By Order of the President

by Kilian, Michael;

  “Especially because of that. We’d very much like to talk to you about it. We can have our San Francisco man meet with you whenever it’s convenient. Even tonight, if need be.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “We’re prepared to pay you well. Say, a thousand dollars?”

  “A thousand dollars? That tape of the shooting isn’t all I have, you know. I now have evidence that the president’s appearance on television last night was a phony. It was a heavily edited and dubbed tape that they rigged for the occasion. It was the president’s face, sure. But the voice belonged to someone else. I have proof of that. Actual voice prints.”

  “Well, Mr. Dresden, if you can show us that, I’d have to say our interest would change to downright enthusiasm! And that figure I cited would change to ten thousand. Or more! Who knows?”

  And there he’d be on the cover, along with Liz Taylor entering another fat farm and a picture of some headless animal. Charles Dresden, just another looney-tune from the land of the bunny rabbits.

  “Triple no thank you. Good-bye.”

  He hung up the phone hurriedly, as though the man’s hand might somehow reach out for him through the receiver. He left the building just as hurriedly, upset by the risk he’d almost run. He should have ended the conversation after the first “no thank you.” He should not have told the man anything. They could have recorded what little he did say and might well run some vague sort of story anyway, anything to justify some not-so-vaguely sensational headline.

  A few minutes before he’d felt so confident and smug about what Tracy had given him he’d thought of going to Antoine’s in search of Jim Ireland and the ultimate showdown. Not now. As he drove by the restaurant and Channel Three’s studios in the Hawker-Siddeley, both places seemed to have an eerie cast to them, and made him shudder. He needed friendship and security, and that lay west over the ridge in Tiburcio. Though he had picked up the phone in wild hopes of hearing Madeleine’s voice, he desperately needed Zack.

  She was not home. She did not appear by anything that might be construed as dinner time, nor an hour after that. Dresden had contritely and assiduously avoided even the thought of drink as he waited, but his agitation became too much for him and he broke his resolve, mixing some Coca-Cola with an inch of old Greek brandy. It was the last liquor he had left in the house.

  He took his glass up to the lanai and settled into the swing. Its view of the road was ample, but the cars that came along were few, and none stopped or even slowed. It was getting cold. This would not do. There was nothing for it but the Tiburcio Saloon and Grocery. If Zack were interested in any kind of reconciliation, she would know to find him there. Leaving a light on in the living room and over the kitchen door, Dresden drove the short, familiar distance that his car could by now doubtless manage all by itself.

  There were few at the bar and no one brought up Charley’s indiscretions of the night before. He forced himself to drink sedately, filling the time by playing the jukebox and joining in the general conversation. He did not ask to have the television set turned on at news time, nor did anyone else. Twice he had to fight off the impulse to telephone his house, in the last instance quite resolutely. It was no way to deal with his difficulties with Zack, which involved much that could not or would not be spoken. If she was home, she could have no doubt as to where he was. If she was there waiting as impatiently as he, not wanting to risk another encounter in the bar, closing time wasn’t that far off. She most likely would not be there, and he didn’t want to submit himself to the loneliness of an empty house before he had to.

  That much, at least, he was spared. At about twenty minutes to midnight, Danny Hill came in, breathless and anxious.

  “It’s happened, Charley,” he said, standing at the bar without pulling up a stool and shaking his head as Cooper began to reach for a bottle of beer. “My ex-wife just called. Her brothers have worked themselves up into a fucking fit with the vino and are headed down here.”

  “You sound scared this time.”

  “If you think I’m scared, you should have heard her.”

  “No problem,” said Charley, reaching for his keys. He pulled off the one to his kitchen door. “If Zack’s not there, use this. If she is, she’ll be glad to put you up on the couch. You’re as much her friend as you are mine.”

  “Muchas, muchas gracias.”

  “We’ll tell them we haven’t seen you all night,” said Cooper.

