Free Crackdown by Bernard Cornwell

fifty, but he did not look a day over thirty-five, an illusion helped by his lopsided boyish grin that was so very full of charm. It was the candid charm that was his greatest public asset. He was popularly supposed to be a man who not only told the truth, but who could not tell a lie, and the senator’s aides and publicists were not unhappy to promulgate that echo of a previous President’s virtues.
    Not everyone was so impressed by Senator Crowninshield. Ellen said he was a political lightweight whose stagecraft was better than his statecraft. The usual jibe was that Crowninshield was a politician without a cause, or rather that he would support any cause so long as it was fashionable, but his critics also attacked Crowninshield for being wealthy, claiming that his eminence was solely due to the vast amounts of money that he spent on his campaigns. One night, long after the senator had chartered Wavebreaker, I had defended him to Ellen, saying that it was not Crowninshield’s fault that he had been born to wealthy parents, and that he had used his wealth well. “He’s an honest man,” I had said trenchantly, “and there aren’t too many of those in politics.”
    Ellen had given me one of her pitying looks. “Honest? For God’s sake, Nick, he graduated from Yale Law School! He’s just pretending to be an aw-shucks-gee-look-what-happened-to-me-when-I-wasn’t-trying kind of guy. He’s nice to us because we don’t threaten him, and because he’s cultivated the vote-catching art of being modestly affable, but wearing cowboy boots and grinning like a demented Howdy-Doody doesn’t turn a rattlesnake into a puppy!”
    I had not believed her then, and I did not believe her now. I believed the senator was a thoughtful man whose wealth had elevated him above the need to make compromises with his convictions. He was also a man who seemed mighty pleased to see me again. He lightly punched my shoulder. “You look good, Nick, real good.”
    “So do you, senator.”
    “I ought to, Nick, considering how much I pay my fitness advisers and dietitians. You know what it costs to join a health club these days? Of course”—he offered me his ingenuous grin—”what really keeps me fit is all that prime USDA beef.” The senator represented a beef-rearing state and never forgot to extol the benefits of a plateful of bleeding home-grown American steak, while in private, as I had learned when he and his wife had chartered Wavebreaker, George Crowninshield rarely touched red meat.
    “How did you find me?” I asked him.
    “One of my staff spoke to that guy McIllvanney. I had to be in Nassau anyway, so I thought I’d look you up. I can’t stay long, but I had a particular reason to speak with you.” The yellow and purple taxi was waiting for him. The taxi driver was squatting by one of Bonefish’s gateposts where he surreptitiously smoked a cigarette. When the cigarette was finished the driver would be invited to wait in the shade of Bonefish’s casuarinas, but not before.
    “Did the Maggot fly you here?” I asked Crowninshield.
    The senator nodded and laughed. “I remember him, of course, from when he played for the Giants. My Lord! He flies a plane in the same way he used to sack quarterbacks!”
    The Maggot had played American football until he had come off his Harley-Davidson at eighty miles an hour and permanently damaged his left knee. Sometimes, when drunk, he would regale me with stories of his footballing prowess, but such stories went past me like galley smoke because I could not bring myself to enquire, nor indeed to care, about the differences between a Tight End and a flea-flicker. When the Maggot became too boring about football I told him cricketing stories until he shut up. We liked each other, and I was glad that the senator also liked him.
    Now, fanning his face with his hat, Senator Crowninshield followed me into the shade of Masquerade’s hull and stared up at her scarred flank. “So this is your