The Fourth K

Christian said, "Who sent the guy?"

Dazzy said, "The only guy who would dare is a member of the Socrates Club. And that would be our old friend Martin 'Take It Private' Mutford."

Christian said, "He's smarter than that."

"Sure, he is," Dazzy said grimly. "Everybody is smarter than that until they get desperate. When the VP refused to sign the impeachment memorandum, they became desperate. Besides, you never know when somebody will cave in."

Christian still didn't like it. "But they know you. They know that under all that flab you're a tough guy. I've seen you in action. You ran one of the biggest companies in the United States, you cut IBM a new asshole just five years ago. How could they think you'd cave in?"

Dazzy shrugged. "Everybody always thinks he's tougher than anybody else."

He paused. "You think so yourself, though you don't advertise it. I do.

So does Wix and so does Gray. Francis doesn't think it. He just can be.

And we have to be careful for Francis. We have to be careful he doesn't get too tough."

Christian Klee paid a call on Jeralyn Albanese, who owned the most famous restaurant in Washington, D.C., naturally named Jera's. It had three huge dining rooms separated by a very lush lounge bar. The Republicans gravitated to one dining room, the Democrats to another, and members of the executive branch and the White House ate in the third room. The one thing on which all parties agreed was that the food was delicious, the service superb, and the hostess one of the most charming women in the world.

Twenty years before, Jeralyn, then a woman of thirty, had been employed by a lobbyist for the banking industry. He had introduced her to Martin

Mutford, who had not yet earned the nickname "Take It Private" but was already on the rise. Martin Mutford had been charmed by her wit, her brashness and her sense of adventure. For five years they had an affair that did not interfere with their public lives. Jeralyn Albanese continued her career as a lobbyist, a career much more complicated and refined than generally supposed, requiring a great deal of research skill and administrative genius. Oddly enough, one of her most valuable assets was having been a te

As an assistant to the chief lobbyist for the banking industry, she spent a good part of her week amassing financial data to persuade experts on the congressional finance committees to pass legislation favorable to banking. Then she was hostess at conference di

It developed naturally that she went to the Bahamas and to Las Vegas with the younger and more personable congressmen, always under the guise of conferences, and even once to London to a convention of economic advisers from all over the world. Not to influence the vote on a bill, not to perpetrate a swindle, but if the vote on a bill was borderline, when a girl as pretty as Jeralyn Albanese presented the customary foot-high stack of opinion papers written by eminent economists, you had a very good chance of getting that teetering vote. As Martin Mutford said, "On the close ones it's very hard for a man to vote against a girl who sucked his cock the night before."

It was Mutford who had taught her to appreciate the finer things in life.

He had taken her to the museums in New York; he had taken her to the

Hamptons to mingle with the rich and the artists, the old money and the new money, the famous journalists and the TV anchors, the writers who did serious novels and the important screenplays of big movies. Another pretty face didn't make much of a splash there, but being a good te

Jeralyn had more men fall in love with her because of her te

But there came a time when Jeralyn had to think of her future. At forty years of age she was not married, and the congressmen she would have to lobby were in their unappealing sixties and seventies.

Martin Mutford was eager to promote her in the high realms of banking, but after the excitement of Washington, banking seemed dull. American lawmakers were so fascinating with their outrageous mendacity in public affairs, their charming i

The funds were supplied by American Sterling Trustees, a lobbyist group that represented banking interests, in the form of a five-million-dollar loan. Jeralyn had the restaurant built to her specifications. It would be an exclusive club, an auxiliary home for the politicos of Washington. Many congressmen were separated from their families while Congress was in session, and the Jera restaurant was a place where they could spend lonely nights. In addition to the three dining rooms and lounge and bar, there was a room with TV and a reading room that had a copy of all the major magazines published in the United States and England. There was another room for chess or checkers or cards.

But the ultimate attraction was the residential area built on top of the restaurant. It was three stories high and held twenty apartments, which were rented by the lobbyists, who loaned them out to congressmen and important bureaucrats for secretive liaisons. Jera was known to be the very soul of discretion in these matters. Jeralyn kept the keys.

It amazed Jeralyn that these hardworking men had the time for so much dalliance. They were indefatigable. And it was the older ones with established families, some with grandchildren, who were the most active.

Jeralyn loved to see these same congressmen and senators on television, so sedate and distinguished-looking, lecturing on morals, decrying drugs and loose living and emphasizing the importance of old-fashioned values.

She never felt they were hypocrites really. After all, men who had spent so much of their lives and time and energy for their country deserved extra consideration.

She didn't like the arrogance, the smarmy self-assured smugness of the younger congressmen, but she loved the old guys, such as the stern-faced wrathful senator who never smiled in public but cavorted at least twice a week bare-assed with young "models"-and old Congressman Jintz, with his body like a scarred zeppelin and a face so ugly that the whole country believed he was honest, All of them looked absolutely awful in private, shedding their clothes. But they charmed her.

Rarely did the women members of Congress come to the restaurant and never did they make use of the apartments. Feminism bad not yet advanced so far. To make up for this, Jeralyn gave little lunches in the restaurant for some of her girlfriends in the arts, pretty actresses, singers and dancers.

It was none of her business if these young pretty women struck up friendships with the highly placed servants of the people of the United States. But she was surprised when Eugene Dazzy, the huge lobby chief of staff to the President of the United States, took up with a promising young dancer and arranged for Jeralyn to slip him a key to one of the apartments above the restaurant. She was even more astonished when the liaison grew to the status of a "relationship." Not that Dazzy had that much time at his disposal-the most he spent in the apartment was a few hours after lunch.