“Good answer.”
“Not original. I heard a colonel say it.”
“Well, we don’t have quite as much to worry about this time from Austro-Hungary. But Russia ’s always a question mark. You know, I got drunk with Boris Yeltsin once. Remember him? God, that man could put it away. We sang ‘Home on the Range’ in the Kremlin. Took me a week to recover. Can’t stand even the smell of vodka now. And vodka doesn’t even smell.”
Cass kept her eyes on the muddy road, feeling his eyes on her, not in a lecherous way.
“So?” he said.
“So?” she said.
“What are you doing here? Aside from keeping World War One from breaking out again.”
“Boring story.” Cass smiled.
“You’ve got me trapped inside a Humvee in Bosnia,” Randy said. “Go on. Bore me to death. Give it your best shot.”
She boiled it down, nervous to find herself confiding a family saga to a United States congressman. She left out her mother’s sarcastic comments at the dinner table about the Cessna but included the detail that her father had secretly taken out a second mortgage on their home to finance his start-up, which continued to founder. After that, her mother took the kids and walked out. That part Cass had learned in a letter received halfway through basic training.
Congressman Randy listened without comment, arms folded over his chest. Cass thought she heard some kind of humming coming from him. Maybe he was bored, singing to himself. They passed the remains of a bombed-out Serb convoy.
“Well,” he said at length. “What do you get a dad like that for Father’s Day? A hand grenade?”
They drove on. Cass said, “Why do you have a Humvee? Aren’t you a big environmentalist?”
“Boring story.”
“Your turn to bore me.”
“All right. Now don’t quote me, because I’ll get in a lot of trouble for even talking about it. But there’s this list. You know how the military and Capitol Police and Secret Service love to scare the shit-pardon my French-out of Congress with disaster scenarios? Drives up their budgets. Well, Tom Clancy, you know, the novelist?”
“I’ve heard of Tom Clancy.”
“Not as good a writer as Villon. He wrote this preposterous book that ends with a plane flying into the Capitol building. Can you imagine? Like people are going to start flying planes into buildings? Please. But everyone in official Washington reads Clancy-you don’t think they’re reading Proust, do you? Au contraire-and it scared the merde out of them. So they decided, we must have a plan. We must have a-list. So they drew this grotesque list of who gets evacuated in the event Japanese jingoists or deranged Swiss yodelers or whoever start flying jumbo jets into our buildings. It’s called ‘List Echo.’ What Washington drudge came up with that designation? But wouldn’t you know-I’m not on it. It’s all senators. Can you imagine a world repopulated by senators? The living would envy the dead. So I thought, All right, fine, I’ll arrange for my own evacuation when the great dome comes down around us. So I bought this appalling vehicle, the station wagon from hell, and parked it permanently in my space in the Capitol garage with a full tank of gas and all sorts of survival goodies packed in.” He added, “I really do care about the environment. Most of the time I ride a bicycle. Of course, it’s not just being green. It kind of helps with the image thing. The Bicycling Congressman.”
“So you spin literally.”
“Very good, Corporal. Yes. I spin. That’s it. An occasion of spin.” He yawned. “Do you mind if I doze off for a bit? Didn’t get much shut-eye on the way over. I don’t want to nod off in front of Special Forces. They’ll probably think I’m a big enough wimp as it is. Wake me if we come under attack or anything really thrilling happens, would you?”
Chapter 4
“Funny,” Congressman Randy said as they drove down the muddy road from the Special Forces camp.
“What?”
“World War One. It finally ended in November. We were just at Camp November. And the war began right here in Bosnia. So in a way, we did a full historical circle in just a few hours.” He was quiet for a while and then said, “They were very gung ho, weren’t they.”
“Special Forces tends to be.”
“Did you do all the normal things in basic training? Or do Public Affairs people get a break from the foxhole stuff?”
Cass gave him a sidelong glance. “I didn’t join the army to issue press releases and…”
“Escort jerks from Congress.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Ah, but you thought it. Well, Corporal, believe me, I may not be a fan of our mission here, but I’ve never had less than full respect for the military. Do you know what I was doing when I was your age? Snorting cocaine in Peru with the Peace Corps and pretending to be with the CIA.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Cass said.
“Guilt.” He winked at her. “With liberals it’s a sacrament. I do admire the military. Though thank God I never had to be in it. Wouldn’t have lasted two minutes. Do you think they were, you know, laying it on thick for me back there? Spinning? What with me being on the record against our being here and all?”
“To be honest,” Cass said, “I think they have better things to do. Like keeping warm. And not getting blown up.”
“Touchй, Corporal. Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die. Onward rode the six hundred. Had to memorize that at Groton. Suppose these days they have you memorize Maya Angelou. Such drivel.”
“You don’t sound very liberal. You drive a Humvee, admire the military, prefer Tennyson to politically correct poetry.”
“On paper I’m pretty pink. My ADA rating is through the roof. But I know what you mean. You know what the French say: ‘Think left, live right.’ Would you like me to recite the whole of ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’?”
“No, thank you. It’s a good thing you didn’t do that back there. They might have opened fire on us.”
“Recited it once during a late night filibuster to block a school lunch cutback. I can do ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee,’ too. Don’t worry. I’ll spare you.”
“What was she like?” It just came out. Cass regretted it instantly.
“Who?”
“Nothing. I-”
“Ah-the Tegucigalpa Tamale.”
“It was out of line. I’m sorry.”
“Well…” Randy cleared his throat. “She can be very nice. I think she just thinks it’s more interesting not to be. We were actually engaged at one point. Mother…God, that was a night never to repeat. I tremble at the memory.”
Cass heard the humming sound again.
“Is that a-”
“It’s called Tourette’s. Just a mild case. Came with the genes. My father had a not mild case. He chirped like a South American cockatoo. Rather awkward in the middle of a Chopin nocturne at the Philharmonic. As children, we would cringe.”
“I don’t mean to laugh.”
“I’ve heard worse, believe me. Say, I’m famished.”
Cass reached behind the seat and handed him a Meal Ready To Eat. The wrapper indicated “ITALIAN STYLE. Spaghetti with M/Ball. 1200 calories.”
Congressman Randy stared at it on his lap, glumly. “Oh, yum.” He threw the MRE back. “Mind if I drive?” he said.
It was against all regulations.
“Uh-”
“Oh, come on. Please? I never get to, back home. You’re always being driven. Driven-in so many ways. Please?”
Cass used to let her younger brother take the wheel when he was fifteen. Congressman Randy, nearly forty, suddenly sounded like a teenager.