“Yes,” Briggs agreed, “and with the convention only two months ahead at that.”
“History has a way of accelerating nowadays,” Elizabeth said. “This will all be forgotten news by the time we convene in Saint Louis.”
“Will it?” Wexford shook his head. “I doubt it.”
“What do you think I ought to do then, Julius?” Augustine asked with forced calm.
“What I said earlier. Call a meeting with members of the Jewish community—the senators from New York and Connecticut, the heads of B‘nai B’rith and the Council of Rabbis and the United Jewish Appeal. Issue a clarification.”
“There’s nothing to clarify, how many times do I have to tell you that? Any so-called clarification is going to look defensive, as if we’re conceding fault. We’d lose all respectall self-respect.”
Briggs said, “We’ve got to have something to give to the press. They’ve been relentless, and all I’ve had to say to them are no-comments or referrals to previous statements. I’m beginning to feel a little like Ron Ziegler and I can’t say I like that very much.”
Augustine looked at him with increasing dislike. Young (thirty-seven, wasn’t it?), boyish-looking with his overlong hair and his freckles, glib most of the time, but with a nasty penchant for whining in moments of stress; the kind of man who, if he had been on a derailed train, would have rushed to save himself first and to hell with everyone else. Augustine wondered what the hell possessed him to give Briggs the press secretary’s job in the first place.
As if interpreting his thoughts, Claire said to Briggs, “If you don’t like your position, Austin, you can always resign.” Her voice was soft, pleasant, but there was an undercurrent of toughness in it that Augustine knew well.
Briggs seemed taken aback. “Excuse me?” he said.
“After all, Austin,” she said, “you don’t have to run the Presidential press office if you’d rather not. You could certainly go back to work for the Los Angeles Times, if that’s what you’d prefer, and the deputy press secretary could assume your duties. I’m sure Frank Tanaguchi would be delighted at the promotion.”
Briggs blushed, coughed, and lowered his gaze to his water glass; he had been put in his place and he was intelligent enough to realize it.
Claire turned to look at Augustine, a long, searching look that seemed to have some meaning he could not quite grasp. Then she smiled and said, “Now I think this discussion has gone far enough for one evening. This is supposed to be a quiet dinner party, not a shouting match. Why don’t all of you sleep on the matter and discuss it again tomorrow?”
The anger inside Augustine faded. Claire had always had a calming effect on him. She was a strong woman; sometimes he thought she was stronger than he was, and more stable, and more perceptive. Sometimes she intimidated him just a little, because he never knew exactly what was going on inside her head, while she always seemed to know what was going on inside his.
He said, “I suppose you’re right.”
Wexford nodded reluctantly, and Ed Dougherty said, “Yes, we might as well table it.”
“Fine,” Claire said. “Then we’ll have coffee and dessert. Edmund.”
But she kept on looking at Augustine, and it was only after the table was cleared that she took her eyes from him and then leaned forward to say something cheerful about current fashions to Rachel Wexford. Who blinked and bobbed her head and kept her chin tucked against her thin breast.
And with sudden belated insight, Augustine understood the meaning in his wife’s eyes, understood that it was not only Austin Briggs whom she had put in his place, but Augustine himself; that she had been telling him he did not have to run the presidency either if he would rather not. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen....
Edmund brought in a cart bearing a silver coffee service and silver dishes of cake. Claire said, “Black Forest cherry cake, Nicholas—your favorite.”
Augustine poured himself another glass of wine.
Four
Off-duty at six o‘clock, Christopher Justice drove his three-year-old Ford sedan from the White House to Georgetown, ate a light supper in a sidewalk café on M Street, and then strolled to Thirty-first Street, where there were several new and used bookstores that stayed open in the evenings. It was a hot night and the tree-shaded streets were crowded, but in the bookstores it was cool and quiet—particularly in the basement of O’Hare’s, an antiquarian bookseller who maintained a substantial and dusty stock of hardcover and paperback mysteries.
Reading and collecting mystery novels was Justice’s one and only hobby. He enjoyed fishing and an occasional game of tennis, but by nature he was a solitary man who did not make friends easily; a member of the Secret Service staff, in any case, seldom had the opportunity for socializing. He was one of those men totally devoted to his job, taking his greatest pleasure as well as his sustenance from that work. And maybe that was the reason he had never married, never been seriously involved with any of the women he had known over the years.
He had gotten interested in mysteries while he was still on the Washington police force, and had begun collecting them on a small scale almost immediately. In his apartment in Alexandria—which he used only on his days off; when he was on duty he occupied a small room in the West Wing of the White House—he had several hundred editions of British and American crime novels. He especially liked the early English mysteries: they had a slow, measured pace; they were peopled with old colonels who had fought in India for British imperialism, and proper ladies and even more proper gentlemen, and eccentric detectives and exotic foreigners, and high-strung nieces and nephews who were interested in archeological excavations or inheritances from dead or dying relatives; they dealt with genteel puzzles and bloodless murders and polite investigative techniques. They were self-contained, mentally challenging, and far-removed from his own experiences, and they served him in the same way that the games of chess or bridge served other thoughtful policemen of one type or another.
