Senator Gordon Tewilliger pulled himself into the limo and shut the door. The weather had turned nasty and his plane from Washington, D.C., had been delayed nearly an hour from landing at Delaware County Airport, just outside of Muncie, Indiana. That meant he was even further behind schedule than usual.
“State Elks dinner begins with cocktails at six.” Jack Long, his district coordinator, leaned back from the front seat. “Your speech is scheduled for about eight thirty. You can just blow in, do the speech, then skip out. Which will get you over to the hospital before ten.”
“That’s still not going to help us, Jack.”
“You cut the ribbon at the Senior Center at six. We go from there directly to the Delaware County reception. You spend fifteen minutes there, then we swing over to the Boy Scout assembly to give out the Eagle badges.”
The door to the limo opened, and Tewilliger’s deputy assistant, James Hannigan, slipped in. Though his title seemed to indicate that Hannigan was number three in the hierarchy of his aides, in actual fact he was the senator’s alter ego and had been with him since Gordon Tewilliger had first run for state assembly. Hannigan, a short, wiry man, put his head down and ran his fingers through his hair, trying to rub off some of the rain. Once the aide was inside, the driver locked the doors and put the car in gear. The windshield wipers slapped furiously, as if they were mad that the rain had the audacity to fall.
“Finish the Eagle badges no later than seven-ten,” continued Long, “then stop by the reception at the Iron Workers Union. If things run late, we can cut that. Then—”
“You don’t want to cut the Iron Workers,” said Hannigan.
“Gordon could stand on his head, and they won’t endorse him,” said Long.
“Sure, but Harry Mangjeol from Yongduro is going to be there, and he wants to say hello.”
“He wants more than that,” said the senator. “He’s going to harangue me about the nuclear disarmament treaty again. ’South Korea get raw deal.’ ” Tewilliger mimicked Mangjeol’s heavily accented English.
“He and his friends are supplying the airplane to New Hampshire tomorrow,” said Hannigan. “It wouldn’t be politick to tell him to screw off.”
“No, I supposed it wouldn’t,” said Tewilliger.
Mangjeol was a first-generation Korean-American who owned an electronics factory halfway between Muncie and Daleville. Though a rich man in his own right, Mangjeol was more important politically as the representative of a number of Korean-American businessmen with deep ties to South Korea.
The Americans were always complaining that the North was getting away with something. Oddly, at least to Tewilliger, in the next breath they would say how much they hoped the peninsula would be reunified, as if getting the two Koreas back together wouldn’t require a great deal of compromise and understanding.
“McCarthy’s not budging on the disarmament agreement,” said Tewilliger. “He won’t change a word.”
“A powerful argument to Mangjeol in favor of backing you for president,” said Hannigan.
“Here we go, Senator,” said Long.
Tewilliger looked up, surprised to find that they were driving up to the senior center already.
“Mayor’s name is Sue Bayhern. Serious lightweight, but she gets eighty percent of the vote,” said Long, feeding the senator the information he’d need to navigate the reception. “The place cost six point seven million dollars; the federal grant covered all but two hundred thousand.”
“Our grant, Jack. They’re always our grants,” said Tewilliger, opening the car door.