The sound of Leopold’s voice outside his door brought him clattering to his feet; he knocked open the desk’s central drawer as he stood. He slid a pile of new pens and pencils that had been left for him on top of the desk into the drawer, and as he did, he felt something brush his fingertips. He pulled the drawer further open, looked down, and extricated a folded scrap of white memo paper. U Chicago, 2,4-D 2,4,5-T cereal grains broadleaf crops, it read. An inscrutable relic, perhaps from the previous occupant. Leopold knocked from the open doorway and Charlie absentmindedly tucked the scrap into his pocket, not wanting to be seen wasting his time on such nonsense. He began removing books from the box on his desk just as Leopold entered. Why does she make me feel like an errant schoolboy? he wondered as he looked at her expectantly.
“There’s a regular poker game among some of the veterans,” she said. “Congressman Strongfellow holds it in his office. His secretary just called to ask if you’d like to join them. Are you free Monday? It will be a good chance for you to meet some of your colleagues.”
It made sense that other veterans would be flocking to Strongfellow, a former POW who’d escaped from behind enemy lines; his war heroism was legendary. “Yes, I’d love to go,” Charlie said, thinking he’d make a few friends and maybe even recruit some allies against Goodstone. Which reminded him: “Miss Leopold, if you have a minute, I’ve been meaning to tell you about this thing that happened at Appropriations yesterday.”
“Oh, I heard all about it.” She closed the office door behind her and stood almost at attention across from Charlie. “Quite a declaration of independence.”
“What have you heard?”
She frowned. “Mixed reviews, I would say.”
“I’m not giving a dime to that company,” Charlie said.
“Well, now, Congressman—” she said, then hesitated.
“Go ahead.”
“Sir,” she said, “do you want me to help you, the way I helped Congressman Van Waganan? Or would you prefer a yes-woman to just tell you your teeth are white and your shoes are shiny? Because I can do that, and it will be a lot easier. For me. Not for you. The opposite for you.”
Charlie smiled. “Okay,” he said, “you’re right. Tell me. What else are you hearing?”
“Nothing you wouldn’t expect,” she said in her charming Southern lilt. She was from Durham, North Carolina, and her voice conveyed warmth and a debutante’s coy wisdom. “You haven’t paid any dues and you weren’t even elected, so how dare you mouth off; you’re only here because of your father’s connections; and, of course, why on earth did you get Van Waganan’s seat on Appropriations?”
“Right,” said Charlie. “I would probably think that about me too. But that’s not really relevant to the point I was making, which seems more important than how I got here.”
He returned to the business of unpacking, and Leopold put down her clipboard to help. The next box contained books from his work library; Leopold handed him volumes to line his mahogany bookshelves. The Oxford English Dictionary, Richard Hofstadter’s The American Political Tradition, The New Yorker Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Album…
After a few minutes of companionable silence, Charlie asked Leopold: “Did you work for Congressman Van Waganan long?”
“I did,” she said. “He was here for fifteen years and I was by his side for all of them. I started as his secretary and worked my way up to office manager.”
“Impressive.” Charlie stacked and then strained to lift all six volumes of Winston Churchill’s series on the Second World War. Leopold stepped forward, took the top two volumes, and placed them alongside the others on the shelf.
Charlie cleared his throat. “Miss Leopold…I’m sorry about what happened with Van Waganan.” She looked up, and their sudden proximity seemed to make her uncomfortable; she took a couple of steps back.
“He was a good man,” she said. “And then he wasn’t.” She blinked and briefly looked away.
Awkwardly, Charlie busied himself straightening the Churchill volumes.
“Oh, well,” she said, immediately regaining her composure. “Do what thou wilt, I suppose.”
