by James Mills
“Harrington said the girl’s father, the adoptive father, sent the video to the adoptive mother two years ago. They’re separated and he took the girl. He wanted to prove to his wife that the girl was safe and happy, so he sent the video.”
“Where did he take her? Where is she now?”
“Harrington said he didn’t know. He didn’t want to tell me anything. He just wanted to show me what he had so I’d withdraw from the nomination.”
“Who are they?”
She sat up, and Gus moved next to her on the edge of the bed. He said, “The parents? I don’t know.”
“Is she all right?”
“She looks all right on the video. That’s all I know. I think it’s all anyone knows.”
“What are we going to do?”
His desire, his principles, his heart, everything most important to him said, Fight. But prudence, reality, responsibility, his obligation to Michelle and their daughter, his love for Michelle and their daughter, said something else, and that was what he told Michelle.
“I’ll have to withdraw. We’ll go back to Montgomery.”
“And just drop it? Just like that? You can’t do that, Gus, not after seeing that video. We have to know how she is, where she is, is she all right, is she safe.”
“We don’t even know if the man’s looking after her. Where is he living, what’s he doing?”
“Michelle—”
“If you withdraw and we go back and pretend nothing happened, we’ll never know, we’ll spend the rest of our lives just—we couldn’t do that, Gus, we …”
“What do you want to do?”
“Why do you have to withdraw? Can’t the White House find her? Can’t they make Harrington say where he got the video? Why do you have to withdraw just because they’ve got a video of our daughter? That’s not a crime, you haven’t done anything wrong.”
“It doesn’t have to be a crime. They’ve got more than the video.”
“What do they have?”
He went to his briefcase and took out the manila envelope Harrington had given him.
“They have copies of our interviews with Dr. Novatna, and your conversation with a woman at the adoption agency.”
She put out a hand. “Let me see.”
When she had agreed to end the pregnancy, they’d gone to see a counselor, a Dr. Novatna. Gus had told him that he wanted Michelle to have the pregnancy terminated. Michelle had agreed, but her reluctance was clear. Novatna had taken notes. The notes were full of Gus’s insistence and Michelle’s reluctance. Finally, Novatna had said he would schedule an appointment for the termination, but he asked Michelle, point blank, “Are you sure you want to end this pregnancy?” Michelle had hesitated. “Are you sure?” Finally, she said, “Yes. I’m sure.” Novatna had said that before he proceeded he wanted to have another meeting. “Give you time to think about it a little more.”
They had never gone back to Novatna. Instead, Michelle had told Gus she would have the termination in Montgomery. That was the last he had seen of her before her return to Cambridge twelve months later.
The counselor at the adoption agency in Milwaukee had also taken notes. Michelle had confided in her. She had said it was Gus who had wanted the pregnancy ended, that he had insisted. She said she had left him and decided to “save my child.”
Michelle finished reading the reports and handed them back to Gus.
Gus said, “They make me look like I forced you. I look like a monster. I was a monster. I’m sorry, Michelle. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “It didn’t happen anyway.”
Michelle reached for his hand.
After a minute she said, “She’s very pretty.”
“It’s hard to believe.”
“We’re going to find her, Gus.”
“The nomination is off.” Everything in his brain said that was true. But his heart was screaming.
“Why?”
“Michelle, they’ll give all this to the media. How could I be nominated now? The pro-life people won’t support someone who pressured his own wife to end a pregnancy. And the pro-choice people will say that whatever I did I was uncaring and heartless. And think what it will do to the girl, and her adoptive parents. Everything will come out. The father taking her away. The girl’s life—how will she react to this? It’d be all over the TV and newspapers. Maybe she doesn’t even know she’s adopted. What have her parents told her? Nothing good could come from this, Michelle.”
“Maybe you’re wrong, Gus.”
Oh, if only he were wrong.
“Tell Dave Chapman. Tell Dutweiler. Ask what he can do. The White House has power, Gus. We might not be able to find her, but the White House can. If Harrington could get that tape, the White House can find out where he got it. They can find her. At least then someone can talk to her, see how she is. Then we can decide what to do. But we have to find her, Gus. We have to know.”
“Michelle …”
She blew her nose but didn’t speak. He had never felt such sorrow for anyone. She couldn’t share his joy that their daughter was alive because she had never thought she was dead. All she had now that she didn’t have before was the pain of thirteen years lost with the stranger on the video.
She lowered her head and began again to cry. How could Harrington do this to them? The joy of seeing their daughter, his distress at what it had done to Michelle, the impossible position they were in—everything turned to anger. “Cheap, malicious little bastards.”
“So what?”
“What do you mean, ‘So what?’”
“Gus, when some cheap, malicious little bastards left those bullets and photograph in the luggage locker at the airport, you knew what to do.”
He had known what to do because that had been a threat he could overcome. This was not even a threat. This was a certain consequence. Fail to withdraw as the nominee and that video would be on TV, along with the notes of their interviews. The girl in the video would be hounded and destroyed. Michelle would be crushed.
