Part 50 (1/2)
”You're done with the campaign, then?”
”For now,” he said. ”I've been called back. Your dad's been perfect for the last couple of weeks, there's no point in my tagging along anymore . . . we have other patients to work on in California.” Zeldo reached into his satchel and pulled out an unmarked manila envelope, half an inch thick. ”I've put together some data that is relevant to your efforts,” he said, ”and I thought you might like a hard copy.”
”Thanks,” she said, taking the envelope.
She sensed that something was going on. Something in Zeldo's tone of voice, his careful and vague phrasing, reminded her of the conversation in James's bedroom on the Fourth of July.
”Well, stay in touch,” she said.
He seemed inordinately pleased by this offer. ”Thank you,” he said. ”I will. I respect your activities very much and I respect you too. I can hardly say how much,” he added, looking significantly over his shoulder.
”Tell your dad I'm going to take a few liberal arts courses, as per his suggestion. Good-bye.” Then he turned around, slowly and decisively, as if forcing himself to do it, and walked toward the elevators.
The envelope was full of laser printer output. Almost all of it was graphs and charts tracking various new developments in William A Cozzano's brain. There was a cover letter, as follows: Dear Mary Catherine, Burn this letter and stir up the ashes when you are finished with it. Your suite has a working fireplace that will be suitable. Let me make a few general statements first.
Politics is s.h.i.+t. Power is s.h.i.+t. Money is s.h.i.+t. I became a scientist because I wanted to study things that weren't s.h.i.+t. I got involved with the Radhakrishnan Inst.i.tute because I was excited to take part in a project that was at the leading edge of everything, where neurology and electronics and information theory and philosophy all came together.
Then I learned that you can't escape politics and power and money even at the leading edge. I was about to resign when you came back to Tuscola and insisted on being made the campaign physician. This did not make Salvador happy but they had no choice but to let you in.
I knew what you were up to before you even started: you were putting your father through therapies designed to create new pathways in his brain that by-pa.s.sed the biochips. I volunteered to stay on and follow you and your father on the campaign because I knew that otherwise Salvador would put someone else in my place, and he would eventually figure out your plan, and tip off the bad guys.
For the last three months I have been tracking your work, following developments in your father's brain through the biochip. I have not said anything because I didn't want to tip them off, so I will say it now: you are on the right track. Keep it up. In another four months (Inauguration Day) he should be able to function without the biochip, not perfectly, but good enough.
I have enclosed a schematic for a small device you can solder together using parts from Radio Shack. Itwill emit noise in the microwave band over small ranges (<100 ft.).=”” this=”” noise=”” will=”” cause=”” your=”” dad's=”” biochips=”” to=”” put=”” themselves=”” in=”” helen=”” keller=”” mode.=”” you=”” might=”” find=”” it=””>
Let me know if I can be of further use. I am fond of you and I hope, perhaps fatuously, that one day if we cross paths again you will allow me to take you out to dinner or something.
Pete (Zeldo) Zeldovich Mary Catherine wandered out on to the suite's balcony. The harbor view was magnificent.
Immediately to the north she could see the skysc.r.a.pers of downtown Boston's financial district standing out against the brilliant blue sky of the New England autumn. Logan Airport was just a couple of miles away, directly across the harbor, and beyond that she could see the Atlantic stretching away so far that the curvature of the earth was almost visible.
The airport water taxi was just pulling away from the hotel wharf. Zeldo was standing in the back, his Hawaiian s.h.i.+rt blazing among dark business suits. He had his legs planted wide against the rolling of the small boat, and he was looking directly up at her.
She waved to him. He raised his fist over his head in a gesture of solidarity, drawing stares from the men in suits. Then he turned away.
Mary Catherine went back to the suite, burned the letter from Zeldo in the fireplace, and erased the files on her dad's computer.
The schematic for Zeldo's microwave transmitter was buried in the middle of a stack of graphs. He had hand-drawn it in ballpoint pen on a sheet of hotel stationery. It was a network of inscrutable electronic hieroglyphs: zigzags, helices, stacks of parallel lines, each one neatly labeled with Radio Shack part numbers. Mary Catherine folded it up and put it in her wallet.
52.
ELEANOR'S MOTORCADE STEAMED ACROSS THE WOODROW WILSON Bridge, and then immediately on the Maryland side, took the exit to the Inner Loop. To the left was the sewage plant, Boiling Air Force Base, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Navy Yards. To the right, wooded hills, and then the projects, and then the decay of Southeast - one of the great free fire zones in urban America. Eleanor had been for three funerals of friends and relatives who had been shot to death there, and on her way to the third one she had almost been run off the road by a careening SWAT van.
D.C. was a great, historically black city that had been colonized, in a few places, by rich whites. Lacking a traditional organized crime network, it had become the battleground of a drug war among competing groups: Jamaicans, Haitians, New York elements, and home-grown Was.h.i.+ngtonians competing for the lucrative trade to service the insatiable demand of the Beltway professionals. The police could only wait until the ”market worked itself out,” as one police official put it. Once turfs and boundary lines had been established, the murder, it was thought, would stop.
