First Citizen (36 page)

That, I think, is when I blundered. I began to care about the job of governing and, in one single area, really tried to do something right for the country and the people. In a politician, this is deadly folly. It had its root in the insurrection.

A lot of urban property—homes, small businesses, office complexes, streets, and utilities—had been destroyed in the rioting and our suppression of it. The owners naturally had turned to their insurance carriers for compensation; after a single incident two or three thousand claims might be filed in a week. And the insurance boards rejected every claim out of hand. They pointed to the fine print about “exclusions in time of war,” sat back and folded their hands. Let those who insisted take their case to the courts. The claimants did, and the dockets filled up so that the average person would not see judge or jury before 2035. This was a tricky legal area.

While Pollock, Cawley, and I might have privately talked about the urban rioting as “insurrection” and our reaction as “going to war,” we never said those words in public. The strongest terms we used were “disturbance” and “civil unrest.” Only the mediacasters called it a war, and their pronouncements had no force of law. So the insurance boards didn’t really have a clear-cut objection. But then, a couple of trillion in hard cash was at stake. And when was the wording of any insurance policy so clear that you didn’t need six lawyers to define a sneeze?

What made the situation more onerous was that, for twenty years, the insurance boards had virtually managed every business in the country and prescribed the home life of every household. They were involved in every decision. For a small business: where to build, what to sell, how to arrange the stock, what to print or say in advertising it, how to do the bookkeeping. For a homeowner: what terms for a mortgage and collateral were acceptable, how often to clean the front steps, what kind of bleach to keep in the laundry room, how to discipline and counsel the children.

To get life insurance, a person was summarily enrolled in a health maintenance organization and an exercise program. Usually, he or she was also given a list of proscribed activities, foods, and drugs; there would also be a list of countries and cities the person was forbidden to visit.

The objective of every decision, of course, was to find the path of least risk and greatest safety. The right of the insurance company or broker to hold surprise inspections was written into every policy. So the insurance boards had contractual powers that overturned the Fourth Amendment.

Of course, the boards charged high fees for this counsel and advice. Then they turned around and charged higher premiums because of all the potential risks their mandatory investigations had uncovered. This was just a huge, well-oiled money machine. And Gordon Pollock was the chief mechanic; of that I had proof. His vote on the Finance and Banking Subcommittee had many times protected the boards and their rogue power. No doubt he profited handsomely from the business. More than that, he had a personal hand in several sectors—real estate, banking, entertainment— that ran most profitably when their economic environment was risk-free.

Now, when the greatest number of the country’s small policyholders had lost almost everything, the boards and their client insurance carriers disappeared through a loophole. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. And, if I had anything to do about it, it wasn’t going to happen. For six months, my legislative staff and I drafted and redrafted a package of reforms. On paper, the legislation bore the title “Insurance Industry Fair Claims Act,” but it went a lot farther than that.

It redefined the relationship between the insurance carriers and the boards that had been set up to regulate them. It specified the findings of fact and conclusions of law any court would have to make before denying a claim under an existing policy. Further, we streamlined the entire litigation process. We created new standards for risk and compensation that fairly apportioned the burden of a loss between the individual and society. We redefined the Banking and Credit Act so that terms for “adequate indemnity against all losses,” as written into most loan agreements, were not a license for the insurance companies to shear the sheep and take the skin, too. And, to boot, we imposed new antitrust restrictions on the largest insurance carriers.

Oh, we brought in a broom and meant to sweep hard.

And while we polished the wording on our draft legislation—using computer systems that were isolated from the national network and locking everything under my private codes—I had my spies out tasting the winds for me. Gabe turned up a surprising talent for a farmboy: He was a first-class data dabbler. For three months, he had been nibbling around the edges of private storage blocks in the net, especially Pollock’s. Finally, around the middle of December 2017, he claimed to have found an entry point there.

“He’s on to you, Uncle Jim.” A grim smile bent the boy’s horsey face.

“How much does he know?”

“Congress is really ready to support legislation about the insurance mess and Pollock’s staff are passing memos about it.”

