She studied the photos of him. He looked like the sort of person whose great-great-whatever had signed the Declaration of Independence. He was six feet two, trim, broad in the shoulders, a bit storklike, which gave him a needed touch of vulnerability, as if he might blow over in a strong wind. He had pale blue eyes, a nose that had been handed down since the Mayflower, and creased cheeks. He looked like a flesh-and-blood bust done by a distinguished sculptor. It could have a cruel face, but the eyes twinkled and suggested self-awareness and bemusement at his abundant good fortune. And now here he was, approaching her. She had to shout above the high-pitched whine of the jet turbines even as they spiraled slowly to a stop.
“Congressman Jepperson? Corporal Cohane, sir. Army Public Affairs. Welcome to-”
“Well named, isn’t it?”
“Sir?”
“Turd-je!”
“Yes, sir. If you’ll follow me…our vehicle is this way.”
Cass climbed into the driver’s seat of the Humvee, the congressman the passenger seat. His elegant frame and aristocratic bearing seemed somewhat out of context in such a spare, utilitarian space.
He smiled and took her in.
“Cohane, is it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lovely name. Irish? Surely.”
“So I’m told, sir.”
“Do you know, I have one of these at home in Washington,” he said. “Civilian version, of course. Hummer. Sounds almost indecent, doesn’t it? Hummer. I’ll pick you up in my…Hummer.” He chuckled to himself.
Strange duck, Cass thought. This information that he drove a car that got about fifty yards to the gallon hardly squared with the Almanac’s description of him as a “staunch environmentalist.”
As if reading Cass’s mind, he added, “I don’t drive it. Just keep it at home. You know. In the event.”
“Event, sir?”
“I’m sorry. What’s your first name?”
“Cassandra?”
He smiled. “You don’t sound very sure. Do you have your baptismal certificate on you? We could check.”
“Cass. Sir.” She smiled back.
“Tell you what, Cass, sir…if you’ll stop calling me ‘sir,’ which makes me feel a hundred years old, I’ll start calling you Cass. Deal?”
“Okay.”
“Pleased to meet you, Cass.” He looked out the window. “I’d forgotten how dreary it is here.”
Cass said, “I’m sorry it’s just me, but the VIPVIS-the Pentagon-indicated that you didn’t want a large escort. The captain would gladly have-”
“No, no, no, this is fine. Hate entourages.” He pronounced it in a French way, en-tour-ahhh-ges. “It’s gotten so out of hand. My God, did you see about the president’s motorcade in Beijing last week? Fifty-four cars long? Imperial overstretch limousine, I call that. I mean, please. What is it coming to?”
He looked over, saw Cass’s uncertain expression, and said, “I’m sorry, Cass. I really wasn’t trying to trick you into criticizing the commander in chief. There’s often no filter between what passes from my brain to my mouth. I suppose it’s not his fault. Security being what it is and all. Still, what kind of message does it send to the world when the American president goes about that way? Couldn’t they make do with-fifty cars? Jimmy Carter overdid it-he was president before you were born-but I must say I like the idea of an American president carrying his own garment bag. Humility! Quite my favorite virtue. Not that I possess it in overabundance. No one in Washington seems to, these days. Dear, dear. Harry Truman used to take walks, practically by himself. Those were the days. Can you imagine an American president popping out for a stroll in the park? Oщ sont les neiges d’antan?”
“Villon?”
“Very good, Corporal.” He said it without condescension. “I’ll have to stop quoting French, you know, if I run for president. In America these days, a knowledge of the most beautiful, civilized language on earth is considered a disqualification for high office. Much better to say, ЎBuenos dнas! and be photographed biting into some revolting burrito. Well, Corporal Cass, shall we commence fact-finding?”
“Where would the congressman like to fact-find?”
“I thought we might just poke about. I hate the planned itineraries. Oh, gosh, Congressman, we had no idea you were coming. Then you step into the tent and there’s a banner saying WELCOME, CONGRESSMAN JEPPERSON, and you practically gag on the smell of boot and brass polish. The poor people have been up since dawn getting ready for you. It’s tough enough out here without a bunch of Washington assholes sticking their faces in. There’s a Special Forces camp near here, isn’t there? Camp December…”
“November.”
“The very one. Let’s see what’s cooking in Camp November. I like the special ops people. They give it to you with the bark off.”
Cass drove. The congressman observed the landscape in silence. After a while he said, “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Preventing World War One from breaking out again.”
“Good answer.”
“Not original. I heard a colonel say it.”
“Well, we don’t have quite as much to worry about this time from Austro-Hungary. But Russia ’s always a question mark. You know, I got drunk with Boris Yeltsin once. Remember him? God, that man could put it away. We sang ‘Home on the Range’ in the Kremlin. Took me a week to recover. Can’t stand even the smell of vodka now. And vodka doesn’t even smell.”
Cass kept her eyes on the muddy road, feeling his eyes on her, not in a lecherous way.
“So?” he said.
“So?” she said.
“What are you doing here? Aside from keeping World War One from breaking out again.”
“Boring story.” Cass smiled.
“You’ve got me trapped inside a Humvee in Bosnia,” Randy said. “Go on. Bore me to death. Give it your best shot.”
She boiled it down, nervous to find herself confiding a family saga to a United States congressman. She left out her mother’s sarcastic comments at the dinner table about the Cessna but included the detail that her father had secretly taken out a second mortgage on their home to finance his start-up, which continued to founder. After that, her mother took the kids and walked out. That part Cass had learned in a letter received halfway through basic training.
Congressman Randy listened without comment, arms folded over his chest. Cass thought she heard some kind of humming coming from him. Maybe he was bored, singing to himself. They passed the remains of a bombed-out Serb convoy.
“Well,” he said at length. “What do you get a dad like that for Father’s Day? A hand grenade?”
They drove on. Cass said, “Why do you have a Humvee? Aren’t you a big environmentalist?”
“Boring story.”
“Your turn to bore me.”
“All right. Now don’t quote me, because I’ll get in a lot of trouble for even talking about it. But there’s this list. You know how the military and Capitol Police and Secret Service love to scare the shit-pardon my French-out of Congress with disaster scenarios? Drives up their budgets. Well, Tom Clancy, you know, the novelist?”
“I’ve heard of Tom Clancy.”
“Not as good a writer as Villon. He wrote this preposterous book that ends with a plane flying into the Capitol building. Can you imagine? Like people are going to start flying planes into buildings? Please. But everyone in official Washington reads Clancy-you don’t think they’re reading Proust, do you? Au contraire-and it scared the merde out of them. So they decided, we must have a plan. We must have a-list. So they drew this grotesque list of who gets evacuated in the event Japanese jingoists or deranged Swiss yodelers or whoever start flying jumbo jets into our buildings. It’s called ‘List Echo.’ What Washington drudge came up with that designation? But wouldn’t you know-I’m not on it. It’s all senators. Can you imagine a world repopulated by senators? The living would envy the dead. So I thought, All right, fine, I’ll arrange for my own evacuation when the great dome comes down around us. So I bought this appalling vehicle, the station wagon from hell, and parked it permanently in my space in the Capitol garage with a full tank of gas and all sorts of survival goodies packed in.” He added, “I really do care about the environment. Most of the time I ride a bicycle. Of course, it’s not just being green. It kind of helps with the image thing. The Bicycling Congressman.”