Shelley's Heart

by Charles McCarry

  Just then Senator Busby arrived, carrying what Hammett recognized as a thermos bag designed to keep food hot or cold. Waiters were already rolling steam trolleys into the room, where a gleaming conference table had been laid with china and silver for a dozen people.

  “Where’s Archimedes sitting?” Busby asked.

  “Next to me, across from you,” Clark said.

  Giving Hammett a broad wink, Busby opened the zipper on his thermos bag. “I brought our breakfast, Archimedes,” he said. “Yogurt,” he said, thumping a plastic container onto the tabletop. “Fruit salad. Whole-grain muffins. Tea. Every item organically grown back home in California on our own family farm, flown in special, and prepared this very morning by my own hands.”

  He stepped back with a flourish and gave Hammett a triumphant look. Hammett was not reassured. What Busby called the “family farm” was, in reality, a huge industrialized agricultural operation in the Central Valley that collected millions from the federal government in crop subsidies and had sales of vegetables and fruits amounting to more than $1 billion a year. Imagining clouds of pesticides blown onto the Busby kitchen garden from the acreage surrounding it, Hammett managed a feeble smile. He was saved from the necessity of saying something nice about Busby’s “health food” by the arrival of the rest of Busby’s bunch—the left flank of the Judiciary Committee. Half a dozen of them traveled in a pack, all talking at once, all saying the same things, all wearing tailor-made suits and shirts and hundred-dollar neckties that they could not possibly have afforded on their salaries. And these, Hammett thought, are the good guys.

  The breakfast went well, twenty minutes of pleasantries while the senators and the staff lawyers wolfed their fried food and sugary breads, followed by forty minutes of chitchat. At Clark’s invitation, the senators asked questions in order of reverse seniority, so that the chairman could speak last. The questions were not questions; they were statements of support, couched in such a way that Hammett could reply with a precisely calibrated compliment to the senator who had just praised him. He was good at this game. The competition was stimulating; to exchange flattery with a tableful of U.S. senators is something like working out with the U.S. Olympic track team if you yourself are a world-class athlete: you understand how training and practice have enhanced the gifts of God.

  One freshman senator strayed into forbidden territory by asking what Hammett proposed to do to frustrate the reactionary judges who had long controlled the Court, but Busby immediately intervened. “That’s not really an issue,” he said. “Our task is to confirm that the nominee is qualified.” He smiled. “Beyond that be dragons.”

  The younger member replied testily, “How he’s going to slay the right dragons is a question that speaks to his qualifications.”

  “Not really,” said Busby firmly. “Let’s move along.”

  But the other man persisted. “Are we allowed to ask how Mr. Hammett feels about the prospect of presiding over an impeachment trial in the Senate, since that will probably be the first job he has to do as Chief Justice?”

  Busby said, “Nope.”

  One of the senior members grunted as though Busby’s word had been a body punch. Hammett was protected from such inquiries by the long Senate tradition that considers the innermost thoughts, political opinions, and guiding moral convictions of an appointee to the Court out of bounds. Hammett himself thought that this tradition was insane, but he was perfectly willing to benefit from it.

  Senator Marjorie Rynas, the only female present, spoke up. “Mr. Hammett,” she said, “you’ve been quoted as saying that unsuccessful nominees for the Supreme Court are usually destroyed for ideological reasons by extremists in the opposition party.”

  Hammett nodded cautiously. This woman was an ally of Clark’s and therefore no friend of his.

  “Will you tell us why do you think that’s so?” She arched her eyebrows. “I ask this question because it’s sure to be asked by extremists on the other side.”

  His face pleasant yet unsmiling as it always was, Hammett nodded understandingly. “What I have told students and audiences is that extremists at both ends of the political spectrum are fundamentally antidemocratic,” he replied. “They have always regarded control of the Supreme Court, and of the federal court system in general, as the key to political action because the rulings of the Court are not subject to democratic restraints. If you control the Court, you control policy without having to answer to the people, who sometimes may not know what’s best for them. The Court’s words are final, and in many respects an American judge can do whatever he wants to do. He has the power to restrain the President from carrying out certain actions, he has the power to overrule laws passed by Congress, he has the power to put anyone who misbehaves in his presence in jail without trial for contempt of court and to keep him there indefinitely.”

  “These are dictatorial powers. Isn’t that what you’ve said in the past?”

  “Yes, Senator. But always for the purpose of provoking thought and discussion. Clearly the judicial system, if perverted from its constitutional purposes, can be a prescription for absolute power. I’ve said many times that if we ever have a dictator in this country, it’s entirely possible that he’ll wear the robes of the Chief Justice.”

  Busby had not liked Senator Rynas’s question, and he did not like the trend of Hammett’s answer; it was a bad thing to have on the record. He said, “You don’t really think this will ever happen, do you?”

  “Not unless some great, unprecedented crisis destroys the power of the executive and legislative branches to govern,” Hammett replied. “If that ever happened—and so far we’ve never even come close—only the Supreme Court could step in. The American military would never do it.”

  “So we could have a dictatorship of judges?”

