The Hearing (30 page)

“Oh, Gus, that’s just … It’s just crap.”

“Phil, listen to me. You’re not getting it. This isn’t a legal issue. It’s a—”

“Moral issue. Gus …”

Gus waited. When Phil didn’t continue, he said, “Phil, what seems like a million years ago, although I guess it was more like
a couple of months, you said the President wanted to nominate me because I was a slave to the law. That was your phrase.”

“I remember. You’re not letting me forget it.”

“Well—”

“This isn’t the law, Gus. That’s my point. The law doesn’t require you to disclose that agreement.”

“I’ve got a law on my heart that does.”

“No offense, Gus, but could we just stick to the written law, and not get into subjective interpretations of what is or is
not inscribed on your heart?”

“I’m sorry this is upsetting you, Phil.”

“Well, of
course
it’s upsetting me. We nominate you, you end up in a limousine with your daughter and a car bomb and the whole world looking
down the President’s throat—we can’t withdraw you, we can’t get you out of the mess you’re in, we’re about half a millimeter
from having our nominee vaporized, looking like a pack of fools, and—”

“Phil, why don’t you call me back.”

“I’m sorry, Gus, I didn’t mean that. But this is really stupid. Disclosing something that can kill your confirmation stone
dead when you don’t have to, no one even wants you to. That’s just stupid.”

“Maybe there’s a practical aspect to this that can appeal to you, Phil.”

“What would that be?”

“What if we don’t disclose this, and—”

“We?”

“What if
I
don’t disclose this, and then Harrington changes his mind and
be
discloses it, and says that I—and you, Phil, and the President—knew about it all along and concealed it. He says he knows
we knew about it because he told us, and he is just shocked to death that we didn’t disclose it ourselves and that he has
to do it. Headlines, Phil. ‘President involved in Supreme Court cover-up.’ That could happen.”

“And the sky could fall in. The earth could swallow us up. Lots of things could happen. It’s called politics. You don’t commit
suicide just because you’re afraid someone might murder you. It’s stupid, Gus. Think about it.”

“I will if you will. Call me back in half an hour.”

“Gus, what if I talk to the President and we come up with a compromise? There’s gotta be a way out of this. Keep an open mind,
Gus. I’ll call back.”

Gus hung up, turned his head, and stared at the tinted window. He knew Samantha was watching him, and he didn’t want to see
her face. Compromise—was that the most we could ever expect? His father had been the first in Gus’s life to preach compromise
as a standard, a way of life, a maximum expectation, an excuse for not holding out for what was right.

Thirty-five minutes later, Phil called.

“The President can’t believe it, Gus. He just cannot believe it. He’s wondering if the stress has got to you. He
thinks maybe you’re coming unglued. I think he might be right.”

“Is this constructive?”

“Is your mind absolutely set on this, Gus?”

“Absolutely. More now than ever. But I have to tell you—well, you know that you do have a kind of solution.”

“Solution? Oh, really? Please, please tell me.”

“Withdraw my name from the nomination. Wash your hands of me. Then it won’t matter what happens. If I disclose the agreement,
so what? Who cares? I’m not a nominee anymore. At worst, I’m just some conniving district court judge who thought he could
make a lot of money out of a Supreme Court nomination. Even if the bomb goes off, who cares? Nothing to do with the White
House.”

“Don’t tempt me, Gus.”

“So do it.”

“Gus, you know damned well we can’t drop you now. This whole country’s practically worshiping at your feet. There you are,
some damned hero with your newfound, un-aborted daughter about to be blown up by drug traffickers, and the White House abandons
you? Get real.”

“So you’re stuck with me.”

“And when I hang up, your next call’s to CNN. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry, Phil.”

Gus’s next call was not to CNN. It was to Roy Jenkins at the Associated Press, the reporter who’d called him earlier. He left
his number, and Jenkins called back in thirty seconds.

“I can’t believe it,” Jenkins said when Gus had told him about the tobacco company agreement.

“It was a stupid thing for my father to do, but we all do stupid things from time to time.”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant I can’t believe you told me. Why’d you tell me?”

