Authors: Ben Bova
They applauded my speech, all fifteen hundred of the NANMM representatives, especially the trigger words Vickie and my staff had put in:
freedom of information, open access to the newsmakers, making the Constitution work,
and
the healthy adversary relationship between the Government and the news media.
Especially that last one; they loved that one.
These overweight desk jockeys, these owners of newspapers and television stations, these white-haired tight-fisted executives who had never been on the firing line trying to dig the truth out of a reluctant politician, who had suppressed more stories about their friends than they ever published about their enemies—these money handlers loved to think they were Hildy Johnson, Ed Murrow, Walter Lippmann, and Horace Greeley, all rolled into one. They pictured themselves as Citizen Kane, and maybe in that, at least, they were close to the mark.
So I gave them what they wanted to hear, and they applauded enthusiastically. Up until the previous week, I would have believed what I was telling them. The Halliday Administration
was
open, honest, and anxious to play fair with the press—not these stuffed penguins and their bejeweled ladies, but the real, working press.
But while I was speaking those glowing platitudes to them, I knew that I was sitting on the biggest story of them all, and I wasn't going to tell anyone about it.
I made polite conversation through the reception after my speech, and got back to my suite upstairs as fast as I could. I felt drained, exhausted. And—as there had been for the past week—somewhere deep inside of me there was a fear gnawing away, like that last instant of a nightmare just before you awake, falling, falling, falling into something dark and terrible.
It was after midnight. My hotel suite was plush: bed big enough for half a dozen people, automated bar, comfortable sitting room for entertaining business guests. I plopped on the bed and called Vickie's home number. The phone buzzed four times. I was about to click off when her voice answered, throaty and sleepy. The screen stayed a flickering gray. Then I realized it was after
1:00
a.m. in Washington.
"I woke you up," I said. "I'm sorry."
"Meric?" Her voice brightened. "Hi. I must've just dozed off. I was sort of expecting you to call. Wait half a minute . . ."
The screen cleared and showed her, yellow hair tousled and eyes a little bleary. She had a green robe pulled up around her throat.
"How'd the speech go?" she asked.
"Good enough."
"Count the applause?"
"No, let the computer analyze it when the tapes get to the office tomorrow."
"You're down."
"It's a down city," I said.
But she was looking at me from the phone screen very intently. "No, you've been down for the past week or more. Whatever it is, it's really got you bugged."
"Never mind. I'll live through it."
"It started when she called you, didn't it?"
"She?"
"The First Lady." Somehow Vicki put an accent on the word "lady" that wasn't entirely wholesome.
"Laura's got nothing to do with it," I said.
Vickie just shook her head. She wasn't buying a word of it.
We just sat there for a silent moment or two, neither of us wanting to say anything, neither of us wanting to break the connection. I was totally alone except for this flickering electronic image of her.
"The convention's not much fun?" Vickie asked at last.
"Bunch of bloodsuckers," I grumbled. "I'm surrounded by the kinds of people I had to fight when I was a reporter. Fight them for raises. Fight to get the
real
news printed, the stuff they wanted to cover up to protect their friends. Now I'm a big-time political person. I'm supposed to smile at them and tell 'em we're all in this together."
She laughed, and the sound of it made me smile, too. "It's a good thing you didn't go into the State Department."
"Yeah," I admitted, "maybe so."
"Will you be able to stand it for another day? You're scheduled for three network interviews tomorrow."
"That's okay. That's with the working slobs. I get along fine with them."
She tried to stifle a yawn.
"Hunter do okay with the daily briefing this morning?"
"Oh, yes," Vickie said. "He was fine. No problems." She yawned again.
"Aw, hell, I shouldn't be keeping you up all night—"
"I don't mind," she said.
"But I do. Go to bed. We both need some sleep."
"Meric?"
"Yeah?"
"I wish I were there with you." She wasn't smiling when she said it. She said it straight out, no games, no tricks.
Without thinking about it for an instant, I decided to misunderstand her. "You'd be just as bored and sore at this bunch of self-righteous hypocrites as I am."
Her face didn't change expression. But her voice went fainter. "Yes. I guess so."
"Good night, Vickie."
"Goodnight."
