20

The sun burst against the cantilevered roof line of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, a glistening gem against a rare, deep-blue Washington sky. It was still too early for the crowds to begin their invasion. The only people around the stadium at that hour were stadium workers, or diehard fans determined to catch early glimpses of their heroes, or the special elite who picked their way up to the private club, sleepy-eyed but expectant. And then there were the lucky few, the elite of elites, who like Nick were invited to the owner's box, the one remaining stronghold of the imperial city. Here the patron could exhibit his prize, the Queen of the City, Myra Parker Pell, who reveled in her glory, the tiara of her power clearly displayed, the mace of her authority held high for the assemblage to admire and, if necessary, kiss.

Nick had always observed the Sunday ritual with some humor. But having bowed to the mace--indeed, he thought bitterly, having shoved it up his ass--he could see himself as having joined the vassals in the imperial box, another fawning courtier. Which was apparently what Charlie was trying to warn him against from the depths of his inarticulate hell until he betrayed them all with that bullet and the splattered brains. Yet in an odd way Myra, too, was an innocent victim. Could she be blamed for wanting to accept the full measure of her inheritance, for taking what was hers? We are all innocent, he thought, although knowing it gave him little solace.

His mood was bleak as he waited for Jennie in the chill outside the stadium. It was all cross and double cross and double double cross again, everyone thrashing about in search of his private talisman--power, integrity, objectivity, honesty, truth, glory, admiration. Which was his? he wondered, not finding it in the catalog.

Despite the sun, the cold stimulated teariness in his eyes. He had told Jennie to meet him at the entrance, a gruff command, spat out between gulps of hot coffee as he sat with the New York Times spread over the refuse of his Lucite desk. The depth of the Sunday Times' reporting was overwhelming. By comparison the Sunday Chronicle was an inept rag, swollen with trivia. Today he had counted seven advertising inserts, gaudy-colored with, it seemed, row after row of panty ads. He had never imagined that there could be so many different styles and qualities of panties.

The city room was quiet at that hour. A single typewriter clacked and a news aide sleepily opened what remained of a mountain of press releases. The absence of vibration from the presses made the atmosphere particularly unreal, almost eerie. In the far corner one of the older reporters, named McGaren, nodded over his desk reading a book. A widower, he had no home except here. Like me, Nick thought.

A mailbag lay crumpled on the floor near Miss Baumgartner's desk. He stifled the urge to open the bag and poke through it, searching out the hate mail. But knowing it was there, the hallucinatory ravings, the focused anger, was enough. He would read the letters tomorrow and they would provide their bizarre reassurance.

He thumbed through the Times, seeking ideas for stories and editorials. Because of the game, he would miss the morning's editorial meeting. Of course, Monday's editorials were already tentatively programmed. He knew his search was merely a mask for his real intent. Like old Mac sitting in the corner over a book, he simply had nowhere else to go. His life had boiled down to this, at last. The final reality!

Ripping tearsheets from the Times, he checked story possibilities in red grease pencil and flung the remainder on the floor, revealing again the slightly soiled copy of Gunderstein's story. He glanced over to Gunderstein's empty desk, expecting to see the intense pimpled face, calm and myopic.

A news aide brought wire copy. The rest of the world was in motion now. The week had begun in other hemispheres, reality had descended, agony stirred, conflicts awoke, birth and death happened, pain began. Words! Everything was words. Media! He wondered if Martha Gates was scheduled to work that day, but he refused to look at the attendance roster.

When he had completed the tearsheets and written in grease pencil the names of the deskmen to whom he wished them directed, he walked out to the city room and handed them to a news aide. Returning, he caught sight of Bonville sitting stiffly in his office, a plume of smoke from steaming coffee rising in the quiet air. Bonville did not see him, could not feel his eyes watching, even as Nick stood in the doorway, casting a shadow. Bonville's concentration was beyond destruction. It was only when Nick banged his fist against the open door, knuckles against the wood, that Bonville looked up, expressionless.

"Still got a copy of that health insurance editorial, Bonnie?" Nick asked gently, as if the need to ingratiate himself were suddenly of primary importance. Bonville looked at him quizzically.