“Because it’s true, and relevant to the decision the Senate will have to make.”

Jenkins laughed. “Because it’s
true?
Well, that’s an interesting twist.”

Carl returned from his visit to Ernie Vicaro just in time to join agents in the command truck watching Terry’s body on a night-vision
TV monitor disappear through a hole cut in the roof of the Mercedes.

Her voice came in muffled grunts over the truck’s speakers as her body squirmed toward the back of the station wagon.

“Another four feet. It looks like there’s about a foot of open space in the back. I should be able to reach over. Hang on.
I’m looking over with the light. The edge doesn’t go all the way down. It fills out. It goes down about ten inches and then
it fills out to where there’s only about a half inch between the RDX and the hatchback. The detonator’s gotta be underneath.
If we’re gonna get to the detonator we’ve gotta move out some of the RDX, or go in through the back door. I’m coming out.”

In three minutes her head and shoulders appeared above the roof of the Mercedes. She climbed out, jumped down, and disappeared
from sight.

“So what now?” It was Terry’s boyfriend.

An FBI man said, “Like she said, go in the back door.”

The ATF men were silent. Carl said, “Historically, how often are car-bomb doors booby-trapped?”

Rolf Zaeder, the agent with the Santa Claus face, said, “Forget it. Better than sixty percent, depending on the makers. What
we’ve seen of this one—the RDX, way it’s packed, remote antenna—we’re looking at experts. If they haven’t booby-trapped the
doors I’m just ashamed of them.”

Terry walked in and unzipped the front of her baggy orange coveralls, revealing a yellow T-shirt and khaki shorts. “Sorry,
guys.”

Someone said, “Man here wants to go through the hatchback.”

Terry laughed. “Gimme a head start, okay? I’ll be in Ohio.”

Carl said, “So what now?”

Terry said, “Listen, I saw something.”

Heads turned, waiting.

“When I came up through the top. I was twisting around to get my body out of the hole and I happened to look at the Trade
Commission. There was a guy there in the window, silhouetted. I got a good look. Then he moved to his left, out of the window.”

Carl said, “How many?”

“One.”

“Sure?”

“That’s what I saw. I only saw one.”

So the thermal imaging people were right. The Trade Commission was occupied.

Carl walked outside with Max Iverson, away from the trucks and other agents.

“So what do you think?”

Iverson said, “Terry confirmed what the imaging people saw.”

“What do you want to do with it?”

“I don’t know. Tough call.”

Carl said, “How sure are they there’s two? Terry only saw one.”

“Positive. They can measure it. They know how much heat the average body radiates under different conditions. They say there’s
no way there could be more or less than two bodies where they’re seeing the radiation. And they’re seeing it in the front
room. Right where Terry saw the guy in the window.”

“So all this tells you—what?”

“Go in. End it.”

“And if they blow up the judge and his daughter?”

“It’s gotta end sometime, Carl.”

Carl raised his head, appeared to be studying the stars. Then he said, “What about your intrusion team—the voice sensors and
TV camera?”

“They’re ready.”

Four minutes after the AP bulletin, CNN’s “Breaking News” logo interrupted a science show, and the picture switched to a story
about the agreement between Gus’s father, Ernesto Vicaro’s father, and the Briggs & Paulman tobacco company. An anchorman
in Washington said, “Legalization of marijuana and cocaine could produce a sixty-billion-dollar-a-year legitimate industry.
What this means personally for Judge Parham, should marijuana or cocaine ever become legal, is a fortune whose dimensions
are virtually immeasurable.”

The image had hardly faded from the screen when the opposition’s pundits and spin doctors weighed in with demands for Gus’s
withdrawal. A special late edition of a Chicago tabloid was typical:

PARHAM A PUSHER?

DEAL SAYS YES!

There were three of them, wearing black sneakers, black cotton pants, black T-shirts, and black face paint. It was late Friday
night.

Carl thought, Commandos. Give me a break. He said to Max Iverson, “So where’s Arnold?”

“Arnold?”

“Forget it.” Schwarzenegger. Iverson probably never heard of him.

The blacked-up team slipped out of the command truck toward the Trade Commission. In the silence around the consoles, someone
said, “So should we listen for a loud bang, or what?”

