The Devil's Advocate
Page 45
He put his gun back into its holster. He sat down in a chair facing the door. Cold sweat ran down his back.
The door opened and Grandon, Keiser, Bishop and Edwards, all smiling cheerfully, entered, saluting. Durant glanced at Grandon, and saw how taut was the young lieutenant’s smile, and how wary. Grandon knew this was to be a test. Or did he? Durant turned his attention swiftly to the others. Bishop, that granite and stupid Army man, with his unintelligent dull eyes? Not Bishop. There was nothing of the fanatic about him. Keiser, his sergeant? Not Sergeant Keiser, with his devotion to his colonel. Edwards, with the hard hazel eyes and the brutal arrogance and the insolent ways? Definitely, Edwards. Who was the other? Or was the whole thing a fabrication, a lie, which was to result in his death? He became dizzy. He forced himself to smile. He waved his hand.
“Well, we’re alone for once, boys,” he said, with false joviality. His voice sounded cracked in his own ears. “We’ll have a drink together and celebrate—”
Grandon leaned nonchalantly against one of the posts of Durant’s bed. “Celebrate what, Colonel?” he asked. Keiser and Bishop and Edwards grinned.
Grandon made a large and sweeping gesture. “Celebrate Democracy Day, or the insurrection of the Armed Forces, sir, and a general revolt? We all know what’s going on, now. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
The other three men had stopped smiling. They were all watching Durant, and suddenly he knew death was in the room, that it was breathing in his face. God help me to be brave and bold for once, he prayed. Just once, God. What is my life anyway? But his life was all he had. If he had to gamble with it there was nothing else to do, however much he regretted it.
He lit a cigaret very carefully. He had to look away from his men to do so, and the presence of death quickened. He said: “Yes, that’s why we’re here. It’s all over, boys. You know it; I know it.”
He stood up, now, and regarded them gravely. Then he went to a waiting tray of whisky and glasses, and filled them. His back was to his men, and he waited, tense, for the crash of a bullet in his flesh. All his muscles crawled, and his hand shook. There was such a silence in the room.
He turned around, his glass in his hand. He raised it, and in a louder and firmer voice than he had believed possible, he said: “To the Republic of the United States of America!”
Grandon still leaned negligently on the bedpost. But he was not looking at Durant now. He was staring at his fellow officers. They were all white and very still. Edwards’ little hazel eyes had an expression of shocked incredulity in them. Keiser’s face was blank and Bishop’s face had become stony.
Then guns were in Keiser’s and Bishop’s hands, and their eyes brightened with rage.
“I guess, Colonel Whoever-you-are,” said Bishop, “this is the end of the road.”
“That’s right,” agreed Keiser. His whole face was transformed, and it was black with hatred.
“Get over there with our lovely little colonel, Grandon,” said Bishop. “Right beside him, you son of a bitch. And you, too, Edwards.”
Grandon lifted himself from the bedpost. Without hurry, he moved to a spot near Durant. He smiled at the other men. “So, it was you boys all the time.” he remarked pleasantly. Edwards, still shocked and bemused, stood closer to Durant. He began to stammer: “I didn’t know. I—I thought the colonel was—was a real colonel. A stinking—”
“He never was,” said Keiser, with an ugly look at Edwards. “We’ve known about it for months. But we never had the chance to kill him, with you bastards around.” He was no longer the stolid and respectful sergeant. “We’re going to kill you and Grandon, too. We know who you are.”
Grandon was still undisturbed, and even more amused. “Has it occurred to you nice little chaps that you’ll never get out of this room alive?” he asked. “The corridors are full of our men, you know.”
Bishop laughed raucously. “Who cares? If we die for The Democracy, we die for The Democracy!” He jerked his head at Keiser, who pointed his gun at Grandon and took careful aim. Grandon lifted his hand.
“I’m curious,” he said. “How did you find out about me, and old Edwards, here?”
“Never mind,” said Bishop. He was hardly recognizable, for he had become all competence. “—traitor,” he added, with an obscene adjective, to Durant.
