The Icarus Agenda (46 page)

The old man pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes, his voice suddenly reverting to its harsh delivery. “How the hell do you know about all this?”

“It wasn’t difficult. You’re the leader of the House of Representatives, the second in line for the presidency, and I wanted to know more about you. Forgive me, but older people speak more freely than younger ones do—much of it is due to their unrecognized sense of importance where so-called secrets are concerned—and, of course, I knew that you and your wife, both Catholics, had divorced. Considering your political stature at the time and the power of your Church, that had to be a momentous decision.”

“Hell, I can’t fault you there. So you looked for the older people who were around at the time.”

“I found them. I learned that your wife, the daughter of a wealthy real estate developer who wanted political influence and literally financed your early campaigns, had a less than enviable reputation.”

“Before and after, Mr. No-name. Only, I was the last to find out.”

“But you did find out,” said Varak firmly. “And in your anger and embarrassment you sought other companionship. At the
time you were convinced you couldn’t do anything about your marriage, so you looked for surrogate comfort.”

“Is that what it’s called? I looked for someone who could be mine.”

“And you found her in a hospital where you went to give blood during a campaign. She was a certified nurse from Ireland who was studying for her registry in the United States.”

“How the
hell
—”

“Old people talk.”

“Pee Wee Mangecavallo,” whispered the Speaker, his eyes suddenly bright, as if the memory brought back a rush of happiness. “He had a little Italian place, a bar with good Sicilian food, about four blocks from the hospital. No one ever bothered me there—I don’t think they knew who I was. That guinea bastard, he
remembered
.”

“Mr. Mangecavallo is over ninety now, but he does indeed remember. You would take your lovely nurse there and he would close up his bar at one o’clock in the morning and leave you both inside, asking only that you kept the tarantellas on the jukebox at the lowest levels.”

“A beautiful person.”

“With an extraordinary memory for one of his age but without, I’m afraid, the control he had as a younger man. He reminisces at length—rambles, actually—saying things over his Chianti that perhaps he would never have said even a few years ago.”

“At his age he’s entitled—”

“And you
did
confide in him, Mr. Speaker,” interrupted Varak.

“No, not really,” disagreed the old politician. “But Pee Wee put things together; it wasn’t hard. After she left for Ireland, I used to go back there, for a couple of years quite frequently. I’d drink more than I usually did because nobody, like I said, knew me or gave a damn and Pee Wee always got me home without incident, as they say. I guess maybe I talked too much.”

“You went back to Mr. Mangecavallo’s establishment when she married—”

“
Oh
, yes, that I did! I remember it as if it were yesterday—remember going inside, no memory at all of coming out.”

“Mr. Mangecavallo is quite lucid about that day. Names, a country, a city … a date—of severance, you called it. I went to Ireland.”

The Speaker snapped his head toward Varak, his unblinking
eyes angry and questioning. “What do you want from me? It’s all over, all in the past, and you can’t hurt me. What
do
you want?”

“Nothing that you would ever regret or be ashamed of, sir. The most stringent background examination could be made and you could only applaud my clients’ recommendation.”

“Your … 
clients
? Recommendation …? Some kind of House assignment?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The horseshit aside, why would I agree to whatever the hell you’re talking about?”

“Because of a detail in Ireland you are not aware of.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ve heard of the killer who calls himself Tam O’Shanter, the provisional ‘wing commander’ of the Irish Republican Army?”

“A
pig
! A blot on every Irish clan’s escutcheon!”

“He’s your son.”

A week had passed and for Kendrick it was further proof of the quick passage of fame in Washington. The Partridge Committee’s televised hearings were suspended at the request of the Pentagon, who issued dual statements that it was revising certain financial “in-depth” records, as well as the fact that Colonel Robert Barrish had been promoted to brigadier general and posted to the island of Guam to oversee that most vital outpost of freedom.

One Joseph Smith of 70 Cedar Street in Clinton, New Jersey, whose father had been with the 27th in Guam, roared with laughter as he poked his wife’s left breast in front of the television screen. “He’s been
hosed
, babe! And that what’s-his-face
did
it! He’s my
buddy
!”

But as all brief periods of euphoria must come to an abrupt end, so did the temporary relief felt by the representative of the Ninth Congressional District of Colorado.

“Jesus
Christ
!” yelled Phil Tobias, chief aide to the Congressman, as he held his hand over the telephone. “It’s the Speaker of the House
himself
! No aide, no secretary, but
him
!”

