by Ben Bova
“You might have informed your press secretary about your switch in plans. I’ve got to make sure the press corps—”
“Meric,” he said with a patient grin, “I am informing my press secretary. I just made up my mind about it a few minutes ago. And Laura thought it’d been quite a while since we broke bread together, quietly and informally. Can you make it or not?”
“Yessir, I can make it. Of course.”
“Good. Seven o’clock. Bring an appetite.”
“Right. Thank you.”
I wish I could say that the first thing I did after clicking off the phone was to check my office for electronic bugs or call Vickie and tell her that if anything happened to me she should break the story to the media. I didn’t. I tore madly out of the office and down the hallway to catch Greta before she got into the elevator and away. I needed her to start the machinery of informing the press corps about the President’s change in plans. Otherwise they’d have my hide on the door by morning.
I just missed her. I had to grab a couple of the younger workers and draft them for the emergency. It took more than an hour to make certain that the entire press corps had been informed.
* * *
Even before Halliday had turned the White House into his almost totally private preserve, tourists had never been allowed up onto the second floor, where the President and his family had their living quarters. Halliday was obsessive about his privacy, to the point where foreign dignitaries were no longer even occasionally put up in the White House. They stayed at Blair House or some other nearby building. Tourists still plodded through the ground and first floors of the Presidential mansion, but the second floor was sacrosanct, even to Cabinet members and most of the President’s personal staff.
That’s why on Saturday I took my usual route through the underground slideway to the West Wing and came up just outside the Oval Office. Saturday or not, Mrs. Bester was at her desk; the rumor among the staff was that she never budged from her post, and her swivel chair had a potty under it. She was a tough old broad; at least she looked that way. But on the inside, she was even tougher. Which is what the President wanted in his private secretary.
I could hear voices coming from inside the Oval Office.
“Is he in there?” I asked cautiously. Somehow she always intimidated me.
“Yes,” she said. Nothing more. She never volunteered information. She just sat behind her fortress-sized desk, gazing at me through steely eyes.
“He… uh, he’s expecting me.”
Looking as if she’d never believe such a transparent lie, she buzzed on the intercom. I couldn’t hear what the President was saying to her; the receiver was jewel-sized and tucked into her left ear.
“You can go in,” she said at last, still looking as if she were very dubious about the whole arrangement.
The President was looking very grim, sitting ramrod straight in his desk chair, his hands flat on the desk top. Admiral Del Bello, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was sitting equally stiffly in front of the desk. The Admiral was in civvies, but you could still see the gold braid all over him.
“Meric,” the President shot before I could get the door closed, “what would be the public reaction to our sending the Third Fleet into the Persian Gulf?”
I blinked.
“Not just the Third Fleet,” the Admiral said, in a voice like steel cable twanging. “With all our budgetary cutbacks, the Third’s more of a paper fleet than a real one. We’d need—”
The President cut him off with an impatient gesture. “Come on, Meric. I don’t want a computer analysis. Just your gut reaction.”
My gut reaction was to take a deep breath first. Then, “Well, Mr. President, I think you’d get a strong split in public opinion. A lot of people will be dead-set against our getting sucked into the Gulf war again, and a lot of others will think we ought to go in there and grab the oil fields while we can.”
“You see?” Admiral Del Bello crowed. “There would be substantial public support… sir.”
“And considerable casualties,” The Man retorted. “And we’d turn Iran into an enemy once more, Shah off the throne and let the Russians overthrow all our diplomatic successes in the area. The entire Middle East would hate us. Even Israel.”
“But we’d have the oil!” The Admiral said, clenching his fists excitedly. “Mr. President, we’d have the oil fields! We could take the entire Arabian peninsula.”
The President cocked an eye at him. “Like we took Southeast Asia? No, thank you, Admiral.”
Del Bello was not one to surrender gracefully. “Mr. President, I really think you should allow the Joint Chiefs to have their day in court. They’re waiting for you in Camp David.”
He shook his head.
The Admiral’s face reddened. “Mr. President! It is our duty to advise you on military matters. The plan we have worked out—”
“What happens to the Third Fleet if the Saudis use nuclear weapons in the Persian Gulf? You can’t disperse your ships widely enough to keep the casualties down to an acceptable rate, can you? The fleet would be demolished.”
“Mr. President…”
“Well? Isn’t that true? Or am I wrong?”
Shifting in his chair, the Admiral said, “But if we…”
The President leaned forward and jabbed a finger at his top military adviser. “The fleet would be demolished, would it not?”
“There’s always that possibility. Yessir.”
“And what happens if we succeed in taking the Kuwait fields and knocking out the Iranian forces? What will the USSR do? Invade Iran? Attack our men? The Russians won’t allow us to gobble up the Middle East.”
His face red-splotched, the Admiral said, “Sir, I’d rather not discuss such highly classified matters with your press secretary present. There’s more information that I want to present to you, and…”
The President eased back in his chair and smiled at me. “All right. Meric, would you mind letting us finish this in private? Mrs. Halliday is upstairs having a cocktail. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep her company for a few minutes more.”