There was a blaze of light, a roar, the sudden acrid stench of powder. Durant involuntarily clutched at his stomach. Smoke filled the brightly lit room. Then the room began to gyrate in slow and sickening circles. A monstrous sharp agony assailed Durant’s vitals. Dimly, he thought: There were real bullets, after all. He closed his eyes on unendurable pain, and his whole body went limp and numb, and there was nothing but darkness before him, and one little spiral of light in that darkness. An eternity shut down, pulsing like a thousand hearts.
The spiral began to enlarge, to brighten, to grow diffused. Voices crashed against Durant’s ears. Something burning and biting was running into his mouth. Someone was saying in an unnaturally high voice: “That’s what imagination can do to a man!” There was a shout of laughter, also high. “Look,” said another voice, “he’s coming around. More whisky, Sadler.”
In the swirling light and darkness Durant told himself that he was not yet dead. He believed he could feel his blood oozing through his flesh, warm and sickly, and with it, his life. Why didn’t they do something, besides forcing whisky on him? Blood transfusions, he thought vaguely. A doctor. His cold and feeble hands pressed themselves against his abdomen. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph,” he muttered. A priest; he needed a priest. Then he was enraged; his guts were spilling through his hands, and they just kept pouring whisky into his closing throat. The laughter and the voices became clearer. He opened his eyes, and said simply: “Can’t you bastards see anything? I’m shot.” His voice was a croak. His dim eyes looked out on a chaos of blurring faces and lights.
Now the room came into focus, a crowded room. Sadler was there, and Grandon and Edwards, and half a dozen Picked Guards, and Mr. Regis and Mr. Burgess, and Bob Lincoln. They were all about him; his face was running with water; his mouth was drooling whisky. They were looking at him with laughter and concern and solicitude.
“I’m shot,” he pleaded. “They’ve killed me.”
Mr. Regis bent over him, smiling. “All right, Colonel? Of course, you aren’t shot. But you’re a man of very interesting imagination, which made you the man you are. There isn’t a mark on you—Andy.” The voice was gentle and understanding.
“Not a mark,” agreed Grandon, with a laugh.
Durant was outraged. He took his hands away from his abdomen and looked at them. They might be shaking, but there was no blood. Starting violently, he examined his body. It was quite intact. For some obscure reason, he was further outraged. “I tell you I felt the bullets and the blood!” he cried.
“A brave man,” said Mr. Burgess, in a moved tone. “The bravest of men. It always takes a brave man, with imagination, to face death valiantly.” He patted Durant’s shoulder. “But you were never in real danger, Colonel. Really you weren’t. Do you think we’d risk your life unnecessarily?”
“Of course you would,” replied Durant, still examining himself. He spit out the whisky still in his mouth. “Anybody would, under the circumstances. Your life, and Mr. Regis’ life, were more important than mine.”
He was still weak, and shivering. And he was ashamed. He had fainted, for no reason at all but that his imagination was too intense. His embarrassment flooded him.
“I think,” said Mr. Regis anxiously, “that he had better be put to bed. He’s had a shock.”
Durant’s reaction made him swear. His shame mounted. “A nice trick to play on me!” he shouted. “A hell of a nice trick!”
“But there was no one else who could help us find out who the spies were,” said Mr. Regis. He wiped Durant’s wet face with his own handkerchief. “I’m sorry, my boy,” said Mr. Regis, with compunction. “Won’t you let us help you to bed?”
“What happened to Keiser and Bishop?”
“We killed them,” replied Lincoln. “And they’ve been hauled away.”
Keiser, with whom he had exchanged so many knowing looks, so much understanding. Bishop, the dull, eating, obedient military man. It was not possible. But he had seen their faces in this room, and their guns. He shook his head violently, and said: “If I had the imagination you all think I have, I would’ve known.”
He was beginning to feel stronger, in spite of his shame. Now, if he had had a wound, just a small unimportant wound, he would not be so disgraced in his own eyes. Mortification made his pale dark face flush, and his anger return.
