The Run (7 page)

Guests were due at seven, and at six-thirty, the doorbell rang. Joe and Susan Adams had been invited to come early. To Will’s surprise, they were accompanied by Senator Frederick Wallace of South Carolina and his wife, Betty Jane. Will tried not to seem an
noyed; he had wanted a few minutes alone with Joe and Sue.

“Come in, come in,” Will said, kissing the women and shaking the men’s hands. “How are you, Freddie?” he asked the elderly senator.

“Better than can be expected,” Wallace rumbled. An ancient tuxedo covered his bulk, and his wife was dressed in a lace gown. They looked like something out of the forties, Will thought. “Kate will be down momentarily,” he said. “Everybody have a seat, and we’ll get you a drink. Anybody want champagne?”

Nobody spoke. A moment later, each guest had been served with his usual—bourbon for the men, white wine for the women.

“Freddie and Betty Jane were on the way, so we gave them a lift,” Joe Adams said.

“I don’t get to ride in many limousines,” Wallace said. “Couldn’t turn it down.”

“Come on, Freddie,” Adams said, “half the lobbyists in Washington have limousines. You could have one at your door on command.”

“Wouldn’t seem seemly to South Carolina’s voters,” Wallace said, looking cherubic, with his shock of white hair and his pink face. “I might get my picture taken in one, and we couldn’t have that, could we?”

“I’m surprised you aren’t riding around town in a BMW,” Will said, “since they opened that factory in South Carolina.”

“We’re happy to have them there,” Wallace said, “but they make
German
cars.”

“My limo is a Cadillac,” Adams said.

“And you’re looking for an even bigger one next election, aren’t you?” Wallace asked, chuckling.

“I’ll ride in whatever comes with the territory, Freddie,” Adams replied.

“The territory ain’t yours yet.” Wallace grinned.

“Tell me, Freddie,” Will said, “if you could choose the next president, who would it be?”

Wallace lowered his chin and peered at Will over the gold half glasses that seemed permanently attached to his nose. “Jefferson Davis,” he rumbled.

Everybody laughed.

“Old Jeff would know how to handle you liberals,” Wallace said, grinning.

“I’ll accept the characterization as a comparative one,” Will replied. “Next to you, Freddie, Jesse Helms was a liberal.”

“He was a goddamned socialist!” Wallace laughed.

Joe Adams spoke up. “I was hoping to get Freddie to cross party lines and support me.”

Wallace snorted.

“I don’t think you could afford to lose that many votes, Joe,” Will said, getting a laugh. He looked up to see Kate coming down the stairs, stunning in a black Ralph Lauren dress. The men got to their feet, and she greeted everyone. A waiter brought her a glass of champagne on a silver tray.

“I hope that ain’t French,” Wallace said.

“It’s Schramsberg,” Kate replied.

“
German
?”

“Californian.”

“Damn near as foreign,” Wallace replied.

“Californians are your countrymen, Freddie,” Kate said.

“Not
my
countrymen,” Wallace said blandly. “You know, there’s something you two fellows have never figured out.” He nodded at Will and Joe. “A senator can have nearly about as much power as a president, if he’s smart, and he don’t have to please anybody from California or New York or anywhere but his home state, and he only has to please fifty-one percent of the actual voters there!”

“You’ve got a point there, Freddie,” Adams agreed.

“You fellows don’t know when you’re well-off,” Wallace said. “Look what you got up on the Hill: You got a nice big office with a loyal staff who does your bidding; you got a nice place to have lunch every day; you got somebody to cut your hair when you need it and a girl to massage you, whether you need it or not; you got free medical care, free parking, and free trips to nice places overseas; and on top of all that, you get paid pretty good money!”

“Yeah, Freddie,” Adams said, “but if you’re president, you get all that,
plus
a very nice house with a swimming pool, a putting green, and a movie theater; a bulletproof limousine to ride around in, a helicopter and a 747 to take you wherever you want to go—and no waiting for your luggage. Plus you get Camp David for weekends and you can play golf anywhere in the world you want to.”

Wallace snorted. “I can play at Burning Tree anytime, and in my underwear, if I’ve a mind to, and that’s good enough for me.”