“Michelle, I—”
“Didn’t you?”
“Please don’t shout. Of course I did.”
“Well?”
“Michelle, this is different.”
“This is not different. This is exactly the same. You are someone those bastards don’t want. You are going to do things they don’t want you to do. You believe things they don’t want anyone believing. What’s the difference? That time the threat was against you and your family. It’s still against you and your family, only this time it’s your whole family, daughter included. Gus, you can’t just roll over and play dead. You will hate yourself if you do that. For the rest of your life you will hate yourself.”
“Michelle, there isn’t—”
“At least talk to Dutweiler. See what he says. Maybe he can do something.”
The morning after she saw the video, Michelle woke up, and the sense of amputation that had haunted her since the birth was gone. She watched the video again and again and again. There her daughter was, before her eyes, alive and strong. Thirteen years ago the loss had filled her with sorrow, and now the rediscovery filled her with joy—and apprehension. One had been a newborn, this was a child of thirteen. Where was she, how was she, who was she? Was she happy? Who were her parents? What did her bedroom look like? Did she have brothers or sisters? Michelle felt herself becoming once again the person she had not been for the past thirteen years. Her daughter was alive, she was alive. She wanted desperately to see her daughter, talk to her, hold her, ask her forgiveness. She wanted to know her.
8
You said you had a video?”
Saturday evening, and Lyle Dutweiler was in a tuxedo. When Gus and Michelle had arrived at his house they’d seen a limousine waiting at the curb.
Gus handed over the video, and Dutweiler walked across the book-lined study and slipped it into the VCR. Phil Rothman was there too, bald, chubby, amicably sinister, sitting on a sofa.
Gus said, I’m sorry to disturb your weekend.”
“Don’t worry about it. You said it’s important, so it’s important. You want to tell me what it’s about?”
Michelle said, “I think it’d be better to watch the video first.”
Dutweiler nodded, smiled, and returned to his seat on the brown leather sofa next to Rothman. “Anyone want a drink? Michelle? Gus?”
“No, thanks.”
Dutweiler crossed his legs, picked up his gin and tonic, and pressed the play button on the remote control.
The eleven-year-old girl came out of a house, walked toward them, smiling, in a hurry. A few yards from the camera, the picture went blank and the video ended. The whole thing didn’t last more than ninety seconds.
Dutweiler said, “Beautiful girl, but I don’t understand. You’ll have to explain. Who is she? What’s it all about? I’m in a fog.”
So they told him, about Michelle’s pregnancy, the proposed termination, the adoption.
Dutweiler interrupted. “Excuse me just a second, Gus.”
He took three steps to his desk, pressed a button, and said, “Michael, could you come in a moment, please?”
A tuxedoed young man appeared in the doorway.
“Yes, sir?”
“Please tell Mrs. Dutweiler we won’t be going this evening. And ask her if she could telephone our regrets?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, Michael. That okay with you, Phil?”
Rothman nodded.
On the way back to the sofa Dutweiler withdrew the videocassette and handed it to Gus. Then he undid his black bow tie and loosened the collar. “Sorry, Gus. Please go ahead.”
They showed him the documents. Dutweiler read them in silence, handed them to Rothman, waited for Rothman to read them. It was impossible to know their reaction. They were attorneys, conditioned to give nothing away.
Dutweiler said, “Where’d you get the video?”
Gus told him.
“They got lucky. They found the mother—sorry, adoptive mother—and she gave it to them, sold it, whatever. So …”
He smiled and shook his head. He put his elbows on the arms of the leather chair and rested his chin on his clasped hands, thinking. Then he sat up and said, “Well, the first question, Gus, is what does this do to you? And you, Michelle? Where does this leave us?”
Gus said, “If I haven’t withdrawn by close of business on Monday they introduce their so-called alternatives.”
“What do you think those are?”
“You could answer that better than I can.”
“What’s your answer?”
“Publicity. Give it all to the media.”
Rothman said, “They wouldn’t be that stupid.”
Dutweiler said, “Phil means they might not want to look like people who would use a child to destroy a nomination. This sword has two edges. They’ll just show it to opposition senators and staffers on the Judiciary Committee and hope quiet conversations with the White House will do the trick. Publicity would be a last resort. They wouldn’t shrink from destroying that kid and the parents and you and Michelle if they had to, but they won’t want the return fire that would bring. We could do a little destroying ourselves. My guess is if you don’t withdraw I’ll get a call from Harrington myself and he’ll be chummy and reasonable and talk about how reluctant everyone is to drag the girl and her parents into this.”
Gus said, “Then what would happen?”
Rothman said, “Then it’s up to the President.”
Dutweiler said, “But you haven’t answered my question, Gus. What about you and Michelle? Harrington’s told you to withdraw. What are you going to do?”
“We’ve been thinking about that all weekend.”