“I’m not going to miss the celebration,” he said firmly.
Durant, still ashamedly unnerved by his ordeal, went downstairs with his friends to the magnificent dining room. A circular table had been set with the finest of silver and crystal, ablaze with candles. Another and smaller table waited for his executive officers, who were now only two.
It was this, more than anything else, which gave Durant a sick shock. He had neither liked nor disliked Bishop, but had enjoyed his jokes, his air of being a simple but jovial military man, his dependable manner. For Keiser, Durant had felt a reluctant kinship. It was impossible to believe that these men had attempted his life, had hated him for a long time, and had always been his enemies. I’m certainly naïve, he thought, as he sat down at the right hand of Mr. Regis. He was so wretched that for some time he could not be impressed by the fact that he was occupying the place of honor beside the future President of the United States.
Captain Steffens sat at her father’s left hand. She smiled, but her eyes were distraught and full of suffering. Durant forgot some of his own misery when he glanced at her beautiful face and thought of her private grief. Ben Colburn, however, had recovered his old quiet buoyancy; joy and hope shone in his smiles and sounded in his voice. Dr. Healy was preoccupied with his own exciting thoughts. He was already head of his hospital in Washington; he had already outlined, in his mind, the entire course of reeducation of the citizenry. He proceeded from point to point: the schools for children, the schools for adults. Of course, there would be no compulsion for adults to attend these schools, but they could be made exciting. The press could be induced to publish propaganda in behalf of liberty, self-reliance, individuality, just as, for so many decades, hundreds of psychologists and psychiatrists had, at the command and behest of the State, perverted the people’s minds to a belief that the State should be all-powerful, and should be obeyed implicity under pain of being designated as “abnormal.” We’ll have to abandon the dangerous “father-image” concept, Dr. Healy thought, not because it is not true in individual cases but because it was used to betray the people.
Dr. Healy was much excited. He had served The Democracy well, if cynically. He confessed to himself that it was a relief to be able to abandon cynicism and “work constructively.” He, himself, would be a free man! This thought excited him even more. It had not given him particular satisfaction to deliver “recalcitrants and psychopaths” over to the loathsome FBHS. He had had to produce scar tissue and callouses over a certain area of his mind. To deliver the young from mindless death and spiritual enslavement would be very good indeed. He began to entertain the idea of God, tentatively.
Walter Morrow talked with Karl Schaeffer, and Durant, who still did not know who or what Morrow was, remained in perplexity. However, he knew that his directives against the farmers had been carried out with strong precision by Morrow, and that Morrow had delivered many inciting speeches to the farmers of Section 7. Durant was annoyed; Schaeffer and Morrow appeared to be old and excellent friends. The fact that Morrow had never confided in him hurt Durant.
An atmosphere of tenseness and happy anticipation pervaded the dining room, with its lofty beamed ceilings, its subdued candlelight, its fire. Only Picked Guards were present, and they lined the walls, shoulder to shoulder, their green uniforms almost black in the low light, their brass buttons twinkling in the reflections of the fire, their faces impassive. They were trustworthy men, and many of them were probably Minute Men, but Durant could not look at their uniforms without the old powerful aversion.
The curtains of the dining room had not yet been drawn, and it hurt the eye to glance at the windows which glared glassily in the floodlights outside. Durant wished that these floodlights could be shut out before the dinner started. But it seemed that this company was waiting anxiously for something to happen. At the end of the room a huge screen glimmered, and the big dining room table was occupied in a manner to give every diner a view of that screen. Now Durant sensed most keenly the tenseness of his fellow-diners.
A sudden grinding roar sounded outside. Mr. Regis nodded at Mr. Burgess, and everyone rose and went to the windows. In the fierce illumination of the floodlights tanks were being wheeled into position at some distance from the house; they ground and turned like heavy, prehistoric monsters, guns lifted. Army vehicles, loaded with soldiers or anti-aircraft guns, moved into place within the circle of the tanks. Now fresh lines of soldiers appeared, hurrying to join the others. Durant uttered an exclamation.
