The Pinocchio Syndrome. David Zeman

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      ‘How about you?’ he asked. ‘How did you get into the reporting business?’

      ‘I always wanted to be a reporter,’ she said. ‘Even in high school. It keeps you busy. You meet a lot of people.’

      ‘People who aren’t necessarily glad to see you,’ Kraig added.

      ‘That’s right,’ she said, nodding. ‘But at least it gets you out of the house. I’m not that fond of my own company.’

      She took a bite of her tuna sandwich, grimaced, and drank a swallow of coffee. ‘Jesus,’ she said. It had been years since she tasted food this bad, even on an airplane.

      Kraig smiled understandingly.

      She switched to the granola bar and ate half of it before saying what was on her mind.

      ‘It’s the same thing, isn’t it?’ she asked.

      ‘What?’

      ‘The same disease,’ she said. ‘The same as Everhardt.’

      Kraig gave her a steady look.

      ‘You don’t listen, do you?’ he said. ‘No comment.’

      ‘On background?’ She smiled. ‘Off the record?’

      He shook his head.

      She was watching Kraig closely.

      ‘All vital functions normal,’ she said. ‘But the patient can’t act. Can’t obey simple commands, can’t talk, can’t walk, can’t feed himself. A paralysis of the function of action or decision.’

      Kraig said nothing.

      ‘They’re looking for a vector,’ Karen said. ‘But they don’t really have a disease, so the vector may not help. There is no known disease that produces these symptoms.’

      Kraig asked, ‘How do you know?’

      ‘I never reveal my sources.’ She shrugged.

      ‘Anyway, as it happens, I know a little something about this sort of thing. I did a double major in biochemistry and journalism in college. I’ve done a lot of reporting on diseases. This is definitely something new.’

      Kraig shrugged. ‘If you say so. I’m not a doctor.’

      She leaned forward, a hint of her clean-smelling cologne reaching Kraig, who smiled slightly.

      ‘Out here there are hundreds of victims,’ she said. ‘Each area is covered completely. But in Washington there is only one victim. The vice president of the United States.’

      Kraig kept his poker face. But he knew she was right. If Everhardt had the same disease, dozens of others in Washington should have it by now. Something here didn’t add up.

      ‘Everhardt is a key to the president’s popularity. He’s big, he’s down to earth, he’s popular among men as well as women. It took the party a long time to come up with him as a running mate. Take him away, and the administration is a lot weaker with the voters. He won’t be easy to replace.’

      Kraig was silent.

      ‘And what about the president’s political enemies?’ she asked. ‘What about Colin Goss? How does he feel about this turn of events?’

      Kraig shrugged. ‘Am I supposed to have a reaction to that?’ he asked.

      She crumpled the wrapper of the granola bar and threw it on the tray.

      ‘Something isn’t right,’ she said. ‘About Everhardt. And about this.’ She glanced around her at the deserted cafeteria.

      Kraig said nothing.

      ‘I’m going to find out,’ she said. ‘With you or without you. When the time comes, it may be you asking the questions.’

      ‘Maybe.’ Kraig nodded.

      ‘I’m betting twelve years of journalism that you won’t like the answers,’ she said.

      Picking up her coat, she left the cafeteria. Her shoulders looked very small under her sweater. A tired young woman, no doubt an incurable workaholic, who did not bother to hide her unhappiness.

      Kraig liked her. There was a tranquil hopelessness about her that struck a chord in him. She had given up on something a long time ago – love? belonging? – and the emptiness it left behind gave her sharp definition as a person. The reporters he had known were shallow people, slaves to their own ambition. Karen Embry was a human being, albeit a scarred one.

      Kraig wondered what she looked like without those clothes on. What her cologne smelled like closer up, when one’s lips were against her skin.

      He hoped he would never see her again.

       8

       WashingtonNovember 22

      Susan Campbell was the only child of a wayward New Hampshire beauty queen and a philandering Boston blue blood named Lee Bellinger. Their marriage had lasted seven years. Susan was six when her father abandoned her mother. A series of boyfriends had followed, along with a desperate search for money that led ‘Dede’ Bellinger into brief forays into television, radio, advertising, and public relations, until her taste for alcohol and her notoriously poor driving ability got her killed in a one-car accident on the New Jersey Turnpike.

      Susan was brought up by two straitlaced Bellinger aunts who sent her to the best private schools and offered her the combined wisdom of the Bible, the Farmer’s Almanac, and Ralph Waldo Emerson as a guide for living. At fourteen she entered Rosemary Hall as a thoroughly confused young girl with braces, skinny legs, and a worried look.

      Four years of private school in the company of privileged girls from the best families in the nation did little for her confidence. She was a shy freshman at Wellesley when a friend introduced her to Michael Campbell, a Harvard junior who was about to undergo a second serious spinal operation after his first one had failed. Michael was frightened; Susan took it upon herself to encourage him. It was in that gesture of giving that she became a woman.

      By the time Susan caught her breath Michael had won two Olympic gold medals and was a national celebrity. He finished law school two years after the Olympics, and two years after that ran successfully for the Maryland state legislature. By now Susan was his wife, and she helped him campaign for the US Senate. Her extraordinary blond beauty made her an attractive partner for him on the campaign trail. She had worked her way through college as a catalog model specializing in sportswear and lingerie, and for several years her scantily clad image was on every package of silk panties sold under the exclusive S/Z brand name. That image still haunted her, for the feature articles on her in women’s magazines often included it.

      Susan was too beautiful for a political wife, and too shy. Michael’s campaign advisors did СКАЧАТЬ