'No, I can't figure, all right?'
'That lovely girl was on the button. Someone wants to make you very important in this country, and someone else is having bowel movements over the prospect. You can't see that?'
'I'm beginning to, and I hope the other guys win. I don't want to be important.'
'Maybe you should be. Maybe it's where you belong.'
'Who the hell says so? Who thinks so?'
'The people who don't want you—you think about that. Khalehla told us that these garbage maniacs who came over here to kill you didn't just hop on a plane from Paris or walk off a cruise ship. They had help, influential help. How did she put it?… Passports, weapons, money—even drivers' licences and clothes and hideouts. Those things, especially the paperwork, you don't pick up at a corner store. They take contacts with power in high places, and the people who can pull those kinds of strings are the bastards who want you dead… Why? Does the outspoken congressman pose a threat to them?'
'How can I be a threat? I'm getting out.'
'They don't know that. All they see is a mensch politician who, when he opens his mouth, everybody in Washington shuts up and listens to.'
'I don't talk that much, so the listening's minor, practically nonexistent.'
'The point is that when you do talk, they don't. You got what I call listening credentials. Like I do, frankly.' Weingrass coughed, bringing a trembling hand to his throat. Evan bent over him, concerned.
'Take it easy, Manny.'
'Be quiet,' ordered the old man. 'You hear what I've got to say… Those bastards see a real American hero who's awarded a big medal by the President and put on important committees in the Congress—’
'The committees came before the medal—’
'Don't interrupt. After a couple of months the sequence of things blurs—anyway, you just made it stronger. This hero takes on the Pentagon brass over national television before he's a hero and damn near indicts the whole damned bunch of them as well as all those big industrial complexes who supply the machine. Then what does he do? He demands accountability. Terrific word, accountability—the bastards all hate it. They've got to start sweating, kid. They've got to figure that maybe this joker-hero will get more powerful, maybe chair one of those committees, or even get elected to the Senate where he could do some real damage.'
'You're exaggerating.'
'Your girlfriend wasn't!' countered Weingrass loudly, staring into Kendrick's eyes. 'She told us that her elite group may have tapped into a nerve centre higher up in the government than they want to think about… Doesn't all this present a blueprint to you, although I admit you were never the hottest shot with a blueprint I ever knew?'
'Of course it does,' answered Evan, nodding slowly. 'There's no nation in the world that doesn't have its degrees of corruption, and I doubt there ever will be.'
'Oh, corruption?' intoned Manny, eyes rolling, as if the word were part of a Talmudic chant. 'Like in one guy stealing a buck's worth of paper clips from the office and another taking a million with a cost overrun, is that what you mean?'
'Basically, yes. Or ten million, if you like.'
'Insignificant peanuts!' shouted Weingrass. 'Such people do not deal with Palestinian terrorists thousands of miles away for the sole purpose of positively removing themselves from a kill. They wouldn't know howl Also, you didn't look into that lovely girl's eyes, or maybe you don't know what to look for. You've never been there.'
'She says she knows where you're coming from because you have been there. All right, I haven't, so what are you talking about?'
'When you're there, you're scared,' said the old man. 'You're walking towards a black curtain that you're going to pull down. You're excited; the curiosity's killing you and so is the fear. All of those things. You try like hell to suppress them, even hide some from yourself, and that's part of it because you can't afford to lose an ounce of control. But it's all there. Because once that curtain is yanked away you know you'll be looking at something so nuts you wonder if anyone will believe it.'
