The Icarus Agenda

'Mr. Speaker, I'm honoured to meet you, sir.'

'Son of a bitch, you are a foreigner!' The gaunt face with the dark eyes and arched white brows was an angry face, angry and yet defensive, the latter trait obviously repulsive to him. 'If you're some fucking Communist errand boy, you can pack it in right now, Ivan! I'm not running for another term. I'm out, finished, kaput come January, and what happened thirty or forty years ago doesn't mean doodlely shit! You read me, Bom?'

'You've had an outstanding career and have been a positive force for your country, sir—also my country now. As to my being a Russian or an agent from the Eastern bloc, I've fought both for the past ten years, as a number of people in this government know.'

The granite-eyed politician studied Varak. 'You wouldn't have the guts or the stupidity to say that to me unless you could back it up,' he intoned in the pungent accent of a northern New Englander. 'Still, you threatened me!'

'Only to get your attention, to persuade you to see me. May I sit down?'

'Sit,' said the Speaker as if addressing a dog he expected to obey him. Varak did so, maintaining ample space between them. 'What do you know about the events that may or may not have taken place some time back in the fifties?'

'It was 17 March 1951 to be exact,' replied the Czech. 'On that day a male child was born in Belfast's Lady of Mercy Hospital to a young woman who had emigrated to America several years before. She had returned to Ireland, her explanation, indeed, a sad one. Her husband had died and in her bereavement she wanted to have their child at home, among her family.'

His gaze cold and unflinching, the Speaker said, 'So?'

'I think you know, sir. There was no husband over here, but there was a man who must have loved her very much. A

rising young politician trapped in an unhappy marriage from which he could not escape because of the laws of the Church and his constituents' blind adherence to them. For years this man, who was also an attorney, sent money to the woman and visited her and the child in Ireland as often as he could… as an American uncle, of course—’

'You can prove who these people were?' interrupted the ageing Speaker curtly. 'Not hearsay or rumour or questionable eyewitness identification but written proof?'

'I can.'

'With what? How?'

'Letters were exchanged.'

'Liar!' snapped the septuagenarian. 'She burned every damned one before she died!'

'I'm afraid she burned all but one,' said Varak softly. 'I believe she had every intention of destroying it, too, but death came earlier than she expected. Her husband found it buried under several articles in her bedside table. Of course, he doesn't know who E is, nor does he want to know. He's only grateful that his wife declined your offer and stayed with him these past twenty years.'

The old man turned away, the hint of tears welling in his eyes, sniffed away in self-discipline. 'My wife had left me then,' he said, barely audible. 'Our daughter and son were in college and there was no reason to keep up the rotten pretence any longer. Things had changed, outlooks changed, and I was as secure as a Kennedy in Boston. Even the la-di-das in the archdiocese kept their mouths shut—'course, I let a few of those sanctimonious bastards know that if there was any Church interference during the election, I'd encourage the black radicals and the Jews to raise hell in the House over their holy tax-exempt status. The bishop damn near threw up in apoplexy, screaming all kinds of damnation at me for setting a hell-fire public example but I settled his hash. I told him my departing wife had probably slept with him, too.' The white-haired Speaker with the deeply lined face fell silent. 'Mother of God,' he cried to himself, the tears now apparent. 'I wanted that girl back!'

'I'm sure you're not referring to your wife.'

'You know exactly whom I mean, Mr. No-name! But she couldn't do it. A decent man had given her a home and our son a name for nearly fifteen years. She couldn't leave him—even for me. I'll tell you the truth, I kept her last letter, too. Both letters were our last to each other. “We'll be joined in the hereafter heaven,” she wrote me. “But no further on this earth, my darling.” What kind of crap was that? We could have had a life, a goddamned good part of life!'

'If I may, sir, I think it was the expression of a loving woman who had as much respect for you as she did for herself and her son. You had children of your own and explanations from the past can destroy the future. You had a future, Mr. Speaker.'

'I would have chucked it all in—’

'She couldn't let you do that, any more than she could destroy the man who had given her and the child a home and a name.'

The old man pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes, his voice suddenly reverting to its harsh delivery. 'How the hell do you know about all this?'

'It wasn't difficult. You're the leader of the House of Representatives, the second in line for the presidency, and I wanted to know more about you. Forgive me, but older people speak more freely than younger ones—much of it is due to their unrecognized sense of importance where so-called secrets are concerned—and, of course, I knew that you and your wife, both Catholics, had been divorced. Considering your political stature at the time and the power of your Church, that had to be a momentous decision.'

'Hell, I can't fault you there. So you looked for the older people who were around at the time.'

'I found them. I learned that your wife, the daughter of a wealthy real estate developer who wanted political influence and literally financed your early campaigns, had a less than enviable reputation.'

'Before and after, Mr. No-name. Only I was the last to find out.'

'But you did find out,' said Varak firmly. 'And in your anger and embarrassment you sought other companionship. At the time you were convinced you couldn't do anything about your marriage, so you looked for surrogate comfort.'

'Is that what it's called? I looked for someone who could be mine.'

'And you found her in a hospital where you went to give blood during a campaign. She was a certified nurse from Ireland who was studying for her registry in the United States.'

'How the hell—'

'Old people talk.'

'Pee Wee Mangecavallo,' whispered the Speaker, his eyes suddenly bright, as if the memory brought back a rush of happiness. 'He had a little Italian place, a bar with good Sicilian food, about four blocks from the hospital. No one ever bothered me there—I don't think they knew who I was. That guinea bastard, he remembered.'

'Mr. Mangecavallo is over ninety now, but he does, indeed, remember. You would take your lovely nurse there and he would close up his bar at one o'clock in the morning and leave you both inside, asking only that you kept the tarantellas on the jukebox really quiet.'

'A beautiful person.'

'With an extraordinary memory for one of his age but without, I'm afraid, the control he had as a younger man. He reminisces at length, rambles, actually, saying things over his Chianti that perhaps he would never have said even a few years ago.'

'At his age he's entitled—’

'And you did confide in him, Mr. Speaker,' interrupted Varak.

'No, not really,' disagreed the old politician. 'But Pee Wee put things together; it wasn't hard. After she left for Ireland, I used to go back there, for a couple of years quite frequently. I'd drink more than I usually did because nobody, like I said, knew me or gave a damn and Pee Wee always got me home without incident, as they say. I guess maybe I talked too much.'