“Can the senator count on Dr. Lowell being there?”
“I’ll convey this information to Dr. Lowell exactly as you have presented it to me.”
“That’s all I can ask,” Carol said. “However, I’d like to reemphasize how extremely important this is for both the senator and for Dr. Lowell. The senator used those exact words.”
Stephanie thanked the woman, said she’d call back in fifteen minutes, and disconnected. She stared at Daniel. “This has to be one of the more bizarre episodes I’ve ever been involved in,” she said, breaking a short silence. “What’s your take?”
“What the devil could this old geezer have in mind?”
“I’m afraid there’s only one way to find out.”
“Do you really think I should go?”
“Let’s put it this way,” Stephanie said. “I think you’d be a fool not to go. Since the meeting is secret, you don’t even have to worry about losing any more self-esteem, unless you care what Ashley Butler thinks of you, and knowing what you think of him, I can’t imagine that’s the case.”
“Did you buy this Carol Manning saying she didn’t know what the meeting was about?”
“Yes, I did. I detected some hurt feelings when she said it. My sense is that the senator has something far from mainstream up his sleeve that he wasn’t even willing to share with his chief aide.”
“All right,” Daniel said with a tinge of reluctance. “Call her back and say I’ll be at the Union Station at nine.”
“That’s we will be at the Union Station,” Stephanie said. “I meant what I said to Ms. Manning. I insist on going.”
“Why not,” Daniel said. “We might as well make it a party.”
four
8:15 P.M., Thursday, February 21, 2002
It appeared to Carol that every light was blazing in the senator’s modest Arlington, Virginia, home as she turned into the driveway and came to a stop. She glanced at her watch. With the vagaries of Washington traffic, it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to manage to arrive at Union Station at exactly nine o’clock. She hoped she’d timed it right, although things were not starting out auspiciously. It had taken ten minutes longer than she’d planned to get from her apartment in Foggy Bottom out to Ashley’s house. Luckily, with her grand plan, she’d given herself an extra quarter-hour leeway.
Leaving the engine running and setting the emergency brake, Carol prepared to get out of her vehicle. But it turned out that exposing herself to the cold drizzle wasn’t necessary. Ashley’s front door opened, and the senator appeared. Behind him stood his portly wife of forty years, looking like the epitome of solid domesticity, dressed in a white, lace-fringed apron over a paisley housedress. Under the protection of the porch and following her apparent orders, he struggled to open his umbrella. What had started out that day as snow flurries had changed to steady rain.
With his face hidden beneath the inverted bowl of the black umbrella, Ashley began descending his front steps. He moved slowly and deliberately, giving Carol a moment to study the blocky, slightly stooped, heavyset man who in another life could have been a farmer or even a steelworker. For Carol, it wasn’t a particularly cheerful sight watching her boss approach. There was something distinctly depressing and pathetic about the scene. The misty air and the sepia coloring contributed, as did the monotonous click-clack of the windshield wipers as they implacably traced their repeated arcs across the wet windshield. But for Carol, it was more what she knew than what she saw. Here was a man she had respected almost to the point of reverence, for whom she’d made countless sacrifices for more than a decade, but who was now unpredictable and occasionally even mean. Despite her best efforts with the senator during the day, she still had no idea why he insisted on the upcoming clandestine and politically risky meeting with Dr. Lowell, and due to his insistence on absolute secrecy, she’d not been able to ask anyone else. To make matters worse, she couldn’t escape the feeling that Ashley had kept the reason for the meeting from her out of spite, purely because he instinctually knew how desperately she wanted to know. During the last year, thanks to a number of undeserved sarcastic comments, she sensed he envied her relative youth and good health.
Carol watched Ashley stop at the foot of the steps to make an adjustment on the flat ground. For a moment, he seemed frozen in place, a metaphor of his bullish stubbornness, a quality Carol had once admired when it involved his populist political beliefs but which now irritated her. In the past, he had fought for power to push his conservative agenda, but now it seemed he fought for power for power’s sake as though he was addicted to it. She’d always thought of him as a great man who’d know when to step aside, but now she was no longer so confident.
Ashley began walking slowly, and with his black coat, rounded shoulders, and short shuffling steps, he reminded Carol of a large penguin. He gained speed as he moved. Carol expected him to come around to the passenger side, but instead he opened the back door directly behind her. She could feel the car shake gently as he climbed in. The door slammed shut. She heard the umbrella fall to the floor.
Carol twisted around. Ashley settled back into the seat. In the dim, brownish-gray light of the car’s interior, his face appeared pallid, almost ghostlike, and his coarse features retreated back into his flesh as if dimpled into a loaf of unbaked bread. His thinning gray hair that typically knew its place was frazzled like a clump of steel wool. The lenses of his thick-framed glasses eerily reflected back the lights of his house.
“You’re late,” Ashley complained, without a trace of his Southern accent.
“I’m sorry,” Carol responded by reflex. She was always apologizing. “But I think we’ll be fine. Should we talk before we head back into town?”
“Drive!” Ashley commanded.
Carol felt a wave of anger wash over her. But she held her tongue, knowing full well what the consequences might be if she voiced her feelings. Ashley had the memory of an elephant for any perceived slights, and the maliciousness of his revenge was legendary. Carol put the hulking Suburban in gear and backed out of the driveway.
The route was simple with limited access roads most of the way. Carol worked her way over to the 395 highway with reassuring ease by catching all the traffic lights green. On the main artery, she was pleased to find less traffic than there had been fifteen minutes earlier, and she accelerated unimpeded to highway speed. Sensing her timing was going to be fine, she relaxed a degree, but as they neared the Potomac River, a commercial jetliner leaving Reagan National Airport thundered overhead. It sounded to Carol as if it were a mere fifty feet above them. As tense as she was, the sudden, reverberating noise startled her enough to cause the car to momentarily swerve.
“If I did not know better,” Ashley said, reverting back to his signature Southern drawl and speaking up for the first time since his rude command, “I would have sworn on my mother’s memory that jetliner’s turbulence extended all the way down here to this highway. Are you fully in command of this vehicle, my dear?”
“Everything is fine,” Carol said curtly. At the moment, she even found Ashley’s theatrical accent aggravating, with the knowledge of how easily he could turn it on and off.
“I’ve been perusing the dossier you and the rest of the staff put together on the good doctor,” Ashley said after a short pause. “In fact, I’ve darn near committed it to memory. I have to commend you and the others. You all did a fine job. I believe I know more about that boy than he does himself.”
Carol nodded but didn’t reply. Silence returned until they entered the tunnel running beneath the grassy expanse of the Washington Mall.
“I know you are displeased and cross with me,” Ashley said suddenly. “And I know why.”