By Order of the President

by Kilian, Michael;

  “Charley. I’ve decided to divorce George.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders, but she stiffened. She did not pull away, but he saw ample reason to keep his embrace loose—friendly, comforting, but formal.

  “It has nothing to do with you, Charley. No, that’s not quite true. You’re a symptom. That night in California, that was a symptom. But you’re not the cause. I don’t need you in my life, Charley. My problem is that I no longer want George in my life.”

  “You won’t believe this, but in a way, I’ve always liked George. I was, I suppose, rotten to him, didn’t respect him at all, but I liked him. He was always a gentleman to me.”

  “A very old-country-type Italian gentleman, Charley. You have no idea what that can be like.”

  “Well, perhaps not.”

  “It can be goddamn hell. They’re one of the wealthiest families in California. But George is just like his wealthy Italian old-country-gentleman father, who in too many terrible ways is just like George’s unwealthy Italian old-country-peasant grandfather. We have all this money, Charley; all these houses. But the only help I’ve had is cleaning women whom I finally persuaded George to have come in every day. All the kitchen work, anything that doesn’t have to do with cleaning toilets, that falls to me. On purpose. The kitchen is where the woman belongs, in the old-country way, just like his mother. And on top of all this has been Washington and Congress and politics. Trips for the vice president. Trips with the vice president. Trips to NATO and every other place. Trips back to the district almost every weekend. Trips to fund-raising dinners. It’s a truly horrible life here, Charley Dresden, with Senator George Calendiari. The only saving grace is that his old-country mother is convinced it’s his constant traveling and politicking that has kept us from having children, and not some dreadfully un-Catholic Nordic chastity on my part. When he is home he drops his underwear and socks at the foot of the bed and expects me to pick them up in the morning. When he’s done with his newspaper he drops it on the carpet. I’m supposed to pick it up. He smokes cigars, and in all our married life he’s never emptied an ashtray. Not once. When the cleaning women aren’t there I’m supposed to answer all the telephone calls. And sometimes he gets them all day—and night.”

  “I don’t think you’re guilty of dreadfully un-Catholic Nordic chastity.”

  “Of all the things you could have said at this point, of all the thousands of words you could have spoken, you just picked the very worst ones.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.”

  He thought she would pull completely away, but instead she relaxed, coming closer to him, her soft, fine golden hair brushing his face.

  “Damn you, Charley.”

  “I didn’t mean what you think I mean.”

  “I know what you mean. I wish you hadn’t miraculously appeared today. I wish you would miraculously disappear. Forever. I had it all figured out. I was going to tell him right after the holidays. I have it all figured out. I’ve got to leave and he’s got to learn to shift for himself. But he shows absolutely no disposition to do so. Not for even a few minutes a day. Like all these goddam politicians, like everybody in government. Like these great Washington journalists, who are the worst of all, he thinks he’s God. He thinks he’s running the country, bearing all the burdens of the world. I’ve had enough. More than enough.”

  Dresden was wearing gloves, and she was not. He took both her hands in his. He stared at her eyes until she finally looked up into his.

  “I understand,” he said.

  “If I help you, by having George help you, it’ll mess everything up. I’ll be taking on a big obligation to him, and I don’t want to owe him anything ever again.”

  “I understand that. I won’t lie to you. I want your help anyway. I need for you to obligate yourself to him. I know you may cut me off forever because I’m saying this, because I’m asking so much. But I need you. I need George.”

  “Just to meet with Laurence Atherton.”

  “That’s not all. I need to go to New York, for the rest of the proof. I need you to come with me. I’ve no one else I can ask.”

  She put her head against his shoulder.

  “That’s all I can say. I’ve nothing more to say,” he said. Gently, he pulled her closer. “I don’t know what’s happening between us. I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I never harmed anybody. I just get a little crazy about things.”

  “Where are you staying, Charley? Where are you hiding out?”

  “At the Embassy Row Hotel.”