“General memos? Just tone of the times stuff? Then he doesn’t have ...”

“Your name or initials come up as a cross reference sixteen times out of twenty possibles. When you pop that bill, he’s going to be looking in the right direction.”

“We’ll have the votes to beat him.”

“If you get a chance to.”

“He wouldn’t—”

At this precise instant, the door to my private office banged open and my personal assistant, Janna, backed into the room, propelled by Pollock himself. If I’d ever seen a man with a black cloud over his head and little lightning bolts shooting off, it was Pollock at that moment. With a hook of his thumb he sent Janna out of the room. Then he turned his mammoth attention on Gabe.

“Get out of here, Puppy,” he said with a glare that should have cleared up the boy’s acne for good.

“But I am Mr. Corbin’s—”

“I know who you are, Snot. Go.”

Gabe glanced at me and I nodded for him to go. He did, with his head down.

Then the searchlight of Pollock’s gaze came around and settled on me. He advanced on the desk and leaned over it, supporting himself on his knuckles.

I stood up to meet him, instinctively going on the ready. My karate reflexes were humming.

“There are ground rules, Corbin. … I didn’t think we’d have to teach you about them.”

“Yes? What rules are those?”

His fury relaxed marginally and he went smooth before me.

“Let’s—ah—see if I can find a metaphor that you can comprehend. If you were a farmer, like your clod-footed nephew there, I would tell you not to plow across another man’s field. If you were a merchant, I’d tell you to keep out of my markets and off my sales floor. If you were a real politician, I’d tell you not to canvass among my constituency. …” Then the words choked up in his throat once more and his face went pale where before it had merely been red-brown like a brick.

“You’re angry about something, Gordon. I can tell.”

“Of course I’m angry! Each of us has certain spheres of responsibility and influence within the government. You are about to poach on mine.”

Do you want to tell me what it is you’re talking about? Or would you rather remain mysterious?”

With a visible effort, he took control of his face and emotions again.

“You are about to launch major legislation—”

“That’s an interesting idea. How do you know?”

“Oh, come on! You reserve twenty-minute blocks of video time and schedule half a dozen enabling votes, we can all guess it’s not to propose a national ice-cream flavor. There is only one subject that could interest you and your pack of Dem-Nat Coalition populists.”

“You mean the insurance scam—um—scandal?”

His face went dead sober, even reasonable. “We’ve built an orderly system of indemnity and risk coverage in this country. We’ve created safety in an uncertain world. Brought order out of economic chaos. You’re an outsider to that system, Corbin. You can’t expect to understand the intricacies—”

“I understand grand larceny when it splashes my shoes.”

“I’m telling you: Don’t interfere.”

“I’ll have to think about it.”

“Don’t think too long.”

“Or you’ll
what?”

Pollock’s eyes locked with mine. He said nothing. He just smiled. But as clearly as if he had spoken aloud, I heard him tell me how I would be killed. By torture. With wires and springs and tiny, tiny knives. After I was made to disappear.

Then, without another word, he turned his on his heel and stalked out.

I wasn’t afraid, but after he was gone I blinked back cold tears of rage. Who was this character to try and intimidate me?
He
was mortal, too;
he
was fallible, and—I suddenly realized—he was
scared.
He knew what would happen if I went ahead with my legislation. The economic matrix would shift. He would lose a measure of control. The ripples would unsettle too many of our small boats. And no one could say where the new powers would rise.

Pollock’s display of anger had given
me
power over
him
. The urge to use it immediately, to push ahead just because it would surprise and hurt him, was irresistible.

That night, I told Carlotta about our encounter. Her reaction was swift.

“You must stop work on that bill immediately,” she said, with real fear in her eyes. “Dump the program and destroy your files. Who’s your chief aide on that—Ronson? Send her to the Deaf Smith office tomorrow. Or fire her. I only hope it’s not too late.”

“Why? We’ve got Pollock on the run. This can hurt him.”

