“Sidi obviously has,” he observed, as the Secretary of Human Services on his left broke in to command his attention in her brusque, homespun way. He tossed Joanie a wry smile over his shoulder as he turned away. “Have fun.”

  And now at one AM she still didn’t know what had been decided at the White House and would not, presumably, until she got to her office in Main Building this coming morning and Ray either called her in to tell her or telephoned. She could offer him the firm news that Willie Wilson and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would probably want to get into things quite early in the game, probably before the administration had a chance to clarify or really firm up its position; and that close behind would come their favorite nemesis on the House side, Joltin’ Johnny Jones, as Ray often referred to him. Followed by all sorts of annoying hoo-hah on the floors of both houses. Democracy in action, she thought with a tired, impatient, sigh; necessary but damned annoying, sometimes.

  And having by now given herself something concrete to think about, she finally dropped off to sleep; but not before one last exasperated thought for her wandering husband. Bets was having the identical trouble with Samir. What were they up to, for heaven’s sake?

  This was what you got, as her mother in Brooklyn often remarked, for marrying the enemy. They were just different, that’s all; just plain different. And although Joanie often disputed this hotly with Mom, she admitted to herself that she never would really understand them as long as she lived, for all her great reputation as a student of Arab affairs and “an Arabist” in the incessant internal arguments of the State Department. The only saving grace of it was that the arguments were almost always over ideas, approaches, attitudes, philosophical and moral concepts. In that kind of combat, Joanie Bourassa knew from long experience that she could almost always more than hold her own.

  * * *

  In the gracious, narrow (sixteen feet wide, forty deep, three stories and basement) Federal house on Capitol Hill that he shared with two young members of the California delegation in the House, Senator Wilson had reached the same conclusion, one that always came to him after one of his sometimes cantankerous, usually good-natured skirmishes with the Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs. Joanie was a brilliant, aggressive, and skillful advocate and defender of the standard State Department approach to the world. Which could be summed up as:

  Wait.

  Go slow.

  Be cautious.

  Don’t try to initiate and develop: new ideas are anathema and almost always virtually impossible to move through the bureaucracy, given the years of prior conditioning that many of the most powerful have undergone in their years in the Foreign Service.

  So wait.

  Go slow.

  And above all, don’t innovate. To do so would be to go out on a limb and risk your career if what you proposed proved disastrous.

  So, don’t. Be cautious. Be careful. Be safe.

  State was as bad as the Pentagon, the Senator sometimes thought with a frustrated sigh, except that in the Pentagon you had perhaps even more reason for cautious inaction than you did at State, because there you had the rigid military hierarchy that could provide quite immediate punishment if you raised your head too far above water. State had somewhat more freedom, being a relatively amorphous conglomeration of independent principalities, all of them with immediate access, if they so chose, to the media and other means of influencing the public. But the dead weight of Don’t Be Too Bright and Don’t Challenge the Official Wisdom was almost equally repressive and deadly, in the long run.

  Still, it always pained him to find someone as intellectually superior as Joan Bourassa falling in with the official line—indeed, from her pro-Arab perspective, giving it additional strength. His own view, stated in many committee hearings and an occasional speech on the floor, was more direct and, perhaps, more simplistic. But, he had found, the world was a simplistic place. Its leaders, many of them vicious, evil, and ruthless men, did not engage in the long, tortuous, tied-up-in-knots ratiocinations of the overly educated, overly sensitized, overly anguished Americans. In many places of power around the globe, leaders knew what they wanted and they acted; and more often than not, particularly in these recent years, their gut instincts were more than a match for the perpetually soul-searching, nitpicking, own-navel-examining leaders of “the world’s sole remaining superpower.”

  Willie’s own gut instinct, based on shrewd observation of humankind going back to university days, was to be prepared—be slow to threaten but be willing to respond when challenged—and having decided to respond, respond. Don’t hesitate, don’t waffle, don’t back down; and above all, don’t have second thoughts about the wisdom of it all in the middle of the contest.

