Harry had been chewing the end of his pen the way he did when he was trying to give up smoking for the umpteenth time. It made him bad-tempered and liable to blow up over nothing and he always started to put on weight if he kept it up for long.
When he was smoking he was as thin as a greyhound and twice as nervy, inclined to bite your head off if you said anything out of turn, so on the whole everyone preferred him to smoke.
Screwing up his eyes to stare at Steve, he asked, ‘And what about this other dame? Is there one? Or is it just dirty minds and wishful thinking?’
Even more on the alert, Steve carefully said, ‘If there is, Gowrie has done a brilliant job so far in keeping her hidden away. You know what Washington is like. You can’t keep a secret for five minutes. Eyes and ears everywhere. A lot of people would pay a fortune to get the goods on Gowrie, but he seems to be as clean as a whistle.’ And while he talked he was wondering if Harry knew something he could not openly pass on, was dropping him a hint to dig it out for himself.
Harry chewed on his pen some more. ‘Is that a “Don’t know” or a “Could be but hard to prove”?’
‘Both,’ hedged Steve, then, watching Harry even more closely, said, ‘But I have to admit Gowrie has never struck me as having a poor libido. He’s getting on for sixty, of course, but he’s got a lot of buzz, and some of that energy has to be sexual. It wouldn’t amaze me to find out that he had a woman somewhere, but it isn’t his wife. She’s older than him, for a start, and she’s as plain as a horse. I don’t see her being hot stuff in bed.’
Harry met his eyes, said softly, ‘What about his secretary? In my experience it’s often the secretary. The single ones are the most dangerous – they get possessive if the guy is the only man in their life.’ His eyes glinted and he smirked. ‘I’ve had one or two who got that way.’
Steve knew all about them; everyone had known, you couldn’t hide anything in an office, any more than you could in Washington. Harry had a wife and two expensive kids at good schools but that hadn’t stopped him having the occasional office affair. They always ended the same way: he had to get rid of his secretary when she turned tearful and demanding.
‘Gowrie’s secretary is certainly devoted, runs his office like clockwork, and I wouldn’t find it hard to believe she worshipped the ground he walks on – but she’s no femme fatale. She wears mannish suits and shirts with ties, has horn-rimmed glasses – I don’t see him having a mad affair with her.’
Harry looked disappointed. ‘Well, there’s someone, I’m sure of it.’
Yes, he had been told Gowrie had a woman – but was his source a good one?
‘I’ll keep my eyes open,’ Steve had promised, but he didn’t think for a second that he would catch Don Gowrie out, even if there was a woman somewhere. Gowrie was smart, and careful.
Glancing around the bar now, Steve wondered if anyone else was on to a rumour that Gowrie had a woman.
‘Ready, Steve?’ his producer said, appearing at his shoulder. ‘I had a word with Gowrie’s people, and explained we had a problem getting the tape to the studio in time for the night news, and they’ve shifted your interview tomorrow forward by two hours, which should be just fine.’
‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Steve said, and meant it. He had interviewed Don Gowrie many times before, but not since Gowrie began to get his nose in front in the race for the presidency. There were other leading contenders on the Republican side, but some very big money was going on Gowrie.
By the time Gowrie showed up, the ballroom was packed to the doors and the air was rank with perspiration, bad breath, the smell of beer and whisky and the machine-oil smell of the cameras and sound equipment.
Gowrie took questions from the press in an order laid down in advance by his media people. There was no spontaneity on these occasions: too much was at stake. Any shouted, unagreed questions were ignored. There was an agreement between the sides: play ball with us, we’ll play ball with you. Refuse to play the game our way and you won’t get any time with the candidate, you won’t get an invitation to any of the social events with which the lobby was sweethearted by the party during election year.
In his late fifties, his hair once dark, now powdered with an ashy shade, his expensive suit grey too today, his white shirt striped with a very pale blue, everything about Gowrie was discreet, elegant. There was even something faintly boyish about him – his features had a faintly haggard spareness, but they were chiselled and attractive, his eyes – a pale blue, washed out to grey – had great charm whenever he smiled that boyish smile. He was a good speaker, that came with the territory; he never made the mistake of being too clever, he talked directly, frankly, disarmingly to his audience, looking into their eyes.
Women flipped over him. Men felt they could trust him. A decent guy, they said. Not tough, maybe, but under the elegance there was a steely strength.
This was his honeymoon period with the media; he was new to this level of attention although he had been around for years, a face in the background, a useful man in his party, knowing everybody but not a leader. Now, he was suddenly hot and the press hadn’t yet got around to sharpening their claws. For the moment they loved him because he was new, because he gave them something different to write about, although how long that would last was anybody’s guess.
Steve was one of the first to ask a question. It had been decided on by his producer, Simon, in advance, in discussion with Gowrie’s people, who liked to sow the audience with friendly questions. What would the senator do about street crime in the cities? Did he favour tougher punishment or more police on the streets? Or did he think society was at fault and what could be done about that?
Gowrie went into hyperdrive on that one, talked angrily about crime and its threat to the peace of the decent people of America, said it was time America got the policing it deserved, talked of ways and means by which that could be achieved. You didn’t need to be a genius to work out that that was going to be one of his campaign platforms, but then all the candidates jockeying to be picked
to run as president came out with the same promises on crime. Half an hour later Gowrie’s people were signalling him to leave. They all looked very satisfied, the press conference had gone well, he had answered every question ably, fluently.
As he turned to go, a voice came out of nowhere. ‘Senator Gowrie, what do you believe will be the long-time effects in Central Europe of the war in the former Yugoslavia?’
Gowrie stopped in his tracks and turned back. This was one of his specialist interests; he had worked in East Europe while he was in the diplomatic as a young man and was rumoured to speak a number of East European languages. Cleverer than he looked, but good at hiding his brains, thought Steve, which made him even cleverer, because if there was one thing the voters did not like it was a clever politician. They didn’t trust them.
His press officers were hurriedly searching their clipboards of agreed questions. The most senior of them leaned over the battery of mikes and said curtly, ‘That question was not submitted, Miss . . .?’
‘Narodni, Sophie Narodni, of the Central European Press Agency,’ the blonde said, and her voice was as sexy as the rest of her, low and husky, with the faintest foreign lisp to it.
Every man in the room was staring at her by now, and they weren’t thinking about politics. That was not what men thought about when they looked at this girl.
The only man in the room who wasn’t goggling at her was Steve Colbourne. He had happened to be looking at Don Gowrie when he turned and had seen Gowrie’s face turn stiff and white as if he was fighting with shock, frozen on the spot like someone whose worst nightmare has begun. He hadn’t moved or spoken since, he was just staring at the blonde girl, and she was staring back at him.
It wasn’t often that Steve Colbourne was surprised by anything. He had been a reporter for far too long in a corrupt and complex world where almost nothing was what it seemed or what people perceived it to be. He had thought himself shock-proof, but it seemed he wasn’t. Jesus, it couldn’t be. Could it? The air seemed to him to be charged, lightning almost visibly flashed between the two of them. His reporter’s mind crawled with curiosity. Don Gowrie and this girl? It was indecent even to think it: she was young enough to be his daughter, and had that lovely, untouched wide-eyed innocence that went with blue eyes and blonde hair and a certain shape of face in the young. He could not believe she was Gowrie’s mistress.