Justice moved slowly, browsing, among the library-type stacks. On one of the “C” shelves he found a battered exlibrary copy of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Calais Coach, third American edition, and took it down and opened it. He had developed an interest in trains since he had been assigned as the President’s bodyguard and had had the opportunity to travel with Augustine on the Presidential Special between Los Angeles and The Hollows in Northern California; and Murder on the Calais Coach, with its fascinating Orient Express background, was one of the classic train mysteries. He had a paperback reissue of the book in Alexandria, but it had been a long time since he had read it. He decided he wanted to reread it and that he would buy this copy instead of driving across the Potomac for the softcover edition.
Tucking it under his arm, he continued to browse. The air in the bookstore was musty and comfortably moist, unlike the atmosphere of the White House which seemed always to be dry, the kind of air that could give someone a sinus condition; the familiar ambiance of old books was pleasant. And yet tonight he could not quite relax, could not seem to isolate himself, as he usually could in bookstores like O’Hare’s, from the responsibilities of the presidency—responsibilities which were his own by inference and because of his duty.
The plain truth was, he was worried about the President.
Outwardly Augustine was the same sensible, forthright figure he had always been, but at the edges, Justice thought, he was beginning to weaken. Six months ago he would not have made those remarks on Israel, as essentially reasonable as they had been. They were politically damaging and upsetting to the influential Jewish electorate, as Maxwell Harper, in his superior fashion, had pointed out that morning. Six months ago the President had not been so bothered by attacks in the press. Hadn’t he gone on national television several times to quietly and eloquently defend himself and his administration on controversial issues? Hadn’t he laughed publicly at the disparaging comments in Newsweek about his “neurasthenic habit” of mumbling distracte
dly to himself from time to time, his “obsession with railroads” and his “adolescent predilection” for humming and sometimes informally singing folk ballads such as “John Henry” and “The Wreck of Old 98”?
Lost in thought now, Justice turned abruptly out of the stacks and climbed the stairs to the bookstore’s street level. Six months ago the President had not seen fit to spend an average of ten days a month at The Hollows—nor, for that matter, had he found it necessary to unburden himself to a Secret Service bodyguard. Six months ago it had looked as though renomination and reelection were certainties; but now, with his popularity under forty-five percent in all the polls, not only the press but several prominent Washington political figures were saying that the Peter Kineen coalition would, after all, be able to take the nomination away from him in Saint Louis—
“Two dollars,” the clerk at the front counter said.
“Excuse me?”
“This book. It’s two dollars plus tax.”
“Oh,” Justice said, “sure.” Embarrassed by his abstraction, he paid the man quickly and took the copy of Murder on the Calais Coach into the muggy night.
As he made his way through the crowds, past the sidewalk flower vendors and the sellers of beads and trinkets and leather goods, he thought about Peter Kineen. Kineen was a reactionary, considered by many to be a dangerous man: a latter-day Ronald Reagan. If he was able to wrest the nomination from Augustine in Saint Louis, the party might be in serious trouble. And the country would surely be in serious trouble, because even if Kineen lost the election, the minority-party candidate would almost certainly be Elton Kheel, the governor of Illinois, who was an old-line machine politician and who was reputed to be a closet hawk on foreign policy despite his avowals to the contrary.
Justice was hardly an expert on politics, but his close proximity to the President had given him a certain inside knowledge; it seemed obvious to him that the only hope for the future lay with Nicholas Augustine. Which meant that the President had to draw himself together, seal off vulnerability, rally the party around him as he had done four years ago.
And he will, Justice told himself. You had to have faith, that was all.
You had to have faith.
Five
Claire was lying on her back in the canopied rosewood bed, the covers pulled up to her breasts and her hands resting palms up at her sides, when Nicholas Augustine came through the door that connected their two bedrooms. It was dark in the room, except for a pale shaft of moonlight that filtered through the south window and lay across the edge of the bed at her feet, as though it had prostrated itself there. Her eyes were closed, but Augustine could not tell if she was asleep.
He hesitated, holding the edge of the door with his left hand. But then she stirred, turned her head and opened her eyes. “Nicholas?” she said.
“Did I wake you?”
“No, I was just resting. Couldn’t you sleep?”
“No. I have a hell of a headache.” He rubbed his temples with the heels of both hands. “I suppose I drank too much wine at dinner.”
“I suppose you did,” she said mildly. “Did you want to join me?”
“Would you mind?”
“Of course not.”
Augustine crossed the room, shed his bathrobe, and moved in beside her. The sheets were warm from her body, scented with the musky fragrance of her perfume, and when she laid her hip against his he felt desire move through him. But he lay quietly, looking up at the quilted underside of the canopy; she was a very desirable woman and he wanted her, and yet his mind was so full of political matters that he could not focus on the physical need.
She turned onto her side so that her breast flattened along his rib cage, reached up to touch his temples with her cool fingers. Massaging them gently in small circles, she asked. “Does this help?”
“A bit,” Augustine said. Wexford, Oberdorfer, Maxwell Harper, Israel, the Indian problem in Montana and the meeting with Wade and Hendricks and Sandcrane that had not gone at all well this afternoon .... “A little bit.”
