Kitabı oxu: «The Pinocchio Syndrome»

Dedication

To Susan and to Karen

Pinocchio looked at Candlewick. To his astonishment he saw that Candlewick’s teeth had grown very large, and that his ears were growing longer.

Pinocchio looked at his own face in the mirror, and saw that his ears were growing longer too, as were his teeth. He looked down at his hands and saw that they were turning into hoofs. So were his feet.

Pinocchio cried out in terror. But his cry came out as the braying of a donkey.

PINOCCHIO

Prologue

May 15

Aboard the cruise ship Crescent Queen Somewhere west of Crete

It begins with a fairy-tale prince and an open sea …

‘Look at the way he moves.’

‘He’s sexy.’

‘Look at the way his ass moves when he jumps.’

‘Don’t you two ever think of anything else?’

The Crescent Queen, a charter cruise ship of American ownership staffed by an English crew, was sailing smoothly on a calm sea, her decks bathed in Mediterranean sunlight.

Three girls, all thirteen years old, were standing on the promenade deck, their eyes riveted to a volleyball game being played by eight boys their own age. The boys were sweating from their exertions, calling out encouragement to each other as they changed position and dove for the ball. The deep blue of the waves made a brilliant backdrop to the game.

The prettiest girl, Gaye, was also the shyest. She had a crush on the dark-haired boy who was now serving the volleyball. She lacked the confidence to approach him or even to smile when their eyes met, but she had made no secret of her feelings to her two friends.

Their names were Alexis and Shanda. Alexis was a tall girl with unruly auburn hair and a determination to wear as much makeup as she could get away with. Shanda, whose parents were both physicians, was the most aggressive of the three. Her mother, back home in Connecticut, had already endured many sleepless nights over Shanda, who seemed to be on a fast track leading to cigarettes, alcohol, and perhaps pregnancy.

The present cruise had been chartered by the National Talented and Gifted Scholarship Association, whose acronym was TAGS. The purpose of the Association was to encourage achievement by junior high school students around the country by sponsoring events that would reward the students for good grades and challenge them intellectually.

There were eight hundred students aboard, along with sixty-five teachers from around the country and a crew of sixty. The cruise was six weeks long, with extended stopovers in Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii. En route the students were given intensive course work in language, science, and history. There was to be a competitive exam given on the way back to New York, the winners to be honored with scholarships and a guaranteed return cruise next year.

A less-than-publicized fact about intellectually gifted children is that they tend to be sexually precocious. This was particularly true of Shanda, whose career in junior high had already included some amorous adventures that she had managed with considerable difficulty to keep secret. Shanda had quickly gravitated to Alexis the day the Crescent Queen set sail from New York Harbor. The two had co-opted Gaye into their friendship because they envied her beauty and were beguiled by her sweet, gentle personality.

An only child, Gaye had been lively and rambunctious until the onset of puberty dropped a shroud of self-consciousness over her personality. For a while she was so withdrawn that her mother sent her to a child psychiatrist. Then it was discovered that her IQ was 164. Her moodiness was chalked up to her high intelligence and the routine identity crisis experienced by gifted children. It did not help that she was the only daughter of Kemper Symington, the United States secretary of defense, a highly visible architect of the current administration’s foreign policy.

Like everyone else on board, the three girls had become aware of handsome Jeremy Asner, a tall, athletic boy from Riverside, California, who was the sole representative of his school district on this cruise. Jeremy was a junior high school all-American in soccer, and had dreams of a career in politics.

A well-spoken, polite boy whose gray eyes had a dreamy and somehow withdrawn quality, Jeremy had quickly become the most popular boy on the Queen. Shanda and Alexis had coveted him from afar for several weeks, but had made no romantic headway with him. Now they had decided their best bet was to set Jeremy up with Gaye, who exceeded them in physical beauty and seemed more Jeremy’s type. If Gaye got to first base with Jeremy, the victory would be for all three.

The only problem was Gaye herself. She was too shy to approach Jeremy directly. Weeks of wheedling by her two willful friends had not moved her. Before long the cruise would be over and it would be too late.

Tonight, however, was the Week Five dance, to be held in the main ballroom. According to the rules set by the social committee, anyone could invite anyone. Girls were free to invite boys. Shanda and Alexis were giving their final push to Gaye.

‘You’ve got to invite him,’ Shanda said. ‘I talked to his roommate. He doesn’t have a date. He’s even thinking of not going to the dance. He’s just waiting for you, Gaye!’

‘I don’t know,’ Gaye temporized, looking across the deck at the boys, who were now changing sides. Under the bright sunlight, his dark hair tousled by the wind, Jeremy looked almost too handsome to be real. She felt unworthy to approach him. He looked like a prince out of a fairy tale.

If only I knew he liked me …

Sensing Gaye’s thoughts, Shanda said, ‘Look, he thinks you’re cute. His roommate told me. But he thinks you’re standoffish. He’s afraid to talk to you.’

Gaye took this news with suspicion. ‘When did you talk to him?’

‘Last night after dinner,’ Shanda said. ‘For God’s sake, Gaye, can’t you see this is your chance? You can ask him to the dance. That way he doesn’t have to get up his guts to ask you. There’s no risk. It’s guaranteed!’

Gaye had only known Shanda for a few weeks, but she was familiar enough with her mannerisms to know when she was lying. This story didn’t sound right.

‘If he likes me, he can ask me,’ she responded.

‘He can’t, dummy!’ Shanda exploded. ‘He’s afraid of you. Don’t you listen?’

Gaye still hung back.

Then something happened that forced the girls’ hand. Jeremy left his friends and headed toward the academic area amidships. The game went on without him.

‘I can’t do it,’ Gaye said fearfully.

‘If you can’t, I will,’ Shanda said.

Still a bit out of breath, Jeremy called something over his shoulder to one of his friends. He was coming straight toward the girls.

Gaye knew she was trapped. Shanda, the aggressive one, would not hesitate to speak to him on Gaye’s behalf. Jeremy was only a dozen feet from her now, not looking at her but coming straight toward her.

‘Come on, dummy,’ Shanda hissed in her ear as she pushed her forward.

The push was rough. Gaye’s slender young body was flung forward, right into the path of the approaching boy. She tried to catch her balance, but it was too late. She saw Jeremy’s arms react as his eyes turned to her. In that last split second she thought, Shanda was lying. He doesn’t like me. He can’t –

The thought never completed itself. Before she could turn to dart a look of reproach at her friend, Gaye Symington ceased to exist.

Shanda and Alexis were sharing a grin of complicity when their bodies turned to vapor.

No one heard the blast or even saw the flash. The deuterium and tritium that fuse in a hydrogen bomb are heated within a few microseconds to a temperature of ten million degrees centigrade. The energy from the reaction heats the surrounding air to a temperature of 300,000 degrees after one hundredth of a millisecond.

There would be no wreckage for the searchers to find. The only proof that there had been a ship here, and a nuclear explosion, would be a digital blip on monitor screens in radar installations around the world.

Jeremy Asner’s last thought before death canceled his brain was She’s prettier close up.

Book One
The Pied Piper

The Piper was angry when the townspeople refused to pay him for getting rid of the rats. In revenge, he decided to kill all the children of the town. He lured them to the river with the song of his pipe. The children could not resist the song, any more than had the rats. They hurried to the river and flung themselves in, one by one. All were drowned.

Only one child survived – a deaf boy who could not hear the song of the pipe. He remained at home, and found out afterward that all his friends were gone.

‘THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN’

1

SIX MONTHS LATER

Liberty, Iowa

November 15

11:45 A.M.

Snow fell silently, like a sleep coming over the land.

The postman came around the corner, pulling his bag behind him. he wheels of his cart left moist black trails in the fresh snow on the sidewalk. A crumpled snowman, made from yesterday’s storm, regarded the passing postman pathetically, its corncob pipe falling down its face.

It was the biggest snow on record for this time of year. School had been canceled yesterday. Today was Saturday, so the town’s children could enjoy what was left of the accumulation with their sleds and flying saucers.

The postman wore his Saturday look, a bit more watchful than usual, as he started to cross the street. Saturdays were more dangerous for him than weekdays, and more interesting. Children were on the loose. With children came snowballs, pranks, and sometimes an unruly dog. He had to be on his toes.

But something stopped him in the middle of the street. He stood still in his tracks, his cart beside him, his eyes fixed on something beyond the houses and the trees and the snow-covered lawns. One hand was raised toward his chin, as though to stroke it thoughtfully. The other was at his side. His eyes blinked as a wind-blown snowflake plopped on the lashes. His mouth was closed, the jaws set rigidly.

