Ex Officio

by Donald E. Westlake

  But what was the alternative? For Bradford, stagnation and uselessness. For the country, if Bradford and Robert were right, the beginning of the decline from democracy.

  No, she couldn’t make up her mind about anything now, she couldn’t think clearly now. But she did want to see Bradford and reassure him that she was still on his side, that much she had to do, whether or not it was the truth.

  Always be sincere, the old joke ran, whether you mean it or not.

  She carried that thought with her up the stairs and down the long corridor to the closed door of the back library. She knocked, heard his muffled response, and opened the door.

  He had been reading again, this time The Making of the President 1972, and he smiled as Evelyn came into the room, and tapped the book and said, “This could have been written by Robert. It’s fascinating how widespread that fatalistic attitude is.”

  Should she try to argue with him, talk him out of his ideas? No. If Robert, who was so much better prepared, had failed to turn him, Evelyn didn’t stand a chance. All she could accomplish would be to make him suspect he couldn’t trust her any more, and that was the one thing she knew she couldn’t permit. She had to remain his confidante, she had to know his plans.

  She said, “I read his article today. The one about the Fuehrer. I hadn’t known people were thinking that way at all.”

  “From the highest to the lowest,” Bradford said. “I think perhaps that’s the advantage of retirement, one can step outside the action and see it from a different perspective, not get caught by the received truths that everybody else absorbs without noticing.”

  “I’d never known that was possible, to have a whole shift in the way people think, without anybody noticing.”

  “Look at a ten-year-old fashion magazine,” Bradford said, “and you’ll see the same thing operating on a different level. The clothes will look foolish to you, you’d be embarrassed to be seen wearing any of them. Try to remember how much you admired clothing like that at the time, and you can’t do it. The memory is gone. You know you must have liked that clothing, you can remember owning things very much like it, but to remember your attitude then is impossible.” He transferred the book from his lap to the table beside his chair and said, “I hope you won’t be telling anyone else, Evelyn. What I said to you I said in confidence.”

  Suddenly nervous and frightened, Evelyn said, “No, of course not. I’m sorry about that, Bradford, I shouldn’t have done it.”

  “I hadn’t realized you and Robert were so close,” he said, and smiled a bit sadly at her. “Naturally, if marriage is in prospect—”

  “It isn’t that,” she said quickly, too quickly, and embarrassed herself by it. But she didn’t want Bradford to think what she wasn’t permitting herself to think.

  But Bradford looked at her closely and said, “It isn’t? What is it, then?”

  A mistake. If she hadn’t talked to Robert for the reason Bradford thought, then what was her reason? She floundered briefly, and said, “Well, it was such a shock to me. Such a brand new idea. I wanted to talk to somebody, and I felt I could trust Robert—”

  “I wish you’d talked it over with me first,” he said.

  “Yes, I should have.”

  “I hope he won’t be foolish enough to inform the authorities.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m sure he won’t. He promised me, before he left. But he’ll keep trying to talk you out of it,” she added, giving in for the moment to the hope that Bradford could be talked out of it.

  But he shook his head and said, “He’ll be wasting his time. I am absolutely sure of myself now. I haven’t been so positive of a course of action since the first campaign for the Presidency.”

  He was that sure? She found her convictions slipping again, the stacked boxes angling a different way, the other perspective dominant all at once. She looked at him, about to say something, she wasn’t sure what, confess something, open her mind to him more completely, but something in his expression stopped her, some shadow or line across his face that reminded her all at once of Harrison, three months ago, and the business of the pipeline. He’d been sure then, too, positive and unreachable, until Herbert Jarvis had shocked him back into realism.

  What would shock him out of his sureness this time? What suicide, short of his own?

  She buried what she’d been intending to say, and instead told him, “As long as you believe in what you’re doing, that’s the important thing, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Each of us must follow his own destiny. I have been fortunate in mine.” He seemed to look down from a great height for a moment, as though the chair he was sitting in had risen up into the sky to show him all the nations of the earth. But then his expression shifted, grew more natural, and he looked at her and said, “I imagine you aren’t coming with me.”

  “Oh, no! I mean, I’m not sure yet. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  “What about Robert?”

  “Well—I don’t know how important that really is.” It was easiest to lie with the truth.

  “It’s up to him now, is that it?” Bradford smiled slightly, and said, “I think he’ll claim you, Evelyn, I believe he won’t want to give you up.”

  Evelyn felt warmth in her face, and didn’t know whether or not it would be best to let her emotions show. But then she realized she had no choice in the matter, she’d already let him see her feelings. “If he does . . . claim me,” she said, “then I won’t want to go, no. That’s the truth.”

  “And only natural,” he said. “I’ll miss you, Evelyn, but I’ll understand.” He smiled boyishly and said, “But I expect it’s going to be quite an adventure. If you do come along, you won’t have much time to mourn lost loves.”

  “No, I suppose I won’t.”

  “Well, there’s time, there’s still time to make up your mind. I’ve asked them for a passport for you in any case. If you don’t use it, we’ll give it back to them.”

