‘This is the truth as far as I know it. There may be worse things happening which I don’t know about. The prospects for the fall and the winter may be better than I’ve been led to understand. I don’t know. All I can say right now is that this nation is faced with the prospect of a famine, and that every man, woman, and child has the right to know.’

When Ed had finished speaking, the lofty triangular room had fallen totally silent. Then the elegant young black prompter had let one of his cards fall, and it had skated across the floor.

Shearson Jones had lifted himself out of his chair, and waddled to the centre of the hall. His bulk had been dark, imposing, and immovable.

‘Hardesty,’ he had said, harshly, ‘you have just brought down the temple. The art of politics, quite apart from feathering one’s own nest, is to preserve the public’s sacred ignorance. The public, far from having a right to know, have a right to be kept in the dark. It is for their own good, their own safety, and their own survival. You don’t shout “fire!” in a crowded auditorium, even if there is a fire. You tell the audience that there has been an infestation of fleas, or that the leading actor has fallen sick, and then you usher them quietly out.

‘I admit quite freely, that I might have exploited some aspects of this blight to my own personal ends, although you will never get me to say so in front of a judge, or a Senatorial committee.

‘But you have seriously misjudged my capabilities as a politician in keeping this crisis low-key. I have been trying to save this country’s neck. And now, with your one foolish broadcast, you have guaranteed its strangulation.’

Ed had stayed where he was.

‘I shouldn’t let it worry you. Senator,’ he had said, loudly. ‘You’ll be okay, won’t you? You have plenty of food, and plenty of wine, and enough money to last you through the next few months. Why should you be upset?’

‘Because the United States of America is my country,’ growled Shearson. ‘And because you have effectively undone with two hundred ill-advised words the work of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and hundreds of Americans a hundred times abler and more dedicated to this country than you are.

‘Graft is one thing, Hardesty. Suicide is another.’

Book Two

One

It was the sound of breaking glass that woke Nicolas up. Not downstairs, in his own delicatessen, but all over the city. Glass breaking, in street after street, with a terrible wintry jangle like sleighbells.