Horace had no idea whether he was under investigation and might be charged with federal crimes at any moment or whether he was going to be called to testify. A lawyer might have been able to make inquiries for him, but Horace saw no point in paying someone a great deal of money to make phone calls to the wrong people. Only Lockwood. Olmedo, and Blackstone in his ivory tower knew what role, if any, Horace was going to play in the impeachment, and they were unlikely to confide in any attorney he might engage. The likeliest person to find out what was in store for him was Julian, and the fact that Julian had not communicated with his brother could only mean that even he could not find out the facts.
The suspense was hard on Rose MacKenzie. She was solitary by nature, but as the person in charge of the FIS’s data banks, she had lived much of her life with the illusion that she knew almost everything that was worth knowing and could quite easily find out anything she happened not to know. Now she did not even know if she was going to be charged with a crime, or whether she was going to be dragged before the world on television and humiliated with questions she had sworn an oath never to answer. She was not a young woman. She was almost fifty, and the idea of going to prison terrified her. Living at the Harbor with Horace, she was disintegrating before his eyes: drinking too much, talking wildly about just vanishing, weeping continually, neglecting to eat, forgetting to bathe, making sexual demands that Horace had difficulty gratifying at his age, waking in the night and crying out, “Oh, God, jail! My mother! ” She had always been untidy, but now she was turning the Harbor into a mare’s nest—all the books in the wrong places, dirty glasses everywhere, clothes left anyhow. Horace could not keep ahead of it. The two of them had been intermittent lovers for many years, but they had never lived together. When he suggested a greater attention to neatness, Rose wandered into the woods and was gone for twenty hours before he found her huddled against the bole of an ancient sugar maple with an empty 1.75-liter bottle of Popov vodka at her feet. It was cold in the Berkshires in March; she caught pneumonia and went into the hospital.
While she recovered, Horace decided that he must do something to regain control of his own life and, if possible, to preserve Rose from the fate she seemed to be conjuring for herself. His idea from the beginning had been to provide information that would blow the situation open in an early stage, rendering it unnecessary to involve either Rose or Julian. He had always been willing to be the osageyfo, a title he had suggested to an able but ill-fated political-action asset in West Africa (not that there was any other kind of African political asset) more than half a lifetime before. The term, from the Efik, meant “he who bears the brunt.”
Horace had information that no one else had, not even Julian or Philindros, and he saw no way out but to use it. It would have been foolhardy to phone Busby direct, so he called Five-Three, an international banker who was the first member of his Shelleyan cell, asking him to set up a rendezvous between Horace and Busby. That weekend, wearing a light but sufficient disguise and traveling under one of several false identities for which he had kept up the documentation, including even a pilot’s license, Horace journeyed to the secret meeting with Busby. He was uncomfortable with the breach of discipline involved in using FIS documentation for private purposes, but given the choice between his friend and his country, he chose his friend. How strangely things turned out, Horace thought. All his life until now, he had done exactly the opposite as a matter of moral principle.
In a matter of hours he and Busby were sailing through the Grenadines in Busby’s sloop, two lanky, well-kept, but almost elderly men, looking for humpback whales but talking about Horace’s career in espionage, about which Busby knew little and was curious to know more. Although he had abominated the Outfit and all its works because these undermined the Definition and the Duty, Busby had always been puzzled by the fact that he had not been tapped for recruitment by the Outfit, as he had been tapped for membership in nearly everything else worth getting into at Yale. A joiner by nature, he did not like the uncomfortable feeling that he might have missed out on belonging to something to which so many other good fellows belonged. Especially something that so clearly had been fun, scruples or no scruples. Not that he would have been any good at it. Unlike his old friend, who had never thought in terms of political virtue— in fact, Horace regarded the term as an oxymoron—Busby had always been an idealist. He had been impressed early in life by the intellectual harmony and moral symmetry of Karl Marx’s ideas, which were so much like Shelley’s in Prometheus Unbound. Rapturously Busby quoted: “ ‘Man, one harmonious Soul of many a soul, / Whose nature is its own divine controul …
“That’s where Marx got ‘Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains,’ ” he said. “What unforgettable stuff!”
Horace happened to know that Marx had stolen this famous phrase in The Communist Manifesto from Marat, but he did not bother to mention this. As the sloop sailed on before the wind, Busby expounded on his belief that the system envisaged by Marx had not worked because the Russians, who by an accident of history were the first to try to live by his maxims, were too primitive to understand them, too disorganized to put them into effect, and too clumsy to seduce even the skittish tart that was the West. “Ah, but if the Germans had had a Lenin in 1919 or the Americans had reelected Hoover in 1932, creating the objective conditions for revolution,” he said, “who knows what the world might have been like today?”
Buzzer had always had the gift of enthusiasm; it was the hallmark of his character and had led him into many an unexpected result. Knowing what torrents of sophomoric philosophizing were coming next—he had been listening to his fellow Shelleyan expound on what he regarded as the inevitable revolution since undergraduate days—Horace abruptly cried, “Thar she blows!”
“Whales? Where away? How many?” demanded Busby, leaping to his feet.
