By Order of the President

by Kilian, Michael;

  Dubarry had the third highest seniority of his party in the Senate, and, owing to the system that honored it, had become chairman of the Armed Services Committee as well as the chairman of his party’s Senate conference. There was talk that he might end up being elected president pro tempore when the new Congress sat the following January. The incumbent, a man even older than Dubarry, had been defeated in his bid for reelection.

  Dubarry was not inclined to try for it, however, as it would mean giving up his Armed Services post, worth billions to Louisiana and possibly reelection to him.

  “Our president has survived,” Dubarry said, as the secretary handed him his brimming glass. “Damn good reason to celebrate. You oughta celebrate, too, Reuben. Make him a drink, Lillian.”

  Jackson shook his head at her. On the television screen, Bonnie Greer was falling to the ground.

  “Lillian, honey,” said Dubarry. “Go out and tell someone to get all this on videotape next time they run it. We’re going to want to see this again.”

  “I just hope they’re keeping their cool in the White House,” Jackson said.

  “The angel of death is passing among us,” said Dubarry. The television screen faded to black, and then a slide appeared with a picture of Bonnie Greer smiling, the dates of her birth and death just beneath. After that, the network went to a commercial.

  3

  “He’s dead,” said Charley Dresden, watching the television screen over the rim of the large glass that held his second lunchtime Manhattan. The drink was an indulgence for him. He had signed a contract that morning to produce some television commercials for a seaside amusement park. The money would pay the rent for his one-man advertising agency for two or three months, and he had been feeling celebratory. But no longer. He had known Bonnie Greer a few years before, during one of his incarnations as a television station news director.

  The restaurant was crowded, and many of the customers had come into the bar to follow the television reports. No one paid Dresden much attention.

  “If he was dead they’d say so,” said the bartender, putting Dresden’s newly totalled check on the bartop. “The TV guys were there and they say he isn’t.”

  “Lou, the TV guys don’t know,” said Dresden, unsmiling. He looked solemn enough for the tragedy on the screen, but it was his ordinary expression. At thirty-five, he was a handsome man in a drawn, weary way, with a few odd scars on his face, he looked a little too German for an American, especially a Californian. The dark Prussian blue of his eyes was a stark, cold color against his tan and graying blond hair. He almost never smiled anymore, except when he was with women.

  On the screen, President Hampton was again being pushed at his limousine by Agent Berger, who then doubled backward as though in sudden pain and fell down, his shirtfront crimson. When they cut again to the footage of Bonnie Greer’s head exploding, Dresden looked away. She had been a gushy young reporter just out of Santa Linda State when he knew her. He had given her a glowing reference for a good job with a network station in San Francisco. Now she was butcher’s meat.

  “Look at his face next time they run the tape, which will probably be in about three minutes,” Dresden said. “Mortality writ large.”

  The bartender, a longtime friend, normally deferred to Dresden in all matters concerning television, but not now.

  “Charley. It’s official. He’s alive. Until someone comes on the tube there and says he’s dead, I’m going to have to say you’re nuts.”

  “What if I came on the tube and said he was dead?”

  “What?”

  “What if I walked over to the TV station and sat down on the news set and announced in authoritative tones that the president was dead? Then you’d believe me, right? Anything I’d say.”

  “You’re nuts, Charley.”

  “I’ll bet you fifty dollars.”

  “You’ve got too big a tab here to make bets.”

  “I’ll bet you my tab, double or nothing.”

  “Forget it, Charley.”

  He moved away to take care of another customer, leaving Dresden to his drink. Antoine’s was the most expensive restaurant in Santa Linda, California. Despite the French name—the proprietor was actually an Anthony Ciardi—the cuisine ran more to steaks and prime rib than continental fare, and the decor was that of a California interior decorator’s vision of an English club: vinyl, wallboard, and Formica doing for genuine leather and walnut.

