“So you’ve been working with her since then, is that it?”
“Yes. But we haven’t had much more contact with her than you have, from what Edgardo tells me. She’s been very concerned to be sure she is working with people she can trust, and understandably so, given what’s happened. So we’ve had to do things her way, to show her she can trust us. She’s been doing some work on her own that she’s gotten to us, some data mining and even some physical surveillance of some of the problem people, so we can make the case against them stick. And now we feel we are ready to do a root canal on these guys, or I hope we can. In any case this confrontation with you may force our hand.”
“Good,” Frank said.
Umberto glanced at Edgardo, then said, “The problem is, they’ve gone inactive since the assassination attempt. I think that wasn’t their idea, but it scared them. Now they are very quiet. But still a threat, obviously. So, we know who they are, but they’ve been clever about distancing themselves from their activities, and they aren’t doing anything now that we can stick them with. So, we think your friend is dealing with this same problem, from her side. She doesn’t have anything to use, and she wants to stay away from her husband.”
Umberto stopped then, and looked at Frank as if it were Frank’s turn to say something.
Frank said, “He came right up to me in a restaurant and asked me where she was.”
“So Edgardo said.”
“And, well, she’s not leaving anything at our dead drop.”
“Yes. But—I can get a message to her.”
Frank nodded briefly. This he knew. It was irritating that she was contacting them but not him—that he needed the black wing of the GAO to contact his girlfriend for him. And she was part of that world. “And say what to her?” he asked.
“We were thinking that, since this group wants to find her, that might be the means to pull them out of their quiet mode.”
“Make her the bait in a trap, you mean?”
“Yes. Both of you, actually. We would plan something with the two of you, because you are under their surveillance, while they seem to have lost her. So, we would arrange something in which it looked like you were contacting each other, and trying to be secret, but accidentally revealing to her husband where you are going to meet. Then if they responded to that, and tried to kidnap her, or both of you—”
“Or kill us?”
“Well, we would hope it would not start with that, because they would not want to risk such a thing, or really to draw any attention to her until they have her. We think they want to frame her for the tampering, so they don’t have that out there and hanging over them. In any case, we would have people in place such that they would be apprehended the moment they showed up. The exposure would be minimal.”
“Can’t you just arrest them and charge them with what they’ve done? Election tampering, illegal surveillance?”
Umberto hesitated. “The surveillance may be legal,” he said finally. “And as for the election tampering, the truth is, it seems as though they have succeeded in framing your friend pretty thoroughly. As far as we can tell from what we see, it all came from her office and her computer.”
“But she’s the one who gave it to you!”
“We know that, and that’s why we’re going with her. But the evidence we have implicates her and not them. And ARDA Prime is a real group, working legitimately under the NSC umbrella. So we have to have something substantial to go on.”
Frank tried to remember if Caroline had mentioned taking the vote-tilting program out of her own computer or not.
Disturbed, he said, “Edgardo? If I’m going to go along with something like this, I have to be sure it’s for real, and that it’s going to work.” He remembered the SWAT team they had run into in the park, busting the bros with overwhelming force. “That it’s being done by professionals.”
Edgardo nodded. “They can brief you. You can judge for yourself. And she’ll be judging it too. She’ll be in on the planning. It’s not like you will be deciding for her.”
“I should hope not.”
“We would also have to study the situation very thoroughly, until we understood how they have been tracking you, so we can deal with that and put it to use.”
“Good.”
“Stay late tonight at work,” Umberto said. “I’ll try to get you a confirmation.”
“Confirmation?”
“Yes. I can’t guarantee it for tonight, but I’ll try. Just stay late. So we can get you the assurances you require.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s get back to the office,” Edgardo suggested. “This has been a long run.”
“Okay.”
On the way back, after a long silence, Frank said, “Edgardo, what’s this about it all coming from her computers?”
“That’s what they’re finding.”
“Could they have set her up like that?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“But, on the other hand, could she have done the whole thing herself? Written the tampering program, I mean, and then leaked that to us, so we would counteract it ourselves, and thus tip the election to Chase?”
Edgardo glanced at him, surprised perhaps that such a thing would occur to him. “I don’t know. Is she a programmer?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, then. That would be a very tricky program to write.”
“But all the tampering comes from her computer.”
“Yes, but it could have been done elsewhere and then downloaded into her computer, so that this is all we can see now. Part of a frame job. I think her husband set her up from the start.”
“Hmmm.” Frank wasn’t sure now whether he could trust what Edgardo was saying or not; because Edgardo was his friend.
So Frank went back to his office, and tried to think about work, but it was no good; he couldn’t. Diane came by with news that the Netherlands had teamed with the four big reinsurance companies to fund a massive expansion of the Antarctic pumping project, with SCAR’s blessing. The new consortium was also willing to team with any country that wanted to create salt water lakes to take on some of the ocean excess, providing financing, equipment, and diking expertise.
Frank found it hard to concentrate on what Diane was saying. He nodded, but Diane stared at him with her head cocked to the side, and said suddenly, “Why don’t we go out and get lunch. You look like you could use a break.”
