Capitol Reflections (13 page)

BOOK: Capitol Reflections

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Gwen knew that her husband, like many men, liked to play with his toys—drills, table saws, sanders, and anything metal that could hang from a tool belt. She stepped over to the kitchen table and planted a small kiss on Jack’s forehead before moving back to the stove. “Catch any cyber crooks today?” she asked matter-of-factly.

“Uh, no. So how was your day, honey?”

“Same ol, same ol,” Gwen replied, scooping the wok’s contents onto two plates she carried to the table with an ever-so-subtle sway to her hips. “Bugs and drugs aplenty, but not to worry. They won’t triumph on Captain Maulder’s watch.”

Jack finished his glass of wine and continued to smile. To Gwen, he looked like an unmoored buoy at the mercy of conflicting tides. She knew he wanted to say something to her about Marci and she also knew that she’d short-circuited him. Long-term, this wasn’t the best thing for a marriage. For tonight, though, it was just what she needed.

Gwen sipped a second glass of wine after she and Jack washed the dishes. A slight buzz was fine, but postprandial drowsiness was not in the offing. As Jack dried flatware, she decided to do something more productive for her marriage. She quietly slipped upstairs and returned minutes later wearing one of Jack’s flannel shirts … and nothing else.

Trial and error had taught her that Jack was not a Victoria’s Secret kind of guy. He could not resist L.L. Bean, however, when it was modeled with a flair not exhibited in the catalog. With urgency and red wine governing hormones, the long climb upstairs was not an option. Gwen wondered if her grandmother’s couch had ever seen this kind of action before. Although she doubted it, she did remember that Fitz was one of nine …

Later, as Jack drifted off, Gwen whispered, “If it’s a girl, can we name her Marci?”

The red numbers on the digital clock said 2:00 a.m. Gwen opened her eyes and glanced at the nightstand, her brain racing at the sight of the red “2” just inches away. Jack was fast asleep, having been led upstairs with great difficulty shortly before midnight.

Slipping into her silk robe, Gwen crept downstairs and sat on the living room sofa, legs tucked beneath her.

“I’m a complete idiot,” she said to the quiet room. “I could kick myself.”

Her mind was clear from what amounted to a power nap, and the nocturnal epiphany now brewing in her brain stemmed from remembering Fitz Rule Number Two: When baffled, turn the world upside down. Rotate a problem 180 degrees. Look at things differently.

She was an epidemiologist, and she needed to start acting like one. She needed to step back and look at the problem from a wider perspective. It’s what she did for a living, for God’s sake. Jack had his manly tools down in the basement, but Gwen had her own set of tools at the FDA. She also had contacts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, people with very sophisticated tools that might be helpful in getting to the bottom of Marci’s death.

Marci’s dead, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Gwen paused. In her grief, the words had been streaming through her mind like the updates at the bottom of a cable news screen—they were there but not necessarily assimilated. Marci was dead and Gwen would always cherish the memory of her former college roommate. But she had finally reached the all-important stage of acceptance. She would be able to work more effectively now. Grief and confusion would be replaced by action and an attention to detail. There was something she could do after all.

Gwen went back upstairs, knowing exactly what steps she would take at work in a few hours. She would call Jan Menefee, a medical school classmate and director of the BioNet Surveillance Project down at the CDC. A relatively new system, BioNet was a highly sensitive computer network comprised of more computing power distributed around the globe than was ever conceived for even the largest supercomputer. The goal was to use everyday clues in order to provide early warning for disease outbreaks or bioterrorism events by searching for subtle anomalies, minor blips on the radar screen that could help the medical community stay one step ahead of potential disaster. With such a sophisticated database, perhaps BioNet would be able to provide some clues as to whether Marci’s death was truly a random tragedy or part of some larger picture.

Gwen slid under the sheet next to Jack and fell asleep immediately.

For the first time in two months, she had peace of mind.

Eddie Karn was having trouble sleeping after a long day treated to Washington’s
auto-da-fé
.

Dr. Edward Jason Karn, graduate of Princeton, 1979, had been nominated by the president for the position of commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. The nomination came as a mild shock to Eddie, whose outspoken insistence on the need to subject certain genetically modified foods to premarket approval by the FDA had met with considerable resistance, and the agency was obviously an anathema to the entire grocery lobby. Dr. Karn did not hesitate to speak out on the elimination of rBGH (bovine growth hormone) from the food supply, nor did he temper his opinion on chemically-altered feedstock given to chicken and pigs to make them fatter and meatier. He didn’t believe enough long-term testing had been conducted on chemical additives, and as far as genetically modified foods were concerned, scientists were just beginning to understand gene sequencing in humans, enabling them to isolate certain genes that might predispose certain individuals to illness. How could anyone be sure that genetically modified foods were not causing illness by disrupting normal gene functioning? Karn also believed that mutations in the very structure of DNA might result from such modifications.

