“I agree,” I said amiably.

“But you tell us he’ll be beaten in 2000.”

“I say anybody the New Democrats put up will be beaten,” I replied. “Anyone. Quinn, Leydecker, Keats, Kane, Pownell, anybody. This is the moment for Quinn to grab, all right, but the right next rung isn’t necessarily the top one.”

Missakian, squat, precise, thin-lipped, the communications expert, the man of clear vision, said, “Can you be more specific, Lew?”

“Yes,” I said, and swung into it.

I set forth my not very chancy prediction that whoever went up against President Mortonson in 2000 — Leydecker, most likely — would get beaten. Incumbent Presidents in this country don’t lose elections unless their first term has been a disaster of Hooverian proportions, and Mortonson had done a nice clean dull unexceptionable sluggish job, the kind a lot of Americans like. Leydecker would mount a respectable challenge, but there were really no issues, and he would be defeated and might be defeated badly, even though he was of obvious presidential caliber. Best to stay out of Leydecker’s path, then, I argued. Give him a free run. Any attempt by Quinn to wrest the nomination from him next year would probably fail, anyway, and would certainly make Leydecker Quinn’s enemy, which wasn’t desirable. Let Leydecker have the accolade, let him go on to destroy himself in the election trying to beat the invincible Mortonson. We would wait to put Quinn up — still young, untarnished by defeat — in 2004, when the Constitution prohibited Mortonson from running again.

“So Quinn comes out big for Leydecker in 2000 and then goes to sit on his hands?” Ephrikian asked.

“More than that,” I said. I looked toward Bob Lombroso. He and I had already discussed strategy and come to an agreement, and now, hunching his powerful shoulders forward, sweeping the Armenian side of the table with an elegant heavy-lidded glance, Lombroso began to outline our plan.

Quinn would make an open bid for national prominence during the next few months, peaking in the early summer of ‘99 with a cross-country tour and major speeches in Memphis, Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco. With some solid attention-getting accomplishments in New York City behind him (enclave realignment, curriculum streamlining, deGottfriedizing of the police force, etc.), he would begin speaking out on larger issues like regional fusion-power interchange policy and reenactment of the repealed Privacy Laws of 1982 and — why not? — mandatory oil gellation. By autumn he would begin a direct attack on the Republicans, not so much Mortonson himself as selected cabinet members (especially Secretary of Energy Hospers, Secretary of Information Theiss, and Secretary of the Environment Perlman). Thus he would inch into contention, becoming a national figure, a rising young leader, a man to reckon with. People would start talking about his presidential possibilities, though the polls would rank him well behind Leydecker as a favorite for the nomination — we’d see to that — and he would never actually declare himself in the running. He’d let the media assume he preferred Leydecker to any of the other declared candidates, though he would be careful not to make any outright endorsement of Leydecker. At the New Democratic convention in San Francisco in 2000, once Leydecker had been nominated and had made the traditional free-choice speech declining to name his running mate, Quinn would launch a game and dramatic but ultimately unsuccessful bid for the vice -presidential nomination. Why vice-presidential? Because the floor fight would give him major media exposure without opening him, as a presidential bid would, to accusations of premature ambition, and without angering the powerful Leydecker. Why unsuccessful? Because Leydecker was going to lose the election to Mortonson anyway, and there was nothing for Quinn to gain in going down to defeat with him as his running mate. Better to be turned aside at the convention — thereby establishing the image of a brilliant newcomer of great promise thwarted by political hacks — than to be repudiated at the polls. “Our model,” Lombroso concluded, “is John F. Kennedy, edged out for vice-president just this way in 1956, head of the ticket in 1960. Lew has run simulations showing the overlap of dynamics, one on one, and we can show you the profiles.”

“Great,” Ephrikian said. “When’s the assassination due — 2003?”

“Let’s keep it serious,” said Lombroso gently.

“Okay,” said Ephrikian. “I’ll give you serious, then. What if Leydecker decides he’d like to run again in 2004?”

“He’ll be sixty-one years old then,” Lombroso replied, “and he’ll have a previous defeat on his record. Quinn will be forty-three and unbeaten. One man will be on the way down, the other obviously on the way up, and the party will be hungry for a winner after eight years out of power.”

There was a long silence.

“I like it,” Missakian announced finally.

I said, “What about you, Haig?”

Mardikian had not spoken for a while. Now he nodded. “Quinn’s not ready to take over the country in 2000. He will be in 2004.”

“And the country will be ready for Quinn,” said Missakian.

One thing about politics, the man said, is that it makes strange bedfellows. But for politics, Sundara and I surely would never have wandered into an ad hoc four-group that spring with Catalina Yarber, the Transit Creed proctor, and Lamont Friedman, the highly ionized young financial genius. But for Catalina Yarber, Sundara might not have opted for Transit. But for Sundara’s conversion, she would very likely still be my wife. And so, and so, the threads of causation, everything leading back to the same point in time.

What happened is that as a member of Paul Quinn’s entourage I received two free tickets to the $500-a-plate Nicholas Roswell Day dinner that the New York State New Democratic Party holds every year in the middle of April. This is not only a memorial tribute to the assassinated governor but also, indeed primarily, a fund-raising affair and a showcase for the party’s current superstar. The main speaker this time, of course, was Quinn.

“It’s about time I went to one of your political dinners,” Sundara said.

“They’re pure formaldehyde.”

“Nevertheless.”

“You’ll hate it, love.”

“Are you going?” she asked.

“I have to.”

“Then I think I’ll use the other ticket. If I fall asleep, nudge me when the mayor gets up to talk. He turns me on.”

So on a mild rainy night she and I podded out to the Harbor Hilton, that great pyramid all agleam on its pliable pontoon platform half a kilometer off Manhattan’s tip, and foregathered with the cream of the eastern liberal establishment in the sparkling Summit Room, from which I had a view of — among other things — Sarkisian’s condo tower on the other side of the bay, where nearly four years earlier I had first met Paul Quinn. A good many alumni of that gaudy party would be at tonight’s dinner. Sundara and I drew seats at the same table as two of them, Friedman and Ms. Yarber.

During the preliminary session of bone-doping and cocktails Sundara drew more attention than any of the senators, governors, and mayors present, Quinn included. This was partly a matter of curiosity, since everybody in New York politics had heard about my exotic wife but few had met her, and partly because she was surely the most beautiful woman in the room. Sundara was neither surprised nor annoyed. She has been beautiful all her life, after all, and has had time to grow accustomed to the effects her looks evoke. Nor had she dressed like one who minds being stared at. She had chosen a sheer harem suit, dark and loose and flowing, that covered her body from toes to throat; beneath it she was bare and when she passed before a source of light she was devastating. She glowed like a radiant moth in the middle of the gigantic ballroom, supple and elegant somber and mysterious, highlights sparkling in her ebon hair, hints of breast and flank tantalizing the onlookers. Oh, she was having a glorious time! Quinn came over to greet us, and he and Sundara transformed a chaste kiss-and-hug into an elaborate pas de deux of sexual charisma that made some of our elder statesmen gasp and redden and loosen their collars. Even Quinn’s wife, Laraine, famous for her Gioconda smile, looked shaken a bit, though she has the most secure marriage of any politician I know. (Or was she merely amused by Quinn’s ardor? That opaque smirk!)