by David Wind
He turned to Savak. “Someone’s been busy.”
They went into the master bedroom, where the signs of a search were more evident. Two drawers of his cherry wood bureau were partially open; the closet door ajar.
“FBI?” Savak asked.
“Who else?” The feeling of violation grew stronger when they went into the kitchen, the evidence of a search even more blatant. It was as if the men who’d searched the house had gotten angry that they’d found nothing.
“What were they looking for?” Savak asked.
He glared at Savak. “How the hell do I know?” He held himself still in an effort to calm down. “Sorry, Arnie, this whole thing’s getting to me. Drink?”
“I’m long overdue; so are you.” Savak took two glasses from a cabinet over the sink and put ice into them. “The scotch still in the same place?”
“If the feds left us any,” Steven said absently as he looked around.
“Come on,” Savak prodded, leading Steven into the living room.
Steven followed obediently, his thoughts troubled. After Savak poured three fingers of the single malt over the ice, he handed Steven a glass and went to the couch. “You come up with any ideas?”
Steven took his time, weighing each word carefully. “A few things have crossed my mind, but I can’t be sure without more information. Something else doesn’t fit this picture. Why is the FBI involved? They spouted national security, but came up with a kidnap warrant, which makes no sense. Then those sons-of-bitches searched my house, looking for what I can’t even begin to imagine.”
He sipped his drink, rolling the scotch over his tongue before letting it slide down his throat. “What would happen to Pritman’s campaign if one of the senator’s upper-echelon staff tried to murder another member of his staff?”
Savak double-stroked the side of his nose with a knuckle. A thoughtful frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. “It could create a scandal that would knock Pritman out of contention, if it’s not handled properly. But there are ways of dealing with that kind of a situation.”
Steven wagged his finger. “Only one way. If I resigned from the senator’s staff and predated the resignation to last Monday. The senator would then announce he had asked for my resignation because of erratic behavior. Oh, boy, wouldn’t Simon Clarke have a field day citing all the cases of post war stress syndrome while showing Senator Pritman was so much the people’s candidate that he filled his staff with vets.”
Savak’s nostrils flared. “Pritman would never do that to you. And I sure as hell wouldn’t let it happen.”
“He’d have to.” Steven’s voice was low and without anger. “You’d have no choice but to go along with him. I couldn’t let it happen any other way. He, and you, would have to use my Vietnam background to its best advantage; and showing he was sympathetic to veterans by having hired me in the first place. We have to consider this may be about discrediting him.”
“No, it’s too damn soon. He hasn’t made his announcement yet.”
“It’s an accepted fact at this point. Why else would he be doing fundraisers and benefits all over the country? If the opposition can throw enough dirt at him now, they’ll stop him before he really gets rolling.”
Savak leaned forward, his eyes burning bright with inner knowledge. “That’s not how the game’s played. Besides which, you’ve already come up with a way to keep Pritman clear of the situation. No, if it was planned by the opposition, the evidence would already be indisputable.”
Steven shrugged. “It was a thought. Without information, all we have are assumptions. Look at it Arnie, there are too many things that don’t add up. Things no one has brought into focus yet.”
“Like her stomach,” Savak said in a scratchy whisper. “Jesus, Steven, I... When I heard about it, all I could think of was Nam.”
Steven watched the subconscious movement of Savak’s left hand rubbing across his abdomen. “Yes, the torture is part of it. But nobody seems interested in knowing about the other factors—like where was Ellie last week?”
Savak shook his head, his hand still on his stomach. Steven finished his drink, set the glass on the table, and said,” Arnie, why was she here?”
Savak picked up his glass and rolled it between his palms. The remnants of the ice cubes clinked together. “She was coming to you, obviously, and just as obviously, I don’t have the answers we’re going to need to clear this up. I don’t think we’ll find them here, either. In Washington, maybe—at least there we have enough contacts and friends to get a quiet but full scale inquiry going.”
“I’m staying with Ellie.”
“We both are,” Savak stated. “You heard what Chuck said. He agreed Georgetown is better equipped to handle long-term coma patients. Steven, if Ellie has a chance, the doctors and equipment at Georgetown will increase the odds in her favor.”
“We still have to wait until she’s out of the critical period.”
“When Chuck and I were talking, earlier, he said that she was doing well under the circumstances. If she remains stable through the night, we can move her as early as tomorrow afternoon. Steven, please, let me make the arrangements to get her to Georgetown.”
He tried to come up with a sensible argument but realized Savak was right. He could do as much for her here as he could in Washington. He studied his friend’s face, and saw behind Savak’s stoic mask, his friend’s personal agony of the situation. Suddenly, Steven realized his friend was hurting as much as he was.
“All right, do what’s necessary,” he said at last. “And, Arnie, thank you.”
A half-smile formed on Savak’s lips. “Don’t go maudlin on me. We do for each other. That’s the way it’s always been.” Savak stood abruptly. “I have to call Pritman and fill him in. I might as well get the ball rolling to have Ellie transferred. I’ll use the phone in the kitchen.”
When Savak went to the kitchen, Steven went over to the fireplace.
“I can hold off a bit if you want to talk,” Savak said from the doorway.
