“We’ve got a goddamn debate tomorrow!”
“And I am ready.” He began humming “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” and walked off.
Teeley said to the campaign manager, “Is he on drugs? If he is, I need to know now. I don’t like surprises.”
“Ugly fucking state,” President Peacham said, looking down on the frozen landscape from Marine One, the presidential helicopter. The president was in his usual frame of mind, not helped by the latest tracking polls showing him several points behind-Senator Randolph K. Jepperson. The only good news was that with so many candidates running-there were now over a dozen in all, including the candidate of the Free Immigration Party-no one was a clear front-runner.
“Well, Mr. President,” Bucky Trumble said, sounding as bright and upbeat as he could, “New Hampshire certainly loved you four years ago. And they’re going to love you tonight.”
President Peacham grunted. “Doesn’t look one damn bit picturesque. Might as well be New Jersey, with snow.” He went back to his debate preparation book. He had not wanted to come and debate his challengers, but Bucky told him he must. His plan was to take out Jepperson here with a crippling blow. If they could beat him in Iowa and New Hampshire, the two early decisive points of the campaign, they might be able to force him to run as an independent.
They were going to hit him on Bosnia. Their polling showed that was his Achilles’ heel.
It was somewhat delicate, since this meant collaterally going after Cassandra Devine, whose father, Frank Cohane, was now Peacham’s campaign finance chairman, sitting just a few seats away on Marine One. Frank Cohane had said he had no objection. “Do what you have to.”
The candidates had separate greenrooms, in trailers parked outside the hall.
An aide with an earpiece radio scurried up to Cass and said, “Ms. Devine-Reverend Payne has asked to see you.”
Cass looked over at Terry. He shrugged and said, “Know thy enemy.”
Cass and the aide left the Jepperson trailer and walked across a crusty snow parking lot to the Payne trailer. The Payne aides-most of them evangelicals-regarded her coolly. To them, she was Joan of Dark. A door was opened, and there was Gideon.
“Come in, come in out of the cold,” he said heartily.
They shook hands. He held hers with both of his. “You are very kind to have come, my dear girl, very kind.”
She hadn’t seen him in person in some months. He looked well. He’d lost weight, his skin had color, his hair was no longer oily.
“Good to see you, Reverend,” she said. “How’ve you been?”
“Very well indeed. You didn’t use to call me that.” He smiled. “Sit, sit. Just for a moment, I know you must attend to the senator. There’s something I wanted to say to you.”
Cass sat.
“I wanted to say,” Gideon said, “that I personally never thought you had anything to do with that lunatic Arthur Clumm. Or that anything untoward took place in that minefield in Bosnia. I know we have our disagreements. Profound ones. But we’ll have a vigorous debate on the issues. I just wanted you to know that allegations will have no place in my arguments. On that you have my word, Cassandra.”
She nodded. “All right. Fair enough.”
“Good, then.”
“Reverend-”
“Gideon. Please.”
“I saw the thing on TV. I know that you didn’t…”
“Kill my mother?”
“Yes. But I can’t help thinking that something else happened. That it didn’t happen quite the way you said it did. It’s none of my business.”
He looked at her. “Someday you and I will take a walk together, and I will tell you a long story. But now let me say, for myself, I don’t believe for one minute you really want Americans to kill themselves just to fix a budget problem.”
Cass smiled. “No, not really.”
“You’re just trying to make a point, aren’t you?” He wagged a finger at her. “Well, I must say, young lady, that you have certainly made it. Even if you do set a mean agenda.”
Cass looked at her watch. “I have to go.”
They stood. He patted her hand. “Good luck to you, Cassandra Devine. Go forth”-he smiled-“and spin no more.”
She was crunching on snow across the parking lot when she heard a voice call out, “Hello, Cass.” She turned and saw her father. It had been many years since she’d seen him.
“Hello, Frank.”
He moved forward as if to kiss her. She held back.
“Look at you. You’re all grown up.”
“Look at you. All rich.”
“I did try.”
“Try what?”
“To make it up to you. The check. The one you tore into pieces.”
“Oh,” Cass said, “well, we’re even. I have to go. Good luck in the debate.”
“Oh, fuck it,” Frank said angrily, and turned on his heel.
“Nice talking with you,” Cass muttered. “Dad.”
“What did he want?” Terry said when she got back to the Jepperson trailer.
“Who?” Cass said, somewhat dazed.
“The second coming.”
“We seem to be fanning each other with olive branches.”
“There’s a whole lot of love going on in this campaign. Come on, showtime.”
They went into Randy’s dressing room. He was standing in front of a mirror, gesturing.
“Should I limp when I walk out onstage?”
“Why don’t you just hop?” Cass said. She brushed off his jacket. “You ready, Senator?”
“Alons, enfants de la pa-trie…”
“Fuck off.”
Bucky’s plan was to wait for closing statements, when it would be too late for a counterassault, for Peacham to say, “I think a man who drives a young woman into a minefield in the middle of a war zone for immoral purposes should not be allowed within a hundred yards or a hundred miles of the nuclear button.” Not a bad line, but Peacham never got to say it.
It happened sixty-four minutes in. The president had just recited a string of somewhat abstruse economic indicators suggesting that the U.S. economy might actually grow its way out from under the crushing deficit.
The moderator, John Tierney of The New York Times, turned to Randy and said, “Senator Jepperson, you have ninety seconds to respond.”
“Thank you, John, but I don’t need ninety seconds to respond. I can respond to what the president just said in four words: Shut the fuck up.”
Chapter 36
The incident posed a challenge to news organizations-namely, how to report, verbatim, that a candidate for president of the United States told the incumbent president to “shut the fuck up”-without incurring fines by the Federal Communications Commission. The cautious evening network news shows bleeped the word.
For a moment, everyone in the auditorium-and across the nation-watched in mute amazement. For a few seconds, it looked as though President Peacham were going to cross the stage and punch Senator Jepperson in the nose. The rest of the candidates gripped their podiums while their mouths made fish-out-of-water motions. Randy held his ground like Stonewall Jackson at the Battle of Bull Run. Tierney, the moderator, bit down on his lip. After a pause that seemed to last an eternity, President Peacham turned on his heel and stormed offstage, surrounded by scowling Secret Service agents who looked as though they might open fire on the senator. The rest of the debate was somewhat less memorable.
Spin Alley, the area outside the hall where the candidates’ aides rushed to proclaim their man’s or woman’s (“obvious”) victory, was normally a hive of chatter. This night it was uncharacteristically hushed. Declaring victory tonight would be beside the point, like standing outside Ford’s Theatre after President Lincoln had been shot to proclaim the excellence of the acting.
When Cass arrived, reporters instantly abandoned whomever they had been interviewing and swarmed in on her. She was pressed up against a wall so tightly that Jepperson staffers had to form a flying wedge to save her from being asphyxiated.