Джеффри Арчер - The Prodigal Daughter

She watched in silence as Pete Parkin arrived in Air Force Two at the Detroit airport. One staffer told her that his crowd was smaller than the one that had turned out for her yesterday, while another said it was larger. She made a mental note of the staffer who said that Parkin’s crowd was larger today and decided to listen to his opinions more carefully in the future.

Pete Parkin made a short speech at a specially set-up podium on the tarmac, his Vice Presidential seal of office glistening in the sun. He said how delighted he was to be in the city that could rightly describe itself as the car capital of the world. ‘I should know,’ he added, ‘I’ve owned Fords all my life.’ Florentyna smiled.

By the end of two days under ‘house arrest,’ Florentyna had complained so much about being cooped up that on Wednesday morning the Secret Service took her down in a freight elevator so that she could stroll along the river front, enjoying the fresh air and the skyline view of Windsor, Ontario, on the opposite bank. She had gone only a few paces before she was surrounded by well-wishers who wanted to touch her hand.

When she returned, Edward had some good news: five uncommitted delegates had decided to vote for her on the first ballot. He estimated that they needed only another seventy-three to claim the magic 1,666. On the monitor she followed the program on the floor of the convention hall. A black school superintendent from Delaware expounded Florentyna’s virtues, and when she mentioned Florentyna’s name the blue placards filled the hall with ‘Kane for President.’ During the speech that followed, there was an equivalent sea of red placards demanding ‘Parkin for President.’ She paced around the suite until one-thirty, by which time she had seen forty-three more delegates and spoken on the phone to another fifty-eight.

The second day of the convention was devoted to the major platform speeches on policy, finance, welfare, defense and the keynote speech by Senator Pryor. Time and time again, delegates would declare that whichever of the two great candidates was selected, they would go on to beat the Republicans in November; but most of the delegates on the floor kept up a steady hum of conversation, all but oblivious to the men and women on the platform who might well make up a Democratic cabinet.

Florentyna broke away from the welfare debate to have a drink with two delegates from Nevada who were still undecided. She realized their next stop would probably be Parkin, who would also promise them their new highway, hospital, university or whatever excuse they came up with to visit both candidates. At least tomorrow night they would have to come out finally in someone’s favor. She told Edward she wanted a fence put up in the middle of her room, so that wavering delegates had somewhere to sit when they came to meet her.

Reports flowed in during the day about what Pete Parkin was up to, which seemed to be much the same as Florentyna except that he was booked into the Westin Hotel at the Renaissance Center. As neither of them could go into the convention arena, their daily routines continued: delegates, phone calls, press statements, meetings with party officials and finally bed without much sleep.

On Thursday, Florentyna was dressed by six o’clock in the morning and was driven quickly to the convention hall. Once they had arrived at the Joe Louis Arena, she was shown the passage she would walk down to deliver her acceptance speech if she were the chosen candidate. She walked out onto the platform and stood in front of the banked microphones, staring out at the twenty-one thousand empty seats. The tall, thin placards that rose from the floor high into the air proudly proclaimed the name of every state from Alabama to Wyoming. She made a special note of where the Illinois delegation would be seated so that she could wave to them the moment she entered the hall.

An enterprising photographer who had slept under a seat in the convention hall all night began taking photographs of her before he was smartly ushered out of the hall by the Secret Service. Florentyna smiled as she looked toward the ceiling where twenty thousand red, white and blue balloons waited to cascade down on the victor. She had read somewhere that it had taken fifty college students, using bicycle pumps, one week to fill them with air.

‘Okay for testing, Senator Kane?’ said an impersonal voice from she could not tell where.

‘My fellow Americans, this is the greatest moment in my life and I intend to—’

‘That’s fine, Senator. Loud and clear,’ said the chief electrician as he walked up through the empty seats. Pete Parkin was scheduled to go through the same routine at seven o’clock.

Florentyna was driven back to her hotel, where she had breakfast with her closest staff, who were all nervous and laughed at each other’s jokes, however feeble, but fell silent whenever she spoke. They watched Pete Parkin doing his usual morning jog for the television crews; it made them all hysterical when someone in an NBC windbreaker holding a mini-camera accelerated past a breathless Vice President three times to get a better picture.

The roll call vote was due to start at nine that evening. Edward had set up fifty phone lines direct to every state chairman on the convention floor so that he could be in constant touch if something unexpected happened. Florentyna was seated behind a desk with only two phones, but at the single touch of a button she had access to any of the fifty lines. While the hall was beginning to fill they tested each line and Edward pronounced that they were ready for anything, that now all they could do was use every minute left to contact more delegates. By five-thirty that evening, Florentyna had spoken by phone or in person to 392 of them in four days.

By seven o’clock the Joe Louis Arena was almost packed, although there was still a full hour to go until the names were placed in nomination. No one who had traveled to Detroit wanted to miss one minute of the unfolding drama.

At seven-thirty Florentyna watched the party officials begin to take their seats on the stage and she remembered her days as a page at the Chicago convention when she had first met John Kennedy. She knew then that they had all been told to arrive at certain times; the later you were asked, the more senior you were. Forty years had passed, and she was hoping to be asked last.

The biggest cheer of the evening was reserved for Senator Bill Bradley, who had already announced he would address the convention if there was a deadlock after the first ballot. At seven forty-five, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Marty Lynch, rose and tried to bring the convention to order, but he could scarcely make himself heard above the klaxons, whistles, drums, bugles and cries of ‘Kane’ and ‘Parkin’ from supporters trying to outscream one another. Florentyna sat watching the scene but showed no sign of emotion. When finally there was a semblance of order, the chairman introduced Mrs. Bess Gardner, who had been chosen to record the votes, although everyone in the hall knew that the results would flash up onto the vast video screen above her head before she even had a chance to confirm them.

At eight o’clock the chairman brought his gavel down; some saw the little wooden hammer hit the base, but no one heard it. For another twenty minutes the noise continued as the chairman still made no impression on the delegates. Eventually at eight twenty-three Marty Lynch could be heard asking Rich Daley, the mayor of Chicago, to place the name of Senator Kane in nomination; ten more minutes of noise before the mayor was able to deliver his eulogy. Florentyna and her staff sat in silence through a speech that described her public record in the most glowing terms. She also listened attentively when Senator Ralph Brooks nominated Pete Parkin. The reception of both proposals by the delegates would have made a full symphony orchestra sound like a tin whistle. Nominations for Bill Bradley and the usual handful of predictable favorite sons followed in quick succession.