“Okay,” Frank said.
When they were in one of the loud little lunch delis on G Street he found he could focus better on Diane, and even on their work. They talked about Kenzo’s modeling for a while, his attempt to judge the effect of the new lakes, and Diane said, “Sometimes it feels so strange to me, these big landscape engineering projects. I mean, every one of these lakes is going to be an environmental problem for as long as it exists. We’re taking steps now that commit humanity to like a thousand years of planetary homeostasis.”
“We already took those steps,” Frank said. “Now we’re just trying to keep from falling.”
“We probably shouldn’t have taken the steps in the first place.”
“No one knew.”
“I guess that’s right. Well, I’ll talk with Phil about this Nevada business. Nevada could turn into quite a different place if we proceeded with all the proposals. It could be like Minnesota, if it weren’t for all the atomic bomb sites.”
“A radioactive Minnesota. Somehow I don’t think so. Does the state government like the idea?”
“Of course not. That’s why I need to talk to Phil. It’s mostly federal land, so the Nevadans are not the only ones who get to decide, to say the least.”
“I see,” Frank said. And then: “You and Phil are doing well?”
“Oh yes.” Now she was looking at her food. She glanced up at him: “We’re thinking that we’ll get married.”
“Holy moly!” Frank had jerked upright. “That’s doing well, all right!”
She sm
iled. “Yes.”
Frank said, “I thought you two would get along.”
“Yes.”
She did not show any awareness that his opinion had had any bearing on the matter. Frank looked aside, took another bite of his sandwich.
“We have a fair bit in common,” Diane said. “Anyway, we’ve been sneaking around a little, because of the media, you know. It probably would be possible to keep doing it that way, but, you know—if we get caught then they will make a big deal, and there’s no reason for it. We’re both old, our kids are grown up. It shouldn’t be that big a deal.”
“Being First Lady?” Frank said. “Not a big deal?”
“Well, it doesn’t have to be. I’ll keep on being the science advisor, and no one pays any attention to them.”
“Not before, they didn’t! But you already made it a high-profile job. Now with this it will be a big deal. They’ll accuse you of what do you call it.”
“Maybe. But maybe that would be good. We’ll see.”
“Well—whatever!” Frank put his hand on hers, squeezed it. “That’s not what matters, anyway! Congratulations! I’m happy for you.”
“Thanks. I think it will be okay. I hope so.”
“Oh sure. Heck, the main thing is to be happy. The other stuff will take care of itself.”
She laughed. “That’s what I say. I hope so. And I am happy.”
“Good.”
She gave him a searching look. “What about you, Frank?”
“I’m working on it.” Frank smiled briefly, changed the subject back to the salt lakes and the work at hand.
And he went back to work, and stayed late. And around eleven, as he was falling asleep at his desk, there was a knock at his door, and it was Umberto and Phil Chase himself, and a tall black man Frank had never seen before, whom they introduced: Richard Wallace, GAO.
They sat down and discussed the situation for most of an hour. Chase let the others do most of the talking; he seemed tired, and looked like he was in a bit of pain. His neck was still bandaged in front. Not once did he smile or crack one of the jokes that Charlie had said were constant with him.
“We need to clean this up,” he said to Frank in concluding the meeting. “Our intelligence agencies are a total mess right now, and that’s dangerous. Some of them are going to have to be sorted out confidentially, that’s just the nature of the beast. These are my guys for improving that situation, they report directly to me, so I’d appreciate it if you’d do what you can to help them.”
“I will,” Frank promised. They shook hands as they left, and Chase gave him a somber look and a nod. He also had no idea that Frank might have played any part in him getting together with Diane. There was something satisfying in that.
-
ONE AFTERNOON WHEN CHARLIE WENT down to the White House’s daycare center to pick up Joe, the whole staff of the place came over to meet with him.
“Uh oh,” Charlie said as he saw them converging. Joe was meanwhile looking studiously out the glass doors into the playground.
Charlie said, “What’s he done now?”
What a pleasure it was to say that. He knew that the part of him that was pleased was not to be revealed for the moment, and suppressed it. The result was probably a certain defensiveness, but that would be natural no matter what he was feeling; and in truth his feelings were mixed.
The young woman in charge that day, an assistant to the director, listed Joe’s infractions in a calm, no-nonsense tone: knocking down a three-year-old girl; throwing toys; throwing food; roaring through naptime; cursing.
“Cursing?” Charlie said. “What do you mean?”
A young black woman had the grace to smile. “When we were trying to get him to quiet down he kept saying, ‘You suck.’”
“Except some of us heard it differently,” the assistant director added.
“Wow,” Charlie said. “I don’t know where he would have heard that. His brother doesn’t use that kind of language.”
“Uh huh. Well anyway, that was not the main problem.”
“Of course.”
“The thing is,” the young woman said, “we’ve got twenty-five kids in here that we have to give a good experience. Their parents all expect that they’ll be safe and comfortable while they’re here with us.”
“Of course.”
The quartet of young women all looked at him.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Charlie promised.
Then Joe crashed into him and wrapped himself around his right leg. “Da! Da! Da! Da!”
