“You really think that the Senator is clinically depressed?”
“Of course he is! It’s obvious! He’s crashed from starvation stress. And that myoclonic tremor in his hands—that’s an overdose of neural appetite suppressants.”
“He’s supposed to be long off all those pills.”
“Then he must have been hoarding them, and eating them secretly. Typical behavior in the syndrome. Those repeated presentations about his so-called criminality—those far-fetched guilt obsessions…He’s very depressed. Then when you tricked him into eating, he turned manic. His affect is all over the map! You need to test him for cognitive deficits.”
“Well…he was just faint from hunger. Normally, he’d see right through a childish gambit like that chowder stunt.”
Greta put down her chopsticks and lowered her voice. “Tell me something. Tell me the truth. Did you ever notice that he’s enormously outspoken and energetic in public, but then he always retreats and cocoons himself? For, say, two or three days?”
Oscar nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“First, he’s very expressive and charming, working twenty-hour days, throwing off a lot of sparks. Then, he’s just gone. He claims he’s thinking things over, or that he needs his privacy—but basically, he’s dug himself a hole and pulled it over him. That’s not uncommon with creative personalities. Your Senator has bipolarity. I imagine he’s always been bipolar.”
“He’s ‘in the back of the bus.’” Oscar sighed. “That’s what we used to call it, when he pulled that routine on the campaign.”
“In the back of the bus, with Moira.”
“Yeah. Exactly. Moira was very good at getting next to him when his guard was down.”
Greta narrowed her eyes. “You did something awful to Moira, didn’t you?”
“Look, the man is a U.S. Senator. I put him into office, I have to look after his interests. He had an indiscretion during the campaign. So what? Who am I to judge about that?” He paused. “And who are you, for that matter?”
“Well, I came here so that I could judge the Senator,” she said. “I hoped he could really help me. We could have used an honest, decent Senator to back the lab, for once. Obviously, Alcott’s someone who could really understand us. But now he’s been destroyed, because he went head-to-head against Huey—a man who just chews up people like him. Politics always chews up people like him.” Her face grew long and grim. “Look what he’s done with this hopeless old building, look at this beautiful work he’s done. He must be some kind of genius, and now they’ve just crushed him. This really makes me sick at heart. What a loss. He’s lost his mind. It’s a national tragedy.”
“Well, I admit that it’s a setback.”
“No, it’s over. He’s not going to come around just because you force-fed him. Because he is demented. He can’t help you anymore—and that means that you can’t help me. So it’s all over, and it’s time for me to give this thing up.”
“We’re not going to give up.”
“Oscar, let me go back to my lab now. Let me work. It’s the reasonable thing.”
“Sure it is, but I’m not a reasonable person, and these aren’t reasonable times.”
Leon Sosik came into the office. “Bit of a debacle there.” His face was gray.
“Can you believe the audacity of that guy?” Oscar said. “Huey had a French aircraft carrier waiting offshore. The guy’s a traitor! He’s in league with a foreign power!”
Sosik shook his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“We can’t acquiesce in a naked power grab like this. We’ve got to nail Huey’s feet to the Senate floor and beat him like a drum.”
Sosik stared at him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Of course I’m serious! Our man has flushed Huey out of the canebrake, and now he’s revealed his true colors. He’s a clear and present menace to national security. We’ve got to take him out.”
Sosik turned to Greta with courtly concern. “Dr. Penninger, I wonder if you’d allow me to speak to Mr. Valparaiso privately for a moment.”
“Oh, of course.” Greta rose reluctantly, setting down her chopsticks.
“I could get our chef to put together a little takeout box for you,” Sosik said considerately.
“Oh no, I do need to be going…If you could just get me a cab. There’s a conference in town. I have work to do.”
“I’ll have our chauffeur take you to your meeting, Doctor.”
“That would be perfect. Thank you very much.” She gathered her purse and left.
Oscar watched her reluctantly, then spotted a screen remote and plucked it up. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” he told Sosik. “She has an agenda, you know. We could have gotten to her a little later.”
