raymond? darling, what were you going to do, make me stand out there like room service? -- soft curves conceal razor claws and titanium backbone -- she kisses her son on the lips, straightens his collar, his tie, lets her hands smooth his shirt to his chest for a little too long, and never stops talking:
i asked downstairs and miss freeman, your 'wrangler' -- helpful ms. freeman -- said you were up here practicing your speech. honestly, i don't understand why you insist upon isolating yourself, people adore you, raymond, they crave your company and yet here you are, holed up, as if you were some kind of emotionally challenged individual like your father instead of raymond prentiss shaw, a handsome, intelligent, people-loving war hero with a great deal to offer to his party and his country.
no what? baby, i haven't even asked you a question. your hair is too flat. and that tie. the tie is wrong.
something a little less busy.
oh. you're not interested? i thought you were. did i miss my cue?
i'm sorry, for a second there i thought it was your father speaking -- that dreaded shaw blood rising -- and the stink of defeat made me nauseous.
and excuse me, when have i ever attacked the honorable mr. jordan, despite the shameful way his daughter misled you that summer at the shore.
if that's how you want to remember it.
honey, you're oversimplifying things somewhat -- but, yes, okay -- i promise, promise i will stay out of it. you have my word. raymond stares at her.
after all, you're young and you have plenty of party conventions ahead of you in which to discover, as your father did, that democracy is an elusive and imperfect science, and the meek do not happily inherit the earth, but simply get eaten by the alpha dogs, chewed up, digested and deposited on the carefully mown parkways of american politics. raymond rolls his eyes. she ruffles his hair again, heads into the bedroom.
one day, you will, i'm sure, tearfully memorialize me in your acceptance speech. don't you have a different tie in here? your grandfather always let me pick his ties. raymond smooths his hair back down.
bluffing?
they should be down on their fat white knees thanking me for saving this party from committing political seppuku.
no. i gave them one opportunity. and that was unusually generous of me. she pushes through a door, and into --
before we get started, i'm dying to know: which genius here hatched the scheme of pairing a sound bite from nebraska with a relic who thinks keeping suicide bombers off our busses is unconstitutional?
'sits quite well' translates into how many votes?
my son is a war hero.
we didn't come here to have a discussion.
even running against this cut-and-fold vice president, with his party's record of abysmal failure at home and abroad, arthur is still unelectable without help. consider. the governor is a corn-belt candidate who -- scratch and sniff -- looks and smells alot like the kind of liberal-labor-intellectual dukakis was, but without, thank god, the helmet. assume our intrepid arthur can carry the northeast, plus his home ground, and california. we're still dead in the south, and southwest, where they win by landslides. the mid-central is a toss- up. tom jordan actually becomes a liability in florida because of his castro-appeasement profile, and in the carolinas, where he fumbles the military vote over his "terrorism isn't a war it's a social disease" nonsense. the room is surreally silent. ellie spins and moves like a televangelist, preaching to the frightened faithful.
you know this. your own polls and surveys back me up. you're counting on jordan to help you get the black vote, women, college kids -- my gut instinct says he won't -- and arthur holding the center -- where he's soft at best. and who's to say the president won't throw troops into another third- world skirmish, pushing his sidekick's approval ratings up into the eighties again, and the campaign off the front pages?
what's your margin of error? five points? three? i can swing that, and you know it. i can swing seven away from you -- more than enough to split the party and --
america is facing the greatest test of its history, gentlemen. not just from terrorist organizations both outside and within our borders, but from covert alliances of disaffected nations so terrified of winding up on our shit list they believe the only way to protect themselves is to hit us with everything they can find before we get around to them. am i the only one in this room paying attention to the nsa reports? we are on the brink of nuclear cataclysm, on our own soil, while our policies remain shackled by jordan-style one worlders who insist that human beings are essentially good .  and that power is something shameful, and evil. make no mistake, the people of this great country are frightened. they know what's coming. they can feel it. and we can shovel them the same old shit and call it sugar, or arm them, with a young, vibrant, populist congressman, a war hero with heart -- forged by enemy fire, in the desert, in the dark, when american lives hung in the balance.
-- billions of dollars, thousands of troops, sacrificed on behalf of a disastrous foreign policy which has only served to galvanize our enemies --
raymond -- -- sorry to interrupt -- but she's not. slipping her arm through his and steering him away.
you must learn not to let yourself get cornered by the bottom-feeders.
i devour everything in my path, darling, top or bottom, you know that. . to join a lively group of corporate heavyweights. david donovan is a man possessed of a commanding presence, radiating charm, brilliance and stealth. j.b. johnston is younger than the others, a three-sport letterman who graduated with distinction from princeton and happily works until there's no one left in the office to give instructions to. mark whiting is gracious and warm.
hello mark. ellie greets whiting with a fondness she reserves for old friends -- as a former tyler prentiss protg, he now stands comfortably at the fertile crossroads where big industry meets big government, and profits soar.
