We open the door without knocking, step inside. Briggs has been sitting on the leather couch against one wall and he frowns when we come in, probably in reaction to our unannounced entrance. Then he stands, puts aside a sheaf of press clippings he has been reading and comes forward. He does not smile as he faces us.
He seems to want to say something about observing the proprieties before entering one’s private domain, but he is too used to a role of passive servility to assert himself to anyone who represents authority. Instead he says, “Well, right on time.”
“Yes,” we say, “right on time.”
“Welt—would you care to sit down?”
“We’d... I’d rather stand.” Careful. Careful.
“All right.” He takes a package of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, extracts one, lights it with a silver lighter, and blows smoke carefully to one side. “Well,” he says for the third time, “what is it you wanted to see me about? I had the impression on the phone that it was important.”
“It is,” we say, and move past him, stop beside his desk and pretend to look through the open venetian blinds at the lighted grounds beyond. We let the fingers of our left hand slide along the desk, come to rest on the smooth black onyx ashtray we have seen there before. Then we turn slowly to face Briggs again.
His head is wreathed in smoke from his cigarette. A thin streamer of it rises from his hand in a vertical line that seems to bisect his face, so that for an instant we see him as two fragmented halves, as if he has been cleaved in two. The image is unsettling and we take a step backward and one more to our left—but not so far away from the desk that we cannot now reach the black onyx ashtray with our right hand.
Briggs says, “If it has something to do with the backgrounder this morning—”
“It has everything to do with that,” we say, “and nothing to do with it. I’m here because of you—what you are and what you’ve tried to do.”
He avoids our eyes, puffs deeply on his cigarette. “I don’t know what you mean,” he says.
“Oh but you do. You know exactly what I mean.”
His expression becomes defensive. “My conscience is clear,” he says. “I’ve never done anything that wasn’t in the best interests of the party, the presidency, the country.”
“Not to mention the best interests of Austin Briggs.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” We look at him more closely, and what we see feeds our hatred for him, cements our purpose. “You’re a parasite, Austin, and a righteous, self-deluding one at that. You don’t have an ounce of compassion or human decency.”
He stiffens, looks at us, looks away. There is a stirring of fear in him now; we can see it in his eyes. “I don’t have to listen to that,” he says.
“No, of course you don’t. There’s no point in going on with it, is there?”
“None at all,” Briggs says, and draws again on his cigarette.
“You’re about to lose your ash,” we say.
He blinks. “What?”
“The ash on your cigarette, you’re about to lose it,” we say. And we pick up the black onyx ashtray, cup it in our palm, extend it toward him.
“Oh,” he says in a confused way, “yes.” He takes a step forward, and his gaze is locked on the ashtray; he does not notice that we have braced one hip against the desk, that we stand rigid and poised. Our heart is racing wildly now.
When he reaches out with his cigarette for the ashtray we raise our left hand and jab the knuckles sharply into his shoulder. He stops in mid-stride, frowning in surprise, and turns his head toward his shoulder—and that exposes his left temple, makes of it a target on which we fasten our own gaze. Then we bring the ashtray up with all our strength and drive the flat edge of it against his temple.
There is a dull, ugly sound. Briggs cries out in pain, staggers but does not fall. We go after him, swing the ashtray a second time, feel it connect solidly with the bone above one eye. This time he makes no sound and this time he collapses immediately, boneless, and lies staring up at us with eyes like discs of polished glass.
The execution is finished: the traitor is dead.
We take several deep breaths, look away from Briggs and cock our head to listen. No one has heard his cry; the building is shrouded in silence. We realize his dropped cigarette is smoldering on the carpet, and we pick it up and tamp it out in the ashtray which we find we are still holding in our hand. On the carpet is a small black scorch mark, but there is nothing to be done about that. The ashtray is undamaged, and since the blows we struck did not draw blood, there are no marks on it. We replace it on the desk.
It occurs to us as we go to the window that we have, in spite of all our premeditation, acted with too much passion and not enough foresight in our planning. We might have chosen a better place for Briggs’s execution than his own office, than the White House. But it is too late to worry about that now. What is done is done.
We roll up the blinds, bind them into place, then unlatch the window and open it. Carefully we put our head out into the muggy night air. Floodlights illuminate the rose garden, the trees and shubbery on the south lawn, but the oleander bushes beneath the window are wrapped in shadow. Over by the south balcony, we see one of the security people walking his patrol—but after a moment he disappears around the east corner. There is no one else within the range of our vision; night security on the grounds is considerable, but it is also concentrated at the perimeters to guard against illegal entry.
We open the window all the way, return quickly to where Briggs lies sprawled on the carpet. We grasp him under the armpits, struggle with his inert weight to the window, and manage to lift him across the sill. Perspiration spots our forehead; the effort of moving Briggs has left us panting. We take a moment to catch our breath, looking out again at the grounds. They still appear deserted in all directions.