  She looked up, her eyes brimming with tears, but a brave sort of smile on her lips.

  “You’re a most stylish fugitive.”

  “It works out.”

  Now she pulled so close to him he could feel her breasts.

  “Help me, Charley. Help me every way you can. Help me the way you want me to help you.”

  “Maddy, I’d kill for you.”

  She stepped back. Her expression was all frozen again, as it had been in the store.

  “Once again, you’ve said exactly the wrong thing. Now I’m losing my trust in you. Now you’re scaring the hell out of me, Charley.”

  Maddy’s hard look into his eyes was searching, doubting, fearing.

  “Be in your room at eight P.M.,” she said. “If I decide to help you, to be with you, I’ll come then. If not, not. And that will be it with us, forever. You understand that? No popping up at meat counters.”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. I’ll drive you back to your car. Then I’ll do some thinking. A lot of thinking. Damn it all, Charley. Why are you and George the only men in all my life I’ve ever loved?”

  “Because I’m damned lucky.”

  “For once you’ve said the right thing. But I haven’t made up my mind. I’m not sure I’ll come. I don’t think I will.”

  “My life has been run by other people ever since the president was shot. I’ll abide with whatever you decide. I promise. Now I’m going to say the wrong thing again, Madeleine Margrit Anderson Calendiari. I love you.”

  She closed her eyes, an invitation. He kissed her, gently, as gently as the falling snowflakes. Her lips were sweetly dry and warm.

  “I still don’t think I’ll come,” she said.

  The knock at his hotel-room door came at nine-twenty P.M. He reached for his pistol, then thought better of it, and hurriedly slipped the big revolver into a dresser drawer. The new bottle of whiskey atop the dresser he didn’t bother to hide. If it was Madeleine, the pistol would frighten her away. The whiskey she wouldn’t like, but would expect.

  If it wasn’t her, he was probably done for anyway. He hesitated, then swung open the door. She carried a small overnight case.

  “I wasn’t going to come,” she said, stepping into the room. He closed the door quickly. “I really wasn’t. I made up my mind. Then I got the call from Europe. It wasn’t even George; just some staff aide. He said George would be delayed two days because he had to go to Bonn for some meeting with the German defense minister. He said George would have called himself, but it was the middle of the night over there and he’d gone to bed.”

  She set down her case, glancing at the whiskey bottle as he helped her off with her coat.

  “It just made me so goddamn mad,” she said. “I’ve already been alone in that house for four days. And he wouldn’t even make the call himself.”

  She looked again at the whiskey bottle and went to an armchair, taking off her shoes and then leaning her head back and closing her eyes.

  “Make me a drink, Charley. I don’t intend to become a drunk like my friend Stephanie Pernell. That’s one of the reasons I have to leave George. But now I really need a drink. I don’t intend to become a whore like Stephanie either. That’s why I’ve come to you. I need a man, but I don’t want to start picking up strangers. Somehow, with you, I still feel like an honest woman.”

  He handed her a glass filled with ice and scotch.

  “I don’t know I
’m at all in love with you, Charley. I didn’t really believe you when you said you’d fallen for me again.”

  “I meant it.”

  She smiled, wearily. “Your problem is that you’ve stayed in love with all the women you ever loved.”

  He smiled sadly.

  “I’ll have this drink and then we’ll make love, Charley. I’ll go to New York with you tomorrow. I don’t know what’s going to come of all this—what’s going to become of us. I just wish you weren’t in this awful mess.” She drank, with need and haste. “Do your best when you make love to me. Your very, very best. You owe it to me.”

  17

  Kreski’s last flight to Honduras had been aboard Air Force One five months before, during President Hampton’s much-publicized two-day visit to American troops in the camps and compounds in the combat areas along the Nicaraguan and El Salvadoran borders. Then they had been escorted by what seemed half the U.S. Air Force, including an AWACS radar mother ship and a squadron of F-15s.