-- raymond, this is j.b. johnston, from manchurian global --
-- and david donovan, their managing director.
the plucky idealist.
tom.
tom, please, just because the party felt a younger, more dynamic man could help the ticket, i don't think it's fair for you to single me out and --
am i this predictable?
i'm calling to compliment you, mr. grumpy. i thought you were magnificent tonight. so do all the network campaign experts. "presidential" was a word they used. raymond's second line flashes with another call.
this compassionate vigilance thing is working quite well for you. i might have to convert.
of course you do. now raymond --
raymond -- raymond punches a button and puts his mother on hold.
raymond?
you want to help him?
i can't even imagine why.
what should we do? make him a general?
what?
you don't actually believe his story?
this is why voters love you. your humanity and everything. i've never projected humanity.
that was a joke, you dreadful boy. a busboy delivers ellie her meal: a thick steak stuffed with viscous grey -- off raymond's disgust:
carpetbag steak.
the steak part is mostly for you. doesn't it look yummy?
and eating it is an absolute sexual experience. try some.
oh, raymond, how much do you really know about your friend? ellie finds two thick files and plops them down, as punctuation, in front of raymond.
evidently this has been going on for years .  only agent volk remains, unmoved by what just occurred. close on - marco, catching his breath.
 sad little tin soldier.
isn't it disgraceful the way troubled individuals are allowed to simply walk around with the rest of us until something horrible happens? another failure of the hmos. i'm thinking of sponsoring a bill, with senator friedman of rhode island --
well, imagine how terrified your people were yesterday when major marco showed up at the airport and you invited him -- my god, invited him -- to tag along. knowing what they knew.
that's what the neighbors always say about serial killers. raymond stares at an old photograph of marco: curled up in a fetal position, on a v.a. hospital bed.
perhaps we could arrange a promotion to a less stressful posting. somewhere tropical.
lies. fabrications. fiction. you've been waiting to do this to me for, what, twenty years? get out.
get out of my house. raymond proceeds down the hallway to --
the man is insane, tom -- full-blown schizophrenia -- he's been stalking raymond -- if you dare to use this -- now they see raymond, under the imposing andrew wyeth painting of tyler prentiss that dominates one whole wall of the study, and ellie stops.
your bipolar buddy has been sharing his dreams with senator jordan.
can we please not go down that road?
christ, tom. they contribute to half the senate, for god's sake. silence.
possibly the senator's motives are colored by his desperation to get himself back on the presidential ticket now that the heavy lifting is done --
he can't prove anything.
raymond, remember when --
i know -- i know, baby --
raymond --
sergeant shaw -- raymond slows -- curious to be addressed like this -- sound of the desert wind rises --
-- sergeant raymond shaw -- he's turning -- the room coming alive -- light shifting, intensifying -- that terrible vividness -- and the wall of the zaghareet .
raymond prentiss shaw -- listen:
oh, don't lecture me --
tom jordan was going to destroy everything we've worked toward, and every one of us along with it, and you want me to call a meeting?
bullshit. you can tell yourself that as you go to bed tonight, david, and i hope it helps you wake up tomorrow with a clean conscience -- but we are talking about my son and the future of this country. my father, tyler prentiss, never asked. he just did what needed to be done.
is this major marco?
-- major bennett marco -- marco reacting quizzically -- sound of the distant windstorm building -- extreme close up - marco - his ear -- at the phone:
bennett ezekiel marco -- -- marco's senses are quickening -- the light literally changing around him -- that terrible luminosity -- as -- sound of fabric, in the wind -- the sandstorm raging -- marco's eyes shining now, hyper-alert -- a warrior's eyes --
-- listen:
the bullet will pass over your shoulder, just missing your head on the way to its target .
 because, of course, the assassin -- the deranged, obsessed, tragically
paranoid, lone gunman -- is trying to kill you.
the assassin always dies, baby. it's necessary for the national healing. she takes his shirt off a hanger, he stands up, and she starts to dress him --
i'm sure you will never entirely comprehend this, darling, and i know, the way you are right now, this is like trying to have a whimpered conversation with someone on a distant star .  but it must be said, raymond -- i did this for you -- so that you could have what i could not, what your father didn't want -- what your grandfather dared to dream possible -- she runs her hands through his hair. tears fill her eyes.
-- when you ran away to join the army, after that girl, after jocie -- when you swore you'd never speak to me again, i felt your father's shadow pass across us, and i couldn't let him run you the way he ruined himself. that's when mark whiting came to me with talk of extraordinary scientific breakthroughs .  attitude adjustment .  reconciliation .  greatness. so i let them take you, and change you. not too much. not so much that you'd notice. just enough to bring you back to me.
and look what you have, now! look how far we've come! it's working, darling -- they think they own you, but they are very, very wrong. you're not something they can buy and sell, raymond, not for
any price -- we're one, and there'll be no stopping us now, will there? we're going to save this country in the hour of its greatest need. raymond is dazzled by eddie's radiance.
how much you look like my father, now -- you have his hands, and you hold your head in the same proud way. and when you smile it's like i'm a little girl again, and -- when you smile -- when you smile -- raymond moves to her -- their embrace is all consuming --