Q Clearance

by Peter Benchley

  That door opened, emitting Mario Epstein and the Secretary of the Treasury, a middle-aged polymath named Jerome

  Goodman who had been educated at Harvard and Stanford and had since educated others at Harvard and Stanford when he wasn't rescuing some conglomerate from the chapters or writing, under a pseudonym, a series of intricately plotted crime novels that elicited from critics phrases like "wickedly clever."

  Epstein and Goodman did not look up. They looked at each other's shoes, the way important people always do when they exchange profundities on the hoof. Burnham was pretending to read his Important Papers, and if some kindly muse had not told him to look up at the last second, he would have barged into both men. But he did look up, and, with the quickness of a startled tarantula, flung himself flat against the wall. Epstein and Goodman flowed by, unaware.

  Burnham saw one of the Secret Service men notice him plastered against the wall, and frown, and say something to the other Secret Service man, who looked, and frowned, and then recognized Burnham and grinned.

  Burnham shook himself together, as an actor does before an entrance, and walked with measured pace down the hall, pretending once again to peruse his documents. He nodded gravely as he passed the Secret Service men, and walked beyond into Evelyn Witt's office, the anteroom to the Oval Office.

  Evelyn Witt was in her mid-fifties, and she had been with the President since her early twenties. He had brought her with him from Sandusky, Ohio, when he had come to Washington as a freshman congressman. When he resigned his seat to join the Navy to fight in Korea (a meticulously planned fit of patriotism that freed him, on his return, to allow himself to be drafted for nomination to the Senate), she joined the Navy, too, as an ensign. At his urging, she stayed on in the Navy and did not take part in the Senate campaign, which was the smartest thing she could have done, since it kept her off the political battlefield and out of the public eye and made it seem eminently sensible for him later, as a senator and member of the Armed Forces Committee, to request her transfer to him as a Naval aide.

  He thus acquired, at no cost to his staff budget, a cherished, trusted assistant who owed him her entire professional life. She thus acquired a job in which her promotions were mandated by her boss and his colleagues, her benefits comprehensive, her pension generous and guaranteed, and her status secured by rank and respected by law.

  At the moment, though she did not wear a uniform except when there was some benefit to be garnered from a display of feathers, she was a captain in the United States Navy, and she and the President had already discussed the timing of her final promotion so that a few weeks before he left the office of the Presidency, the Congress would confirm her as Vice-Admiral Evelyn Chester Witt, USN. She lived with her mother.

  Because of her relationship with the President—they had a favorite bit of banter, in which she would say, "I'd better get this right or you're sure to fire me," and he would say, “I could never fire you, Evie, you know that. I'd have to have you killed," and then they would both laugh—Evelyn was above White House politics, so she could afford to be, and (save at times of extreme stress) was, kindly, solicitous and considerate of those she called "those poor sites" who had to deal with, bow to and be terrified of Benjamin T. Winslow.

  She was particularly nice to the writers—or so it seemed to them—perhaps because she perceived them as they perceived themselves, as a pack of lost souls staggering around in the dark, serving the unservable, with no authority and a lot of accountability.

  She looked up as Burnham entered her office, and she said, "Good morning, Timothy. Thank you for coming. You look awful. Are you all right?"

  "Of course I'm not all right. I'm a basket case."

  There were many people in the White House you could finagle, with a smile or a bit of slick patter. Evelyn Witt was one of the few you couldn't. She knew too well the power of the aura—some thought of it as a miasma—of the Oval Office and the man who occupied it. She had dealt with the congressman who had taken that one extra belt of vodka in pathetic hope of brewing enough courage to go toe-to-toe with Ben Winslow, only to slide into a spasm of uncontrollable hiccups and, finally, a fitful slumber right there in her office; with the dashiki-clad cannibal. Colonel Roe his name was, who swept into the Oval Office full of macho Third-World bullshit and demanded this and that, and for his trouble found himself referred to in public by the President as Chairman Moe; with the newly crowned sheik of some date-picker's paradise who spent his time with the President discussing Great Ladies I Would Like to Ring My Bones Upon and who tried to entice two of Evelyn's younger assistants into coming back to the desert "for a little holiday."