Steven shook his head. “I don’t know what we’d talk about, Arnie. No, make your calls.”
He started to turn back, but hesitated. “Arnie, how did you get that warrant jerked?”
“It was all kinds of roundabout. I called a friend at Justice, who called someone high up in the Bureau to explain how certain lines shouldn’t be crossed without properly analyzing all aspects of the situation.”
Steven knew better than to press Savak for a clearer explanation. His friend had contacts and influence few people in Washington could match. “Thank you.”
Savak disappeared into the kitchen, and Steven consigned himself to the mindless job of cleaning the fireplace. He spent ten minutes on the task, and then went about preparing a new fire.
When the wood caught, he returned to the couch. He sat back and rested his feet on the coffee table. The muted tones of Savak’s voice filtered in from the kitchen and mixed with the sound of the wind tugging at the trees outside.
Listening to the confluence of sounds, he realized so much had happened in the space of a single day that his mind was a jumble of unintelligible thoughts. He’d been up for forty hours, and drained emotionally by the events of the past fourteen.
He blamed himself for what happened to Ellie. If he hadn’t decided to come to Pennsylvania, Ellie wouldn’t be at Greyton Memorial. If he hadn’t wanted to be alone…
Steven cut off his taciturn mood swing, and looked across at the fireplace. His life’s history was neatly set out across the mantel. His high school picture showed twenty-three smiling kids about to step into a world on the edge of havoc. With hindsight, he doubted anyone graduating school in the sixties could have foreseen what was to come. How could they? There’d been no preparation for it.
The early sixties had been a perfect time to grow up with rebelliousness channeled into rock and roll, hot rods, and back seat sex.
War was something from history books and comic books. Vietnam was a country
few people had ever heard of. Football and baseball, sock hops and pep rallies made up a high school student’s life.
He smiled thinly, thinking about the special group of friends who had known each other from childhood. Sam Londrigan had wanted to become an electrical engineer. Instead, he’d ended up owning the largest automobile dealership outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. He’d married, had three kids, and gotten divorced all within a decade and a half.
Larry Lomack, another of the Greyton High School football team, had never gone to college. He’d joined the Air Force, seen the world, and after the war had come home a distant man who drank more than he should and smiled less. He worked for Londrigan as Sam’s manager.
Then there had been the unholy trinity—himself, Arnie Savak, and Chuck Latham. Steven moved his gaze to the picture set between two gilded trophies. It was the Greyton High football team the year they’d won the state championship. In the center, all within an inch of the same height, was himself, Arnie, and Chuck.
The three of them were the backbone of the team. The quarterback, end, and halfback. When the three played together, they were infallible. Savak was the strategist, instinctively knowing which play would work when. Steven was the logical one, spotting weaknesses and faults and feeding them to Savak. Latham was their secret weapon. His long fingers and sure hands always knew where the ball was and when it would float down to him.
Now Latham’s sensitive hands were being used for more: a doctor isn’t what Chuck started out to be, it’s what he’d grown into. Like Arnie Savak and himself, Chuck’s early visions of the future were altered by the same events that affected Steven and Arnie.
Arnie and I, Steven said silently to himself, were the only ones to leave Greyton. Arnie was the only one of the group who’d left Pennsylvania for college. He’d gone to American University to study political science. A subject of which none of the others was the least bit familiar.
Arnie Savak had wanted to enter the diplomatic corps. After Nam, he’d turned his ambitions from the international arena to the domestic, and to Senator Philip Pritman. For fourteen years, Arnold Savak devoted his career to the senator. Ten years ago, he’d begun to run Pritman’s staff as the senator’s top advisor and Chief of Staff.
Once set, Savak had talked Steven into leaving his fledgling legal practice in Greyton to join the senator’s staff. They’d worked together to bring about the changes they’d dreamed of and planned, following their time in hell.
He leaned back, closed his eyes, and pictured Eleanor smiling at him. Azure eyes sparkled mischievously. Her mouth, seductive yet innocent at the same time, pouted invitingly. She was the part of him he had been missing for too many years. She was the perfect foil to his seriousness, one who broke through his carefully nurtured guards to make him want to set aside the pain of the past and love again.
Steven looked from the mantel to the glove leather attaché case resting by the far wall, a present from Ellie. Within its locked interior was the future. The case’s contents had been the reason for his coming to Greyton. He’d needed the solitude for absolute concentration. Time was running out. The final version of Senator Philip Pritman’s international policy proposal, and the plank he was determined to set into the party platform, had to be ready when he won the party’s nomination for President of the United States.
It was ready now. A dozen years of preparation, and two years of constant brainstorming with the premier minds of international politics, was now forty pages of theory, legalities, and proposals: every single day of those years had been well worth the effort.
Steven and Savak had designed the proposal to accomplish two important objectives. The first was to put Senator Philip Pritman into the White House; the second, to use the proposal as a tool to help stop the accelerated nuclear weapons buildup, which was reaching disastrous proportions. In its present form, it would give Pritman the ability to bring the super powers to a conference table and force them to reach a binding agreement on arms control.
If it’s used right. That was the catch phrase as well as the other aspect of his job, to assure that what he and Arnie Savak had created would not be misused.
