Gideon was indeed very happy to hear that his gold watch and fob had been located, though that was not the sum of his reaction.
It is unpleasant to be blackmailed at any time, but especially inconvenient when you are launching a presidential campaign, and worse yet if your name carries the prefix Reverend. Yet for all that, Ms. Tolstoy sounded quite friendly over the phone and made no mention of money.
“You look cute on TV,” she said. “I don’t think that you kill your mother. You are too nice-looking. Why you not come to my apartment? We will have party, with Champagne. Watch sexy movies. I am wery wet for you.”
Gideon shifted in his chair. He was almost fifty years old, and no woman, ever, had purred to him this way, much less asked him to come party with her. I am wery wet for you.
“If I,” Gideon croaked, “come, you will return me my watch?”
“Oh, yes. But,” she said, “first you must find watch. I have many hiding places. Mmmm. Hurry, Gidyon. I so wery wet for you, I am having to change my panties.”
She gave him an address in Arlington.
It occurred to Gideon, poor Gideon, that it was Sunday, the Sabbath. What was it Stonewall Jackson had said after he asked the surgeons if he was dying and they told him yes? “Good. I always wanted to die on a Sunday.”
No. Mustn’t. Madness. Then he thought, The watch. He must retrieve the watch. He would retrieve the watch and leave. Maybe, just to be friendly, he’d stay for just one glass of Champagne.
Gideon slipped out of campaign headquarters unnoticed.
Chapter 35
Randy was feeling cocky, having been proved right in the matter of the bull. Polls were running overwhelmingly against the Vatican. His own tracking polls showed a gain of four points after telling Rome to butt out. Americans, it appeared, did not welcome divine intervention.
Gideon Payne was strangely silent on the matter, even absent. The media were clamoring for his comments, yet he was nowhere to be found. His press secretary said that the candidate was “down with a bad cold” and had to cancel his schedule. The truth was, Gideon had dropped off the map. He wasn’t at home. He wasn’t answering his cell. He had last been seen Sunday night, the night of the 60 Minutes broadcast. And it was now Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon.
“Where the hell is he?” Teeley demanded. No one knew. “He can’t just disappear! We’re in the middle of a goddamn presidential campaign!”
Cass, meanwhile, had conceived the idea that Randy should use the word fuck at a campaign event. The genius of this strategy was not immediately apparent to the candidate. Or, for that matter, to Terry, who usually was on the same bandwidth as Cass.
“It’s how this generation talks,” she said to them. “If you want to get their attention, you have to sound like them. They’ll get it.”
Randy stared. “Ask not what the fuck your country can do for you? Four score and seven fucking years ago? For God’s sake, Cass. The FCC would fine me. And the FEC.”
“Fuck ’em,” Cass said. “We’ll make headlines.”
“As long as we’re at it,” Terry said, “why not a wardrobe malfunction during the debates? He can go over to Peacham and rip off his shirt. Tweak his nipple.”
“I’m serious about this, guys. If you just subtly slipped it in-”
“Subtly?”
“-at precisely the right moment, it would be monster. Huge. Tectonic. I can’t even discuss it. No presidential candidate has ever said the f-word before.”
“Didn’t some vice president tell a senator to go fuck himself?”
“Not on live TV. That was just some corridor grab-ass in the Capitol.”
“No,” Randy said. “I said no. No. Fucking. Way.”
“We’ll spike five points with U30,” Cass said. “That would put you ahead.”
“Yes, and we’d lose every other voter.”
“Throw long.”
“I’ll think about it,” Randy said. “Did you have in mind any particular script for unleashing this little bon mot?”
“Yes, in fact.”
Randy went off to cast a vote.
Terry said to Cass, “I wish you hadn’t planted that idea in his head.”
“Hey,” Cass grinned. “Got to think out of the box.”
Gideon Payne was a happy man.
He had not known such happiness was possible.
He was so happy, in fact, that it was only by a superhuman exertion of will that he departed Tatiana’s (Ms. Tolstoy had a first name, it turned out) apartment, a perfume-candle-scented bower of bliss in Arlington improbably overlooking the Iwo Jima Memorial.
“Darrling Gidyon,” she purred, twirling his hair with a finger as he nuzzled her right nipple, “don’t you must be in presidential campaign? It’s two days already you are here.”
Two days, a case of Champagne, thousands of dollars in ATM withdrawals, God knew how many condoms. He’d lost track.
“Ummmph.”
“Come. I make you coffee and you go.”
“No. I’m staying. I’m never leaving. Never ever ever. Mummmmph.”
“Darrling. My boozum. It hurt. You are wery hungry boy. You come back. But for now you must go. Come on, I make you nice hot bath with bubble.”
She got him into a bubble bath. He starting singing, “Glory, glory hallelejuah…”
Strange boy, she thought. And she could swear that this was the first time he had ever been with a woman.
Olga Marilova (Tatiana was not her first name, nor was Tolstoy her surname) had not anticipated this. She’d had Kulchek (Ivan) standing by, concealed in the apartment, armed, in case Gidyon Pine showed up with his own security people. Presidential candidates could be expected to be a bit hostile about being blackmailed. But when she opened the door, there he was alone, and with such an expression like a child’s.
He came in. They sat. She told him the watch was in a safe place. She would give it to him for a “donation to orphanage” of…$100,000. She braced for a furious reaction, ready to summon Kulchek. And then Gidyon Pine said, “Yes, I think that would be reasonable. And it’s a good cause. I have always been partial to orphans. I will have the money for you tomorrow.” She hardly knew what to say. Then he said, “Now, my dear, didn’t you say something about a glass of Champagne? I would be happy to pay for that right now.” And one thing led to another. And he wouldn’t leave. Well, she thought, confused, okay, it’s biznis. Good biznis.
Wery good biznis, as it turned out. The next day, Gidyon tore himself away from her lovely breasts long enough to make a phone call to someone named Sidney, and a few hours later a short man with a look of alarm knocked on her door and handed over a steel briefcase containing $100,000. This was the easiest bit of biznis Olga had ever conducted. And she was no novice at the client shakedown. Gidyon didn’t even ask for the watch! He just wanted her to get back into bed. He was…insatiable. A little steam engine of carnality. At one point, he asked her to marry him. She had to get him out of the apartment. She had appointments, with important clients. Regulars. Two ambassadors and a deputy secretary of state…
“Jesus Christ, Gideon-where have you fucking been?” His press secretary, Teeley, was livid.
Gideon had a grin. He murmured, “Actually, it’s the other way around.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I needed a rest, that’s all. I am most heartily sorry. I hope y’all were not too inconvenienced.”