No one would find him for ten minutes. As luck would have it, the children were all inside their houses, playing in their rooms, watching Saturday-morning television, or getting ready for lunch. Those mothers who were not out at work did not expect the mail until after noon, so no one came out to check a mailbox.

During those ten minutes the postman did not move a muscle. He was as rigid as the dying snowman who sagged under the new-fallen snow.

The mother was standing in her kitchen, watching the news station on TV as she talked to her sister on the phone.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Just getting ready to give the kids lunch.’

She paused, listening to something her sister was saying.

‘No,’ she said with some anger. ‘I’m so fed up with husbands, I’m not going to move a muscle. They can get along without me. I’ve had it.’

She craned her neck to glance into the playroom. Her maternal radar had alerted her to the fact that the little ones were up to something.

‘Just a second,’ she said to her sister. Then she held the phone against her breast and shouted at her older child, the boy, ‘Stop doing that to her!’

There was a pause. The mother went to the door of the playroom and gave both children a hard look. ‘Lunch in five minutes,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave this room until you clean up this mess.’

They were five and seven. The little girl was quiet enough when left to her own devices, but the boy, Chase, was a terror. When he wasn’t torturing his sister he was putting her up to some sort of mischief. It was impossible to leave them alone in a room for half an hour without a crisis resulting.

The mother went back to the kitchen, the cordless phone in her hand. On the TV screen was the face of Colin Goss, the controversial right-wing politician whose rise in the polls had alarmed many observers.

‘God,’ she said, ‘there’s that maniac Goss on the news.’

‘Turn it off,’ her sister advised.

‘I wish I could turn him off,’ the mother said.

Both sisters hated Colin Goss, a perennial independent candidate for president who had lost three times in the general election. They considered him a pure demagogue, a menace to freedom and a potential Hitler. Their husbands, however, had been swept up in the recent groundswell of support for Goss. It was difficult to get through an evening without an argument on this subject.

‘Gary watches all Goss’s speeches on C-SPAN,’ the mother said. ‘He actually thinks the guy makes sense.’

‘So does Rich. I’ve heard him say it a thousand times. Colin Goss is strong, Colin Goss is the only man who has the guts to do what needs to be done. To me he’s a madman. Also, he’s icky.’

‘Creepy. You’re right.’

A lot of men admired Goss for his success in business and his strength and toughness. They viewed him as a dynamic leader who could ‘save the country.’ But when many women looked at Goss’s face they saw a lecher, a dirty old man. There was something cruelly sensual about Goss that repelled them.

Colin Goss’s main campaign issue was, and always had been, antiterrorism. A Nobel Prize-winning biochemist who had built his own pharmaceutical empire from nothing, Goss had gone on to become one of the richest conglomerators in the world. His influence was said to extend to every corner of government and the private sector. Over the years Goss had had run-ins with terrorists whose activities had affected his business dealings overseas. In the 1990s he emerged as the most eloquent, and certainly the most strident, antiterrorist in American politics.

Goss’s views never caught on, primarily because terrorism had not yet hit Americans close to home, and also because his speeches bristled with thinly veiled racism, particularly against Arabs and other people of color. When Goss talked of ‘cleaning up’ the Third World and the American underclass, many political observers cringed. Rhetoric like this had not been heard since the fascist movements of the 1930s.

But the World Trade Center attack changed the political climate. And with that attack still fresh in the public mind, the Crescent Queen disaster created a new political world.

‘If it weren’t for the Crescent Queen,’ the mother said, ‘no one would give Goss the time of day. But people are scared out of their wits.’

‘Well, it’s no wonder,’ her sister said. ‘All those poor children vaporized out in the ocean. It’s unbelievable.’

Military and scientific observers had determined that the Crescent Queen was destroyed by a tactical nuclear weapon delivered by ballistic missile. No terrorist group had taken credit for the attack. The president had promised that those responsible would be brought swiftly to justice. ‘The Crescent Queen disaster must not only be solved,’ he said. ‘It must be avenged.’

But in the six months since the attack, the combined efforts of the federal intelligence services had failed to identify the perpetrators. A state of fear unequaled since the Cuban missile crisis had set in among Americans.

A week after the attack a terrifying piece of video was sent to the major television networks and cable stations from an unknown source. It showed the Crescent Queen floating placidly in the Mediterranean, in such close focus that the name of the ship was visible on the bow. Then the nuclear explosion vaporized the vessel, and the camera pulled back to show the mushroom cloud rising majestically over the blue sea. The video had clearly been shot from a surface vessel at a safe distance from the blast.

‘It gives you the creeps,’ said the sister. ‘Just waiting to see where the next one is going to drop. I can’t sleep at night.’

‘Gary thinks the Muslims are behind the whole thing,’ said the mother. ‘He says the nuclear technology is being provided by Iraq or Libya or somebody, and the Muslim terrorists are pushing the button.’

‘Maybe he’s right. But it doesn’t make much difference, since we don’t know what to do about it. I feel like a sitting duck. I’m scared for my kids.’

‘Do you know what Rich says? He says kill all the Muslims and everything will fall into place.’

‘Gary is exactly the same. He says nuke the Arabs and divide the oil resources among the developed countries, and our troubles will be over.’

Many American men had similar opinions. It was hard to avoid unreasoning anger when they saw news video of Muslims marching in the streets of Middle Eastern capitals to celebrate the Crescent Queen disaster. Shaking fists and holding up signs that read DEATH TO AMERICA, the Muslims considered the attack a victory over the United States. Islamic terrorism was on the upswing, spreading throughout developing countries like a cancer. Governments in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa, intimidated by the Muslim groundswell, did not dare to refuse safe haven to the terrorists, even though this brought economic reprisals from America.

Meanwhile the continuing oil crisis, fostered by hostile Arab states, aggravated the recession that had begun just before the president’s election. Unemployment was at its highest point in a generation.

Few Americans dared to remember the time, only a few years ago, when the worst problem the nation faced was what to do with the surplus. The old world was gone. A new one had taken its place, a world in which one held one’s breath and waited for disaster to strike.

‘You know,’ said the mother, ‘I believe Gary honestly thinks that’s what Goss will do if he gets into office.’

‘You mean kill all the Muslims?’

‘Yes. That, or something like that – crazy as it sounds.’

‘I don’t know … It does sound insane, but I’m not sure I would completely put it past Goss. There’s something about those eyes of his … You know, Hitler never actually said he was going to kill people, either.’

‘I can’t believe we’re actually saying if he gets in,’ said the mother. ‘Ten years agó it would have been unthinkable.’

‘Yeah, but that was before the Crescent Queen. People want revenge. Men especially.’

‘The recession has a lot to do with it too. Being out of work for two years can do something to a man’s mind. I know it’s done something to Gary’s mind. He never used to be this way.’

The president’s popularity was at an all-time low. There was talk in Congress to the effect that he should resign. A constitutional amendment would permit a special election in which the American people could choose a new leader. Colin Goss was a visible spearhead of this movement. In the new climate of fear and anger, Goss was viewed as a viable candidate for president. His standing in the polls had been increasing steadily as public confidence in the administration declined.

‘Rich says if Goss runs for president he’ll be the first one at the polls. He wants to vote for Goss that badly.’

‘I just pray it never happens.’

The mother turned away from the TV. As she did so she saw the postman through the window, standing in the middle of the street. She frowned as she noticed his immobility. His shoulders and cap were now covered by a light layer of snow.

‘Listen,’ she said to her sister, ‘I’ve got to go. There seems to be something wrong with Mr Kennedy. I’ll call you back, okay?’

She hung up the phone, quickly looked in on the children, and threw on her coat. She remembered at the front door to put on her boots. She made her way across the snow-covered lawn to the sidewalk, and then into the street.

An odd stillness hung over the block as she moved toward the silent mailman. There was not a car in sight, not a tire track the entire length of the street. Snowflakes swayed downward like pillows from the gray sky.

She was close enough now to see the snowflakes on the mailman’s nose and eyelashes. His face was rigid. He reminded her of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, who simply froze in one position when the rain caused him to rust.

‘Mr Kennedy?’ she asked. ‘Are you all right?’

The postman’s eyes were a pale blue. They gave no sign that he had heard her. Something about them was strange, but it would not be until much later, telling her story to the health authorities, that she would put it into words by saying that his eyes were as though hypnotized from within.

She called to him several more times, and dared to touch his sleeve. But he was like a statue, completely oblivious of her.

She saw a couple of neighbor children coming toward her.

‘Stay back, children,’ she called. ‘Mr Kennedy may be sick.’

