Practically speaking—pragmatically speaking—he’d felt secure. Far more so than the others. For he knew all they had to do was wait until Andrew Trevayne’s “abridged” version was released from the Potomac Towers. Once that happened, who would make, could make, the decision to allow him to submit the report in its original form? The rope would be on fire at both ends; Trevayne trapped by his own compromise, and the government’s need for equilibrium.
William Hill as much as admitted it.
Big Billy. Hamilton wondered if Hill would ever realize how great a part—unknowingly, of course—he’d played in the development of Genessee Industries. He’d no doubt take his own life if he did. But it was true; Ambassador William Hill had been largely responsible. For over the Washington years Hamilton had watched Big Billy closely. They both were “friends to,” advisers to presidents; Hill much older, of course. He’d seen Big Billy’s words stricken from the record more than once. He’d sympathized as Hill’s advice to Eisenhower over the U-2 crisis in Paris had gone unheeded—the summit meeting aborted; he’d felt for the old man when McNamara persuaded Kennedy that Hill’s judgment on Berlin was in error—the Wall was the result; he’d winced openly when those maniacs at the Pentagon convinced a perplexed, malleable Nixon that the “incursion” into Cambodia was necessary—over the loud, intensely felt objections of William Hill.
Kent State, Jackson. An all but destroyed Joint Chiefs of Staff.
And Ian Hamilton realized that he’d been observing a man whose shoes he might jump into; a version of himself in a few years to come.
Unacceptable.
The alternative was the power and influence of Genessee Industries.
He’d concentrated on that. For everyone’s good.
The Chesapeake retriever was now trying to separate a twig from a fallen limb. The twig held firm; Hamilton bent down and twisted it off.
It took considerable strength, he considered, but he wasn’t even breathing hard.
Big Billy.
Big Billy had flown out to Chicago—an emissary from the President of the United States. They’d met in private in a suite at the Palmer House.
There were areas of mutual concern to be discussed. Mutual concern. The President wanted to see him, meet with him in Washington.
Accommodation would be reached.
The Chesapeake retriever had found another stick. But this one was different from the others; there were several sharp points where the bark had been stripped from the white wood. The dog whimpered, and Ian Hamilton could see that there was blood trickling down from the mouth over the wet fur.
Sam Vicarson sat on top of the packed, sealed carton and looked around at the empty room. Empty except for the couch which had been there when the subcommittee had taken over the office. The movers were about finished. The chairs, the desks, the file cabinets had all disappeared, taken back to wherever chairs and desks and file cabinets went when there was no more use for them.
The cartons were his only concern. Trevayne had told him to oversee their crating and removal into the truck. The truck that would take them to Trevayne’s house in Connecticut.
Why in God’s name would he want them?
Who would want them?
Blackmailers, perhaps.
But these weren’t the important files. The Genessee files.
Those had long since been removed from the Tawning Spring basement; sealed in wooden crates, with locks and guards and—as he understood it—driven directly to the underground vaults in the White House.
Cop-out.
Trevayne had copped out; they’d all copped out.
Trevayne tried to tell him that he hadn’t; that the decisions made were for—what were the fatuous words?—the “greater good.” Trevayne had forgotten that he, himself, had termed such words “the twentieth-century syndrome.”
Cop-out.
He wouldn’t have believed it a month ago. He wouldn’t have considered it possible.
And, goddamn it, a man—a young man—had to look out for himself.
He had the options; Christ, did he have options! Trevayne had secured him offers from half a dozen top corporate firms in New York—including Walter Madison’s. And Aaron Green—pretending to have been impressed with him at the Waldorf—had said he would go to work next week as the head of his agency’s legal department.
But the best of all was right here in Washington. A man named Smythe, chief of the White House staff.
There was an opening.
What could look better on a résumé than the White House?
* * *
James Goddard sat on the thin, hard bed in the dingy rented room. He could hear the breathy wail of a woodwind—a primitive recorder, perhaps—and the intermittent, discordant twang of a Far East string instrument—a sitar, he thought. The players were on drugs, he knew that much.
Goddard wasn’t a drinker, but he’d gotten drunk. Very drunk. In a filthy bar that opened early in the morning for the filthy, glassy-eyed drunks who had to have that drink before they went to their filthy jobs—if they had jobs.
He’d stayed in a back booth with his four briefcases—his precious briefcases—and had one drink after another.
He was so much better than anyone else in the bar—everyone could see that. And because he was better, the filthy bartender made it a point to be solicitous—which, God knew, he should have been. Then several of the filthy bar’s filthy clientele had wandered over and been respectful—solicitous—also. He’d bought a number of drinks for the filthy people. Actually, he’d had no choice; the bartender said he couldn’t change a hundred-dollar bill, so the natural solution was to purchase merchandise.
He’d mentioned to the filthy bartender that he wouldn’t be averse to having a woman. No, not a woman, a young girl. A young girl with large breasts and firm thin legs. Not a woman with sagging breasts and fat legs, who spoke with a nasal twang and complained. It was important that the young girl with the large breasts and firm thin legs speak pleasantly—if she spoke at all.