"Yes, I do, as a matter of fact." His long bony fingers reached into a desk drawer. Unlike his own, the surface of Bonville's desk was neat and organized. Finding the copy quickly, he held it out for Nick to grasp. When he had not, he laid it carefully on the desk top as if it had been something delicate, fragile.

"I'm surprised to see you today, Bonnie."

"I'm rather surprised I'm here," Bonville said, his Adam's apple bobbing in his scrawny throat. "I mean that figuratively as well as literally." Nick could sense the beginnings of another confession. Please don't, he told himself.

"Frankly, I'm going through a bit of a crisis," Bonville said.

"You too?" It was a tribute to Bonville's insensitivity not to have caught the obvious. The man was totally within himself, Nick knew. He searched for the right moment to leave, but Bonville was continuing.

"I can't seem to make a dent. I feel I'm talking to the wind."

"You're the house radical, Bonnie. You keep us on our toes."

"I see the truth with such clarity," he said, avoiding Nick's eyes. "Sometimes I feel as if all my nerve ends were reaching out and finding the meaning, right at the heart of things. If only I had the power to persuade you, to verbalize the sense of truth."

"Come on, Bonnie. There's a hell of a difference between truth and ideology."

"That's exactly the point. I don't think of myself as an ideologue."

Nick found himself getting edgy. He hadn't meant to be drawn in. There was no point to it, no possibility of resolution. Bonville was a classic Leftist ideologian, handpicked by him to leaven the editorial committee.

"I really don't think I can continue to take the beating," Bonville said suddenly, his pain showing now.

"You take things too seriously, Bonnie." Would he sense the hypocrisy?

"Not seriously enough," Bonville said, looking at him as if for the first time. "The world is falling apart."

"Old Cassandra."

"There is injustice everywhere," Bonville said.

Another one, Nick thought. What is it about this business? he wondered. That damned sense of justice that ran like a stream through all of them. He felt engulfed by it. Enough!

"We'll discuss that health piece tomorrow, Bonnie," Nick said, escaping, conscious that he had left some of Bonville's words in midair.

Back in his glass cage, he could feel the day begin, as the room began to fill, actors taking their places, the play beginning. At the moment their audience was stirring in their warm beds, the prospect of a lazy Sunday before them, the expectation of the big game, which magnetized their attention. In his absence a news aide had piled on more copy, the columnists' filings, the overnights from around the world, the flood of words converging. He began to read, trying to pick up again the rhythm of his work, the exquisite balance, as comforting as a pair of old shoes that had grown to fit the contours of his feet. If only he could stay in his glass cage forever, never stirring from within its perimeter and the mental boundaries it symbolized. Here is where he wanted to live and here he wanted to die. Thank you for this gift, Charlie, he told himself, feeling the gratefulness of a loyal old dog who would not stir from its master's grave. The loss of this world would be his thirty, he knew, taking pride in the newspaperman's symbol, the origin unremembered. Telephones began to ring. Typewriters clacked. Voices hummed. The giant was stirring.

"Yes," he said into the mouthpiece of his own telephone which had rung.

"Nick." It was Myra. She seemed surprised. "I tried your apartment."

"Some loose ends," he said. He would not show her how much he needed to be here.

"Just wanted to be sure you wouldn't forget the game."

"Not a chance."

"And Jennie?" There was the slightest change of pitch, or had he imagined it?

"Jennie, too."

She had paused, her breath expelled, perhaps, in relief. He was certain now that Jennie had not confided, a mark of her own strategy for survival.

"And, Nick. I just want you to know how grateful I am for your attitude on Henderson. He called me late last night. I'm very thankful."

"He admitted it, Myra. He implied you also knew." It was important for her to know that he shared their little conspiracy. The pause was longer now, as she gathered her thoughts for some adequate response. She also knew the limits of her powers.

"He's our kind of guy," she said, ignoring the accusation. She could hear only the sound of her own drummer, he knew.

"Yes, Myra. He's our kind of guy." The words came out rippling, as if they were dragged over an old-fashioned washboard.

