Christopher Buckley - Boomsday

“I’m trying to formulate our position. If you’d just be quiet for a second.”

“Well, formulate fast, the limo’s pulling up. Oh, hell. There’s a mob of them. Vultures.”

“Tell Corky to drive around the block.”

“Too late. Here they come.”

“You’ll be issuing a full statement tomorrow morning.”

“Why can’t I just-”

“You’re going to…consult. You’re going to consult with…theologians. That’s it. Religious authorities.”

“Which theologians?”

“I don’t know! Thomas Aquinas. St. Jerome. Thomas More. Just stonewall .”

Cass hung up. She let out a breath and said to Terry, “Do we know any theologians?”

“On K Street?”

JEPPERSON CALLS VATICAN THREAT “A LOAD OF BULL”

Cass stared at the headline. She had already seen a dozen online versions of it throughout the night. She was tired. She found herself wishing that she had lived before the age of the Internet and cable TV, when news arrived twice a day instead of every fricking second .

Terry walked in. He looked as if he hadn’t slept much, either. He glanced at the front page of the Post. “I see our boy stayed on message.”

Cass looked up gloomily. “I guess I’ll be spending more time on the road with the candidate. Hurling myself between him and the nearest reporter.”

The phone rang. Randy.

“Well, if it isn’t the Antichrist,” Cass said.

“I’m a god in Minneapolis!” he said. “Have you seen the papers?”

“Yeah.”

“They lapped it up!”

“Randy. They’re Lutherans. Before you go nailing any more theses to the front door of the cathedral, let’s see how this plays in small cities like, you know, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Baltimore, Los Angeles. Other little villages where they actually like the pope.”

“He’s French.”

“Randy, he’s the pope .”

“Well,” Randy sniffed, “ he fired the first shot. I know how you and Terry hate it when I actually have an independent thought, but I have a strong feeling in my gut about this.”

“So do I. Like a cramp.”

“Americans don’t like being bossed about by foreigners.”

“Let’s hope for the best. Meantime, please try to avoid the subject. I really don’t want to pick up Time magazine next week and read that you called the Virgin Mary a slut.”

The phone at the papal nunciature had not stopped ringing. Every major media outlet in the country wanted to interview Monsignor Montefeltro. Even the late-night comedy shows wanted him. A New York City tabloid put him on the front page with the headline RAGING BULL!

The papal nuncio, Montefeltro’s nominal boss, was a bit put out that Rome had bypassed him and asked his number two to be Vatican point man. As for Montefeltro, he wanted to crawl under his desk. He was hoping against hope that Ivan the Terrible and the jezebels Tolstoy and Dostoevsky hadn’t watched TV yesterday or seen a newspaper. Or a magazine. Or the Internet. Or… Dio mio.… ?Maybe they’d all gone back to Russia. Maybe they’d all died of venereal disease or in a gun battle over drugs. Maybe-

“Monsignor? It’s a Mr. Ivan for you. He says you know him. And a Ms. Katie Couric from the television called again, twice.”

“What do you want?”

“Everywhere you are on television. I think you will be pope someday. So, am calling for donation to orphans. Donation should be more now that you are such big important man in church. I think…one hundred thousand dollars. Orphans will be very happy. God will be very happy.”

Montefeltro wondered if the Swiss Guard had a secret assassination unit. He sighed. “I don’t have one hundred thousand dollars. Why don’t you call Mr. Pine. He is very rich.”

“We called him. He was very happy to hear watch is located. There is Mercedes SL 550 parked outside your office. Is very nice car. Why you are not donating that to orphans? Humble priest should not be driving one-hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes-Benz. Jesus did not drive in Mercedes. He drive on donkey.”

Gideon was indeed very happy to hear that his gold watch and fob had been located, though that was not the sum of his reaction.

It is unpleasant to be blackmailed at any time, but especially inconvenient when you are launching a presidential campaign, and worse yet if your name carries the prefix Reverend. Yet for all that, Ms. Tolstoy sounded quite friendly over the phone and made no mention of money.

“You look cute on TV,” she said. “I don’t think that you kill your mother. You are too nice-looking. Why you not come to my apartment? We will have party, with Champagne. Watch sexy movies. I am wery wet for you.”

Gideon shifted in his chair. He was almost fifty years old, and no woman, ever, had purred to him this way, much less asked him to come party with her. I am wery wet for you.

“If I,” Gideon croaked, “come, you will return me my watch?”

“Oh, yes . But,” she said, “first you must find watch. I have many hiding places. Mmmm. Hurry, Gidyon. I so wery wet for you, I am having to change my panties.”

She gave him an address in Arlington.

It occurred to Gideon, poor Gideon, that it was Sunday, the Sabbath. What was it Stonewall Jackson had said after he asked the surgeons if he was dying and they told him yes? “Good. I always wanted to die on a Sunday.”

No. Mustn’t. Madness. Then he thought, The watch. He must retrieve the watch. He would retrieve the watch and leave. Maybe, just to be friendly, he’d stay for just one glass of Champagne.

Gideon slipped out of campaign headquarters unnoticed.

Randy was feeling cocky, having been proved right in the matter of the bull. Polls were running overwhelmingly against the Vatican. His own tracking polls showed a gain of four points after telling Rome to butt out. Americans, it appeared, did not welcome divine intervention.

Gideon Payne was strangely silent on the matter, even absent. The media were clamoring for his comments, yet he was nowhere to be found. His press secretary said that the candidate was “down with a bad cold” and had to cancel his schedule. The truth was, Gideon had dropped off the map. He wasn’t at home. He wasn’t answering his cell. He had last been seen Sunday night, the night of the 60 Minutes broadcast. And it was now Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon.

“Where the hell is he?” Teeley demanded. No one knew. “He can’t just disappear! We’re in the middle of a goddamn presidential campaign!”

Cass, meanwhile, had conceived the idea that Randy should use the word fuck at a campaign event. The genius of this strategy was not immediately apparent to the candidate. Or, for that matter, to Terry, who usually was on the same bandwidth as Cass.

“It’s how this generation talks,” she said to them. “If you want to get their attention, you have to sound like them. They’ll get it.”

Randy stared. “Ask not what the fuck your country can do for you? Four score and seven fucking years ago? For God’s sake, Cass. The FCC would fine me. And the FEC.”

“Fuck ’em,” Cass said. “We’ll make headlines.”

“As long as we’re at it,” Terry said, “why not a wardrobe malfunction during the debates? He can go over to Peacham and rip off his shirt. Tweak his nipple.”

“I’m serious about this, guys. If you just subtly slipped it in-”

“Subtly?”

“-at precisely the right moment, it would be monster. Huge. Tectonic. I can’t even discuss it. No presidential candidate has ever said the f-word before.”