As we approached Seattle's swank Sorrento Hotel, where a private reception was held Thursday night for Ambassador Joseph Wilson, my companion for the evening announced that he had been awake since 6:00 a.m., when he had gotten out of bed to check the political blogs.

It didn't surprise me—and he didn't have to tell me what he was checking the blogs for. I had gone to the blogs first thing when I awoke too. When I didn't find news of any indictments—Karl Rove was still a free man? Scooter Libby too?—I thought about calling Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and confessing to the crime myself, just to relieve the tension.

Inside the penthouse suite, the man who triggered what has become the political suspense thriller of the moment—one that has sucked in not only my companion and me, but also most everyone I know—was signing copies of his book, The Politics of Truth, for the suede, silk, and cashmere set of liberal Seattle. People told him over and over: "Thank you so much."

They were thanking him for writing an Op-Ed in the New York Times in July of 2003, titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa." It showed that the Bush administration's pre-war claims about Iraq trying to purchase "yellowcake" uranium from Niger were bogus, or as he put it, "twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." By undercutting a central rationale for the war—that Iraq was on the verge of sending a nuclear "mushroom cloud" to America—Wilson's Op-Ed began a cascade of events: Retaliation from the White House, the outing of his CIA-agent wife by columnist Bob Novak, the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the outing, the jailing of Times reporter Judith Miller as part of that investigation, and now, reports say, a raft of imminent indictments that could shatter the Bush administration.

Wilson stood on the plush carpet of the penthouse suite, in a suit and tie, serene yet completely self-possessed, and told the small crowd that the outing of his wife was "not a crime against Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame," but rather "a crime against the country.

"I get no great satisfaction out of this," he continued. "I think it is a sad day for our democracy."

Speak for yourself, Joe.

There was no hiding that "Indictment Day," or "Fitzmas," would be a happy day for all assembled at the penthouse and later at Town Hall, where Wilson gave a speech. As many have noted, the excited tension gripping Democrats, progressives, and liberals around the country is not just about anticipation of revelations to come this week from Fitzgerald. It's about payback, a proxy-battle for the larger fight that liberals have been losing by hair-thin margins over the last five years. There's a sense that this might just be the one the Bush administration loses.

Big time.

Everyone wanted to know if Wilson had any inside information. When will the indictments come down? What might they say? He didn't offer any clues. When I asked him, in a private room off the penthouse, if he was obsessively checking the blogs like everyone else, Wilson shrugged it all off, telling me he wasn't. "It cuts into my cigar-smoking time," he said. Then he added that every reporter in the country was calling him any time a new rumor surfaced, asking him if he might be able to confirm it. One of the perks of being Joseph Wilson is getting to hear the rumors before they make it to the blogs.

"I try not to obsess on it, although I have to tell you it's not easy to think of anything else productively," he said.

After his speech to the small crowd at the Sorrento, Seattle City Council Member Jean Godden came up to Wilson and almost bowed as she shook his hand. Later, she told me she was just as consumed with the speculation as everyone else, and spoke of blog reports of five indictments coming soon, including perhaps one of a heretofore-unknown person. "Do you know who Mr. X is?" she asked me, giddy.

Soon everyone was heading down the elevator and stairwells, making their way toward Town Hall. Most of us walked the few short blocks, but Wilson was driven to Town Hall in an SUV. When he arrived he was greeted by the glare of television camera lights and shouts from people begging for a ticket to the sold-out event. "Thank you for saving our country," shouted one man waiting for a ticket. Wilson shook his hand, then went inside.

"When a government takes a country to war on lies and false information," he told a rapturous crowd of more than 1,000, "that government ceases to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And that government becomes, arguably, a government that preys on the people."

Wilson outlined the lies promoted by the Bush administration in the months before the American invasion of Iraq, which he noted has now cost 2,000 American lives and more than $200 billion, and has left America's reputation abroad in tatters.

I sat in the audience, listening, trying to concentrate on what Wilson was saying about the war, the lies, the deaths, and the damage Bush has done to the nation. But my mind kept drifting back to the investigation, to the indictments, to the payback. I remembered something Wilson said to me back at the hotel: "Everything you're hearing is rank speculation. The person who knows hasn't spoken yet."

That person is Patrick Fitzgerald, the Republican in whom liberals across America have invested their hopes. At the mere mention of Fitzgerald's name during Wilson's speech, the crowd erupted in applause.

The speech ended and the crowd filed out, Wilson's suggestion that Plamegate could turn into a crisis bigger than Watergate no doubt ringing in their ears. But as I hiked up the hill toward home and my computer, I found myself unable to get any more excited. I was past excitability, full up with predictions and speculation. I was past tense. I just wanted to know what the outcome of all this would be, or barring that, I craved some definite sense of when the outcome would arrive. I got home and immediately checked the blogs. Still no relief.

Joseph Wilson appeared at Town Hall as part of Foolproof's American Voices series, which is sponsored this season by The Stranger.