“I’m trying to summon up that image,” Kate said, “but the mind boggles.”

“
And,”
Joe Adams said, “when you’ve served your eight years—or even if you’re kicked out after four—you get a great big presidential library to hold all the documents that make you look good in the eyes of the world. And when you finally pack it in, you get a free plot in Robert E. Lee’s front yard and a very nice funeral.”

Wallace raised his hands in mock surrender. “Well, I guess we know what’s important to
you
, Joe.”

“What’s
really
important,” Will said, “and what separates the big guy from all the pretty big guys in the Senate is the veto.”

“Yeah,” Wallace agreed, “and if the Supreme Court
had just let it get by, the line-item veto. Somebody once said that if Lyndon Johnson had had that, he’d have been a Nero. Shit, if I had it, I’d be
God!
”

Will got up to answer the doorbell. Now, the deluge.

They began arriving in clumps, now—three or four senators from each party, plus a few congressmen; columnists, TV reporters, cabinet members, a couple of sports figures, and a movie star. Will’s press secretary made up the guest list, and few people were invited in successive years, except the president and the vice president, and the president had never shown.

Champagne was poured, scotch was dispensed, canapés were distributed, and rumors were exchanged, but no news was made. Will extracted a moratorium from all the journalists invited.

Dinner was served—racks of lamb, haricots verts, pureed carrots, and a huge spinach soufflé for the vegetarians. The wine was a California Cabernet, not for patriotic reasons, but because Will preferred California wines to French. People sat everywhere—on sofas and chairs, on the stairs, on the floor. The talk was high-spirited without being raucous.

Will was waiting for someone in the powder room under the stairs to finish when he was joined by Paul Epstein, the Washington bureau chief for the
New York Times
.

“Good party, Will.”

“Thanks, Paul; we’re glad you could come.”

“Will, while I’ve got you here, there’s something I need to ask. Certainly, I won’t quote you on your answer.”

Will said nothing, to show disapproval that a journalist would question him in his own home.

“One of my people heard that Joe Adams might not be well. Anything to that?”

“Jesus, Paul.” Will sighed. “Walter Reed published the result of his last physical less than a month ago. You want to know his cholesterol count? His triglycerides? I’m sure Joe’s office would be happy to send you a copy of all the results. And I happen to know that Joe played squash this afternoon with somebody twenty years his junior, and Joe cleaned his clock. You ever played squash?”

“No.”

“The game is a man killer; I wouldn’t touch a squash racquet with a fork.”

“Will, we hear it might not be physical.”

Will pointed to the living room. “He’s sitting right over there; go talk to him and tell me if you think he’s nuts.”

“Well…”

To Will’s relief, the powder-room door opened and an undersecretary of state vacated. “See you later, Paul,” Will said, closing the door behind him. He used the toilet, noticing that his pulse rate was up. He splashed some cold water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror. The face that stared back at him looked worried. “Come on, boy,” he said to his reflection. “Go back out there looking happy.”

11

On New Year’s morning, Will arrived at his hideaway office in the Capitol at ten. Tim Coleman, his chief of staff, and Kitty Conroy, his press secretary, were waiting for him.

“Happy New Millennium!” Will cried, eliciting flinches from both people.

“Senator, I hope this isn’t your idea of a joke,” Tim groaned. “I was out until four.”

“I haven’t even been to bed,” Kitty said.

“Sorry about that; my last guests didn’t leave until after two, so I’m a little fuzzy around the edges myself.”

“So what’s up?” Kitty asked. She was the less patient of the two.

“I wanted to talk to you today, because the building is pretty much empty, and I didn’t want anybody around.”

“You firing us?” Tim asked.

“No, I’m doubling your workload.”

“Swell,” Tim replied.

“This stays among the three of us, until I say differently, agreed?”

“Agreed,” the two said in chorus.

“No spouses or lovers to know.”

“Agreed,” they said again.

“I want you two to start—today, right now—to put together a plan for a run for the presidency.”

“The presidency of what?” Tim asked, looking blank.

“The United States of America.”

