'You mean like we should have a real relationship, a commitment to each other, like love?' he said. 'Like the house niggers used to make to their masters down in your dear old South?'
She sighed. 'Your macho bullshit could be a problem,' she said. Then she went on: 'I can make a deal for us. I've been a big help to the Vice President in her political career. She owes me. Now you have to see reality. Jintz and Lambertino are going to be slaughtered in the November election. Helen Du Pray is reorganizing her staff and I'm going to be one of her top advisers. I have a spot for you as my aide.'
Sal said smilingly, 'That's a demotion for me. But if you're as good in the sack as I think you are, I'll consider it.'
Elizabeth Stone said impatiently, 'It won't be a demotion, since you won't have a job. And then when I go up the ladder, so do you. You'll wind up with your own staff section as an aide to the Vice President.'
She paused for a moment. 'Listen,' she said, 'we were attracted to each other in the senator's office, not love maybe, but certainly lust at first sight. And I've heard about you screwing your aides. But I understand it. We both work so hard, we don't have time for a real social life or a real love life. And I'm tired of screwing guys just because I'm lonely a couple of times a month. I want a real relationship.'
'You're going too fast,' Troyca said. 'Now, if it was on the staff of the President. He shrugged and grinned to show that he was kidding.
Elizabeth Stone gave him her smile again. It was really a hardboiled sort of grin but Troyca found it charming. 'The Kennedys have always been unlucky,' she said. 'The Vice President could be the President. But please be serious. Why can't we have a partnership, if that's what you prefer to call it? Neither one of us wants to get married. Neither of us wants children. Why can't we sort of half live with each other, keep our own places, of course, but sort of live together? We can have companionship and sex and we can work together as a team. We can satisfy our human needs and operate at the highest point of efficiency. If it works, it could be a great arrangement. If it doesn't, we can just call it quits. We have until November.'
They went to bed that night and Elizabeth Stone was a revelation to Troyca.
Like many shy, reserved people, man or woman, she was genuinely ardent and tender in bed. And it helped that the act of consummation took place in
Elizabeth Stone's town house. Troyca had not known that she was independently wealthy. Like a true Wasp, he thought, she had concealed that fact, where he would have flaunted it. Troyca immediately saw that the town house would be a perfect place for both of them to live, much better than his just adequate flat. Here with Elizabeth Stone he could set up an office. The town house had three servants and he would be relieved of time- consuming and worrying details like sending clothes out for cleaning, shopping for food and drink.
And Elizabeth Stone, ardent feminist though she was, performed like some legendary courtesan in bed. She was a slave to his pleasure. Well, it was only the first time women were like that, Troyca thought. Like when they first came to be interviewed for I job, they never looked as good after that. But in the month that followed, she proved him wrong.
They built up an almost perfect relationship. It was wonderful for both of them after their long hours with Jintz and Lambertino to come home, go out for a late supper and then sleep together and make love. And in the morning they would go to work together. He thought for the first time in his life about marriage. But he knew instinctively that this was something Elizabeth would not want.
They lived contained lives, a cocoon of work, companionship and love, for they did come to love each other. But the best and most delicious part of their times together was their scheming on how to change the events of their world. They both agreed that Kennedy would be reelected to the presidency in November. Elizabeth was sure that the campaign being mounted against the President by Congress and the Socrates Club was doomed to failure. Troyca was not so sure. There were many cards to play.
Elizabeth hated Kennedy. It was not a personal hatred; it was that ideally opposition to someone she thought of as a tyrant. 'The important thing,' she said, 'is that Kennedy not be allowed to have his own Congress in the next election. That should be the battleground. It's clear from Kennedy's statements in the campaign that he will change the structure of American democracy. And that would create a very dangerous historical situation.'
'If you are so opposed to him now, how can you accept a position on the Vice President's staff after the election?' Sal asked her.
'We're not policymakers,' Elizabeth said. 'We're administrators. We can work for anybody.'
So after a month of intimacy, Elizabeth was surprised when Sal asked that they meet in a restaurant rather than in the comfort of the town house they now shared. But he had insisted.
In the restaurant over their first drinks, Elizabeth said, 'Why couldn't we talk at home?'
Sal said thoughtfully, 'You know, I've been studying a lot of documents going a long way back. Our Attorney General, Christian Klee, is a very dangerous man.'
'So?' Elizabeth said.
'He may have your house bugged,' Sal said.
Elizabeth laughed, 'You are paranoid,' she said.
'Yeah,' Sal said. 'Well, how about this. Christian Klee had those two kids,
Gresse and Tibbot, in custody and didn't interrogate them right away. But there's a time gap. And the kids were tipped off and told to keep their mouths shut until their families supplied lawyers. And what about Yabril?
Klee has him stashed, nobody can get to see or talk to him. Klee stonewalls and Kennedy backs him up. I think Klee is capable of anything.'
Elizabeth Stone said thoughtfully, 'You can get Jintz to subpoena Klee to appear before a congressional committee. I can ask Senator Lambertino to do the same thing. We can smoke Klee out.'
'Kennedy will exercise executive privilege and forbid him to testify,' Sal said. 'We can wipe our asses with those subpoenas.'
Elizabeth was usually amused by his vulgarities, especially in bed, but she was not amused now. 'His exercising executive privilege will damage him,' she said. 'The papers and TV will crucify him.'
'OK, we can do that,' Sal said. 'But how about if just you and me go to see Oddblood Gray and try to pin him down?
We can't make him talk but maybe he will. He's an idealist at heart, and maybe psychologically he's horrified at the way Klee botched the atom bomb incident. Maybe he even knows something concrete.'
It was unfortunate that they picked Oddblood Gray to question. Gray was reluctant to see them, but Elizabeth's friendship with Vice President Helen Du Pray was the deciding factor in their favor. Gray had a tremendous respect for Du Pray.
Sal Troyca opened the discussion by asking, 'Isn't it odd that the Attorney General, Christian Klee, had those two young men in custody before the explosion and never got any information out of them?'
'They stood on their Constitutional rights,' Gray said cautiously.
Troyca said dryly, 'Klee has the reputation of being a rather forceful and resourceful man. Could two kids like Gresse and Tibbot stand up against him?'
Gray shrugged. 'You never know about Klee,' he said.
It was Elizabeth Stone who put the question directly. 'Mr. Gray,' she said, 'do you have any knowledge or even have any reason to believe that the
Attorney General secretly interrogated those two young men?'
Gray felt a sudden rush of anger at this question. But wait, why the hell should he protect Klee? he thought. After all, most of the people killed in New York had been black. 'This is off the record,' he said, 'and I will deny it under oath. Klee did conduct a secret interrogation with all the listening devices turned off. There is no record. It is possible to believe the worst. But if you do, you must believe the President had no part in it.'
CHAPTER
19
ON THIS EARLY MAY MORNING before meeting with the President, Helen Du Pray went on a five-mile run to clear her head. She knew that not only the administration but she herself was at a very dangerous
