Neal Stephenson - Interface

Zorn continued, "Maybe you would like to explain how you're going to get Cozzano's name off the ballots in all fifty states in just four days!"

Ogle looked perplexed. "Who said anything about ballots?"

"Cozzano did. He claims he's withdrawing from the race."

"Oh, no," Ogle said, shaking his head, and looking a little shocked. "He never said anything about withdrawing from the race. He just said he didn't want any more campaigning."

Zorn was speechless.

Lefkowitz was not. "Excuse me, Cy, but I think we have a problem here. We negotiated the terms of this debate in good faith. Then you came in with a last-minute change. You said you wanted some free time for Cozzano to speak from Tuscola. And your excuse was that he wanted to make an important announcement. Am I right!"

"Yes, you're right. These were my words," Ogle said.

"The only reason that Cozzano was granted that free time was because of this important announcement. He wouldn't have been given that time if all he wanted was to make editorial comments."

"True," Ogle said.

"So we all construed his words to mean that he was dropping out of the race."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Ogle said, "he didn't mean to say that."

"But if he wasn't dropping out of the race," Lefkowitz said, "then he wasn't making any important announcement - which means that you obtained that free air time under false pretenses. You committed a fraud against the American people! And I am sure that this fraud will be covered extensively by those here in the press room, and that you and Cozzano will be judged for it by the American people, who have grown sick of dirty campaigning."

"But he did make an important announcement. Just as I said he would. There's no deception here," Ogle said. "Just a mis­understanding.

"What are you talking about?" Zorn shouted.

"You heard him," Ogle said, "he announced that his son was publishing a book. Doesn't that seem like an important announce­ment to y'all?"

Four days after Cozzano's landslide victory, the Speaker of the House suffered a stroke during a party in a private Washington ' club, while sitting on the toilet in the men's room. On the recom­mendation of the President-elect, the Speaker's family sent him. to the Radhakrishnan Institute for therapy.

The house across the street from the Cozzano residence in Tuscola had become vacant a couple of months previously, and the Cozzanos had bought it. Cy Ogle and some of his best people now moved into it and made it into the headquarters for the transition. If the Cozzano house was the Tuscola White House, then the place across the street was the Tuscola Executive Office building.

Cy Ogle had a big leather La-Z-Boy set up in the living room and spent much of mid-November lying in it "like a sack of shit," as he put it, recovering from a cold, watching TV, and enjoying his first chance to relax in the better part of a year. It was a wonderful time for him. He had devastated not only the opposition candi­dates, but also his competitors in the election business. Even the fearsome Jeremiah Freel was in jail. And besides, he was a sucker for Christmas.

After Election Day, Ogle, as leader of the transition team, declared a three-week moratorium on all official activities for the President-elect. Eleanor Richmond likewise stuck close to home - her Alexandria apartment - attending a couple of T.C. Williams football games (Harmon, Jr., had become a star punter) and shopping for inaugural clothes with her daughter, Clarice.

At the beginning of December, Ogle issued a press release listing the members of the Cozzano transition team. Ogle claimed, of course, that he had hand-picked these men, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Whoever had chosen them had done an excellent job: they were professional, experienced, nonpartisan, and classy in a nonintimidating way. They had impeccable credentials and were universally regarded as ethical and trust­worthy. It was claimed that these people had spent the last year behind the scenes, working on position papers for the Cozzano campaign. This was patently untrue, but Ogle had to admit that it sounded great. All the serious press agreed, and praised the skills of the Cozzano team. The rest of the media was content with photo-ops of Cozzano and his family and entourage shoveling snow in Tuscola.

Ogle knew that the people, whose consciousness he had pummeled and abused so relentlessly for the previous year, needed a rest. They needed to concentrate on the NFL, sitcoms, and Christmas. They needed to recharge their batteries because what was to come in the Cozzano administration would be tough. A quick glance at the aforementioned position papers proved that much. The waffling and pathetic efforts of the previous administration were to be replaced by calm, cool decisiveness. No one knew what the plan was, beyond the endless evocation of the return to values, and its fiscal corollaries: cut the deficit, pay back every penny on the debt.

Ogle knew that his role in this operation would end as of January 20. He had two major tasks left to organize, and this was the kind of thing he liked best - public displays without elections. Spectacles. On December 1 he gathered his staff together to launch the final push on the Cozzano Family Christmas Special. The buildup for the special would run until December 21. He would drop names out in the media like lures for hungry trout. Names for potential cabinet officers, names for White House staff. Names for possible judicial appointments. The idea was partly to show what fine people would be working for Cozzano, partly to build up suspense for the Christmas Special, and partly to avoid the tedious and demeaning sight of wannabes trudging back and forth between the Champaign-Urbana airport and Tuscola.

Instead he had a parade of foreign dignitaries make the same trip. It looked more impressive, and the sight of Brazilians and Saudis making snowmen on the front lawn was great television. Ogle toyed endlessly with the sequence of their arrivals. He also found ways to make use of the soaring stock market, inspired by the Cozzano victory, the knowledge that the debt would not be forgiven, and all of the feel-good symbolism that was radiating from Tuscola like heat from an old-fashioned wood stove.

Starting on the twenty-first he would begin to throw more logs on the fire. Mary Catherine had taken a job at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and Dad was giving her a cozy brownstone apartment to move into; while its exact location was not mentioned, Today show viewers were given a video tour of the place, complete with blazing fires, oriental rugs, and antique furniture.

On the twenty-second an affirmation of Cozzano's strength would be made: he would do a guest shot on a special live edition of a popular woodworking show. The pipe-smoking, suspender-wearing host would interview Cozzano working in his shop, steam coming out of his mouth, as the President-elect fixed a busted chest of drawers.

Scheduled for the twenty-third was the official launch of James Cozzano's new book, Kingmakers. The Inside Stories of Ogle, Zorn, and Lefkowitz and How They Created a President. The publisher was throwing a launch party at the Hay-Adams Hotel, across the park from the White House. Rich and powerful people would be present. So would TV cameras. The rave reviews had already been written.

The twenty-fourth would feature the Cozzanos at midnight mass. And the twenty-fifth would make the country feel good. Real good.

The seven weeks after the election were glorious for Mary Catherine. No more travel. Minimum of interviews, speeches and other campaign hassles. Maximum of time with Dad. Most of the time was strictly business, though. As she had been doing for the last six months, she spent several hours a day putting him through therapeutic exercises, mostly concentrating on the left hand.