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‘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.
3
Washington
November 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 that.
For a moment Dan sat thinking about Colin Goss. Not since McCarthy had an extremist of the Right worn so hateful a mantle. Dan Everhardt had done a senior thesis on Hitler at Rutgers. There were obvious parallels between Hitler’s anti-Semitism in Mein Kampf and Goss’s speeches about terrorism. The megalomania, the paranoia. The caricature of the opponent as a subhuman cancer cell eating away at the heart of the civilized world.
Obviously it appealed to something in the psyche of the voters. Since the Crescent Queen Americans were lining up by the thousands to hear Goss’s speeches, and writing letters to the editor of their local paper to say that he was the man to ‘save the country.’
To inflame the public further Goss had recently begun placing ‘public service’ ads in major newspapers and magazines, stressing the theme that it was ‘Time to Fight Back’ or ‘Time for a Change.’ Criticized by journalists and even advertisers for electioneering on behalf of himself at a painful time, Goss responded by placing some of the ads on television. It was not unusual these days to see commercials on cable and network stations featuring Goss, a fatherly expression on his face, talking about the ‘crisis’ America faced and the need for Americans to ‘make the tough choices’ at this critical time. Several of the ads showed Goss before a back-projection view of the Crescent Queen explosion.
Those who tried to keep the ads off the air were frustrated by Goss attorneys who cited their client’s right to free speech. The advertising managers of the television networks were loath to say no to Goss’s money, especially when the public seemed to be responding so positively to the ads.
This was going to be a tough battle, Dan Everhardt realized. Goss was throwing everything he had into the effort to force the president out of office. The political situation was meeting Goss halfway. People’s fear of another nuclear attack, possibly on American soil, was greater every day. The status quo was a continual state of terror. More and more voters wanted a change at any price.
Dan was glad Michael Campbell was on board. Mike was hugely popular in his own right, and every word he said in the media got listened to.
Michael would probably run for president himself eventually. His natural ability, combined with his good looks and the huge profile brought by his Olympic victories, would make him a strong candidate for the White House. His wife’s beauty didn’t hurt, either. The only slight negative was their childlessness. But no doubt in the next few years that problem would be solved.
In the interim, Dan Everhardt was vice president of the United States. He had no presidential ambitions for himself. He was loyal to the president and determined to help him stay in office. In this tempestuous time the country needed a sane, wise leader more than ever.
Dan Everhardt looked at his watch. Twenty minutes remained before his conference call with the majority leader.
He stood up and stretched. His back gave him a twinge, a reminder of his football days. He also had a trick knee, the result of surgery on the anterior cruciate ligament. But mostly he felt tired. The stress he had been under recently was taking its toll.
He reached for the intercom.
‘Janice?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘I’m going to take a quick shower. Take messages for fifteen minutes, will you?’
‘Certainly, sir. Did you want to return Senator Buerstin’s call?’
‘After I get out.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Dan Everhardt noticed himself in the mirror as he moved toward the bathroom. His bulk was beginning to sag, he noticed with some displeasure. The heavy-plated lineman’s armor was taking on the look of a middle-aged man’s spare tire. He wished he could find more time for workouts. But these days so many things kept pressing in on him. One less martini at night would help too – but that was not an option either. His nerves were strung too tight. Things hadn’t been going all that well with his wife. They hadn’t really talked in a long time. As for lovemaking, that was a sore point.
He went into the bathroom and peeled off his clothes. He would put on a fresh shirt after his shower, as always. He sweated a lot.
He draped his jacket over the hanger that hung from the hook on the wall. He threw the shirt into the little hamper, then took off his pants and folded them. He turned on the shower, waited for the water to warm, and got in. A wave of sudden weakness stole through him. He worried briefly about his heart. He was over fifty now, and not in the best of shape.
He felt empty. He thought of Pam, lying in bed when he said good night to her last night. She had looked so lonely. He wanted to reach out to her. But so much water had run under the bridge. Like the water ceaselessly disappearing down this drain, even as it pounded down on him from above. All of life, slipping through our fingers, he thought. Nothing permanent.
He recalled the graduation speech he had given at Rutgers last year. He had had that thought at the time – ‘Nothing is permanent’ – but he had not had the heart to express it to all those fresh-faced graduates. They would find it out in time. Why spoil their happy years by bringing it up now? Better to be gentle.
