Deep Cover (19 page)

Ronnie sucked in her breath and the sound couldn't be mistaken for anything but disapproval. He looked at her. “You don't like it, do you?”

“It has a smell of blackmail—extortion. You're playing dirty pool.”

“Do you think this is a game? The hardware lobby has too many of my honorable colleagues in its pocket—bought and paid for. I can't outbid the giants but I've got to equalize the pressure somehow. The Pentagon has a hundred billion dollars a year to sling around and how many Congressmen are going to bite a hand that feeds them that well? Don't you think I have a right to offset that pressure? We've got one hundred Senators and fourteen of them are officers in the military reserves; we've got more than five hundred Congressmen and almost a hundred and thirty of them are reservists. Including Webb Breckenyear and Ross Trumble and two dozen other key members of Congressional committees that handle foreign policy and appropriations and defense.”

Spode said to Ronnie, “I hope you took that down, it's a nice campaign speech.”

She said, “I still don't like it, Alan.”

It was the first time she had done that in the office and he noticed Spode's quick glance of interest. A spot of color showed at Ronnie's cheek and she hurried on: “Have you thought about what will happen if it backfires? They'll resent being exposed.”

“Let them. I want the public stirred up—I want the Senate flooded with mail. That's what pressure's for.”

Spode said, “You'll likely get just as much mail against as for.”

“Doesn't matter, Top. The pressure on Lyndon Johnson didn't come from the majority but it was enough to reverse his Vietnam policy and that happened only because the peace movement drove everything else off the front pages. I want to make Phaeton the number-one headline issue—the point where we draw the line on this hardware cancer. If we have to drag a few skeletons out of closets then let's drag them out.”

Spode pulled the side of his mouth back with a click as if he were dislodging something from his back teeth. “You're a lot more politician than you look.” It wasn't clear whether he meant it as compliment or rebuke.

“Just get me the Phaeton figures from Trumble's file, Top. Let me make the policy decisions.”

“I always do, don't I?”

He took Ronnie to dinner at Cliff House and they sat at a corner-window table with Tucson on the plain below them, three hundred square miles of incandescent lights. Half a dozen tablehoppers made ritual pilgrimages to their table and Forrester gave them all a smile and a handshake and a few words, and when the last of them departed Ronnie said, “Do you have to put up with that all the time?”

“You have to tolerate them—it's no job for an introvert.”

“You must get sick of it.”

“I usually have Les Suffield around to remind me I need their votes.”

She searched his face with an odd intensity. “How important is it to you?”

“Let me quote Grover Cleveland: ‘What's the use of being elected unless you stand for something?' I'd turn it around: ‘What's the use of standing for something unless you can get elected?'”

“You meant it the first way around. You're a poor liar.”

A piece of a smile shaped his mouth. “You're a hard girl to lie to.”

“Then why try? If you meant that cynical-sounding remark
you wouldn't have involved yourself in this Phaeton mess. It's likely to destroy your political career.”

“Evidently you don't believe my opponents when they claim I'm trying to feather my political nest.”

“Don't you stand to lose more votes than you could possibly gain? The whole state of Arizona lives on Pentagon money. But then that column in
Time
did accuse you of turning your back on your own constituents to woo the votes of the big liberal states and I haven't heard you deny that. Are you really running for the Presidency, Alan?”

“If I can jump from Cleveland to John Kennedy, every woman wants her man to become President but no woman wants her man to become a politician in the process. Or in the words of our good friend Woody Guest, that's a bridge I'll double-cross when I get to it.”

“What about speaking for yourself?”

“What'll you have for dessert, Ronnie?”

“In other words, let's change the subject.”

She was cross with him. She buried herself in the menu—he watched the way her dark hair swayed with silken weight when she tipped her head down to read, and swung back when she straightened. “You know what really annoys me? You're trying so desperately hard to be a nasty ruthless son of a bitch. It just doesn't fit you.”

She was so earnest he had to laugh at her and his laugh was the kind that demanded one in return, but afterward Ronnie said, “I'm serious—you've got so much going for you, why throw it over? You're everybody's picture of the American political messiah—big, good-looking, sincere, involved with people's problems.… Am I making you blush? It's true, you know—you're genuine, under all that grade-B tough talk you've been spouting. Don't you see you're only going to hurt yourself if you try to make yourself over into an ordinary conniving politician, using people, greasing squeaky axles, making cheap deals? Why degrade yourself?”

“Aren't you asking me when I stopped beating my wife?”

“It wasn't a loaded question and you know it.”

He had to organize it in his mind and when he spoke it was slowly and in a low tone to make her see it was important. “I
suppose I've been all those things, Ronnie. Big, dumb, honest, painfully sincere. And immature and totally useless. Following the trends and beating the right dead horses and plodding dutifully along in the tracks of the groundbreakers. God knows I'm no hysterical revolutionary, but a little while ago I woke up to the fact that I've been elected to a position that calls for responsible leadership and all I've done is to be a follower.”

“And when did this great revelation come to you?”

“Don't be sarcastic, it doesn't suit you.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to come out that way. I just wondered if your wife's death had anything to do with the change in your thinking.”

He thought about that. “I suppose it did. I'm not sure. It's true I made up my mind after Angie died—you always go through a stage of introspection and reappraisal when something changes your whole life in a moment that way. But I'm not sure you could trace it to cause and effect. To tell the truth I never knew how insanely trivial death could be until I lost Angie—all the stupefying casual life-must-go-on business, the petty everyday details of funeral arrangements and insurance and that whole mountain of impersonal rubbish, it's all so stupid and irrelevant but in a way it's exactly what you need at a time like that because it gives you things to do and worry about. I didn't just sit down and bawl and think everything out deliberately and decide to change the course of my life then and there. There was never any time for that kind of thing. But you must know all this—you lost your husband.”

