chapter 31
SENATOR Lonsdale stared up at the vote total on the board and looked around for someone to choke. She'd waited sixteen years for her party to get control of the Senate, and now with a five-person majority they couldn't even pass a simple spending resolution. She scanned the well of the Senate in search of the majority whip. She'd never liked the little pudd from Illinois and had led a very vocal opposition to his being given the post. Her dark brown eyes zeroed in on him, and she began muttering a few profanities under her breath.
Then, just as quickly as she'd started, she stopped. A placid expression washed over her face as she remembered the admonishment she'd been given by her entire staff a little over a month ago. Something about her looking old, angry, and constipated. It had taken the little pussies two full weeks to work up the courage to tell her that someone had started a Web site dedicated to her declining looks. It had been a full-blown intervention with eight of them filing into her office with a slide show from the Web site. Her chief of staff, Ralph Wassen, who had not been involved in the conspiracy, stumbled upon the intervention and was appalled. Upon seeing several of the enlarged still images of her deeply lined and contorted face, he announced, to the utter delight of all, that she looked like an angry lesbian. Wassen, in addition to being her closest advisor and friend, was also a queen. His sexual preference gave him the cover to say all kinds of politically incorrect things.
As much as it pained Lonsdale to admit it, they were right. It was as if Mother Nature had sucked all the moisture from her beautiful skin and carved deep lines all over her face. That night she'd gone home and looked through a string of recent photographs and was further depressed. It was as if turning fifty-eight had suddenly aged her a full decade. She'd put on at least five pounds, if not ten. She was getting lazy. Lonsdale was not the type to sit around and feel sorry for herself for very long, so the very next day she went on a crash diet, doubled the number of cigarettes she allowed herself from four a day to eight, and began walking and taking the steps every chance she had. She made an appointment with a dermatologist and had already completed two dermabrasion sessions that hurt like hell, but they appeared to be helping.
A month later she'd lost five pounds and was set on losing at least another five. She'd talked to her dentist about getting some veneers for her teeth and was finally convinced it was time to have a little minor face work done. Just around her eyes. None of that Botox stuff, though. She'd come across one too many of those crazy bitches at fund-raisers. They looked like freaks, walking around with that stupid, wild-eyed permafrost expression. She wasn't going to complain to her colleagues about it, but there was no doubt it was much more difficult for a woman to do this job.
As Lonsdale slid her feet into a pair of black pumps, she reminded herself to keep that placid expression on her face. Slowly but surely she was reprogramming herself to be more self-conscious about the faces she made. She stood and grabbed the bottom of her silver jacket, giving it a tug. Down the aisle she went, tucking first her shoulder-length raven black hair behind her left ear and then her right. As she reached the well, she turned right and slowed as she passed her party's leadership table.
"Wonderful job, gentlemen," she said with false sincerity. She stopped in front of the senior senator from Illinois and bent forward. With a congenial smile on her face she said, "Get your shit together, Dickie. You're embarrassing all of us."
Lonsdale left the floor and entered the cloakroom. Two of her staffers were waiting for her. A man and a woman, or more accurately, a boy and a girl. The girl had her burgundy leather briefing folder clutched tightly against her perky breasts, and was wearing a short-sleeved ivory cashmere sweater. Lonsdale suddenly resented the woman's youth. That and the fact that she was pissed about losing the vote caused her to ask a bit impatiently, "What now?"
The woman, in her early twenties, tilted her briefing folder forward and scanned her notes. "You have a photo opportunity with the Pipefitters Union..."
Lonsdale listened as her aide spoke excitedly about the day's remaining events. It was an entirely boring litany, and she unfortunately had no choice but to attend each and every one. The boy stepped forward. His name was Trent or Trevor or something like that.
"Wade Kline is waiting for you in your office."
"Which one?" Lonsdale asked, trying to sound uninterested.
"Upstairs."
As the senior female senator in her party, Lonsdale had an office in the Capitol as well as her larger one in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
"Did he say what he wants?"
"No."
Without wasting another moment, she turned and left the cloakroom. She took one step toward the stairs and then headed for the elevator. Her heart was beating fast enough over the prospect of seeing her favorite Justice Department employee. She didn't want to show up flushed and out of breath. Paula or Pastel or Pearl or whatever her name jumped into the elevator along with Trent. She waited to see which button her boss pressed. Down meant the tram over to Dirksen and the Pipefitters and up meant the handsome lawyer from the Justice Department. Lonsdale pressed the button for the fourth floor and the aide immediately began pecking an e-mail on her BlackBerry that would alert the rest of the senator's staff that she would be late for the photo op.
