His own capacity for adjustment sometimes amazed him; perhaps it was his real secret — and people were always asking him his “secret.” In fifty-six years, for example, he had gotten used to being a Jew in Poland, then a Pole in the Bronx. He’d gotten used to Harvard, first as student, then as professor. Then he’d gotten used to government, to politics. And with politics, power. And with power, celebrity. And with celebrity —
Lights.
It seemed a journey from the darkness of ignorance to the lights of knowledge and in more than the metaphorical sense. Literally: Lights. He lived in them and sometimes felt as though his eyes would burn out from the strain of the flashbulbs, the glare of the TV minicams, as they were called (he knew the latest technical jargon), or, as now, the lights of a television studio.
This silly woman counted herself an expert on world affairs. She was a great toucher, as though her brains were in her fingertips. Even on the air she’d reach across and press them with gentle greed against his plump legs, and her eyes would radiate the warmth of love — or the warmth of enough barbiturates to flatten a dinosaur; it was difficult to say which — as she asked some astonishingly stupid question about the State of the World.
It was Danzig’s habit — indeed, almost his trademark — that he consider gravely each nuance, each phrase, solemnly tensing his forehead, willing the light to drain from his eyes, before answering. He had studied himself on television — in fact, the administration in whose service he had labored as Security Advisor and Secretary of State (Oh, Glorious Days!) had paid a media consulting firm $50,000 to improve his televisability — and knew that his charm, so charismatic with one or two people, or small groups, or meetings, or parties, almost vanished on the airwaves, where he became an ominous, pedantic screwball. Thus he’d adopted (at the consultant’s expensive counsel) the camouflage of the little professor. He even tended to overstate the slight Polish accent left in his syllables, on the ground that it forced reporters to listen more carefully, so they were less inclined to garble the quotes.
“And so, Dr. Danzig, in conclusion, would you say that we are again to enter a period of chill? Is the Cold War to begin again, or is there a thaw in sight?” She touched his knee again and looked at him warmly with those vacant, bagged-out eyes. You could have flown a plane through those pupils. More irritating, it was a question which proved conclusively that she had been paying not an iota’s attention during the past several minutes. Still, this network paid him a handsome yearly retainer to fly up to New York once a week or so, and perform like a seal; and so he would.
But as Danzig took just an instant to formulate a response to the idiotic query, blinking against the fierce light, he was aware of several other aspects of his own circumstances.
He was aware that though this woman was stupid, and vain, and frighteningly trivial, he’d like to make love to her just the same, even taking into account that as a rule television women were so punchy on barbs or their own faces, in bed they were rotten. Still, she was a star; and to have her was in a certain way to have America. Not to ignore the merely physical, however, of late he’d become conscious of his own long-sublimated libido, a buried secret self. In him, deep down, beneath the intellectual, beneath the political figure, beneath the celebrity, beneath even the old Jew: something prehistoric, primordial, a lecher, a rapist. He’d never needed sex before; now he thought of it all the time. He feared it would consume him; he half wanted it to.
But serious matters also consumed him: he was aware that the first volume of his memoirs — Missions for the White House — had just dropped two notches on the Times best-seller list, to Number 9, and that his paperback auction floor in Great Britain had been a meager £2,000, a great disappointment.
He was further aware that he was contractually obligated to deliver a second volume of Missions for the White House, the years 1973–1976, within two years; and that he did not want to. He faced that particular mission with an enormous reluctance, weariness even. There was, in fact, over half a ton of documents stored in his office in Washington and he had not even begun to examine them, and they would have to be absolutely mastered before he could ever begin to deliver up his vision of the past.
He was aware that the floor manager — more TV jargon — was standing just beside the bulky gray camera, circling his finger madly, signaling in the private language of television to speed it up, already.
And he was aware that standing a few feet behind the director, with a mild look on his calm face, a pinkish, healthy hue that set off his gray pinstripe suit, was an old friend and antagonist, Sam Melman of the Central Intelligence Agency.
“Karen,” Danzig said, “these next years will be a test of our will, our nerve, our resolve as never before in human history. The Soviet Union must be put on notice that its raiding parties into the free world cannot and will not be tolerated. In this, I firmly support the President and the Secretary of State.”
“Thank you, Dr. Joseph Danzig.” She turned to the camera, smiled in brainless glee, and said, “And now to Terry, with this word.”
“Cut to ad,” somebody said. Onto a monitor a detergent commercial sprang to immediate life.
“Good, Kay, that was fine” — the godly voice from the booth. “You too, Doc, nicely done.”
“You’re a pro, Joe,” said Kay — only the millions knew her as Karen. “You even read the camera cues, don’t you?”
God, she was a beautiful woman.
“I have been on television a few other times,” he said and she laughed. Beauty began with the teeth and hers were extraordinary. Her mouth. A shiver ran through him as he contemplated it. He ached for her. Now that the cameras were off them, she was not touching him. He wished she would. A beautiful, stylish woman. He ached for her ….
But she was up, unhooking her mike, and with a last nod raced back to the show’s main set, which was surprisingly close by, just a few feet away, in fact.
The lights flashed off, leaving Danzig in darkness as he stood and demiked himself. He’d have to get the makeup off before he left — he looked like a Hamburg tart. He had a speech before the Council of Life Underwriters today at noon, for $7,500. As he unclipped the mike, his bodyguard — a shadow, but a shadow with a.357 magnum — slipped discreetly into place a step back. Uckley today, the ex-marine — and a step behind came Sam Melman, with his bland, pleasant smile.
“Hello, Dr. Danzig,” the intelligence executive said.
“Hello, Sam.”
No hand was offered. Melman stood in his quiet suit — he must be here alone, Danzig realized in amazement, for he saw no entourage of earnest young men, no staff to open doors and call cabs and get coats, which surely a comer like Melman would have by this time earned — and waited patiently. He was a deputy director now, was he not? They’d been curiously friendly adversaries years back on the 4 °Committee, when Danzig had been the White House adviser and Melman the slick Agency liaison.
“Has World War Three begun?” Danzig joked, for what else would bring a hotshot like Melman up from Langley to intercept him this early — not yet eight?
Melman smiled quietly — he had a deceptive easy warmth about him for such an ambitious man, a charm not unlike Danzig’s own. A clever man, it was said, who if he played his cards right might one day be Director of Central Intelligence. Perhaps even now he had begun to fish for allies.
“Hello, Dr. Danzig. No, it hasn’t, at least not the last time I checked. A certain matter has come up and I thought I might presume on our earlier relationship for a little chat.” Sam was smooth; Sam was facile. His modest smile and warm eyes beckoned to Danzig.