Acts of Mercy
Page 4
Six
We are still not quite sure of the identities of the traitors, but the evidence is beginning to mount strongly against one man in particular. Is he the leader of the conspiracy among those close to the President, of the turncoats who hide behind the guise of friendship and trust? We are beginning to believe that he is.
We must have more conclusive evidence before we can act—but we sense it will not be long until this final damning proof is revealed to us, until he stands before us fully exposed. And when that time comes, we will act immediately and without compunction. The conspiracy must be stopped at all costs; the traitor must be eliminated.
But we must be careful too. The President’s safety and the President’s future are in our hands; we must carry out our mission not only with dispatch but with caution and premeditation. There are those who would not understand our methods, those who would try to prevent us from acting if they suspected our intention.
Soft, then. Soft and cunning.
Death to the traitor on cat’s paws.
Seven
At precisely nine o’clock Wednesday morning, Maxwell Harper knocked on the door of the Oval Study upstairs and then opened it and stepped inside. The room was empty. His immediate reaction was one of annoyance; he had called the President an hour earlier to request a private appointment, and Augustine had told him to come here at nine instead of to the Oval Office, and if there was one thing Harper detested it was a lack of punctuality.
He crossed the room and sat in one of the leather armchairs before the fireplace, placing his briefcase carefully on the floor beside him. The drapes were drawn across the windows that looked out on the south lawn, and the room seemed dark, oppressively cluttered. Too much furniture, haphazardly arranged; and too much emphasis on trains. Augustine’s collection of railroadiana—a dozen different types of switch-stand lanterns, locomotive headlamps, an early telegrapher’s outfit, a ticket-validating machine, glass cases filled with brass baggage checks and advertising memorabilia and dime novels and popular fiction dealing with railroads—made it look more like an obscure museum than a White House study. Harper himself was a neat, fastidious man whose bachelor apartment near the French embassy was a model of functional conservatism; he had always felt out of place here.
As he waited, his annoyance modulated into determination. Things, he had decided, were approaching a serious crisis point: the Israel gaffe, Augustine’s inattention to the Indian problem in Montana, his decision to run off still again to The Hollows were all danger signals not to be treated lightly. The President was backing himself into a political corner, and that did not bode well for the country or for anyone in his administration.
He was badly worn out, which was understandable because the man had worked like a demon for the past three and a half years; but that was a symptom, not an explanation. The fact was, it was not Augustine who was responsible for what was happening, it was those with whom he had surrounded himself in responsible, influential positions. Men such as Franz Oberdorfer, and perhaps Julius Wexford and Austin Briggs—men Harper had not approved of from the beginning. They had given the President poor advice or not enough advice, used him to further their own careers, even circumvented him entirely like that demagogue Oberdorfer; and Augustine, never a forceful leader, had begun to buckle under the pressure and the dissension.
This close to the convention, a wholesale firing of these people was impossible because it would completely undermine public faith in the President. What could be done, what had to be done, was to make Augustine realize both the danger and his own fallibility and then to take steps to rectify matters. Rifts with the press had to be sutured, a strong and vocal reelection campaign had to be implemented, concessions to the National Committee and to certain special-interest groups and to the Jewish electorate had to be made that would induce them to remain in the President’s corner. Then, after renomination and reelection, Oberdorfer and the others could be systematically replaced—
The door to the Monroe Room across the study opened, interrupting Harper’s reverie, and he glanced up. But it was not the President who entered; it was the First Lady.
Harper rose immediately. “Good morning, Mrs. Augustine,” he said.
She hesitated for a moment, looking at him, and then came slowly across the room. She wore a beige pantsuit that accentuated the slim lines of her body, and her hair was done in a casual ponytail tied with a blue velvet ribbon. Harper felt the palms of his hands turn moist; she never failed to have that effect on him.
“Good morning,” she said, and stopped a half-dozen paces away from him. Her tone was cool and curiously dull, and he realized in the dim light that she looked as tired as the President: small lines beneath her eyes, a pinched look to the corners of her mouth. He wondered if she understood the seriousness of Augustine’s position. Surely she did understand, as intelligent and perceptive as she had always been.
He said, “I had a nine o’clock appointment with the President, so I came straight up. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, I don’t mind ... Maxwell.”
“He’s ten minutes late,” Harper said. “Do you know where he is?”
A loose strand of hair had fallen away from her temple and she brushed it back into place in that absent, caressing way some attractive women had, both conscious and unconscious of its sensuality. “He had a meeting at eight o’clock with the security affairs advisor,” she said. “I imagine he’ll be here shortly.”
She seemed to want to say something else, but did not; Harper had the impression that she was vaguely ill at ease. She was usually so poised, so self-assured, and yet in his presence she was oddly subject to fluctuating moods. Sometimes she seemed cold and distant, as if she did not like or trust him completely; at other times she was open and friendly in a way that bordered on affection. It occurred to him now, as it had before, that she intuited his carefully concealed attraction for her and perhaps responded to it. That under different circumstances she might have been receptive to him as an intimate.