Charlie was about to ask what she meant by that cryptic remark when there was a knock at the door and a young woman peeked in. She was in her early twenties and attractively wholesome, with brown hair, a dusting of freckles, and a sweet smile. Handing a cup of coffee to Leopold to give to the congressman, she seemed to have trouble meeting Charlie’s direct gaze. He suspected it was shyness; he’d seen it before with some of his students at the beginning of a new semester. His bestselling book gave him a kind of celebrity that Charlie didn’t feel was particularly deserved.
“There’s a phone call,” the woman said to Leopold. “Senator Kefauver’s office. The senator would like the congressman to swing by today. After lunch.”
“Did he say what it was about?” Leopold asked.
The young woman’s face flushed. “I didn’t know I could ask!”
Leopold turned to Charlie. “Congressman, this is Sheryl Ann Bernstein, a senior at Georgetown, majoring in American history. She’s our new intern this semester, and as luck would have it, an admirer of your book.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Bernstein.”
Bernstein cleared her throat. “I have to tell you how much Sons of Liberty meant to me,” she said. “It made me love history in a way I never had before; to be honest, it set me on my current path. I’m going to pursue a PhD.”
“Thanks,” said Charlie, “it’s kind of you to say that. What are you going to focus on?”
“Colonial history, I think. I’m doing my senior thesis on the propaganda techniques of Sam Adams.”
“What a scoundrel,” Charlie said. “Him, not you.”
“Thank you, Sheryl Ann,” Leopold interjected, dismissing her. “Congressman, I’ll set up your meeting with Senator Kefauver, and I’ll let Congressman Strongfellow know you’ll be in attendance Monday evening.”
The two women turned to leave. Leopold slowed her pace until the intern was out of earshot, and then she turned again to face Charlie. She drew back her shoulders and smoothed her sensible tweed skirt.
“Congressman, I say this in the spirit of what we discussed earlier, about my helping you,” she said. “I wouldn’t push the Goodstone approp issue. And if you want me to alert the chairman’s office that you’ll be backing off, I’m happy to do so in a discreet way.”
Charlie’s jaw clenched slightly. His voice was firm: “No.”
“This is a man who will kick you off the committee just for spitting on the sidewalk.”
“I’ll be polite,” Charlie said. “But I’m not going to back down.”
Chapter Four
Friday, January 15, 1954—Afternoon
U.S. Capitol
Sheryl Ann Bernstein’s eyes were bright and she seemed to be trying hard not to bounce in excitement as she followed Charlie into the wicker coach. “Thanks for inviting me to tag along,” she said as they boarded the monorail from the Capitol to the Senate Office Building. “This contraption is amazing!”
“Don’t get used to it, Bernstein,” Charlie teased as they sat down. “We can only use this train when I have an actual appointment with a senator.”
“Why don’t members of the House have an underground train to reach the Capitol? Why do you guys have to walk?”
“You need to ask?” he said. “We’re serfs. Lucky the senators deign to even acknowledge us.”
“Well, you have to admit,” she said, “members of the House can be rather unsavory.”
“Malodorous?”
“Opprobrious.”
Charlie smiled, but he felt he should steer the conversation to something more educational. “Pop quiz: What do you know about Kefauver?”
“Let me see,” Bernstein said, her eyes darting skyward as if that’s where the information was stored. “He ran those organized-crime hearings a few years ago. He’s incredibly popular with Democrats. He was on TV shows like What’s My Line? and such. He ran for president in 1952 and won the New Hampshire primary.”
“Correct,” said Charlie. “Beating President Truman and essentially chasing him away from the idea of running for reelection.”
“Really? I thought ol’ Harry was already planning not to run.”
“Revisionism. Truman would have run, but Kefauver cleaned his clock,” said Charlie, which prompted a loud chuckle from the tall senator in the cart in front of them. Charlie looked and realized they were seated behind Senate minority leader Lyndon Johnson, Democrat of Texas, who looked back at Charlie, smiled, and winked, then returned his attention to the Washington Star.
“Kefauver then went on to run the table in the primaries,” Charlie said in a more hushed tone. “So why wasn’t he the Democratic presidential nominee?”