I touched the button on the tiny keyboard alongside the phone, and its screen went blank and dead.
Shit!
Added to everything else, now I was sore at myself.
The phone chimed softly. I punched the response button. A woman's face filled the screen: middle-aged, but well kept; expensive makeup and hair styling.
"Mr. Albano, are you retiring for the evening?"
I had seen her before. Where? Behind the hotel service desk down in the lobby, when I had checked in that morning.
"Yes," I said.
"Is there anything we can provide for you?"
I heard myself chuckle. "Sure. A fifth of Scotch, a bucket of ice, and a tall redhead."
She didn't even blink. "Any particular age?"
"On the Scotch?"
"That, too."
"Make it the best Scotch you've got. And the lady should be in her twenties. I'll settle for that."
"Certainly, sir."
Like the rest of the hotel's services, my nightcap left a lot to be desired. The redhead was willing, even enthusiastic. She was young and well built, the kind that would go to fat in another five years. Big bouncy siliconed breasts. And a brain the size of a walnut. Most intellectual topic of discussion: the local hockey team. Apparently she and another girl were keeping the visiting teams so busy that they inevitably lost when they played in St. Louis. So she claimed. Showed me a purseful of still photos of herself, her friend, and the top stars of the hockey league. Offered to run a videotape cassette in the room's TV, if I'd add twenty to her fee.
At least she didn't talk with her mouth full.
I got through the interviews the next day with a buzzing head and a rasping conscience. While I was sitting there pontificating on freedom of the press and being congratulated for my forthrightness by the interviewers (Why are they all so alike? Movie idol faces, leather jackets and flowered shirts that were "mod" years ago, fag-English accents) the inside of my head was shouting at me that I was just as big a hypocrite as anybody in the game. The President was in danger and I was playing it quiet.
The last interview that afternoon was conducted by a boy-girl team. It was a typical TV studio: one corner cluttered with the benches and phony ship's deck of a kiddies' show; across the way, the podium, clocks, maps for the evening news show. We were sitting under the lights on a comfortable pile of cushions arranged to look like a conversation pit in a Persian palace. Sure enough, the "boy" half of the interview team wore a rust suede jacket and a gold silk shirt. At least the "girl"—a sharp-eyed woman in her thirties—had the brains to wear a slacks and vest outfit, the kind that lots of women were wearing back on the East Coast.
Halfway through the interview she impatiently interrupted her teammate to ask me, "But what's the President really like? I mean, in person? When the doors are closed and the cameras are off?"
I shifted mental gears and launched into my standard paean of praise about
James J. Halliday, the man.
Sure, we had worked out this spiel in the office, but most of it was from the heart. We didn't have to labor very long or hard to come up with a good three minutes' worth of glowing description about The Man. We all liked him.
But while my mouth was going through its motions, my brain decided that if I liked The Man so goddamned much I shouldn't be sitting on these nonallergenic cushions talking about him. I ought to be helping him to find out who, or what, was trying to kill him.
I put in a call to McMurtrie right there in the studio as soon as the interview was over. It was late afternoon, nearly 4:00
p.m.
The White House operator told me that Mr. McMurtrie was out of town on a special assignment.
"Where?" I asked.
She looked like a chicken. Beady eyes, hooked little nose, pinched pasty-skinned face. She clucked impatiently once and answered, "We are not permitted to reveal that information."
I reminded her of who I was and showed her my ID again. No go. I went over her head, to the Secret Service man in charge of White House security in McMurtrie's absence. He was even stonier. Finally I had to get to Wyatt, and that took damned near half an hour.
His Holiness hemmed and grumbled but finally told me McMurtrie had gone out to some laboratory in Minnesota. Something to do with Dr. Klienerman and the investigation.
"What's the name of the lab?" I asked. "Where in Minnesota?"
It was like trying to break into Fort Knox with a cheese knife, but finally the old man grudgingly told me what I wanted to know. I had to threaten to resign, just about, to get him to open up.