“Certainly, Mr. President,” I said.
I got as far as the door before he asked, “Oh, Meric. One further question. What would be the public reaction to a Russian ultimatum that we either quit the Persian Gulf or suffer an ICBM attack?”
I turned back. The Admiral’s face had gone purple. The President seemed quite cheerful. “Never mind,” he told me, waving me out the door. “You don’t have to answer that one. I know what the reaction would be.”
Only a cretin could fail to find his way down the West Wing corridor, into the main elevator, and up to the second floor. But I had a security guard escort me all the way. Standard operating procedure. The man was as silent as a well-oiled robot. The guard ushered me through the Yellow Room, with its Dolly Madison furniture, and out onto the Truman porch.
Laura was sitting there alone, stretched out on a recliner in shorts and halter, watching the sunset and listening to the birds getting ready for nightfall. She had a tall drink beside her.
She looked up at me. “Hello again, Meric.”
“Hello,” I said. “The President said he’ll be tied up a few minutes more with Admiral Del Bello.”
With a smile she asked, “The Admiral hasn’t had a stroke yet?”
“He’s getting close to it.” I pulled up the nearest webchair and sat next to her.
“You need a drink,” Laura said. “Tequila and lime, isn’t it?”
“Dry sherry… amontillado, preferably.”
She looked at me, and I tried to stay cool. “You’ve changed,” she said.
“That’s right.”
Laura touched the phone keyboard on the serving table next to her recliner. “You look uptight, Meric.”
“Look,” I blurted, “it’d be a lot easier for all of us if we stopped playing games. I was in love with you. Maybe I still am. Let’s not act like it never happened.”
/> Her face went serious, almost scared.
“Okay,” I went on. “So what do you want this time? To find out if I’m still loyal to him? If I’m going to keep the lid on this thing?”
“It’s important.”
“It’s cost four lives,” I snapped. “Five. I forgot about the helicopter pilot. McMurtrie was a damned good man—”
“I know that better than you do.”
It was the President. I jumped to my feet as he slowly walked out onto the porch. He looked at Laura.
“You shouldn’t be wearing that. Not here. This isn’t Key West.”
She made a sly smile. “There’s nothing to worry about. Even if some news photographer got close enough to snap a picture, Meric would pull the right wires to keep it from being published. Wouldn’t you, Meric?”
“That’s not what I came here to talk about,” I said.
“You’re here,” the President said, “because I told you to come here.”
I felt a shock inside me. He sounded more like his father than himself. He was blazingly angry, for some reason. Down in the Oval Office, even though he was arguing strongly with Del Bello, he could smile. But now he was radiating anger.
“You were talking about McMurtrie,” the President said to me.
“That’s right. And four other dead men.”
“What about them?”
I’d never seen him this way before. Was he sore about Laura? Maybe it had been her idea to invite me over here and he didn’t like it.
“Mr. President… do you still want me to keep quiet about the attempts on your life?”
He stood straight and rigid in front of me. Not the usual relaxed slouch, not at all. “As far as I know,” he answered stiffly, “there have been no attempts on my life.”
I couldn’t believe I’d heard him right. “No attempts…?”
“Two imposters have been found, both dead of unknown causes. A helicopter accident has killed the chief of my personal security force and my personal physician. No one has fired a shot at me; no one has made any attempt whatsoever on me.”
“And the investigation on those two… imposters? Who’s taking that over, with McMurtrie dead?”
“Robert Wyatt is handling that. We’ll be using selected personnel from the Secret Service and the FBI.”
“And you want me to keep it all under wraps?”
“I expect you to keep everything quiet, until I’m ready to make a public announcement.”
“And when will that be?”
“Maybe never. If we find out who’s responsible for those duplicates, and the story’s sensitive enough, you might never get to tell the press about it.”
About the only thing I could say was, “I see.”
“Now I need to know, Meric,” he went on, deathly cold now, “if I can count on your cooperation and your help. There’s no reason for you to play detective in this. We have enough experts for that. We’ll find out who’s behind these killings. What I need from you is silence. Or your resignation. Which will it be?”
It was like getting punched between the eyes. I bet I staggered backwards a step or two. “My resignation? You’re asking for…”
“I’m asking you to decide. I don’t want you to resign. But I’ve got to have absolute loyalty and cooperation. There’s no third possibility.”
“I see,” I said again.
“You can think it over for a day or so. Sleep on it. Let me know Monday.”
“No need to,” I heard myself say. “I’ll stick. I’ll get the job done.”
“You’re sure?”
For the first time in my life, I was knowingly lying about something important. But I had the feeling that if I resigned, a fatal accident might hit me, too. And moreover, if Halliday was starting to purge his staff of everyone except blindly loyal followers, something ugly was going on.
“I’m sure,” I said. “As long as you have Wyatt keep me informed on the progress of the investigation. I still have to know what I should avoid stepping on in front of the press.”
He nodded once, curtly. “Good. I’ll go in and phone Robert right now. I’ll tell him that you’re still on the team, and he should cooperate with you.”
“Fine. Thank you.”