“Maybe you should let the other ‘himself’ know about it,” said Annie O’Reilly. “He called on your line, not mine. Don’t talk, sweetie. Just push the button and announce. It’s out of your league.”

“But it isn’t
right
! His people should have called
me
—”

“
Do
it!”

Tobias did it.

“
Kendrick?
”

“Yes, Mr. Speaker?”

“You got a few minutes to spare?” asked the New Englander, the word “spare” emerging as “spay-yah.”

“Well, of course, Mr. Speaker, if you think it’s important.”

“I don’t call a shithead freshman direct if I didn’t think it was important.”

“Then I can only hope that a shithead Speaker has a vital issue to discuss,” replied Kendrick. “If he doesn’t, I’ll charge my hourly consultation rate to
his
state. Is that understood, Mr. Speaker?”

“I like your style, boy. We’re on different sides but I like your style.”

“You may not when I’m in your office.”

“I like that even better.”

Astonished, Kendrick stood in front of the desk staring in silence at the evasive eyes of the gaunt-faced, white-haired Speaker of the House. The old Irishman had just made an extraordinary statement, which should have been, at the very least, a proposal but was, instead, a bombshell in Evan’s path of retreat from Washington, D.C. “The Subcommittee on Oversight and Evaluation?” said Kendrick in quiet anger. “Of
Intelligence
?”

“That’s it,” answered the Speaker, glancing down at his papers.

“How dare you? You can’t
do
that!”

“It’s done. Your appointment’s announced.”

“Without my
consent
?”

“I don’t need it. I don’t say you had the clearest sailing with your own party leaders—you’re not the most popular fella on your side of the fence—but with a little convincing, they agreed. You’re kind of a symbol of independent bipartisanship.”

“Symbol?
What
symbol? I’m no symbol!”

“You got a tape of the Foxley show?”

“It’s nonhistory. It’s forgotten!”

“Or that little rhubarb you pulled in your office the next morning? That fella from the
New York Times
did a hell of a column on you, made you out like some kind of—what was it? I reread it yesterday—‘a reasoned voice among the babel of mad crows.’ ”

“All that was weeks ago and nobody’s mentioned anything of substance since then. I’ve faded.”

“You just sprang back to full flower.”

“I refuse the appointment! I don’t care to be burdened by secrets involving national security. I’m not staying in government and I consider it an untenable position to be placed in—a dangerous situation, to put it bluntly.”

“You publicly refuse and your party will wash you out of its hair—publicly. They’ll call you a few names, like a rich mistake and irresponsible, and revive that jackass you buried with your money. He and his little machine are missed around here.” The Speaker paused, chuckling. “They gophered for everybody with nice little perks like private jets and fancy suites from Hawaii to the South of France owned by the mining boys. Didn’t make a damn bit of difference what party you were with, they just wanted a few addenda on legislation—couldn’t care less where they came from. Hell, Congressman, you refuse, you could be doing all of us a favor.”

“You really are a shithead, Mr. Speaker.”

“I’m pragmatic, son.”

“But you’ve done so many decent things—”

“They came from being practical,” interrupted the old pol. “They don’t get done with buckets of vinegar, they go down easier with pitchers of warm syrup, like sweet Vermont syrup, get my drift?”

“Do you realize that with one statement you just condoned political corruption?”

“The
hell
I did! I just condoned the acceptance of minor greed as part of the human condition in exchange for major legislation that helps the people who really need it! I got those things through, shithead, by blinking my eyes to incidental indulgences when those who got ’em knew my eyes weren’t closed. You rich son of a bitch, you wouldn’t understand. Sure, we got a few millionaires around here, but most aren’t. They live on yearly salaries that you’d piss away in a month. They
leave
office because they can’t put their two or three kids through college on what they make,
forget
vacations. So you’re goddamned right, I blink.”

“All
right
!” shouted Kendrick. “I can understand that, but what I can’t understand is your appointing me to Oversight! There’s nothing in my background that qualifies me for such an assignment. I could name you thirty or forty others who know a lot more than I do—which isn’t hard because I don’t know
anything. They follow these things, they love being on the inside of that dumb business—I repeat, I think it’s a
dumb business
! Call on one of them. They’re all salivating at the chance.”