Thirty-five minutes later they were back. A Puerto Rican FBI agent, in the command truck to translate Spanish-speaking voices
from the newly inserted sensors, said, “We’re getting the carrier and that’s it. Either no one’s there or they’ve got nothing
to say.”

A monitor for the night-vision TV camera installed outside the rear of the Trade Commission showed a green image of the back
door.

The men in black disappeared.

The Puerto Rican agent switched the sound from the speakers to his headset, lit a cigarette, and picked up a copy of
Newsweek
.

Carl walked outside. It had been exactly thirty-five hours since the Mercedes arrived at Blossom. For the past eighteen hours,
Rolf Zaeder had been wandering around outside the command truck telling everyone he expected a timer to set the bomb off “any
second now … any second
… annnnny second.” Carl would have given anything to know what time the timer was set for.

Max Iverson appeared beside him.

“Carl, tell me what you think of this.”

“What is it?”

“Those people in the Trade Commission aren’t going to stay there when the bomb goes off.”

Carl said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

“When they come out, we’ll see them on the TV. They’ll give themselves some running time—ten, fifteen minutes at least. However
long they figure it’ll take them to get to safety will be long enough for the judge and his daughter to drive to safety.”

“So you’d want them to drive out.”

“Why not? If they’ve got the time. It’s a lot better than just sitting there and hoping to survive the explosion.”

“Let me think about it.”

Rothman called.

Gus said, “Phil, I’m sorry about all the media—”

“Don’t be. It may be turning.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some preliminary polling indicates that your integrity in disclosing the agreement is hitting harder than the agreement itself.”

“Well, well, well.”

“But I’ve got something else you need to know.”

“What is it?”

“The experts out here have a new idea. If they could find out when the device is set to detonate, you might have time to drive
the limousine to safety. They don’t know that they
can
find out, or how much of a window that will give
you, but if they get some forewarning, they want you to be prepared to drive out. So what they want, they want to make sure
you’ve shut down everything—air-conditioning, radio, minimize phone use to near zero—because you’ll need power to start the
limo. The engineers are afraid that very soon now you’ll lack starting power.”

“Phil, we’ve hardly used anything. The air-conditioning—”

“No more air-conditioning, Gus.”

“We’ve got to have some air in here. You can’t imagine. It’s not survivable without the AC, Phil.”

“If may not be survivable with it. That’s what they’re saying out here. I’d believe them.”

“Then let’s get off the phone. We’ll do our best. There’s not much left to cut.”

S
ince late Friday morning, Phil Rothman had been struggling with a question that excited his political heart. How could the
threat of the car bomb be turned around, used to the advantage of the White House? The bomb contained tremendous political
power waiting to be harnessed to a good idea. And now Rothman thought he had that idea.

What if Samantha came out of this alive and were herself to testify before the Judiciary Committee? You would have a thirteen-year-old
girl, innocent, beautiful, survivor of a car-bomb threat, responding to sordid revelations of prostitution brought by evil
forces attacking her while she was down. She tells the world her side of the story and declares
her love and respect for her newfound father. On television. Senators of both parties would be buried beneath an avalanche
of letters, faxes, E-mail, and phone messages demanding Gus’s confirmation.

Of course, you’d have to get the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to allow it—old Eric Taeger. But there were weapons.
Taeger wasn’t too old to have libidinous desires that occasionally drove him to embarrassing indiscretions. If the need were
sufficiently pressing, there were cards to be played.

It looked good. Rothman took the idea to Dutweiler, who liked it. They decided not to trouble Gus with it now. Better to wait
until the bomb threat had been resolved and he and Samantha were out of the limousine.

Friday morning Helen called Gier’s mobile phone. No answer. She waited an hour. Still no answer. She called Gier hourly all
day. She called Harrington. Harrington hadn’t heard from him either. Gier was either dead or he’d dropped off the face of
the earth. CNN said the Judiciary Committee had postponed, “until this difficult situation is resolved,” the confirmation
vote that had been scheduled for Monday. The Senate floor vote set for Wednesday had also been put off.