Or as a lover? he thought.
Pointless thinking, damn it. Pointless.
At length she said, “If you’ll excuse me, I have some things to do.”
“Of course, Mrs. Augustine.”
Harper watched her walk across to the hallway door, the play of her hips beneath the suit pants. When she got there, she paused and looked back at him, as if she still wanted to say something more; but again she did not speak. And a moment later she was gone.
Frowning, he returned to the chair by the fireplace and sat down again. He wished he understood her better, what motivated her, what went on behind that dispassionate public facade. Did Augustine himself understand her? Did anyone? She was the President’s wife, she had by everyone’s testimony more to do with this administration than any First Lady since Mrs. Woodrow Wilson—and yet, could it be that she was not working with the President so much as using their collaboration as cover for some sort of personal cachet?
He could not quite shake the pervasive feeling that she was something more and something less than what she seemed to be.
Eight
The press secretary’s office was down the hall from the West Wing Reception Room, and as Christopher Justice turned the corner toward it a few minutes past noon, on an errand for the President, two men just emerged from the office were walking shoulder to shoulder and talking animatedly. Even though they had their backs to Justice, he recognized them: Attorney General Wexford and Peter Kineen.
Justice paused, looking after them. There was probably some innocuous reason for them to be together, but it struck him as odd that Kineen, the President’s bitter rival, should be here in the White House; that he should be so intimate with the attorney general, who was also chairman of the President’s reelection campaign. And odd, too, that both men had been together with Austin Briggs (whom Justice didn’t particularly like because he sometimes seemed to use questionable judgment in his comments to the press).
Briggs was seated at his desk, and he had apparently been studying a sheaf of papers spread out in front of him; but now he blinked at Justice, swept the papers together hastily, put them into a manila folder and his hand on top of the folder as if guarding it. His expression, Justice saw with some surprise, was like that of a child caught at some sort of mischief.
“I’m sorry if I’m intruding, Mr. Briggs,” Justice said. “But the President asked me to stop by.”
“The President asked you—?”
“Yes sir. He’s busy and he couldn’t come himself. He’s planning to go to California this weekend and he’d like you to cancel the press luncheon scheduled for next Monday. He’d also like you to prepare a media release saying that he intends to remain at The Hollows for from three to five days for private policy discussions with members of his staff.”
Briggs seemed nervously flustered, uneasy; he ran a hand through his hair, ran his tongue over his lips, and reached for a cigarette from the pack in front of him. Though they were approximately the same age, he appeared very young to Justice—had seemed that way from the first moment they’d met. Maybe because there was a certain obvious immaturity in the man.
“I don’t understand,” Briggs said. “Is this some sort of joke?”
“Joke, sir?” Justice felt himself frowning. “Of course not. Why would you think it’s a joke?”
Briggs cleared his throat. “Well, it’s just that going to The Hollows again while the press is still in an uproar over the Israel remarks ... well, I’m not sure it’s such a wise decision.”
Justice said, “It’s the President’s decision, Mr. Briggs. If you’d like to call him later on ...”
“No,” Briggs said, “no, that won’t be necessary. All right, I ... I’ll take care of the cancellation and the release.” He got up jerkily, like a man struggling out of water, crushed his unlighted cigarette in the heavy White House ashtray on his desk, and caught up the folder and tucked it under his arm. And went out past Justice, leaving the door open, hurrying.
Justice stood for a moment, confused and bothered by the press secretary’s curious behavior. What was in those papers he had been studying? Did they have something to do with the presence earlier of the attorney general and Senator Kineen? Was he up to something, and had he been guiltily worried that Justice would realize it and inform the President?
He hurried back to the Oval Office.
Nine
For Augustine it had been a typically grueling day.
To begin it there had been a seven A.M. conference with the national energy advisor to discuss several of his bottlenecked energy proposals. Then there had been a brief meeting with the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, followed by a meeting with the security affairs advisor on intelligence matters. Shortly past nine he had gone upstairs to the Oval Study for a brief and painful consultation with Maxwell Harper, who had not told him anything he didn’t already know or suspect; but he was damned if he would listen to any more accusations that he was starting to make serious political blunders, and he had cut the meeting short.
At ten o’clock he’d met with members of the cabinet, minus Oberdorfer who was still in Tel Aviv, and Wexford whose absence was unexplained. Discussion of economic imperatives—going over the same ground he had covered with the economic council chairman—and then of the grave status of the French franc (during which he had had a fleeting feeling of sympathy for Nixon, who’d at least had the courage to admit that he did not give a damn about the Italian lira). At twelve-thirty, just as he was preparing to go to lunch—alone, because Claire was with Elizabeth Miller at a UJA luncheon downtown—Justice had returned from his errand to the press secretary’s office to tell him about Briggs and Wexford and Kineen. That had spoiled his appetite and he hadn’t bothered to eat at all.
