It was a time to marvel at the splendor and savor it. It would not soon come again.
Chapman Davis had no time to consider the beauty as he bypassed a crowded escalator and leaped up steps two at a time from the subway stop deep beneath Capitol Hill. Davis had counted the steps once, ten years earlier, when he’d considered making them part of his daily workout. He gave up the idea when he realized his colleagues wouldn’t tolerate spending the day with someone who’d worked up a good sweat without benefit of a post-workout shower.
This day there was no time for such accommodation. Davis felt like the Dutch boy plugging holes in the dike. You don’t worry about a shower with an ocean coming in on you.
The day had started routinely. Davis got out of bed at his Silver Spring, Maryland, townhouse at 5:30, dressed, stretched, and went out to run his daily five miles. He was four blocks away, hitting his 6.5-minute-a-mile stride, when the morning edition of the Washington Chronicle hit his front porch. When he returned, the trouble rose off the front page to assault him like a bad odor.
On the end table in his living room, the red light was blinking impatiently on the telephone-answering machine. The message was from Senator Harold Marshall. It was terse: “Read Pace’s story on the front page of the Chronicle and meet me at my office as soon as you can get here.” “Here” was the operative word. Apparently, Pace’s story had jolted Marshall to his office before seven, a full two hours earlier than his usual show-up. Davis showered, dressed, and found his subway train by rote, thinking of little but how to handle the senator from Ohio. There was too much going down to risk an intemperate reaction to a story that was merely a montage of coincidence and supposition. That it hit close to the mark was annoying but not disastrous—unless somebody overreacted.
Davis could hear the tightness in Marshall’s voice on the answering machine. A small snit was not in the senator’s repertoire. Marshall was about to cloud up and storm, and his aide’s most visceral fear was that the squall would be directed at the Chronicle. Davis didn’t even want to think about the results. To rage at the newspaper would only deepen its conviction and harden its resolve. If Davis didn’t get a lid on it, the volatile politician could blow everything.
The receptionist in the front room of Marshall’s suite cocked her head toward his private office when Davis arrived at 8:30. “He’s waiting for you,” she said. “He’s probably paced a new rut in the carpet by now.”
Actually, Marshall was standing still before the window behind his desk. When Davis let himself through the eight-foot doorway, the senator turned, picked up a copy of the Chronicle and tossed it across his desk, Pace’s story face-up.
“How the hell did this happen?” he demanded, his voice barely controlled.
“I don’t know,” Davis replied, scarcely glancing at the report he’d read twice already. “I don’t know where they’re going with this, but it would be a mistake to get involved.”
“Damn it to hell, man, we don’t need this!” Marshall exploded. “We’re almost there. We don’t need some crusading reporter turning over rocks to keep a damned story alive.”
“What’s the difference?” Davis tried to toss the subject aside. “The NTSB is satisfied with its findings, and I don’t think this—this coincidence—is going to change minds.”
Marshall leaned over his desk, his weight resting on his closed fists. Above his half-glasses, his blue eyes were cold and hard.
“You get with Lund today and make certain it doesn’t,” he ordered.
“What can Lund do?” Davis asked in genuine surprise. “This is way outta his realm.”
“He can reel it in,” Marshall insisted. “He can call a press briefing and question out loud whether the Chronicle is trying to throw a red herring into the investigation. He can reaffirm the NTSB’s confidence that it has found the reason for the accident. Furthermore, he can render the judgment that the deaths of two investigators, tragic though they are, are strictly coincidental.”
“Assuming he would do that, it could be viewed as protesting too much.”
“He doesn’t have to beat it to death. One briefing to throw cold water on this.” He pounded the folded newspaper. “They never come right out and say conspiracy, but that’s the implication.”
Davis shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Pace’s story is about a coincidence, not necessarily a conspiracy. It doesn’t follow—”
“Newspapers don’t write about coincidences on page one!”
“Sure they do. Even if you’re right, going to Lund might be a bad idea. He didn’t take too well to George’s visit. Why should he respond better to mine?”
“Because you know what George Ridley doesn’t: how to use finesse, how to be discreet and diplomatic. Ridley’s a fat-ass blundering idiot. He’s got no subtlety in him, no sense of… of rhythm.” Davis started at the phrase. He looked closely at Marshall’s face, trying to determine whether it had been a deliberate racial slur, and decided the senator wasn’t sensitive enough to know the difference. Marshall continued his tirade. “He doesn’t know how to chat somebody up, how to gain somebody’s confidence, how to make a proposal so that when hands are shaken later, the other guy thinks the agreement was his idea. You know.” Marshall looked pointedly at his aide. “It’s the sort of stuff you picked up learning your way around the mean streets.”
Davis chose to ignore the reference. “And if Lund throws me out of his office?”
“He won’t if you handle him right.” Marshall leaned over the desk again. His voice was menacing. “There can’t be any turning back, Chappy. Our course is set. We’re either going to sail home scot-free, or we’re going to be dashed to death on the rocks in trying. All of us. Each and every one. Do I make myself clear?”
Springtime in Washington spread below Kathy McGovern’s window at the front of the second floor of the Russell Building. The early lunch crowd already was choosing the best seats in the sun on the lawns of the Capitol. The sky was a brilliant blue, the grass a new, moist green, and there was flowering color wherever one chose to look.
She was sitting in her chair at the window, her back turned on a desk full of work, her eyes focused on the outside but not seeing it. A barrier of grief, now reinforced by fear, had sprung up in her mind, blocking the beauty of the day from her brain, blocking everything but the memories of her brother’s death the previous week and the newspaper headline branded in her mind three hours earlier. The headline played over and over, like a closed loop of tape:
And the drop-head:
Kathy had awakened at 8:15, an hour later than normal, because she hadn’t set the alarm and overslept. She rose reluctantly, feeling unrested. She put on coffee and showered, moving through the morning more by rote than by motivation to get to work. It wasn’t until she picked up the Chronicle that she was able to focus on anything. Then the focus was sudden and sharp.
The headlines leaped at her. The first paragraphs, under Steve’s byline, chilled her.
She scanned quickly, trying to grasp the salient points. When she finished, she gulped air, realizing she’d been holding her breath. In numb disbelief, she put the paper on the sofa and poured a cup of coffee, skipping the usual doctoring of cream and Equal. She returned to the living room to read the story again.