"It's going to be one helluva year," she said, girlish, gleeful.

"We needed an encore," he said. "See you later."

He had barely hung up when the telephone became persistent again, drawing his eyes away from the overnights. Finally he picked it up. It was Gunderstein's flat quiet voice, a slight quiver revealing a tenseness that might not be detected in a face-to-face talk.

"Will you be in for a while?" Gunderstein asked.

"I'm going to the game."

"I must talk to you." It was a confrontation he wanted to avoid. Could Gunderstein ever really be placated? The man's tenacity was superhuman.

"I'm leaving early." He knew then that he should just hang up the phone and run, as far as he could go. But there was no escape, not from the all-seeing myopic cyclops that was Gunderstein.

"Please, Mr. Gold. I can be there in ten minutes." The phone clicked off, leaving the receiver in a wet and trembling hand. When he had finally returned it to its cradle, Nick felt his concentration drain away. Moving his body in the chair, he looked into the city room again. Down the line of desks he could see the dark face of the Atkins girl, caught, he imagined, in the agony of nonobjectivity. Even at that distance she must have felt his eyes on her. She looked up, her head bobbing slightly, then returned to her typing.

The overnights seemed suddenly hollow, pretentious, as if the reporters were forcing themselves to fill space, injecting interpretations and stretching them to the point of pontificating. He was tempted to take his pencil and emasculate the copy, remove all the opinions and propagandizing, extract the spice of the newspaperman's art like a bad tooth. Usually it was impossible for him to see this kind of blatancy and do nothing about it. Sometimes he would excise a word, a paragraph, sometimes kill an entire story. This morning, though, he felt his powers ebb, a man caught in a never-ending dream sequence reaching for an object that his fingers refused to hold. Media! The word buzzed in his head like an insect beating its wings against a light. Later, he knew, he would read the printed paper with growing anger as he viewed the words he should have destroyed. It wasn't enough that he had set the line, at best fuzzy and ill-defined except in his own brain, but policing the line was a special problem, requiring the alertness and vigilance of an army. It was impossible for one man's brain to monitor it all. If only the information would just stop coming for a single day. Even when there were strikes, and they knew they would skip publication, the information continued to come. It was always processed and kept in readiness for the moment when the public would be let in, the zoo reopened.

Gunderstein arrived breathless, the front of his hair sweaty, plastered to his forehead. Little red circles had already outlined his pimples, a sure guide to the state of his agitation. He looked furtively from side to side as if someone might be expected to intrude at any moment.

"I've refocused my story," he said, taking a sheaf of copy paper from the side pocket of a rumpled jacket. The pages were folded vertically. He opened and smoothed them as he thrust them on top of the pile of dispatches.

"It's really a closed issue, Harold," Nick said looking blankly at the copy, refusing to stir his eyes to read it.

"I've actually cleared the major hurdle, Mr. Gold," he said. "Allison has agreed to be quoted. I assume that's your major objection."

"Allison?" He had barely remembered the man's name, although he had invoked the idea of his non-quotability as a major stumbling block to publication. Why couldn't Gunderstein let sleeping dogs lie?

"Yes. He has agreed to be quoted." Gunderstein pointed to the copy.

"He's not afraid?" Nick asked.

"He's frightened to death."

"Then why?"

"I paid him," Gunderstein said simply.

"You paid him?" The cadence of his words indicated that he wanted to say more. Gunderstein waited for the words that did not come.

"It was my own money," Gunderstein said, before Nick could protest that he had not authorized the payment.

"You're crazy, Harold," Nick said finally.

"Twenty-five thousand."

"You're crazy," Nick repeated.

Gunderstein smiled thinly, his meaning unmistakable. The story is everything, the means to acquire it merely incidental. They had been down that road before.

"You shouldn't have done that, Harold." He knew before it was uttered that it was an unworthy response, a naïve admonishment. "If it ever gets out..." He had heard that before as well. Indeed, he remembered having said it in just that way, fear and outrage curdling his guts while the mind sought adequate rationalizations.

