Senator Zucco had his finance committee purring along like a well-oiled machine. From his visitor’s chair by the door of the room Jake watched Zucco greeting the arriving senators as they took their places in the double bank of seats in the front of the hearing chamber.
Oscar Zucco was small, and he seemed old, bent, frail, with wispy white hair and a prominent hooked nose. His smile looked genuine enough, Jake thought: like a kindly old grandfather beaming genially at his offspring.
Once he called the meeting to order he said, in a soft tenor voice, “Our first order of business this morning is to vote on the bill to have the Treasury Department guarantee long-term, low-interest loans for private firms to invest in new space development programs.”
“Point of order, Senator.”
Jake felt his brows knitting. He didn’t recognize the woman who spoke. She was fiftyish, chunky, dark hair streaked with gray.
“Senator Fitzgerald, of Massachusetts,” said Zucco, with a little nod in her direction.
Her heavy-featured face serious, almost grim, Senator Fitzgerald said, “This is a momentous bill. Giving the Treasury Department the power to guarantee loans is a serious step in a direction that is fraught with pitfalls. I believe we should discuss the matter further.”
Zucco stared at her for a hard moment. Then, “We have discussed the ramifications of this bill, discussed them very seriously. You were unfortunately absent from several of our sessions.”
“I had other obligations…”
Zucco blinked his eyes and nodded. “Yes, I understand. But the committee has decided—in your absence—to vote on the matter this morning. Further discussion would merely go over ground we have already considered.”
Suppressing a grin, Jake thought that Zucco might look frail, but he knew how to cut the legs out from under an opponent.
“I still think we should give this momentous bill more serious, deeper consideration.”
“Are you making a motion to that effect?” Zucco asked. His tone was still mild, but Jake thought he heard iron underneath it.
“I so move,” Fitzgerald said.
“Second?”
Three other hands went up around the table. All Democrats, Jake realized.
Zucco took it all in stride. He called for a vote on Senator Fitzgerald’s motion, and it was voted down, along party lines.
“Very well,” said Senator Zucco. “Now let us proceed to vote on the bill.”
It passed. Even a handful of the senators who voted with Fitzgerald backed away from her and helped pass the bill. Jake breathed a sigh of relief.
Zucco’s screwed Sebastian, he thought. In public. Tomlinson’s stock will go up and Sebastian’s down.
Suddenly Jake realized, We’ve won! Zucco’s made his calculations and he’s jumped to our side!
Jake felt like leaping up from his visitor’s chair and baying at the Moon.
* * *
“Don’t start counting your chickens just yet,” warned Kevin O’Donnell, once Jake bounced into the office wearing a triumphant smile. “Sebastian could still scuttle the bill when it comes up for the full Senate’s vote.”
Jake’s cheerful mood slipped a notch. “What do you mean?” he asked the staff chief. “The bill should win a yes-or-no vote in the full Senate. And it’ll pass in the House easily.”
As O’Donnell led Jake past the desks and cubicles in the front of Senator Tomlinson’s suite back toward his own office, he explained, “Yeah, so it passes in the Senate and the House. Then it goes to the president for her signature.”
“You think she’d veto it?”
O’Donnell stopped at the door to his private office. “In a New York second. Lots of people are against your idea of having the government guarantee loans to private investors. I’m not sure I go for the idea, myself.”
Suddenly feeling deflated, Jake muttered, “And we won’t have the votes to override a veto.”
O’Donnell patted Jake’s shoulder. “If our man wins the presidential election next November, you can get the bill reconsidered.”
“But if Sebastian wins. Or the Democrats.”
O’Donnell made an elaborate shrug. “That’s politics, Jake. The best-laid plans can get kicked into the trash bin of history.”
“Thanks for the good news, Kevin,” Jake growled. And he headed off toward his own office, on the other end of the suite.