  “A passport? I already have a passport.”

  “We can hardly travel under our own names,” he said, and the boyish smile flashed again. The idea of the trip clearly delighted him. “We’re getting false passports, you and I, we’ll be a pair out of Eric Ambler.”

  “False passports? From where?”

  “From the Chinese, of course! I sent them an old photo of you, and your vital statistics. I should be getting them any day now.”

  The Chinese. It was real, it was actually real, Bradford was in sub rosa contact with the Communist Chinese! And he’d told them of his plans, and they were helping him, providing passports and who knew what else.

  Of course they’d help him, they’d love to get their hands on him, they’d use him the way the brainwashed GI’s were used during Korea.

  Had they been in the house, had Chinese agents been within these walls? Was there one here now, hidden somewhere?

  No, that was just foolishness, there was no reason for Chinese agents to lie hidden inside this house. Still, she felt the flutter of fright up and down her spine, and she wished this room were better lit. And the hall outside, and all the rooms, all better lit, much more brightly lit. And full of people, known and trusted and real.

  Bradford broke into her flowering hysteria without knowing it, calmly saying, “Evelyn.”

  She looked at him, and darkness and terrors seemed to recede from the corners of her vision like an ebb tide. “Yes?”

  “You haven’t told anyone else, have you?”

  “Anyone else? About you, you mean? Of course not!”

  “I know someone you’ve been planning to tell,” he said, and his smile now was arch and playful.

  Despite that playfulness, she suddenly felt guilty and afraid, like a child caught in a lie. “I’m not planning to tell anybody,” she insisted, knowing that her face was giving her away by turning sullen and mute, the truly childish response.

  He remained playful, cocking his head to one side and smiling up a
t her. “Not even Joe?”

  Joe? Uncle Joe! Dr. Joseph Holt! Of course he must be told, she should have gone to him first! He’d know what to do, how to keep Bradford from doing this.

  Bradford was looking triumphant now, shaking a finger at her and saying, “Yes, I can see it in your face. You don’t want me to take any trips without Joe looking me over, I know all about that. But, Evelyn—” his manner abruptly changed, became serious and intent “—you can’t tell him about this. I told you my plans in confidence, you can’t spread them around. Robert may keep it to himself, Joe might even keep it to himself, but how can we be sure? Promise me, Evelyn, that you won’t tell Joe.”

  Promise a lie? There was nothing else to do. “I promise,” she said. “But you have to promise me something.”

  “Oh?”

  “You call him yourself, ask for a physical. Say you’re thinking about going out to California again or something. But have him give you a check-up. Will you do it?”

  He hesitated, and seemed on the verge of refusing, but abruptly nodded and said, “Done. It’s a deal.”

  “You can talk to him Sunday. If you’re going.”

  “Going?” He obviously had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Greg’s wedding,” she said. “We got the announcement last week, I told you about it.”

  “Whose wedding?”

  “Greg. Uncle Joe’s son Gregory, he’s marrying Audrey White.”

  “I’d forgotten.” He shook his head and made a dismissing motion with one hand. “I have too many relations under twenty-five,” he said, “I can’t remember them all any more. In fact, I’ve stopped trying.”

  “Well, are you going to the wedding?”

  “No.” He was all at once irritable, cranky, a dozen years older than he’d been just two minutes ago. “I can’t stand that sort of family fuss any more. You go, take my place. I’ll phone the happy couple my best wishes. They can come visit me after their honeymoon, I’ll give them a patriarch’s blessing.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go?”

  “No. A wedding? Definitely not.”

  “I thought you could talk to Uncle Joe then, while you were there. Do you want me to?”

  “No.” His irritability was increasing. “We have a deal, Evelyn, don’t push it. I’ll call him myself, before we leave.”

  “All right,” she said. Then, suddenly doubtful, she said, “You won’t be leaving before then, will you? Before Sunday?”

  “What? No. No chance of it, we don’t have a route lined up yet, the preparations are nowhere near ready.” Then, in another abrupt change of mood, he peered at her and smiled and said, “Don’t worry, there’ll be time for Robert to make up his mind. It’ll be a week or two before you’ll have to give me your final answer.”

  A week or two. No time at all. “That’s fine,” she said.

  ii

  ON THURSDAY, ROBERT DROVE down to take her to dinner. Neither of them mentioned Bradford—who didn’t appear to say hello to Robert—until they were out of the house, in the yellow Jaguar and moving toward the trees. Then Robert said, “Has there been any change?”

  “No. He says he’ll be leaving in a week or two.” She said it quietly, having had three days to get used to the closeness of the deadline. She and Robert had talked together on the phone each of those days but, not knowing who might be listening, neither had said anything about the current situation.

  So the time element was brand new to Robert, who gave her a startled glance and said, “So soon? How’s he going to do it?”

  “The Chinese are helping him,” she said. “They’re going to send false passports.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Yes. One for him and one for me.”

  Robert shook his head, peering grimly out at the blacktop road. “I keep hoping it’s going to blow over,” he said, “like the running for Congress thing.”

