“Anything wrong?” he asked.
Hughes shook her head. “Just cold.”
“You shouldn’t be out today without a coat.”
“I know,” she agreed. “I didn’t think about it this morning.”
He nodded slowly. “Well, I hope you don’t get sick.”
“Me, too,” Hughes replied and shivered again. “I’ll get some coffee, and I’ll be fine.”
The man moved on. Hughes knew she hadn’t been shivering from the cold.
The chill she felt was fear.
“What the hell do you mean you don’t know? What happened to that little slut you keep on your payroll to report these things? She only get laid on weekends?” G. T. Greenwood was in high dudgeon, and Harold Marshall was the target.
People in Washington didn’t speak that way to Marshall; he went to great lengths to cultivate an image precluding it. But Greenwood was CEO of Converse, his best constituent and most lucrative fund-raiser, so he reined in his natural instinct for indignation.
When he arrived at his office this morning, Marshall found a message from Greenwood. He ignored it as he polished his tirade for the Senate floor. Greenwood called again, and Marshall told his secretary to say he wasn’t there. There were two more messages when Marshall returned from the floor. He wished in retrospect he’d gone right out for a long lunch somewhere. But he knew he’d have to face Greenwood sooner or later, so better it be sooner and get it over with. Once done with Greenwood, he could give serious consideration to going home.
Marshall felt dizzy and vaguely nauseous. He’d been experiencing the dizziness with some regularity of late, and it was particularly bad when he left the Senate floor. He walked to his office across the Capitol grounds rather than take the underground subway, hoping the cold, fresh air would clear his head. But the dizziness affected his balance, and once he thought he nearly fell. At the moment, he tried to focus on defending himself against the abuse from the Converse CEO.
“George, she’s not a slut, given all I know, and I don’t keep her on the payroll to spy on the Chronicle. I don’t know if she had any notice of this. I assume if she learned anything, she would have told me. She always has. I’m not going to order her to sleep with the photographer to get information for you. That would be unconscionable.”
“What the Chronicle is printing is unconscionable, Harold,” Greenwood spat back at him. “We can’t tolerate it. We had this mess in hand, under control. The fire was out. Now somebody’s rekindled it, and I want to know why and on what evidence.”
“I can’t answer your question. I’ll talk to her. But I’m not going to prostitute her.”
“Why not? You’ve already done much worse. We’re dealing here with something that could bring this company down. I won’t let that happen, Senator, and I don’t care who I have to sacrifice to prevent it, is that clear?”
“I’ve already done everything I can. And I’ve gone way over the bounds of propriety and law in doing it. If the Ethics Committee ever got hold of this, it would finish my career. I don’t see how I have the means to discredit the Chronicle stories.”
“Do you have the means to find out what they’re based on?”
“No. What do you want me to do? I’ve lied for you. I’ve cheated for you. I’ve used Davis to do things that shouldn’t have been done. My neck is out as far as I can stick it. What more, exactly, is it you think I can do?”
“Surely you can do something more than take the Senate floor and threaten to overturn the First Amendment! Christ, what were you thinking of? We want to appease the media, not wave a bloody rag under their noses.”
“So, fine. Suggest something.”
“Cast some doubt about the motives of the people behind this. I’ll fax you some material you can use.”
“Like what?”
“Sachs did consulting work for MacPhearson-Paige before he went to the NTSB.”
“So?”
“Do I have to paint you a picture? M-P is one of our chief competitors. Maybe you should suggest he’s taking money under the table to discredit us.”
“How, exactly, do you plan to prove that?”
“We don’t have to prove it,.” The exasperation in Greenwood’s voice was growing. “All we have to do is suggest a motive for deceit, and put the kibosh on this thing quick.”
“But that’s Sachs. I don’t know that he’s behind this.”
“Oh, shit. He’s the goddamn chairman of the NTSB.”
“Maybe the impetus for this came from within the go-team,” Marshall suggested.
“Harold, for chrissake, we’re not trying to be accurate here; we’re trying to discredit the new suspicions. Since Sachs worked for one of our competitors, hang it on him. Let the public think the NTSB chairman can influence a go-team. And so what if he can’t? None of the poor unwashed out there knows that. Why don’t you suggest the guy had an ax to grind, a future to consider? Hell, Cordell Hollander isn’t going to be President forever. When he’s out of office, Sachs is going to be looking for a job. Maybe he’s trying to build that future on our dead bodies? At least let’s plant the seed of that idea.”
“You know it’s bullshit.”
“I don’t know it. And I don’t care. I want you to convince the American public it could be so. Go back out on the floor and talk about his association with Mac-Paige. Or call a press conference. Or leak it to the Post or the Times. Hell, I don’t care how you do it; just do it! Make it a conflict-of-interest thing. Hang this sucker around his neck so heavy he won’t be able to raise his head to kiss his wife hello.”
In his office in the suite occupied by the Senate Transportation Committee staff, Chapman Davis was having his own problems. Sylvester Bonaro showed up unbidden, demanding to know if his deal was about to come apart.
“I can’t believe you had the balls to waltz in here,” Davis railed. He whisked Bonaro out of the offices, where there was absolutely no privacy, and into the committee’s empty hearing room. There they sat huddled in a corner, talking in stage whispers.
“That damned reporter is getting too close,” Bonaro said. “You and your boss don’t pay me enough to hang around and take the fall for this. I can disappear back into the Baltimore waterfront in an hour, and nobody will find me. Now, what’s the plan?”
“There isn’t one I know of,” Davis answered honestly. “This just hit us this morning. We didn’t have any warning.” He cupped his hands and wiped them down over his face. The stress was beginning to wear on him. This definitely wasn’t the political career he’d envisioned. “I don’t think it would do us much good to take Pace or his girlfriend out now.”
“Yeah, right,” Bonaro said. “The guy writes about how somebody’s fucked up the Dulles job, and he and his girlfriend turn up dead. What more proof would anybody need?”
“I suppose,” Davis agreed. “I suggest you get yourself off the streets and wait until you hear from me.” He looked at Bonaro sharply. “How’d you get here this morning?”
“What? I drove.”
“The van?”
“Yeah. It’s my wheels.”
“Did you get it fixed?”
“Hell, who’s had time?”