  “No. That won’t do,” Dresden said. “We’ll tell them you went off with some housewife from Santa Linda. A woman in her fifties with a big car. They’ll believe that.”

  “You’re not coming?” Hill asked.

  “Not yet,” said Dresden. “If Zack is there, tell her I’m here, and that I’ll be along. Unless she wants to join me here.”

  “Okay, amigo. I think I’ll leave by the back.”

  It was full into the middle of the night in Washington, yet Kreski was in his living room, in his pajamas, Mahler playing mournfully on his stereo and an untouched glass of wine on the table before him—something to stare into, not to drink.

  His wife appeared in the doorway, tying her robe.

  “Again?”

  “Yup. Can’t sleep. Again.”

  “After what they did to you in Congress today, I don’t blame you.” She sat down beside him and took his hand in hers.

  “It was worse seeing it replayed on television. They left out every significant and responsible thing I said. I came across looking like an incompetent war criminal.”

  “I couldn’t watch it. I turned it off. You didn’t wake me when you came in.”

  “One of us should sleep. I’m told they have even worse planned for tomorrow. One of our men somehow managed to fire off an accidental round this afternoon on the Sequoia. The vice president was using it. Why the hell he thought this is a time for yacht cruises is beyond me.”

  “That certainly wasn’t your fault. You were testifying.”

  “Some bleeding heart idiot in the House is even suggesting that we be disarmed except under special circumstances, like British police. The hell with them. They won’t have me to kick around tomorrow. I’m going to go out of town. I probably won’t be back until the following morning.”

  “Why, Walt?”

  “In the sacred name of the investigation. I’m going to try to talk to a man in Colorado. The famous Peter Ashley Brookes.”

  “On the late news, they said that one of his books turned up among that man Huerta’s things.”

  “Yes. Copley decided it would appease the press to release a list of the inventory. He should have gone into public relations instead of the law. He’s certainly better at it than I am.”

  “Shouldn’t his people be talking to Brookes?”

  “I’m sure they are. Or will be. I just want to talk to him myself.”

  “Why?”

  “I have the strong sense that Copley wants me to, and I don’t know why. Maybe I’ll come up with an answer. Also, it falls within my authority to do so and I’ll admit I’m for any excuse I can get to avoid going up to the Hill tomorrow. Besides, damn it, I can’t think of anything else to do with this rotten damn investigation. Every door we’ve opened has led to another door, but in the end they’ve led nowhere. All my astounding tire track discovery has produced is an APB for six different kinds of big cars that use that size radial. All the agents’ stories check out. But we have to keep at this. I’ve got to keep doing something.”

  “You do what you feel you must, Walt. That’s always been good enough for me.”

  “And I’ve always counted on you for that. But this time it may get me into trouble. I probably won’t survive this, you know. Politically. My career may soon be at an end. It may already be. The first question today was whether I should keep my job.”

  “We’ll survive it in all the other ways. You just make sure you do what you must.”

  He smiled, wearily, and kissed her cheek. “My problem is that I can’t seem to fi
gure out just what that is. I’ve never before felt so stupid and helpless. And scared. I try to keep it from everybody, but I’m scared to death. I don’t think this thing is over.”

  “The investigation? Of course not.”

  “I mean the assassination attempt. I think Bushy Ambrose is right. Politically wrong, politically crazy, but right. I think the president’s still in great danger, and if I were Mr. Atherton, I’d go find myself a fort too. I keep telling him that. I tell Shawcross that. They sent Mrs. Atherton to Williamsburg, but otherwise I’m ignored. I guess we no longer give the orders.”

  “Walt. Come to bed. Around here I give the orders.”

  He surrendered, though it would do no good. She had no idea the things he still saw when he closed his eyes.

  By closing time neither Danny Hill’s brothers-in-law nor Zack had made an appearance. Dresden resigned himself to the obvious. She, at least, was not going to appear. He was condemned to return to a darkened house, an empty bed, a snoring Hill on the couch, and not even the makings of a decent drink. That was the only thing he could remedy. He bought a bottle of bar whiskey from Cooper on the tab, and slowly walked with it out to his car, the saloon’s last customer. The night sky was extraordinarily clear and starry. Gazing up at it, he thought he might restore his spirits with a walk.

