‘There’s one more thing I’d like to say,’ Michael Campbell said. ‘Many of my ancestors were Irish. What happens if you are attacked by a terrorist group, and you fight fire with fire, bombing one of their schools for every one of your own schools that is bombed? Assassinating one of their leaders for every leader of your own who is assassinated? You get Northern Ireland. Is that what we want for our children and our children’s children? There has to be a better way.’
‘Smart,’ Karen said aloud. Campbell was modest, he deferred to older and more established politicians. But he had a knack for putting the case in such a way that ordinary people could understand it.
In the last couple of months the administration had discovered Campbell as a powerful weapon against the strident Goss forces. Campbell was too young to be identified with the late-twentieth-century policies that had failed to control terrorism. He was handsome, well spoken, and – most important of all – a living embodiment of great physical courage. As a teenager he had developed a serious curvature of the spine that required a lengthy hospitalization. As part of his rehabilitation he took up competitive swimming and became an all-American at Harvard. A second operation became necessary in his junior year, and he came back from it to win two gold medals at the Olympics as a first-year law student at Columbia.
Campbell’s political career had derived immediate momentum from his Olympic triumphs and the pain he had overcome. He won his Senate seat from Maryland in a landslide. He was admired by men for his courage and coveted by women for his handsome looks. Voters of both sexes admired his beautiful wife, whose face appeared every month on the cover of Vogue or Cosmopolitan or Redbook.
Karen yawned and took a bigger swallow of the sour-tasting coffee. She had to admit that Campbell was a handsome man. The body that had made him famous as an Olympic athlete was still hard and attractive. He had a clear, youthful complexion that went well with his crisp dark hair. The combination of his youth and his arguments for moderation was powerful.
On the split screen Colin Goss seemed aware of this. He was looking at Michael with a condescending smile. His personal dislike of Campbell was well known. He considered Campbell an ambitious punk, wet behind the ears where the issues were concerned, a matinee idol trying to make a career out of his looks and charm. Yet he realized that Campbell was now a dangerous enemy, politically speaking.
Mercifully Karen’s three Advil were beginning to work. She got up, poured another cup of coffee, and headed for the shower. Leaving the coffee on top of the toilet where she could reach it, she stood for a long time under the steaming water. Then she soaped herself, washed her hair, and turned the water much colder for a final wake-up rinse.
She hung the towel on the rack and walked naked into the bedroom. As she was opening her underwear drawer to locate a pair of panties, something on the TV screen stopped her.
Washington Today had been interrupted for a special report. On the screen was a live image of a roadblock surrounded by empty Iowa farm fields, along with a reporter interviewing a worried-looking public health officer.
‘We’re still trying to assess the situation,’ the public health man said. ‘We know that there are victims in several communities in this part of the state, but we still don’t know how many. We’re evacuating them as we locate them.’
The reporter asked, ‘Sir, can you comment on the rumors that the mystery illness leaves its victims frozen like statues in the position they were in when it struck?’
‘I don’t know that it’s a “mystery illness,”’the man replied. ‘We’re still assessing it, as I said. It’s true that the onset seems to be sudden, but I can’t really say any more at the present time.’
More questions were shouted at the official as the camera cut away to video, apparently of victims of the disease. A man was shown slumped behind the wheel of a semi trailer on a frozen interstate highway. A school bus was shown stopped at an odd angle in the middle of a rural intersection, the expressionless faces of children visible behind the windows. A helicopter shot showed a skating rink adjacent to a high school or middle school. Skaters lay in unlikely postures on the ice, some face down, others in a sort of fetal position.
Karen stood gazing at the screen, the panties still in her hand. Goose bumps started on her arms. She frowned.
‘Mystery illness,’ she said aloud.
WashingtonNovember 16
An hour after the Washington Today broadcast, Vice President Dan Everhardt was in his EOB office, already laboring under a mountain of work.
It was a beautiful day outside. The Washington Monument thrust boldly into a sunny sky while the last of the fall colors daubed the trees along the Mall. A perfect Washington day, cool and crisp. The kind of day that DC natives dreamed about throughout the steam bath of summer.
This was football weather. It brought back pleasant memories of college games in which Dan had tested his strength against some of the toughest linemen alive.
Had he been looking out the window, he might have seen Karen Embry’s little Honda pass by on 17th Street. Karen was on her way to the Library of Congress. She had some medical research to do, and not much time to do it in.
But Dan Everhardt was looking at the list of appointments on his computer screen. The list was long. It was going to be a tiring day.
The phone on Dan’s desk rang. His secretary said the president was on the line. Hurriedly Dan sat down and pushed line two.
‘Mr President. Glad to hear from you.’
‘Danny, how are you?’
‘Fine, Mr President.’
‘I’m just calling to congratulate you on your performance on Washington Today. We all liked what we heard.’ The president’s voice had its usual composite tone, at once caressing and demanding. He was a man who knew how to get what he wanted from political men without browbeating them.
‘Thank you, Mr President. I’m glad Mike Campbell was there,’ Dan replied. ‘In all honesty, I’m not a genius at thinking on my feet. That sheep ranch bit of Goss’s had me thrown. But Mike jumped in and bailed me out.’
‘Michael is a good boy,’ the president said. ‘He’s bright, and he has the right instincts. I told him how much we appreciate his help. He says he’ll go anywhere for us.’
‘I’m glad,’ Dan Everhardt said. ‘We might need him. Have you seen the polls today, Mr President?’
‘Let me worry about the polls, Danny.’
The president’s reassurance was sincerely meant, but the fact remained that in the latest opinion polls the public’s approval of the administration was at an all-time low. Nearly fifty percent of registered voters told pollsters that if a special election for president were held today they would cast their votes for Colin Goss.
‘Frankly, Mr President, I’m worried that I didn’t do a good enough job,’ Dan said. ‘If it hadn’t been for Mike I would have looked like an idiot.’
‘You did fine, Danny. The choice before the people is clear. At the moment they’re expressing their worries about the future by flirting with Goss. But they’ll never take that into a voting booth. All we have to do is sit tight and keep doing our job.’
‘I hope you’re right, Mr President.’
They said good-bye, and Dan Everhardt let out the sigh of relief that had been trapped in his lungs throughout the conversation. Had he heard a hint of impatience in the president’s reassurances? The thought made sweat stand out on his palm as he replaced the receiver. No matter how ingratiating his manner, the president was still the president. His tolerance for malingerers was zero. Everyone knew