“That was a long time ago and you've changed the subject again. It's taken me all day to work up the nerve to talk to you this way and I want to finish before I run out of steam. I'm worried because I think possibly this Phaeton thing popped up at just the right time for you to clutch it to your breast. Something to occupy your attention—you're compulsive that way, you need an obsession, you're not the kind of man who can be at loose ends for long. It might just as well have been a woman—it happens to everybody, doesn't it? Don't you think it's possible you dived into this Phaeton fight without
even stopping to see if there was water in the pool? And when you found out what a desperate chance you were taking you panicked and decided you had to use every dirty weapon you could lay your hands on because if you can't have Angie maybe you'll take the Presidency of the United States as a consolation prize?”

It was a long speech breathlessly delivered and when she had finished she lifted her shoulders and chin.

He said, “You're tough.”

“I don't like what I see you doing. What you're changing yourself into.”

“Your concern means a lot to me, you know.”

She avoided his eyes.

He said, “You've got it wrong, Ronnie. I don't really lust after the dreary delegate-wooing and all the greasy lubrication of party machinery you have to go through to get into the White House. My ambition is to accomplish something, not to be something—you see the difference? For the first time in my life I've got a cause, a reason to step out front and act like a leader, and because I believe in this fight I believe it's my fight to lead. Let the rest of them get on the bandwagon for a change.”

“Fine. Then get in there and steer the fight on the floor. But don't make it dirty.”

“I can't stick to sentimental notions if it means forfeiting a victory on an issue this vital. We're dealing with an insane competition in ultimate weapons that can produce the ultimate end.”

“In other words if you lose this fight the world will end—do you honestly believe that?”

“I believe it's possible.”

Over coffee Ronnie turned businesslike. “There were a few calls while you were in conference with Professor Moskowitz. I'd better bring you up to date.”

Her smoky voice had become brisk. “Les Suffield called to check in—nothing terribly important, the Secretary of Defense has called a news conference for Friday afternoon and
the Secretary of State will be on
Meet the Press
Sunday, and Les thought you ought to know because undoubtedly they'll both discuss you. I tried Frank Shattuck again but of course he's out, to us, and—”

“Top tells me Shattuck's in cahoots with Webb Brecken-year. You may as well cross him off. No point wasting more time trying to set up appointments that he'll keep breaking.”

“All right.” She made a note. “Now, about yesterday, I had a rather long talk with one of the personnel officers out at the Shattuck plant. It was educational—let me give you the gist of it. I asked him what the reaction had been among the employees and he surprised me—he said it hadn't caused much stir. Most of them know Shattuck Industries intends to bid on the lion's share of the Phaeton component systems, and Shattuck's likely to end up winning a good many of the contracts, but they don't seem to care terribly whether it all comes through or not. A few of their contracts are due to run out soon, but according to Mr. Karakian about a thousand people leave the plant labor force voluntarily each year and that would just about coincide with the attrition from the completion of current contracts. They don't visualize having to lay off very many people even if they don't get any Phaeton contracts. There's no union representation at Shattuck, of course—right-to-work—and men are laid off on the basis of job elimination, employment record, and seniority, in that order. Karakian said the men are quite aware that as long as they do good work they haven't got much to worry about—the company always lets the goldbricks go first. He was frank about it, said not many people go to work in aerospace-defense who can't live with this kind of insecurity. They've been through cutbacks before and they expect them again. When I asked him about his own job he just laughed and said he'd just bought a new Dodge and made the first payment and he wouldn't have done that if he was worried.”

Forrester's eyes were wide. “So much for the specter of wholesale catastrophic unemployment if I kill the Phaeton program.”

“I thought you'd like it. Now let's see—I briefed you on the conference tomorrow in Scottsdale—Senator Guest, Congressman Trumble, Ramsey Douglass. I've never been quite clear on exactly what Douglass does, but Trumble wants him there so I have to assume he's important enough to be included. He works for Matthewson-Ward but I don't really understand where he fits in.”

“He's their SATAF coordinator—Site Aerospace Test Activation Facility. When Matthewson-Ward delivers a missile to the Air Force Douglass has to see that it's set up properly and tested out before he turns it over to the Government. It's a job that requires a good deal of political maneuvering—Douglass got it because he's both a first-class engineer and an active Republican. He moonlighted as Trumble's chief speech writer in the last campaign and I suppose he'll do it again this year. He's worked his way up in the party on the local level and I understand he pretty much tells the County Supervisor what to do. But he stays pretty much behind the scenes because he hasn't exactly got the kind of personality it takes to get up in front of crowds and charm people.”

“I'll say. He's such a bitter little man. I can't stand him.”

“Nobody can. But he's got a brain like a scalpel.”

“Let's talk about someone else.” She reached for her coffee with a theatrical shudder.

“That must have got cold by now.” He turned to signal the waiter.

“Never mind,” she said, “it would only keep me awake. I really shouldn't drink coffee after five.” When she looked at her watch he followed her glance and found himself attentively studying the fine pale hairs on her slim forearm.

“Almost ten,” she said. “My goodness. I'd better take the body home and put it to bed.”

He parked at the curb outside the palm-fringed apartment court where she lived. It was the third time he'd driven her home but she hadn't invited him in and he had not pressed her to. Still he felt challenged by her odd admixture of warm personal concern and guarded, almost hostile reserve.

He walked around the car and helped her step out over the high sill of the old Mercedes; he walked her along the flower-bordered walk to the far corner of the court and when she found her key she hesitated and then with an impulsive gesture thrust it toward him.