Lonsdale's Capitol office consisted of five rooms: a reception area that was staffed by two receptionists, a conference room, a bullpen stuffed with five legislative assistants, a good-sized office for her chief of staff, and a massive office for herself with a veranda that looked out over the Supreme Court, the Russell, Dirksen, and Hart Senate Office Buildings, and Union Station. Lonsdale knew Kline would be waiting in her office. She walked past her receptionists, ignoring their pleas for a word, and she continued straight into her office, closing the door behind her.
Kline didn't bother to stand. He was sprawled out on the leather couch, his suit coat open, his narrow waist and lean chest on display. He looked at the senator from Missouri and said, "You look fantastic. What is that, Donna Karan?"
"It is, as a matter of fact." Lonsdale placed the toe of her left foot out in front of the other foot, bent her knee, and held out her arms, striking an elegant pose. Her silver jacket and matching skirt were accessorized with a black belt, black blouse, and black pumps. She did not look fifty-eight.
"You've lost weight."
"Please." Lonsdale spun and walked over to her desk. She was extremely pleased he'd noticed.
The office looked like a European drawing room with its fifteen-foot gilded plaster ceilings, massive stone fireplace, and large oil portraits of well-fed men from centuries before. Lonsdale opened the top left-hand drawer of her desk and pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights. She held the pack up for Kline to see.
"Care to join me?"
"Why do you think I'm here?" Kline smiled. "Other than to see you, of course."
The two headed out onto the veranda, like high school kids sneaking a smoke at lunch. It was a gorgeous afternoon. The sun was out, there was a hint of humidity in the air, and the flowers were blossoming. Lonsdale looked into Kline's eyes as he lit her cigarette and she felt herself stir. She looked away and exhaled a cloud of smoke. It was his damn eyes, she told herself. They were this crazy blue gray that sucked you right in. If you looked at them for too long you'd begin to think of things that you shouldn't be thinking of in the middle of the afternoon.
"That thing you wanted me to dig into," Kline said as he finished lighting his own cigarette.
The spell was broken, and Lonsdale was momentarily confused. She shook the flustered look from her face. "What thing?"
"These black-bag guys over at Langley. Rapp and Nash."
"Oh, those two," moaned Lonsdale. "Please tell me you're getting ready to indict them."
"I wish, but at the rate things are going, we'll both be retired by the time I actually get a chance to question them."
"They're stonewalling you?"
"I wouldn't even say stonewalling. I can't track them down. For a month straight I've been requesting meetings with them and I've got nothing. I finally got Director Kennedy to show up on Friday. What a coldhearted bitch she is, by the way."
"Not my favorite person in Washington."
"Well, she and I locked horns and it wasn't pretty. I pretty much told her that if she didn't put Rapp and Nash in front of me by this Friday I'd start serving subpoenas."
"And?"
Kline took a drag and shrugged his shoulders. "The woman's a coldhearted bitch. I don't know what to tell you. She just sat there and stared back at me." Kline looked off in the distance toward Union Station and after a moment said, "To be honest, she kind of gave me the creeps."
"How so?"
"I got the impression she'd like to hurt me."
Lonsdale giggled like a little girl.
"It's not funny," Kline said with a frown. "She has a lot of power."
Lonsdale covered her mouth. She was laughing because she herself would like to hurt Kline, but probably not in the way Kennedy would like to. "Sorry... I didn't mean to be so insensitive." She reached out and touched his firm bicep. "You're a big boy. I think you're more than capable of taking care of yourself."
"Don't get me wrong. I've put a lot of nasty people away, but these guys are different. They're not your average criminal."
"I disagree. That's exactly what they are, and that's why they need to be locked up."
"Barbara," Kline said in a tone absent frustration, "I am not lacking in conviction. I firmly believe that these guys need to be brought to justice, but ignoring the fact that they are dangerous would be foolish."
"I'll grant you that point, but now is not the time to be timid. This fictitious war on terror has dragged on for far too long. Now is the time to act. Did you see the damn Post this morning?"
"Yes."
"You need to get that reporter to sit down in front of a grand jury and tell you who his sources were for that article and then you need to start handing out subpoenas."
Putting reporters under oath would not work. It had been tried by a lot of prosecutors and about all it did was ensure that the reporter would get turned into a martyr and offered a big advance for a book. "It would help," Kline said, "if you could get your committees to put some pressure on them."
"Wade... darling, I've tried that, and I will continue to put pressure on them. Nash will be appearing before the Intel Committee this afternoon. A one-front assault against these guys will never work. We need to squeeze them. We need to catch them in their lies."
She watched as Kline looked away. He took a long pull off his cigarette and frowned. "What?" she asked, too impatient to wait for him to speak his mind.
"The president."
"What about him?"
"I hear he and Kennedy are close. I've even heard he's fond of Rapp."
"Don't worry about the politics of this thing. That's my arena. Just get these bastards and make an example of them. Show the American people that we are a nation of laws." Lonsdale pointed a perfectly manicured fingernail at him and added, "You do that, Wade, and you'll be able to write your ticket in this town."