"The story is everything, worth anything, the ethics of the payment directly proportional to the necessity of the story's being told," someone had said. Had it been Gunderstein? Or Myra? Or himself?

"Is it really worth that much to you, Harold?" Nick asked.

"I guess it speaks for itself, Mr. Gold," Gunderstein said. "It simply must be told."

Nick looked dumbly at the pages before him, despite himself starting to read, then checking himself after the lead paragraph:

"A former CIA operative has accused Senator Burton Henderson, the Democratic front-runner for the presidential nomination, of being the principal engineer of the assassination of Diem of South Viet Nam in 1963," the paragraph began.

"Right out on the limb," Nick said.

"The limb will hold."

"And the concept of two sources?" Nick could barely dislodge the words.

"There aren't two sources, Mr. Gold. The Dallas and Los Angeles bullets took care of that."

"And Allison? The man's a drunk and frightened. He'll crack when the others start pressing him for motivation. He'll be sure to mention the money."

"It'll be too late by then. The story will be out. Besides, I doubt if he'll mention it."

"And if he does?"

Gunderstein shrugged.

"Sooner or later it all comes out."

They had gone over that ground, too. Who would finally be the first to tell the story of the quarter of a million? What will it matter then? The President was gone now. History had marched on. Was it he who argued for the price of the truth?

"In the end, Allison finally agreed with you," Gunderstein said. "He'd be safer with the story up front than hiding in the shadows, a potential victim."

McCarthy's words, too, cascaded downward from the vault of time. "Find out," he had said. "Whatever it costs, find out." It had echoed and reechoed in space and time.

"People will think this whole business of democracy is one gigantic license to steal, a fraud. Aside from Henderson's career, have you assessed the impact on this country?" The words sounded like his, familiar in the delivery, but their integrity seemed suspect, even to him. He wondered if Gunderstein could detect the hollowness, the false ring.

"It doesn't matter," Gunderstein said quietly. "That's not for us to contemplate."

"Only the story?"

"Only the story."

"And if I choose not to run it?"

"You can't," Gunderstein said.

"But I can," Nick protested.

"Not in good conscience."

"Good conscience?"

Gunderstein nodded. Was it an implied threat? He would never know unless he picked up the gauntlet.

What had all this to do with conscience? he wondered. Self-interest was the paramount reason for all things, self-protection. It was in the rhythm of the evolutionary process, a part of the figurative food chain. The powerful eat the less powerful, while each transforms, developing new coping skills. They create new kinds of power, new life forms, in which the more powerful eat the less powerful and so on. He hung now by a thin thread over the razor's edge.

"You could always take the story to the New York Times," Nick noted, hoping that the suggestion might take hold. It was not Henderson who concerned him. Henderson, the confirming other source.

"I could."

Would Gunderstein see a story in that, the refusal of the Chronicle to carry the story, the implied cover-up, that abominable word, by the world's most powerful newspaper? And then would come the story of the quarter of a million, the avalanche of names, payoffs, a whole new Pandora's box. Surely the Chronicle would respond with denials, would find, in the musty attic of the Times, something to prick the balloon of their unbearable self-righteousness. Then the two great newspapers would lock themselves in mortal combat, draining their energy in a great media war--an unlikely outcome. It was an axiom of the media never to attack a fellow purveyor, at least on a peer level. Economics, the old concept of property ownership, dictated as always the extent of media reach. He, Nick, might stand in the doorway, but in the end, as he now knew, Myra held the key. Okay, Charlie, he asked, the futility of the question heavy in his mind, what do we do now? Go crazy? Take the bullet? Or walk away, the prospect of a living death?

"I should submit it to the legal eagles."

"There's no libel here, Mr. Gold, not on our part."

"When did you start to practice law?"

"Between us we know more libel law than a brace of lawyers." It was the only visible sign of cockiness he had ever revealed. "A good reporter understands libel by instinct, because a good reporter only writes the truth."