The filthy bartender in the filthy apron found him several young girls. He’d brought them back to the booth for Goddard to make his selection. He chose the one who unbuttoned her blouse and showed him her large, pointed breasts. She actually unbuttoned her blouse and pushed her breasts above her brassiere and smiled at him!
And when she spoke, her voice was soft, almost melodious.
She needed money in a hurry; he didn’t ask why. She said if she had money she’d calm down and give him a work-out he’d never forget.
If he gave her money, she’d take him to a wonderful old house in a quiet, old section of Washington where he could stay as long as he liked and no one would find him. And there were other girls there; young girls with large breasts … and other wonderful things.
She’d sat down beside him in the booth and reached between his legs and held his organ.
His wife had never, never done that. And the girl’s voice was soft; there wasn’t the harsh hostility he’d put up with for nearly twenty-five years; there was no inherent complaint, only supplication.
He agreed, and showed her the money. He didn’t give it to her, he only showed it.
He wasn’t Genessee Industries’ “keystone” for nothing.
But he had one last purchase to make from the filthy bartender before he left with the young, large-breasted girl.
The filthy bartender at first hesitated, but his hesitation disappeared when James Goddard produced another hundred-dollar bill.
The old Victorian house was everything the girl said it would be. He was given a room; he carried the briefcases himself; he wouldn’t let anyone touch them.
And she did calm down; and she did come to his room. And when he’d finished, when he’d exploded in an explosion he hadn’t experienced in twenty-five years, she quietly left, and he rested.
He was finished resting now. He sat on the bed—a bed of such memory—and looked at the four briefcases piled on a filthy table. He got
up, naked except for his knee-length socks, and walked to the table. He remembered precisely which briefcase held the final purchase he’d made from the filthy bartender.
It was the second from the top.
He lifted the first briefcase off the stack and placed it on the floor. He opened the next.
Lying on top of the cards and the papers was a gun.
53
It had begun.
This doomed land, this Armageddon of the planet, this island of the power-damned where the greeds had fed upon themselves until the greatest good became the greatest evil. For the land belonged to the power-damned.
And the insanity was abruptly, shockingly made clear with a single act of horror.
Andrew Trevayne sat at the dining-room table in front of the large picture window overlooking the water, and his whole body trembled. The morning sun, careening shafts of blinding light off the surface of the ocean, did not herald the glory of morning, but offered, instead, a terrible foreboding. As if flashes of lightning kept crashing across the horizon through the bright sunlight.
An unending daytime of hell.
Trevayne forced his eyes back to the newspaper. The headlines stretched across The New York Times, roaring the impersonality of objective terror:
PRESIDENT ASSASSINATED:
SLAIN IN WHITE HOUSE DRIVEWAY
BY BUSINESS EXECUTIVE
Pronounced Dead at 5:31 p.m.
Assassin Takes Own Life; James Goddard, Pres., San Francisco Div. of Genessee Industries, Identified as Killer.
Vice President Sworn into Office at 7:00 p.m. Calls Cabinet Meeting. Congress Reconvened.
The act was ludicrously simple. The President of the United States was showing newsmen the progress of the Christmas decorations on the White House lawn when in a holiday spirit he greeted the last contingent of tourists leaving the grounds. James Goddard had been among them; as recalled by the guides, Goddard had made numerous tours of the White House during the past several days.
Merry Christmas, Mr. President.
The inside pages were filled with biographical material about Goddard and speculative conjectures about the atrocity. Interviews hastily written, hysterically responded to, were given un-thought-out importance.
And in the lower-right-hand corner of the front page was a report, the obscenity of which caused Trevayne to stare in disbelief.
REACTION AT GENESSEE
San Francisco, Dec. 18—Private aircraft flew in from all over the country throughout the night bringing top Genessee management to the city. The executive personnel have been closeted in meetings, attempting to unravel the mystery behind the tragic events of yesterday in Washington. One significant result of these conferences is the emergence of Louis Riggs as the apparent spokesman for Genessee Industries’ San Francisco Division, considered the company’s headquarters. Riggs, a combat veteran of Vietnam, is the young economist who was Goddard’s chief aide and top accountant. Insiders say that Riggs had for weeks been concerned over his superior’s erratic behavior; that the young aide had privately sent a number of confidential memoranda to other top-level management personnel stating his concerns. It was also revealed that Riggs will fly to Washington for a meeting with the newly sworn-in President.
It had begun.
And Andrew Trevayne knew he could not let it continue. He could not bear witness to the cataclysm without raising an anguished voice, without letting the country know.
But the country was in panic; the world was in panic. He could not compound that hysteria with his anguish.
That much he knew.
He knew also that he could not react as his wife had reacted, as his children had.
His daughter. His son.
The lost, bewildered guardians of tomorrow.
The girl had been the first to bring the news. Both children were home for the holidays, and both had been out separately: Pam involved with Christmas shopping, Steve with other young men his age, regreeting one another, exaggerating their first semesters. Andy and Phyllis had been in the downstairs study quietly making plans for getting away in January.