  “Not this time,” she said. “I’m sure of it, he won’t change his mind.”

  “Particularly if the Chinese are already involved. They’ll keep him fired up.”

  “It’s so easy to get into his way of thinking,” she said. She hesitated, waiting while Robert made the turn out of the private road onto 992, and then said, “Sometimes I find myself on his side, thinking that the grand gesture should be made, that only small and timid minds would be against what he wants to do.” She smiled wanly, looking out at the road. “It’s easy to start thinking that way.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is. I had the same temptations when he was going to run for Congress. The adventure of it.”

  “Harrison’s pipeline,” she said, and turned to look at his profile. “Remember me telling you about that?”

  “Of course.”

  “That was the same thing. High adventure, the pipeline through the desert.”

  “He has a need for drama in his life, I guess.”

  “Because of being retired, do you suppose?”

  “I don’t know.” He glanced at her, and away. “But I don’t think that’s the important part now. It doesn’t so much matter why he wants to do it, what matters is how are we going to stop him?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I start to think about that, and I just feel helpless. I remember what he told you about the news conference.”

  “I know. We can’t let him go, we can’t talk him into changing his mind, we can’t make him stay.” He turned his head for another brief look at her and said, “We can’t do this by ourselves, Evelyn. We need help. We need people who know more than we do.”

  “Yes, I know that. And I know who I want to talk to next. Do you remember Dr. Joseph Holt?”

  “Your uncle. Yes, of course, I met him at that Congressman lunch.”

  “He’s the one I want to talk to. I think he’ll know what to do, if anyone does.”

  Robert shook his head. “I wish I could have been more help to you,” he said. “I keep thinking I might have been able to talk him out of it if I’d kept my temper better, but I really don’t believe it.”

  “No, he wasn’t going to be talked out of anything,” she said, “I could see that from the very beginning of the conversation.” She put a hand on his arm and said, “Don’t think you haven’t done any good. You’ve done me wonders. Just to know that you were there to talk to.”

  He gave her a quick grateful smile. “Thank you. A boy doesn’t like to feel helpless in front of his girl.”

  The implications of that distracted her from her line of thought, and she remained silent for a moment, her hand still holding his forearm, feeling the small movements it made as he steered the car. She looked at his profile in the dash lights, feeling both warm and frightened, and finally said what she was thinking: “I hope this isn’t going to spoil things between you and me, all this trouble.”

  The smile he flashed her this time was larger, happier. “I keep thinking the same thing,” he said. “Every time we get started, something comes along to goof it up before we find out where we’re going.”

  “I know.”

  “If this mess is ever over, you and I are going to have to take a nice long illicit weekend together somewhere and get to know one another.”

  “I think I’d like that,” she said, answering his smile. But she couldn’t maintain the mood, and she faced front again, saying, “But it isn’t over. Not even close.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll talk to Uncle Joe on Sunday,” she said, and explained, “Dr. Holt.”

  “Sunday? He’s coming out?”

  “No, there’s a wedding, his son’s getting married. Bradford was invited, naturally, but he didn’t want to go. I’m sort of his representative.”

  “Good. You’ll have a legitimate excuse to go see the doctor, without Bradford getting suspicious.”

  “You can be my escort. Will you come? We can talk to Joe together.”

  “Sure,” he said, and grinned at her once more. “Happy to be your escort.”

  �
�It isn’t exactly an illicit weekend,” she said.

  “A wedding.” He laughed, and said, “Maybe some of the normality will rub off.”

  3

  DR. JOSEPH HOLT STEPPED through the French doors from dining room to patio and smiled in pleasure at his guests, scattered in bright colors across the lawn.

  You couldn’t ask for better weather. Considering that this Sunday was the twenty-first day of October, you really couldn’t even ask for weather this good. The air was cool enough for the women to wear wraps, but the sun shone bright and clear, the air was beautifully fresh, and that slight scent of leaves being burned far away added the perfect final touch.

  And where was the happy couple? Greg, finally home from his Navy tour in the Mediterranean, had lost no time signing on for another voyage, this one of hopefully longer duration, and at five minutes past noon today he had exchanged the nuptial vows with Audrey White, his fiancée for the last three years. And now, at three o’clock, with the caterers’ men doing excellent work at the tables set up for food and drink, the reception was in high gear.

  As was fairly common in this strata of society, long-threaded familial relationships already existed between the bride and groom, mostly through one or another branch of the Lockridge family. Audrey’s mother was the former Sandra Wellington, niece of that Dinah Wellington who had been Bradford Lockridge’s wife. A cousin of Audrey’s, James White (killed three years ago in an auto accident), had been married to the former Katherine Bloor, niece of Sterling Lockridge’s wife, Elizabeth. A further Bloor, Albert, was Joseph Holt’s brother-in-law, having married his wife’s sister Rosemary. Looking around now at the assembled guests, it seemed to Holt that everybody here was ultimately related somehow to everybody else, and further, that every two people were related in at least two different ways. With Greg and Audrey already distantly related through both the Wellingtons and the Bloors, it almost seemed superfluous for them to marry.