  Better than that would be a drive, to a place he’d not been in weeks. As he started his car, he wondered if the old Hawk would be up to it, but the engine commenced with such encouraging vigor he decided to take the risk.

  He repaid the automobile with kindly driving once he had turned up onto the mountain road. The surface became quite rutted and stony in the steep switchbacks that began after he passed the entrance to Tiburcio’s now abandoned silver mine, compelling him to slow nearly to a stop on the turns to protect the car’s old suspension. But wheezing like an aging runner, the Hawker-Siddeley finally bounced onto the grassy summit.

  Stepping out into the odd quiet of the windless night, he glanced about. Often this place was used by lovers, but none were in sight or hearing. What was in view was his world as seen by the gods. To the east, shimmering in its valley, was Santa Linda in the only manifestation of beauty it ever displayed. Below, to the west, Tiburcio was a friendly cluster of warm and tiny lights. The glimmer on the far distant horizon to the north was San Jose. To the southwest, were it daylight and the weather still this clear, a glimpse of the sea would be visible through the saddle of a mountain pass.

  Dresden felt what he always did atop this mountain, a sense of awe that such a place existed and a sense of exultant possession. There was also a reaffirmation of his faith in the sufficiency of this magical kingdom, his.

  What had provoked this madness in him, this compulsive fascination with a distasteful mystery in a dreary, forbidding Washington that could scarcely be imagined from this California prospect? Television had done it. Television had intruded all this unpleasantness upon him. It was his life’s work. It had also been his father’s death. He had stubbornly, proudly, refused to abandon it, refused to accept his father’s defeat, and now television was extracting a terrible price. Tiburcio, his advertising agency, Zack, Isabel, Tracy, they were all he had, and he was losing them fast.

  Perhaps. Perhaps not quite yet. He eased himself onto the car’s left front fender, opened his bottle, and drank. The alcohol, he supposed, was part of the evil television was working upon him. Like most everyone in Tiburcio, he had indulged in drinking as a recreation, but usually with some care and wisdom. Two years before, when he had been so successful and made such a remarkable amount of money, he had drunk only white or rosé wine, and often not even that. Now, in the mad course of a few days, he’d been driven to flooding his system with the poisonous stuff like a lush on a bender. He may well have become such a lush.

  That could be determined on the morrow. This night he would accept the whiskey’s exhiliration and solace at least one more time. For it was, after all, a momentous occasion. He was at last coming to terms with the requirement of making a resolute and final decision. He could wait no longer.

  The Greek historian Herodotus had written of the village elders of ancient Persia that it was their custom to deliberate on important matters while drunk and then reconsider them in sobriety. If they through inadvertence came to a conclusion while sober, they would often reflect again upon it after having become blotto. Dresden was putting his morning’s decision to the same set of tests. Without haste, moving his gaze from point to point in the panorama around him, he consumed something approaching half the bottle. It was enough. He was done. He was still sure. He’d do it. He’d quit this thing, and forget President Hampton ever existed.

  He went to the boot of the car where he had locked his all-important briefcase with the tapes and voice analysis inside. Retrieving it, he climbed a slight rise at the edge of the clearing that gave way to the mountain’s steepest slope. With a gleeful, echoing shout of liberation, he swung the briefcase and flung it spinning into the void. Then, after one last ceremonial swallow of whiskey, he hurled the bottle after it.

  His joy diminished to mere sleepiness by the time he reached the bottom of the mountain and the canyon floor, but there was much contentment.

  It was not long-lasting.