“Well, you need to know something, Gus. We aren’t exactly novices here. Harrington and his people may not want to suffer the agony this could bring them. If this goes down to the wire it’ll turn nasty—it’s already turned nasty—and the issue with these mud-and-blood brawls is always the same. Do the ends justify the pain? Who can inflict the most agony? How much damage is each side prepared to endure before they cut and run? When I take this to the President I have to know how much pain you’re willing to tolerate. Both of you. The President’s going to ask me that—he may want to ask you directly—and I have to know the answer. When he first decided to nominate you, he said he wanted you because you were a slave to the law—that was his phrase. But the decision is yours. If you want to withdraw, that’s that. I wish you had more time to think about it, but all you’ve got is till tomorrow at five P.M.”
Michelle had been leaning out of her chair, chin forward, eyes riveted on Dutweiler. When he paused for breath, she said, “We don’t need till five P.M. tomorrow. We’ve been thinking about this since Friday. Gus is not a withdrawer and neither am I. We don’t want to withdraw.”
Gus said, “I agree with Michelle. We do not want to withdraw. We’re in this for keeps. With one condition.”
“And it is?”
“The girl and her adoptive parents. She’s our daughter, and those parents have raised her. You mentioned pain. I’m not going to volunteer them for this war. They’re going to have to volunteer themselves.”
“What does that mean?”
“Find them. I want to talk to them, explain what’s happening, have the same conversation with them I’ve just had with you. How much pain, if any, are they prepared to tolerate.”
Rothman said, “I’m not sure if—”
Dutweiler interrupted. “What if we can’t find them?”
“Harrington found them.”
“They had five weeks to look.”
“But they weren’t the government. They didn’t have your resources.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Gus. People like Harrington—they have extremely sophisticated investigators.”
“Better than the FBI?”
“Not better but a lot less encumbered by legal restraints. They can do things we can’t touch.”
Michelle said, “We have to talk to our daughter and the parents.”
“So it boils down to this,” Dutweiler said. “If we find the girl and her adoptive parents and they say okay, you want to stick with this?”
Gus said, “That’s right.”
“All the way? No matter what?”
Michelle said, “All the way.”
“You’re not going to wait until we’re in deeper than we can get out and then tell us you’ve changed your mind?”
“I won’t do that.” Gus waited, and then he said, “Will you?”
“I won’t.”
“The President?”
“I can’t speak for the President. He does what he wants. We do not ask the President for promises.”
“But you’ll find them—the girl and the parents?”
Dutweiler said, “Between now and Monday evening? Two days?”
He looked at Rothman. “What do you think, Phil?”
“Forget the two days. Harrington’s just babbling. The Judiciary Committee’s not scheduled to vote till the end of next month. We can push them. At least two weeks. Probably three or four. Plenty of time.”
Rothman stood, walked to Gus, and put out a hand, palm up. Gus put the video into the hand. Rothman’s soft, chubby fingers closed around the black cassette.
“Consider them found.”
Dutweiler walked downstairs to show the Parhams to the door, then returned to the study. He lowered himself onto the brown leather sofa and fixed his eyes on Rothman.
“So what do we tell the President?”
“I’d tell him we’re stronger now than ever.”
Dutweiler laughed. “Always looking for the bright side. If you fell off the top of the World Trade Center, Phil, you’d be celebrating when you hit the concrete.”
“Look at it realistically, look at—”
“I’m looking at it realistically. Parham tried to talk his wife into having an abortion.”
&
nbsp; “But she didn’t have it. Whatever anyone tries to say, there was no abortion.”
Dutweiler sighed.
Rothman moved forward in his chair.
“On the one hand, Lyle, Parham’s pro-choice because he urged his wife to abort. On the other hand, he’s pro-life because he’s delighted that she didn’t. Something for both sides to like.”
“Or hate.”
“But you’re missing the point. The key here is the girl. Did you see that girl?”
“I saw her.”
“You cannot believe for one minute—not for one minute—that Harrington or anyone else is going to be crazy enough to come against her. It’d be like shooting Bambi.”
“You think we can find her?”
“Oh, we can find her. For sure, we can find her. Lyle, Parham’s an even better nominee now than before we saw the video. Thirteen years ago, in the heat and pressure of the moment, he urged his girlfriend to have an abortion—no one’s gonna hate him for that. But today—well, look at the girl on the video. Not aborted, beautiful and full of life. He’s delighted she wasn’t aborted. And who wouldn’t be? How can you attack him?”
“What about the others? Someone’s going to tell the President that video makes Parham unconfirmable.”
“Unconfirmable—like, for example, Clarence Thomas? Pornography, sexual harassment, pubic hairs on Coke cans, remember all that? A complete nightmare. Much worse than anything Parham will ever be accused of. And he was confirmed.”
“Are you ready for another bloodbath like that?”
“I’ll tell you a bloodbath I’m not ready for. I’m not ready to tell the President we blew it again. Politically, after two previous mistakes, we cannot afford to withdraw this nominee. I don’t know why we’re even discussing this. There’s no choice, Lyle. And aside from the politics, you’ve heard the President say it a hundred times—Parham is the man. There’s no chance he’d withdraw him. Parham is the President’s man. He’s been nominated and he’s going to stay nominated.”
“So your advice is …”
