something urgent for him to do. It was because Mahoney didn’t care whether DeMarco had made plans or not. DeMarco would ask for permission to take time off, he’d tell Mahoney the days he intended to be gone, and Mahoney would almost always nod his big head in agreement. But Mahoney never bothered to write down the dates when DeMarco would be absent, because from his perspective the dates were unimportant. Then, after having given his permission, after DeMarco had purchased airline tickets and booked hotels and made promises to friends and lovers, Mahoney would force him to cancel his vacation, believing sincerely that whatever problem John Mahoney had far outweighed any problems that he might cause his subordinate.
DeMarco bought travel insurance every time he made reservations.
This year DeMarco was planning to spend a week in Key West, sitting in the sun, drinking rum, and ogling women in small bikinis. Now his trip might be in jeopardy. On the other hand, Mahoney had not specifically instructed him to cancel his vacation. He’d just said for DeMarco to keep his ear to the ground, an activity DeMarco figured he could do by phone from a Florida beach, unless otherwise directed.
To change the subject, he asked Mahoney, ‘How’s Broderick’s bill looking?’
Mahoney shook his head in disgust. ‘It’s still in committee, but with this thing that Reza did, there’s a good chance it’ll make it to the floor for a vote. I’m gettin’ a lot of mail saying that Broderick’s got the right idea, and I’ll betcha everybody on that Senate committee is too.’
On occasion, when Mahoney would talk to high school kids, he’d ask them if they knew how laws were made. The education system being what it is, the answer was usually no, and Mahoney would give the high schoolers the kindergarten version of the lawmaking process.
A bill could be initiated in either body of Congress, the House or the Senate, or in both bodies simultan eously. Suppose a senator – say, William Broderick – decided that the nation needed a new law. He would draft his proposal in the form of a bill, and the bill would go to the appropriate standing committee in the Senate. Here the bill would be reviewed and discussed and modified and then, if approved by the committee, it would go to the floor of the Senate to be voted upon. If the bill passed by simple majority in the Senate, it would then go to the House, and if the House voted to approve the bill, it would go to the president for his signature, and the bill would become law, unless the president vetoed it, which he rarely did.
That was the kiddy-class version of how a bill became a law.
The actual process was much more complicated. It involved backslapping and backstabbing, compromises and trades. Think tanks would crank out position papers, twisting facts as needed to support or undercut the legislation, depending on who was paying their fee. Lobbyists would take lawmakers on golfing trips and ply them with booze and broads and bucks. Party leaders would bend back arms, making it clear that the partisan way was the only way, and special-interest groups would dance around their bonfires and flood the legislature with threatening mail. The politicians would take all these factors into account, add to the mix the proximity of the next election, listen to a reading of the bones cast by various blind pollsters, and, most important of all, decide how a yea or nay vote could affect their chances of being reelected – and then the politicians would vote.
Laws are a lot like hot dogs: You don’t really want to know how they’re made.
‘What are you going to do if it’s approved in the Senate?’ DeMarco asked.
‘It’ll never happen,’ Mahoney said.
The speaker was almost always right when he made predictions about how Congress would behave, but he hadn’t factored Youseff Ibrahim Khalid into his thinking.
Youseff Ibrahim Khalid was so frightened he could hardly walk. He’d already vomited once since arriving at LaGuardia. He would have vomited again, but he had nothing left in his stomach. As he approached the security checkpoint, he could feel the sweat soaking into his shirt and pouring down his forehead. He knew he had to try to appear calm, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t stop the trembling in his legs. He couldn’t stop the sweat rolling down his face.
He was certain the TSA agents at the checkpoint would stop him because of the way he was acting. However, as fate would have it, a snowstorm had hit the Midwest and this had caused a number of flights to be delayed or canceled – although Youseff’s flight was not one of them. So it was unusually busy at the airport that morning, there were long lines of upset, impatient people everywhere, and the agents were rushing their inspections to avoid further delays. It was God’s will.
Youseff placed his carry-on bag on the conveyor belt and moved slowly forward to walk through the metal detector. He had already made sure he had nothing on him that would set off the detector. His pockets were completely empty; he had even removed his belt and thrown it into the garbage can in the airport restroom. All his possessions were in the carry-on bag. He expected that they would search the bag and pat him down because of his name, but this time they didn’t. He simply passed through the metal detector, picked up his carry-on bag, and put on his shoes.
It was all God’s will.
The small jet used to shuttle passengers between New York and Washington had twelve rows, two seats on the starboard side of the plane, one seat on the port side. He was in the single seat in row eight. A woman and her child were sitting across the aisle from him, the child a tiny blond-haired girl no more than seven. He couldn’t look at the child.
He sat there with his eyes closed as the plane was being prepared for takeoff and thought of his wife and his own children, his beautiful children. Would his wife miss him when he was gone? Probably not, he’d treated her so badly the last two years.
The plane rose into the sky over New York. The stewardess informed the passengers that they would arrive at Reagan National Airport in less than an hour. When the seat-belt light was extinguished, Youseff sat a minute, tried and failed to remember a prayer from his childhood, and then rose from his seat. He pulled his carry-on bag from the overhead bin and walked back to the restroom. As he walked down the aisle he saw more children. The plane seemed to be filled with children.
Inside the restroom, he removed from his bag the pieces that made up the pistol. The pistol was constructed of some sort of plastic, a polymer that was very tough, and the gun’s components resembled common objects: the barrel was the handle to a hairbrush; the trigger was the earpiece to a pair of sunglasses; three small-caliber plastic bullets and a spring had been packed into a container that appeared to be a ballpoint pen. Youseff assembled the pistol with trembling hands and loaded it, then looked into the mirror. His face was unshaven, his hair was sticking up, and his eyes seemed to have swelled in their sockets, as if they were about to explode from all the emotions he was trying to suppress. He looked like a madman.
But it was time. It was time to do what he had to do. Then it would all be over.
He left the restroom and walked slowly up the aisle of the plane, the pistol in the pocket of his jacket. He dropped his carry-on bag on the seat where he’d been sitting and continued up the aisle toward the stewardess, who was standing by the coffee mess near the cockpit door. He approached as if he was going to ask for something, then grabbed her by the arm, jerked her in front of him, and placed the barrel of the gun against her head. He heard people start to scream and then he started screaming too, telling the passengers not to move, not to resist. At least that’s what he thought he said. He wasn’t sure, there was such a roar inside his head.
He
