Then he was there, confronted with the metal detector, people pushing him from behind, and all he could do was give himself up to the force of the crowd, the pressure of history, and walk on through.
Nothing happened. As he kept on walking with the crowd now filling the main floor of William A. Cozzano’s National Town Meeting, becoming invisible and anonymous, he was overcome with relief, which showed up as a vivid green on the monitors in the Eye of Cy and at ODR headquarters in Pentagon City.
The National Town Meeting was a political convention in all but name, and it followed some of the same protocols. One of these was the hierarchy of introductions. It wouldn’t do just to have the nominee stroll out on stage and start talking. He had to be introduced by someone. Preferably by someone very, very important. And anyone who was important enough to make that introduction was, likewise, too important to step out in front of an ice-cold audience and just start talking. He would have to be introduced by someone else. That person had to be important enough that his role as introducer did not seem to belittle the stature of the introduced . . .
Suffice it to say that the first person who stepped out in front of the microphones that evening was as completely anonymous as any person could be. His job was to get the attention of the crowd. To sever all of the conversations that had sprung up among the people standing shoulder to shoulder on the convention floor. Then he introduced an alderman, who introduced a former mayor of Chicago, who introduced a former Governor of New York, who introduced a movie star, who introduced a former Secretary of State, who introduced Governor William A. Cozzano. At each stage of the hierarchy, the dull roar of bored conversation diminished and the excitement of the crowd built.
Twenty thousand people were in the hall. The original roster of the National Town Meeting had been ten thousand, but these people were just statistical abstracts who had been snatched off the streets and transported into town to spout their opinions and represent their demographic groups. Many of them supported Cozzano, many didn’t, and the ones that did, did so in the same moderate, reasonable way that most average people supported political candidates. Which was to say that, while they might vote for Cozzano, they would not be willing to paint his name across their foreheads and jump up and down screaming at every mention of his name.
Consequently, Cy Ogle had brought in an additional ten thousand people who would do exactly that. They tended to stand closer to the dais, crowding the National Town Meeting participants into the back of the hall. The fact that these riotous supporters were not the same as the ten thousand average Americans who had been appearing on TV all week was not, of course, explained to the nationwide television audience, which was watching on no fewer than eight networks.
This was a good thing for Floyd Wayne Vishniak, because, until tonight, you couldn’t have gotten into the convention center without a special National Town Meeting photo ID. Vishniak didn’t have one. But neither did any of the other ten thousand fanatical Cozzano supporters who had packed the hall tonight.
Tables had been set up at the back of the hall and piled high with Cozzano paraphernalia: signs, bumper stickers, skimmers, buttons. Vishniak scored an armful of stuff and festooned himself like the hard-core Cozzano supporter that he, in fact, was. He even filled out a little COZZANO FOR PRESIDENT stick-on name tag: HELLO, MY NAME IS Sherman Grant. He was amid relatively glum, drab National Town Meeting participants who had now been relegated to the outer darkness. As the hierarchy of introductions rose toward its peak, he shouldered his way through them, working toward center stage.
Like a lot of other secretaries of state, the one who introduced Cozzano had not been allowed to die a natural political death. He had resigned or been forced out, or something like that, in the middle of a term. Everyone concerned had agreed that it was over a question of principle on which reasonable people could honestly disagree, which gave this man the image of a person who was willing to stake his job on a matter of principle. As such, he was exactly the right guy to introduce Cozzano.
He delivered a lengthy and somewhat less than thrilling address about his career in big-time Washington politics and how disgusted he had been by the decadence and corruption of it all. He talked about the need for change. Finally, his voice began to rise in pitch, he started to pump the crowd back up out of the comatose state into which he himself had placed them, to pull them back in from the lines at the rest rooms, and by the time he bent forward to shout the name of William A. Cozzano into his microphone, he was completely inaudible, even to himself: thousands of people were screaming the name.
Cozzano appeared on the stage, holding hands with Eleanor Richmond. Behind them were four younger people: Mary Catherine and James Cozzano, and Clarice and Harmon Richmond, Jr., all holding hands.
The screaming, and the sound of the air horns, seemed loud enough to split the molecules in the hot sweaty air of the convention hall. The candidates and their families stood in a pool of blue carbon-arc light that set them apart from everything else, which now looked dim and yellowish by comparison, like a TV screen blaring in the middle of an antique living room.
It was just like when the Quad Cities Whiplash scored a winning goal with one second remaining in a playoff game, thought Floyd Wayne Vishniak, standing just below the dais, a stone’s throw from William A. Cozzano.
He had a clear shot from here. But shooting him was not really part of the plan. The idea was not to hurt Cozzano, but to protect him.
Cozzano was a great man. A hero. The only honest politician in the United States. But even a great man could be led astray by the forces of evil, and Vishniak had been forced to the conclusion that it was happening to Cozzano right now.
Why couldn’t anyone else figure it out? It was so obvious. They were all stupid. The world was full of morons. In all of the United States, only a tiny number were capable of seeing the truth.
