Landon picked at a fingernail.
“But let’s face it. The deaths of innocents are like fertilizer. Take China. Our Internet hardware manufacturers overlook political repression in order to sell them routers. Routers open the Chinese to the Internet. The Internet opens their eyes to freedom of speech and democracy.”
Gage pointed at Landon. “You’re starting to sound like Anston.”
“That’s exactly the problem, except Anston didn’t believe in democracy, only in fertilizer.”
Landon paused, then a half smile appeared on his face.
“There’s a certain irony in all of this I didn’t grasp until now. Brandon used to think of himself as my Machiavelli. What he didn’t realize was that Machiavelli believed the first act of a newly formed republic was sacrificial. It must murder the prince-and I suspect it’s something Anston never doubted.”
Landon’s eyes focused on the bookshelf behind Gage. “You know what St. Augustine says about original sin?” He looked back at Gage, but didn’t wait for an answer. “He calls it an inescapable blindness in human action. We never really know what we’re doing. And by ‘we’ I mean all of us. It’s not just Republicans or Democrats. We’re all coconspirators in our own self-deceptions. We create the most powerful industrial nation on earth, but only by funding oil-producing governments that want to destroy us. And then once in a while we wake up, have a moment of terrifying clarity, then run from it or go back to sleep pretending it was just a nightmare.” He hung his head. “Worst of all, when we most think we’re our own men, we’re really just someone else’s puppets.”
Landon inspected the cigar in his hand as if he’d never seen it before, then threw it into the wastebasket next to his credenza.
“In all these years since you gave me Augustine’s Confessions, it never crossed my mind he was talking about me.”
Landon dropped back into his chair, his arms limp in his lap. His eyes went vacant and inward for a moment, then he squinted as though searching for something far in the past. He finally focused on Gage.
“You always knew how all this would end, didn’t you?”
Gage shook his head, He hadn’t known. He had no way of knowing. And he was certain that in his heart Landon didn’t believe Gage knew. It was just that the floundering man still needed to believe that there was such a thing as perfect knowledge-both insight and foresight-with which he could have armed himself against the tragedy that now enveloped him.
“Maybe not specifically,” Landon continued. ”Maybe you couldn’t have foreseen where I am now, but from that first day on the river, you saw the hazards below the surface”-he lowered his gaze-“and all I really saw was my own reflection.”
Chapter 92
Senator Landon Meyer paused at the threshold of the Senate Radio-Television Gallery, just out of sight of the video cameras focused on the door. He looked over at Gage.
“You know where I am in the New Hampshire polls?” Landon asked.
“Does it make a difference?” Gage asked.
Landon shook his head. “Turns out it never did.”
He then stepped through the doorway into the floodlights. In three strong steps he stood behind the podium. He scanned the familiar faces before him, the sources of thousands of questions over nearly two decades. While they were always dis-satisfied with his politically polished answers, he was always forgiven because of his charming delivery.
He glanced toward his wife standing behind him, thinking that she would have made a wonderful first lady. But he knew the voters would never forgive him for Brandon, and for his own blindness. She smiled at him as though they were alone in the kitchen reading newspaper cartoons over coffee or at the dinner table after he said grace.
As Landon’s eyes turned back to the crowd, he caught sight of an NBC producer, eyes pleading for action, as if to say the networks weren’t giving up advertising revenue only so the public could watch a senator gaze at his wife.
Landon glanced back at her again, then faced the cameras and removed his notes from his suit breast pocket.
“I have served as a United States senator for the last fourteen years and have sought to represent the people and the interests of the State of California.”
He paused and scanned the standing-room-only crowd.
“What does that mean? To represent. To act for others.”
He paused again.
“Who are the people? And what is in their interest?
“Does representation mean casting my vote to reflect the polls? Or does it mean voting my conscience that tells me what’s right, what’s wrong, and what’s in the true interest of the country, regardless of what the polls might say? It means all of this and, as it turns out, a great deal more.
“I say these things as a preface to a story I need to tell not only to the people of California, but to the people of the United States, for I serve in the United States Senate, not the California state legislature. This story recounts how I became elected to that body, how it happened that I continued to serve in that body, and finally became a candidate for president.”
Landon looked toward the rear of the packed room where producers and camera operators lined the wall.
“Cognizant as I am of deadlines, news cycles, and the short attention span of the press, I shall begin with a sound bite that can be quickly digested.”
Landon stared at the NBC camera.
“Unbeknownst to me, I have been the beneficiary of both corruption at an unimaginable level and disgraceful political maneuvering that destroyed not only lives, but the reputations and careers of each of my senatorial opponents in turn.”
The crowd condensed into a stunned mass. Not a gasp. Not a stir. Not a word.
“It began twenty years ago…”
F ifteen minutes later, the press had answers to questions none of them would have ever thought to ask, but not the one Landon posed when he began.
Landon thought about the president watching in the White House, knowing Duncan was as shaken as he was.
“Now,” Landon said, “let’s return to where we began. With the matter of how I’m to represent the people of the State of California, people who were deprived of the senators they would’ve chosen had the political process not been corrupted, but in whose interests I must act.
“I return, therefore, to one of my initial questions. What is that interest? Is it a matter of polls or conscience? Is it a particular interest relating to these nominees for the Supreme Court or a general one relating to how we are to be governed? It seems to me it is all of these.”
Landon gripped the podium, shoulders square.
“The bottom line is this. I believe these two nominees are highly qualified to serve as justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. I recognize they hold views considered by many to be extreme. The fact is that in good conscience I share many of those views, and do not at all think they are extreme.
“Given the tragic death of Senator Lightfoot, and given that ninety-eight other senators have already announced their intentions, it would appear the confirmation of these nominees rests in my hands.”
Landon paused, staring at his notes, then folded them and returned them to his pocket.
“But that’s not true. In fact, these confirmations were never in my hands. They were in the hands of the people of California. Even before the nominations were made by the president, before the Senate Judiciary Committee held its hearings and sent them on to the full Senate. Indeed, even before the tragic events of last night. In truth, these nominations were in the hands of the people of California when they walked into their polling booths, when they marked their ballots or touched the computer screens.
“I firmly believe that had it not been for corruption and deceit, I wouldn’t be in a position to decide whether these nominees become justices of the Supreme Court.”