The children moved reluctantly away. The mother hurried inside, told Chase and Annie to stay in the playroom, and then called 911. The operator got the street wrong, and it was not until about twenty-five minutes later that a police car rolled to a stop alongside the immobile mailman. By now some more children had emerged from the surrounding houses and were gawking from their front lawns.

One of the policemen approached the mailman. He noticed a wet area on the man’s cheek. Looking down, he saw the remnants of a snowball on the ground at the mailman’s feet.

‘Children, I want you all to go inside your houses now,’ he said, motioning to his partner, who herded the children away.

The policeman tried to help the mailman into the cruiser, but the mailman seemed to resist, clinging to the spot where he stood. His jaws were clenched tightly, and he had a look of empty, meaningless stubbornness on his face.

After another few minutes of indecisive parley, an ambulance was called. When it arrived two paramedics discussed the situation with the police and finally lifted the mailman onto their gurney and slid him into the back of the ambulance.

‘All right, children,’ said one of the mothers who had ventured onto her frozen stoop. ‘It’s all over now. Let’s all get inside before we freeze our noses off.’

The children, bored now that the police car and ambulance were gone, went back into their houses.

The emergency room physician who examined Wayne Kennedy that afternoon found all his vital signs essentially normal. Heart rate, blood pressure, even reflexes were well within normal limits. But the patient could not speak or perform simple commands. (‘Wayne, can you lift your little finger for me?’) His eyes were seen to notice a flashlight beam as it was moved across his field of vision, but when asked to follow the light on command, he could not or would not obey.

By evening Kennedy had been moved to a semiprivate room adjacent to the intensive care ward. The doctors did not understand his condition, so they did not know what to expect. Emergency life support might become necessary if some unknown toxic or infectious agent was behind his illness. On the other hand, the silence and the stubborn immobility suggested a mental disturbance, and Kennedy would have to be watched for this as well.

By nine o’clock that night, most of the physicians and interns on duty had had a look at the patient, and none could offer a constructive thought.

The nurses were told to keep a close watch on him, and he was put to bed for the night.

In all this time Wayne Kennedy, a fifteen-year veteran of the postal service with a large family of his own, had not uttered a single sound.

2

Alexandria, Virginia

November 16

7 A.M.

Karen Embry was dreaming.

The fringes of a troubled sleep procured by nearly half a bottle of bourbon made her dream intense and disturbing.

She was applying for a job in a very tall building. The elevator thrust her upward with such force that the wind was knocked out of her. She thought she was going to wet her pants.

The personnel director greeted her when the elevator opened. Looking down at herself, she noticed with a shock that she had nothing on below the waist. Just the suit jacket and foulard she had worn for the job application, the large purse and the red leather shoes.

She opened the purse, which seemed inordinately huge, to search for the missing skirt and underwear. The purse was completely empty.

I’ve got to get to the ladies’ room. She saw the door marked ‘Ladies’ and went through it. The personnel director smiled indulgently, as though to say, ‘Yes, go ahead, I’ll wait for you.’ But at the last second he darted into the ladies’ room behind her.

There was something magical about that entry, for when they got inside he was no longer a man, he was a little girl. Karen looked at herself in the mirror and saw that she, too, had regressed through time and was small again, as she had been back home in Boston. She was still naked below the waist. So was the other girl.

‘Let’s touch each other,’ the girl said. Karen thought she recognized her as a childhood friend, Elise perhaps. The girls stretched out their hands to fondle each other.

A tremor shook the building. It’s an earthquake. The building tilted suddenly to one side. The doors to the toilet stalls swung open with a bang.

Karen tried to escape, but the little girl had hold of both her hands. The building was falling over with an enormous roar. Karen was tumbling through space, about to be buried by tons of concrete and steel.

Help! Help me!

With a scream in her throat, Karen woke up.

The alarm was ringing. She reached sleepily to turn it off, realizing with a smile that the roar of the crumbling building in her nightmare had actually been the buzz of the alarm clock.

The headache hit just as she was fumbling for the button. The empty glass beside the bed reminded her of how much bourbon it had taken to leave her in this shape. A throb in her bladder told her she had to pee. No wonder the dream had been about a bathroom, she thought.

With a groan she got out of the bed and stood up.

‘Jesus,’ she said. The headache was much worse. She staggered to the bathroom, flung open the medicine cabinet, and found the Advil bottle. She shook three of the brown tablets into her trembling hand and filled the dirty water glass from the tap. She moved to the kitchen. Mercifully, the coffeemaker was full and ready to perk. She had remembered last night, despite the booze, to fill it.

She turned the machine on and padded back to the bedroom. The churning sound of the coffeemaker was like a fist squeezing repeatedly at her throat.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she moaned. ‘Hurry.’

It took seven long minutes for the coffee to perk. The Advil still had not taken effect when she brought her first cup back to the bed. With her eyes half closed she turned on the little bedroom TV.

Washington Today, one of the most-watched political talk shows, was on. Dan Everhardt, the vice president, was being assailed by two right-wing senators who challenged him to defend the administration’s policy on terrorism.

‘Just tell me how you can defend a policy that simply doesn’t work,’ one of them demanded.

‘The fact is that our policy on terrorism does work,’ Everhardt said. ‘In cooperation with other governments around the world we have prevented countless terrorist attacks over the years.’

‘Not as many as you could have prevented.’

‘That’s not quite fair.’

‘Not the World Trade. Not the Crescent Queen.’

Karen smiled. Dan Everhardt was not a good debater. A quiet family man, a former defensive lineman at Rutgers, he projected honesty and integrity rather than glib eloquence. The president had chosen him as his running mate for precisely that reason.

Everhardt was very popular. He stood six feet five inches tall and was, in his ruddy way, quite handsome. Unfortunately, his slowness on the uptake was hurting him in this debate against two strident pro-Goss spokesmen.

‘Those were terrible tragedies,’ he said. ‘But we learned valuable lessons from them. I —’

‘Not the lessons we needed to learn,’ said one of the senators. ‘The World Trade should have taught us to destroy these fanatics before they attack us. The Crescent Queen tragedy took place precisely because we had not learned that lesson. Nine hundred innocent people slaughtered, most of them children. And we still don’t know who is responsible. We sit here like sheep waiting for the slaughter. The next hydrogen bomb could land on New York or Washington. Don’t you people in the White House have any conception of what we’re up against?’

Unfortunately for the vice president, the show’s director took this opportunity to cut to an image of the mushroom cloud rising above the blue Mediterranean where the Crescent Queen had been.

Even more unfortunately, the moderator now interrupted the proceedings to bring in Colin Goss himself, via split screen from his corporate headquarters in Atlanta.

‘Mr Goss, can you bring some perspective to the debate going on here?’

‘Well, I hope I can.’ Goss leaned forward, his sharp gray eyes fixed on the camera. ‘I honor my distinguished colleagues, and I think they speak out of a sincere regard for our nation at this perilous time. However, I don’t agree with Vice President Everhardt’s logic. I don’t think our policy on terrorism works. Let me put the analogy to the vice president in a different way. Suppose a farmer has a sheep ranch, and wolves are breaking through his fences and killing his sheep. He has consulted the best experts about the fences, and has learned that no fence can be built that will completely protect his sheep. He now has two choices. He can either close down his ranch, sell his sheep, and give up – or he can shoot the wolves that are killing his sheep.’

He joined his hands in a gesture of resolve. ‘The American people seem to feel, as I do, that it is time to fight back against the mad dogs who are massacring our children.’

Karen smiled. Time to fight back. That was one of Goss’s favorite campaign slogans. Mad dogs was his code word for terrorists. ‘You can’t negotiate with a mad dog,’ he liked to say.

Goss had leaned back, but his eyes still seemed to glare into the camera. Those eyes had made him a national figure, for they expressed a powerful will and great intelligence. But some observers said they were also the reason he had lost the three presidential elections in which he had run. There was something dangerous in Goss’s look. Some saw it as strength, others as ruthlessness. He had the look of a leader, but perhaps of a bad man.

Dan Everhardt was caught off guard by Goss’s analogy.

‘For one thing,’ he said, ‘we have fought back. We fought back with great success in Afghanistan …’

‘Our campaign in Afghanistan only provoked the terrorists,’ Goss retorted. ‘And did it prevent the Crescent Queen disaster? We knew for years that the terrorists were developing weapons of mass destruction. The handwriting was on the wall. Yet we did nothing, and look where it has gotten us.’ He smiled patronizingly. ‘In sports there is an old saying, ‘The best defense is a good offense.’ I wonder if the vice president and his administration have ever really understood this.’

