FOUR
Confession
He had a choice office in the Rayburn House Office Building, one that gave him a commanding view of the west front of the Capitol, and a chairmanship of one of the most powerful committees in the House of Representatives, but Congressman Richard Vorhees would have traded it all to be diving out of a perfectly airworthy C-141B Starlifter into the Uwharrie National Forest once again. Rubbing his left leg, though, as he stared out upon the glistening power center of the United States, he knew that the only battles he would fight were destined to erupt right there. The limb was hard to the touch, though softer than the one he’d had until a few months earlier. Advances in prosthesis design and manufacture made the newer, lighter limb possible, but it would never be close enough to what he had, or what could have been his. A Cuban mine had seen to that as he led his company of 82nd Airborne troops into battle in Grenada so long ago. Ten pounds of explosives and steel. That’s all it took to end an Army career. And to begin one in Washington.
The new wars, Vorhees thought, as he turned his attention back to the Los Angeles Times. It was one of the four papers he read each day, and, like the others, a front-page story in today’s edition chronicled the budget battle over funding of research for a new fighter. Of course such a benign topic would never have made it to page one if there hadn’t been accusations of corruption by the anticipated lead contractor on the project, but that was a lot of bull. Everything was corrupted, the representative from Massachusetts knew. All you had to do was point a finger and you’d be right. He was corrupt. The speaker was corrupt. The president was corrupt. The system was corrupt. It was tit for tat, I’ll do this if you do that. Legalized influence peddling and vote swapping, interrupted every two years by the song and dance needed to get reelected. Vorhees laughed every time he heard the complaints about when an actor came to D.C. to be president, because he knew that getting elected to Congress was the perfect training for a career in acting, something reinforced each time one of them was reelected.
Bored with the same story for the fourth time, Vorhees flipped through the pages, scanning stories on the surprising rebound of California’s aerospace industry. Wait’ll they see next year’s budget. Then on to the inevitable litany of crime stories. A dead body here. A drive-by shooting there. A — Wait.
“Shit,” Vorhees said softly, the artist’s conception of the face of one dead… Nick King!…slapping him across the face. He read the accompanying story, including the complete account of a woman who lived near the house where the nerve gas accident happened. It took a minute more to sink in fully. “Goddamn you, Monte!”
Vorhees slapped the paper shut and tossed it over his desk, where it fluttered to the floor in separate pieces. He leaned forward, resting both elbows on his large wooden desk, and tried to think. Think fast. Wonderful! He had already hurled the requisite invective at the man, the former — as of now — contributor, who had gotten him into this. It will be good for the country, Dick. “Yeah, damn you again, Monte.”
Damage control. That was the priority now. And first? What came first?
Say something. That ran contrary to the rule about keeping one’s mouth shut, but silence was no longer accepted. No longer could an elected official not dignify such a ludicrous suggestion. He had to say something. And fast. But what? He thought on that question for a moment before coming to a startling conclusion.
“The truth.” He might have laughed if the chance for real political damage wasn’t so real, but the truth was his ally in this fight. It would have to be massaged, of course, to give it the proper feel. To portray him as terribly upset over this horrid, unforeseen twist. And that, too, was actually true. Vorhees emerged from the anger of the previous moment, now allowing a small laugh. He was really innocent in this. But who would ever believe that? he thought. The voters, he knew, answering his own question. Convincing them took little more than thirty seconds of video and some catchy ad copy. How hard could it be?
“Mark,” Vorhees said after dialing his chief aide, “get me a press conference for this afternoon… No, not tomorrow — today… I don’t care how hard it is, just do it. And make sure there’s press from my district there… Call them yourself, goddammit! Just get them here, all right… This is important.”
Vorhees laid the phone back in its cradle, his manner surprisingly calm. He swung his chair around and looked to the Capitol again. That was where it would happen, in a suitably sedate room. Some books in the background, he thought. Maybe a flag to… No, no flag. This had to be him and his shame.
He lowered his head, shaking it slightly. No. That didn’t feel right. This truth thing, and its requisite emotions, was, surprisingly, a tough act to master.
Vasquez Rocks, a popular county park north of Los Angeles, had seen much activity over the years. Formed by the geological forces of plate tectonics long before the first Mexican bandits used the giant rock formations as hiding places from which to launch raids upon arriving pioneers, the park now enjoyed favor as a place to climb and hike on the weekends. Hollywood, too, had taken notice of the somewhat alien-looking landscape, with its huge, rounded slabs of red rock jutting from the earth at near 45-degree angles, and had used the park many times in films and television shows, from the obvious westerns to the futuristic Star Trek series of the 1960s.
But during the week the visitors were fewer, mainly those dedicated rock climbers who simply could not wait until the weekend to travel to the more distant, and more challenging, Joshua Tree National Monument in the desert to the east of Los Angeles. There were also those who were there just to walk, to enjoy the sights. And there were those who enjoyed the solitude. And the privacy.
“Monte,” John Barrish said as he approached the man from behind.
Monte Royce jumped and spun around, the somewhat disguised face of the man he had once expected never to see again just feet away. “Christ, John, you scared the daylights out of me.”
John removed the sunglasses but left the large Aussie bush hat on as protection from the fine, chilly mist that was falling across the beautiful landscape. “You move fast for an old man,” he said, the observation far from innocent in its meaning. “When you want to.”
“What do you want, John?” Royce asked.
“I want more money, and I don’t want any of the crap you gave my boys while I was away,” he answered, his voice coming down after punching up the word he knew would carry the most impact.
Royce, his face long and lined after seventy years of life, stared into the younger man’s eyes, his breaths coming quicker. “Listen. I gave you what you said you needed before. I kept your family fed while you were locked up. I supported you.” His head shook. “No more, John. I can’t reconcile what you’re going to do anymore with what I believe.”
“Going soft, Monte?”
“No, just getting smart,” Royce said. He was much larger than the odd-looking man challenging him, but there was a power to John Barrish, one that had once drawn him into his inner circle. But now, with time away from the man to be with his own thoughts, Royce was beginning to understand the place he had been, a place as alien as television had made the landscape around him appear, but infinitely more real, and frightening.