Depressed thoughts like these did not come naturally to Dan, who was an optimist by temperament. But just at this moment they seemed cogent and inescapable. The whole world was like a house of cards, ready to crumble at the slightest touch.
A house of cards … He was thinking of these words when a greater weakness came over him. The soap fell to the floor of the shower with a splat. He made to bend down toward it, but his arm didn’t move.
Something was wrong. He had sensed it a moment ago, perhaps even earlier. But he had ignored it, decided it was nothing. And that was the opening it had come through – his own obliviousness.
His body seized up, frozen like an engine thrown into reverse at full throttle. The room was yellow, then red. A sound like screeching trumpets was in his ears. He didn’t even try to reach for the walls. He sought only to get out the cry that would bring help. But his throat was locked tight, nothing would come out.
Pam. It was the last word in his mind, but it never came near his lips.
He sagged against the wall of the shower. That was where he would have remained, had it not been for the slippery soap under his feet. He fell to the tiled floor with a crash, his bulk forcing the shower door open. His head emerged from the cubicle, water dripping from his hair onto the floor. The bar of soap lay innocently on the drain.
His hands were clenched at his sides. His eyes were wide open. He looked as though he were preoccupied by something beyond this water-soaked room, something terribly urgent and transcendently important.
He tried to make himself move. It was impossible. He lay staring straight ahead, as he would be when they found him.
4
Hamilton, Virginia, on the Chesapeake Bay
November 16, 6 P.M.
Judd Campbell, having just finished watching his videotape of Washington Today for the third time, rewound the tape on his VCR and began the program all over again. He called out to his daughter, ‘Ingrid, get me a Guinness, will you?’
‘Another one?’ Ingrid, who watched her father’s intake of alcohol and tobacco like a hawk, gave her usual protest.
‘For Christ’s sake, daughter, no sermons. Just get it!’
Judd used the remote to speed through the early exchanges between Dan Everhardt and his adversaries. He stopped when Michael’s face came on the screen. Judd’s eyes, a startling blue-green with touches of gold deep in the iris, focused on his younger son with a combination of great tenderness and stern judgment. Michael was the bearer of the Campbell name and of his father’s torch.
Outside the window loomed the Chesapeake Bay, gray and choppy under a momentary cloud cover. One brave soul was out there on a sailboat. Judd did not look at him.
Behind him loomed the house, its sixteen rooms sprawling under high ceilings, the bedrooms placed along the upstairs front with spectacular views of the Bay. Judd had bought it as a ‘summer cottage’ when he was based in Baltimore, and had fallen in love with the place and moved in permanently. His children loved the beach, and Judd himself was a dedicated sailor and fisherman. His wife had died here. He still kept her bedroom exactly as she had had it when she was alive.
His cardiologists would no longer allow him to sail a small boat alone, but he went out often on his yacht, the Margery, both to sail and to fish. He liked to conduct business meetings aboard the boat, and didn’t care if the colleagues who attended got seasick. He felt more lucid on the water, more free of the fetters of dry land.
Judd Campbell was a self-made man, and liked people to know it. He came from an impoverished Scotch-Irish background and had made his mark on the business world as a textile manufacturer and importer before he was thirty. His patchwork empire of factories grew into a conglomerate that included everything from hotels to telephone companies. Though not a modern man by temperament, Judd saw the computer revolution coming in the 1980s and invested millions in the PC and software markets. By age fifty-five he was an institution in American business.
But he was hardly a household name. And now that age and chronic heart trouble had forced him to retire, he knew he never would be.
It was Susan who brought him the glass of dark ale. She and Michael were having dinner here tonight. Susan had arrived first, an hour ago, and was helping Ingrid in the kitchen. Michael was due before the meal was served.
‘Ah, here’s a face I can live with,’ said Judd. ‘Thanks, sweetie.’
‘Ingrid is still muttering about your ration.’ Susan smiled.
‘Let her mutter. Come here, look at your husband.’ Judd gestured to the TV screen on which Michael’s handsome face was shown.
‘I’ve seen him before.’ Susan patted her father-in-law’s shoulder. ‘Have to get back to work. How many times have you watched that thing?’