‘There’s something about your analogy I don’t like,’ Everhardt said tentatively. ‘For one thing, in this civilized world we don’t solve our problems by taking out guns and shooting people.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Goss. ‘We use force to defend ourselves when the adversary doesn’t understand reason. Perhaps the vice president doesn’t remember how we defeated Hitler and Saddam Hussein.’

He leaned forward again, his eyes darkening. ‘But the situation is even simpler now. This is not a territorial struggle, as it was with Hitler or Saddam. These terrorists have only one aim. They want to kill Americans. They’ve said it over and over, they don’t make any bones about it. To kill Americans. And our response has been to sit here waiting for them to attack. That response is worse than cowardice. It is insanity.’

At this point Dan Everhardt made a crucial error.

‘But how would we know who to attack?’ he asked. ‘We don’t know who was behind the Crescent Queen.’

There was an audible intake of breath among those present. Everhardt had admitted his administration’s weakness, both intelligence gathering and in retaliation.

Colin Goss’s lips curled in disdain. ‘If we had the right leadership in Washington,’ he said, ‘we would know who to attack.’

The silence that followed this remark was deeply embarrassing for Everhardt and those who supported the administration.

‘Well, I …’ Dan Everhardt stammered.

The moderator came to his rescue. ‘We have another special guest via satellite. The junior senator from Maryland, Michael Campbell, has accepted our invitation to join in this debate. Senator Campbell, how would you respond to Mr Goss’s analogy?’

Karen smiled again as she sipped at her coffee. The Goss camp must be pissed off to see Campbell come to Everhardt’s rescue. Campbell was a good speaker and a good debater.

‘I agree with Dan Everhardt,’ Campbell said. ‘I think Mr Goss’s analogy is faulty.’ The contrast between Campbell’s handsome face and Goss’s jowly middle-aged countenance was immediate. So was the contrast between Goss’s angry gaze and the reflective, almost tender eyes of the young senator.

‘I do agree,’ Campbell said, ‘that there are mad dogs in the world, but I think that our system of laws and of international covenants is an instrument designed precisely to fight those enemies. Let me put it this way: when a rancher’s property is threatened by wolves he sits down with his fellow ranchers and they discuss together what must be done to control the wolf population and to protect their collective properties. By working together they solve the problem. No one rancher, by simply charging out onto the prairie with his rifle, can solve a problem that concerns everyone.’

The force of this argument made itself felt. Campbell, despite his youth, had been able to articulate the mature, wider view that was needed to combat Colin Goss’s bloodthirsty metaphor.

Colin Goss looked at Michael Campbell with well-concealed dislike.

‘And what happens,’ Goss asked, ‘if the rancher and his friends can’t agree on precisely what should be done to fight the wolves? What if the larger ranchers and the smaller ones don’t see eye to eye on the matter? What if their negotiations drag on for months or years? How many sheep must be lost before something positive is done to stop the wolves?’

This was an undisguised allusion to the Bilateral Agreement of last year, which followed a summit conference that included Israel, the United States, and leaders of the major Arab nations. That agreement had promised a united front against terrorism. But the terms of the agreement were so vague that in its final form it was hopelessly watered down.

Nine hundred students and teachers aboard the Crescent Queen were bombed into vapor exactly six months after the signing of the Bilateral Agreement.

Dan Everhardt had no answer to this. Michael Campbell, though, seemed to have anticipated the question.

‘Again I don’t think the analogy is quite right,’ he said. ‘The purpose of collective cooperation among the ranchers is to use every appropriate method, including deadly force, to stop the wolves that are killing the sheep. I’m sure Mr Goss remembers that it was a collective effort by a coalition of countries that forced Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait. The campaign in Afghanistan that defeated the Taliban was also an international effort.’

‘I agree with Senator Campbell,’ threw in Dan Everhardt. ‘We can’t use vigilante tactics to fight terrorism. It’s the civilized world we’re trying to protect. We have to go about it in a civilized way.’

‘There’s one more thing I’d like to say,’ Michael Campbell said. ‘Many of my ancestors were Irish. What happens if you are attacked by a terrorist group, and you fight fire with fire, bombing one of their schools for every one of your own schools that is bombed? Assassinating one of their leaders for every leader of your own who is assassinated? You get Northern Ireland. Is that what we want for our children and our children’s children? There has to be a better way.’

‘Smart,’ Karen said aloud. Campbell was modest, he deferred to older and more established politicians. But he had a knack for putting the case in such a way that ordinary people could understand it.

In the last couple of months the administration had discovered Campbell as a powerful weapon against the strident Goss forces. Campbell was too young to be identified with the late-twentieth-century policies that had failed to control terrorism. He was handsome, well spoken, and – most important of all – a living embodiment of great physical courage. As a teenager he had developed a serious curvature of the spine that required a lengthy hospitalization. As part of his rehabilitation he took up competitive swimming and became an all-American at Harvard. A second operation became necessary in his junior year, and he came back from it to win two gold medals at the Olympics as a first-year law student at Columbia.

Campbell’s political career had derived immediate momentum from his Olympic triumphs and the pain he had overcome. He won his Senate seat from Maryland in a landslide. He was admired by men for his courage and coveted by women for his handsome looks. Voters of both sexes admired his beautiful wife, whose face appeared every month on the cover of Vogue or Cosmopolitan or Redbook.

Karen yawned and took a bigger swallow of the sour-tasting coffee. She had to admit that Campbell was a handsome man. The body that had made him famous as an Olympic athlete was still hard and attractive. He had a clear, youthful complexion that went well with his crisp dark hair. The combination of his youth and his arguments for moderation was powerful.

On the split screen Colin Goss seemed aware of this. He was looking at Michael with a condescending smile. His personal dislike of Campbell was well known. He considered Campbell an ambitious punk, wet behind the ears where the issues were concerned, a matinee idol trying to make a career out of his looks and charm. Yet he realized that Campbell was now a dangerous enemy, politically speaking.

Mercifully Karen’s three Advil were beginning to work. She got up, poured another cup of coffee, and headed for the shower. Leaving the coffee on top of the toilet where she could reach it, she stood for a long time under the steaming water. Then she soaped herself, washed her hair, and turned the water much colder for a final wake-up rinse.

She hung the towel on the rack and walked naked into the bedroom. As she was opening her underwear drawer to locate a pair of panties, something on the TV screen stopped her.

Washington Today had been interrupted for a special report. On the screen was a live image of a roadblock surrounded by empty Iowa farm fields, along with a reporter interviewing a worried-looking public health officer.

‘We’re still trying to assess the situation,’ the public health man said. ‘We know that there are victims in several communities in this part of the state, but we still don’t know how many. We’re evacuating them as we locate them.’

The reporter asked, ‘Sir, can you comment on the rumors that the mystery illness leaves its victims frozen like statues in the position they were in when it struck?’

‘I don’t know that it’s a “mystery illness,”’the man replied. ‘We’re still assessing it, as I said. It’s true that the onset seems to be sudden, but I can’t really say any more at the present time.’

More questions were shouted at the official as the camera cut away to video, apparently of victims of the disease. A man was shown slumped behind the wheel of a semi trailer on a frozen interstate highway. A school bus was shown stopped at an odd angle in the middle of a rural intersection, the expressionless faces of children visible behind the windows. A helicopter shot showed a skating rink adjacent to a high school or middle school. Skaters lay in unlikely postures on the ice, some face down, others in a sort of fetal position.

Karen stood gazing at the screen, the panties still in her hand. Goose bumps started on her arms. She frowned.

‘Mystery illness,’ she said aloud.

3

Washington

November 16

An hour after the Washington Today broadcast, Vice President Dan Everhardt was in his EOB office, already laboring under a mountain of work.

It was a beautiful day outside. The Washington Monument thrust boldly into a sunny sky while the last of the fall colors daubed the trees along the Mall. A perfect Washington day, cool and crisp. The kind of day that DC natives dreamed about throughout the steam bath of summer.

This was football weather. It brought back pleasant memories of college games in which Dan had tested his strength against some of the toughest linemen alive.

Had he been looking out the window, he might have seen Karen Embry’s little Honda pass by on 17th Street. Karen was on her way to the Library of Congress. She had some medical research to do, and not much time to do it in.

But Dan Everhardt was looking at the list of appointments on his computer screen. The list was long. It was going to be a tiring day.

The phone on Dan’s desk rang. His secretary said the president was on the line. Hurriedly Dan sat down and pushed line two.

‘Mr President. Glad to hear from you.’

‘Danny, how are you?’

