his machinery. Things were getting back to normal.
“Worst case the press picks it up, gets this guy to talk to them,” Anne said. “They play it up from some sort of sympathetic angle. Here’s a lowly street person and one of the most powerful men in the country. Then they press you to affirm or deny, you deny, and they get to your driver, or this Helen Forbes Kensington, and one of them cracks. Then you’ve got a situation where everybody knows you’re lying to the cops and the country.”
“Great,” Levering said. “For a moment I thought it was bad.”
Anne waited for instructions. She had a few ideas of her own, but wanted to get the word from the senator first. Give him a feeling of being in control.
Silence stretched on. Levering became motionless at the window, his back to Anne. He kept his hands clasped behind him, his fingers wiggling as if to indicate brain function. Then, without turning around, he said, “We’re sure he’s homeless?”
“Yeah.”
“If we went further with this, what would be the downside?”
Anne knew what he meant. Early on in their association, when they were dancing around each other, testing limits, they had come to a meeting of minds. Levering’s goal was the presidency, and no effort would be spared in his getting there. Any obstacle would be removed. The only limitation would be the downside risk.
The means for dealing with situations beyond the norm had never been explicitly stated. Anne had been the one to suggest they base their relationship on “plausible deniability.” Levering would never issue directives that could later come back to haunt him. Anne would be given a free hand, so long as Levering didn’t know the details.
What surprised Anne at the time was how easily they both had accepted the parameters.
Anne calmly replied, “The cops know this guy is a potential witness against you. On the other hand, he isn’t much of one. It’s a really weak case. I don’t think the public would buy it.”
“But there’s a chance,” Levering said. “I mean, I’ve got a little bit of a reputation in that area.”
Boy howdy. “This guy might take off, hit the road. They’re not going to hold him.”
“How do we convince a crazy homeless person to leave town?”
“I’ll handle the details.”
“Right,” he said. “I don’t want to know anything specific.”
“Of course,” Anne said. Then she added, “When you get to the White House, you will need a chief of staff.”
Levering smiled wryly at her. “You have anyone in mind?”
“Maybe.”
He nodded. “You make this little problem go away, and the job is yours.”
5
The plane rose into fog, a gray netherworld. Millie took a deep breath and looked out the window.
In so many ways this day should have been a relief. She’d spent precious hours with her mother, seen her before she died. That wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t had her accident. And she was going back to Washington to assume the job of a lifetime – chief justice of the Supreme Court.
So why the feeling that her whole life was about to change?
She put on the earphones the flight attendant had passed out earlier and clicked the dial until she got classical music. The recording was right in the middle of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9, The Ode to Joy.
She put her head back, letting the music wash over her. Then she looked outside again. Bright sunlight streamed through her window as the ascending plane topped the fog. Suddenly, there was clear sky, the bluest of blues, and soft clouds seen from above, like an angel’s playing field.
The music swelled.
Inside her something opened up. There was a flooding in, an expansion, as if she were a sail filling with wind. And it terrified her.
She put her hands on the earphones, pressing them in, making the music even louder to her ears, as if she could crowd out all thought, all sensation.
But she could not. For one brief moment of almost unendurable intensity she felt like a door was opening, and thought she might go crazy.
Part Two
Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court
he ceases to be your friend.
HARRY S. TRUMAN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1
By mid September, Washington was buzzing again.
Anne Deveraux could feel it in the air, the way a ballplayer must feel when the new season is about to begin. Time to play hardball.
First order of business in the new season involved two games at once. One was keeping Dan Ricks, sleaze reporter, off balance. The other was using him for the essential information on Millicent Mannings Hollander. Her hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would vote on her nomination to be chief justice, was coming up. Should Hollander suddenly veer off her liberal course, she and Levering would be ready to leak embarrassing material.
So she was ready for the first pitch. But Ricks was late.
He had insisted on meeting her in the parking garage of the Marriott. He joked