‘Never mind.’ Judd went back to his TV as Susan left the room.
Judd Campbell did not try to disguise the special feeling he had for Michael. Even as a toddler Michael had shown a kind of energy and strength that his two older siblings lacked. Judd had taken the child to his heart, teaching him to excel in everything he did. When Michael was learning to swim, to ride a bike, to throw a ball and swing a bat, Judd had repeated familiar anthems in his little ear.
‘Excellence without victory is like frosting without a cake.’
‘The man who finishes second is not a man. He is only a footnote.’
And of course the legendary Vince Lombardi maxim. Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. Judd took this as holy writ, and made sure his son heard it often.
When the boy was very small he did not seem to understand these injunctions. But as he grew older, their deeper effect made itself felt. He attained success in everything he did. Though slight of build he was a natural and graceful athlete, a student to whom high grades seemed to come naturally, a handsome young boy to whom popularity came without being sought.
When Michael became a national hero at the tender age of twenty-three for his courageous performance in the Olympics, Judd knew that the door of opportunity was open for the Campbells. Michael had all the equipment needed to make a mark on the world in a way his father had not. Michael had intelligence, ambition, guts, and – the one quality Judd lacked – charm.
For a dozen years Judd had supported his favorite son in his political career with money, contacts, and advice. They made a strong combination. Michael’s political rise had been meteoric. Unlike Judd, though, Michael did not need to make the pursuit of success a grim crusade. He had no chip on his shoulder, like the one Judd had inherited from his impoverished immigrant childhood. Instead he had a talent for diplomacy that made him many friends among political men, including those who opposed his party and his views.
It was this talent that allowed him to take in his father’s overbearing demands without being offended by them. He seemed to understand the vicarious commitment of Judd, a profoundly unsatisfied man, to Michael’s own career. He went from achievement to achievement easily, almost tenderly, as though he wanted to give his father a gift he knew Judd needed with all his heart.
Michael was the only Campbell child to possess this instinctive ability to ‘handle’ Judd. Stewart, his older brother, had attained a life of his own only at the price of leaving the family and cutting off all contact with his father. Temperamentally unsuited to the world of ambition that Judd lived for, Stewart had locked horns with Judd as a teenager. After his mother’s death their conflict had escalated into open war. Stewart stayed away after college, paid his own way through graduate school, and got a doctorate in history. Today he was a professor at Johns Hopkins. Though he lived only forty miles from Judd, he had not visited in fifteen years.
Ingrid, less willful, had remained at home, renouncing a husband and children of her own in order to care for Judd in his waning years. She was Judd’s emotional slave, though she affected the role of stern caregiver as she rationed his intake of alcohol and fought against his addiction to cigars. She also devoted herself to Michael and to Susan, whom she treated like an adored younger sister.
Judd had been ruthless as a businessman, walking over those who stood in his way and browbeating even his most loyal employees. His great downfall had been his tendency to do the same in his family. It had lost him Stewart’s love, and had reduced Ingrid to a shadow of what she might have become. But somehow Michael had survived and even flourished under his father’s stern aegis.
The only untoward incident in Michael’s otherwise normal childhood was the spinal curvature that began to afflict him in his mid-teens, a severe scoliosis that threatened more than his youthful athletic career – it actually threatened his ability to lead a normal life.
But it was precisely this challenge that brought out the killer instinct in Michael, making him into an all-American swimmer and then an Olympic champion. As an additional silver lining, it was during his convalescence after the second surgery that he began courting Susan Bellinger, a heartbreakingly pretty Wellesley freshman who came from a broken home and was working her way through college as a model.
Susan helped him recover from the surgery and watched in wonder as he went back to swimming and slowly, relentlessly pushed himself back into Olympic form. She fell in love with Michael as a weak, pain-ridden young stranger about whom she knew next to nothing. Three years later she was married to him as a celebrity. And she herself, as his attractive young wife, soon became a celebrity too.
A brilliant law student, Michael became editor of the Law Review and joined a prestigious Baltimore law firm upon his graduation. He ran for the House of Representatives four years later, and was elected to the US Senate before he reached the age of thirty. The leaders of his party quickly identified him as a rising star and even a potential standard bearer. Michael’s future looked every bit as stellar as his past.