  That way, he was convinced from a lifetime’s experience, lay loss of will, loss of courage, and ultimately, loss of the sound objectives of freedom and democracy which the leaders of the Sole Remaining Superpower often enunciated but just as often lost along the way in a welter of hesitation, procrastination, and overly complicated second-guessing; sometimes encouraged by reluctant, timorous allies but essentially the result of having great power and not having the guts to exercise it as strongly and decisively as it must be exercised if it is not ultimately to be dissipated beyond recovery and allowed to slip into the dustbin of history.

  He had come home from Dolly’s to spend a final hour reading the text of two bills his young colleagues wanted his advice on before they introduced them in the House. One was an amendment to the Defense Department appropriations bill that would, in essence, direct the President to “provide all necessary means, equipment, and support to protect US troops in any and all United Nations peace-keeping or other efforts … without reference to any arrangements made by any other non-American participants in such peace-keeping or other efforts for the protection, defense, and/or support of their own forces.”

  The other was a nonbinding sense-of-the-Congress resolution that would specifically ban the President from providing US “participation in, or support for, any future United Nations peace-keeping or other efforts … without two-thirds prior approval of Congress.”

  Both, he knew, didn’t have a chance in their efforts to limit the President’s prerogatives in foreign affairs—he would have to lead the fight against them if they survived by some miracle and came over to the Senate—but he didn’t want to discourage his youthful colleagues too early in the game. Both were in their thirties, eager and idealistic, as he himself had been when he first came to the House more than forty years before; no need to stomp on them too early, he thought with a sigh. But how to explain to them the realities of Hill and White House, State and Defense? Maybe it might be better to let them sail into it headlong: the quicker the slap down, the sooner the bounce back. He was fond of them both, both married, with children, both struggling to make ends meet, both midweek bachelors who left their families at home on the other side of the continent because they couldn’t afford to support two households on a congressman’s salary; which was why they had wound up sharing the comfortable quarters he offered two blocks away from work—and even that not always a safe walk, even in broad daylight, these days.

  Their eagerness and idealism kept him on his toes, he reflected as he got ready for bed and thought once more of his little skirmish with Joan Bourassa. That was probably why he had taken to renting out rooms on a regular basis soon after Donna’s death twenty years ago. His tenants admired and respected him personally, if not always his political positions, and even there, he found them stimulating. Many and many a lively debate had raged around the fireplace in the narrow old living room, when one or another of his roomers had invited some of their fellow congressmen in for “one of Willie’s brainstormers.”

  “You keep an old man young,” he told them when the guests departed, surfeited on something as simple as hot dogs and beer, replete to overflowing with lively arguments and, usually, good-natured controversy. Even on the rare occasions when someone got a little high and a little angry, it was stimulating; and most times it was friendly, intelligent, and constructive. He often congratulated himself when one of these sessions was over that, in his quiet way, he had quite a bit of influence in the House, as well as his long-established influence in the Senate.

  “Sage of the Senate,” his fraternity brother Tim Bates often called him with a mixture of joshing and affection when he telephoned or came up to the Senate for lunch, as he often did. Timmy, also eighty, was retired after a long and distinguished career as a nationally syndicated columnist for Anna Hastings’s Washington Inquirer. He still wrote an occasional Sunday analytical piece—“thumb-suckers,” as they were known in the trade—which was always faithfully sent out to some three hundred former clients, many of whom were still flatteringly glad to print his commentaries. Timmy, too, still had an influence, and the satisfaction that went with it.

  “For two old geezers,” he sometimes remarked fondly to Willie, “we’re still doing all right.”

  “Better than most,” Willie agreed.

  “And you most of all,” Timmy remarked, with an affectionate echo of the respect that had first been born when Willie was student-body president at the university, so long ago. And he had added with a smile: “As always.”