"That is the biggest crock of shit I've heard all morning," he said, knowing it was the truth, knowing that there was no libel in the story. By now, he could only view himself with disgust, his own cowardice galling. But Gunderstein stood his ground, humility returning, the face impassive again, although the myopic eyes seemed to squint less and the red circles around the pimples had diminished.

"Have you shown this story to anyone?"

"No."

"Martha Gates?"

"No." His eyes had narrowed at the mention of her name. Had she told him? The outrage of it, he thought, the invocation of moral principles.

"I need more time, Harold." He had framed the words carefully, more in tone than in meaning. It was necessary not to appear as if he were pleading. There was always the chance that Myra would understand, that reason could prevail. He searched for signs of her pragmatism, found many, invested her with her father's intelligence and balance.

"Give me time," he said, as if it were Gunderstein's to grant. He could feel Gunderstein's awkwardness in the face of the plea. He was, after all, the editor, not Gunderstein. The younger man stood awkwardly before him, shifting his weight clumsily from one foot to the other. Physically, he seemed so bland, almost frail. Perhaps in his very lack of formidability lay the key to his character.

"Let me read the story carefully," he whispered, reaching for the telephone, his ultimate technique of dismissal. Gunderstein watched him for a moment, then turned and walked slowly back to the city room. When he had crossed the room and sat down at his desk, Nick reached for the story, refolded it, and put it in the inside coat pocket of his jacket. It was then that he called Jennie, the words belched like commands as she acknowledged them with glum assents.

Putting on his jacket and fur-lined leisure coat, which barely reached to the end of his jacket, he walked quickly from the city room, his eyes fixed straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge Gunderstein's eyes, which he knew followed him. His coat testified to his destination. Let him draw his own implications.

He could see her emerging from the cab, probing carefully for the curb, with panted legs. She was dressed in her own special version of what was expected for the game, a high-crowned fur hat, teddy bear jacket, a blaze of orange which he knew would match her lipstick. Seeing him, she moved gracefully, recalling for him the special moments of tenderness. He could have been quite content in his ignorance, he thought.

"Hail to the Redskins," she said, falling in step beside him as they passed through the door to the special entrance. In the elevator they huddled in the crowd, light-hearted and bantering, as the cab moved slowly upward.

Faces turned as they arrived at the private suite behind the owner's box. The elite were crowded around the bar, sipping Bloody Marys, the dominant personality Myra Pell, slender and carefully groomed in a beige pants outfit. She had been talking with Swopes, elegantly suited in a camel's hair sport jacket and soft red shirt. Nick noted the familiar faces, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Senator Jack Martin, a long-shot presidential hopeful, Barry Halloran, the President's Press Secretary, the swinging Ambassador from Iran, who sported a lovely wide-eyed showgirl type, clutching at his arm. Ambruster, the head of the CIA, his breakfast companion of a few days ago, Mrs. Hoffritz, the obligatory rich dowager hostess, recently widowed, already slightly smashed, the ex-vice presidential candidate Richard Melton, Melissa Haversham, the actress of the current hit television show, daintily sipping champagne, John Packard, the oil lobbyist, tall and stately with a deeply flushed face, and his pouchy wife, bloated by too many cocktails and canapes, both of them clutching large glassfuls of bourbon on the rocks. But it was the blue eyes of Burton Henderson that magnetized him for a moment, matching perfectly the blue sky that peeked in the distance. He smiled broadly into Nick's face as his wife worked at keeping her eyes averted, the mantle of her past humiliation still visible. Behind him was Biff Larson, the Secretary of the Treasury, rakish in a shiny leather jacket. Nick felt his hand being pumped and grasped as Myra moved between him and Jennie holding each by the upper arm, the attentive hostess.

"And here's Jennie," she said. Without seeing it, he could assume that there was a special squeeze on Jennie's arm, a knowing signal.

"So you're the acid wit at the end of the by-line," the Chief Justice said, grabbing her hand. Jennie's eyes flashed furtively at Nick.

"Pungent but attractive," the dowager said.

"It's me," Richard Melton said, grabbing Nick's hand. "The old professional ex-pol."