Instead the violence had infected a whole new generation with the notion of the cheapness of human life, and the flow of weapons into the region that made semiautomatics available to even preteens. The doctors who worked emergency rooms in the District had become some of the world's leading experts on the treatment of gunshot wounds. During the Gulf War they had been sent straight to the front lines, where they felt right at home.
Awaiting Eleanor was the Lady Wilburdon Gunshot Wound Inst.i.tute, an ugly, brand-new, fortresslike structure built on the bulldozed foundations of the first of the War Against Poverty projects. Its architecturereflected its function, which was to treat people involved in deadly combat. The place had been made secure and bulletproof to discourage shooters from coming by to finish off their victims while they were being worked on by the doctors.
The only shooters here now were carrying cameras. Eleanor got out of her limo and followed her advance person through a wall of photographers and cameramen. She made her way, along with her Secret Service escort, to a small auditorium in the inst.i.tute. Already present on the stage were the Mayor of D.C.; the medical director of the inst.i.tute, who was a young black Gulf War veteran named Dr. Cornelius Gary; and the founder and namesake, an imposing Englishwoman named Lady Guenevere Wilburdon. An empty seat awaited Eleanor.
”Ms. Richmond,” Lady Wilburdon said, extending her hand, ”it's a pleasure to meet you. I look forward to your inauguration.”
”Thank you so much, Lady Wilburdon, but we do have to go through the election.”
”Pfft,” Lady Wilburdon said, and waved her hand as if shooing flies away.
Eleanor repressed an urge to laugh. This was exactly the kind of att.i.tude that she had sported, back before she was a candidate.
They were not able to converse anymore before the ceremony began. It opened with a presentation of songs by the ma.s.sed choirs of several local churches, a lengthy, involved oratory-c.u.m-prayer by the Mayor, and the presentation of Dr. Cornelius Gary, the executive director of the inst.i.tute. Who in turn presented Lady Wilburdon, who said nothing except to introduce Eleanor, who dedicated the inst.i.tute.
”It was nice to have met you, Lady Wilburdon,” Eleanor said after it was over.
”Not so fast, Ms. Richmond,” Lady Wilburdon said. ”We are going to have a chat.”
”I would like nothing better, but my schedule- ”Arrangements have been made,” Lady Wilburdon said firmly.
On their way out the front doors they had to jump out of the way of an incoming gurney: the inst.i.tute's first patient, a thirteen-year-old boy who had been gunshot with a .357 Magnum.
Eleanor's advance person explained it to her in the motorcade. Eleanor's next two engagements had both been cancelled at the last minute. She had a couple of free hours. Nature abhors a vacuum and Lady Wilburdon had rushed in to plug the gap. They would be having lunch at the Willard.
It was a small lunch too - just Eleanor, Lady Wilburdon, and her secretary, Miss Chapman. Lady Wilburdon used both force of personality and sheer physical bulk to eject all of Eleanor's hangers-on from the room. Then they sat at the table together and lunched on tiny sandwiches.
”I should explain that I knew Bucky,” Lady Wilburdon said.
”Bucky?”
”Salvador. The fellow who was shot by the madman across the river and exploded in front of the sus.h.i.+ bar. It is tasteless, I know, but I have become inured.”
”I didn't know him myself,” Eleanor said. ”All I know is that he ran the company that does media consulting for our campaign. And that Cy Ogle has taken over from him.”
”Bucky was the very embodiment of low cunning,” Lady Wilburdon said. ”Impressive in a superficial way.
But flashy.” She said this word with the same intonation she might have used if she were calling him a child molester. ”In a way it is surprising that the Network hired him. Normally we have higher standards. But we are in an age when high standards are no longer fas.h.i.+onable.”
”Network? He worked for one of the television networks?”
Lady Wilburdon rolled her eyes. ”Certainly not. Not even Bucky would do that. You need to know about this, as you will be spending the next eight years - possibly the next sixteen - in a position of great responsibility.”
”We have to win the election.”
”You will,” Lady Wilburdon said. ”We have solved the problem of elections.”
It was somewhat later in the afternoon. Lady Wilburdon had dipped into a bottle of sherry and held forth at some length on the subjects of Bucky, Ogle, Cozzano, and the functioning of the PIPER 100. Eleanor listened politely, soaked it all up, and made up her mind that she would not try to figure out until later whether this woman was completely out of her mind or telling the truth.It would be easy enough to pa.s.s her off as a dingbat. But her words explained a lot. From time to time Eleanor would feel an uncomfortable shock of recognition as Lady Wilburdon's explanations matched up perfectly with what she herself had noticed. Consciously she kept an open mind. Subconsciously she had long ago decided that everything Lady Wilburdon said was true.