  It was true, of course. Willie was still one of the major players in politics and government; although he had secretly decided that this term would be it: two more years and out, gone with the millennium. He had always carefully refrained from public comment on seniors who had outlived their usefulness but lingered on in the Senate on the fund of constituent sentimentality built up over the years, just enough to return them to office against the challenge of far more youthful Senate wannabes. He had seen many of them go down, finally, to humiliating defeat when time and health became opponents just too tough to beat. Not for him, though he had not told Timmy or his kids, all of whom wanted him to “retire and take it easy,” as they often said.

  “You could die in harness, Dad,” Latt had remarked as recently as a couple of weeks ago. “But it wouldn’t become you.”

  With this he had agreed, although he was inwardly quite tickled by the turn events were apparently taking with Sidi. He had figured he was good for about one more big battle before hanging up his shield, one more contest of wills in the legislative cockpit he had known and loved so well for so long; and very likely old Seedy Sidi was going to provide the occasion for it.

  Or maybe not. Maybe the man in the White House would be as firm, decisive, and unyielding as Willie thought he should be; maybe there wouldn’t be any need for domestic battle, but only with the Middle East’s most dangerous provocateurs; and with them, if need be, he could only hope it would be a battle short, sharp, and, for once, decisive.

  He wasn’t at all sanguine about this, though, he thought as he entered the little elevator he had installed five years ago and ascended to his third-floor suite of rooms.

  From there he could see, through the new-growth leaves of spring stirring in the mild breeze, the dome of the Capitol rising white and pure against the late-night sky. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, he thought wryly, or close the wall up with another hell of a wrangle between a feisty group of colleagues, led by him, and the White House.

  I’m ready for it, he told the tricky gentleman now presumably sleeping at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue as he turned out the light.

  Old Willie’s waiting.

  * * *

  And so, too, was Joltin’ Johnny Jones of Alabama, also still awake at this late hour, engaged in his favorite activity with two compliant young female secretaries from the staff of the House Appropriations Committee.

  Johnny was always very much aware of “all that phony stuff ’bout sexual harassment,” as he described it, that had so agitated his female colleagues in House and Senate, and the females on their respective staffs, and the females in the media, and ever’ other God-damned female busybody in creation in the early nineties. Johnny knew a trick or two to get around that.

  “Here,” he’d say, whipping out the big ole huntin’ knife he used to hunt coons in Alabama. “Wanna cut it off?”

  This either provoked a stern and angry look and an immediate farewell, or a spontaneous giggle. If the latter, he knew he was on safe ground.

  “Give me a buzz as soon as we adjourn,” he’d say, slippin’ ’em a piece of paper with his private direct phone number on it; and at least 50 percent of the time, they did. Which wasn’t a bad average, he thought with satisfaction now as he returned to the fray with a barely suppressed whoop and a holler, greeted with equally muffled but equally delighted screams from his companions in the suburban motel room they were occupying for the purpose. (He always had them do the rentin’, and so far that had proved a fine safeguard. In his twenty years of such activity on the Hill, he had never been caught—yet.)

  Johnny Jones hadn’t heard about Sidi at the moment, and even if he had, the worthless old bastard (slightly younger than Johnny) would have been the farthest thing from his mind at this particular delicious moment. His reaction toward the Middle East was automatic anyway: “fuck ’em all,” was his attitude; and, to Foggy Bottom’s constant annoyance and his constant delight, that was his attitude toward the State Department as well.

  He didn’t much care what the issue was with State, he just enjoyed yankin’ their lily-livered, pantywaist, nancy-fancy, airy-fairy chains. And then turnin’ right around and demandin’ all sorts of special treatment from them when he went on one of his “inspection trips.” He made ’em crawl on the witness stand and he made ’em crawl in Bangkok or Madrid or you name it. He despised them and they despised him. He couldn’t say exactly why; it had always been that way ever since he first came to the House. They made his skin crawl with their smug, superior ways and their smug, condescending attitude toward a good Southern boy. He and the department hated each other, and he made sure to take it out on them every chance he got.