  Dresden had been a regular customer since he had first come to Santa Linda from New York some fifteen years before. Channel Three, the television station where he had risen to the high position of program director, was two blocks up the street. The city’s major advertising agencies and its sole newspaper, the Santa Linda Press-Journal, were not much farther. Dresden and most of the restaurant’s patrons knew each other well, which is why Dresden sometimes found himself alone at the bar.

  He would finish this second Manhattan and then return to his office via a Burger King or a taco stand. That would be lunch. Dresden worked very hard, and so stayed in business, as few California hip-pocket ad agencies ever managed to do for long. But his former television colleagues in Santa Linda considered him very much the has-been. When he could, he economized.

  On the television, Tom Brokaw and Roger Mudd of NBC were looking at a map of the Gettysburg battlefield. Brokaw noted that the assassination scene was not far from the stone marking the high-water mark of the Confederacy at the farthest reach of Pickett’s charge, and that Hampton was born a Virginian. He and Mudd started filling the time with a discourse on Henry Hampton’s fascination with the Civil War.

  A man and a woman came up behind Dresden. She took the empty seat next to him and the man stood just behind her. They appeared to be waiting for a table. She looked expensive, a trifle over thirty, a trifle flashy, more likely from Southern California than the Bay Area. The man was older, well into his forties. Dresden nodded to them. The woman gave him a quick, disinterested smile and the man ignored him, waving to the bartender. He ordered two daquiris.

  “The president’s dead,” Dresden said.

  “What?” said the woman. “Did they announce that?”

  “No,” said Dresden. “But it’s obvious from the tapes. He’s a dead man.”

  The man gave Dresden a belligerent look. Charley was not a man to pick fights, but he did not like this stranger.

  “Ease up, Charley,” said the bartender.

  “Just trying to serve the cause of truth. ‘I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.’”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Albert Camus. He wrote in La Chute. He also said, ‘The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.’ Only Hampton’s death is not absurd. It follows logically.”

  The woman’s companion had ceased to ignore Charley. “What do you mean, ‘logically’?”

  “I mean the war,” Dresden said, pleased with the woman’s interested gaze. “Hondurans, El Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Cubans, Russians, Libyans, Iranians. He became a marked man the minute he sent in the first combat unit.”

  The other man’s voice lowered with menace. “You’re talking about the president of the United States. He’s been shot. He could be dying.”

  “He’s already dead.”

  The woman kept glancing from Dresden to her companion, gauging, guessing what each would do. The man seemed unsure.

  “I think you’d better shut your mouth,” he said finally.

  “I’ll say what I damn well please in this bar.”

  “I think you better take it back about the president asking to get shot.”

  The man appeared as muscular as he was richly dressed. His deeply tanned face had mean lines in it, but his eyes were weak. He seemed the sort who would fend off competition with raised hackles and growls, not by going for the throat of the first challenger; the sort to establish his territory with expensive suits and women, and no do
ubt a very expensive car outside. He was not the sort to piss in the dirt upwind. When necessary, Dresden was.

  “A hundred dollars says he’s dead,” said Charley. “Surely you have a hundred dollars on you.”

  “I’m not going to bet on the life of the president of the United States.”

  “Two hundred dollars then. We’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Five hundred dollars!”

  It was not the woman’s companion who spoke but another voice, one Dresden knew too well. He turned in his seat to see James Xavier Ireland hulking over him, one hand on the back of Dresden’s chair, the other clutching hundred-dollar bills. Ireland had once been his boss and friend. He had long since ceased being either.

  “Put up or shut up, Charley. Five hundred dollars. You’ve been ruining my lunch. If you can’t put up the money, then for God’s sake, shut up!”

  Ireland was now owner and president of Channel Three. A onetime protégé of Dresden’s television pioneer father, he had given Charley his first real job. Most station owners would have been back in their news rooms at such a time, grandly interfering with the news director’s efforts to respond locally to the assassination attempt. But Jim Ireland always prided himself on being a man who knew how to delegate authority, which was to say, he hated having anything to interrupt his lunch.