Tim’s expression didn’t change, and Kitty looked just as blank.

Will sat there and let it sink in.

“Okay,” Kitty said finally, “I’ll bite. What’s the punch line?”

“I started with the punch line,” Will said.

“Senator,” Tim said slowly, “don’t you think it’s a little early to start planning a campaign for eight years hence?”

“I’m running
this
year,” Will said.

Kitty piped up. “I didn’t see the
Post
this morning; did Joe Adams drop dead last night?”

“I saw him at midnight, and he looked fairly alive to me.”

“Let me get this straight,” Tim said. “
You
, of all people, are going to run against
Joe Adams?
”

Will took a deep breath. “I can’t answer many questions,” he said. “Just take my word for it.”

Tim and Kitty exchanged a long look.

“Well,” Tim said, “can we assume that you know something we don’t?”

“Tim, Kitty, it’s not inconceivable that someday someone may ask you for an account of this conversation. I’d like you to be able to answer, truthfully, that I
didn’t tell you anything, except that I intended to make the run, and that you took my word for it.”

“All right,” Tim said, “you’re running, and I’m going to do everything I can to help.”

“Me too,” Kitty echoed.

“But we can’t tell anybody we’re helping?”

“Not for the moment.”

“Then how can we organize a campaign?”

“I want you to put together a structure that will serve us from the day I announce until the second Tuesday in November—everything from issues to fund-raising. Make a chart. Next to every box I want you to write a name—more than one—we won’t get everybody we want. There should be a campaign manager at the top, and I don’t want a figurehead; I want a working manager. You know what the other boxes will be; they won’t be all that different from the senatorial campaigns.”

“Are we going to get Tom Black in on this?” Kitty asked.

“Not yet. Tom’s on hold; he won’t commit to anybody else. I want to keep this as close as the three of us and Kate—and Kate, although she knows, will be at arm’s length throughout, for obvious reasons. She’s not going to quit her job.

“Back to your chart: On the day we’re ready, I want to be able to call everybody we need very quickly. When this happens, it’s going to happen fast; I doubt if we’ll have a week between the moment of the final decision to go and the announcement, and I want to have everybody who’s really important to us aboard during that week. I want to hit the ground running so fast that nobody will ever be able to catch us. Right now, our only advantage is that my eventual opponents don’t know
they’re
running.”

“How much time do we have before you make the absolutely final decision? I mean, when is go day?” Tim asked.

“I can only guess, but I should think it will happen this month.”

“How much can we spend?”

“Nothing. We’ve got about three-quarters of a million in my campaign fund, but we can’t touch it yet. One of the first things we’ll have to do on go day is round up enough people in enough states to get enough signatures on petitions to qualify for federal campaign funding. Pay particular attention to that.”

“Of course,” Tim said.

“Forgive me for stating the obvious, but I want every base covered. Kitty, of course you’ll pay particular attention to the press operation, but I want you also to concentrate on finding us the right person to assemble and train a staff of advance people. We’ll want someone who can pick up the phone and recruit at least a dozen experienced people on day one.”

“We’re going to need a campaign headquarters in Washington,” Tim said.

“Put that at the top of your list.”

“Can I feel out some people on real estate?”

“Absolutely not. Your effort has got to be completely secret until we go, and I’ll tell you how secret: I gave you both briefcases for Christmas?”

“Yes, thanks very much,” Kitty said.

“Me too,” Tim echoed.

“They have locks on them. I don’t want you to create a piece of paper that won’t fit into those briefcases, and I want you to be practically handcuffed to them. In the unlikely event that you have time to go out to dinner or to the movies, I want those briefcases securely locked in a safe. You are to talk to no one, not
even each other, about this on the telephone. You are to create no computer files, not so much as a memo on this subject. You are not to talk to each other about this anywhere except in this room, in your offices or homes, or in my office, and then only behind a locked door.

“You’re going to have to keep regular office hours and do your regular work. I don’t want anyone on the staff to know or even suspect what you’re doing. Don’t say anything to anybody that might make them think you’re working on anything special.”

“Whew!” Kitty said. “This is going to be tough.”