  He didn’t know what their next head-on collision would be, but he knew there would be one.

  Dithering old farts like Willie Wilson in the Senate might try to protect ’em, but Johnny Jones in the House was always there to expose their infinite shortcomings. And make ’em take it, and swallow it, too.

  * * *

  Something of the same anticipation, perhaps not quite so personalized—perhaps more institutionalized, which was how the Secretary of State often described it to his colleagues in the department—was dominating the thoughts of three of the media’s finest as they completed their notes on their conversations and observations at Dolly Munson’s party.

  Each of them always made a practice of doing this after an evening out on Washington’s nonstop sociopolitical circuit. It was an absolutely necessary, indispensable way of assisting memory in the replay of quotations, impressions, hunches, guesses, inadvertent blurts and revelations—the hodgepodge of fleeting but invaluable bits and pieces that went into news coverage of the capital’s constantly shifting tides and personalities. Somebody, under the prod of good food and good liquor, inadvertently said something—somebody deliberately leaked something, in the traditional, mutually understood Washington way—somebody looked funny at somebody else—somebody actually came right out with some concealed animosity or political ambition—it was all grist for the mill.

  From such squibs and squiddities, as Tim Bates described them, came weighty columns, profound TV commentaries, eagerly informative Sunday newspaper articles and magazine pieces, to help educate an incorrigibly obtuse and backward public. It was necessary, it was duty, it was fun. News gathering was fun, and nowhere more so than in this self-consciously important summit of the Western world, where men and women walked mighty through their days, and where the course of the sun, the stars, and the planets were often rearranged and sometimes decided—or so they convinced themselves, on such occasions as a party at Dolly’s … or Pamela’s … or Kay’s … or whoever was the most ubiquitous favorite party-giver on any given night.

  In his exquisite, antique-filled bachelor house on P Street in Georgetown, James Van Rensselaer Burden was just closing up his John Quincy Adams writing desk, his handwritten notes placed neatly beside the old-fashioned Remington upright on which he always delicately tapped out his somewhat precious, but always well-informed, column, “As I See It.”

  Jimmy Van, as he was always referred to in the Washington world of Anybody Who Was Anybody, had been married—once. It had not diverted him from old, familiar pastimes, and when these were discovered in due course by his stylish wife—divorced spouse of another rather fragile Georgetown gentleman—she had proved to be not as tolerant as many other wealthy ladies in similar situations. She had, in fact, left him flat, but she had also left him the house and a million-dollar settlement, a tribute to a lingering affection and the fact that Jimmy Van, among other things, was really quite a likable man. He need never have written another thing, Jimmy often told himself, and still he would have been able to live out his life in complete comfort; but he had been a highly successful, very well respected, self-supporting journalist before she came along, and in his mid-fifties he didn’t see any reason to be any less successful, respected, or self-supporting. On his part, it had been an experiment that hadn’t worked; what it had been on hers, he never quite figured out. But he was able to dismiss it quite lightheartedly because its termination permitted him to devote his creative energies fully once again to the reportorial life he loved to the exclusion, really, of almost everything else.

  If he hadn’t still been in the thick of it he would have missed it all terribly. It was, simply, great fun to cover the Hill; attend (quite frequently) White House state dinners and (less frequently but still often enough to boast about it) more informal family gatherings; and be a guest on a regular basis at such ego-uppers as those given by Dolly … and Pam … and Kay.

  And he would have missed most of all the chance to skewer the targets of his sometimes waspishly vindictive but always well-rounded and well-reasoned dislikes. Nobody could ever accuse Jimmy Van of being a lightweight thinker; “Profundity sticks out all over him,” Willie Wilson had once remarked dryly. He had his prejudices and he didn’t hesitate to express them, but he backed them (usually) with thoroughly logical (as he saw it) argument. It made him a formidable (if somewhat old-fashioned and gradually becoming out-of-date) force in the Washington media.