‘I’m, er – I’m just starting your typing now,’ she said, looking away.
‘That’s all right,’ he told her. ‘I’ve come to tell you that
I’m sorry.’
‘You’re sorry? Why should you be?’
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’re Peter Kaiser, nicknamed “The Machine”, and you’re the most efficient administrative executive in the whole of the Republican party organisation, bar none, and any stupid chit of a secretary who wastes your precious time by asking fatuous questions about coffee and time off – well, she hardly deserves an apology, does she?’
Peter smiled. ‘I like you,’ he said. ‘You’re spunky.’
She turned and looked at him. ‘The last time anybody said that to me, I was seven years old, and I’d just come last in the egg-and-spoon race at school, and managed not to cry.’
‘You’ve changed since then,’ Peter said.
‘In some ways. I still don’t cry.’
‘All right,’ he grinned, ‘I’ll allow you that. Will you come out to dinner this evening?’
‘Where are we going? The nearest Exxon station?’
‘I don’t understand.’
She shrugged. ‘The way you’ve been acting, I thought you only fed on gasoline.’
‘Karen,’ said Peter, ‘I am a human person. I do have feelings. If you cut me, do I not bleed?’
‘I don’t know. You might ooze a little grease.’
He laughed. It was an odd laugh, strangely high-pitched. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to say I’m sorry, and I’m sorry. So will you still let me take you out to dinner?’
Karen thought for a moment. One voice said: no. tell him to go screw himself, or even his mother. But the other voice said: if Peter Kaiser likes you, he’ll introduce you to Senator Jones, and if Senator Jones likes you… the sky’s the limit. Or at least the dome of the Capitol’s the limit. It’s what you came to Washington for. You political groupie, you.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Invitation accepted. What time do we eat?’
‘Nine, nine-thirty. That’s not too late for you, is it?’
‘I should have just about digested my Big Mac by then. By the way, here’s a message for the senator, when you talk to him next.’
Peter took the memo and quickly looked it over. Then he read it again, more slowly, and frowned.
‘Three forty-five?’ he asked. ‘Just a couple of minutes ago?’
That’s right.’
‘And is this all he said? Nothing else?’
‘That’s all,’ shrugged Karen. ‘The blight is some kind of a virus, and it’s spreading. Kind of creepy, isn’t it?’
Peter forced another grin. ‘Just one of those crackpot messages you always get when this kind of thing happens. I won’t be surprised if we get more in the next few days. Viruses… death-rays from Mars… punishments from Heaven… you’ll get used to it.’
‘It frightened me, as a matter of fact,’ said Karen. ‘The man sounded so sane.’
They always do,’ Peter assured her. ‘Now – do you think you can put me through to Senator Jones?’
‘Whatever you want. Particularly since you’re buying dinner. And particularly since I seem to have escaped two hours of solid dictation.’
‘Okay,’ said Peter. ‘I’ll take it in my office. And – well, I’ll see you later.’
Karen picked up the phone and dialled through to Senator Jones’s office. It was almost a minute before anybody answered, and then she heard Della McIntosh’s voice, slightly out of breath. ‘Yes? Senator Jones’s office?’
‘Mrs McIntosh? I have Peter Kaiser for the senator. I think it’s pretty urgent.’
‘Hold on,’ said Della, and Karen heard her put the phone down on the table. In the background, she picked up the distinctive rumble of Senator Jones saying, ‘What does that frosty-faced asshole want now? Right in the middle of—’ Then Senator Jones, louder and closer, said, ‘Yes? Is this Peter?’
‘I’ll put you through. Senator,’ said Karen, and she connected him to Peter; but at the same time she held her hand tightly over the mouthpiece of her own phone, and listened in.
‘Peter?’ growled Senator Jones. ‘I hope you realise you’ve called me at a goddamned awkward time.’
‘I’m sorry. Senator, but I’ve had an urgent message from Ed Hardesty, in Kansas. I thought you’d want to hear it straight away.’
‘Hardesty? That blackmailing son-of-a-bitch? His daddy’s whelp, that’s all he is. What the hell has he got to say that justifies your interrupting my personal rest-period?’
Peter Kaiser took a long, steadying breath. ‘He says he’s had some results from the research people in Wichita. They seem to believe that this blight is caused by some kind of virus, although they don’t seem to have put a name to it yet. The worst thing is, though, that they’ve definitely connected the virus with those corn and soybean blights in Iowa. In fact, all those reports on fruit and vegetable diseases that Dick Turnbull’s sent us over the past couple of days… it seems like they’ve tied up the virus with those blights, too.’
Senator Jones said, ‘Virus? What are they talking about?’
‘I don’t know specifically. Senator,’ Peter told him. ‘But Hardesty did say that someone called Dr Benson had made tests and reckoned that the whole of the nation’s food supply was at risk.’
‘Benson? I remember Benson. A goddamned drunk. He came to Fall River once and spewed all over my Cherokee rug. I thought they’d kicked his ass right out of Kansas after that.’
‘It seems like they didn’t,’ said Peter, patiently. ‘And if he’s right, we could be in big trouble with the Blight Crisis Appeal. Benson only has to tell the press that the entire country’s crops are going down the sink and nobody’s going to feel like allocating anything to two dozen Kansas farmers.’
‘How are the federal analysts doing?’ asked Senator Jones.
‘I haven’t called them yet. But I checked with Professor Protter this morning, and he said their progress was strictly limited.’
‘In other words, they haven’t gotten anywhere at all. That’s typical, isn’t it? One alcoholic quack in the middle of Kansas can analyse a disease, but a whole team of agricultural supermen in Washington can’t work out the difference between wheat and birdseed. Get on to Protter again, and tell him to work faster, or I’ll kick his ass from here to next week.’
‘Yes, Senator.’
Senator Jones cleared his throat, and sniffed. Then he said, ‘There are two things you have to do, Peter. You’re right about the Blight Crisis Appeal. We have to get as much of that money into our bank account as we can, before people start to panic. How are you doing so far?’
‘Nine million dollars promised, as of three o’clock. If I really hustle, I guess I can get hold of most of it by the weekend. Say seventy per cent. We’d have to arrange for special clearance on the cheques, of course.’
‘Just lay your hands on as much as you can,’ grunted Shearson. ‘It may only be a fraction of what we originally planned to raise, but it’ll do. The second thing you have to do is put maximum pressure on Professor Protter. Maximum, do you hear? It’s Protter’s job to come up with an antidote, and real fast.’
‘But if we find an antidote, and announce it publicly, won’t that slacken off contributions?’
Shearson sniffed. ‘It’s a question of picking the right moment. The right political moment, the right scientific moment, the right psychological moment. We may find an antidote tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean we have to announce we’ve found it tomorrow. What we do is, we hold it back while the contributions are still rolling in, and we only announce it when the blight has become so critical that contributions are falling off in any case. The media are going to bust the blight situation wide open sooner or later. They’re bound to. But it’s then that we say we’ve discovered the answer to everybody’s problems, and pick up all the political credit for saving the day. Some people call it brinkmanship. I call it the Lone Ranger syndrome. Don’t shoot that silver bullet until you really have to.’