I called Vickie and told her not to expect me in the office the next day; Hunter would have to play "meet the press" for me again. She looked surprised, even startled. Before she could ask why, or where I was going to be, I clicked off and punched the number for airlines information. Thank God it was computerized. No arguing, no explaining, no back talk. Just tell the computer where you are and where you want to go, and the lovely electronic machine gives you a choice of times and routes. I picked a plane that was leaving for Minneapolis in an hour. The computer assured me that my ticket would be waiting at the gate. I rushed off to throw my dirty laundry into my flight bag and head out to the airport.
It was raining by the time I boarded the plane. We sat at the end of the runway for twenty minutes, exposed in the middle of the flat, open airport, engines whining and wind howling and shaking the plane, while the pilot cheerfully explained that a line of squalls and tornadoes was passing over the area. I couldn't see anything outside my little oval window except a solid sheet of rain and an almost constant flickering of lightning. The rain drummed on the plane's fuselage, and the thunder rumbled louder than the engines.
After one really nerve-shattering clap of thunder the pilot told the stewardesses to pass out free drinks. They were just at the row of chairs ahead of mine when he came on the microphone again: "Okay, folks, we just got clearance for take off. Button everything up, ladies."
And through the rain and slackening wind, we took off. The plane was buffeted terribly until we cleared the cloud deck, and then the golden-red late afternoon sun turned the cloudtops into a horizon-spanning carpet of purple velvet. By the time they started serving drinks again I had dozed off.
It was noticeably chillier in Minneapolis when we landed, and I saw that the Twin Cities Airport runways and ramps were wet and puddled. But in the last dying light of the setting sun, I could see that the clouds were hurrying off eastward and the sky was clearing.
Probably get rained on by the same storm again tomorrow, in Washington
, I thought.
Nobody at the rent-a-car booth in the airport had ever heard of the North Lake Research Laboratories, the place that Wyatt had touted me onto. The woman who was making out my car rental forms even phoned the University of Minnesota, and drew a blank there. I knew it was just outside the town of Stillwater, though, so she gave me a map and directions for getting there. Even phoned ahead for a reservation at the Stillwater Inn.
Driving up the Interstate on my way to Stillwater, I had more than an hour to size up my situation.
Point number one: I was acting like a damned fool. Okay, but I was doing what I felt I had to do. Maybe it was the old newshawk instinct. More likely just a combination of fear and curiosity about the unknown. All I knew was that I had to see McMurtrie and Klienerman and find out for myself what in hell was going on.
Point number two: Nobody in the whole world knew where I was. Correction. Robert H. H. Wyatt knew. Or did he? His Holiness knew I was trying to get in touch with McMurtrie. I never told him I was coming up here in person. Didn't even tell Vickie. Wyatt could figure it out soon enough tomorrow, when Hunter called in for the morning press briefing instead of me.
But not until tomorrow morning. No reason for him to miss me tonight.
Which led to point number three: Nobody at the North Lake Research Laboratories knew I was going to drop in on them. I decided to use an old newsman's trick and just show up at their doorstep tomorrow morning, unannounced and unexplained, and demand to see the top man. Hit 'em before they can phony a story together.
I nearly missed the turnoff onto 1-94 as I suddenly realized what my mind was doing. I was counting Wyatt, McMurtrie, Klienerman, and whoever runs North Lake Labs as possible suspects. Potential assassins. Traitors plotting to take over the Presidency.
Which brought me to the logical conclusion of all my logical thinking. I realized there was absolutely no one I could trust. Not McMurtrie or Wyatt or Laura or even the President himself. I was totally alone. I couldn't even be sure of Vickie.
I glanced at the bare-branched trees whipping by in the twilight. I felt as if I were alone and naked out there, clinging to one of those dead bare branches. It felt lonely, cold, and damned dangerous.
As the moon came up over the wooded hills, I saw that the highway had now swung along the bank of the mighty Mississippi River. I think they call this part of it the St. Croix, locally. It was a magnificent, wide, beautiful river, cutting through the rolling hills that were dotted with the tiny scatterings of lights that marked little communities and, sometimes, individual homes. The river looked much stronger and somehow younger up here, not like the weary old sick stream that meandered sluggishly past St. Louis. And I knew that a thousand miles southward it finally flowed into the Gulf of Mexico.
It endures. Despite what we do, the river endures. That old songwriter told it truly.