“Not yet, anyway; there are some things I still need to do.”
“Like talk to Bobby?”
“Yes, as soon as possible. He knows what it’s about.” Burdick looked away, struck by how incongruous that now sounded. “No, he doesn’t know what it’s about. He’ll think he does, but he doesn’t.”
He realized that it made no sense, that Allen could not possibly know what he meant. He felt a strange giddiness, a compulsion to laugh out loud; what he might have felt listening to an argument about who was going to win the World Series, or the next election, after just learning that the world was going to end the day after tomorrow. He did not laugh-he had not lost quite that much control-but a stupid grin hung for what seemed forever on the ruined simplicity of his mouth.
“No, he doesn’t know what it’s about,” he said, pulling himself together. “If you talk to him, tell him it’s about what we talked about before-The Four Sisters-only that there’s more, a great deal more, to it than what I had thought then.”
Allen knew that, whatever it was, it was serious. He picked up the telephone and called Hart’s private number.
“He has it turned off. He’ll call me back as soon as he is finished with whatever he is doing. I’ll ask him to call you right away.”
Burdick thanked him and started to leave, but Allen did not want him to go.
“Let’s talk a little-not about what you’re working on, what you want to talk to Bobby about-about what’s going on this week.”
Burdick sank back in this chair, glad for the chance to think about something else, to have a reprieve, as it were, from what had been weighing so heavily on his mind.
“There are a lot of rumors,” continued Allen, as he put his feet up on the corner of his cluttered desk.
His shirtsleeves were rolled up almost to the elbow and the striped tie he wore almost every day was pulled down from an open collar. The lamplight glistened on his round, balding head. As he started to talk, his eyes took on the manic quality of the player who loves the game, the political insider who can never stop talking about things that have not happened and might never come about, a future formed by speculation that changes with the hour. Who was in, who was out; who was up, who was down; and all of it conditioned by the certain knowledge, which made a principle of uncertainty, that if the future was like the past, nothing would turn out even close to the way everyone was convinced it would. Where else but politics could you gain a reputation for wisdom by talking about things that did not yet exist?
“Rumors that Russell is going to try to get the nomination; rumors that he is going to step aside; rumors that Hillary Constable is going to run and no one, least of all Irwin Russell, can beat her; rumors that even if she doesn’t run there are others he couldn’t beat either.”
He started to list them, the other potential candidates to succeed Irwin Russell in the office to which no one had ever seriously thought him qualified. Burdick stopped him.
“Have you talked to anyone in the White House? What are they saying? Do they think Russell is going to run?”
Burdick’s expression had changed. In place of the nervous anxiety, the palpable sense as of something gone terribly wrong, there was now an intense interest, a single-minded concentration on the issue at hand. Noticing the difference, Allen wondered at the cause.
“I’ve had a few conversations,” he replied, guardedly. “But those were all with Constable’s people. Whatever they really think about her, and some of them-this is off the record, right?-have, to put it charitably, never liked her; but they’re all part of the Constable machine. They worked in that first campaign; that’s how they got their jobs in the White House. Everything they have, everything they want, has always depended on the Constables staying on top. They have no loyalty to Irwin Russell. Hell, most of them thought it was a mistake to put him on the ticket. They thought-”
“Why was he put on the ticket?” interjected Burdick, sliding forward until he was close enough to put his forearm on the desk. “I know the reason that was given: that Russell brought Ohio into play; I know that the real reason was that they wanted someone who didn’t have ambition, someone who wouldn’t challenge Hillary for the nomination when Constable finished out his term. But there were others who could have served the same purpose-why Russell in particular?”
Allen pulled his legs off the desk and sat up. Pondering the question, he thought back four years to when it happened, remembering what he could about the backstairs intrigue that had had everyone in Washington talking. It had proven, as if any more proof had been needed, that Robert Constable had a genius for the game, the way he had replaced one vice president with another and made it seem, publicly at least, that he was doing both of them a favor. Anyone could be ruthless with their enemies, once they had them in their power; Robert Constable could be ruthless with his friends.
“He knew Russell better than he knew the others. Remember, Russell was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. He always did what the president wanted him to do. And that’s what he wanted on the ticket: someone he could trust.”
Burdick nodded thoughtfully.
“That’s always been Russell’s strength: he knows as much about the federal budget-about money-as anyone in Washington.”
“Sure. The only person who might have known as much was Frank Morris, who chaired Ways and Means.”
Burdick crossed one leg over the other and sat sideways in the chair. A look of puzzlement and doubt spread slowly across his long, angular face.
“So you take someone who as chairman of the Finance Committee can do more than anyone else to help you get through Congress what you need and make him vice president because he doesn’t have any ambition for higher office? Why would Constable have done that? And why did Russell go along with it? It seems to me that, on the surface anyway, both of them gave up something they wouldn’t have wanted to lose: the president, automatic support on the committee; Russell, control of one of the two or three most important committees in the Senate.”
Allen was surprised. No one in the press had written more thoughtfully about what made Robert Constable different from most of the other men who had had become president. How could he have forgotten this? He felt almost a fool, quoting back to the man who first wrote the sentence that had become the conventional wisdom about the failure of the administration to measure up to what had seemed its promise.
“Constable was always more concerned with politics than with legislation.”
Allen paused, expecting some reaction, but Burdick was too impatient, too caught up in the conversation, to notice, or, if he noticed, to care, about the origin of words. He was only interested in what Allen thought.
“He wanted someone on the ticket he knew would not try to challenge his wife, and in Russell, he got it.”
“Even granting that,” remarked Burdick, “it doesn’t explain why Russell did it, gave up all that power and prestige to hold an office that if you don’t want to be president, doesn’t mean a thing. The only one who stood to gain from that arrangement was the president’s wife. Or so she must have thought.”
“Must have thought?” asked Allen as Burdick got to his feet. “What do you mean?”
Burdick tapped his fingers on the package he held in his other arm.
“There is a reason why Russell ran for vice president, and it isn’t what anyone thinks. Russell did not have a choice. I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more than that; not yet, before I check a few things first. Would you tell the senator when he calls that I’ll be back in New York sometime late tonight and that I need to see him right away?”
All the way to the airport, all the way on the flight to New York, Quentin Burdick kept hold of the package. The only time he let go of it was when he passed through security at the airport, and then he held his breath, afraid that if he took his eyes off it even for a moment it might disappear. He was still holding onto it on the cab ride into Manhattan when Bobby Hart finally called.