“You don’t believe this, Laura? This is just the crap that people rake up as part of the political dog-fight.”
He tapped the papers with his finger. “This is going to cut off a lot of heads. I’ll see to that.”
“You must have known, Logan. You must have guessed that you couldn’t have done all that on your own. The most experienced politician in the country could hardly have done it. Nobody could do it as an outsider.”
“Where is Dempsey?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who gave you this stuff? Who told you about Dempsey?”
“A CIA officer.”
“What’s his name?” His hand hovered over the telephone.
She reached inside her handbag and took out the brown envelope. She handed it to him.
“They also gave me that.”
He opened the flap and took out the photographs. She saw his eyes close. When he opened his eyes to look at her his voice was a whisper.
“What shits. After all this time.”
He pushed the photographs back in the envelope carefully and meticulously, and she knew that he was playing for time.
“Tell me about this committee.”
“All I know is that it exists, and that they are drafting an impeachment document to bring to the Senate in the next few days, if possible before Christmas.”
“Why did they tell you all this?”
“They wanted to know if I would see you and break the news. They’ll let you resign. You could come back to us and we could just be a family again.”
“How many people know?”
“The Chief Justice, the Speaker, and some CIA people. Very few. They suggested that you resign on medical grounds. They have two heart specialists who could cover this.”
“They’re very confident, the bastards.”
“They’re not bastards, Logan. Your people were the bastards. Traitors.”
“I’m not the first Republican President to have support from the left. All the candidates court them. They always do.”
“They didn’t give you support, Logan. They committed crimes, they involved you. Your old friend Dempsey fixed the girl and the photographs. They killed Siwecki and his wife to stop them giving evidence. They killed Maria whatever-her-name-was because she sent the CIA to Siwecki. They put in millions of dollars of Russian money to get you elected. That’s not support, that’s corruption.”
“That’s what they did, not what I did.”
“Logan. Siwecki made a statement to the CIA before your people murdered him. That strike was contrived and you knew it. You knew it at the time and you went along with it.”
He looked at her. “Old Elliot and that fat bastard Bethel must have enjoyed all this. You, too.”
“They could just have gone ahead and hit you with this in public.”
“They didn’t not do that for my sake. They knew what it could mean to the country. Every bloody Congressman and Senator would have gone down with me and they know it. The public never liked politicians. They liked them even less after Watergate. This would bring the roof down on them all.”
“I don’t care about the others, Logan. I only care about you. Please think of us all. You, me, and Sammy.”
“How is Sammy?”
“He’s had bronchitis but he’s getting better.”
“How’s he making out?”
She shrugged. “It’s hard to say. He doesn’t say anything but his grades are down and I was called to see Smithson. He said Sammy was defiant to the staff.”
There was a long silence before Powell spoke again.
“You know, it’s odd. Up to a week ago I couldn’t really believe I’d made it. And now I can’t believe this.” He looked at her. “I’ll have to fight these bastards, you know, Laura.”
“You’d be lynched, Logan. Imagine the Washington Post when it was leaked. Imagine any paper in the country. Those photographs would be enough.”
“The media would know what it would do to the country. They might rally round for the country’s sake.”
“Each one waiting for the other to break the story. The editorial boards sniggering at their copies of the photographs. And Congress and the Senate sending every Bill back automatically. They’d cut you into shreds with real venom and feel holy while they did it.”
“Even if I resign the thing will be leaked.”
“I don’t think so. It would be a terrible responsibility if they did that after you’d resigned.”
“What the hell would I do?”
“You’d get the presidential pension. We could move to Europe on the grounds of your health.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“You’d spend a lifetime hating me.”
“My dear, I saw you and Andy Dempsey for the first time ten years ago tomorrow. Jimmy Rankin introduced me to you both. It was at a Christmas Eve dance held at the Women’s College. You had a Ché Guevara moustache and it looked terrible, and you made two very witty cracks that impressed me. Even when I found out later that they were Dorothy Parker originals I was still impressed. I’m still impressed now. Andy Dempsey was a smooth character but you were straight off the front page of Saturday Evening Post. Good, honest American, reliable and all the jazz, and I guessed that one day you’d be a professor. Preferably at Hartford, come the worst at Yale. There was a touch of Scott Fitzgerald about you, and I loved it. And I loved you. And I love you now.”
“Why?”
“The same way I should still love Sammy if somebody conned him into doing something stupid. He’d still be my Sammy, and you’re still my husband.”
“What about the photographs?”
She shrugged. “You probably felt lonely. And you probably resented my non-co-operation. It doesn’t matter.”
“I remember that night we met. You wore a white dress with big orange poppies all over it and an orchid in your hair.”
“Eight out of ten, it was an hibiscus.”
“Have you ever been to Switzerland?”
“No.”
For a moment his face was alight with hope and then it collapsed to the grim lines of tension again.
“It’s phoney you know, Laura, all this crap they’ve scratched
