Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

She wipes away the tears and teeters on her tiptoes, wringing her hands in front of her like she’s going to break her knuckles. “We think it’s there, on the video,” she says.

“Punch it up,” says Harry.

For the next twenty-six minutes, the five of us sit around the table, our eyes glued to the television screen, watching the image of Arthur Ginnis talking to someone across a table in what appears to be a crowded restaurant-white linen tablecloth and crystal glassware, the clink of dishes and the cluttered sounds of conversation and laughter drowning out almost everything Ginnis says on the video. You can make out maybe every sixth or seventh word.

This is what they’ve been working on since midafternoon, the three women with pencils and pads, listening to the video over and over again, trying to write down words, partial sentences, trying to work out a rough transcript of what is being said on the video.

The curved end of Ginnis’s cane can be seen hooked over the edge of the table.

Every once in a while, he will laugh, and the intelligible few words that follow can be heard, but it’s just idle chatter. At one point he’s buttered a piece of bread when he laughs, throws his head back, and says, “I know. It was hilarious. I saw that on CNN.” Then his voice drops again, and his words are swallowed up in the surrounding noise.

Several times he leans with his elbows against the table and talks fervently to whoever it is on the other side. We can’t see the face of this person, just his right hand, the sleeve of his suit coat, and the starched cuff of his shirt where it sticks out.

Each time Ginnis leans against the table, the camera shakes. From this, and from the slight fish-eye wide angle of the video and the fact that he never once looks at the camera, it’s obvious: Ginnis doesn’t know he’s being filmed. I’m guessing that the lens on the camera was probably not much larger in circumference than the eraser on the end of a pencil. It was probably concealed in a small binder, a day planner, or the hollow case of a cell phone, good enough to capture thirty minutes, maybe an hour, of low-quality video and sound. You can buy one in any spy shop.

We are just over nine minutes into the tape when the camera shakes a little and the hand on this side of the table disappears from view. When it reappears a second or so later, it is holding a sheaf of paper, folded in thirds.

“There it is.” Jennifer’s pointing at the screen.

The hand comes back into view, and the papers are unfolded. They are stapled together at the top left-hand corner, what appears to be four pages. This is obvious because the forefinger of the other hand idly fans them at the bottom as if to show the camera the individual sheets.

“What do you think it’s worth?” The man holding the letter is speaking, and with the elevated volume of his voice you can hear it clearly. “The original, I mean.” This is even more audible.

Harry looks at me and mouths the words, The firebug.

We have both heard Scarborough’s voice enough times from videos of appearances on his final book tour to recognize it.

The look from Ginnis is dour. You can’t hear his words, but you can read his lips: “Put it away.”

For almost fifteen seconds, you can see the reduced image of elegant handwritten script, something from another age, on the open page in front of the camera. If you froze the picture with the proper equipment, you could read it. Just on the inside margins of the page, you can see the shadowed line from the edge of the original document that was copied.

He tries to hand the letter to Ginnis, but the old man occupies himself with a piece of bread in one hand and the knife going for the butter in the other. He mumbles something.

“We think he said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’” says Jennifer. “We’ve listened to it a dozen times, but he’s leaning forward, his head is down, and we can’t make it out.”

There is some wobble with the camera, and when Ginnis settles back against his chair again, the letter is open, faceup, in the middle of the table. Scarborough’s empty right hand now lifts the crystal wineglass in front of him. The hand and the wine both disappear. A few seconds later and the glass is back on the table.

“When can I have the original? I need it before I can deliver.” Over the din of laughter and the clatter of dishes, you can hear this clearly. It is obvious now that not only is the volume of Scarborough’s voice elevated but that he is much closer to the concealed microphone.

Across the table Ginnis’s thin face shows the taut strings of flesh from his jawline down his neck. His face may wear the stress of recent illness, but his expression is the classic portrait of the furtive look-Gollum from Lord of the Rings. He is holding the buttered bread, but he is not eating. Swallowing nothing, yet his Adam’s apple is bobbing.

“Have you finished it?” Ginnis says. You can’t hear his words, but you can once more read his lips. The women all agreed. That’s what he said.

We cannot hear anything from Scarborough. He may have said something and we didn’t hear it, or he may have gestured, but it appears that he communicated something to Ginnis, because the old man smiles and says, “Good.”

Just like that, he is affable once more. He wipes the butter off both edges of his knife. Then he reaches out with the knife and lifts the letter just enough so that it slides back across the table toward Scarborough. He smiles. Nods a few times and says, “Put it away. You’ll have what…”

“‘Put it away. You’ll have’ what?” says Harry.

“What you need,” says Jennifer. “It took us three or four times, but we finally got it.”

Both hands come out once more, and the letter is folded. Within seconds it disappears, back where it came from, probably into the inside breast pocket of Scarborough’s coat.

Ginnis and Scarborough talk quickly now. One of the women flips her pencil into the air, and it lands on the pad in front of her. “We tried to get some of this, but his face is in his plate most of the time. At one point he says ‘good work,’ but that’s all we could make out.”

The video ends, and we turn off the set.

“It’s yeoman service,” I tell them. “Bonuses all around.” Even if I have to pay them out of my own pocket. “And you.” I look at Jennifer. “Don’t let anybody ever tell you that you’re not tenacious,” I tell her.

The party goes on for a while as they debrief and unwind all the details of the morning and afternoon since Jennifer returned with the disk and they first punched it up. Twenty minutes later Jennifer is the last of our staff out the door, walking on air, headed for home.

Harry watches her from the open door as she disappears under the arch and out to the street, and then closes it. “You know, it’s only a guess, but I would bet she’ll never forget this day.”

“No. I doubt that she will.”

“Not to diminish what any of them did. Hell, this morning we weren’t even sure that the letter existed. Now we have a picture of it,” says Harry. “For all the good it will do us.”

“I know,” I say. “There’s no foundation to get any of it in, unless we can produce the person who made the video, and he’s dead.”

“Did you see the look on Ginnis’s face when Scarborough dropped that letter on the table?” says Harry. “That old man is up to his teeth in this thing. There’s a lot of fear in that video.”

“That wasn’t fear you saw. That was anger.”

Harry shoots me a questioning look.

“Ginnis’s face on that video brought back something that Trisha Scott told me months ago, when I met with her in Washington. She said Ginnis despised Scarborough and that he wouldn’t have anything to do with him. It was her way of trying to get me to leave Ginnis alone.”