“Off the port bow,” Horace replied. “Three, I think. They sounded.”
He put the helm over and let out the boom; the sloop heeled and reached for a line of surf a mile or two away.
“Careful, that’s World’s End Reef dead ahead,” Busby said, scrambling forward. “But steer for it; the coral will turn them. We can anchor and put on snorkel gear and maybe swim with them. It’s mind-boggling fun, Horace—the whales like us. God knows why.”
Busby dashed below for flippers and masks. He was genuinely excited. Horace felt a certain contrition, because he had not really seen any whales. Not that Busby would ever know this. As the center who had passed the basketball to Busby for his famous last-second shot against Harvard almost half a century before, Horace knew that Buzzer had not been able to see the basket. That was why his nickname was such a byword—Buzzer’s winning basket was almost the only shot he took that season and certainly the only one he made. He had always been too vain to wear glasses and claimed that he was allergic to contact lenses, and would no more be able to see these imaginary whales of Horace’s than he had been able to make out the net from the centerline of the basketball court. Horace followed in the dinghy as Busby, a long, bleached creature trailing bubbles, struck out along the reef.
On a tiny sand island an hour later, Horace ate a chicken sandwich and drank a bottle of beer from the boat’s picnic cooler while listening with a perfectly straight face to Busby’s description of his pursuit of the whales. They had been right at the outer edge of vision, he said, but they had unmistakably been whales—three of them, a cow and two calves, swimming majestically through an iridescent screen of reef fishes.
“Baxter,” Horace said, “I want to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“About this situation in Washington.”
“I’m all ears,” said Busby.
Horace said, “The last time we met, up at the Harbor, you mentioned thinking about alternatives, and it occurred to me that your only alternatives have suddenly become pretty appalling ones.”
“Meaning?”
“Mallory takes over the
world if Lockwood goes down fighting.”
“Too horrible to contemplate.”
After a pause, Horace said, “Did Vice President Graves really die of natural causes?”
Busby was amused but startled by the question. “Good God, of course he did. What else? Cyanide in his ear? There was an autopsy. He had an embolism. Dead between one breath and the next, poor bastard.”
“Getting back to the subject,” Horace said, “let’s say Lockwood admits he wasn’t elected and leaves gracefully, but somehow Mallory cannot prove that he himself was elected.”
“In that case you get Attenborough,” Busby said.
“Can you live with that?”
“It’s better than the alternative.”
“Julian says Attenborough is a hopeless drunk.”
“He is, in addition to now being an alleged rapist. The only thing in his favor is that anyone, drunk or sober, is better than Mallory. Because one way or another Lockwood is going to go down, you know.”
“Is he? Julian says he may have enough votes in the Senate to avoid conviction.”
“Julian’s out of touch,” Busby said. “Lockwood can’t possibly survive now.”
“Julian’s not so sure. He says he can still get up off the canvas and amaze everybody.”
“Julian’s a loyal friend, but Lockwood’s a convicted liar—an embarrassment to the party, to the Cause. He always was, of course, but there used to be Julian to do the thinking, to stick to the agenda, to keep everyone posted. Now there’s no one—literally no one.”
“All right. Suppose you’re right. If Lockwood does go down, as you say, what happens then?”
Busby shrugged. “I’ve already said it. Attenborough becomes President and four years from now, if his liver holds out that long, we nominate a new face. If he doesn’t live to the end of his term, he’ll be succeeded by whomever he appoints and—important point—Congress approves as his Vice President.”
“Interesting,” Horace said again. He opened two more bottles of beer and handed one of them to Busby. “As you know, I’m a little concerned about Julian and my friend Rose in all this, and, most of all, about my young sister-in-law. Emily is upset, and has been since last fall. Lost a baby. Weeps continually. I feel responsible for that.”
“Oh, the whole thing was your idea?”
“My doing. Therefore my responsibility. I thought I might be able to help through Lockwood’s lawyer, but all that seems to have fallen apart, and I suppose I’m right in thinking that Attenborough is no great friend of ours?”
“He’s no friend of Julian’s, certainly. Or of yours, as a matter of fact. He feels that you two got Lockwood into this and—what really worries him—that the party may go down with him.”
“No point in arguing about that now. But wouldn’t it be better if the whole question of the election irregularities never came up?”
“Better for whom?”
“Better for the party. Better for the FIS. Much better for Rose.”
“And for you, of course. But how can that happen?”
“My thought was, if Lockwood is convicted on the first article of impeachment, namely the Ibn Awad matter, then there would be no point in even voting on the others. He’d be out, and you’d go on from there. With Attenborough, for want of a better alternative.”
“That was your thought, was it?”
“I’m sure it has occurred to others.”
“Your point being?”
“Jack Philindros wasn’t really asked the right questions about Ibn Awad in that hearing before the Committee of Managers.”
“He wasn’t? What are the right questions?”
Horace was searching for something in the cooler. He found it, a Ziploc plastic bag with a sheet of paper in it. “Here,” he said. “I typed them out for you.”
Busby frowned; as usual he’d brought no reading glasses with him. “Read them to me,” he said.