  "With anybody else," Evelyn said, "I'd ask if it was a hangover."

  "I wish it was a hangover. Then I'd know it would get better. No. Life. Fate doth conspire against me. First thing I did today was smash my head on a beam. Next thing was tear the a ... the seat out of my pants. And now this. D'you know what it's about?"

  "No more than you do."

  "Can you find out for me? Please?"

  Evelyn smiled. "No time. He's only got a few minutes before he has to speak to"—she consulted the President's schedule on her desk "the American Association of Junior Labor Leaders, in the Rose Garden."

  "I guess that's a comfort." Burnham tried to sound convinced. "How much damage can he do in a few minutes?"

  She started to smile again, at Burnham's innocence, but then she snorted instead as she recognized the desperation in his voice.

  "Go on in," she said, pointing to the closed door to the Oval Office. "He's waiting for you."

  Burnham turned and faced the door. A knot of pain dug at his colon, and he had a fleeting terror that he would defecate on Evelyn's rug. The sweat under his arms was not trickling, it was coursing. He hoped he didn't stink. He wiped his handshaking hand on the seat of his trousers and reached for the doorknob.

  He had never been in the Oval Office, but he had seen so many pictures of it that he found nothing unfamiliar. He even knew about the tiny pock marks he saw on the cork floor by the door leading to the Rose Garden—the marks left by Dwight David Eisenhower's golf shoes, covered over by other floors laid by other Presidents but revealed anew at the command of this one.

  The President was in the far right comer of the office, his back to the door, bent over his "signing table," an early American pine refectory table on which the secretaries placed all the letters, messages, memos, speeches, executive orders, proclamations and other papers that needed presidential approval, disapproval, initials or signature.

  Burnham took a step into the office and shut the door quietly behind him, and suddenly there was something brand new to his senses. It was the smell. Automatically, he decided it was the smell of power, but no; that was too easy. It had in it a faint aroma of cologne (Old Spice, he thought), and furniture polish, and clean, dust-free upholstery, and a tang of a substance with chlorine in it, and altogether it smelled of care, of concern, of gravity. This was not an office frequented by laughter.

  "Ah . . . sir?" Burnham wasn't sure the President had heard the door.

  "Right with you." The President signed a final paper, closed and put away his fountain pen, straightened up, turned around and smiled.

  He walked toward Burnham, so Burnham walked toward him, hoping that motion by him would not be misconstrued as an assumption of equality, and they met in the center of the Oval Office.

  The President held out his hand, so Burnham held out his hand, and when the two hands met, the President's hand ate Burnham's hand, swallowed it and then returned it intact.

  The President looked directly down into Burnham's eyes and said, "How you doin', Tim?"

  Timothy, Burnham said to himself. Timothy. "Fine, sir," he said, looking up into the eyes of the biggest person in the world.

  The human being himself was large—three inches taller than Burnham and forty pounds heavier, with feet so mammoth that (he liked to joke about himself) his shoes "came from a partnership
'tween a blacksmith and a saddler" and his hands were used, when he was young, "one for a maul, t'other for an anvil." He insisted that physically he was the perfect paradigm of the American farm boy, as imagined on postcards and recruiting posters; his official biography had him growing up on a small mom-and-pop dairy farm in central Ohio. And he had tricks that made him seem even bigger He always stood as close as he could, often smotheringly close, to people shorter than himself, which increased the angle at which they had to look up at him and emphasized the difference in their stature, and that, in turn, became a symbolic representation of the difference in their importance and position and achievement, all of which was supposed to make them understand that one of nature's immutable laws was that Benjamin T. Winslow was smarter, wiser, better, than they and that to disagree with him was not only stupid but absolutely, ineffably wrong. And because only people who are unsure of themselves, or are lying, or are wrong, look away during a one-on-one palaver, Benjamin T. Winslow never unlocked his eyes from the eyes of the person he was challenging or fighting or seducing.

