The Key to Midnight

certain now that she could be no one else - then all memory of her true identity had been scrubbed from her either by accident or by intent.
        'Lisa Chelgrin?' She seemed dazed. 'I don't get it.' 'Neither do I.'
        'Who is she? What's the joke?'
        'No joke. But it's a long story. Too long for me to tell it while we're standing here in the cold.'

----

    11
        
        During the return trip to the Moonglow Lounge, Joanna huddled in one corner of the rear seat of the taxi while Alex told her who he thought she was. Her face remained blank. Her dark-blue eyes were guarded, and she would not look at him directly. He was unable to determine how his words were affecting her.
        The driver didn't speak English. He hummed along softly with the music on a Sony Discman.
        'Thomas Moore Chelgrin,' Alex told Joanna. 'Ring a bell?'
        'No.'
        'Never heard of him?'
        She shook her head.
        'He's been a United States Senator from Illinois for almost fourteen years. Before that, he served two terms in the House of Representatives - a liberal on social issues, to the right on defense and foreign policy. He's well liked in Washington, primarily because he's a team player. And he throws some of the best shindigs in the capital, which makes him popular too. They're a bunch of partying fools in Washington. They appreciate a man who knows how to set a table and pour whiskey. Apparently Tom Chelgrin satisfies his constituents too, because they keep returning him to office with ever larger vote totals. I've never seen a more clever politician, and I hope I never do. He knows how to manipulate the voters - white, brown, black, Catholics and Protestants and Jews and atheists, young and old, right and left. Out of six times at bat, he's lost only one election, and that was his first. He's an imposing man - tall, lean, with the trained voice of an actor. His hair turned silver when he was in his early thirties, and his opponents attribute his success to the fact that he looks like a senator. That's damned cynical, and it's a simplification, but there's some truth in it.'
        When Alex paused, waiting for her reaction, she only said, 'Go on.'
        'Can you place him yet?'
        'I never met him.'
        'I think you know him as well as anyone.'
        'Not me.'
        The cabdriver tried to speed through a changing traffic signal, decided not to risk it after all, and tramped on the brakes. When the car stopped rocking, he glanced at Alex in the rearview mirror, grinned disarmingly, and apologized: 'Gomen-nasai, jokyaku-san."
        Alex inclined his head respectively and said, 'Yoroshii desu. Karedomo… untenshu-san yukkuri.'
        The driver nodded vigorously in agreement. 'Hai' Henceforth he would go slowly, as requested.
        Alex turned to Joanna. 'When Tom Chelgrin was thirteen, his father died. The family already had been on the edge of poverty, and now they plunged all the way in. Tom worked through high school and college, earned a degree in business. In his early twenties, he was drafted into the army, wound up in Vietnam. While on a search-and-destroy mission, he was taken prisoner by the Viet Cong. Do you know anything about what happened to our POWs during that war?'
        'Not much. Not really.'
        'During World Wars One and Two, nearly all our POWs had been stubborn in captivity, difficult to contain. They conspired against their keepers, resisted, engineered elaborate escapes. Starting with the Korean War, all that changed. With brutal physical torture and sophisticated brainwashing, by applying continuous psychological stress, the communists broke their spirit. Not many attempted to escape, and those who actually got away can just about be counted on my fingers. It was the same in Vietnam. If anything, the torture our POWs were subjected to was worse than in Korea. But Chelgrin was one of the few who refused to be passive, cooperative. After fourteen months in captivity, he escaped, made it back to friendly territory. Time devoted a cover story to him, and he wrote a successful book about his adventures. He ran for office a few years later, and he milked his service record for every vote it was worth.'
        'I've never heard of him,' Joanna insisted.
        As the taxi moved through the heavy traffic on Horikawa Street, Alex said, 'When Tom Chelgrin got out of the army, he met a girl, got married, and fathered a child.