«We could take the train; it’s electric.»
«Power stations pollute.»
«Airplanes pollute, too.»
«What about riding down to Washington on horseback! Like Paul Revere!»
«Horses pollute.»
«They do?»
«Ever been around a stable?»
«Oh.»
Sequoia pounded his fist again. «I’ve got it! It’s perfect!»
«What?»
«A balloon! We’ll ride down to Washington in a non-polluting balloon filled with helium. That’s the dramatic way to emphasize our opposition to this SSZ monster.»
«Fantastic!»
«Marvelous!»
The redhead was panting with excitement. «Oh, Mark, you’re so clever. So dedicated.» There were tears in her eyes.
Helper asked softly, «Uh … does anybody know where we can get a balloon? And how much they cost?»
«Money is no object,» Sequoia snapped, pounding his fist again. Then he wrung his hand; he had pounded too hard.
When the meeting finally broke up, Helper had been given the task of finding a suitable balloon, preferably one donated by its owner. I had volunteered to assist him. Sequoia would spearhead the effort to raise money for a knockdown fight against the SSZ. The redhead volunteered to assist him. They left the meeting arm in arm.
I was learning the Washington lobbying business from the bottom up, but rising fast. Two weeks later I was in the White House, no less, jammed in among news reporters and West Wing staffers waiting for a presidential news conference to begin. TV lights were glaring at the empty podium. The reporters and camera crews shuffled their feet, coughed, talked to one another. Then:
«Ladies and gentlemen: the President of the United States.»
We all stood up and applauded as she entered. I had been thrilled to be invited to the news conference. Well, actually it was Keene who’d been invited and he brought me with him, since I was the Washington rep for the SSZ project. The President strode to the podium and smiled at us in what some cynics had dubbed her rattlesnake mode. I thought she was being gracious.
«Before anything else, I have a statement to make about the tragic misfortune that has overtaken one of our finest public figures, Mark Sequoia. According to the latest report I have received from the Coast Guard—no more than ten minutes ago—there is still no trace of his party. Apparently the balloon they were riding in was blown out to sea two days ago, and nothing has been heard from them since.
«Now let me make this perfectly clear. Mr. Sequoia was frequently on the other side of the political fence from my administration. He was often a critic of my policies and actions, policies and actions that I believe in completely. He was on his way to Washington to protest our new supersonic zeppelin program when this unfortunate accident occurred.
«Mr. Sequoia opposed the SSZ program despite the fact that this project will employ thousands of aerospace engineers who are otherwise unemployed and untrainable. Despite the fact that the SSZ program will save the American dollar on the international market and salvage American prestige in the technological battleground of the world.
«And we should keep in mind that France and Russia have announced that they are studying the possibility of jointly starting their own SSZ effort, a clear technological challenge to America.»
Gripping the edges of the podium tighter, the President went on, «Rumors that his balloon was blown off course by a flight of Air Force jets are completely unfounded, the Secretary of Defense assures me. I have dispatched every available military, Coast Guard, and Civil Air Patrol plane to search the entire coastline from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras. We will find Mark Sequoia and his brave though misguided band of ecofr … er, activists—or their remains.»
I knew perfectly well that Sequoia’s balloon had not been blown out to sea by Air Force jets. They were private planes: executive jets, actually.
«Are there any questions?» the President asked.
The Associated Press reporter, a hickory-tough old man with thick glasses and a snow-white goatee, got to his feet and asked, «Is that a Versace dress you’re wearing? It’s quite becoming.»
The President beamed. «Why, thank you. Yes, it is …»
Keene pulled me by the arm. «Let’s go. We’ve got nothing to worry about here.»
I was rising fast, in part because I was willing to do the legwork (and dirty work, like Sequoia) that Keene was too lazy or too squeamish to do. He was still head of our Washington office, in name. I was running the SSZ program, which was just about the only program Anson had going for itself, which meant that I was running the Washington office in reality.
Back in Phoenix, Bob Wisdom and the other guys had become the nucleus of the team that was designing the SSZ prototype. The program would take years, we all knew, years in which we had assured jobs. If the SSZ actually worked the way we designed it, we could spend the rest of our careers basking in its glory.
I was almost getting accustomed to being called over to the West Wing to deal with bureaucrats and politicians. Still, it was a genuine thrill when I was invited into the Oval Office itself.
The President’s desk was cleared of papers. Nothing cluttered the broad expanse of rosewood except the telephone console, a black-framed photograph of her late husband (who had once also sat at that desk), and a gold-framed photograph of her daughter on her first day in the House of Representatives (D., Ark.).
She sat in her high-backed leather chair and fired instructions at her staff.
«I want the public to realize,» she instructed her media consultant, «that although we are now in a race with the Russians and the French, we are building the SSZ for sound economic and social reasons, not because of competition from overseas.»
«Yes, Ma’am,» said the media consultant.
She turned to the woman in charge of Congressional liaison. «And you’d better make damned certain that the Senate appropriations committee okays the increased funding for the SSZ prototype. Tell them that if we don’t get the extra funding we’ll fall behind the Ivans and the Frogs.
«And I want you,» she pointed a manicured finger at the research director of TURD, «to spend every nickel of your existing SSZ money as fast as you can. Otherwise we won’t be able to get the additional appropriation out of Congress.»
«Yes, Ma’am,» said Roger K. Memo, with one of his rare smiles.
«But, Madam President,» the head of the Budget Office started to object.
«I know what you’re going to say,» the President snapped at him. «I’m perfectly aware that money doesn’t grow on trees. But we’ve got to get the SSZ prototype off the ground, and do it before next November. Take money from education, from the space program, from the environmental superfund—I don’t care how you do it, just get it done. I want the SSZ prototype up and flying by next summer, when I’m scheduled to visit Paris and Moscow.»
The whole staff gasped in sudden realization of the President’s masterful plan.
«That right,» she said, smiling slyly at them. «I intend to be the first Chief of State to cross the Atlantic in a supersonic zeppelin.»
Although none of us realized its importance at the time, the crucial incident, we know now, happened months before the President’s decision to fly the SSZ to Paris and Moscow. I’ve gone through every scrap of information we could beg, borrow or steal about that decisive day, reviewing it all time and again, trying to find some way to undo the damage.
It happened at the VA hospital in Hagerstown, a few days after Mark Sequoia had been rescued. The hospital had never seen so many reporters. There were news media people thronging the lobby, lounging in the halls, bribing nurses, sneaking into elevators and even surgical theaters (where several of them fainted). The parking lot was a jumble of cars bearing media stickers and huge TV vans studded with antennas.