“They told me you were like this,” Sosik said soberly. “They told me you were exactly like this, and I couldn’t believe it. Would you put down that remote control, please?”
Oscar squeezed his way through a set of feeds. “This is a breaking development, Leon. We’ve got to spin this quick, and nail the guy before he launches his next cover story.”
Sosik gently plucked the remote from Oscar’s hand. He put his hand over Oscar’s shoulder. “Kid,” he said, “let’s go for a walk. Let’s do some serious face-time together.”
“We don’t have a lot of time to kill right now.”
“Kid, I’m the chief of staff. I don’t think I’ll be wasting your time. All right?”
A krewewoman handed them their hats and coats. They took an elevator down to the street.
“Let’s walk toward Somerville,” Sosik said. “The audio surveillance is a lot less tight there.”
“Is that a problem? We could walk apart and talk things over on encrypted phones.”
Sosik sighed. “Would you slow down to human speed for a minute? I’m an old man.”
Oscar said nothing. He followed Sosik north up Prospect Street, hunching his shoulders against the chill. Bare trees, straggling Christmas shoppers, the occasional Caribbean storefront.
“I can’t stand it in that office just now,” Sosik said. “He’s throwing up, he’s shaking like a leaf. And the people in there, they all worship the ground the man walks on. They’ve had to watch him come apart at the seams.”
“Yeah, and our walking out on them isn’t likely to help their morale much.”
“Shut up,” Sosik explained. “I’ve been in this business thirty years. I’ve seen a lot of politicians come to bad ends. I’ve seen them go drunk, I’ve seen them go crooked, sex scandals, money scandals…But this is the first guy I ever saw who cracked up completely before he even made it to Washington.”
“Alcott’s always ahead of the curve,” Oscar nodded. “He’s a visionary.”
Sosik shot him a nettled glance. “Why’d you pick on this poor guy? He’s not any kind of normal pol. Was it the wife? Did she have something on you? Was it the personal background thing?”
“Normal pols aren’t getting the job done, Leon. These aren’t normal times. America’s not a normal country. We’ve used up all our normality. There isn’t any left.”
“You’re not normal. What are you doing in politics?”
Oscar shrugged. “Someone has to deal with your thirty-year legacy of solid professional achievement, Leon.”
Sosik grimaced. “Well, he gave it his best shot. And now he’s toast.”
“He’s not toast. He’s just crazy.”
“Crazy is toast. Okay?”
“No, it isn’t. It’s true—he’s had a mental breakdown. That’s a problem. It’s an image problem. When you get a problem that big, you can’t stonewall it. You have to shine a light on it. This is the problem: he starved himself half to death in a sincere protest, and now he’s lost his mind. But our keyword here isn’t ‘crazy.’ Our keywords are ‘sincere’ and ‘protest.’”
Sosik turned up his coat collar. “Look, you can’t possibly play it that way and get away with it.”
“Y
es, Leon, I could. The question here is whether you could.”
“We can’t have a Senator who’s non compos mentis! How the hell could he ever get a bill passed?”
“Alcott was never cut out to be a legislative technician. We’ve had enough of those nitpickers. Alcott’s a charismatic, he’s a moral leader. He can wake the people up, he can guide them and show them the mountain top. What he needs is a way to compel their attention and make them believe in him. And now, he’s finally got it.”
Sosik considered this. “Kid, if you did that and it really worked, it would mean that the whole country’s gone crazy.”
Oscar said nothing.
“How exactly would you angle it?” Sosik said at last.
“We have to demonize Huey on the patriotism issue, while we come clean on the medical problem. Constant bedside reports whenever Al is lucid. Winston Churchill was bipolar. Abraham Lincoln was a depressive. We call in all our chits from the FedDems, we get the party to stay with him. We fly the wife in, she’s a fighter, she’s standing by him loyally. Grass-roots sympathy mail, we’re spooling it in by the ton. I think it’s doable.”