  “Of course we could, in theory,” Hammett said. “Anything is possible. But we’re just playing what-if, Senator. This isn’t the apocalypse. Such a development would require terminal chaos and a Chief Justice who was a totalitarian personality. I say again: We’ve never even come close to having such a combination.”

  Silence fell. After a moment Sam Clark ended it, saying, “Not yet, anyhow.”

  Busby gave Hammett a long, thoughtful look while the other senators studied the tabletop. Everyone present knew that Hammett himself was a totalitarian personality. And notwithstanding the fact that his admirers vehemently rejected the description, this quality was the basis of his appeal on the radical left, just as the extreme right perceived Mallory as a leader who was capable of imposing their ideas on the country before it was too late.

  Perceiving the mood, Hammett adroitly turned it to his advantage. “In my opinion, we don’t have much to worry about,” he said. “If Mallory couldn’t find a way to appoint a dictator to the Court, nobody else is going to do it.”

  All heads nodded except Sam Clark’s. He said, “I guess even Franklin never thought of destroying the country in order to save it.” He balled up his napkin and threw it on the table. “And let that be our thought for the day.”

  The breakfast came to an end. Clark summed up. “I think we can all agree that the Senate has seldom, if ever, considered a candidate for Chief Justice who is quite like Mr. Archimedes Hammett,” he said. “We can’t know what kind of a Chief Justice he’ll make. Even he doesn’t know that. God knows we’ve had all kinds in the past, and the republic has always survived. The President of the United States wants him on that bench. Nobody in this room has any reason to say him nay. Others do, but they’re outnumbered, and since we’re dealing with Mr. Hammett here, maybe they’ll even be outsmarted. In any case, the Senate will do its duty, Mr. Chief Justice-designate. The rest will be up to you.”

  With a curt nod to Hammett, but no handshake, Clark got up from his place and walked out of the room. One by one, the other senators filed by, shaking Hammett’s hand as they left. Finally there was no one left in the room except Buzzer Busby. He was a tall, florid man with beautifully bar
bered white hair who wore a Yale class ring, a piece of jewelry seldom seen on the finger of a man of his social class, and large solid-gold cuff links that caught the light. He gazed benignly at Hammett, plainly wanting to speak some important last word, but the waiters lingered. Finally he said, “Mr. Hammett, come on into the next room for a minute, where we can be alone.”

  Hammett was immediately apprehensive. Things had gone well, but not perfectly. Why did Busby want to be alone with him? What was he going to say? Did he have some message from Clark, some warning about Clark’s intentions? What doubt, what mental reservation, had Clark’s skeptical behavior created? He followed Busby through a door into a small, unoccupied office.

  Busby closed the door behind them. He said, “There’s a question I couldn’t ask you with the others present.”

  Hammett nodded. “Okay.”

  “I’m only asking it now because you seem a little worried and I want you to understand there’s no reason for that.” Busby moved closer. Then, looking Hammett straight in the eyes, he said, “What did Trelawny snatch from the funeral pyre at Viareggio?”

  13

  The White House announced Hammett’s appointment at midmorning. In a matter of hours, as if some signal had been sent from a previously dormant lobe of its brain to every nerve in its body, the vanguard elite of his constituency went into action. In Skinnerian terms, the nomination was the greatest single stimulus ever administered to this particular tribe of believers, and the response was immediate and powerful. Before noon every United States senator who was not a sworn enemy of the Cause had received telephone calls from every single interest group backing the nomination, and from numerous journalists in Washington and back home. This added up to a great many calls, none of which a senator could afford to ignore. All knew that these calls from the priesthood were merely the first wave of the onslaught to come. Still before them were the calls, faxes, and letters from the faithful, hundreds of thousands of people all over the country whose first and sometimes only interest in life was the issue supported by a particular interest group.

  At breakfast the next morning, Macalaster mentioned this process to Franklin Mallory.

  Mallory nodded. “These people are having a religious experience,” he said. “In the Dark Ages, monks preserved the knowledge of writing by copying out the Scriptures and making them more pleasing to the eye by illumination. What Hammett’s folks want to do is take the country apart like a Rolex watch they got from Santa Claus, shake up the parts in a bucket according to methods perfected in the old USSR, and thereby produce a good proletarian alarm clock.”

  Though he was amused, Macalaster grunted noncommittally. He agreed with Mallory’s point, but it would have been inelegant to say so. Too much harmony between writer and subject violated the unspoken protocol that governed relationships between politician and journalist.

  It was still early. Wiggins and Lucy had called Macalaster at their accustomed hour of seven and driven him to another of Mallory’s houses, this one a fortresslike granite mansion that overlooked Rock Creek Park. While breakfasting, he and Mallory watched a montage of television news coverage recorded earlier that morning and the night before—image after image of garrulous politicians and journalists forecasting quick and easy confirmation of Hammett by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Most of those interviewed also commented solemnly on the probability of Lock-wood’s impeachment, followed by conviction or exoneration, depending on the party affiliation of the man being interviewed. The Malloryites interviewed tended to be the most outrageous right-wing figures in his party; by no coincidence, they were usually also the least telegenic.