But he had not had time to dwell on the news. At onefifteen there had been a brief meeting with a ceremonial delegation from the National Council of Ministers, who were in town for their annual convention; the bishop said he would pray for the presidency. At one forty-five there had been a conference with Senate Majority Leader Gordon Parkson on S-1, a dangerous bill authored several years before by Nixon (no sympathy this time) and John Mitchell which would severely repress civil liberties and which was now out of committee after nearly two years and would be put on the Senate floor for debate. Parkson had had no constructive ideas on how to get it back into committee or to otherwise block it.
At two-thirty Vice-President Jim Conroy had telephoned from Phoenix. Conroy had been making a week-long swing through several Western states, doing a little preconvention stumping, but had been having a fairly rough time of it: in Montana he had had to be hurriedly taken away from his hotel to escape an unruly crowd gathered to demonstrate in favor of a Cheyenne Indian takeover of their reservations; and in Wyoming he had suffered a mild case of food poisoning at a banquet which he was convinced had not been accidental. He said there was radical unrest in Arizona, too, and wanted to know if he could cut the trip short and come straight back to Washington. Augustine told him no, repressing the urge to tell him flat out that he was not only a whiner but a coward.
No sooner had he broken the connection than Oberdorfer had telephoned from Tel Aviv to discuss the “Israeli crisis.” Which turned out to mean that Prime Minister Stein was angry and demanding an immediate public retraction, and unless he got it was intimating that the Augustine administration would face the loss of financial and political support from the American Jewish community. Oberdorfer said ominously that careful consideration must be given to Stein’s demand “or I will not be held responsible for the consequences”; Augustine said he would be in touch shortly on the matter and then hung up on him, the bastard.
Now it was after three, and he had a half-hour open before another meeting with Hendricks and Wade and Sandcrane on the damned Indian problem, and what he planned to do was to lie down on the Oval Office couch, just lie down and rest for thirty minutes. So, naturally, George Radebaugh buzzed him from the outer office and said that the attorney general wanted to see him on a matter of considerable urgency.
Christ, Augustine thought, now what? He picked up one of his pipes, tapped the bit wearily against his teeth. “All right,” he said, “send him in.”
Wexford entered immediately, and the first thing Augustine noticed about him was that he looked nervous and haggard. There was a thin coating of perspiration on his florid face that gave it a polished sheen, like a block of old carved wood. As he approached, his eyes drifted from side to side, never quite meeting Augustine’s.
“Thank you for seeing me, Nicholas,” he said, and sat stiffly in one of the facing chairs.
“What’s the problem?”
Wexford seemed reluctant to speak. He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and patted at his damp cheeks; he cleared his throat, seemed to find something to stare at on the terrace beyond the French doors. Intuition touched Augustine, tightened his mouth and narrowed his eyes; he was remembering what Maxwell had said to him this morning and what Justice had told him at noon. But he did not say anything, watching Julius, waiting for him to get on with it.
“Nicholas,” Wexford said finally, and then stopped and cleared his throat again. “Nicholas, I’ve been taking soundings on this Israeli thing and I just received advance word on the new Harris poll from Austin. It looks like a twenty-two percent approval rating. Now I don’t have to tell you how serious that is—”
“Get to the point, Julius,” Augustine said. “You didn’t come to tell me about the Harris poll.”
Wexford seemed to draw himself up. “No, you’re right,” he said, “I didn’t. I might as well be direct; the situation is pai
nful enough without beating around the bush. The fact of the matter is, there was a rump meeting of the National Committee in Saint Louis last night, and I’m flying out there again this evening for the formal procedural discussions on the convention, and ... well, there’s been a considerable amount of sentiment that it might be best for everyone—the nation, the party, even yourself—If you would decide not to seek renomination.”
“I see.” Carefully, Augustine laid his pipe on the desk, put his hands flat on the litter of papers before him. There was anger in him, but it was cold, controlled. He had known for weeks that something like this might happen, although he had deluded himself into believing that it would not. “And am I to believe this sentiment is based on a twenty-two percent preliminary Harris? Or is there more to it than that?”
Wexford still refused to meet his eyes. “There is no single causative factor; it’s a whole pattern of feeling which has developed over recent months. And you know what’s been happening in the primaries, Nicholas.”
Nothing much had been happening in the primaries. Kineen had won all but one of them—the favorite-son candidate had beaten him in Pennsylvania—but he had done so over a widely split field of test-case candidates. The primaries meant little against an incumbent president anyway; even LBJ, who had lost in New Hampshire and Wisconsin in 1968, could not have been denied renomination on their basis. What primaries were, in truth, was shadow plays: clever little exercises exactly as important as the National Committee cared to make them. You could build a nomination on a series of victories, yes, as Jimmy Carter had done, as he himself had done to a lesser degree four years ago; but there were subtle ways to make sure that no victories came to a candidate the committee did not really want, and subtle ways of making even victories seem inconsequential.