“If that’s doable, then I’ve lost touch. That’s not the America I know. I don’t have the stomach for that. I’d have to resign. You’d have to be chief of staff.”
“No, Leon, you’ve got to be chief of staff. You’re the seasoned professional, you’ve got Beltway credibility, and I’m…Well, I can’t be in the picture at all. With my personal background, I can’t possibly front a big medical-publicity spin.”
“I know you want my job.”
“I’ve got my hands full already.”
Sosik snorted. “Don’t give me that.”
“All right,” Oscar said. “I admit that I’d like to have your job, but I have my own agenda to look after now. You see, it’s Greta.”
“Who?”
“The scientist, damn it! Dr. Penninger.”
Sosik was astonished. “What? Her? She’s pushing forty and she’s got a face like a hatchet! What is it with you, kid? Not two months ago you had your pants around your ankles for some campaign journalist. You were lucky as hell not to be outed on that. And now her?”
“Yeah. That’s right. Her.”
Sosik rubbed his chin. “I forgot how hard up a young guy can get…Can it possibly be that good?”
“No, it’s not that good,” Oscar told him. “It’s no good at all, it’s bad. It’s real bad. It’s worse than you could imagine, it’s terrible. If we’re ever caught, we get outed. She’s a fanatic workaholic—science is the only thing in the world that doesn’t bore her to death. Huey adores her and wants to recruit her for some kind of mad-genius brain lab he’s building in a salt mine…She drinks too much. She has allergies. She’s eight years older than me…And oh, she’s also Jewish. Though for some reason the Jewish thing hasn’t come up much.”
Sosik sighed, his breath steaming in the air. “So that’s your situation, huh?”
“That’s almost it. Except for one more thing. She’s truly a genius. She’s a unique, brilliant, wonderful thing.”
__________
Kevin Hamilton was visiting Oscar’s house for a neighborly chat. Kevin, a man of deeply irregular schedules, had brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a bag of dried banana chips.
“Politics are irrelevant now,” Kevin informed him airily.
“I’m not asking you to become a political activist, Kevin. I’m just asking you to join my krewe and run my security.”
Kevin munched a handful of banana chips and had a swig of chocolate milk. “Well, you being the guy you are, I guess you’ve got the money for that sort of thing…”
Oscar adjusted his laptop on the conference table. “There’s not a lot of time for idle chitchat here, so let’s put our cards on the table. I know you’re a rather special guy, but you’re not the only guy in the world who can do net research. So can I. You’ve got a civil disobedience record as long as my arm. You spent ten years with no visible means of support. Your dad is a convicted computer criminal on electronic parole. You’re a police informant and a surveillance freak. I really think I need a guy like you in my outfit.”
“Nice of you not to mention my dicey ethnic background,” Kevin said. He set his sandwich aside and produced his own laptop from a battered valise. The ancient machine was pasted together with tension straps and travel decals.
“I never, ever mention that sort of thing,” Oscar said.
“Not that you would. You’re not an ‘ethnic’ guy.” Kevin consulted his own screen. “As far as I can figure out, you’re some kind of lab product.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“My dad went bad after his business crashed—but your dad was a genuine gangster. Good thing for you that the feds don’t like to bust movie stars.”
“Yeah, and his films were criminal acts, too.”
“You must be really hard up, man. I don’t do bodyguard work. I’ve got it together to run a successful neighborhood watch. It’s a good gig for a guy who was a big-time nomad—I get to sit still now, and I’ve got a roof over my head. But you’re a dodgy politician with some major-league enemies. I could get killed working for a guy like you.”
“The plan here is that I don’t get killed, and you get paid for that.”
“I dunno why I’m even listening to you, man. But you know—I gotta admit that I kinda like your proposal. I like a guy who knows what he wants and just goes right after it. There’s something about you that…I dunno…it just inspires confidence.”
Time to play the next card. “Look, I understand about your father, Kevin. A lot of decent people suffered when intellectual property crashed. Friends of mine in the Senator’s office could talk to the Governor about a grant of clemency. I believe I could do something for you here.”
