I couldn't think of anything to say, and we again lapsed into silence. After a few minutes I stood up and groped my way around the suite until I found a light switch.
We had been asked to be patient and wait. We were patient, and we waited. At six thirty there was a knock at the door. It was one of the Secret Service agents asking if it was a convenient time for us to be taken to dinner. It was a most convenient time, and if our attire-jeans, denim shirts, and hiking boots-did not seem quite appropriate for going out to dinner in Washington, nothing in the demeanor of the agent indicated that he thought so, or that there would be any problem.
There wasn't. We were taken to one of Washington's better restaurants. Arrangements had obviously been made beforehand, for the maitre d' nodded to the two agents as we entered, and we were ushered through a velvet-roped gate, past a number of startled diners, to a candle-lit table in a private booth at the rear of the main dining room.
'Shannon's laying it on a bit thick, isn't he?' Garth said to one of the agents sitting across from us.
'The captain has been asked to order for us, Lieutenant,' the stern-faced man replied evenly. 'I hope you approve. You won't be disappointed.'
We weren't. An hour and a half later, stuffed with French cuisine and fine wine, Garth and I followed the agents out of the restaurant to the waiting limousine that had brought us.
Followed by a second car with four Secret Service agents in it, we rode slowly through the night streets of Washington. I had assumed we were going to be driven to the White House, but that wasn't the direction in which we were headed. Finally the car pulled up to the entrance of a park, and I knew where we were. Up and down the street, spaced twenty yards or so apart, were police cars, with their lights off. The officers standing on the sidewalk were alert and watchful.
'The president will meet you at the war memorial,' one of the agents said as he opened the car door for us. 'Just follow the sidewalk.'
Garth and I ducked under the wooden barricade that had been placed across the entrance and headed down the sidewalk into the park. There were lights over the walk, but they had been dimmed to the point where they were not much brighter than the dappled moonlight. We walked in silence, for there seemed nothing left to say to each other. We had 'come in from the cold' only to end in an even colder place, and now we were on our way to meet the supreme commander of what was beginning to look like just one more enemy army.
We came around a bend in the path and suddenly found ourselves confronted by the startling sight of the Viet Nam War Memorial, its long slab of polished black stone faintly glowing in the moonlight like a sacred obelisk left behind by some ancient, extinct tribe of warriors.
Suddenly a man with a walkie-talkie stepped out from behind a clump of bushes to our left. 'The lieutenant has to say here,' the Secret Service agent said, blocking Garth's path.
'Bullshit!' I snapped, moving closer to Garth. 'My brother and I go down there together, or we don't go at all.'
'Then you don't go at all,' the agent said evenly, looking directly at me. 'You won't get around us on this one. We didn't approve of meeting here in the first place. We lost the battle on choosing the meeting site, but we won't budge on choosing who goes down there. We're responsible for the safety of the president. The lieutenant is dangerous; he attacked a presidential aide.'
'Fuck you, thank you, and good night.' I said, and turned around. I started to walk away, but was stopped when Garth gripped my shoulder and turned me around again.
'Go ahead, Mongo,' Garth murmured. 'This man's just doing his job, and he happens to be right. You go ahead and see what Shannon has to say. I'm feeling very spooky, and I really don't care to meet with the son-of-a- bitch anyway.'
'Okay, brother. You all right?'
'I'm all right. Go take care of business, and don't give him shit.'
I squeezed Garth's hand, then walked ahead, across a short open expanse, to the lip of the recess in which, like a monster shard in a great, rectangular bomb crater, the Viet Nam War Memorial stood. Again, I found myself profoundly moved by the stark simplicity and awesome power of the sculpture. As had been intended, the black stone slab cut not only through space, but also through all the pretensions and desperate, muddled rationales all sides offered to try to explain the most complex and ultimately futile war the United States of America had ever fought.
I slowly descended a ramp into the magnificent hole in the ground, walked up to the granite, and touched my fingertips to the sharp lines of the stonecutter's art in the center of the wall of names. Keeping my left hand on the wall, I moved to my right until I finally came to the last of the names. The rest of the wall was naked black stone awaiting more bad news about bones unearthed from unmarked graves halfway around the world.
There were some names that should be added, I thought-the victims, including two children, who had died in the fire that had destroyed my apartment building; Loan Ka and his family, and Kathy; Gary Worde, and the six fighting men of America's armed forces sent to die in shame on a madman's murderous errand.
I was most impressed by the monument-and angry that Kevin Shannon should use the mystery of the site in an embarrassingly obvious effort to manipulate my feelings. I resented the banality and predictability of his action and found it depressing.
I heard footsteps behind me, and I turned as Kevin Shannon, casually dressed in charcoal slacks, black loafers, black turtleneck, and a heavy white cardigan sweater, came down the ramp and walked toward me at a brisk pace. He was shorter in person than he appeared on television or in photographs. His thick, gray-streaked black hair was cut sharply in the swept-back style that was his trademark. His craggy, fifty-seven-year-old face could not be described as handsome, but his features were nonetheless striking, with a square jaw, pronounced cheekbones, and bright, black eyes. He looked like a man who could control himself as well as situations, and it was this bearing-along with his political views-that had first attracted me to him. I had believed in Shannon, believed he was somehow different from the mangled politicians who usually survive the internecine warfare that is our political system to gain election to high office. Now I felt like a fool.
His grip, when he shook my hand, was firm. 'Good evening, Dr. Frederickson,' Kevin Shannon said in his pleasing baritone.
'Good evening, sir.' Courtesy costs nothing.
Shannon motioned for me to sit down on the stone bench behind us. I did, and he sat beside me. He crossed his legs, reached into a pocket of his cardigan, and to my surprise, brought out a small silver flask emblazoned with the presidential seal. He unscrewed the silver cap, drew a shot glass out of the same pocket, set them both down on the bench between us.
'Your rather extensive dossier indicates you like Scotch, Frederickson. I thought you might like to share a drink with me. The flask is for you.'
I hoped that the offer of a presidential souvenir at the beginning of our discussion was an attempt at humor, but I had the most disquieting feeling that it wasn't. Like Burton Andrews, probably like most people who crave for and exercise power, Kevin Shannon seemed to have had his soul, as well as a good deal of common sense, displaced by a preoccupation with symbols. It was at once fascinating and unnerving, and I wondered how much of this presidential stroking I was going to have to put up with before we got down to business.
'No, thank you,' I said.
Shannon shrugged, set down the flask next to the shot glass and cap. 'What do you want, Frederickson?' he asked, leaning toward me and resting his forearms across his knees.
'I thought Burton Andrews might have told you.'
'You tell me.'
'Justice.'
'We might disagree over what constitutes justice.'
'Let the courts decide. That's what they're there for.'
Shannon leaned back, drew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He offered me one, which I declined. He lit one, inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. 'What, in your opinion, would constitute justice in this matter?'
'At the very least, Orville Madison should be sent to prison for the rest of his life.'
'What about Veil Kendry?'
'He should be left alone.'
