Deep Cover

She had high strong bones and large eyes and she moved with graceful economy. The dark hair fell loose to her shoulders and she stopped to comb it back from her eyes with her fingers while she looked for him in the windows. He moved his hand back and forth against the plexiglass until she smiled and nodded and came along to the foot of the boarding stairs to wait for the crowd to thin out. Then she came up the stairs, long-legged and slender and full of vibrant energies. She had to be thirty-six or more but in the sunlight she moved like a twenty-year-old.

Forrester stood up in the aisle and lifted his briefcase onto the seat—that ancient expandable briefcase, its leather tough and creased with age lines, which his father had carried to the United States Senate before him.

The stew let Ro

She smiled, but it was incomplete. Something had come up behind her eyes. She withdrew her fingers and spoke in a soft low contralto. “I thought I’d better come on board and warn you.”

“The reporters? I saw them.”

“They’re waiting for you like the Mexicans outside the Alamo.”

“I’ve been besieged before. What kind of mood are they in?”

“Edgy—your plane’s two hours late. But some of them smiled at me.”

“Anybody’d smile at you, Ro

“When a cougar bares his fangs it doesn’t pay to assume he’s giving you a friendly smile. They only wanted to pump me. You’d better fix your tie, they’ve got TV cameras—here, let me do it.”

Her touch at his throat was light and cool and her face hovered before him. “There,” she said, and smiled. Forrester felt defensive. He reached across the seat for his briefcase and glanced out through the window. The strong warm sun slanted down, the tarmac had emptied of passengers; and he could see the reporters stirring impatiently. A tiny woman in a trim grey suit, with wire-grey hair and a simian face, had come outside and stood pointing toward the door of the plane, and a camera crew beside her circled forward to focus their portable television apparatus on the top of the boarding stairs. The woman was Nicole Lawrence, KARZ-TV’s political reporter and professional gadfly; she had traveled with him on the campaign and he knew her tart caustic tongue. “I see they’ve sent out the big guns.”

“What did you expect? You uncovered your own artillery last night,” Ro

“You don’t approve, do you?”

Her smile was evanescent and nervous. “I only work here.”

“That’s what Top Spode said. I didn’t let him off the hook and I won’t let you off either.”

“I hate to admit this,” she said, “but anything you do is all right with me.” She seemed to have surprised herself because she added with an impatient toss of her head, “Senator, I don’t—”

“Alan.”

It had been a silly thing to say; this wasn’t the time for it. It only made her withdraw. “Maybe,” she said, not looking at him. ‘‘I’ll have to think about that. In the meantime before you go out there and let them stand you up against the wall, you need to know this—they’re going to hit you with questions about the primary campaign. Have you got an answer for them?”

“Id est, am I ready to a

“Because you’re not sure if the Phaeton thing will turn into a banana peel?”

“Maybe.”

“The mood of the press,” she said deadpan, “is such that they’re assuming if you don’t declare for office now it’s because you’re scared the party will scuttle you over the Phaeton issue. One of them asked me if you intended to run as an Independent. Have you thought about it?”

“No.”

“The fu

“They wouldn’t anyway. Candidates always deny they’re going to be candidates. That’s rule one of the great American game.”

“Then what will you tell them?”

“That I haven’t made up my mind.”

“They’ll call it a cop-out.”

“Let them,” he said. “We’d better go.”

He took her arm but she disengaged herself. “It wouldn’t look right, would it? You’d better go out alone and let them take your picture on the stairs. I’ll creep out afterward and collect your luggage and meet you out front with the car. Will you be staying at the ranch?”

“Not for a few days. I had Les call the Pioneer for a reservation.”

“I could have somebody drop your bags at the hotel if you want to stop by the office first.”

“Good. I’ll want to get on the phone before di

“Is it important?”

“Sometimes I’m not sure what’s important,” he said, and elaborated it with a lie: “There’s a lot we’ll have to discuss and there may not be time at the office. I’m going to work you hard for the next week or two.”

“In that case I’ll break my date.” Her eyes were dark with a sort of reserve he couldn’t place. She had been married once, but her husband had been dead ten or twelve years. Still, it was possible she felt his presence, as Forrester felt Angie’s, a memory which crowded out the desire for further affinities.

She was watching him with a soft wide expression, her lips slightly parted and her head tipped to one side. He gave her a quick smile and stepped out into the warm blaze of sunlight.

He sat back with a huge yawn and a slow two-handed combing back of his hair. Through the doorway he saw Ro

She cradled the phone and ripped the top page off the pad and came into his office talking briskly:

“I tracked down Frank Shattuck at the Mountain Oyster Club. He’ll be on the golf course in the morning but he said he’d be home by three if you’d care to drop in then.” Her voice was dry with irony. “Easy enough to see how the wind blows, isn’t it? He won’t come to you—you have to go to him.”

“After all,” he said, “tomorrow’s Sunday.” Frank Shattuck was board chairman of Shattuck Industries, which manufactured ICBM components in its plant two miles from the gate of Davis Monthan Air Force Base.

She poked the note into his breast pocket. “Don’t miss the appointment.” But the gesture contained an intimacy she evidently hadn’t intended and she stepped back quickly.

He spoke to fill the silence. “We’ll have to take a raincheck on that di

She turned her face: a quick smile. “No.”

“Have you met Bill Ryan?”

She shook her head and the hair flowed softly back and forth.

“I expect you’ll like him.”

Through the window he could see the courthouse square, pooled by street lamps. A couple stood in the square with two young children, pointing and talking, the father in dungarees and a zippered windbreaker talking with wide sweeps of his arm and probably explaining to the kids the functions of the courthouse.

He felt Ro

She gave him a brief warm smile.

On the way out they passed a few night workers—pale civil servants and fluttering clerks. Forrester smiled at them with his candid eyes and answered their greetings, addressing them by name as a political animal must, and when they reached the sidewalk Ro

“Hitler had charisma. I don’t altogether approve of the personality cult in politics—even if I do owe it a great deal.”