There were so many large flags on stage people were getting lost in them. Burkhart led the crowd in the national anthem. I guess being off-key meant you were being sincere.
For a few minutes I allowed myself to enjoy the afternoon. I watched hawks ride the air currents and smelled the smoky scent of the breeze and saw the surrounding hills melancholy with leaves that were beautiful in their dying. This was the season of Halloween and football Saturdays and long walks to watch the shadows stretch as dusk came early now. To hell with the Burkharts and Sylvias. If they had their way they’d strip-mine and cut down everything that made the landscape godly. They’d also start revising textbooks the way Texas and a few other states already had — you know, the John Wayne mythic America. There was a time in my life when I occasionally voted for men and women of the other side. But that party and those people had no place in the opposition anymore.
I listened to Burkhart start his salutation to the whites-only world he’d grown up in. Talk about your opium for the masses as Marx said of religion. The portrait he painted of Mom and Dad, flag and country, opportunity and riches rang resonantly on the Midwestern plains. The anger at a black president and liberals and immigrants and gays would come a bit later. For now he was letting his supporters feast on this picnic lunch of treacle and bullshit.
Burkhart was a cunning politican. He’d started his political career a few years ago guesting on a local radio hate show called ‘Freedom’s Way,’ hosted by a bilious racist named Paul Revere. This was his actual given name and he never let you forget it. I always pictured his audience as people sitting around in white sheets dousing huge crosses with gasoline in preparation for the night ahead. Burkhart became a legend on that program and, because of that, when the country was confused and enraged over Wall Street billionaires and endless charges of bank fraud, he recognized that this was the time for fanatics. He had a great presence, was a good speaker, and for all his average-guy hoo-hah was a bright, savvy man. In private he was said to frequently quote Ayn Rand. This wouldn’t do when he was addressing the little people whom Rand scorned so much. They might think he was, you know, unmanly.
‘We need to go,’ I said, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’
TWO
I didn’t want to be in Atherton and I particularly didn’t want to be working with Congressman Jeff Ward. But four days earlier, when I’d been fighting my own client’s battles, Tom Ward called me. After serving four terms in the House, my father had gone into the political consulting business. Tom Ward had been his best friend and most trusted employee.
Ward had also saved my father’s life. In a scene out of the movie Duel, an eighteen-wheeler ran them off a narrow road in hilly country. They ended up in a fast, cold river. My father was knocked unconscious. Rather than save only himself, Tom swam my father to safety.
Years later he gave a moving speech at my father’s funeral, one of those personal tributes that are by turns sad and funny and authentic. I’d known him since my teenage years and liked and trusted him as much as my father had.
‘My son’s in some trouble downstate, Dev. He’s up against a man named Burkhart, one of those guys who wants to dismantle the federal government since the White House has been eternally sullied by a man of the colored persuasion. All the usual lies about Obama. As you probably know, Jeff’s served two terms and this one should be a cinch for him, too, but it’s anti-incumbency straight across the board. A very tough election cycle.
‘Now I’m going to say some things about my son that may make it sound as if I don’t love him, but that’s not true. I love him very much. But you know what it’s like growing up with an op for an old man. He’s never home — I was never home — and the kids get raised by their mother. Jeff’s an only child and Helen spoiled him rotten. And it doesn’t help that he got her looks. He’s got a rep as an ass bandit and unfortunately it’s true. He can also be arrogant and nasty when the mood moves him. But he thinks right. Straight down the line he’s for all the things we believe in. I’ll give him that. He stands up when it matters. He’s one of the few liberals who have no apologies to make. You’ve never met him, have you?’
‘Just briefly.’
‘Well, he’s got a spy somewhere in his campaign and he won’t admit it or deal with it. He keeps telling me that he’d know if he had a spy. He has a friend in the CIA so now he thinks he knows all about spying. But I know better. And I have to ask you if you’ll go down there and check out his staff yourself. Just for a couple of days.’
‘Tom, I’m facing my own problems here in Madison. We should be running eight, nine points ahead. I just saw some new internals this morning. We’re four points ahead at best.’
‘I know, Dev. But he’s my kid.’
After my years with army intelligence, I started my own political consulting agency using many of the same methods my father had developed during his long tenure in the same business. Now I had a home office in Chicago with several employees and I still felt that the most useful things I’d learned were from my old man.
I thought of how moved my family was by Tom’s words the morning of my father’s funeral. I thought of how he and my dad used to laugh after work in the conference room with a six-pack of cold beer on the table between them. ‘Two days max and I’m out.’ I thought of how he’d saved my father’s life.
‘I’d do this myself, Dev, but when I offered he got really pissed. In fact, I have to warn you. He might even give you a little shit. Just tell him to buzz off. He resents any kind of outside help. He’s got this little group around him and that’s all he wants. I’m going to call him now and tell him you’re coming. I’m also going to remind him that I brought him his biggest contributor. That’ll shut him up for a while.’
After we hung up I thought through everything I’d heard about Jeff Ward. Bright, arrogant, combative, and rumored to have slept with a good share of Washington’s finest available ladies — some married, some not. Somehow I’d never heard a word about a divorce. Maybe he had his wife bound and gagged in the basement.
I’m in no position to make moral judgments but I am in a position to avoid vortexes. You start to work for a client who has numerous sexual secrets, straight or gay doesn’t matter, and you find yourself spending as much time suppressing the secrets as working on the election. Bill Clinton had a small army dealing with his past transgressions. That’s work for other consulting firms, not mine.
I spent an hour on my Mac laptop reading up on Jeff Ward’s political history and the people around him. He was working with a company out of San Diego that most consultants had given up on a few years back. I wanted my own opposition people.
I called the Silberman-Penski agency in Chicago and asked for Matt Boyle. The agency was a five-star international investigative firm that had wisely created an Internet department eight years ago, long before most of its competitors realized how to use the new development. They not only had the right equipment, they had the right young men and women. My firm used them exclusively. If you farted in church in 1971, they would present you with witness testimony in less than ten hours.
‘Hey, Mr Conrad.’
‘I think we’re up to ninety bucks by now.’
‘Oh, right. I forgot. Hey, Dev, how’s it going?’
Matt and his wife Amy had both graduated at the top of their class at MIT. They were both deep-sea divers and mountain climbers. They loved adventure. And that included the adventure of being online detectives. If that involved hacking, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.
When I called and gave them a name, they knew what I was after. The kind of detail that can make a man think twice about staying in the race.
‘The name is Rusty Burkhart. I checked. There’s a fairly long story about him on Wikipedia. Can you start right away?’
‘If I can’t, Amy can.’
‘Great. You’ve got my cell number.’
‘You got it, Dev. Let’s hope he’s a serial killer.’
Jeff Ward was campaigning in the western section of his voting district when I’d flown into town last night so I’d yet to see him. His headquarters was one of those big, empty buildings that had housed a giant audio store before the economy committed suicide. Now it was the realm of phones, faxes, computers, stacks of campaign