‘Fine, Mr President.’

‘I’m just calling to congratulate you on your performance on Washington Today. We all liked what we heard.’ The president’s voice had its usual composite tone, at once caressing and demanding. He was a man who knew how to get what he wanted from political men without browbeating them.

‘Thank you, Mr President. I’m glad Mike Campbell was there,’ Dan replied. ‘In all honesty, I’m not a genius at thinking on my feet. That sheep ranch bit of Goss’s had me thrown. But Mike jumped in and bailed me out.’

‘Michael is a good boy,’ the president said. ‘He’s bright, and he has the right instincts. I told him how much we appreciate his help. He says he’ll go anywhere for us.’

‘I’m glad,’ Dan Everhardt said. ‘We might need him. Have you seen the polls today, Mr President?’

‘Let me worry about the polls, Danny.’

The president’s reassurance was sincerely meant, but the fact remained that in the latest opinion polls the public’s approval of the administration was at an all-time low. Nearly fifty percent of registered voters told pollsters that if a special election for president were held today they would cast their votes for Colin Goss.

‘Frankly, Mr President, I’m worried that I didn’t do a good enough job,’ Dan said. ‘If it hadn’t been for Mike I would have looked like an idiot.’

‘You did fine, Danny. The choice before the people is clear. At the moment they’re expressing their worries about the future by flirting with Goss. But they’ll never take that into a voting booth. All we have to do is sit tight and keep doing our job.’

‘I hope you’re right, Mr President.’

They said good-bye, and Dan Everhardt let out the sigh of relief that had been trapped in his lungs throughout the conversation. Had he heard a hint of impatience in the president’s reassurances? The thought made sweat stand out on his palm as he replaced the receiver. No matter how ingratiating his manner, the president was still the president. His tolerance for malingerers was zero. Everyone knew that.

For a moment Dan sat thinking about Colin Goss. Not since McCarthy had an extremist of the Right worn so hateful a mantle. Dan Everhardt had done a senior thesis on Hitler at Rutgers. There were obvious parallels between Hitler’s anti-Semitism in Mein Kampf and Goss’s speeches about terrorism. The megalomania, the paranoia. The caricature of the opponent as a subhuman cancer cell eating away at the heart of the civilized world.

Obviously it appealed to something in the psyche of the voters. Since the Crescent Queen Americans were lining up by the thousands to hear Goss’s speeches, and writing letters to the editor of their local paper to say that he was the man to ‘save the country.’

To inflame the public further Goss had recently begun placing ‘public service’ ads in major newspapers and magazines, stressing the theme that it was ‘Time to Fight Back’ or ‘Time for a Change.’ Criticized by journalists and even advertisers for electioneering on behalf of himself at a painful time, Goss responded by placing some of the ads on television. It was not unusual these days to see commercials on cable and network stations featuring Goss, a fatherly expression on his face, talking about the ‘crisis’ America faced and the need for Americans to ‘make the tough choices’ at this critical time. Several of the ads showed Goss before a back-projection view of the Crescent Queen explosion.

Those who tried to keep the ads off the air were frustrated by Goss attorneys who cited their client’s right to free speech. The advertising managers of the television networks were loath to say no to Goss’s money, especially when the public seemed to be responding so positively to the ads.

This was going to be a tough battle, Dan Everhardt realized. Goss was throwing everything he had into the effort to force the president out of office. The political situation was meeting Goss halfway. People’s fear of another nuclear attack, possibly on American soil, was greater every day. The status quo was a continual state of terror. More and more voters wanted a change at any price.

Dan was glad Michael Campbell was on board. Mike was hugely popular in his own right, and every word he said in the media got listened to.

Michael would probably run for president himself eventually. His natural ability, combined with his good looks and the huge profile brought by his Olympic victories, would make him a strong candidate for the White House. His wife’s beauty didn’t hurt, either. The only slight negative was their childlessness. But no doubt in the next few years that problem would be solved.

In the interim, Dan Everhardt was vice president of the United States. He had no presidential ambitions for himself. He was loyal to the president and determined to help him stay in office. In this tempestuous time the country needed a sane, wise leader more than ever.

Dan Everhardt looked at his watch. Twenty minutes remained before his conference call with the majority leader.

He stood up and stretched. His back gave him a twinge, a reminder of his football days. He also had a trick knee, the result of surgery on the anterior cruciate ligament. But mostly he felt tired. The stress he had been under recently was taking its toll.

He reached for the intercom.

‘Janice?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I’m going to take a quick shower. Take messages for fifteen minutes, will you?’

‘Certainly, sir. Did you want to return Senator Buerstin’s call?’

‘After I get out.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Dan Everhardt noticed himself in the mirror as he moved toward the bathroom. His bulk was beginning to sag, he noticed with some displeasure. The heavy-plated lineman’s armor was taking on the look of a middle-aged man’s spare tire. He wished he could find more time for workouts. But these days so many things kept pressing in on him. One less martini at night would help too – but that was not an option either. His nerves were strung too tight. Things hadn’t been going all that well with his wife. They hadn’t really talked in a long time. As for lovemaking, that was a sore point.

He went into the bathroom and peeled off his clothes. He would put on a fresh shirt after his shower, as always. He sweated a lot.

He draped his jacket over the hanger that hung from the hook on the wall. He threw the shirt into the little hamper, then took off his pants and folded them. He turned on the shower, waited for the water to warm, and got in. A wave of sudden weakness stole through him. He worried briefly about his heart. He was over fifty now, and not in the best of shape.

He felt empty. He thought of Pam, lying in bed when he said good night to her last night. She had looked so lonely. He wanted to reach out to her. But so much water had run under the bridge. Like the water ceaselessly disappearing down this drain, even as it pounded down on him from above. All of life, slipping through our fingers, he thought. Nothing permanent.

He recalled the graduation speech he had given at Rutgers last year. He had had that thought at the time – ‘Nothing is permanent’ – but he had not had the heart to express it to all those fresh-faced graduates. They would find it out in time. Why spoil their happy years by bringing it up now? Better to be gentle.

Depressed thoughts like these did not come naturally to Dan, who was an optimist by temperament. But just at this moment they seemed cogent and inescapable. The whole world was like a house of cards, ready to crumble at the slightest touch.

A house of cards … He was thinking of these words when a greater weakness came over him. The soap fell to the floor of the shower with a splat. He made to bend down toward it, but his arm didn’t move.

Something was wrong. He had sensed it a moment ago, perhaps even earlier. But he had ignored it, decided it was nothing. And that was the opening it had come through – his own obliviousness.

His body seized up, frozen like an engine thrown into reverse at full throttle. The room was yellow, then red. A sound like screeching trumpets was in his ears. He didn’t even try to reach for the walls. He sought only to get out the cry that would bring help. But his throat was locked tight, nothing would come out.

Pam. It was the last word in his mind, but it never came near his lips.

He sagged against the wall of the shower. That was where he would have remained, had it not been for the slippery soap under his feet. He fell to the tiled floor with a crash, his bulk forcing the shower door open. His head emerged from the cubicle, water dripping from his hair onto the floor. The bar of soap lay innocently on the drain.

His hands were clenched at his sides. His eyes were wide open. He looked as though he were preoccupied by something beyond this water-soaked room, something terribly urgent and transcendently important.

He tried to make himself move. It was impossible. He lay staring straight ahead, as he would be when they found him.

4

Hamilton, Virginia, on the Chesapeake Bay

November 16, 6 P.M.

Judd Campbell, having just finished watching his videotape of Washington Today for the third time, rewound the tape on his VCR and began the program all over again. He called out to his daughter, ‘Ingrid, get me a Guinness, will you?’

‘Another one?’ Ingrid, who watched her father’s intake of alcohol and tobacco like a hawk, gave her usual protest.

‘For Christ’s sake, daughter, no sermons. Just get it!’

Judd used the remote to speed through the early exchanges between Dan Everhardt and his adversaries. He stopped when Michael’s face came on the screen. Judd’s eyes, a startling blue-green with touches of gold deep in the iris, focused on his younger son with a combination of great tenderness and stern judgment. Michael was the bearer of the Campbell name and of his father’s torch.

Outside the window loomed the Chesapeake Bay, gray and choppy under a momentary cloud cover. One brave soul was out there on a sailboat. Judd did not look at him.

Behind him loomed the house, its sixteen rooms sprawling under high ceilings, the bedrooms placed along the upstairs front with spectacular views of the Bay. Judd had bought it as a ‘summer cottage’ when he was based in Baltimore, and had fallen in love with the place and moved in permanently. His children loved the beach, and Judd himself was a dedicated sailor and fisherman. His wife had died here. He still kept her bedroom exactly as she had had it when she was alive.