Phyllis insisted on the Caribbean; a hot country where Andy could spend hours on his beloved ocean, sailing around the islands, letting the warm winds ease the hurt and the anger. They’d take a house in St. Martin; they’d use some of their well-advertised money to help heal the wounds.
The door of the study was open, the only sound the hum of the wall vacuum being used by Lillian somewhere upstairs.
They’d both heard the crash of the front door, the hysterical sobs through the cries for help.
Cries for a mother and father. For somebody.
They’d raced out of the study, up the stairs, and seen their daughter standing in the hallway, tears streaming down her face, her eyes afraid.
“Pam! For heaven’s sake, what’s the matter?”
“Oh, God! God! You don’t know?”
“Know?”
“Turn on the radio. Call somebody. He was killed!”
“Who?”
“The President was killed! He was killed!”
“Oh, my God.” Phyllis spoke inaudibly as she turned to her husband and searched his face; Andrew instinctively reached for her. The unspoken statements—questions—were too clear, too intimate, too filled with agony and personal fear to surface the words.
“Why? Why?” Pamela Trevayne was screaming.
Andrew released his wife and silently, gently commanded her to go to their daughter. He walked rapidly into the living room, to the telephone.
There was nothing anyone could tell him but the terrible facts, the unbelievable narrative. Nearly every private line he knew in Washington was busy. The few that weren’t had no time for him; the government of the United States had to function, had to secure its continuity at all costs.
The television and radio stations suspended all broadcasts and commercial breaks as harried announcers began their fugues of repetition. Several news analysts wept openly, others betrayed angers that came close to outright condemnation of their vast, silent audiences. A number of the self-hustlers—second rate politicians, third-rate journalists, a few pompous, pontificating articulators of academia—were by chance “in the studios” or “on the other end of the line,” ready to make their bids for immediate recognition, spreading their tasteless perceptions and admonitions on a numbed public only too willing to be taught in its moment of confusion.
Trevayne left a single network station—the least irresponsible, he thought—on several sets throughout the house. He went to Pam’s room, thinking Phyllis would be there. She wasn’t. Pam was talking quietly with Lillian; the maid had been weeping, and the girl was comforting the older woman, conversely regaining her own control as she did so.
Andrew closed his daughter’s bedroom door and walked down the hall to his and Phyllis’ room. His wife sat by the window, the light of early night filtering through the woods, reflected up from the water.
Darkness was coming.
He went to her and knelt beside the chair. She stared at him, and he knew then that she knew what he was going to do before he did.
And she was terrified.
Steven Trevayne stood by the fireplace, his hands black with ash, the poker beside him, resting on the brick below the mantel. No one had thought to light a fire, and the fact seemed to annoy him. He had mixed new kindling with nearly burnt logs and held the Cape Cod lighter underneath the grate, oblivious to the heat and the dirt of the fireplace.
He was alone and looked over at the television set, its volume low, on only to impart whatever new information there might be.
The Vice President of the United States had just taken his hand off a Bible; he was now the world’s most powerful man. He was President.
An old man.
They were all old men. No matter the years, their dates of birth. Old men, tired men, deceitful men.
“That’s a good idea. The fire,” said Andrew quietly, walking into the living room
.
“Yeah,” answered the boy without looking up, turning his head back toward the expanding flames. Then, just as abruptly, he stepped away from the fireplace and started for the hallway.
“Where are you going?”
“Out. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. It’s a time to do nothing. Except, perhaps, think.”
“Please cut the bromides, Dad.”
“I will if you’ll stop being childish. And sullen. I didn’t pull the trigger, even symbolically.”
The boy stopped and looked at his father. “I know you didn’t. Maybe it would have been better if you had.…”
“I find that a contemptible statement.”
“… ‘even symbolically.’ … For Christ’s sake, then you would have done something!”
“That’s off-base. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“ ‘Off-base’? What’s on-base? You were there! You’ve been there for months. What did you do, Dad? Were you on-base? On target?… Goddamn it. Somebody thought. Somebody did a terrible, lousy, rotten, fucking thing, and everybody’s going to pay for it!”
“Are you endorsing the act?” Trevayne shouted, confused; he was as close to striking his son as he could ever recall.
“Jesus, no! Do you?”
Trevayne gripped his hands in front of him, the muscles in his arms and shoulders taut. He wanted the boy to leave. To run. Quickly.
“If that hurts, it’s because that killing took place in your ball park.”
“He was insane, a maniac. It’s isolated. You’re being unfair.”
“Nobody thought so until yesterday. Nobody had any big files on him; he wasn’t on anybody’s list. No one detained him anywhere; they just gave him millions and millions to keep on building the goddamn machine.”
“That’s asinine. You’re trying to create a label out of one warped clump of insanity. Use your head, Steve. You’re better than that.”
The boy paused; his silence was the stillness of grief and bewilderment. “Maybe labels are the only things that make sense right now.… And you lose, Dad. I’m sorry.”
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