“Now, that would be great. You know, my dad really got a raw deal. He was never your typical racist white-power bomber. The feds just brought up that terror-and-conspiracy indictment, so he would plead out on the embezzlement and wiretapping charges.”
“He must have had a good lawyer.”
“Sorta…his lawyer had the good sense to defect to Europe when the real heat came down.” Kevin sighed. “I almost went to Europe myself, and then I thought…what the hell? You can drop out as a road prole and it’s almost the same as leaving the country.”
“You don’t mind traveling to Texas? You don’t mind missing Christmas? We’ll be flying there right away.”
“I don’t care. Not as long as I can still log on to my own servers.”
The door chimed. Moments later, Donna arrived with an airmailed packet.
“Is that for me?” Kevin said brightly. He eviscerated the package with a massive Swiss Army knife. “Mayonnaise,” he announced unconvincingly, producing a sealed jar of unlabeled white goo. “This stuff could be really handy.” He stuffed the jar into his accordion-sided valise.
“She’s arrived,” Donna whispered.
“I have to see another guest,” Oscar told Kevin.
“Another ‘guest’?” Kevin winked. “What happened to the cute one in the bathrobe?”
“Can you get back to me in the morning with your decision?”
“No, man, I’ve made up my mind. I’m gonna do it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, it sounds like a nice change of pace. I’ll get right on the job. Clear it with your sysadmin, and I’ll see what I can do about shoring up your net.”
Life in the Collaboratory lacked the many attractive facilities of the Back Bay in Boston.
Oscar and Greta met in a broken car in the dark parking lot behind the Vehicle Repair Facility. This assignation spot was Kevin Hamilton’s idea. Kevin was very big on secure meetings inside anonymous cars. Kevin was no Secret Service agent, but he brimmed over with rule-of-thumb street smarts.
“I’m afraid,” Greta confessed.
Oscar adjusted his jacket, tugging for elbow room. The car was so small
that they were almost sitting in each other’s laps. “How could you have stage fright over such a simple thing? You gave a Nobel Prize speech in Stockholm once.”
“But then I was talking about my own work. I can always do that. This is different. You want me to stand up in front of the board of directors and tell them off to their face. In front of a big crowd of my friends and colleagues. I’m not cut out for that.”
“Actually, you are cut out for it, Greta. You’re absolutely perfect for the role. I knew it from the moment I saw you.”
Greta examined her laptop screen. It was the only light inside the dead vehicle, and it underlit their faces with a gentle glow. They were meeting at two in the morning. “If it’s really this bad here—as bad as you claim it is—then it’s really no use fighting, is it? I should just resign.”
“No, you don’t have to resign. The point of this speech is that they have to resign.” Oscar touched her hand. “You don’t have to say anything you don’t know to be true.”
“Well, I know some of these things are true, because I leaked them to you myself. But I would never have said them out loud. And I wouldn’t have said them this way. This speech, or this rant, or whatever it is—it’s a violent political attack! It’s not scholarly. It’s not objective.”
“Then let’s talk about how you should say it. After all, you’re the speaker—you’re the one who has to reach the audience, not me. Let’s go over your talking points.”
She scrolled up and down fitfully, and sighed. “All right. I guess this is the worst part, right here. This business about scientists being an oppressed class. ‘A group whose exploitation should be recognized and ended.’ Scientists rising up in solidarity to demand justice—good Lord, I can’t say that! It’s too radical, it sounds crazy!”
“But you are an oppressed class. It’s the truth, it’s the central burning truth of your existence. Science took the wrong road somewhere, the whole enterprise has been shot to hell. You’ve lost your proper niche in society. You’ve lost prestige, and your self-respect, and the high esteem that scientists once held in the eyes of the public. Demands are being made of you that you’ll never be able to fulfill. You don’t have intellectual freedom anymore. You live in intellectual bondage.”
Distraction Page 23