They knew, of course. The people who were manipulating Cozzano had access to all kinds of secret FBI and CIA files. They could use their computers and satellites to pry into people’s school records, police records, and bank accounts. They had figured out that Floyd Wayne Vishniak, and a few other people around the country, would see through the charade and would represent a threat to their conspiracy.
They couldn’t just send out hit men to kill Vishniak and the others. No, that was just a little too obvious. Instead they were taking the subtle approach. All the way across Illinois, Vishniak had been laughing at himself. To think he had actually believed the ridiculous story that the little Jew had told him! “We’re doing research on public opinion and we want you to wear this Dick Tracy watch.”
Research on Floyd Wayne Vishniak’s brain waves was more like it. They were watching him. Waiting for him to figure out the conspiracy and make his move. And he had played into their hands. He had worn the watch. He had even sent them letters, explaining his opinions in detail, and in these letters, he had made the incredibly stupid mistake of tipping them off to the fact that he was suspicious.
He could have just taken the watch off his wrist and been free of it, but he was a little smarter than that. To take the watch off his wrist at this point would probably mean certain death. They would send out a hit man to get him.
To hell with a hit man. The watch probably was booby-trapped. It probably had a little needle coated with shellfish toxin, and if he tried to take it off now, that needle, activated by a satellite transmission from ODR headquarters, would jab into the underside of his wrist and shoot the poison straight into his vein. But as long as he kept wearing the watch, they’d think he had still been duped. He could continue his careful reconnaissance of the Cozzano campaign.
This was the first step: to get close to Cozzano, to get a good look at his security apparatus, and so memorize the faces of the people who were close to him. Not the obvious ones like Eleanor Richmond and Mary Catherine—they were just pawns too—but the men in suits who hovered around the edges, just out of reach of the arc light’s rainbow-ting
ed border.
The platform was huge, as big as the stage for a major rock concert, and it was hollow, and all of the mysterious men in suits had special access to the cleverly concealed doors and stairways that led beneath. All the doors were guarded by uniformed cops who would only let certain people through; you had to have a special backstage pass around your neck. But from time to time when some bigshot went in or out, a door would swing open for a few seconds, giving Vishniak a glimpse into the hidden world under Cozzano’s feet. What he saw confirmed everything he’d been thinking: thick black cables snaking everywhere, and banks of television monitors, men wearing radio headsets, talking on phones and typing on computers. And in the center of it all, hard to glimpse through the tangle of technicians and cables and structural supports, sitting right in the middle of the web, was a semitrailer rig, a nice new one. He couldn’t see enough of it to read the words on its side, but he didn’t have to; you could recognize it from its color scheme; it was a GODS truck.
He took a good look at the people under the platform whenever those doors opened up. These were the ones who were controlling Cozzano’s mind. The ones who, sometime between now and Election Day, were going to be taking nine-millimeter bullets between the eyes, fired from Floyd Wayne Vishniak’s plastic gun.
Vishniak jumped up and down and screamed along with the crowd. “I’ll save you, Governor Cozzano! I’ll get you out of this conspiracy or die trying!” But his words of encouragement were lost in the tumult.
forty-seven
ELEANOR DIDN’T get a real chance to talk to William A. Cozzano until several hours after the announcement. She had met him once, briefly, prior to the debate, and spoken with him in formal circumstances, in a conference room full of flacks and advisers, before the announcement. After the announcement they had spent most of their time partying in the ballroom of Cozzano’s hotel. This had not been a real party, of course, any more than a talk show appearance was a real conversation; it had been a staged event, and she had had to stay on her toes the entire time. She knew, without being told, that she was going to have to get in the habit of holding her tongue more than she was used to, and try to avoid making gaffes.
Finally, shortly before midnight, she and Cozzano and Mary Catherine got together in Cozzano’s hotel suite, on the top floor of the hotel, naturally. The women changed out of their party dresses and into comfortable, casual clothes, and they had a nightcap up on the balcony.
She had known about William A. Cozzano for many years and she had always been a bit put off by the hyper-macho foundations of his image: war and football. He had always seemed like the type who’d be great for smoking cigars and shooting wild game with corporate CEOs, but who wouldn’t be able to handle the subtle nuances of national politics, who wouldn’t really grasp women’s issues.
After about five minutes on the balcony with him, she decided she was wrong. He wasn’t a macho shithead at all. He was courtly in an almost European way and he had a fine, self-deprecating sense of humor. He had an easy rapport with his daughter that told Eleanor everything about what kind of man he was.
They ended up conversing for more than an hour. Cozzano had a penchant for anecdotes and he told several of them. Toward the end of the evening, Eleanor could tell that this was beginning to make Mary Catherine slightly uneasy. She would shift in her chair and say, “Oh, Dad!” when he was beginning to launch into a story. And as he was telling these stories, she would watch his face intently and occasionally frown or bite her lip.
Eleanor wasn’t quite sure why. Cozzano liked to talk, but this was not senile rambling by any means. It didn’t make Eleanor uncomfortable. He told his stories concisely and they always had a point that was germane to the conversation. But all they did was make Mary Catherine agitated.