“Hi Joe. I’m hearing that you weren’t very nice today.”
Joe stuck out his lower lip. “Don’t like this place.”
“Joe, be polite.”
“DON’T LIKE THIS PLACE!”
Charlie looked at the women beseechingly. “He seems kind of tired. I don’t think he slept very well last night.”
“He seems changed to me,” one of the other women observed. “He used to be a lot more relaxed here.”
“I don’t know if I’d ever describe Joe as being what you’d call relaxed,” Charlie said.
But it was no time for quibbling. In fact it was time to extricate the Quiblers from the scene of the crime ASAP. Charlie went into diplomatic mode and made the exit, apologizing and promising that it would go better in the future. Agreeing to a meeting time for a strategy session, as the assistant director called it.
On the Metro home Charlie sat with Joe trapped between him and the window of the car. Joe stood on his seat and held the bar on the back of the seat before him, rocking forward and back, and sideways when the train turned, into Charlie or the window. “Watch out, Da! Watch out!”
“I’m watching out, monkey. Hey, watch out yourself. Sorry,” this to the man in the seat ahead. “Joe, quit that. Be careful.”
Charlie was both happy and unhappy. This was the Joe that he knew and loved, back full force. Underneath everything else, Charlie felt a profound sense of relief and love. His Joe was back. The important thing was to be gung ho, to tear into life. Charlie loved to see that. He wanted to learn from that, he wanted to be more like that himself.
But it was also a problem. It had to be dealt with. And in the long run, thinking ahead, this Joe, his beloved wild man, was going to have to learn to get along. If he didn’t, it would be bad for him. Over time people had their edges and rough spots smoothed and rounded by their interactions with each other, until they were like stream boulders in the Sierra, all rounded by years of banging. At two years old, at three, you saw people’s real characters; then life started the rounding process. Days of sitting in classes—following instructions—Charlie plunged into a despair as he saw it all at once: what they did to kids so that they would get by. Education as behavioral conditioning. A brainwashing that they called socialization. Like something done to tame wild horses. Put the hobbles on until they learn to walk with them; get the bit in the mouth so they’ll go the direction you want. They called it breaking horses. Suddenly it all seemed horrible. The original Joe was better than that.
“You know, Joe,” Charlie said uncertainly, “you’re going to have to chill out there at daycare. People don’t like it when you knock them over.”
“No?”
“No.”
“I knock you over, ha.”
“Yes, but we’re family. We can wrestle because we know we’re doing it. There’s a time and a place for it. But just the other kids at daycare, you know—no. They don’t know how tough you are.”
“Rough and tough!”
“That’s right. But some kids don’t like that. And no one likes to be surprised by that kind of stuff. Remember when you punched me in the stomach and I wasn’t expecting it?”
“Da go owee, big owee.”
“That’s right. It can hurt people when you do that. You have to only do that with me, or with Nick if he feels like it.”
“Not Momma?”
“Well, if you can get her to. I don’t know though. It might
not be a good habit, or…I don’t know. I don’t think so. You can ask her and see. But you have to ask. You have to ask everybody about that kind of stuff. Because usually rough-housing is just for dads. That’s the thing about dads, you can beat on them and test your muscles and all.”
“When we get home?”
“Yeah, sure. When we get home.” Charlie smiled ruefully at his younger son. “You get what you get, remember?”
“You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit!”
“That’s right. So don’t throw any fits. We’ll make it work, right Joe?”
Joe patted him on the shoulder solicitously. “Good Da.”
But this was only one of many such occurrences. Charlie began to dread the trip down to the daycare center to pick Joe up; what would he have perpetrated this time? Fitting a Play-Doh hat to a sleeping girl; climbing the fence and setting off the security alarm; plugging the sink with Play-Doh and climbing in the little “bath” that resulted…he was very creative with Play-Doh, as a sympathetic young black woman named Desiree noted, trying to reduce the tension in one of these postmortem sessions.
But reducing the tension was getting harder to do. The woman in charge asked Charlie to take Joe in to their staff doctor for an evaluation, and that led to an evaluation by a child psychiatrist, which led to a sequence of unilluminating tests; which led, finally, to a suggestion that they consider trying one of the very successful ameliorating drug therapy regimens, among them the paradoxical-sounding but clinically proven Ritalin.
“No,” Charlie said, politely but firmly. “He’s not even three years old. A lot of people are like this at his age. I was probably like this then. It isn’t appropriate.”
“Okay,” the doctors and daycare people said, their faces carefully expressionless.
Charlie was afraid to hear what Anna thought about it. Being a scientist, she might be in favor of it.
But it turned out that, being a scientist, she was deeply suspicious that the treatment had been studied rigorously enough. The fact that they didn’t know the mechanism by which these stimulants calmed certain kids made her coldly contemptuous, in her usual style. Indeed, Charlie had seldom seen her so disdainful of other scientific work. No drug therapies, she said. My Lord. Not when they don’t even have a suspected mechanism. The flash-freeze of her disrespect—it made Charlie grin. How he loved his scientist.
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