“This is preposterous! I won’t stand for this…” Hawkins ran on for a few minutes, but it was obvious that nobody was paying attention to him anymore.
I overrode him. “General, you didn’t deserve to wear the uniform then and you sure don’t deserve to come back for a second shot.”
Hawkins protested loudly at this, but Boren cut him off. “What do you want, Congressman Buckman?”
“Senator, you can’t believe any of this…”
Boren waved him off and kept looking at me. “Well?”
I simply shook my head. I turned to face Baldwin. “This asshole is history. Forever. I have no interest in telling this story. Nicaragua is still a powder keg, and nobody needs this brought up. Just dump his sorry ass now and forever.” I faced Hawkins. “General, I have no idea where you came from, but it’s time to go back there. Get out of Washington. Sell the house, quit the job, and leave. It’s time to go home and live off your pension and be forgotten.”
I looked back at the others. Boren and Pell silently nodded; Ford grimaced and gave Hawkins a disgusted look. Baldwin simply had a stone face and refused to look at Hawkins. Newt simply stood up and came over to me. “I think I can take it from here, Carl. Why don’t I call you later?”
“Fair enough. I need to go home and apologize to Marilyn. I’ve been a little short with her and the kids since this started.”
I shook the others’ hands, well, not Hawkins, but I wasn’t feeling overly polite with him. I limped out of the office, straightened up a touch, and retrieved my coat and hat.
Screw the son of a bitch! Payback really is a bitch!
Chapter 114: A New Contract
Tuesday, January 12, 1993
Newt popped into my office Monday morning unannounced. I was doing some paperwork, but you’re always polite to the Whip. The title is because the Whip is supposed to be the guy who whips his side into order. They have a lot of power over staffing and committee assignments and office administration, and can generally make your life miserable if you defy them.
When Mindy announced him I put my paperwork aside and stood, to greet him and wave him towards a seat. “That was quite the bombshell you lit off last Thursday,” he told me.
“You catch any grief on this? Or do I need to be sacrificed on his behalf?”
Newt shook his head. “I got together with Boren and we made a few phone calls Friday. We didn’t do a complete verification, be we got enough to know you weren’t bullshitting us. The White House will be withdrawing his name, citing family issues or something like that. Is that going to be good enough for you?”
I shrugged. “I’ve got no interest in making any of this public. I just won’t let this guy back in. If he heads off to East Asshole, Indiana, and never shows his face again, that will be just fine with me.” I cocked my head to the side a touch and asked, “So where does this leave me? Shit flows downhill. Is any going to splash on you or me? I’m sorry if you catch any grief on this, Newt. That wasn’t my intention.”
He waved it off. “This won’t be a problem. He’s just one more pissant appointee. Nobody needs the grief. Those guys have already forgotten his name and your name.” He gave me a curious look. “Leaving aside your personal feelings, you think Hawkins would have really been a problem?”
“Absolutely. It’s bad enough that George Bush put us into Somalia, but Clinton is going to make it even worse. He’s a complete novice at anything overseas, except for smoking dope at Oxford. Hawkins would really make that bad!”
“You think Somalia is going to be bad? We did all right in Kuwait, and Bush put us in that.”
“I think Somalia is going to be a disaster! Bush’s problem is that he thinks he has to ‘do something’ to help. Kuwait was a real country with a real government and a real people. We had a simple problem, run the Iraqis out and turn it over to the real owners. Somalia, well, some places are just too screwed up to be fixed. You watch! We are going to be filling body bags over this and for no good reason. God help us if Clinton sends Hawkins over to supervise!” I replied.
Newt shrugged and stood up. “Well, it’s over, so keep your mouth shut and nobody will care. After the recess is over, we need to get together and make some plans to turn the heat up on the Democrats. No reason to let up on them.”
“I’ve got no problems with that. Call me or John or one of the other guys, and we can schedule a meeting at the clubhouse. I think we can still get some more mileage out of the bank and post office problems. People are going to jail over those little issues.”
He smiled, like a vulture considering his next meal. “We do this right, we can take control back of the House, at least. Maybe the Senate, too.”
“I have an idea or two. Let me get a few things down on paper and plan them out for after the recess.”
I showed Newt out through the office lobby. He stopped at the outer door and turned to me. “You know, if we do take back the House, you guys are actually going to be somewhere in the middle of the seniority ranking. Any thoughts on that?”
It was my turn to smile back. “Yeah, let me off Science or Veterans Affairs, or both. I want Armed Services or Foreign Affairs.” Those would be good payoffs for moving the Democrats out.
Newt smiled and nodded. He liked a good horse trade as much as the next politician. “For a guy who was never a politician before, you learn quickly. Let’s make this happen, and then we can worry about that sort of thing.” We shook hands and he left.
I made phone calls to the offices of Pell, Ford, and Boren, to get five minutes with each of them. One thing I had learned, both on the first trip and this one, is the importance of face to face communications and thank you’s. With Pell and Ford it was pretty straightforward — thank you for seeing me last week, sorry if I disrupted anything, I appreciate the effort you took. Equally understood was the fact that Washington is a place of give and take, and I now owed them a favor. Fair enough.
With Boren it started out the same way. I got five minutes with the man, which was all I had requested, and when I was shown into his office, I started my little spiel. “Senator, thank you for seeing me. I just wanted to thank you for listening to me last week.”
“Congressman, you’re welcome. Please have a seat,” he replied.
“Well, I didn’t want to take up your time. I just wanted to say thank you and it was appreciated. I’m sure you’re a busy man.”
He smiled but shook his head, and gestured towards an armchair in a sitting area. Leaving now would be very rude, so I had a seat, and he sat in a matching chair next to me. “I wanted to talk to you for a minute about that. You know that Newt and I looked into your story. He told me he was going to talk to you.”
“Yes, sir, he saw me the other day. That’s one reason I was making sure to make my manners with you gentlemen,” I said, smiling.
“The courtesy is appreciated. I wanted to talk to you about that mission. I talked to some people over at the Pentagon. That thing was a screw-up from the start, wasn’t it?”
“That’s as good a description as any I’ve heard, Senator,” I agreed.
“I also heard what really happened afterwards, including what the charges would have been. All the charges.” His face didn’t change when he said that, but I knew what it meant. He had heard that the dickless lieutenant had said I shot the prisoners. Boren must have pulled some strings to get that information, because I was sure it wasn’t in any sort of routine file.