  Taller people posed a special problem, and they were kept at the greatest possible distance from the President. None was permitted to work near him.

  This large human being also knew how to use the majesty of his office to magnify him into superhumanity. "Jimmy Carter was quite the genius," Benjamin Winslow would say with a sorry sigh. "He turned the presidency into a toilet and then dove in and pulled the chain."

  No one ever called this President anything but "Mr. President." Ever. It was supposed that his wife called him "Benjamin" or "Ben" or even something private and endearing, like "Bunny" (the mind reeled), in private, but in public she never referred to "Benjamin" or "Mr. Winslow" or "my husband," but always to "the President."

  "Hail to the Chief was played at every opportune occasion. At state dinners, the President danced twice, once with his wife and once with the wife of the guest of honor. No other beauty—be she Christie Brinkley or Meryl Streep, was permitted to partake of the imperial two-step. He never joined a singer on a stage for a chorus of "Blue Skies," never made light remarks about the United States, never made a public slip stronger than "hell," and never in public called anyone by his or her first name. No entertainer was Willie or Frank, no politician Tip or Teddy or Bob or Strom. Everyone was Mr. or Mrs. (That trick he had learned from a man whose verbal skills he admired, William F. Buckley, Jr. It always made Buckley seem at once respectful and superior.)

  "The American people don't want their buddy for a President," he explained to a New York Times reporter in a rare moment of candor. "They can't look up to their buddy. Their buddy can't give them hope or make them proud. They want a goddamn leader! That 'goddamn' is off the record."

  And yet he had to balance distance and majesty with humanity. He had to be a man if not of the people, then from the people. Up from the people. Now and then he had to let his roots show through. And where those roots didn't exactly fit the need of the moment, why, he'd prune them, cutting this one short and grafting a little color onto that one.

  He put his arm around Burnham's shoulder and led him toward the sofa. "Fine," he said. "That's a good thing to be. I'd say I'm fine, too."

  Where are we going? Burnham wondered. Why are we going to the couch? There are plenty of perfectly good chairs all over the place. What does he want to do with me? Make out? Oh shit. Don't laugh. Not now.

  But the image of the President of the United States, suddenly overwhelmed by a steamy passion, flinging some benighted, unknown wretch onto the floral-print sofa and pouncing on top of him to smother him with kisses, started Burnham smiling and then gurgling to suppress a laugh.

  "What say, son?"

  "Nice, sir. I was saying that it's nice that you're fine, too."

  "Damn right."

  Burnham didn't have a chance to sit on the sofa; the President sat him on it. He guided him by one elbow, like a tugboat turning a tanker, and smoothly shoved him backward until his legs hit the front of the sofa and he fell.

  The President did not sit. He stood over Burnham and looked down on him, and Burnham saw so far up the man's immense nostrils that he felt like a tourist at the base of Mount Rushmore.

  "Comfortable?"

  "Fine, sir. Thanks." Burnham leaned forward and placed his Important Papers on the coffee table in front of the sofa—just in case the President should want to know what he was working on these days.

  "How's Sarah?"

  Sarah! Jesus! Burnham thought. This man doesn't miss a trick.

  "Oh, fine. Fine."

  "Still working for Te . . . Senator Kennedy?"

  Oh-oh. So that's it.

  "Ah . . . now and then ..."

  "Fine with me," the President said quickly. "Don't misunderstand. It's every American's birthright. If she can make the voters forget there was a time when he didn't know right from wrong, or right from left"—he chuckled maliciously— "why then, more power to her. Of course, if I was running again," the President grinned at Burnham, "you and I might have a word or two about it."

  "Of course, sir. But ..."

  "But I'm not. So it's no problem. No problem!"

  He's trying to make me feel at ease, Burnham decided. Why? What's coming next? The sweat that had dried coolly on his hands began to run warm again.

  The President turned away and took a few casual steps across the office. "Tim," he said, "I am the President."