  The chief fear then had been of ground-to-air missiles, and even worry of an actual attack by aircraft. The El Salvadorans only had some Soviet Yak-28s and a few leftover American Blackhawk helicopters, but the Nicaraguans were flying MIG 21s, OH-6s, and Alouette IIIs. Happily, they had restrained themselves, confining their response to the president’s visit to a nighttime strike at a Honduran army base hours after Hampton had left the country.

  Now, whatever the Nicaraguans’ mood, Kreski’s only protection was the neutrality of the Mexican airliner in which he was a passenger.

  The approach into Tegucigalpa was the same as it had been in Air Force One, and just as unnerving, flying straight in from the coast and low over the city and the murky little river that divided it in two, touching down on the lip of the high, hazy plateau to the west that itself was bordered by steep mountains.

  He was one of several Americans to come down the aircraft’s steps, and no one seemed to pay him any particular attention. There was military everywhere, mostly Honduran—the officers in crisp khaki uniforms, the enlisted men in rumpled, sweaty fatigues, nearly all wearing sunglasses.

  At customs, he found himself being studied by an American wearing a military beret and camouflage fatigues, though no rank or insignia. The man also wore mirrored sunglasses and carried what looked to be a NATO-issue 9 mm Beretta automatic on his webbed belt.

  Kreski glanced away, but noticed the man move to one of the Hondurans in business suits. In a moment the man in fatigues had disappeared and the Honduran was approaching Kreski. The heat and humidity had not bothered Kreski, but suddenly he began to sweat. He had no wish to begin—and end—this visit by being placed under arrest, or worse.

  The Honduran, a good foot shorter than Kreski, smiled. “You have cleared customs, señor,” he said. “You are free to go.”

  Once outside, he was beseiged by a swarm of taxi drivers. Brookes had told him he would be met at the airport, but had said nothing about the mob of jabbering cabbies. One pushed his way through the others, however, put his hand on Kreski’s bag, and said all he needed to: “Señor Kreski. Hemos reservado una habitation”—“We’ve reserved a room.”

  It proved to be not in a hotel, but in what in Tegucigalpa passed for an expensive residential high-rise, and it was not a single chamber but a one-bedroom apartment, with kitchen, bath, large living room, and balcony. The taxi driver had unlocked the door, handed him the key, set his bag just inside, and left. It was not until Kreski had closed the door behind him that he noticed the man in the chair near the balcony door. He was well dressed and very Latin, with very large dark eyes and a thick mustache. When he stood up he was as tall as Kreski. He was also very light complexioned.

  “Señor Kreski. I am Señor Sandoval—Jorge Sandoval Mejia. Welcome to Honduras.”

  Kreski shook his hand. “You work for Peter Brookes?”

  “Let us just say we have many mutual friends. Would you like some refreshment?” He nodded to a bar with many bottles. “Something cooling? There is an excellent local rum. To drink rum is to help the economy of this poor region.”

  “I’ll have a rum and tonic, then.”

  Sandoval moved to the bar. “And I will join you, but with a rum and Coca-Cola. They have changed the formula for Coca-Cola, unfortunately, but the drink is still called a Cuba Libre, correct?”

  Kreski nodded, but remained standing. Sandoval returned to his chair.

  “Cuba Libre. A wonderful phrase, but unlike the drink, the reality goes sour. Do you speak Spanish well, Señor Kreski?”

  “Well enough to get by, I suppose.”

  “But not well enough to tell that I am not Honduran. My accent is Cuban. I am an American. I grew up in Florida. My father owned a hotel in Havana. He went to Miami after Battista was overthrown and got a job as a waiter. Shortly after that he was headwaiter and soon he was managing the hotel. Finally, he owned his own hotel again, though not a large one. Sadly, he returned to Cuba, at night, with old comrades. Several times.” Sandoval raised his glass. “Cuba libre. One time he never came back.”

  Sandoval drank, staring at Kreski over the rim of his glass.