Leaning our shoulder against Briggs’s hip, we push him over the sill.
He falls loosely, making a whispery rustling sound in the oleanders and then a barely audible thump as he strikes the ground—not heavy enough to register on the sound-sensor equipment monitored by Security. When we peer down we see him lying in a pocket of heavy shadow, his arms folded under him, his head resting near one of several large decorative stones which border the oleanders. Our plan will work after all, we think. It will appear as though he was leaning out of the window, lost his balance, fell and struck his head on one of those stones. A tragic accident.
We turn from the window, leaving it open, and glance around the office. There is nothing out of place, no signs of violence. Satisfied, we cross to the door, open it, slip into the anteroom; and a moment later our steps echo hollowly in the empty corridor as we hurry away from the scene of our execution.
The scene of our act of mercy.
Seventeen
It was 10:25 when the telephone rang in the Oval Study.
The sudden sound made Augustine jerk his head up from Fred Fearnot and the Rioters, the Hal Standish railroad dime novel he was paging through. He looked at the Seth Thomas wall clock, noted the time. Pretty late for someone to be calling, he thought, unless it’s important business. He let the phone ring three more times while he rubbed at his tired eyes, took a sip of water from the tumbler on his desk blotter. Then he reached out and caught up the receiver.
“Yes?”
“Mr. President? This is Christopher Justice, sir. I have to see you right away. It’s urgent.”
“Urgent? At this time of night?”
“Yes sir, very urgent.”
“Where are you?”
“Downstairs in the press secretary’s office.”
“All right—come up then.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Augustine replaced the receiver. Justice’s voice had sounded grim, shaken, as if he were the harbinger of tragic news; and it would have to be something tragic, Augustine thought, to rattle someone of Christopher’s nature. A foreboding touched him, but it
was ephemeral, directionless. He could not imagine what might have happened.
He picked up the dime novel again, carried it around his desk and across the room, and put it away in one of the glass-fronted cabinets. Restlessly he began to roam the study. Two minutes passed; three. He had stopped in front of the shelves of railroad lanterns and was running his fingers over the flared reflectors on one of them when the knock, soft but hurried, sounded on the door.
When he opened the door, the sense of foreboding deepened. Justice’s face was tightly set; his eyes, shadowed because of the dim light in both the hallway and the study, had a somber, uneasy appearance.
Augustine gestured him inside, shut the door. “My God, Christopher,” he said, “what is it, what’s happened?”
Justice said heavily, “It’s Mr. Briggs, sir.”
“Briggs?”
“Yes sir. He ... I’m afraid he’s dead.”
“What!”
“It’s true, Mr. President. I was walking on the south lawn, getting some air because it was so hot in my room, and I noticed that the window in the press secretary’s office was open and the lights were on. But there was nobody inside, so I went over to have a look. I found him lying in the bushes under the window.”
“But how—how did it happen?”
“I’m not sure, sir. It looks as though he was leaning out for some reason and lost his balance and fell. He must have hit his head on one of the rocks.”
A hollowness had formed under Augustine’s breastbone, but he seemed to have no other reaction beyond a kind of shocked confusion. Sometimes you came up against something so stunning that you lacked the emotional language to deal with it immediately. He shook his head, walked over to the nearest piece of furniture—a leather couch—and sat on the arm and stared down at the carpet.
Across the study, the door to the presidential bedroom opened and Claire entered. “I thought I heard voices,” she said. “Is something—” Then she stopped speaking and ridges appeared on the smooth surface of her forehead.
Augustine said, “Claire, something terrible has happened.”
A shadow passed across her face. She caught the fabric of her blouse at the throat—she was still fully dressed, or she would not have entered as she had—and then came over to where he was sitting. “What is it?”
“It’s Austin Briggs. He’s dead.”
Her mouth opened and her face went white. “Oh my God,” she said.
“Christopher just found him, outside his office window.”
“Where?”
“It seems to have been a freak accident, Mrs. Augustine,” Justice said. He went on to tell her what he had told Augustine.
Claire said, “Are you certain he’s dead?”
“Yes ma’am. I checked his pulse.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
“No. I thought the President should be the first to know.” She closed her eyes, put her hands to her temples as though trying to clear her thoughts. Watching her, Augustine thought dully that the news seemed to have hit her even harder than it had him; he had never seen her quite so shaken.
Justice said, “Do you want me to notify the security chief, Mr. President?”
Before Augustine could answer, Claire lowered her hands and turned abruptly. “No,” she said. “Not yet. Don’t call anyone yet.”
“But Mrs. Augustine ...”
“Don’t argue with me, please. We need time to think.”
Justice looked at Augustine, who nodded mutely. “Yes ma’am,” he said then. “Whatever you say.”
Claire bit her lip, and her eyes, dark and glistening, rested on Augustine for a long moment. Then she pivoted and hurried out of the study.