His cardiologists would no longer allow him to sail a small boat alone, but he went out often on his yacht, the Margery, both to sail and to fish. He liked to conduct business meetings aboard the boat, and didn’t care if the colleagues who attended got seasick. He felt more lucid on the water, more free of the fetters of dry land.

Judd Campbell was a self-made man, and liked people to know it. He came from an impoverished Scotch-Irish background and had made his mark on the business world as a textile manufacturer and importer before he was thirty. His patchwork empire of factories grew into a conglomerate that included everything from hotels to telephone companies. Though not a modern man by temperament, Judd saw the computer revolution coming in the 1980s and invested millions in the PC and software markets. By age fifty-five he was an institution in American business.

But he was hardly a household name. And now that age and chronic heart trouble had forced him to retire, he knew he never would be.

It was Susan who brought him the glass of dark ale. She and Michael were having dinner here tonight. Susan had arrived first, an hour ago, and was helping Ingrid in the kitchen. Michael was due before the meal was served.

‘Ah, here’s a face I can live with,’ said Judd. ‘Thanks, sweetie.’

‘Ingrid is still muttering about your ration.’ Susan smiled.

‘Let her mutter. Come here, look at your husband.’ Judd gestured to the TV screen on which Michael’s handsome face was shown.

‘I’ve seen him before.’ Susan patted her father-in-law’s shoulder. ‘Have to get back to work. How many times have you watched that thing?’

‘Never mind.’ Judd went back to his TV as Susan left the room.

Judd Campbell did not try to disguise the special feeling he had for Michael. Even as a toddler Michael had shown a kind of energy and strength that his two older siblings lacked. Judd had taken the child to his heart, teaching him to excel in everything he did. When Michael was learning to swim, to ride a bike, to throw a ball and swing a bat, Judd had repeated familiar anthems in his little ear.

‘Excellence without victory is like frosting without a cake.’

‘The man who finishes second is not a man. He is only a footnote.’

And of course the legendary Vince Lombardi maxim. Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. Judd took this as holy writ, and made sure his son heard it often.

When the boy was very small he did not seem to understand these injunctions. But as he grew older, their deeper effect made itself felt. He attained success in everything he did. Though slight of build he was a natural and graceful athlete, a student to whom high grades seemed to come naturally, a handsome young boy to whom popularity came without being sought.

When Michael became a national hero at the tender age of twenty-three for his courageous performance in the Olympics, Judd knew that the door of opportunity was open for the Campbells. Michael had all the equipment needed to make a mark on the world in a way his father had not. Michael had intelligence, ambition, guts, and – the one quality Judd lacked – charm.

For a dozen years Judd had supported his favorite son in his political career with money, contacts, and advice. They made a strong combination. Michael’s political rise had been meteoric. Unlike Judd, though, Michael did not need to make the pursuit of success a grim crusade. He had no chip on his shoulder, like the one Judd had inherited from his impoverished immigrant childhood. Instead he had a talent for diplomacy that made him many friends among political men, including those who opposed his party and his views.

It was this talent that allowed him to take in his father’s overbearing demands without being offended by them. He seemed to understand the vicarious commitment of Judd, a profoundly unsatisfied man, to Michael’s own career. He went from achievement to achievement easily, almost tenderly, as though he wanted to give his father a gift he knew Judd needed with all his heart.

Michael was the only Campbell child to possess this instinctive ability to ‘handle’ Judd. Stewart, his older brother, had attained a life of his own only at the price of leaving the family and cutting off all contact with his father. Temperamentally unsuited to the world of ambition that Judd lived for, Stewart had locked horns with Judd as a teenager. After his mother’s death their conflict had escalated into open war. Stewart stayed away after college, paid his own way through graduate school, and got a doctorate in history. Today he was a professor at Johns Hopkins. Though he lived only forty miles from Judd, he had not visited in fifteen years.

Ingrid, less willful, had remained at home, renouncing a husband and children of her own in order to care for Judd in his waning years. She was Judd’s emotional slave, though she affected the role of stern caregiver as she rationed his intake of alcohol and fought against his addiction to cigars. She also devoted herself to Michael and to Susan, whom she treated like an adored younger sister.

Judd had been ruthless as a businessman, walking over those who stood in his way and browbeating even his most loyal employees. His great downfall had been his tendency to do the same in his family. It had lost him Stewart’s love, and had reduced Ingrid to a shadow of what she might have become. But somehow Michael had survived and even flourished under his father’s stern aegis.

The only untoward incident in Michael’s otherwise normal childhood was the spinal curvature that began to afflict him in his mid-teens, a severe scoliosis that threatened more than his youthful athletic career – it actually threatened his ability to lead a normal life.

But it was precisely this challenge that brought out the killer instinct in Michael, making him into an all-American swimmer and then an Olympic champion. As an additional silver lining, it was during his convalescence after the second surgery that he began courting Susan Bellinger, a heartbreakingly pretty Wellesley freshman who came from a broken home and was working her way through college as a model.

Susan helped him recover from the surgery and watched in wonder as he went back to swimming and slowly, relentlessly pushed himself back into Olympic form. She fell in love with Michael as a weak, pain-ridden young stranger about whom she knew next to nothing. Three years later she was married to him as a celebrity. And she herself, as his attractive young wife, soon became a celebrity too.

A brilliant law student, Michael became editor of the Law Review and joined a prestigious Baltimore law firm upon his graduation. He ran for the House of Representatives four years later, and was elected to the US Senate before he reached the age of thirty. The leaders of his party quickly identified him as a rising star and even a potential standard bearer. Michael’s future looked every bit as stellar as his past.

Judd Campbell got up from his chair and stood before the TV with the remote in his hand. Judd was tall, at least six three in his stockinged feet. His hair was thinning now, with only a few touches of the old russet among the gray. His emerging forehead, high and strong, made him look as vibrant as ever. Not a few friends and colleagues had remarked over the years on his resemblance to the actor Clint Eastwood. He was a handsome man. Chronic heart disease had done nothing to dim his sex appeal.

He froze the image of Michael long enough to call into the kitchen, ‘Susie, would you bring me a bowl of peanuts?’ Susan appeared at the doorway. ‘What, Dad?’

‘Peanuts,’ Judd repeated. ‘Unsalted peanuts, for an old man.’

‘Coming up.’ She moved away along the hall. Judd’s smile lingered as he heard her light steps.

Judd loved Susan more than any woman except his late wife. When Michael had first brought her home to him – Michael still on crutches at that time, and Susan more a confidante than a love – Judd had taken to her immediately. Her delicacy reminded him of Margery. Under her sunny blond looks there was a ruminative, somewhat depressive streak that made him want to protect her. And also a sweet, maternal quality that made her an ideal nurse for Michael during the most painful times.

And there was her extraordinary beauty, hardly a thing to go unnoticed by a red-blooded man like Judd. He admired her looks, and he also cannily reflected that she would be an ideal mate for Michael in his political career.

The greatest tragedy to befall the Campbell family had come when Margery, Judd’s doting wife of twenty-six years, committed suicide. No one had seen it coming. No one had thought Margery capable of such an act. Michael was seventeen at the time, Stewart twenty-four, Ingrid twenty-two.

The loss had been devastating. It was probably the real cause of the rift between Stewart and his father, though the pretext was Stewart’s determination to follow an academic career. It also brought on Judd’s first serious heart attack. And it was certainly the proximate cause of Ingrid’s spin-sterhood, for Ingrid began devoting herself to her father’s needs after he became a widower.

Judd never got over the loss of Margery. It was not until Susan came along that he started to live again. True, he was living through Susan and Michael, and Michael’s career. He sensed this obscurely, but buried the knowledge under his ambition for Michael and his tenderness toward Susan.

Susan went into the kitchen, where Ingrid had interrupted her work to watch a news report on the little TV that was kept on the counter.

‘Ing?’ Susan asked. ‘Where are Dad’s peanuts?’

Ingrid didn’t answer. Susan moved to her side and looked at the little screen. A reporter was shivering against the background of a frozen farm field while the graphic ‘Mystery Disease’ was shown.

‘The public health people say they’re trying to get the situation under control,’ the reporter said. ‘That means hospitalizing all the victims, probably under quarantine, and cordoning off the affected areas. None of the officials would comment on what the disease is. Sources have told us it seems to be a genuine mystery.’

‘What’s going on?’ Susan asked.

‘Some sort of epidemic.’ Ingrid turned to face Susan. ‘Probably the flu. The media are hyping it as usual. Where’s Dad?’

