“That’s okay, don’t worry about it. I picked up the test.”
“So when do you think I’ll hear?”
“Well, can you give us a week or so? We’ll look it over and see how it fits into our needs. Do you have a phone?”
“No, I’m sort of mobile now. Let me call you. A week?”
“Yes, that’s fine.”
They stopped to pick up Russ’s coat and then were sauntering through the newsroom when Russ noted that nearly everyone had left their desks and gathered around a television set suspended from the ceiling near the wire room.
“Oh, God,” said Bruce.
“Willie just called. I think this is it, Bruce,” said someone rushing by. “If it is, meeting at three instead of four.”
“What’s going on?” Russ said.
“Come on, watch this, you’ll find it amusing.”
Russ followed Sims over to the mob of reporters and editors, mesmerized by an empty podium, a microphone and the dreary look of a banquet hall in a chain motel near the interstate. A label on the screen identified the setting: Etheridge Campaign Headquarters, Los Angeles, California.
“Go, C-Span!” somebody cheered.
Soon enough, surrounded by aides and accompanied by a handsome but remote woman, a thin man with silver hair and a professionally distinguished face approached the podium. He looked about sixty-five and wore one of those almost uniform-perfect blue suits, a red tie and a white shirt. There wasn’t anything out of place; there wasn’t anything interesting either.
The party reached the podium. There was shuffling, chatter, awkwardness.
“Two years and still not organized,” said someone.
“What a hopeless wanker,” someone with a British accent editorialized.
“Who the hell is it?” Russ whispered to Sims, even as the man’s features were beginning to vibrate with recognizability, like a character actor who always plays the best friend.
“Holly Etheridge,” Sims responded. “You know, former Senator Hollis Etheridge. He chose not to seek reelection two years ago and has spent the past twenty-four months running the most inept presidential campaign since Ed Muskie.”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember,” said Russ. “He’s the one who built the road for his dad?”
“The Etheridge Porkway. Who says there’s no free lunch in America? If you knew Harry and then Holly, you got very rich.”
“My friends,” said Hollis Etheridge, reading stiffly from a prepared statement, “and members of the press who have chosen to honor me with your attention. For years and years, my father had a dream. He dreamed that his only son would become President of the United States. It wasn’t too much to ask for. After all, he had come out of the backwoods of Arkansas and become United States representative for thirty years. As far as he saw it, in this great land of ours, anything was possible and no dream was too large.”
Russ thought he’d seen the guy on talk shows over the years. He was always a fill-in, a somewhat orthodox man in whose mouth English seemed a foreign language.
“One thing about old Holly,” whispered Bruce salaciously, “he got more pussy than a toilet seat.”
“I shared that dream,” Hollis droned onward. “I worked ceaselessly to make it a reality. I gave up my position in the august body known as the United States Senate to make it come true. I raised money and went to banquets and gave speeches.
“But as my fourth-place finish in last week’s California primary has made clear, that dream will not come true.”
There were some audible groans from the audience, whom Russ gathered were campaign workers and true believers. Though what in Holly Etheridge was there to believe in truly, other than the practical craft of the professional politician?
“That, coupled with a third in New York, a third in Massachusetts and a fourth in New Hampshire, has made it clear that the party will seek another for standard-bearer and that my continued presence distracts from the message of the two from between whom you will choose the candidate.”
He paused amid the groans.
“There goes my Pulitzer Prize,” somebody said, to laughter.
“You were never going to win a Pulitzer Prize,” someone else said. “You don’t work for the Washington Post, the New York Times or the Miami Herald.”
“True enough,” said the first. “I should have said, there goes my fantasy of a Pulitzer Prize.”
His colleagues hooted. Someone threw a wadded-up ball of paper at him. Russ smiled. Journalists. Cynics, smartasses, calculating everything as a career move first and history second.
“Shit,” said Sims to Russ. “Little Rock had its time in the sun. We thought Fort Smith’d get a goose out of old Holly. But no way: too square, too slow, too orthodox.”
“He could put No Doz to sleep,” somebody else said, “unless he was chasing stewardesses.”
“I heard his specialty was nurses,” somebody else said. “He liked the uniform thing and the white stockings.”
“Look at his wife,” somebody else added. “I think she has a DoveBar up her ass.”
The woman stood just behind the man with one of those painted-on smiles lighting up a face that was pure stone.
“Dotty, God,” somebody said. “She makes Pat Nixon look like Mary Tyler Moore. She makes Pat look … perky.”
“A DoveBar is the only thing she’s ever had up her ass.”
“And so,” said Hollis Etheridge, “I hearby announce my withdrawal from the presidential campaign. I want to thank my wife, Dorothy, Paul Osteen, my campaign manager, and all you loyal workers. You people worked like heck and I do appreciate it; now it’s back to private life for this son of Arkansas. Thank you very much.”
“Senator,” a question came, “what will you do with your delegates? And your war chest? You still lead in money raised.”
“That’s to be determined at a later time in consultation with key members of my team,” said Etheridge.
“He could still carry some weight,” somebody said.
“He’s over, he’s finished,” came a counterverdict. “Color him the Jeopardy! answer without a question.”
“God bless America, and God bless the state of Arkansas,” Etheridge said, then turned and walked stiffly away.
“We won’t have Holly Etheridge to kick around anymore,” some wag said.
“Hell, there wasn’t enough of him to kick around in the first place,” someone else added.
31
t had been a good day for the general. At eleven, he had finally closed a contract with Colonel Sanchez of the Honduran Army. Colonel Sanchez was el comandante of Battalion 316, the counterterror and insurgency specialists, American-trained. Though the Hondurans had plenty of money to spend, the general could see no justification for pushing the No. 1 System, as it was called. The SR-25 with the Magnavox thermal sniperscope and the JFP MAW-7 suppressor was the most sophisticated system in the world but it was labor-intensive maintenance-wise and he doubted a third-world nation without a sophisticated technical culture would be able to maintain the units through heavy usage. And heavy usage was expected: the current guerrilla war showed no signs of abating and indeed was moving into the cities, where Battalion 316 and Military Intelligence rightly understood that a long-range precision night-vision sniping capability would prove invaluable.
After much hassling and wrangling, the general had finally convinced Colonel Sanchez that a system built around rebuilt army AN/PVS-2 Starlights mounted on state-of-the-art McMillan M-86s with the JFP Technology M14SS-1 suppressors was exactly what the doctor ordered. Twenty of the units would be in .308 Winchester, ten in .300 Winchester Magnum and ten in .223 Remington, giving Battalion 316 a great deal of tactical flexibility.