  All the lights were out at his house, including the one over the kitchen door. Silently cursing Danny Hill, and his own tipsy state, he struggled for a long time trying to get his spare key in his door, before discovering it was unlocked. He entered quietly, for, in happy surprise, he had found Zack’s Triumph parked in its customary place in the drive. Waiting a moment for his vision to adjust to the darkness, he made another meaningful decision. Whatever Zack’s mood in the morning, he would, without waking her, slip into their bed. Hill’s occupying the couch would provide excuse. He was in no mood now for the hard floor.

  But Hill was not on the couch. He was for some reason sleeping on the rug near the living room doorway. Perhaps he had managed somehow to become drunk, though Dresden could hear no sound of snoring. Stepping carefully over his friend, he proceeded to the bedroom, where he was made curious again. Zack, though naked, was not in the bed but kneeling as though in prayer against the foot of it. But one did not pray with one’s arms hanging behind one. In sudden consuming terror, he reached frantically to turn on the light, wishing instantly he had not, wishing now for a thousand million things that could never, ever be.

  She had been shot, a hole as neat and round and large as the one he had put in the wall by the corner of his window, in the middle of her back, another less well-defined crimson circle at the back of her head. The bedclothes were red with blood. With trembling hand, he reached to touch her shoulder, as though this were all some macabre joke she would end by leaping up and shouting, “Surprise!”

  She did not. In response to the urgent grasp of his fingers on her cold flesh, her body fell back, legs bending stiffly at the knees, her horrible bloody mask of a face staring upward at him as her head came to rest by his feet.

  Staggering backward, numb now, he turned on another lamp and went to his friend Hill, peering down in horror. Danny was fully clothed, though his shirt was badly torn. His shirt was all by which Dresden could recognize him, for his face had been beaten into a jellified red, purple, and greenish lump with only one dead eye visible. Dresden began to retch, the angry gods taking back the whiskey as they had the lives of these two dear, innocent people. He swore and cried, uselessly. There was no one to hear.

  11

  After the sickness came paralysis. Dresden stumbled to his couch, closing his eyes, not moving—after a moment not able to move. He decided this could not possibly be happening to him. He was still on the mountain and drunk, having some sort of delirium. Or he was in Maddy Anderson’s bed, tormented in sleep with guilt for having broken faith with Zack.

  He opened his eyes and the bodies were still there in the stark lamplight, unmoving, as though they had always been there and would always be, permanent fixtures of his hou
se, of his life. That they would be, forever and ever and ever, no matter what desperate means he might use to drown the memory.

  His life. It had been rendered a useless, pointless, rapidly perishing commodity, worth a few days or hours. Or minutes. He had thought he could simply back away from whatever the terrible secret was he had been pursuing, that the decision to ignore it would make it cease to exist, or at least exist only in some immeasurably distant place far beyond all his horizons. But the keepers of that dreadful secret had reached through all time and space and limit and found his small life and tried to smash at it as one might some skittering insect’s, as they had smashed Charlene’s and Danny Hill’s. They had heard his small, ridiculous, inconsequential voice raised in feckless protest at what they were doing and decided to silence it with the most expeditious ruthlessness. They had nearly succeeded. They had missed him only through mischance. A second blow from them could come at any moment. A gunsight might be centered on the back of his head that instant, the tiny pull of a finger all that was required to destroy him.

  He bolted for the light switch and then stood in the sudden darkness, his breathing heavy in fear as he waited for his vision to adjust, as he waited for his mind to work. Sweat was covering his chest and neck. His hands tingled.

  He had to flee at once. His shock, anger, and helplessness had first combined in frustration, and a compelling urge to do nothing more than call the police, to summon the forces of law. But that would be utter madness. They would look no further than one suspect: Charles August Dresden, who was still known throughout the canyon as the man who had shot Curley Lewes, who had fought with Zack the night before just after Cooper had taken his gun away, who had now been drinking for hours in the saloon and upon returning home had found his woman naked with his friend. There would be no search for mysterious strangers. If the true killer or killers didn’t gun him down, he’d just be meat for the police. He’d pass this night either dead or in some filthy, sour-smelling cell.