It looked to Eleanor as though father and daughter had some talking to do, and so finally, a little after one in the morning, she excused herself, insisting that she could find her own way down to the lobby and back to her own hotel. She wanted to enjoy her last evening of freedom before her full-time Secret Service contingent kicked in the following morning.
The elevator came quickly—demand was low at this time of the morning—and she climbed on and punched the button for the lobby. When the doors closed, she found herself alone in a room for the first time since Mary Catherine had come to see her earlier that day. She was exhausted. She dropped her tote bag on the floor, sagged against the wall of the elevator, closed her eyes, and heaved an enormous sigh.
This was a type of pressure she’d never known before. Since her first meeting with Cozzano earlier today, not a second had gone by without her photograph being taken. It boggled the mind to think about a lifestyle in which you could never pick your nose, never allow your hair or your face to get messy.
The elevator slowed. Eleanor opened one eye a crack and saw that they were pausing on the tenth floor. She closed her eye again, content to spend another few minutes relaxing before she exited back into public life again—no doubt, photographers would be waiting on the sidewalk.
The doors opened and Eleanor sensed someone climbing on board. Remembering that she was now a role model, she forced herself to open her eyes and stand up straight. It was a thin man in a suit. He had very short hair and burning, hyperactive eyes. He was staring at her. His eyes dropped to her tote bag.
“Whatcha got there?” he said, brusquely.
“My stuff,” she said, unable to come up with anything more eloquent at this time of the morning.
“What’s this?” he said, bending over and reaching for it.
The tote bag was just a cheap freebie given out by her travel agent in Alexandria. Eleanor had brought it along precisely because it was so flimsy that it could be wadded up and stuffed into other luggage. Tonight it had come in handy for carrying a change of clothes. Right now she was wearing jeans and an old sweatshirt with TOWSON STATE printed across the front. Her party dress, jewelry, and purse were all in the tote bag. The purse was on top. As the man in the suit bent down, she followed his gaze, and saw that the strap of the purse—a heavy gold-plated chain, a la Chanel—was dangling out. His hand reached out, quick as a snake, grabbed the chain, and yanked, taking the purse out with it.
“Hey!” she said, and grabbed at the chain. But he yanked the purse away as her hand was closing around it, ripping it out of her hand and bending a couple of nails back.
She’d heard of these guys: well-dressed thieves who wandered around in posh hotels late at night, snatching purses and picking pockets. They’d be in the lobby any second and then this guy would be in trouble. “Goddamn it,” she said, and kicked him in the knee.
“You bitch,” he said. He bent down, got one shoulder into her solar plexus, and used the thrust of both legs to body-slam her into the wall of the elevator. Her head snapped backward against the wall, which didn’t cause any serious damage but did leave her disoriented; she slid down the wall and collapsed to the floor with her legs sprawling, and realized that she could not draw a breath.
The man loomed in front of the elevator’s control panel. He had pulled out a huge keychain, the kind that’s attached to a spring-loaded reel on the belt, and shoved a tubular key into the switch at the base of the panel. He rotated the switch one notch and then pressed the button beneath the one for the lobby.
The door opened a moment later. This was not the lobby of the hotel: she saw barren concrete walls, harshly illuminated with cheap industrial lights, and steel doors with numbers painted on them. The man turned the key switch one more time and the elevator froze in position with the doors open. She still couldn’t breathe. This was the first time she’d had the wind knocked out of her since the second grade.
“Get out,” the man said, reaching down to grab her wrist. He yanked hard and trudged out into the corridor. He wasn’t so much helping her to her feet as he was dragging her over the floor. Eleanor hardly cared; the lack of oxygen was a more immediate concern than this guy’s bad manners. She ended up tumbl
ed in a heap on the floor next to a steel door in the corridor, close to the elevator. The keychain jingled once again, the door swung open on a big room with a few people in it.
Finally she drew in a breath. Her lungs had constricted, her airway was clenched shut, and the air passing through it made an ugly sobbing noise. But it felt good. She forced that breath out and drew in another one. Color vision returned. Her panic subsided.
In the meantime, a couple of other men in suits had stepped to the door, grabbed her arms, hauled her up off the floor, and dragged her into the room. They sat her down on a chair. The room contained four cheap steel desks, chairs to go with them, a couch, and a table with a coffee machine. In the corner was some kind of a communications setup: a phone switchboard and a two-way radio.
Eleanor closed her eyes and just concentrated on breathing for a while. But when she closed her eyes, her head began to swim around; she was still dizzy from having it slammed into the wall. She kept her eyes open just enough to get a strong visual fix on one object: a cheesy pinup of a woman with huge breasts, dressed half in a cop uniform and half in sexy lingerie, a pistol stuck into the band of her fishnet stocking, dangling a set of handcuffs from her finger.
Finally she recovered enough to get pissed. “What the hell is going on here!?” she said, and rose from her chair. But someone gripped the collar of her sweatshirt from behind, twisted it tight around her neck, and jerked her back down into the chair. “Shut up, sister,” a voice said. “You should know better than to make trouble.”
Then they grabbed her arms and pulled them around behind her back, behind the back of the chair. She heard a high zipping noise and felt something go tight around her wrists: plastic handcuffs. She couldn’t move her arms.