“We hope—nothing—will be necessary,” Mr. Regis explained. “But we can’t take any chances. We believe that over fifty percent of the Armed Forces are with us, in this Section. However, the forces still have a large quota of fanatics and others who believe we are traitors and rebels, and must be destroyed. Our own men are working even more frantically than ever, tonight, at convincing the unconvinced, or the stupid, or those mistakenly ‘loyal’ to the evil men of The Democracy.”
He lifted his hand, and someone outside caught the signal. Immediately the floodlights went out. It was some moments before Durant could adjust his eyes to the blinding darkness. Eventually the dimmed whiteness of the snow returned, and the still and silent moon. The soldiers, thousands of them now, patrolled in dark and orderly ranks. The guns pointed in every direction, including the purple sky. It was an ominous sight, and Durant was dismayed. He had only casually thought that the State would resist. Bombs! He strained his ear for the sound of aircraft, and was unhappily rewarded. The roar of a whole fleet of planes sounded overhead, great twelve-engined planes which could carry six hundred men and their equipment, armored planes with guns. All listened, as Durant listened, and he saw the clenching of fists, the strained whiteness of faces. Even the soldiers were looking up, in a mass.
The planes circled, and they all waited. Lower and lower they circled, like nightmare birds of prey. What if the bastards drop an atom bomb on us? though Durant. Mr. Regis and Mr. Burgess were pressed against the windows, looking upward as the flocks of iron buzzards went over the house, wheeled, and returned, in precision formation.
Then Mr. Regis and Mr. Burgess cried out exultantly. The bellies of the planes had become alight with flashes of blue and red and white, in perfect patterns. A deafening roar of joy went up from the soldiers outside. It was impossible for their officers to control them. They shouted and laughed and embraced each other hysterically. Then, as if at a signal, they began to sing, and Durant’s emotional heart turned over and his eyes filled with tears. For the soldiers, turning now to the house, were singing the old and forbidden anthem of the Republic: The Star-Spangled Banner. The anthem welled, rose, swelled into a very thunder of joy and deliverance; the sound made the big house vibrate. The sky, with its iron pulsing of aircraft engines, seemed to quiver.
How wonderful was the song of those thousands of young men outside, who sang as they had never sung before, waving their caps, faces illuminated by the moon, drowning out, by their voices, the throbbing pulses of the planes! The song of freedom.
There was a
flagpole outside, and though it was night a huge banner began to climb its stem, flowing out into the winter wind. The song of soldiers rose to a majestic pitch:
“Whose broad stripes and bright stars!”
There were tears on Durant’s face, and tears on the faces of the others. Their eyes rose as the flag mounted, and a single spotlight followed its course. The Picked Guard in the room were singing also. Dr. Healy, who had heard the melody in his boyhood, but did not remember the words, began to hum.
“—gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there!”
It had always been there, thought Durant, openly weeping; always, in the hearts of the debased and enslaved people, it had been there. We could have worked forever, but without the people we could have done nothing. They remembered the words; they remembered the song.
“—the land of the free, and the home of the brave!”
Now the streaming and blowing flag hung unchallenged between earth and sky, proudly aloft over the massed faces of those who hailed it with reverence and passion. Then, all at once, there was a thunder of guns and a vivid explosion in the winter air, the salute of men made free. Twenty-one guns, shattering the night, echoing back from the whole white countryside, echoing back from the sky. The soldiers saluted the flag, standing at attention, their thousands of eyes fixed upon it sternly and with exaltation, while the red lightning of the guns lit up the snowy landscape, and the earth trembled.
No more hiding now, no more fear! Tyranny, like hell, might not be easily conquered. But it could be conquered by brave and devoted men. It had been conquered tonight.
The last gun sounded in the salute. The floodlights rushed out again, blindingly. The flag soared and the soldiers re-formed into the patrol. Mr. Regis dropped the curtains over the windows, and smiled at his friends.