Greta put down her chopsticks and lowered her voice. “Tell me something. Tell me the truth. Did you ever notice that he’s enormously outspoken and energetic in public, but then he always retreats and cocoons himself? For, say, two or three days?”

Oscar nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“First, he’s very expressive and charming, working twenty-hour days, throwing off a lot of sparks. Then, he’s just gone. He claims he’s thinking things over, or that he needs his privacy — but basically, he’s dug himself a hole and pulled it over him. That’s not uncommon with creative personalities. Your Senator has bipolarity. I imagine he’s al-ways been bipolar.”

“He’s ‘in the back of the bus.’ ” Oscar sighed. “That’s what we used to call it, when he pulled that routine on the campaign.”

“In the back of the bus, with Moira.”

“Yeah. Exactly. Moira was very good at getting next to him when his guard was down.”

Greta narrowed her eyes. “You did something awful to Moira, didn’t you?”

“Look, the man is a U.S. Senator. I put him into office, I have to look after his interests. He had an indiscretion during the campaign. So what? Who am I to judge about that?” He paused. “And who are you, for that matter?”

“Well, I came here so that I could judge the Senator,” she said. “I hoped he could really help me. We could have used an honest, decent Senator to back the lab, for once. Obviously, Alcott’s some-one who could really understand us. But now he’s been destroyed, because he went head-to-head against Huey — a man who just chews up people like him. Politics always chews up people like him.” Her face grew long and grim. “Look what he’s done with this hopeless old building, look at this beautiful work he’s done. He must be some kind of genius, and now they’ve just crushed him. This really makes me sick at heart. What a loss. He’s lost his mind. It’s a national tragedy.”

“Well, I admit that it’s a setback.”

“No, it’s over. He’s not going to come around just because you force-fed him. Because he is demented. He can’t help you anymore — and that means that you can’t help me. So it’s all over, and it’s time for me to give this thing up.”

“We’re not going to give up.”

“Oscar, let me go back to my lab now. Let me work. It’s the reasonable thing.”

“Sure it is, but I’m. not a reasonable person, and these aren’t reasonable times.”

Leon Sosik came into the office. “Bit of a debacle there.” His face was gray.

“Can you believe the audacity of that guy?” Oscar said. “Huey had a French aircraft carrier waiting offshore. The guy’s a traitor! He’s in league with a foreign power!”

Sosik shook his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“We can’t acquiesce in a naked power grab like this. We’ve got to nail Huey’s feet to the Senate floor and beat him like a drum.”

Sosik stared at him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m serious! Our man has flushed Huey out of the canebrake, and now he’s revealed his true colors. He’s a clear and present menace to national security. We’ve got to take him out.”

Sosik turned to Greta with courtly concern. “Dr. Penninger, I wonder if you’d allow me to speak to Mr. Valparaiso privately for a moment.”

“Oh, of course.” Greta rose reluctantly, setting down her chop-sticks.

“I could get our chef to put together a little takeout box for you,” Sosik said considerately.

“Oh no, I do need to be going … If you could just get me a cab. There’s a conference in town. I have work to do.”

“I’ll have our chauffeur take you to your meeting, Doctor.”

“That would be perfect. Thank you very much.” She gathered her purse and left.

Oscar watched her reluctantly, then spotted a screen remote and plucked it up. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” he told Sosik. “She has an agenda, you know. We could have gotten to her a little later.”

“They told me you were like this,” Sosik said soberly. “They told me you were exactly like this, and I couldn’t believe it. Would you put down that remote control, please?”

Oscar squeezed his way through a set of feeds. “This is a break-ing development, Leon. We’ve got to spin this quick, and nail the guy before he launches his next cover story.”

Sosik gently plucked the remote from Oscar’s hand. He put his hand over Oscar’s shoulder. “Kid,” he said, “let’s go for a walk. Let’s do some serious face-time together.”

“We don’t have a lot of time to kill right now.”

“Kid, I’m the chief of staff. I don’t think I’ll be wasting your time. All right?”

A krewewoman handed them their hats and coats. They took an elevator down to the street.

“Let’s walk toward Somerville,” Sosik said. “The audio surveil-lance is a lot less tight there.”

“Is that a problem? We could walk apart and talk things over on encrypted phones.”

Sosik sighed. “Would you slow down to human speed for a min-ute? I’m an old man.”

Oscar said nothing. He followed Sosik north up Prospect Street, hunching his shoulders against the chill. Bare trees, straggling Christ-mas shoppers, the occasional Caribbean storefront.

“I can’t stand it in that office just now,” Sosik said. “He’s throw-ing up, he’s shaking like a leaf And the people in there, they all worship the ground the man walks on. They’ve had to watch him come apart at the seams.”

“Yeah, and our walking out on them isn’t likely to help their morale much.”

“Shut up,” Sosik explained. “I’ve been in this business thirty years. I’ve seen a lot of politicians come to bad ends. I’ve seen them go drunk, I’ve seen them go crooked, sex scandals, money scan-dals… But this is the first guy I ever saw who cracked up com-pletely before he even made it to Washington.”

“Alcott’s always ahead of the curve,” Oscar nodded. “He’s a visionary. ”

Sosik shot him a nettled glance. “Why’d you pick on this poor guy? He’s not any kind of normal pol. Was it the wife? Did she have something on you? Was it the personal background thing?”

“Normal pols aren’t getting the job done, Leon. These aren’t normal times. America’s not a normal country. We’ve used up all our normality. There isn’t any left.”

“You’re not normal. What are you doing in politics?”

Oscar shrugged. “Someone has to deal with your thirty-year leg-acy of solid professional achievement, Leon.”

Sosik grimaced. “Well, he gave it his best shot. And now he’s toast. ”

“He’s not toast. He’s just crazy.”

“Crazy is toast. Okay?”

“No, it isn’t. It’s true-he’s had a mental breakdown. That’s a problem. It’s an image problem. When you get a problem that big, you can’t stonewall it. You have to shine a light on it. This is the problem: he starved himself half to death in a sincere protest, and now he’s lost his mind. But our keyword here isn’t ‘crazy.’ Our keywords are ‘sincere’ and ‘protest.’ ”

Sosik turned up his coat collar. “Look, you can’t possibly play it that way and get away with it.”

“Yes, Leon, I could. The question here is whether you could.”

“We can’t have a Senator who’s non compos mentis! How the hell could he ever get a bill passed?”

“Alcott was never cut out to be a legislative technician. We’ve had enough of those nitpickers. Alcott’s a charismatic, he’s a moral leader. He can wake the people up, he can guide them. and show them the mountaintop. What he needs is a way to compel their attention and make them. believe in him. And now, he’s finally got it.”

Sosik considered this. “Kid, if you did that and it really worked, it would mean that the whole country’s gone crazy.”

Oscar said nothing.

“How exactly would you angle it?” Sosik said at last.

“We have to demonize Huey on the patriotism issue, while we come clean on the medical problem. Constant bedside reports when-ever Al is lucid. Winston Churchill was bipolar. Abraham Lincoln was a depressive. We call in all our chits from the FedDems, we get the party to stay with him. We fly the wife in, she’s a fighter, she’s stand-ing by him loyally. Grass-roots sympathy mail, we’re spooling it in by the ton. I think it’s doable.”