‘Watching his tape of Michael. He wants peanuts.’

‘No way. I’ll handle this.’

As Ingrid was moving toward the living room Susan heard the front door open. Her eyes lit up as she went to greet Michael. He gave her a long hug and kiss.

‘Where’s Dad?’

‘Watching you on TV.’

‘Again? Doesn’t he ever get enough?’

She watched him hang his coat in the closet. He had changed clothes at his office, and wore slacks and a light sweater. A breath of the outside air had come in with him, and his cheeks were cool against her lips.

‘I talked to Stew today,’ he said.

‘How is he?’ Susan asked.

‘Great,’ Michael said. ‘He sends you his love.’ He was hanging back, not moving toward his father’s den, because he could not let Judd hear him mention the name of his older brother in the house.

‘Did he see you on TV?’ Susan asked.

Michael nodded.

‘Was he favorably impressed?’ she asked.

‘If he wasn’t, he probably wouldn’t have told me.’

As the oldest of the Campbell children Stewart commanded Michael’s respect. Stewart was at the opposite end of the political spectrum from his father. If Judd was a stern judge of Michael’s ambition, Stewart was the judge of his integrity. Stewart hated politicians but made an exception for Michael, whom he considered a huge cut above the rest in character and brains.

Susan and Michael exchanged a brief look. They were both sad that Stewart could not be here tonight. Even though Michael’s career was a common link between Judd and Stewart, the rift between the two was too deep for Michael to bridge.

‘Hey, Ing,’ Michael greeted his sister, hugging her around her broad shoulders.

‘Hey to you, big shot.’ Ingrid smiled. ‘Nice work today.’

As Susan watched, Michael went to the door of the den and looked in at his father. Judd had not heard Michael’s arrival and was glued to the TV, watching his son’s image. Michael went forward and, with an odd gentleness, put his arm around his father and kissed his cheek.

‘Ah. Here you are.’ Relief joined with an almost painful devotion in the father’s voice as he held Michael’s arm. Strangely, Judd did not turn his eyes away from the TV. He remained focused on the abstract image of his son while holding Michael’s hand to keep him from getting away. Susan dared to reflect that this schizoid intimacy was part and parcel of Judd’s love for his son.

Michael glanced back at Susan with an understanding smile, as though to say, ‘You know what Dad is like.’ Nodding, Susan turned away.

In the kitchen Ingrid was whipping the potatoes. The news report on the situation in Iowa was over, eclipsed by a story about violence in the Middle East.

‘Sweetie,’ Ingrid said to Susan, ‘would you finish this for me while I get the roast out?’

The phone rang. Since both women were busy Michael answered it. His face clouded as he listened to the caller.

‘When did this happen?’

Susan turned to look at him. She knew that voice. It meant something serious.

‘Where is he now?’ Michael said into the phone.

Through the dining room Susan could see Judd, who was still absorbed in his videotape. Michael hung up the phone.

‘What’s the matter?’ Susan asked.

‘Danny Everhardt,’ Michael said. ‘He was taken sick late this morning. They took him to Walter Reed.’

‘Sick in what way?’ Susan asked.

‘Something strange,’ Michael said. ‘He can’t move, can’t talk. His secretary found him on the floor of the bathroom, half in and half out of the shower. He hasn’t said a word since.’

Susan looked at Michael. The TV still murmured in the kitchen. Outside the house a gull shrieked, once, and was gone over the waves.

5

Walter Reed Army Medical Center

Gaithersburg, Maryland

8 P.M.

Dan Everhardt was discovered by his secretary ten minutes after the onset of his illness. Alarmed by his failure to emerge from the still-running shower, she opened the door and saw him lying under the spattering water, his eyes still open.

Within the hour the vice president was taken to Walter Reed, where he was placed under observation in the intensive care unit. His vital signs were normal, but he continued to display symptoms of a massive disturbance of function whose precise characteristics were difficult to pin down.

The night of his admission his primary physician received a visit from a Secret Service agent named Joseph Kraig.

‘Dr Isaacson,’ Kraig said, shaking the physician’s hand. ‘Thank you for making time to see me.’

‘We received a call from the White House asking us to cooperate with you in every way possible,’ the doctor said, not looking very happy about Kraig’s presence. ‘It seemed only reasonable to go along.’

The doctor studied Kraig, who was a deceptively ordinary-looking man in a dark suit. Kraig looked to be in his late thirties, prematurely gray at the temples, with shoulders and arms that bespoke good physical conditioning. He had quiet eyes whose neutral expression suggested a coiled inner force kept carefully hidden. Something about him was frightening; something else was reassuring. It was hard to tell the difference.

‘What can you tell me about the vice president?’ Kraig asked.

‘Well,’ said the doctor, ‘it’s very ambiguous. At first we suspected a stroke. There is a rather dramatic impairment of mental function. But the tests we’ve done so far – EKG and so forth – don’t indicate any circulatory problem. I’m leaning toward the functional, but I’m far from sure.’

‘Functional?’ Kraig asked.

‘By that I mean a mental or emotional disturbance without a physical basis,’ the doctor said. ‘Of course, it’s too soon to say.’

‘Could you show me?’ Kraig asked.

‘I’d rather not,’ the doctor said. ‘It wouldn’t be appropriate for anyone outside the family …’

‘Has the family seen him?’ Kraig asked.

‘Only his wife. She didn’t think it would be good for the children to —’

Agent Kraig moved closer to the doctor and spoke in a low voice.

‘I understand your concerns, Doctor. But it is important that I get a clear view of the situation right away. Would you like me to have the head of the Secret Service call you?’

The doctor sighed. ‘No, let’s get it over with. Let me see if he’s awake first.’

The doctor left Kraig to wait in the corridor and disappeared into the hospital room. After a couple of minutes he emerged.

‘Come on in.’

Kraig followed the doctor into the room. Vice President Everhardt was propped up in the hospital bed, looking at the television screen on the ceiling. Not for the first time Kraig noticed the vice president’s size. He had the bulk of a football player.

‘Mr Vice President, I’d like you to meet someone,’ Dr Isaacson said. ‘This is Agent Kraig. He’s with the Secret Service.’

Everhardt looked at Kraig. There was something wrong with the expression in his eyes. Kraig could not put it into words, but the gaze didn’t seem lucid. The eyes seemed elsewhere.

‘That’s Kraig with a ‘K,’ Mr Vice President,’ Kraig said, moving forward to extend a hand.

Everhardt ignored the outstretched hand. He kept looking at Kraig for a few seconds, then looked back at the TV screen, on which an old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie was playing.

‘You can call me Joe if you like,’ Kraig said. ‘Everybody does.’

Everhardt gave no sign of having heard the remark.

‘Mr Vice President,’ said the doctor, ‘I’d like to show Agent Kraig a couple of the things we were trying to do before. If that’s all right with you.’

Everhardt looked at the TV in silence.

‘Just to make sure there’s no mistake,’ the doctor said, ‘is your full name Daniel James Everhardt?’

No response.

The doctor took one of Everhardt’s hands. Everhardt looked down at his hand.

‘Can you just give my hand one firm squeeze?’ the doctor asked.

Everhardt stared at the clasped hands, but did not obey the command. At length he looked back up at the TV, leaving his hand in the doctor’s.

‘All right, Mr Vice President. Can you just look from the TV to Agent Kraig, and then back at the TV?’

There was no response.

The doctor gave Kraig a significant look. Then he pushed the call button on the phone beside the bed. A moment later a nurse appeared.

‘Yes, Doctor?’ she asked.

Everhardt looked at the nurse. His hand remained in the doctor’s.

‘Nothing, Nurse. My mistake,’ said the doctor.

The nurse left the room.

‘Mr Vice President, can you look at me?’ the doctor asked.

Everhardt, whose eyes had returned to the TV screen, did not react to the question.

The doctor escorted Kraig from the room.

‘You saw the essentials,’ he said.

‘He seems aware of his surroundings,’ Kraig said.

‘He is. His reflexes are normal. He reacts to new sights, to sounds. But he can’t do anything on command,’ the doctor said. ‘Nothing at all. He can look at the nurse when she walks in, but he can’t do it if I tell him to look at her.’

‘Did he walk in here under his own power?’ Kraig asked.

The doctor shook his head. ‘When they found him he was immobile. Rigid. He seemed to resist any attempt to move him.’

‘What about language?’ Kraig asked.

‘He hasn’t said a single word since they brought him in. He can’t repeat a word, or even a sound. He’s groaned a couple of times, but he hasn’t spoken. We don’t know if he can speak.’