"I wondered where I saw you before," Jennie said brightly. Once in the crowd, her spirits had perked up. Perhaps it had been Myra's caress that stimulated her. She took a Bloody Mary from the bar.

"I'm great copy for the 'What Ever Happened to' columns."

"What ever did happen to you?" Jennie asked.

"I joined the Mafia."

"Well, at least you didn't change your occupation."

The Secretary of the Treasury laughed heartily, clinking glasses with John Packard.

"To the energy crisis, Biff."

"Long may you profit by it, you bastard," the Secretary of the Treasury said. Nick could not be certain if sarcasm was intended.

"Well, is that broken-down geriatrics ward going to win today?" Barry Halloran asked Swopes.

"Ask Melissa," he said. "She's just come up from giving the boys a pep talk."

"It was marvelous. I've never been in a football locker room before. I've never seen so much manhood in one place," she said winking.

"I'd say you must have inspired them," the Iranian Ambassador said in his charming continental accent. The actress wiggled her hips playfully.

Beyond their chatter, Nick could hear the sound of the crowd, cheering the men who practiced on the field. Henderson came over and pumped Nick's hand. He was relaxed and happy, oblivious to the ticket of his demise that bulged heavily in the inner pocket of Nick's jacket.

"A great day for a ball game," he said.

"Just great," Nick answered with some effort, the words ejaculated with more force than was required.

"I'm really happy that you fellows have gotten together." It was Myra's voice, quietly intruding.

"You've got one helluva guy here, Myra," Henderson said, the implied possessiveness not lost on him.

We're pretty proud of him ourselves."

"I understand that you were Charlie Pell's best friend," he said, his blue eyes flitting between his and Myra's face. It was one of those unexpected remarks. He could actually feel Myra blanch.

"Buddies, those two," she said cheerfully.

"I've heard fantastic things about him," Henderson continued. How could he know he was treading on what was painfully private?

Myra moved away, heading for Ambruster. They began to talk in hushed whispers.

"I'm sure he feels a bit relieved as well," Henderson said, his smile vanishing. "He's taken so much flak lately he must feel like a piece of Swiss cheese."

"Well at least he's not running for anything," Nick said. Henderson frowned briefly, then smiled.

"That's one saving grace," he said smugly, reaching out to catch Jennie's hand.

"Now here is one sharp kid," he said.

"That was quite a do the other night," she said. Nick watched her aim her sense of womanness. It was her instinct not to miss a chance at latching on to power.

"I looked over your future home last night," she said.

"So I read."

"It's real campy. Loved the backyard. And I do hope you change the cook."

"Definitely." He waved his wife over. Moving reluctantly, she sipped her drink as she came toward them.

"Jennie says we should change the cook in the new place." Nick noted that Mrs. Henderson's eyes seemed weary, glazed.

"His mousse was positively inedible."

"Well have to look into it," she said, unable to carry off the required bantering response. Henderson looked at her sharply, disapprovingly. Nick could sense the tension between them. She upended her glass and walked to the bar.

In a corner of the room, white-jacketed black waiters removed the silver covers of the chafing dishes, signaling the beginnings of the buffet. The smell of eggs and sausage permeated the room.

"Mmm, smells good," the Ambassador's girl friend said, apparently relieved to have found a topic of conversation. Nick watched the Ambassador's hand slip down to caress a well-rounded buttock, caught his wink when he saw Nick watching.

"Soup's on," Swopes announced. None of the guests moved. It was considered gauche to be first in line. The slightly tipsy dowager came toward him. Nick braced himself, looking across the room at Myra, who winked playfully. Knowing what was to come, he tried to turn away, but she had already grabbed his lower arm.

"And how is Mr. Brezhnev's man in Washington?" she said, lisping. Once the reigning Washington hostess, she had been systematically destroyed as a media figure by the shift in the Chronicle's coverage, when the Lifestyle section replaced the old Society columns. Charlie had always suspected that she, along with others, had paid the reporters for her coverage, if not in cash, in other ways: lavish gifts, trips abroad. It could never be proved.