  Mallory’s video system, like all his other gadgets, was somewhat beyond state-of-the-art. To summon any particular interview onto the screen, he had only to speak the name of the person he wanted to see and hear; there were no visible controls. As Macalaster spread a spoonful of honey on his toast, Mallory said, “Busby.” Instantaneously the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee appeared in a clip from the Patrick Graham show, saying, “That’s an interesting question, Patrick. But I think it’s accurate and fair to say that the committee isn’t supporting this nomination as a matter of party loyalty, but because Archimedes Hammett is perceived as perhaps the only person in American life who has the credibility to preside over an impeachment trial, if it comes to that.” Worriedly, Graham said, “Will it come to that, Senator?” Even more worriedly, as if personally feeling the weight of history (which of course he was), Buzzer Busby replied, “Patrick, as an American and a loyal member of my party, I’m sad to say I think it’s inevitable. In our democracy, painful questions simply must be answered.” The camera cut back to Graham, who said, “Even questions that perhaps should never have been asked.” Busby looked thoughtful but said nothing as the camera lingered on his grave, handsome, dignified face.

  Mallory switched off the set with a sharp monosyllable, and said to Macalaster, “We now come to what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Which is?”

  “What it all means,” Mallory said. “What you are observing is an example of the law of unintended results. Lockwood—or more likely Julian Hubbard—thought that the White House could tie up the system and delay the impeachment process by nominating a Chief Justice who could never be confirmed. But they miscalculated. The loonies will not be denied on this one. Hammett is going to sail through. We’re going to have a psychopath as Chief Justice of the United States.”

  “You think Hammett’s a psychopath?”

  “What else would you call him?”

  Macalaster blinked. There was’a rare note of dislike in Mallory’s voice. Clearly, beneath the urbanity, he was enough of a reactionary—and enough like Hammett—to think that the next Chief Justice was part of a conspiracy.

  “I’m not sure I follow you,” Macalaster said. “What exactly does all this mean for Lockwood?”

  “It means the end of him,” Mallory replied.

  “But you yourself have told me that others stole the election, not Lockwood.”

  “What difference does that make? No matter who stole the election, the bottom line is that Lockwood wasn’t elected President of the United States. So he’ll have to go.”

  “Granted, assuming that your charges stand up in court. But why should he be finished?”

  “If he resigns like a man, he won’t be finished.”

  “Even if he’s innocent of any crime?”

  “Ah, innocence,” Mallory said. “ ‘The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die.’ ”

  Macalaster said, “Another quote?”

  “Bertolt Brecht, speaking of the defendants at the Moscow trial,” Mallory replied. “And in less than a week every Hammett admirer in the country will be saying the same about Frosty Lockwood. He’s wounded, he’s old, he’s a danger to the tribe. Get rid of him.”

  In a louder voice, directed to the television set, Mallory said, “Graham.” The screen, enormous and perfectly tuned, sprang to life, revealing a tight shot of Patrick Graham.

  “Archimedes Hammett’s nomination,” Graham was saying to his vast audience, “is an appeal to the conscience of every decent American. Nothing in our lifetime has been more important to the future of justice in America than this nomination.”

  Mallory turned off the set. “Pop goes the weasel,” he said.

  14

  Lockwood himself quickly realized that Julian Hubbard had underestimated Hammett’s power to appeal to and unite the radicals.

  “This son of a bitch has laid a big kiss on Snow White,” he said to Julian. “She’s wide-awake and hot to trot.”

  Julian grinned at this Lockwoodian imagery.

  “It’s not funny, boy,” Lockwood said. “I spent half the night on the phone with Sam Clark. He says the phones are ringing off the hook up on the Hill and the media are coming through the windows. They all want to line up and take a loyalty oath to Archimedes just as quick as they can.”

  “What abou
t confirmation?”

  “One week maximum. Pro forma hearings. Sam says the Senate is seized by the urgency of the situation. That wasn’t the game plan you sold me. This guy was supposed to be unconfirmable.”

  “I know that, Mr. President. I’m as surprised as anyone.”

  “You’d better get used to surprises,” Lockwood said. “Sam says that Attenborough is pushing the House Judiciary Committee to start its hearings on Mallory’s charges next week. Hear that? Next week.”

  This shocked Julian—not the statement itself, but the fact that he’d had no warning that these things were happening, and therefore had been unable to warn the President what was coming. In his world, where information was power, the worst possible fate was to be the last to know. He said, “They can’t possibly move that fast.”

  “Like hell they can’t. Attenborough wants to be President. His philosophy is, Why wait? They’ll have articles of impeachment on the floor in ten days, and that fucking Pontius Pilate you went to Yale with will be presiding at my trial before the Senate by the end of March.”

  “What about Mallory’s people?”

  Lockwood threw up his arms in exasperation. “Franklin wants my ass out of the White House,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. But does he want Attenborough to be President?”

  “One thing at a time. If you’re thinking of advising me to put my faith in Franklin Mallory, forget it.”

  Julian started to reply, but Lockwood held up a hand. “No more bright ideas,” he said. “It’s getting away from us, boy!”