Kraig was perplexed. ‘I’m not a doctor,’ he said, ‘but this seems very strange.’

‘It is very strange,’ the doctor said. ‘To have a paralysis of function this massive while all the vital signs are normal, and while he can obviously see and hear and react, is not something I’ve ever seen.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Kraig asked.

‘Keep him under observation. Run some more tests. Some more blood studies to look for infection or a metabolic disorder. Some more sophisticated neurological studies. An EEG and skull X-ray to rule out an atypical seizure disorder or brain tumor. Maybe an MRI.’

The doctor gave Kraig a look. ‘And, I think, a complete psychiatric workup with a thorough history.’

‘Why psychiatric?’

‘Well, his condition has some features of catatonic schizophrenia or certain types of conversion disorders. We’ll also have to rule out a factitious disorder.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The layman would call it faking,’ the doctor said. ‘I’d prefer to call it a kind of stress-related dysfunction. As you know, the vice president is under considerable stress at the moment. As is the president.’

‘You mean the calls for a special election?’ Kraig asked.

‘There could be a lot of ambivalence about a thing like that,’ the doctor said. ‘Especially in these troubled times.’

‘I see what you mean.’ Kraig knew that Dan Everhardt was a career legislator who probably would never have dreamed of running for high executive office if the president had not chosen him as his running mate five years ago. Now that the president was under attack, Dan Everhardt had to absorb the same blows from the media and from hostile forces in Congress.

‘You’re saying that he has a strong motive to be sick,’ Kraig offered. ‘Because it would get him off the hook politically.’

‘That’s correct,’ the doctor said. ‘Not that it’s a conscious decision on his part. The symptoms wouldn’t be this convincing if it was.’

There was a silence. The doctor started to say something, but stopped himself.

‘Yes, Doctor?’ Kraig asked.

‘Did you hear about that strange epidemic out in Iowa?’ the doctor asked.

‘You mean the people who can’t talk?’

‘Yes. It’s just a hunch on my part, but the vice president’s symptoms remind me of the reports about those people. I think it would be worth checking out.’

‘I’ll take care of it,’ Kraig said, making a note on a small spiral pad.

The doctor looked worried. ‘If this thing wasn’t confined … If it was a communicable disease of some sort …’

‘Yes?’ Kraig raised an eyebrow.

‘We wouldn’t know how to combat it,’ the doctor said. ‘We wouldn’t have a clue.’

Kraig looked at him in silence.

‘Of course, that’s very unlikely,’ the doctor went on. ‘What happened in Iowa is probably some kind of mass hysteria.’

‘Probably?’ Kraig asked.

‘Probably,’ the physician concluded. ‘In any case, we’ll work with what we have.’

‘Thank you for seeing me, Doctor.’

‘The hospital administrator tells me the media are waiting for a statement,’ the doctor said. ‘I waited to hear from you. From the government, I mean.’

‘I appreciate it. We can draft something together,’ Kraig said.

An hour later Joseph Kraig stood beside the hospital spokesman, an administrator named Dr Cobb, as he faced a large group of reporters outside the main hospital entrance. Video cameras were running, the bright lights making Kraig squint.

‘Dr Cobb, how is the vice president?’ The question came from several directions at once.

‘The vice president is well,’ Dr Cobb said. ‘We’ve been running a lot of tests today, and the patient is understandably tired. The tests will continue tomorrow.’

‘What is the current diagnosis, Doctor?’ Again several voices shouted this at once.

‘We’re not prepared to make a definitive diagnosis until a full battery of tests has been run.’

Every word so far, Kraig reflected, had been approved by the White House. This was no time for ad-libbing. Kraig’s eyes scanned the mob of reporters and video men. They looked like jackals closing in for the kill. The microphones on their poles were like the proboscises of oversized insects who fed on the pain of humans.

‘Doctor, is there any truth to the rumor that Vice President Everhardt’s condition has baffled your physicians?’

The question was asked by a young female reporter with dark hair, a woman Kraig did not remember seeing before.

‘No truth,’ Dr Cobb said.

‘Doctor, is it true that the vice president is mentally incapacitated?’

‘Not true,’ Cobb answered with some irritation.

‘Doctor, is there truth to the story that the vice president’s illness is connected in some way to the epidemic in Iowa?’

The questions were coming from the same reporter, who outdid even her Washington peers in rapid-fire attack.

‘Not at all,’ Cobb said.

To Kraig’s surprise, the next question was addressed to him.

‘Agent Kraig, are you concerned about protecting the health of other federal officials?’

Kraig narrowed his eyes at the reporter. Who was this hound, anyway?

‘It’s our job to protect the president and those who work alongside him,’ he said. ‘I don’t see how the vice president’s condition affects that.’

‘Does Vice President Everhardt’s incapacitation make you worry about the safety of other government officials?’

‘I wouldn’t call it incapacitation,’ Kraig said.

‘Have you interviewed the vice president yourself, Agent Kraig?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘And how did you find him?’

‘I have nothing to add to what Dr Cobb has told you.’

‘Agent Kraig, isn’t it true that Vice President Everhardt hasn’t said a single word since he became ill?’ The reporter’s dark eyes seemed to bore into Kraig.

Kraig frowned. He had had enough. ‘I repeat, I have nothing to add to what Dr Cobb has told you.’

Karen Embry nodded with a politeness tinged by lingering suspicion. She looked crisp and professional in her dark suit and blouse. Her hair had been brushed with care, and her makeup accentuated her delicate features. There were a lot of female reporters present, from the wire services and cable stations as well as the local media, but none was quite as attractive as Karen. It would have been hard for an observer to recognize in her the young woman who had dragged herself out of bed at seven o’clock this morning with a crushing hangover. But there was no such observer. Karen made sure that no outsider ever saw her without her professional armor on. And her beauty was part of that armor.

The news conference lasted another twenty minutes, all of them uncomfortable, as Dr Cobb parried questions from dozens of reporters. Finally, citing the late hour, the doctor called a halt to the session.

Grateful to make his escape, Kraig left the hospital and drove back to his office.

Since the attack on the Pentagon of September 11, 2001, many of the major federal agencies had been covertly moving around the city. The Secret Service was presently located in a nondescript office building a block away from HUD, in the shadow of Interstate 395. From the weedy parking lot full of unmarked vehicles no one would have guessed the place was a government facility. Only the name tags the agents and secretaries clipped on as they approached the entrance betrayed the true nature of the operation.

Most of the agents were out, but Kraig’s boss, Ross Agnew, was in. It was Agnew who had gotten Kraig this assignment. They had known each other as trainees twelve years ago. Agnew, a graduate of the University of Virginia and a former FBI agent, was a natural-born administrator and a gifted politician. He was the temperamental opposite of Kraig, a field agent who liked solitude and distrusted authority. But they got along well.

‘How is Everhardt?’ Agnew asked.

‘He didn’t look good to me,’ Kraig said. ‘But I’m not a doctor.’

‘Not good in what way?’

Kraig shook his head. ‘A sort of paralysis,’ he said. ‘He can’t talk, and he can’t obey simple commands. So far they can’t find anything wrong with him physically. If it’s mental, it’s bad mental.’

‘I take it he’s not in any condition to go back to work,’ Agnew said.

‘No way.’ Kraig shook his head.

Agnew thought for a moment.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell the White House. They’re not going to like it. Deep concern at the top level. You know what I mean.’

Kraig nodded. He cared little for politics. If it weren’t for that maniac Colin Goss angling to get into the White House, Kraig would not have cared who occupied the place.

‘Do you think the president will have to appoint another man?’ Agnew asked.

‘If Everhardt goes on this way, I’d say so,’ Kraig replied. ‘He’s incapacitated.’

‘Who do you think it might be?’

‘Search me.’ Kraig sat down.

He thought for a moment before saying, ‘Everhardt’s doctor was wondering about the epidemic in Iowa. There are some symptoms in common.’

‘Really?’ Agnew asked. ‘Which ones?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Kraig frowned. ‘I don’t know that much about Iowa.’

There was a silence.

‘Does the doctor think this might be something communicable?’ Agnew asked.

‘He doesn’t know. He seemed worried by the prospect.’

Kraig sat listening to the muted hum of the traffic on the expressway. He looked at the pictures on Agnew’s walls, most of which showed sailboats or fishing boats on the Chesapeake Bay. Agnew was leaning back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other. His knee stuck up well above the desktop. He was immensely tall, six feet eight or nine, and had once had the misfortune of guarding Chris Webber for three quarters in the NCAA semifinals.