“Yes? Ah, Granny, you don’t put a man like Pollock ‘on the run.’ He’s like a great hunting cat: His brain is wired for the kill. He can’t think about meeting an enemy and turning away. He
can’t
run. Now, you must go to him as soon as you decently can and tell him you’ve seen it his way. Apologize and hope with all your heart that he believes you.”

“Oh, not now! No, Carlotta,” I said. She was telling me to do something
my
brain wasn’t wired for.

She gave me a level stare. “I told you once, I would back you as long as you won and kept on winning. Crossing up Gordon Pollock on his home turf is not a winning strategy.” With a slow shake of her head, Carlotta left the room and went to bed. Since the first day of our marriage, she had been drawing lines. Somewhere in the course of this conversation, I had crossed an important one. And that still wasn’t going to stop me. I had thirty-six hours left.

The next day, Gabriel Ossing disappeared. He was late for our routine morning meeting. After half an hour, I had Janna call down to his cubicle in the Page Room. The voice message he’d left there was at least a day old. When it finally rolled over on the sixth ring, Janna discovered that no live human had seen him that morning.

She called his apartment in the city, and the answering machine there told her to call a woman named Jenny Tancredi in Cleveland, Ohio. Being the thorough type, Janna followed up that lead. She got a sleepy voice that sounded, she told me, a lot like Gabe’s saying his aunt was out of the house and could she call back. Janna wisely excused herself, said she had a wrong number—which was almost impossible with the new BioComm liquid switches—and hung up. Janna was mystified, but the tangle jelled a suspicion for me.

“Call my sister in Nova Scotia. Tell her to send her son to my place in Las Vegas. She should buy three different plane tickets in his name and hers out of Halifax, then put him on a boat for the mainland. He’s to go by bus to—umm—Augusta, and
then
fly. Use the scrambler on this as far as you can, at least on the beampath out of Baltimore. And have someone from the security team get up to Augusta’s airport or bus station, whatever, and snatch him.”

“How will they know him?”

“He’ll probably look a lot like the young man we’ve been calling Gabriel Ossing.”

“You mean our Gabe was a plant?”

“Don’t unhinge your jaw, Janna. His information was a little too good, especially toward the end. And Clary never called me ‘Jim’ in her life; so why should he? Now move on this, the real Gabe’s life might be in danger.”

“Yes, sir!”

The business with “our” Gabriel was all smoked herring, meant to distract me. And to deprive me of a set of ears.

The following day, when I was tied into the House’s electronic agenda, working up the timing for our legislative package, an action flash came across the net. I keyed to check it out and found my own name on a bill of impeachment. The detail was sketchy, but it had something to do with my “aiding and abetting insurrectionist elements.” The bill called for my trial in the Judiciary Committee and, if I was found culpable, my removal from Congress, a separate trial in the criminal courts, and revocation of the charter for my G.V. division in Mexico. This action was signed with the personal codes of Harry Colpat, the chairman of Judiciary, and Winifred Ponce, a nobody but also on the committee. Both were New Republican cronies of Gordon Pollock.

While I watched the screen, the preliminary enabling vote was scheduled. A counter bill to examine the evidence was introduced almost instantly. And, bless him, Mike Alcott’s code was on it. He was the junior-most representative on Judiciary.

The data came across in a dump that tied up the network for almost two minutes. There were names, more than 2,000 of them, streaming down the screen: Kareem Ahmed, Kenny Avery, Mohammad Azrael … Burton Calhoun, Abu Conan, Mohammad Crockett … Abraham Davis, Myra Davis … John Doe 121, John Doe 122, John Doe 123 … none of them was familiar to me. At the tail end was the explanation.

These were members of a revolutionary supergang, the Vice Lords, which had been operating in a dozen eastern cities. Each of these people had been apprehended in a felony or a criminal misdemeanor, and each had carried a plastic laminated card that reproduced in miniature a blanket pardon to all Vice Lords, signed by Granville James Corbin. A member of the House of Representatives and of the Special Executive had authorized purse snatchings, felony homicides, breaking and entering, and a catalog of crimes almost as long as the list of apprehended suspects.