  “I’ll write you a check,” Dresden said, reaching into his coat pocket. Ireland, a big man, stayed his hand.

  “No you don’t, Charley. But I’ll tell you what. If you don’t have the money, we’ll go for different stakes. If the president turns out to be dead, and you win, I’ll stop having lunch at Antoine’s. But if you lose, if it turns out he’s alive, as seems to be the case. If he comes on the screen and smiles and waves. Then, Charley, you stay out of Antoine’s and you never come in here again! Is it a bet?”

  The bartender leaned forward. “I’ll take care of this, Mr. Ireland. Charley, why don’t you take off for a while? Just go somewhere and cool off. It’s a bad time. Here, I’ll take care of this.” He picked up Dresden’s check and began tearing it into pieces.

  The woman turned away completely. Dresden stood up and drank the last of his Manhattan.

  “It’s a bet,” he said to Ireland. Then, pushing past him, he walked slowly out into the brilliant sunshine.

  It was four blocks back to Dresden’s office—six, if he didn’t want to walk past the Channel Three studios. Still feeling the humiliation of his long ago firing from there, he seldom did. Today he would. Today he felt bold.

  Dresden passed up the Burger King for the taco stand. Cheeseburgers were cheeseburgers, but a satisfactory Mexican meal required wine, even a meal of tacos. He had most of a half gallon bottle of Almaden burgundy in his office. It was a day for drink.

  His advertising agency, as he grandiosely called it, was in an old, two-story stucco building, with a cracked and faded red-tile roof and a long balcony that ran across the front of the second story, where Dresden’s office was. He did much of his thinking on that balcony, which was sheltered by a large old palm tree and had a pleasant view of the street. There was a beauty shop on the first floor, and Charley enjoyed dragging his swivel chair out and watching the customers come and go, especially in hot weather.

  The sign on his door said THE DRESDEN ORGANIZATION. He still laughed to himself at the pretentiousness of that, but he had never thought of changing it. His father had used that name for one of his unsuccessful companies, his last.

  There was some mail on the floor. He sorted through it quickly with his foot, kicking those envelopes that looked to contain bills apart from those that might contain checks, except that, ultimately, none looked to contain checks. His secretary, Isabel Torrijos, was not yet back from lunch. Perhaps she had taken them to the bank. Isabel was religious. She prayed for checks.

  Shoving the mail aside, he went through the reception area into his own office, a large room with rear windows overlooking the alley. All was a little dusty, but the furniture had originally been expensive. Among the Mexican prints on the wall were a few framed advertising awards. Prominent on the long shelves that lined one wall were the four Emmys he had won, three at Channel Three and another at a station in San Francisco. They and the dusty office were all that was left to him of his career, the definitive summation of his professional life.

  He set the bag of tacos on his desk, filled a coffee cup with wine, and eased himself into his chair. His life. He sipped from the cup. “There is no wealth but life.” John Ruskin had written that. Dresden’s father had often lectured him with that quotation.

  Dresden’s dead father. This room and its contents were the definitive summation of that man’s life as well. Charley sipped again. The wine was good, but the aftertaste was the slightest bit off. He had left the jug on the shelf too long. He would have to drink this up soon.

  His phone rang, a briefly startling intrusion. He stared at the instrument a moment, forcing himself to put aside optimistic thoughts of another client, preparing himself for someone to whom he still owed money. There weren’t many. Seared by the havoc caused by his father’s huge debts and crushing bankruptcy, Dresden always paid off his creditors as soon as possible. Inhaling deeply as he stiffened his posture, he picked up the receiver.

  It was only Cooper, the owner of the principal saloon in Tiburcio, the old mining town in the mountains west of Santa Linda where Dresden had lived for nearly all his fifteen years in California. Cooper, a retired Coast Guard officer, was calling to ask if Dresden knew anything more about the assassination attempt on the president. Charley started to say he was sure the president was dead, but caught himself in time, realizing that line of discourse would be better saved for when he was once again in Cooper’s saloon. Instead, he said, “It’s just what you see on television.”

