Dan O'Shea - Penance

“ Après cela, le déluge ,” Johnson said.

Lynch let out a short laugh. “The reporting is one thing, Johnson. But you start in with the French and I’m dumping you.”

They both laughed, more than they should have, stopped at the corner at the northwest edge of the park. Lynch looked at his watch.

“Need to catch your bus?” Johnson asked.

Lynch shook his head as a black sedan pulled up. “I got a ride.”

“Your new friends?”

He nodded.

“Where are you headed?”

“Going to see Paddy Wang,” Lynch said. “He says he wants to talk.”

Johnson looked at the car, looked back at Lynch.

“The only way these people know how to solve things is to kill people, you know that, right?” she said.

Lynch nodded.

“Please tell me you’re not OK with that.”

Lynch shook his head. “No, I’m not.”

“What are you going to do about that?”

“I wish I knew,” Lynch said.

Lynch and Paddy Wang, alone in Wang’s office.

“Young Lynch, in current circumstances, you are likely suspicious of all motives, but I mean this sincerely. Ever since the unfortunate passing of your father, I have had a kind interest in you.”

“That’s great, Paddy. You help Hurley and his punks kill my old man, or help cover it up, or at least know about it and say nothing, and you tell me what a kind interest you have in me. I’m all choked up.”

“I understand your anger, young Lynch.”

“Keep up that condescending bullshit, and I’m coming across this desk. You’ve got no fucking idea about my anger.”

“At losing a parent unfairly? My parents were killed by the Maoists. I was, well, present for that. Whether you choose to believe it or not, I had no prior knowledge of your father’s death, and saw no benefit to anyone — most particularly to you or your sister or your mother — of exposing what I knew later.”

“And I have no way of knowing if that’s true or just more of your crap.”

“As with all our demons. They drive each of us in all we do, and yet have no currency outside our own souls.”

“Look, Paddy, you got down here for some reason. Can we just get to it?”

Wang just looked at Lynch for a moment, his eyes hooded.

“Have you ever heard the theory that a man is great in proportion to those who take an interest in him?” Wang asked.

“No.”

“By that measure, young Lynch, you have always been a great man. The Hurleys, of course, have an interest. Your uncle has an interest. I, too, have an interest. And now I hear that the President of the United States has an interest.”

“It’s an interesting world.”

“I have always found it so. But perhaps a different world than you imagine.”

“More than is dreamt of in my philosophy?”

Wang chuckled. “Ah, young Lynch. I truly do wish you would visit more often. Yes, yes. Far more.”

“Paddy, you got a point to get to here? Every time I talk with you, I feel like I’m going to end up farting smoke for a week.”

“I’m afraid that my Eastern proclivity for circuitousness and your Western preference for straight lines will always leave us at odds. Very well, to the point. You believe that you are a champion in a great contest between good and evil and that, as a result of your current actions, power will be shaken to its foundations, yes?”

“I think your proclivities run more to hyperbole, Paddy. I believe some assholes got away with murder a long time ago. I believe some other assholes capitalized on it. I believe a lot of other assholes sat by and did nothing.”

“And so you will drag these scurrilous cowards into the light of day so that they may reap that which they have sown.”

“I’ll chase it down and see how it plays out. I know you’re trying to protect them, Paddy — Hurley, Clarke, all of them. You can’t. And if I can prove you’re in it, then I’m taking you down, too.”

Wang sat back, nodding. “Finally, we come to the crux of the matter. You never have understood, young Lynch. You still don’t.”

“So enlighten me.”

“Do you really think that the Hurleys of the world matter? Or the Clarkes?”

“Do I think that one of the most powerful political families in the country matters? Do I think that the President of the United States matters? I’m leaning toward yes.”

“Power matters, young Lynch. And it has a public and a private face. These men are merely its skin — skin that changes with each election or the fall of each dynasty. The Roosevelts, the Kennedys, all so many shed skins.”

“And you’re the snake?”

Wang snorted a short laugh. “Always these scandals. The private face of power decides, young Lynch — decides direction, decides policy, decides strategy. But there must be a public face to translate that vision into useful social action — into law, into commerce, into treaties. And so we find the public faces, and we cultivate them, and we allow them their vainglorious belief in the infinity of their own power. But the public face is always flesh, and the ways of the flesh are always its downfall. And so the face is changed. And so the public face may be changing again. The private face of power does not care and does not involve itself. But the public face cares greatly. The greater the threat, the harder the public face will fight. Do not misunderstand, Lynch. The power of the public face is no threat to the private face — it is venal, banal, grubbing power — but it is still very dangerous.”

“You called me down here to warn me? I’m touched.”

Wang shook his head. “Surely you did not need me to advise you of your current danger.”

“So what do you want?”

“What is your marvelous American saying? I have no dog in this fight? That is all I wanted you to know. Should the Hurleys or the president fall, the private face of power will adjust. Sometimes such tumult presents opportunities for change that are less incremental than those mandated by more tranquil times. We shall watch, and we shall await the outcome. That is all I wanted you to know.”

“So you don’t have my back, but you’re not gonna put a knife in it, either?”

“To paraphrase. Although, in my passion for fairness, I would like to help your new friends with their shopping.”

“Help what new friends with what shopping?”

“Feigned ignorance is trying. Ferguson and Chen. They are used to operating with the equipment and material afforded the minions of power’s public face. They now will need to find new sources. Please give them this.” Wang slid a small card with a phone number on it across the table.

“You’re on our side?”

Weaver hung up the phone. Hastings Clarke, calling from the private residence. Clarke was coming apart. Somebody, probably Lynch, had spilled to the press. Not all of it, but enough. Lynch’s squeeze, that blond from the Tribune , she’d started in hard that morning, and it was pretty clear somebody’d given her a big leg up. Then a guy at CNN she’d played ball with before chimed in. That was enough to churn the water. Now the whole DC press corps was scrambling, knew the Big Story Train was leaving the station, everybody looking for their own angle, trying to grab a seat before the thing got too far down the tracks. There were enough people pulling on the ends of the right strings. Give them enough time, and the whole thing would unravel.

Which meant two things. This shot at Fisher tomorrow, he damn well had to make that work because another day or so was all the time he had. And he had to get an alternative story out there, something for the press pukes who hadn’t bought into what Johnson was selling, or who were too slow to grab a good chunk of it. Give that crowd something to push, have them start calling bullshit on Johnson’s stuff, get everybody fighting over which one was the right narrative. Turn the whole thing from a potential PR nightmare for Clarke into a he-said, she-said hair-pulling contest.