“That kind of appetite isn’t what we’re lookin’ for, son,” said the Speaker in his now heavily pronounced down-home, Down East accent that belied decades of sophisticated political negotiations in the nation’s capital. “Good healthy skepticism, like what you showed that double-talking colonel on the Foxley show, that’s the ticket. You’ll make a real contribution.”

“You’re wrong, Mr. Speaker, because I have nothing to contribute, not even the slightest interest. Barrish was using and abusing generalities, arrogantly refusing to talk straight, only talking down. It was entirely different. I repeat, I have no interest in Oversight.”

“Well, now, my young friend, interests change with conditions, like in the banks. Somethin’ happens and the rates go up or down accordingly. And some of us are more familiar than others with certain
troubled
areas of the world—you certainly qualify in that regard. As that beautiful book says, talents buried in the ground don’t do anybody a cow dung’s worth of good, but if they’re brought up into the light, they can flourish. Like your new flowering.”

“If you’re referring to the time I spent in the Arab Emirates, please remember I was a construction engineer whose only concerns were jobs and profits.”

“Is that so?”

“The average tourist knew more about the politics and cultures of those countries than I did. All of us in construction stayed pretty much to ourselves; we had our own circles and rarely stepped outside them.”

“I find that hard to believe—damn near impossible, in fact. I got the congressional background report on you, young fella, and I tell ya it blew my good New England socks off. Here you are right here in Washington and you built airfields and government buildings for the Arabs, which certainly means you had to have a hell of a lot of conversations with the high muck-a-mucks over there. I mean
airfields;
that’s military intelligence, son! Then I learn you speak several Arab languages, not one but several!”

“It’s one language, the rest are simply dialects—”

“I tell you you’re invaluable, and it’s no less than your patriotic duty to serve your country by sharing what you know with other experts.”

“I’m
not
an expert!”

“Besides,” broke in the Speaker, leaning back in his chair, his expression pensive, “under the circumstances, what with your background and all, if you refused the appointment it’d look like you had somethin’ to hide, somethin’ maybe we ought to look into. You got somethin’ to hide, Congressman?” The Speaker’s eyes were suddenly leveled at Evan.

Something to hide? He had everything to hide! Why did the Speaker look at him like that? No one knew about Oman, about Masqat and Bahrain. No one would ever know! That was the agreement.

“There’s not a damn thing to hide, but there’s everything to let hang out,” said Kendrick firmly. “You’d be doing the subcommittee a disservice based on a misplaced appraisal of my credentials. Do yourself a favor. Call one of the others.”

“The beautiful book, that most holy of books, has so many answers, doesn’t it?” asked the Speaker aimlessly, his eyes once again straying. “Many might be called, but few are chosen, isn’t that right?”

“Oh, for
God’s
sake—”

“That might well be the case, young fella,” broke in the old Irishman, nodding his head. “Only time will tell, won’t it? Meanwhile, the congressional leadership of your party has decided that you’re chosen. So you’re chosen—unless you’ve got something to hide, something we ought to look into.… Now, skedaddle. I’ve got work to do.

“Skedaddle?
”

“Get the fuck out of here, Kendrick.”

The two bodies of Congress, the Senate and the House, have several committees of matching purpose with similar or nearly similar names. There is Senate Appropriations and House Appropriations, the Senate Foreign Relations and the House Foreign Affairs, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, this last with a powerful Subcommittee on Oversight and Evaluation. This counterpartism is one more example of the republic’s effective system of checks and balances. The legislative branch of
government, actively reflecting the current views of a far wider spectrum of the body politic than either an entrenched executive branch or the life-tenured judiciary, must negotiate within itself and reach a consensus on each of the hundredfold issues presented to its two deliberative arms. The process is patently frustrating, patently exasperating, and generally fair. If compromise is the art of governance within a pluralistic society, no one does it better, or with more aggravation, than the legislative branch of the United States government with its innumerable, often insufferable, and frequently ridiculous committees. This assessment is accurate; a pluralistic society is, indeed, numerous, usually insufferable to would-be tyrants, and almost always ridiculous in the eyes of those who would impose their will on the citizenry. One man’s morality should never by way of ideology become another’s legality, as many in the executive and the judiciary would have it. More often than not these quasi zealots grudgingly retreat in the face of the uproars emanating from those lower-class, troublesome committees on the Hill. Despite infrequent and unforgivable aberrations, the vox populi is usually heard and the land is better for it.