A couple of the students lackadaisically ambled after the fluttering sheets.
“Mark, look here!” Helper skidded to a gritty stop on the gravel and breathlessly waved the front page of the newspaper. “Look!”
Sequoia grabbed his aide’s wrist and took what was left of the newspaper from him. He frowned at Helper, who cringed and stepped back.
“I . . . I thought you’d want to see . . .”
Satisfied that he had established his dominance, Sequoia turned his attention to the front page’s blaring headline.
“Supersonic zeppelin?”
Two nights later, Sequoia was meeting with a half dozen men and women in the basement of a prosperous downtown church that specialized in worthy causes capable of filling the pews upstairs.
Once Sequoia called his meeting, I was informed by the mole I had planted in his pitiful little group of do-gooders. As a newcomer to the scene, I had no trouble joining Sequoia’s Friends of the Planet organization, especially when I FedEx’d them a personal check for a thousand dollars—for which Anson Aerospace reimbursed me, of course.
So I was sitting on the floor like a good environmental activist while Sequoia paced across the little room. There was no table, just a few folding chairs scattered around, and a locked bookcase stuffed with tomes about sex and marriage. I could tell just from looking at Sequoia that the old activist flames were burning inside him again. He felt alive, strong, the center of attention.
“We can’t just drive down to Washington and call a news conference,” he exclaimed, pounding a fist into his open palm. “We’ve got to do something dramatic!”
“Automobiles pollute, anyway,” said one of the women, a comely redhead whose dazzling green eyes never left Sequoia’s broad, sturdy-looking figure.
“We could take the train; it’s electric.”
“Power stations pollute.”
“Airplanes pollute too.”
“What about riding down to Washington on horseback! Like Paul Revere!”
“Horses pollute.”
“They do?”
“Ever been around a stable?”
“Oh.”
Sequoia pounded his fist again. “I’ve got it! It’s perfect!”
“What?”
“A balloon! We’ll ride down to Washington in a non-polluting balloon filled with helium. That’s the dramatic way to emphasize our opposition to this SSZ monster.”
“Fantastic!”
“Marvelous!”
The redhead was panting with excitement. “Oh, Mark, you’re so clever. So dedicated.” There were tears in her eyes.
Helper asked softly, “Uh . . . does anybody know where we can get a balloon? And how much they cost?”
“Money is no object,” Sequoia snapped, pounding his fist again. Then he wrung his hand; he had pounded too hard.
When the meeting finally broke up, Helper had been given the task of finding a suitable balloon, preferably one donated by its owner. I had volunteered to assist him. Sequoia would spearhead the effort to raise money for a knockdown fight against the SSZ. The redhead volunteered to assist him. They left the meeting arm in arm.
I was learning the Washington lobbying business from the bottom up but rising fast. Two weeks later I was in the White House, no less, jammed in among news reporters and West Wing staffers waiting for a presidential news conference to begin. TV lights were glaring at the empty podium. The reporters and camera crews shuffled their feet, coughed, talked to one another. Then:
“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”
We all stood up and applauded as she entered. I had been thrilled to be invited to the news conference. Well, actually, it was Keene who’d been invited, and he brought me with him, since I was the Washington rep for the SSZ project. The President strode to the podium and smiled at us in what some cynics had dubbed her rattlesnake mode. I thought she was being gracious.
“Before anything else, I have a statement to make about the tragic misfortune that has overtaken one of our finest public figures, Mark Sequoia. According to the latest report I have received from the Coast Guard—no more than ten minutes ago—there is still no trace of his party. Apparently, the balloon they were riding in was blown out to sea two days ago, and nothing has been heard from them since.
“Now let me make this perfectly clear. Mr. Sequoia was frequently on the other side of the political fence from my administration. He was often a critic of my policies and actions, policies and actions that I believe in completely. He was on his way to Washington to protest our new supersonic zeppelin program when this unfortunate accident occurred.
“Mr. Sequoia opposed the SSZ program despite the fact that this project will employ thousands of aerospace engineers who are otherwise unemployed and untrainable. Despite the fact that the SSZ program will save the American dollar on the international market and salvage American prestige in the technological battleground of the world.
“And we should keep in mind that France and Russia have announced that they are studying the possibility of jointly starting their own SSZ effort, a clear technological challenge to America.”
Gripping the edges of the podium tighter, the President went on, “Rumors that his balloon was blown off course by a flight of Air Force jets are completely unfounded, the Secretary of Defense assures me. I have dispatched every available military, coast guard, and civil air patrol plane to search the entire coastline from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras. We will find Mark Sequoia and his brave though misguided band of ecofr . . . er, activists—or their remains.”
I knew perfectly well that Sequoia’s balloon had not been blown out to sea by air force jets. They were private planes: executive jets, actually.
“Are there any questions?” the President asked.
The Associated Press reporter, a hickory-tough old man with thick glasses and a snow-white goatee, got to his feet and asked, “Is that a Versace dress you’re wearing? It’s quite becoming.”
The President beamed. “Why, thank you. Yes, it is . . .”
Keene pulled me by the arm. “Let’s go. We’ve got nothing to worry about here.”
I was rising fast, in part because I was willing to do the legwork (and dirty work, like Sequoia) that Keene was too lazy or too squeamish to do. He was still head of our Washington office, in name. I was running