  “Was it the KGB?”

  “They haven’t told me, Coop. I’ll see you tonight.”

  He hung up. Even if he were still with Channel Three, he wouldn’t be able to say anything more certifiably factual than that. Cooper often acted as though Charley were a regular guest at the White House, simply because he had been in television.

  A glint of reflected sunlight caught the wings of one of the Emmys on the shelf, rendering it instantly glorious. “If you want to win awards, Charley Dresden’s the best,” his advertising colleagues were fond of saying. “But his commercials just don’t sell.” Father unto son.

  Dresden’s father Max had been one of the founding geniuses of American television, reigning as such for ten years in the 1940s and 1950s, until his network was bought by investors interested solely in money and having few scruples about what went onto the screen to fetch it. Max Dresden had resigned in high anger, shortly before he would have been fired, and then went through a succession of lesser television and advertising jobs, and finally his own unsuccessful firms. Ultimately bankrupt, he had shot himself, leaving no insurance.

  Charley had been about to enter his sophomore year at New York University when his father had fired that shot into his head, making a grotesquerie of the front seat of his mother’s expensive and unpaid for Mercedes. When the big house in Westchester was sold and the debts settled, his mother took a job in a local village shop. His sister, Augusta, went slightly insane and married the first wealthy man who would have her. Charley supported himself in New York City as best he could, attending night school. Then Jim Ireland had “saved” him.

  Once a network protégé of Dresden’s father, Ireland had bought into Santa Linda’s Channel Three when it had been a small and failing concern and had turned it into one of the most profitable television stations in California. He was happy to offer his old benefactor’s son a job.

  As Santa Linda grew, rivaling the sprawl of nearby San Jose, just across the mountains, Charley Dresden prospered, too, for a time. Originally hired as a writer of commercials, he became production chief, assistant program director, and program director in quick succession.

  But Ireland insisted upon ru
nning the station as an efficient business, not a stage for the creative indulgences of a self-styled genius with sometimes terrifying social habits. Dresden occasionally came to work drunk, and sometimes with girlfriends. He had Wagner, Eric Satie, and other favorite composers booming from a phonograph in his office throughout the day.

  One morning when a sound effects record on Dresden’s office phonograph accidentally entertained nearby staff with the sound of speeding railroad trains, Ireland could take no more and fired Dresden without further discussion. He gave Charley a particularly generous severance, a year’s salary, in part out of his loyalty to Charley’s father but mostly because he hoped Charley would use it to travel far—with luck, all the way back to New York. But Charley stubbornly stayed on in California.

  Familiar noises announced the office door opening and Isabel’s return. She looked in, her dark, pretty face brightening at seeing actual work on his desk in addition to the wine and tacos. She helped support a family that included six children besides herself, and was engaged to a pharmacist at the drugstore down the street.

  “There was a check from Frank’s Used Cars,” she said. “Three hundred ten dollars.”

  “They owe me twenty-one hundred dollars.”

  “That’s why I thought a three-hundred-ten-dollar one might actually be good. I got it into the bank as fast as I could.”

  “If it clears, give yourself a hundred of it. A bonus.”

  “Charley …”

  “If through some miracle it actually does clear, we should both consider it a bonus. That bastard keeps trying to pay me off with one of his used cars.”

  She smiled again. “You’d be better off with a bounced check.”

  He finished the cold taco and dropped the bag into his wastebasket, returning to his work. It did not proceed well. His gaze kept shifting to his office television set. Finally, pouring more wine, he turned it on. A tall, bearded man identified on the screen as Walter Kreski, director of the Secret Service, was speaking to a crowd of noisy, shouting reporters. As best as Dresden could determine, the man was saying that a Hispanic illegal alien had been identified as the gunman in the assassination attempt.