When the bedroom door closed behind her Augustine roused himself, went slowly to his desk and poured water into the tumbler there; drank it to ease the dryness in his throat. Some of the numbness began to leave him then, and in his mind he heard the echo of Claire’s voice saying We need time to think. Time to think about what? Briggs was dead, he had died in a tragic accident. In one sense it was unfortunate; and yet, looking at it another way, coldly and practically, it solved the problem of his political threat.
Time to think about what?
But it was already beginning to break in on Augustine, the same realization that must have struck Claire immediately: it was not the fact of Briggs’s death that demanded careful reflection, but the probable repercussions of it. He had died here at the White House, and under circumstances which were as bizarre as they were tragic. There had probably never been an accidental death on the White House grounds, no deaths of any kind here that he was aware of since President Harrison had succumbed to pneumonia in 1841. The story would make national headlines, would have the country buzzing for weeks. Members of the press and his political enemies would use it as a weapon to further attack the viability of the Augustine administration; some of the more vicious, muckraking types might even hint at Christ knew what type of scandal.
Augustine passed a hand roughly over his face. Time to think, time to think—but what was there to be done? Briggs was already dead. Still, the real problem was not the death itself, it was where and how he had died. If the accident had happened somewhere else, in his own house in Cleveland Park, for instance, the repercussions might not be so—
Somewhere else, he thought.
Justice had not told anyone about finding Briggs; suppose it were possible to move the body, to take it away from the White House, to put it in another place where an accidental fall might have happened, a place such as Briggs’s home? Could a dead man be transported off the grounds with all the security guards and security devices in operation? Maybe, he thought. If the man who moved the body was a Secret Serviceman himself, whose presence on the grounds at night would arouse no suspicion, would not be questioned; if the man was Christopher Justice—
No, he thought then, angry with himself, it’s a criminal offense, for God’s sake, I won’t be a party to a thing like that. All his life he had prided himself on his honesty, on his steadfast code of decency in government. If he compromised his principles now, how could he live with his conscience?
And what if Justice were caught? He would have to be sworn to absolute silence in any event, which meant that if he were caught, he would be forced to accept full and sole responsibility—and that would lead to public disgrace, an end to his career, and to repercussions that would be just as bad as if Briggs’s death were simply reported as it ought to be. Ordering him to take that kind of risk was a terrible inequity.
And yet ...
If Justice were careful, he would not be caught; he was a resourceful man, a cautious man; the odds were good that he could get away with it. Wasn’t it worth the risk, then, in the long run? After all, a cover-up of this sort wasn’t really so awful; he would only be taking steps to counteract a bitter turn of fate, to save the country from disruptive hue and cry, to save himself and his administration from the kind of attacks that could cost him renomination and reelection. Didn’t all of that vindicate a minor transgression, a minor distortion of the truth? And where Justice was concerned, wasn’t it a simple if painful matter of priority? The sacrifice of one common man meant little enough compared to the welfare of the country and of the President; Justice would understand that without having to be told, and because he was both loyal and trusting, he would accept the order without question.
Augustine stood for a while longer, struggling with himself; but at a deeper level he had already made his decision, right or wrong. Still, even when he admitted it to himself finally, he knew he would have to talk to Claire. This was one decision he could not act on without discussing it with her first.
He pushed away from the desk, saw Justice standing uneasily by the hall door. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. “Wait here, Christopher. Don’t do anything until I come back.”
“Yes sir.”
Claire was in her bedroom, and when Augustine entered he was surprised to find h
er just hanging up the telephone extension there. She seemed more composed now; the stricken look was gone and some of the rocklike stability that was the cornerstone of her personality had returned. It was always that way with her: no matter what crisis might arise, she never allowed it to disturb her poise for long.
He said, “Whom were you talking to?”
“The appointments secretary,” she said. Her voice was thick. “I’ve asked him to make arrangements for us to leave for The Hollows first thing tomorrow morning.”
“The Hollows?”
“It’s best if we don’t stay in Washington at a time like this.”
“Yes, you’re probably right,” Augustine said slowly. “The only thing is, how will it look if we leave so soon after the announcement of Briggs’s death?”
She came forward, stopped so close to him that he could feel the warmth of her breath on his face. “There doesn’t have to be an announcement tonight, does there?” she said. “There doesn’t have to be an announcement for a while yet.”
Those wide hypnotic eyes gripped his own, probed into them with such intensity that it was as if she were able to penetrate his mind and read his thoughts, to touch the soul of him. She knew him so well, so well; no part of him could ever remain secret to her for very long. Relief moved through him: the decision was theirs, not his, and it was bound.
“No,” he said, “not if the body were to be moved to Briggs’s house in Cleveland Park, if it appeared that that was where he had his accident.”
“Do you think that can be done?”
“Yes. It’s a dangerous risk, but I think it can. And I think we have to try it, Claire. I hate the deception of it, and yet we can’t afford not to handle it this way.”
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