Later that day Sridar gave Charlie a call. Charlie was sitting on a bench in Dupont Circle, feeding Joe a bottle and watching two of the local chess hustlers practice on each other. They played too fast for Charlie to follow the game.
“Look, Charlie, this is a bit ingrown, since you put me in touch with these guys, but really it’s your man that the lamas ought to be meeting. The Foreign Relations Committee is one of the main ones we’ll work on, so it all begins with Chase. Can you set us up with a good chunk of the senator’s quality time?”
“I can with some lead time,” Charlie said, glancing at Phil’s master calendar on his wrist screen. “How about next Thursday?”
“Perfect.”
Here in the latter part of his third term, Senator Phil Chase had fully settled into Washington, and his seniority was such that he had become very powerful, and very busy. He had every hour from 6 A.M. to midnight scheduled in twenty-minute units. It was hard to understand how he could keep his easy demeanor and relaxed ways. It was partly that he did not sweat the details. He was a delegating senator, a hands-off senator, as many of the best of them were. Some senators tried to learn everything, and burned out; others knew almost nothing, and were in effect living campaign posters. Phil was somewhere in the middle. He used his staff well—as an exterior memory bank, as advice, as policy makers, even occasionally as a source of accumulated wisdom.
His longevity in office, and the strict code of succession that both parties obeyed, had landed him the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, and a seat on Environment and Public Works. These were A-list committees, and the stakes were high. The Democrats had come out of the recent election with a one-vote advantage in the Senate, a two-vote disadvantage in the House, and the President was still a Republican. This was in the ongoing American tradition of electing as close to a perfect gridlock of power in Washington as possible, presumably in the hope that nothing further would happen and history would freeze forever. An impossible quest, like building a card house in a gale, but it made for tight politics and good theater.
In any case, Phil was now very busy, and heading toward reelection himself. His old chief of staff Wade Norton was on the road now, and though Phil valued Wade and kept him on staff as a telecommuting advisor, Roy and Andrea had taken over executive staff duties. Charlie did their environmental research, though he too was a part-timer, and mostly telecommuting.
When he did make it in, he found operations had a chaotic edge which he had long ago concluded was mostly engendered by Phil himself. Phil would seize the minutes he had between appointments and wander from room to room, looking to needle people. “We’re surfing the big picture today!” he would exclaim, then start arguments for the hell of it. His staff loved it. Congressional staffers were by definition policy wonks; many had joined their high school debate clubs of their own free will, so talking shop with Phil was right up their alley. And his enthusiasm was infectious, his grin like a double shot of espresso. He had one of those smiles that invariably looked as if he was genuinely delighted. If it was directed at you, you felt a glow inside. In fact Charlie was convinced that it was Phil’s smile that had gotten him elected the first time, and maybe every time. What made it so beautiful was that it wasn’t faked. He didn’t smile if he didn’t feel like it. But he often felt like it. That was very revealing, and so Phil had his effect.
With Wade gone, Charlie was now his chief advisor on climate. Actually Charlie and Wade functioned as a sort of tag-team telecommuting advisor, both of them part-time, Charlie calling in every day, dropping by every week; Wade calling in every week, and dropping by every month. It worked because Phil didn’t always need them for help when environmental issues came up. “You guys have educated me,” he would tell them. “I can take this on my own. So don’t worry, stay at the South Pole, stay in Bethesda. I’ll let you know how it went.”
That would have been fine with Charlie, if only Phil had always done what Charlie and Wade advised. But Phil had pressures from many directions, and he had his own opinions. So there were divergences. Like most congresspeople, he thought he knew better than his staff how to get things done; and because he got to vote and they didn’t, in effect he was right.
On Thursday at 10 A.M., when the Khembalis had their twenty minutes with Phil, Charlie was very interested to see how it would go, but that morning he had to attend a Washington Press Club appearance by a scientist from the Heritage Foundation who was claiming rapidly rising temperatures would be good for agriculture. Assisting in the destruction of such people’s pseudoarguments was important work, which Charlie was happy to do; but on this day he wanted to be there when Phil saw the Khembalis, so when the press conference was over and Charlie’s quiver empty, he hustled back and arrived right at 10:20. He hurried up the stairs to Phil’s offices on the third floor. At 10:23 A.M., Phil ushered the Khembalis out of his corner office, chatting with them cheerfully. “Yes, thanks, of course, I’d love to—talk to Evelyn about setting up a time.”
The Khembalis looked pleased. Sridar looked impassive but faintly amused, as he often did.
Just as he was leaving, Phil spotted Charlie and stopped. “Charlie! Good to see you at last!”
Grinning hugely, he came back and shook his blushing staffer’s hand. “So you laughed in the President’s face!” He turned to the Khembalis: “This man burst out laughing in the President’s face! I’ve always wanted to do that!”
The Khembalis nodded neutrally.
“So what did it feel like?” Phil asked Charlie. “And how did it go over?”
Charlie, still blushing, said, “Well, it felt involuntary, to tell the truth. Like a sneeze. Joe was really tickling me. And as far as I could tell, it went over okay. The President looked pleased. He was trying to make me laugh, so when I did, he laughed too.”
“Yeah I bet, because at that point he had you.”
“Well, yes. Anyway he laughed, and then Joe woke up and we had to get a bottle in him before the Secret Service guys did something rash.”
Phil laughed and then shook his head, growing more serious. “Well, it’s too bad, I guess. But what could you do. You were ambushed. He loves to do that. Hopefully it won’t cost us. It might even help. But I’m late, I’ve got to go. You hang in there.” And he put a hand to Charlie’s arm, said good-bye again to the Khembalis, and hustled out the door.
The Khembalis gathered around Charlie, looking cheerful. “Where is Joe? How is it he is not with you?”
“I really couldn’t bring him to this thing I was at, so my friend Asta from Gymboree is looking after him. Actually I have to get back to him soon,” checking his watch. “But come on, tell me how it went.”
They all followed Charlie into his cubicle by the stairwell, stuffing it with their maroon robes (they had dressed formally for Phil, Charlie noted) and their strong brown faces. They still looked pleased.
“Well?” Charlie said.
“It went very well,” Drepung said, and nodded happily. “He asked us many questions about Khembalung. He visited Khembalung seven years ago, and met Padma and others at that time. He was very interested, very sympathetic. And best of all, he told us he would help us.”
“He did? That’s great! What did he say, exactly?”
Drepung squinted, remembering. “He said—‘I’ll see what I can do.’”
Sucandra and Padma nodded, confirming this.
“Those were his exact words?” Charlie asked.
“Yes. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’”
Charlie and Sridar exchanged a glance. Who was going to tell them?
Sridar said carefully, “Those were indeed his exact words,” thus passing the ball to Charlie.
Charlie sighed.
“What’s wrong?” Drepung asked.
“Well …” Charlie glanced at Sridar again.