"We'll freeze the bitches out," he had said, actually compiling a blacklist. "If I see the names of these cunts in our paper, I'll fire the lot of you," he had shouted at a meeting in his office with the two Society reporters, long gone now, as they sat, guilt-ridden and pale. He had written down a series of names which he had forced them to memorize on the spot. He had wondered if they would make an issue out of it with the Newspaper Guild, but it had all blown over. Occasionally he had let their names slip in. They were, after all, a bit of nostalgia and one couldn't avoid, for example, Mrs. Hoffritz's massive contributions to the Kennedy Center and whatever worthy causes were the current fad. Besides, she represented a kind of caricature that added spice to the Washington scene.

"I'm no longer working for Brezhnev. Mao has made me a better offer, Mrs. Hoffritz."

"There are lots of real Americans out there, just waiting for a chance to get you," she said. A remembered phrase echoed in his mind, suddenly solving the identity of the writer of one of his persistent hate letters. He felt a strange kinship with her. Fryer of my gut, he chuckled.

"So it's you," he said mysteriously, knowing she would never understand. Inviting her might be one of Myra's private jokes, he thought.

"Your dress is lovely, Mrs. Hoffritz," he said, winking at Swopes, who led her away to the buffet table.

"She owns half the real estate in town," Richard Melton said behind them. "In my day, all you had to do was knock Stalin and down would come a ten-thousand-dollar check for your campaign."

"I always wondered what you fellows did with that dough," Nick said.

"Don't knock campaign funds, Nick. It kept a lot of us in groceries."

"I know."

"Standard practice in the industry."

The buffet line had begun to form. Outside the din was increasing. He felt the bulk of Gunderstein's copy in his pocket. He searched for Myra. She was talking to Henderson, the two of them alone now. Mrs. Henderson glared at them from the buffet line. He felt no pity for the poor woman, wallowing in her humiliations and misconceptions, caught in the web of her husband's imagery. It was, after all, a comfortable misconception, since she could excuse her husband's infidelity if it was necessary for the cause. Perhaps she too had made that sacrifice herself. He heard Myra's familiar laughter. Starting toward them, he stopped, noted how banal it appeared, the two of them together, confident of their power. They seemed so innocent, two children at play.

"Ummm, delicious," the Ambassador's girl friend squealed as he spooned tiny chunks of scrambled eggs into her mouth. Beside her, Biff Larson in his tight-fitting leather jacket bent down and held his mouth open for a proffered bit of egg.

"Down his greedy gullet," the Iranian Ambassador said, smiling. "Double the price of the next piece."

"The Middle Eastern mentality at work," the Secretary of the Treasury said with mock sarcasm.

"Oh, you mean oil," the Ambassador's girl friend shrieked, proud of her knowledge of current events.

"You should let her negotiate with us," Biff Larson said.

"She drives a hard bargain," the Ambassador said, winking to Nick, who was listening idly to their chatter.

"I'll bet," the Secretary of the Treasury said, also turning to Nick. The Ambassador held a hand near his mouth and whispered in Nick's ear.

"She has an absolutely exquisite body," he whispered.

The Secretary of the Treasury, who had imagined what the remark might have been, said: "Bribing the press again, Mr. Ambassador?"

"It is an old Middle Eastern tradition."

"Bribing the press?"

"No. In my country we are the press." He turned to his girl friend and blew her a kiss.

"You're not giving things away again?" Melissa Haversham said. The Chief Justice, who had been talking to her, watched her hips move as she walked toward him.

"I'll take them both," the Secretary of the Treasury aid. "Just wrap them up and deliver them to my home."

"In an unmarked brown wrapper," the Ambassador's girl friend said, apparently confused by their repartee, feeling the need not to be considered dumb.

Nick listened to the patter, the relaxed Washington talk. It represented a kind of special shorthand, understood, like Morse code, by both the sender and the receiver. On this stage nobody played for the audience, only for themselves, a tight little group, like the hardcore gamblers of a floating crap game.