“It’s all taken care of,” Savak said.
Steven looked up. “What is?”
“Georgetown. Pritman’s pulling a few of his famous strings. He’s confident that Georgetown will accord Ellie full VIP status. They’ll be able to help her to recover, Steven.”
“The neurosurgeon says Ellie won’t have any memory.”
Savak worried at his lower lip. “His opinion isn’t gospel. He’s a neurosurgeon, not a mind reader. No one can know whether Ellie’s lost her memory while she’s in a coma. We both know how tough a lady Ellie is. She’s a fighter. She’ll get her memory back.”
Steven looked at his friend, and saw all the Arnie Savak he’d known throughout his life: The little boy who became the high school jock; the army captain who evolved into a senator’s chief advisor. “It’s not amnesia, Arnie, her memory was physically destroyed.”
“They think it was destroyed!” Savak half-shouted, his face uncharacteristically showing the strain of the day.
“But,” Steven continued, ignoring Savak’s outburst, “even if she doesn’t remember, I’ll be there to help her because I remember.” He paused, another thought slipping into place. “Has anyone notified her sister?”
Savak nodded. “I tried her before I left DC. All I got was an answering machine. Simon Clarke said he’d keep after her.”
Steven felt strangely detached. “It’s funny, In all the time I’ve known Ellie, she’s rarely mentioned her sister. I’ve never even met Carla.”
“Some people are like that. Not everyone has a story book relationship with their family.”
He glanced sharply at Savak, knowing his friend’s estrangement from his family started before joining the army. Nothing had changed in the years since. He’d never told Steven what had caused the break, and Steven doubted if he ever would. Even as a boy, Savak was always intensely private.
“Arnie—”
“Forget it. What about the Entente proposal. Is there much work left?”
Steven pointed to the attaché case. “Finished. All I need to do is have the final draft typed and incorporated into the platform. Three days and it will be in Pritman’s hands.”
“The problem areas?”
“Are fine now. It’s not the semantics of the proposal that worries me; it’s getting it to the right people so the intricacies are properly understood.”
“Which is what Pritman does best. It’s on his shoulders to make sure his backers not only understand, but believe in it. Without them, it’s a dead issue.”
“No. Whether or not they understand its power and the consequences, they’ll believe in it because it’s their passport into the White House after too many years of playing second best. But Arnie, it has to be handled very carefully. If it isn’t—”
“Enough!” Savak said, hitting his thigh with the palm of his hand. “We’ve been over this a hundred times. We both know any radical shift in foreign policy always faces hostility from those who don’t understand it. We’ve both had enough experience in and out of politics to know that to gain anything worthwhile, risks have to be taken.
“I believe Entente is worth every bit of that risk! Deep inside, so do you. Steven, we have an opportunity to make sure all the madness we were a part of can never happen again. I have no intention of losing that chance.”
“Why didn’t you ever marry?” he asked, not sure why he had changed the subject.
Savak blinked. “I guess I didn’t have the time.”
A log popped in the fire, hurtling a glowing ash against the wrought iron and glass guard. “Not good enough, Arnie.”
“Perhaps for the same reason as you.”
“But I am getting married.” The pain of the carelessly spoken words hit hard as the image of Ellie, lying helpless in the hospital bed grew strong. At the same time, it made him f
ace the truth of the situation. And the reality was that he no longer knew if he was getting married, or if the woman he loved would even know who he was.
He braced himself against his fears. “I want an answer, Arnie; and skip the bullshit about not finding the right woman yet.”
Savak’s reluctance to speak showed clearly across his features. “I guess I never married because of what happened to us in Nam. For me, marriage means children. How in the hell can I bring a child into the world knowing that the same people who sent us to that prison camp are still in charge?
“No, I won’t bring new life into an old world; but, I’ll do my damnedest to make it a better place for those who do. Isn’t that why we went into politics? To help guide the right man into the right job? Isn’t Entente the fulfillment of our plans?”
“I thought it was,” Steven said truthfully. “But now...I’m not so sure. Ever since we put it together I’ve been thinking about its ramifications. If the Soviets or the Chinese get wind of our plans before we set them in motion...”
He took a calming breath. “...or if they learn about Entente in the wrong way, it could destabilize the world political balance. God help us, Arnie, we could end up panicking the Soviets into a war.”
Savak put his palms on the coffee table and leaned forward. His eyes narrowed. “What it will do is exactly what we’ve designed. Entente will make them deal with us in a way they’ve been avoiding for decades. This isn’t some hare brained scheme cooked up overnight. Look at the people we chose to construct the proposal. Theodore Hammel is this country’s leading expert on Soviet affairs in the private sector. He gave us the backbone.”
“He has visions of becoming Secretary of State,” Steven reminded him.
Savak made a dismissing gesture with his hand. “Hammel will be more than satisfied with a seat in the NSC, which isn’t the point. Hammel, and everyone else who’s contributed to the project, agrees it will work exactly as intended.”
“What they agree on,” Steven corrected his friend, “is that their contribution to the project will work. They don’t know just how much of their individual theories will work as part of a much broader plan.”