But his gastronomic conservatism didn’t end there. A bachelor, Karn shopped at the Whole Foods Market, eating products without preservatives, hormones, colorings, or bleached flour. Eddie Karn talked the talk and walked the walk.

So why had he been nominated by a conservative administration? One reason. Politics, plain and simple.

The sitting president was quickly losing his political capital, with approval numbers falling into the low forties. Things were not going well at home and abroad, and the White House chief of staff decided that the Oval Office needed to score a few victories. Supreme Court nominees, for example, might be easier to confirm if the administration threw Congress a bone in the form of a liberal FDA commissioner. It was a show of bipartisanship that might provide even the most stubborn senators with enough incentive to confirm High Court nominees while making some good old-fashioned pork barrel trades on the side. A Supreme Court seat was for life. FDA commissioners usually came and went with administrations. The White House was far more interested in restructuring the court than battling feeble attempts, doomed to failure, aimed at changing the entire food industry. It was doubtful Karn could affect FDA regulatory processes which had been in place for years without new laws that the right would never allow. It was a win-win situation for an administration with other agendas.

Aware of political realities, Karn was completely at ease with the rationale behind his selection. If becoming a political pawn enabled him to put some ideas into public awareness, even if he couldn’t implement them, then so be it.

Over and above the odd alignment of political planets that led to his selection, Karn was certainly qualified for the job. After five years in private practice, the well-known oncologist spent four years as president of the American Cancer Society. He spent another seven years with the CDC, monitoring the incidence of various diseases in southern states bordering the Mississippi River, where cancer rates were unusually high since industry used the Big Muddy as its primary means for the disposal of toxic waste. Phenol levels alone were off the chart. The last ten years of his career were spent overseeing research at Sloan Kettering and Johns Hopkins respectively, where he had investigated how human genes were affected by chemical agents and preservatives. His research convinced him that Americans had no idea what they were ingesting.

Political or not, Karn was exhilarated over his nomination. Then he learned that Henry Broome was on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions. Karn never forgot the night he witnessed Henry Broome dumpsterize Bruce Merewether back in college, and had kept a watchful eye on him, out of simple curiosity at first. Subsequently, he found Henry’s career moves rather suspect.

Henry Broome IV always prospered after people unexpectedly retired or succumbed to mysterious illnesses. The naturally wary Karn didn’t trust the braggart ex-jock. As a matter of fact, Karn thought Senator Broome was downright dangerous.

Karn had been wise to curtail his enthusiasm. During Karn’s courtesy visits to the Hill, Broome was habitually “called to the floor.” This left Karn at the mercy of Henry’s staff, comprised to a large extent of twenty-four-year-olds dressed out of the Talbots catalog who were even less articulate on food and drug issues than on the novels studied—though not necessarily read—in college lit seminars. The inanity of the questions from Henry’s staff during preliminary interviews gave Karn virtually no opportunity to prepare for Henry’s own issues and inquiries—or rather those of the lobbyists who kept him fed and watered—which he would have to address when the actual hearings finally began.

In the hearing room, Henry greeted Karn off-camera like a long-lost friend. A traditional two-handed grip and a string of reminiscences from college days led Karn to the witness seat. Having seen Henry’s ruthless behavior at Princeton firsthand, Karn detested this false show of camaraderie. And false it was. The moment the chairman’s gavel opened the proceedings, Broome grilled the physician mercilessly on his positions regarding the possible danger of chemical additives and genetically modified foods. Karn’s confirmation hearings were as acrimonious as those for Robert Bork in 1988, when Bork had been recommended for a Supreme Court seat.

Henry was not the only senator to adopt an attack posture, however. Despite Karn’s attractiveness to the left, liberal senators suddenly realized that they represented America’s breadbasket. It was one thing to get up close and personal to visit voters at home, but they didn’t expect to see constituents unceremoniously bumping up and down past their offices in tractors, trucked in overnight thanks to the grocery lobby, and waving distinctly unfriendly signs such as “KEEP KARN OUT OF THE BARN.” One or two who actually served on their senators’ finance committees scraped enough mud off their shoes to mosey upstairs into the rarified offices of the Senate in order to explain to their representatives that reelection should not be regarded as a given no matter how much money was stashed away in the local party’s war chest.

The committee vote was 17-4 against Karn, a doleful political lynching of the first order. Karn’s White House handlers professed the proper amount of shock and betrayal at the hands of conservative Senate leaders, while most pundits thought the president should have withdrawn the nomination to save the very respectable oncologist considerable humiliation at the hands of his questioners. Thanks to Senator Broome, the hearings had become an inquisition, making Dr. Edward Karn look like a New Age lunatic who would disrupt the country’s entire food chain, spiking prices in the process because of his hard-line stance against what most people regarded as scientific progress. Consumers wanted to see products moving swiftly along the supermarket’s conveyor belt, not a warning leaflet from the paranoid Dr. Karn.

And that was how Eddie Karn knew that Henry was still the same monster he’d known in college.