Seconds passed, a minute or two. Then Claire began to rub her thigh against his beneath the silk of her nightgown, in the same gentle rhythm, and he felt the need climbing within him, felt himself starting to respond. One of her hands lowered to open the buttons on his pajama top, to stroke his chest, and he rolled over to her then, and kissed her, and drew the straps of her gown away to release her breasts to his hands and then to his lips.
“Yes, dear,” she said, “that’s nice.”
But he did not have a full erection; even her touch did not give it to him. Israel, the Indians, the convention in Saint Louis ... stop thinking! A little desperately, he tried to force himself to concentrate on the softness of her body, on the movements of her hands and of his own. Nothing happened. So he concentrated on himself, willing an erection, mind pleading with body—but that had even less effect, you could not begin to make love by focusing on yourself. Sex was two people, equal partners seeking to become one—
Claire said, “It’ll happen, dear, it’ll happen,” and guided him to her. But she was not ready, her vulva was dry, the body as always telling truths that the spirit would deny, and he felt the last of his rigidity slip away. Damn it, damn it! Angry with himself, dismayed, he pushed away from her and lay on his back again, staring up at the canopy, listening to the dry rasp of his breathing. Beside him Claire made a soft sound in her throat that might have meant anything or nothing at all.
This was the sixth time in succession and the fifteenth or twentieth time in three months that he had failed her, failed himself. For years he had been able to keep this part of his life wholly segregated, unaffected by political pressures; now he seemed to have lost that ability. Impotent, he thought, and the word lay bitter and ugly in his mind. Where did all the power go: the potency, the strength? He was the same man he had always been, and yet things kept happening that intimated he might not be.
Maybe he should see Doctor Whiting, his personal and now the White House physician. But Whiting was a somewhat supercilious little man who thought exercise and a proper diet were the answers to most medical problems and that mental strain could better be relieved by positive thinking than by any medicinal aids. No, there was nothing Whiting could do—and he would have been embarrassed discussing impotency with him in any case. What he needed more than anything was another few days at The Hollows—to be home again in California, to lie with Claire in the big brass bed with the springs that could sing like train wheels in the night ...
He realized that she had moved to him again; she caught his hand in hers. “Is there anything you want me to do, dear?”
“No,” Augustine said, “it’s just not going to work tonight.” He felt irritable; his headache was worse now. He drew his hand away. “You’re disappointed in me, aren’t you.”
“Of course not-”
“You don’t have to pretend, Claire. You are disappointed in me, and not just because of what didn’t happen a minute ago.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t you? I saw the look you gave me at dinner, after you put Austin in his place. You were telling me the same thing you told him, that maybe I ought to get out because I can’t handle the presidency anymore.”
She was silent for a time. “Yes,” she said finally, “you’re right that I don’t think you should run for reelection. But it’s not because I believe you can’t handle the presidency. It’s because of what the office is doing to you. Do you honestly feel you can go through another exhausting campaign, another four years without ...”
She broke off.
“Without what?” Augustine said.
“Without suffering any more. Without ruining your health. You’ve changed in these last few months, Nicholas. You’ve ... changed.”
The irritability increased. “You’re like all the rest of them,” he said. “Pushing me with one hand and pulling me with the other. You all want something and when you can’t have it o
r you’ve got it and you’re afraid of losing it, you put the blame on me.”
“Have I ever said or done anything in the twenty years we’ve been married that wasn’t in your best interests?”
Her voice was soft, patient, reasonable; she was always so imperturbable, so in command of her emotions that at times like this it made him feel frustrated, inadequate. “What about your best interests?” he said. “I suppose you had no ambitions of your own, you never wanted to be the First Lady, the wife of the President of the United States.”
“I wanted to be the wife of President Nicholas Augustine, yes. But you’ve given four important, productive years; isn’t that enough work and sacrifice for one person? You’re not a machine, Nicholas. You’re a fifty-six-year-old man who—”
“Who is starting to lose his grip?”
“—who deserves a rest and a chance to live the remainder of his life in peace and privacy. It’s not as if you would be leaving politics altogether; you would still have influence, you could—”
“I’ve heard enough of this,” Augustine said. He swung out of bed, caught up his bathrobe.
“Nicholas ...”
“Good night, Claire,” he said, and walked out and shut the connecting door behind him.
Alone in his own bed, head throbbing, mind working like an engine that coughed and stuttered and would not shut down, he found himself listening to the faint noises that houses make in the night. Harry Truman had once said that the White House cracked and popped all night long, and that you could imagine that old Jackson or Andy Johnson or some other ghost was walking. It was a nice prison, he said, but a prison nevertheless. No man in his right mind would want to come here of his own accord.
And maybe he was right, Augustine thought. Restoration hadn’t changed the old place any; it was still a prison full of the ghosts of long-dead presidents, wandering through the vast halls, whispering to the man who now occupied the premises, telling him things that he could not hear and dared not listen to if he could. Telling him that one day he would join them and add his voice to theirs, because no matter what he did from now on he was one of them: the presidency was a life sentence, an eternal sentence, and there was no way he was ever going to get out.
Acts of Mercy Page 3
