyists not far from his office in the Russell Building.
“You can see why this is so urgent,” the thin, earnest woman said, brushing a shock of brunette hair from her face. She was even younger than Ben, which undoubtedly accounted for a good deal of the earnestness. “This country has endured the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. We’ve endured Gitmo Bay and the Salt Pit and all the other places where the Constitution has been violated.”
“Technically,” Ben said, “the Constitution only applies to U.S. citizens. Not foreign nationals.”
“So you’re saying you’re okay with torturing prisoners?”
“Nooo,” Ben countered. “I’m down on torture. But I’m down on terrorists, too.”
“If we allow this to continue, then we become the terrorists.”
Ben could see he would get nowhere with this woman using only logic. “You do understand that I’m not Todd Glancy, right? Senator Glancy resigned. I was appointed by the governor to fill out the remainder of his term.”
She flipped her hair back again. “Like I don’t know that already.”
And in that instant, Ben realized that she not only knew that already—that was the reason she had singled him out. She would get nowhere with any experienced member of the Senate, so she was going after the new kid on the block. “Look, if you have a report or something, I’ll be happy to forward it to the Foreign Relations Committee. Of which I am not a member.”
“You seriously think we haven’t done that already? I don’t think you understand how dire this situation is…”
And it probably was dire, too, as was the predicament of every lobbyist, politician, and private citizen who had contacted Ben in the few short months since he became a senator. If he’d had the time, he would have been happy to listen to what she had to say. Maybe. But in this particular instance, the time did not exist. He still had the memo Christina had given him in his suit pocket: the Democrats were planning a filibuster and he was late.
As soon as he’d managed to extract himself from the earnest young woman, which was none too soon, he’d raced down the sidewalk, run into the Russell Building, and taken the elevator down to the small private subway train that shuttled back and forth between the Senate office buildings and the Capitol. Ben liked the train—it was quiet and clean, unblemished by graffiti and advertisements. A series of state flags, arranged in order of admission to the Union, ornamented the track. Ben knew that by the time he reached the baby blue flag of Oklahoma, the forty-sixth state in the Union, he had almost arrived at the Capitol building. But he couldn’t enjoy the ride today. He was late. For his first filibuster! His party was hosting a party and he wasn’t there!
He ran into the building only to be stopped for an interminable period of time at the security checkpoint. How long before they would just wave him past? Probably forever. Finally he smiled at the Capitol Police and raced down the corridor. He sped past the pillared Capitol crypt, past the vice-presidential marble busts in the spectator gallery, past the historic Ohio clock in the hall outside the chamber. He had heard some of his new colleagues talking about the politics of motion—the need to appease the public by creating the appearance of movement, even when none is actually taking place. At the moment, Ben’s feet were giving the phrase a whole new meaning.
Moving as quickly as decorum would allow, Ben made his way inside the Senate chamber. He emerged on the carpeted center aisle but veered left toward the curving rows of nineteenth-century mahogany desks (exactly one hundred of them) arranged in concentric semicircles. Ben found his assigned desk on the Democrat side: Desk 101 on the far rear left of the chamber, the desk reserved for the most junior freshman senator in the assemblage. He slid behind it, sat up straight, and tried to act as if he had been there all along and knew exactly what was going on.
Ben had been in such a rush it took him a moment before he noticed that no one else was there. The other desks were all empty.
What was going on? Had he gotten the dates confused? He checked the memo Christina had given him. No, she had told him to be here thirty-five minutes ago, and Christina did not make mistakes. Where was the rest of the Senate?
There was one other person present, but he wasn’t at a desk. The junior senator from Alaska, Byron Perkins, was on his feet, milling aimlessly about the Senate floor in the general vicinity of the rostrum. He was a tall, prematurely gray senator in his second term, but Ben knew he had already managed to get appointed to some of the most prestigious committees. He appeared to be reading from the newspaper—something about grape imports in Pago Pago.
Perkins spotted Ben and made his way toward Desk 101. He eventually stood directly in front of Ben, winked, and continued reading.
“…while the commerce secretary assured the crowd that a steady stream of fruit would continue throughout the spring season. The representatives from the agricultural community were pleased by the announcement. In other news…”
Ben listened to the scintillating prose from the Washington Post read aloud for the better part of an hour. Could this really be what he was supposed to be doing? And if so, why was he the only person here? He wanted to ask someone, but he was afraid to get out of his chair. Could one false move end the filibuster? Perkins never took a breath long enough for Ben to ask him anything. What should he do? Eventually, a potent combination of confusion, fear, and boredom gave him the courage to raise a hand.
“No, sir,” Perkins rambled on, “I will not yield to the young senator from Oklahoma, because if I did, my filibuster would come to an end and the Republican majority could seize control of the chamber. However, the weather forecast for this week in D.C. looks exceptionally rosy…”
Ben lowered his hand.
“…but despite the fine weather outside, I might do well to offer the eager but rather inexperienced senator from Oklahoma the knowledge that during a filibuster, although the senators have to remain on the premises in case a quorum call is made by the opposition, only the most inexperienced rube would actually go to the Senate chamber and listen to the continuous drivelous spiel that makes up the actual filibuster.”
Ben shrank down into his seat.
“Interested parties might find the members of the Senate in the large conference room across the hall. If such interested party will be going there now, I wonder if he might consider fetching me some coffee. I don’t want to presume, but when one is the most junior senator in this august legislative body, and one has been foolish enough to actually attend a f
ilibuster in progress, a certain degree of errand-running might not be utterly inappropriate…”
Across the hall in the large conference room, Ben found a vast expanse of cots stretched as far as the eye could see. The other ninety-eight members of the Senate, with few exceptions, were resting on the cots, for the most part sound asleep. Ben gazed at the field of legislators, some of whom he had admired his entire life—Senate Minority Leader Hammond, Senator Keyes from Texas, and numerous others, all arrayed before him, many of them stripped down to T-shirts and boxers, and also—
Snoring.
Ah, the glamorous life of a United States senator.
2
It still didn’t seem like his office.
Ben, aided by Christina’s eternal resourcefulness and dubious decorating taste, had tried to remake the place in his own image. Almost everything that had belonged to Senator Glancy had been removed—including that creaky copying machine that printed only in blue ink. Ben had ordered the walls painted, the carpet replaced, and new furniture imported. Christina had contributed plants, a mostly dying breed from her nearby apartment on “C” Street. The walls were loaded with family photographs and press clippings pertaining to some of Ben’s more high-profile cases. He’d noticed that most of the other senators decorated the walls with campaign memorabilia, but since he’d never campaigned for anything in his life, he’d have to make do with mementos of trials gone by.
He’d made his private retreat in the right rear of Senate office S-212-D in the Russell Building a near replica of the one he had back at Two Warren Place in Tulsa: a cozy nook in which he could deal with the endless stream of memos, e-mail, phone calls, lobbyists, and constituents. He needed a place for personal privacy or private meetings. He still hadn’t been assigned one of the basement hideaways—just as well, given the unpleasant memories of Glancy’s hideaway he still retained, not to mention his inability to navigate the basement without becoming hopelessly lost. And no one seemed to use the Senate library anymore. It was dusty, musty, poorly lit—and worst of all, they didn’t carry either of the two books Ben had written. There was a rumor circulating that Christina was mounting a boycott.
Capitol Threat bk-15 Page 2