Horace read out what he had written in a low and guarded voice. Straining to hear, Busby was amazed. “You mean the bombs were missing for four years?” he said. “You mean they weren’t actually located until last October, while the presidential election was in progress?”
“That’s right. And since the whole point of snuffing Ibn Awad was to get the bombs, this could be interpreted to mean that the operation accomplished nothing.”
“The bombs could have gone off anytime.”
“Yes, and they still could. Just ask Philindros where they were found and where they are now.”
“Where?”
“Better you should be surprised.”
Busby slowly shook his head in a combination of wonder and horror. “This is the smoking gun,” he said. “It will finish Frosty. He might have got away with one lie, but not two.”
“Too bad, but if the thing’s to be done, maybe it should be done quickly.”
“You’re absolutely sure of your facts?”
“Oh, yes,” Horace said. “It was me who found the damn things.”
He took back the paper from Busby and set it on fire with a disposable cigarette lighter—a tool of the trade that he, a lifelong nonsmoker, always carried for such purposes. Busby was still registering amazement. Horace gave him a warm but quizzical smile. The trusty maxim applied: Knowing what Buzzer Busby wanted to do, he had made it possible for him to do it.
2
On Monday morning, as tradition dictated, all members of the House of Representatives, led by the Committee of Managers, walked in solemn procession from their own chamber across the length of the Capitol and knocked thunderously on the door of the Senate. They were admitted by the sergeant at arms. Speaking in a voice nearly as powerful as Attenborough’s, Bob Laval addressed the president pro tempore: “Mr. President, the managers of the House of Representatives, by order of the House, are ready at the bar of the Senate, whenever it may please the Senate to hear them, to present articles of impeachment and in maintenance of the impeachment preferred against Bedford Forrest Lockwood, President of the United States, by the House of Representatives.”
These had been the exact words spoken on March 4, 1868, by John A. Bingham, chairman of the Committee of Managers charged with prosecuting the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. It was a moment of solemnity and drama, something that had happened only once before in the history of the republic. The senators and representatives present were visibly moved by their own ceremonial behavior, by the sonorous voices, and by the majestic simplicity of the language.
As soon as the members of the House had delivered the articles of impeachment they withdrew and the Senate immediately voted to begin the trial eight days hence, on the following Tuesday. Senator Clark proposed that the Senate appoint a Committee on the Impeachment of Bedford Forrest Lockwood, President of the United States. This body would be composed of seven senators—the chairmen and ranking minority members of the Judiciary, Rules, and Government Operations committees, plus a chairman to be chosen by the whole Senate—and would recommend rules of procedure for the impeachment trial. This was the same number that had been appointed for the same purpose in the Johnson impeachment. The Senate approved, and on a motion from the floor, Clark himself was named chairman. This meant that the committee, like the Senate itself, was equally divided, with a member of Lockwood’s party exercising the tie-breaking vote. The committee was instructed to deliver its report for the approval of the full Senate on the following Saturday morning. The Senate then adjourned.
Clark called an immediate meeting of the Committee on the Impeachment. He distributed copies of the rules adopted by the Senate in the Johnson case. All the members, having known for several days that they would be appointed to this committee, had been provided by their staffs with copious background materials on the Johnson trial. Clark eyed these with unconcealed disapproval; he had done a little research, too. “Before we get started,” he said, “I want to quote James A. Garfield of Ohio, a future President of the United States who was a member of Congress in 1868. Quote: T
his trial has developed, in the most remarkable manner, the insane love of speaking among public men. Unquote. The way I see it, our job on this committee is to keep that from happening this time. We’ve got a week to do this job. Let’s keep it simple and get it done.”
Busby said, “Mr. Chairman, I support that sentiment completely. I’d like to suggest that we simply adopt the rules approved by the Senate for the Johnson trial, with one modification that will do more to ensure the speedy arrival at a just verdict than anything else this committee can do. Mr. Chairman—”
“We’ll get to substance in a minute,” Clark said. “Anyone have any objection to using the rules adopted by the Senate in 1868 for the Andrew Johnson trial and subsequently revised as a basis for the rules for this trial?”
Amzi Whipple said, “Fundamentally they’re good Republican rules even if they are a hundred and thirty-three years old, Mr. Chairman. I’ve got one modification to propose when the time comes.”
Clark said, “Anyone else?” There was no response. He said, “Let’s start it off, then. Senator Busby?”
The others shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. As everyone on the committee knew, Busby’s negotiating technique was simple: he simply kept saying the same thing over and over again, pretending to be deaf to all objections, until his colleagues were so bored, so frustrated, so eager to escape, that in the end they agreed to his demands merely to shut him up.
“As we all know, the Chief Justice will preside at this trial,” Busby said. “The great problem in the Andrew Johnson trial was the ambiguity that surrounded the authority and powers of the Chief Justice. He was overruled after the fact by the Senate on points of law and procedure, he was deprived of the essential privilege of breaking a tie with his vote even though he was. under the Constitution, the presiding officer of the Senate during the trial of an impeached President. More than any other factor, these affronts to the dignity and constitutional authority of the Chief Justice brought the Johnson trial, and the Senate itself, into disrepute. Friends, we can’t let that happen again.”
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