Brian Haig - The Capitol Game

“Yes, I’m afraid that’s it.”

Not looking the least frustrated or even disappointed-Jack thought, in fact, that he looked almost giddy-Bellweather pushed away from the table and got to his feet. Haggar also worked his way out of his chair. Jack had barely taken two bites of his hamburger, but taking the cue, so did he.

“Hey, I appreciate your time,” Bellweather said, sounding quite gracious and sincere.

“I can’t thank you enough for stopping by,” the secretary of defense replied, matching his tone.

A few peremptory handshakes later, they were being hustled back down the hallway and downstairs to their limousine.

Haggar was bent over, mixing a drink from the minibar as they raced over the Memorial Bridge into D.C. proper. He handed Jack a scotch. “What did you think?”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Anything you like. The truth.”

“All right, I’m badly disappointed. Crushed. The meeting was a disaster.”

“You think so?” Bellweather asked, eagerly grabbing a bourbon on the rocks from Haggar. He took a long cool sip and relaxed back into the plush seat.

“They were totally unreceptive, Dan. You pitched a great case. Both of you did, all the reasons for jumping right into this thing. It’s a no-brainer. They didn’t care.”

Bellweather and Haggar both enjoyed a good laugh, at Jack’s expense. Could he really be that naïve? After a moment Haggar said, “They were giving us the green light.”

“How do you get that?”

“We knew, and they knew, they couldn’t just give us everything we asked for.”

“And how is that favorable?”

“Well, Jack,” Bellweather said in a condescending tone, “they just described the roadblocks. They were begging us, virtually screaming for help.”

“Really?”

“Learn to listen better.”

“I’m all ears now.”

“A noncompetitive, no-bid deal is a certain invitation to scandal. We knew that going in. It draws reporters and muckrakers like flies. Drives them berserk.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Robinson and Windal were giving us a road map to make this happen. Clear a few hurdles in Congress. Muzzle our competitors, make sure they don’t have a chance to raise a big squawk.”

“And how do you do that?”

“That’s why we make the big money, Jack.”

Jack stared out the window. They were passing by monuments to Washington’s greats, Lincoln to their left, and off in the distance, Jefferson. Eventually he asked, “Where are we going?”

“To pay a visit on an old friend,” Bellweather answered, sipping from his bourbon and staring off into the distance.

Representative Earl Belzer, the Georgia Swamp Fox to his colleagues, had spent twenty-five long years on the Hill. For the past decade he had served as the feisty, rather autocratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, a roost from which he ruled the Defense Department.

He had avoided military service himself, for reasons that shifted uncomfortably over the years. During the wild and woolly seventies, it was ascribed to an admirable act of youthful conscience against the perfidious Vietnam War; in the more conservative eighties it morphed to a disabling heart murmur before a competitor discovered his childhood medical records. And there was his most recent excuse-screw off, none of your business.

He was now beyond needing an excuse.

He represented a backwater district in Georgia that hosted two large military bases. Twelve years before-a few brief years before he rose to the omnipotent job of committee chairman-the Defense Department had tried to shutter both of them. They were extraneous, ill-located, contributed nothing to national defense, two sagging leftovers from the First World War that had long since become senseless money sumps. The Army was begging to have them closed. They were hot and muggy, and the training areas were brackish swamps. Aside from a few ubiquitous fast-food joints and one overworked whorehouse, there was nothing for the soldiers to do. Virtually no soldier reenlisted after a tour at either base.

But they also employed twenty percent of Earl’s constituents. The federal money that funneled through the bases supported another thirty percent.

If the bases went away, his district and his political career would both become pathetic wastelands. Before he was elected, Earl had been a struggling small-time lawyer, filing deeds and scrawling wills, banging around hospitals and morgues, advertising himself on park benches and in the Yellow Pages, scraping by on $30K a year. And that was a good year. In truth, he admitted to himself, he really didn’t have much talent for the law. It was a miracle he’d done that well. If he had to return home in disgrace he couldn’t pay clients to give him their cases.

His appeals to his congressional colleagues elicited little sympathy and no support-the base closure list was nationwide, large, and expansive; almost two hundred bases were targeted, after all. It was every man for himself. In desperation, Earl eventually took a wild gamble; he marched over to the Pentagon and appealed directly to Secretary of Defense Daniel Bellweather.

The secretary seemed understanding. Both bases could easily be saved, Earl was informed. For the price of a small favor or two, Bellweather would take another close look at the closure list and make the alarming discovery that two posts of staggering importance in the middle of Georgia, a strategically vital state barely a stone’s throw from Cuba, had sloppily slipped onto the list. America would be defenseless against Castro’s hordes, he said with a wink.

What kind of favors? Earl nervously asked. Well, for instance, another House member badly wanted a new Army truck built in his district; one more vote, just one compliant lapdog to say yea, and his worthy dream would be fulfilled. Can we count on you, Earl? Bellweather asked with an ingratiating smile.

Earl thought about it a moment. The truck made even less sense than keeping his bases open-the Army had more trucks than it could drive, a whole new plant would have to be built, workers hired and trained, the cost would be mountainous, perhaps exceeding thirty billion dollars. And anyway, the Army despised the truck, a curiously idiotic vehicle, designed by a drug-addled moron, with twelve gears and twenty U-joints that was destined to become a maintenance nightmare. Earl had already come out loudly and quite forcefully against it. He had gotten a little worked up at a recent press conference where he termed it a disgraceful rip-off, an incomprehensible scandal, a mechanical insult to the taxpayers. Earl had run for office as a reformer, dedicated to root out waste and abuse. His campaign slogan was “Send a washing machine to Washington.” The truck was the ideal target, and he had pounced on it with a wordy vengeance.

If he reversed himself now, his reputation would be ruined. He would never be able to look himself in the mirror. He would be a laughingstock in the House, another pathetically corrupt pol to the press, a spineless hypocrite to the public.

“Sure, no problem,” he squealed after about two seconds of indecision. The important thing was, he would be a hero to his voters.

It had been the fatal “I do” that forever changed Earl’s political career. From that moment on, like a fallen woman, he had no reputation to protect, no grand cause to espouse, no principle that couldn’t be fudged or bought. He threw himself into an endless succession of deals and bargains and compromises, and made the swift ascent to the chairmanship of one of the House’s most powerful committees.

And he owed it all to Daniel Bellweather.

They met in a tiny, run-down Chinese restaurant three miles from the Capitol building, in a decrepit neighborhood better known for crack wars and corner hookers than meetings between the rich and powerful. Representative Earl Belzer was seated at the table and waiting when they arrived.