  "Yes, sir," Burnham said to his back.

  The President stopped, spun, glared and said, "Is that funny?"

  "Sir?" Burnham's heart whacked against his rib cage.

  "I said, is that funny? Is the Presidency funny?"

  "N-n-n-n ..." Burnham clamped his lips closed.

  "Is it funny to be President?"

  Burnham wanted to say something like "I wouldn't know, I've never tried it," but he couldn't. He couldn't say anything. A jerky sequence of "S" sounds bubbled from his mouth.

  "Is it funny to be responsible for the lives of two hundred and forty million Americans?"

  What is going on? Burnham howled to himself. "No-no, no sir."

  "Is it funny to be custodian of the untold millions of the unborn?"

  Burnham didn't bother to attempt a reply.

  "Is it funny to bear the burden of knowing that if you make one mistake, one wrong decision, those unborn and their offspring and their offspring—maybe they'll all be mutants— will look back and say, 'It's your fault, Mr. President'?"

  This time the President waited, and Burnham forced his mouth to fashion the two simple words. "No . . . sir."

  "Then why the jokes?"

  "Wha . . . ?"

  "I am not a funny President."

  "I . . "

  "A President who wants to look funny is an asshole. To coin a phrase."

  Burnham's brain clawed through the drawers of memory, searching for any candidates, any jokes he had written that could have gone wrong.

  "The press is drooling for a chance to make the President look like an asshole. You know that, don't you?"

  "I . . . I . . ."

  “You mean you want to make your President look like an asshole?"

  "N-n-n-n-n-n . . . NO!"

  "Well, then . . ."By now the President was towering over Burnham, his arms outstretched in a gesture of majestic outrage, the American eagle betrayed by one of its own chicks. He dropped his arms and, his head hung with the expression of a wounded parent stung by the serpent's tooth of a thankless child, retreated to a chair opposite Burnham and put his feet on top of Burnham's Important Papers on the coffee table. "It seems you've got some hard explaining to do, Tom."

  Tom? Now what? First it was "Tim." He got Sarah's name down cold. Now "Tom."

  Then Burnham knew: He was about to be fired. For, there was, in the Winslow White House, a mle: He Whom the President Wishes to Dismiss He First Makes Lowly. And what better way to abase a staff member, to make him seem a bagatelle and his dismissal a trifle, than not even to know his
name?

  Still, Burnham didn't know what his offense had been, and he was damned if he would go ignorant into ignominy. Curiously, he felt relieved, as if the certainty of his doom freed him from the conventions of cowering before the throne, and he was able to say, without once stammering, "I'd be happy to explain, Mr. President, if you'd tell me what the hell you're upset about."

  The President's eyes narrowed, and his ears flattened noticeably against the side of his head. Like a pit bull. "I'm sick and tired of writers going around with their thumb up their ass and their mind in neutral."

  "What?" Burnham knew now that he was as good as gone; he had nothing more to lose. "What in the name of Jesus does that mean?"

  It was another of the down-home, good-ole-boy backwoods sayings that the President collected like other people collect stamps. He didn't care what part of the nation a saying came from, if he liked it he adopted it and attributed it to one or another member of his family—a family whose cast of imaginary (or at least untraceable) characters grew and spread metastatically across America and its past.

  "It means that a President who puts his trust in writers who think the presidency's a joke"—a buzzer sounded urgently on the President's desk—"has about as much chance of making it into the history books as a fart in a cyclone!"

  As the President rose to answer the buzzer, his shoe dragged Burnham's Important Papers off the coffee table onto the rug. Absently, forgetting for a second who he was, the President leaned down and scooped up the papers and put them back on the table, glancing at them—with a brief snap of double-take, first at the papers, then at Burnham—as they left his hand.

  Burnham saw the President frown as he turned toward his desk, noticed that he seemed distracted as he listened on the telephone, was surprised at his vehemence when he said into the phone, "Then let 'em wait, goddammit! All they're gonna do is grow up to be burrs under the saddle of America anyway!"