  “Now I own the hotel,” he continued. “And some other things. When I can, I try to be helpful. I am here to be helpful to you. We will introduce you to anyone you want to meet. We will take you wherever you want to go. The taxidriver who brought you here will be waiting outside and will be at your disposal whenever you are in Tegucigalpa. When you want to go out into the countryside we will provide more rugged transportation and additional protection.”

  “When and why will I be wanting to go into the countryside? Into the war zone?”

  Sandoval smiled. “The war zone is everywhere, señor. You are a policeman. You will go where you think you must, where your instincts and the evidence leads you. But we strongly suggest that you include three items on your itinerary. One is to join me and a Colonel Victores of the Guardia Nacionale for dinner tonight. He is a most charming gentleman, a very pleasant and interesting conversationalist. He may also be the only honest policeman in the country, his only corruption being that he is heavily in the pay of Americans.”

  “You mean the CIA?”

  “I merely said Americans, not the American government. We also strongly urge you to visit Huerta’s village, where he had his farm and where his people were murdered. And we would like you also to go to the town on the coast where he was last seen before he turned up several weeks later as a corpse in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This town will be the most difficult to visit, for there is a large American military presence in the area and frequent fighting. We will do all for you that we can.”

  He stood up, draining his glass and returning it to the bar.

  “In the meantime, you should find everything here that you might need.”

  “I was expecting a hotel. Is there a place nearby where I can get American newspapers?”

  “I will have the Miami Herald brought here every day. I will have this morning’s brought to you this afternoon. Also, the Mexico City English-language paper, and the most reliable newspaper published here in Tegucigalpa—if your Spanish is good enough to follow it.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Bueno. It isn’t reliable enough.” Sandoval started toward the door, then halted. “Did you bring a weapon, señor? Probably not.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “We will provide you with one. Weapons are plentiful everywhere now in Honduras—in Central America. As numerous as the insects. You will need one.”

  “As you say. I’m familiar with them.”

  Sandoval paused just once more, this time with his hand on the doorknob. “I would suggest also, señor, that you keep off the balcony, though the view is very pleasant when there is no haze. And that you not go for aimless strolls on your own. As I say, weapons are everywhere in Honduras, and everywhere is in its way a war zone. Until tonight, then. I will pick you up at ten P.M. The restaurant is not far.”

  Maddy drove
, insisting on it after examining Dresden’s injured knee and other wounds when they awoke in the morning. She insisted also on his returning the aging Chevette, though the rental agency’s neighborhood clearly frightened her, and on using her bright yellow Mercedes for the New York trip instead. His argument that it was conspicuous was not persuasive. She had become used to many things. She would stay with him, but she would not part with her car.

  “You’re speeding,” he said. “It won’t help at all to be stopped by the police.”

  “Everyone speeds on the New Jersey Turnpike. Who can blame them? This must be the worst stretch of countryside in America.”

  “They named one of the rest stops after Joyce Kilmer.”

  “Only in New Jersey would they name a urinal after one of America’s great poets.” She smiled at him and briefly took his hand. Her fear and trembling of the night before had disappeared. He sensed an excitement in her. He supposed it was not because she anticipated or appreciated the danger they were rushing toward. It was that they were breaking utterly free, however temporarily, from her world, the world of Washington, the world of George Calendiari. She had begun her estrangement, thrillingly, and with love. However tenuously, she’d grabbed hold of some tangible happiness. She was delightful. If it weren’t for all the corpses strewn about in his all-too-vivid memory, it would have seemed they’d been brought together again through some wonderful act of divine intercession.

  He’d been glancing back at the following traffic with some frequency, paying particular attention to those who stayed too near too long, but he’d seen no one to alarm him. A state police cruiser had taken note of Maddy’s California license plate, but that was logical. It said U.S. SENATE.

  “We’ll be in New York within the hour,” she said. “We can have a late lunch. You don’t know how much I’m looking forward to that. Washington hasn’t quite got the knack of great restaurants yet, especially in Georgetown, where we congressional ladies are always having to go for our socializing. But now, a genuine first-class New York meal.”