Nick moved out of earshot, leaning against the far wall, balancing his plate. Outside the noise of the crowd grew louder. He ate by habit, tasting little, watching Myra circulate again, the Queen Bee offering herself for impregnation to the workers. He had the impression that she could feel his eyes on her, a laser beam, energizing her as she made her rounds. Henderson followed in her wake, the symbolism apt. Jennie completed the train, looking for a new place to roost now that she had lost him.

Again he felt for the folded copy in his jacket, rubbing its bulk, sensing the frantic beat of his heart beneath it. Myra was coming toward him now, a thin benign smile pasted on her lips.

"Are you all right, Nick?" she asked. He quickly removed his hand from his jacket.

"Fine." He cautioned himself. Was this the moment?

"There's a time to shut off the motor, Nick." It sounded like an order.

"Cut him adrift." He found himself saying it, despite the draining away of courage. But the players were being announced and the room had suddenly reverberated with the boom of the crowd, a wave of stamping and vibrations, drowning out intelligible sounds.

"What?" she said. But the noise persisted. He looked upward, watching the ceiling, waiting for the sound to die down. It seemed like the recurring dream of the unheard shout, the unreachable grip, where energy and motion defied real movement. If she had heard, would she have understood?

"Last call for drinks," Swopes shouted above the din as the group clustered around the bar.

"Who do you like in the game?" Henderson asked, casual, unruffled, confident. Behind him Nick could see his wife, stern and dour, a note of hopeless resolution in her glazed eyes.

"The Skins, of course," the Chief Justice said. "You can't drink the man's booze and do otherwise."

"Now there's an unbiased judge," Myra said, laughing, as the group proceeded into the box. He felt a tug on his arm, turned and saw Jennie.

"It's not who wins or loses, but how you play the game, right, Nick?" she said, then whispering, "Besides, who gives a shit?"

It seemed a clue to his own resolve. What did it matter, after all? Nothing would change. If not Henderson, it would be someone exactly like him, someone tinsel thin, media-created, able to rationalize the most bestial act in the name of country, or flag, or ideology, or some other self-conceived concept of morality.

Someone has got to become the watchdog of the public conscience, Mr. Parker had said that day, long ago. But who will watch the watchdog? he asked himself.

He who owns words owns the world, he repeated to himself as he filed into the box, the Imperial Box. The crowd cheered, a single mindless plaint from the immensity of the stadium. Each of them surely could feel the sense of their own specialness, as if the crowd were cheering for each of them. They, who had the power to control the callous inert crowd mind. In the antiseptic isolation of his glass cage, he had to imagine the sense of power, to create it in his brain, but here in this immensity of humanness, he could see it, feel it, smell it. We have no right to play with their innocence, he told himself, watching Myra's confident profile, her chin lifted proudly. He caught another glimpse of Henderson's blue eyes, sparkling with the moisture of the cold.

Then he felt the urge begin, seeing the distance between himself and the field, the low railing of the box, easily scaled, as Charlie might have seen the trigger of the hanging shotgun. Muscles tightened as they signaled for energy from the brain, but, at that moment the stadium became quiet, the humanity frozen as one voice rose above the rest in the rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," the ritualized words stilted and irrelevant.

A wrenching shiver seized him as he viewed the standing crowd, an amorphous indistinguishable mass, singing with innocent expectation. He could sense something expiring in this environment, a terminality in himself as well. Who will be left to watch the watchdogs? he asked again, wondering if his lips had moved soundlessly. Or will the watchdogs become the guardians, the threatened? Suddenly Myra's eye caught his, winked, a sign of her benign possession of him.

As he heard the last echoing strains of the National Anthem, the resurgence of the crowd's mindless babble, he knew he was misplaced in space, a straggler in an untracked jungle. He who kept the word must never leave the glass cage, never feel or touch or taste the humaness that could corrupt objectivity, destroy perfection.

Sounds of the crowd rang in his ears as he ran from the box, passing the black waiters who were clearing the imperial buffet. Outside in the glaring sun he flagged a cab and directed the driver to take him to the Chronicle.

The story, the word, in the end, was all, the only meaning. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the sheaf of paper, making mental notes of an appropriate headline, cursing Gunderstein as he read. The man was constantly splitting infinitives.