The Icarus Agenda

'Bull! I listened to you on the phone—you heard something, somebody mentioned drugs and I'd better listen—so I made some damn clear inquiries and found out what I had to know, what I knew was the truth! We're clean here, clean as a 'Bama stream! Now, I want to find out who sent you, what thief in what larcenous boardroom thought he could scare me with this kind of crap?'

'I don't think you'd want this kind of “crap” made public, sir. The information is devastating.'

'Information? Words! Innuendo! Rumours, gossip! Like that black kid who tried to indict the whole gawdamned Congress with his lies!'

'No rumours, no gossip,' said Milos Varak, reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket. 'Only photographs.' The Czech from Inver Brass threw the white envelope on the desk.

'What?' Partridge went instantly to the envelope; he sat down and tore it open, pulling the photographs out one by one and holding them under the green-shaded desk lamp. His eyes widened as his face went white, then blood-red in fury.

What he saw was beyond anything he might have imagined. There were various couples, trios and quartets of partly and fully naked young people using straws with white powder strewn on tables; hastily taken blurred shots of syringes, pills and bottles of beer and whisky; finally clear photographs of several couples making love.

'Cameras come in so many sizes these days,' said Varak. 'Microtechnology has produced them as small as buttons on a jacket or a shirt—’

'Oh, Jesus Christ!' cried Partridge in agony. 'That's my house in Arlington! And that's—'

'Congressman Bookbinder's home in Silver Springs, as well as the houses of three other members of your committee. Your work takes you out of Washington a great deal of the time.'

'Who took these?' asked Partridge, barely audible.

'I won't answer that except to give you my word that the person is thousands of miles away without the negatives and no chance of returning to this country. One could say a university exchange student in political science.'

'We've achieved so much and now it's all down the goddamned drain… Oh, God!'

'Why, Congressman?' inquired Varak sincerely. 'These young people aren't the committee. They're not your attorneys or your accountants or even senior aides. They're children who've made terrible mistakes in the headstrong environment of the most powerful capital in the world. Get rid of them; tell them their lives and careers are ruined unless they get help and straighten out, but don't stop your committee.'

'Nobody will ever believe us again,' said Partridge, staring straight ahead as if speaking to the wall. 'We're as rotten as everyone we go after. We're hypocrites.'

'Nobody has to know—’

'Shit!' exploded the congressman from Alabama, pouncing on the phone and pressing a button, holding it down beyond the point where his call was answered. 'Get in here!' he screamed. The young aide came through the door as Partridge rose from the desk. 'You fancy-school son of a bitch! I asked you to tell me the truth! You lied!'

'No, I didn't!' yelled back the young man, his eyes watering behind the tortoiseshell glasses. 'You asked me what's going on—what is going on—and I told you nothing—nothing is going on! A couple of us got busted three, four weeks ago and it scared all of us! Okay, we were dumb, stupid, we all agreed, but we didn't hurt anyone but ourselves! We quit the whole scene and a hell of a lot more than that, but you and your hotshots around here never noticed. Your snotty staff works us eighty hours a week, then calls us dumb kids while they use the stuff we feed 'em to get in front of the cameras. Well, what you never noticed is that you've got a whole new kindergarten class here now. The others all quit and you never even noticed! I'm the only one left because I couldn't get out.'

'You're out now.'

'You're gawdamned right, Emperor Jones!'

'Who?'

'The allusion would grab you,' said the young man, dashing out of the door and slamming it behind him.

'Who was that?' asked Varak.

'Arvin Partridge, Junior,' replied the congressman quietly and sat down, his eyes on the door. 'He's a third-year law student at Virginia. They were all law students and we worked their asses off around the clock for spit and little thanks. But we were giving them something, too, and they betrayed the trust we placed in them by giving it.'

'Which was?'

'Experience they'd never get anywhere else, not in the courts or in the law books, nowhere but here. My son split legal and grammatical hairs and he knows it. He lied to me about something that can destroy all of us. I'll never trust him again.'

'I'm sorry.'

'It's not your problem!' snapped Partridge, his reflective voice suddenly gone. 'All right, trash boy,' he continued harshly, 'what do you want from me to keep this committee together? You said no cover-up, but I suppose there are a couple of dozen ways of saying it without saying it. I'll have to weigh the pluses and the minuses, won't I?'

'There are no negatives for you, sir,' said Varak, taking out several folded sheets of paper, then unfolding them and placing them on the desk in front of the congressman. They comprised a resume, a small identification photograph in the upper right-hand corner of the first page. 'My clients want this man on your committee—'

'You've got something on him!' broke in Partridge.

'Absolutely nothing compromising; he's above reproach where such matters are concerned. To repeat, my clients seek no cover-ups, no extortion, no committee bills sent out or blocked for passage. This man does not know my clients, nor do they personally know him, and he's completely unaware of our meeting tonight.'

'Then why do you want him with me?'

'Because my clients believe he will be an excellent addition to your committee.'

'One man can't do a damn thing, you know that, don't you?'

'Certainly.'

'If he's planted to get information, we're leak-proof Partridge glanced at the snapshots under the green-shaded lamp; he turned them over and slapped them down on the desk. 'At least we were.'

Varak leaned over and took the photographs. 'Do it, Congressman. Put him on the committee. Or, as you said, so much down the drain. When he's in his chair, these will be returned to you along with the negatives. Do it.'

Partridge's eyes were on the snapshots in the blond man's hand. 'As it happens, there's a vacancy. Bookbinder resigned yesterday—personal problems.'

'I know,' said Milos Varak.

The congressman looked up into his visitor's eyes. 'Who the hell are you?'

'Someone devoted to his adopted country, but I'm not important. That man is.'

Partridge glanced down at the resume in front of him. 'Evan Kendrick, Colorado's ninth,' he read. 'I've barely heard of him and what I did hear doesn't raise any pimples. He's a nobody, a rich nobody.'

'That will change, sir,' said Varak, turning and heading for the door.

'Congressman, Congressman! yelled Evan Kendrick's chief aide, racing out of the office and running down the House corridor to catch his employer.

'What is it?' asked Evan, pulling his hand away from the elevator button and looking bemused as the breathless young man skidded to a stop in front of him. 'It's not like you to raise your voice above a very confidential whisper, Phil. Did Colorado's ninth get buried by a mud slide?'

'It may have just been dug out of a longstanding one. From your viewpoint, that is.'

'Do tell?'

'Congressman Partridge. Alabama's Partridge!'

'He's rough but a good man. He takes chances. I like what he does.'

'He wants you to do it with him.'

'Do what?'

'Be on his committee!'

'What?'

'It's a tremendous step forward, sir!'

'It's a lousy step backward,' disagreed Kendrick. 'His committee members are on the nightly news every other week, and they're “fill” for Sunday mornings when our newest congressional comets aren't available. It's the last thing I want.'

'Forgive me, Congressman, but it's the first thing you should take,' said the aide, calming down, his eyes locked with Evan's.