“Meet me in the dining room,” he said.
My drink arrived as the President left the balcony. Laura excused herself to dress for dinner. I sipped sherry and knew what it felt like to be a politician. I had said one thing and meant something else altogether. One slip-up, though, and he’ll know where you stand, I thought.And when that happens, you won’t be standing for long.
But by the time we’d gathered together in the President’s Dining Room, with its wallpaper depicting wildly inaccurate scenes from the American Revolution, The Man was his old cheerful, relaxed self again. He even joked about how grim-faced I looked.
It wasn’t until the dinner was over and I was sitting in the dark rear seat of a White House limousine on my way back to my apartment that I realized the entire truth of it.He’s in on it. Whatever’s going on, the President is not one of the intended victims of the plot; he’s the chief plotter!
TEN
I never did go out to the country. I stayed holed up in my apartment, thinking, worrying, wondering what to do. I couldn’t sleep Saturday night after that dinner with The Man and Laura. I paced my three rooms all Sunday morning, then started cleaning the place, desperate for something to occupy my time and fidgety hands. I wondered briefly if any of the neighbors would complain about the vacuum running so early in the day, or cause a fuss with the cleaning service and its union. But everyone else in the building must have either been out at church or sleeping soundly; the phone didn’t buzz once.
By midafternoon I was trying to force myself to watch a baseball game on television. Even in three dimensions it bored the hell out of me. I couldn’t concentrate on it. My mind kept circling back to the same thoughts, the same fears, the same conclusions. If he’s in on it, then Laura must be, too. I wanted to believe otherwise, but I knew that was a stupid straw to clutch at. She’s part of it.
Part of what? What in hell is the President trying to do with men made to look exactly like him? Why was McMurtrie murdered? Was there a power struggle going on? A coup?
Have they—whoever they are—already slipped their man into the White House? No. That much I was certain of. They could make somebody look exactly like the President, but not behave so minutely similar to him. Despite that little show of real rage on the back porch Saturday evening, The Man was still James J. Halliday, not a duplicate. Of that I was certain.
But why is he behaving this way? Why so secretive about it? All right, keep it out of the press. That stands to reason. But most of the White House staff didn’t know about this. Certainly the Cabinet didn’t. Nor the Vice-President. I wondered if even the FBI had been told about it. There would’ve been rumors and rumbles all over town if more than eleven people were in on the investigation. Even after McMurtrie and Klienerman were killed, the only chatter was the “too bad, they were good men” kind of talk that follows every accidental death.
Who’s trying to get rid of the President? And why is The Man keeping the battle so tightly under wraps?
My apartment was spotless and even the laundry was done by the time the answer hit me. I was standing in the middle of the living room, looking for something else to do, trying to keep myself occupied. The sun was low in the west, sending red-gold streams of light through my windows. The TV set was blathering mindlessly: some game show. And the answer hit me. The General.
The man who had raised his son to be President, but got a President whom he didn’t agree with. The man who grew more paranoid and megalomaniacal each day. The closer he came to death, the more wild-eyed he got about “setting the country straight.” And if his son couldn’t do the job the way the General wanted it done, then the General would make a new son and put him in the White House.
It sounded crazy. But it fit. That’s why the P
resident wouldn’t come out with all guns firing against his shadowy opponent. That’s Why McMurtrie was killed just after talking to the General. And Dr. Klienerman—he had probably recognized the symptoms right off.
The dramatic thing to have done would have been to phone the White House immediately and pledge my support to The Man wholeheartedly. Instead, I simply took a frozen dinner out of the refrigerator and popped it into the microwave cooker. There were three things wrong with my terrific piece of deduction.
First, if the President had wanted my help in fighting his father he would have asked for it.
Second, it’s always stupid to get involved in a family scrap. In this case, it could be fatally stupid. The President wasn’t a killer, I was certain. But there were those around him whose entire careers were based on killing.
And Wyatt—His Holiness: where did he stand? Which side was he on? Both? Neither? Wyatt could order a killing; I knew it in my bones. Under the proper circumstances he could commit murder himself.
Third, and most important, was the nagging doubt in my mind about the whole idea. If it was the General, why wouldn’t the President simply drop a battalion of troops into Aspen and cart the old man off to a well-guarded rest home? Why all the pussyfooting? Why let the plot go on, and let good men like McMurtrie die? There was something more involved. Something I couldn’t see. As yet.
I thought about calling Vickie to talk it over with her. But I decided against it. No sense getting her more involved than she was, either with the White House power struggle or with me, personally.Never confuse a hard-on with love, I warned myself. It was a motto that had saved me from many a pitfall. Ever since Laura.
So I ate my aluminum-wrapped dinner alone, drank the better part of a liter of Argentinian red, and trundled off to sleep on crisp clean sheets. Slept damned well, too, for a change.
* * *
Monday morning I got to the office a little earlier than usual. The lobby of the Aztec Temple was still mostly empty; the big rush crowd was a half-hour behind me. I took my usual elevator. Just as the doors started to close, another man stepped in, slipping sideways to avoid the rubber-edged doors.
