I wish I knew what’s on those disks,” Arthur said to Pat.
“The DVDs Cassie made?”
They were having lunch at one of the little restaurants just off Capitol Hill, leaning together conspiratorially over the tiny, wobbly table. Neither of them recognized anyone else from the trial in the restaurant, yet still they talked in near-whispers.
“Yes,” Arthur said gloomily. “Cassie’s legacy.”
“I still think Rosen should have allowed you to see them before they’re introduced as evidence in the trial,” said Pat.
Arthur grimaced. “His position is that they’re not scientific evidence. They’re just a personal statement by a scientist who worked on the program.”
“We’ve come a long way from restricting ourselves to the scientific facts, haven’t we?”
Nodding, Arthur replied, “And Graves is letting him get away with it.”
“She won’t be helpful to you, will she?”
“Rosen wouldn’t use the disks if they were helpful,” Arthur grumbled. “The only question is, how much damage can they do?”
Pat tried to change the subject. “You really demolished Ransom.”
“He had it coming.”
“I didn’t think he’d be so easy to knock off.”
Arthur smiled grimly. “That sneaky little sonofabitch has never had to stand up to cross-examination before. Not in any way. He’s always attacked through the media or through the courts, always arranged things so his victims are on the defensive and he’s on the attack. Once he had to defend his own position, he crumbled.”
“No,” Pat said admiringly, “you crumbled him. And then you held out your hand to him, at the end. That was beautiful.”
Arthur looked surprised. “Oh, you mean when I said he’d need regeneration one day?” He shrugged. “Well, we all will, won’t we?”
“Potter needs it now,” Pat said.
Arthur’s face hardened. “I wonder what I’d do if we were ready for human trials and Potter came to me and asked for help.”
“You’d help him.”
“Would I? That man ruined my life.”
Pat laughed. “I wouldn’t say your life is exactly ruined, Arthur.”
“No thanks to him.”
She grew more serious. “His testimony was pretty damning, though.”
Arthur huffed. “He made an ass of himself.”
“He sounded very convincing to me.”
“You’re not a scientist. Anyone in the field who still has a few brain cells functioning will see that Potter’s so-called scientific study is nothing but numerology.”
“Really?”
“I’ll tear him to shreds when I cross-examine him.”
Pat smiled a bit. “Perry Mason attacks.”
“You’ll see.” Arthur smiled back.
At least he’s smiling, Pat thought as their waiter brought a pair of salads. Pat was drinking iced tea, Arthur a nonalcoholic beer.
“How much damage can Cassie do?” she asked.
Arthur’s smile vanished. “Not much scientifically. But if her video is as emotional as I think it’ll be, we’re going to get lynched in the media.”
“I don’t think there’ll be all that many reporters back for the afternoon session. They got their story when you and Ransom squared off.”
“They’ll be there,” Arthur said. “Let Cassie break into tears just once on her videos and they’ll swarm around us like piranhas. She’ll be on the six o’clock news, not Ransom and me.”
“And we’ll look like monsters.”
He picked listlessly at his salad, then looked up again. “I wanted this trial to go strictly on the scientific merits of our work. If we could just stick to the science we’d have no trouble whatsoever.”
“But Rosen won’t do that, and Graves is letting him get away with it.”
“This isn’t what Graves and I agreed to, at the beginning,” Arthur said bitterly. “I’ve been betrayed.”
“The trial hasn’t been on the front page since the opening day,” Pat said, trying to sound optimistic. “Even Reverend Simmonds’s pickets have thinned out a lot.”
“Senator Kindelberger tried to sabotage us,” Arthur said. “He’s out to get us.”
“He’s running for reelection,” said Pat.
“And appealing to the crazies.”
“I guess.”
“But where’s Jesse?” Arthur wondered. “Why wasn’t he here?”
“I don’t know. Do you want me to find out?”
“And what’s on Cassie’s disks? What’s she going to say? How bad is it going to get?”
Laureen Jarvis skipped lunch. She went straight from the hearing chamber in the Rayburn Building to Senator Kindelberger’s offices in the Dirkson Building, on the other side of the Capitol.
Inserting Ransom into the trial had been Kerry Tate’s brilliant idea and it had backfired hideously. The little creep was totally outgunned by Marshak. As she headed for the senator’s private office, Laureen saw that Kerry’s door was closed tight.
He doesn’t want any of us ragging him, she thought. Can’t say that I blame him. But this next ploy is going to blow Marshak out of the water; it can’t fail.
The senator was sitting at the conference table in his office, looking worried, one big hand wrapped around his luncheon glass of bourbon. Elwood Faber sat on the far side of the polished mahogany table, an attaché case opened on his lap. Laureen saw three plastic-covered DVDs inside the case; Faber seemed to be guarding them as if they were bars of solid gold. Reverend Simmonds stood over by the window, his head bowed over hands clasped in prayer.
Laureen complained, “The reporters won’t be back after lunch. They got what they wanted from Marshak’s takeout of Ransom.”
Kindelberger shot her an annoyed glance. Faber looked up from the DVDs. “You’re wrong, honey. I’ve phoned every reporter in town. They’re all going to be there, watching these videos.”
“You’re certain of that?” Kindelberger asked.
“Depend on it,” Faber said, smiling.
Simmonds lifted his face and said, “God is on our side. He will provide us with victory.”
“He’d better,” Laureen said. “Another fiasco like Ransom and we’ll be wiped out.”
Faber closed the attaché case tenderly, then patted its lid. “Listen, people: these videos are a godsend. Little Cassie’s going to win this fight for us.”
Simmonds sat down and leaned his arms on the polished conference table.
“But Marshak tore Ransom to shreds,” Kindelberger grumbled. “That makes me look like a jackass.”
“It doesn’t matter what the scientists say,” Faber said, putting both his loafer-clad feet on the tabletop. “Once little Cassie here starts blubbering on the TV screen about her monkey, the media’s going to crucify Marshak but good.”
Simmonds’s eyes narrowed slightly at the word “crucify,” but he said nothing.
“You stop Marshak and you’re a national power, Reverend. A national political force. You’ll get the senator here reelected. And then other politicians will come a-courting you. You’ll see. They’ll come to you with their hats in their hands and tell you that they’ve seen the light and they want your blessing on their campaigns. They’ll beg you to let your followers work for ’em. And vote for ’em, of course.”
“I’m not interested in political power,” Simmonds rumbled.
“No, course not.” Faber jabbed a finger at him. “But you want to put an end to creating fetuses just so’s some scientists can kill ’em and use their stem cells, don’t you? You want the schools to stop teaching about sex, don’t you? And stop teaching about evolution, too. You want dirty books and smutty Web sites taken out of circulation, don’t you? You want families to be families again, you want to stop all these welfare sluts from getting free abortions, you want to make these United States dedicated to the power and glory of the Lord, don’t you?”
Simmonds said nothing. He did not have to.
“Well, then,” Faber said, smiling broadly at him, “to get that done we’ve got to destroy Marshak. Not just beat him at this trial, not just stop his infernal scientific research. We’ve got to ruin the man, break him, crush him up so bad that nobody’ll ever want to hire him even for janitor!”
Simmonds clasped and unclasped his hands for several long moments. His eyes shifted away from Faber, looked down at his clenching fingers.
At last he said, “God’s will be done.”