By Order of the President

by Kilian, Michael;

  “Did I hurt you? Your wound …”

  “No. There isn’t anything.”

  He lifted himself on his elbow and reached to touch her brow with his fingers, and then her lips, which were cold and trembling. He brushed her cool cheek.

  “I’ll get us out of here,” he said.

  “It wouldn’t make any difference.”

  He tried one more idea.

  “You’ve made a difference. We both have. You said you wanted to help the country get out of its trouble and you have, very bravely. Thanks to these British, there’s a chance now to stop these terrible people for good. We can make this end happily.”

  “Not for us, Charley.”

  He sat up.

  “Go away now, Charley.”

  “I love you.”

  “Go. Don’t make love to me again. Don’t make love to the dead.”

  The next afternoon, the ambassador summoned him to his private study. President Hampton, back in his bathrobe, was on the television screen.

  “He’s come out again,” Hyde-Milne said, gesturing Dresden to a nearby chair. “Like the French fleet at Trafalgar. Yet he’s rambling on about the civil rights movement.”

  Dresden made a quick search of his memory. “It’s Martin Luther King’s birthday.”

  “A national holiday,” the ever-present Thompson reminded. “The only individual in this country honored with his own day.”

  “Hampton always waxed very eloquent on this occasion,” Dresden said. “It was his substitute for dealing very actively with race problems.”

  “Yes,” said the ambassador. “But listen to his voice. It’s clear as Waterford crystal. The hoarseness has utterly gone. Listen, it’s his old self.”

  “Very old self,” said Dresden. “I’d guess most of what you’re hearing is from last year’s speech.”

  Suddenly, Hampton switched the subject to Central America, making another, somewhat jarring appeal for national calm and unity in dealing with this time of crisis.

  “Bloody marvelous,” said Thompson.

  “And you’re going to tell us that he’s still quite dead,” said Hyde-Milne, “and that these words have all been ingeniously edited together and dubbed onto a videotape that itself has been ingeniously edited together.”

  “Of course. If you took voice prints, the trick would show up immediately.”

  “It looks as realistic as anything I’ve ever seen on television,” said Thompson.

  “It’s supposed to,” said Dresden.

  F.B.I. Director Steven Copley was driving down the Atlantic City Expressway from a heliport at Camden, New Jersey. He was past McKee City and almost to the Garden State Turnpike when the patch call he’d been trying to complete finally came through over his car phone.

  “Before going any farther, sir,” he said, “I must tell you we’re speaking over a very open line.”

  “Understood,” said Vice President Atherton. “Precisely.”

  Copley gestured to his driver to slow down. He didn’t know what his instructions might be. “We have located the subject,” he said. “In a hotel on the boardwalk. He’s been in there for hours. He’s had the room for weeks.”

  “You’ve made a positive identification?”

  “Yes, sir. The subject and a lady friend were observed in the hotel casino and they subsequently returned to their room. My men on the scene say they are there now.”

  They were very near the sea, and wide patches of mist hung shroudlike over the road.

  “Have they any protection?”

  “There’s one man in the lobby. I think they may have another one roving. They’re trying to keep a low profile this time.”

  There was silence on the line. His driver was staring hard at the road. Copley glanced back at the chase car he had following. It was keeping very close.

  “All right,” said Atherton at length. “Go get them. Bring him back to Washington by the quickest means possible. Be careful. I don’t want the sen—the subject hurt. I only want to talk to him. I simply must talk to him. We can bring him to our side. Then all will be well.”

  “I should perhaps remind you, sir, that the involuntary transport of a person across a state line is a federal offense.”

  “You’re just doing your duty. Damn it, get him!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded to his driver to increase their speed, then replaced the phone set and picked up his radio microphone.

  “All units,” he said. “Execute, execute.”

  What followed was audible to him only as confusion. Finally, one of his agents came on the air to announce that the subject was not to be found on the premises. When Copley pulled up in the hotel parking lot he came up to explain. Copley lowered the window, glowering at the man.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said the agent. “They took a whole row of connecting rooms. Dubarry came in one and went out another around the corner. It’s just like his Senate offices.”

  “Your men in the corridor missed him?”

  “They all rushed the room he went in.”

  “And your men in the lobby?”

  “He didn’t come out through the lobby.”

  Copley ran his hand wearily over his eyes.

  “They knew we were coming, sir,” said the agent. “This was all a setup to draw us in. They left this.”

  He handed Copley a business card with “United States Senate” printed on it. The card was one of Dubarry’s. On the back were written just two words: “You lose.”

  “We have a lot of mobile units in the area, sir. Do you want to try an intercept?”

  “No,” said Copley. “If we tried, they’d just pull this stunt all over again. We’ll let them win this one. We’ll see Senator Dubarry again at the State of the Union.”

  As they drove back across the state, Copley tore the card into tiny pieces, then tossed them out the open window into the car’s slipstream and the mist.

  25

  For the week preceding the scheduled date of the State of the Union address, the news reports had been vague and confusing, but generally in agreement that the president would deliver his speech via television from Camp David, as he had been speaking to the nation since the Gettysburg shooting. On the morning of the speech, however, the “Today Show” interrupted the first segment of its morning broadcast with a report from unnamed sources that the president would actually be making the address in public, a symbolic declaration that the national crisis was at last over. In the next hour’s segment, the report was simply repeated. By then, ABC’s “Good Morning America” had one of its own, more excited in tone, but more restrained in wording, to the same effect. “CBS Morning News” ignored the story entirely, but the network broke into a following soap opera with a bulletin citing unconfirmed reports that the president might actually appear in person.

  Subsequent radio news reports were a babble of confusion, with not a few radio preachers hastening onto the airwaves with sermons evoking Moses’s descent from the Mount. The headlines on extra editions of afternoon newspapers rushed onto the street hours ahead of press time all ended in question marks.

  In the White House, Vice President Atherton called an emergency meeting in the Roosevelt Room, made more comfortable in doing so because of National Security Adviser Malcom’s absence from the capital, reportedly for another unpublicized trip out of the country.

  For all its urgency, the meeting began with everyone around the table sitting in stunned or cautious silence. Finally, Atherton broke it.

  “All right,” he said. “If I didn’t want your opinion, I wouldn’t have asked for it. Just what the hell is going on?”

  After a moment’s additional silence, Press Secretary Neil Howard became the first to respond.

  “I think it’s more of the same. The rumors, leaks, and lies they’ve spread around this town are deeper now than the snow in the winter of ’79.”

  “Begging pardon,” said Merriman Crosby, “but that particularly harsh winter was 1976�
��1977.”

  “I recall there was a hell of a lot of snow in February or March of ’79.”

  “Damn it!” said Atherton, snapping forward in his chair. “We all know what’s at stake here! Let’s get damned serious.”

  “I tend to agree with Neil,” said the attorney general. “More deliberate confusion and obfuscation, designed to keep us off balance, prevent us from doing or saying anything before the president, or his facsimile, makes tonight’s speech.”

  “But our press conference isn’t scheduled until tomorrow morning,” said Atherton. “They know that.”

  “Should I call it off?” Howard asked.

  “They could have some bombshell planned for tonight,” said Shawcross. “Something calculated to render our press conference moot.”

  “Begging pardon,” said Crosby, “but it’s we who have the bombshell planned for tonight.”

  “Except it’s designed for late tonight and after the speech,” Wilson said. “And they may still know nothing about it.”

  “Just a minute, just a minute,” Atherton said. “Let’s back up here and return to our basic premise. I’ll ask the question again I’ve asked a hundred times. Is there anyone here who doubts the evidence that Dresden and Mrs. Calendiari brought us?”

  There was a universal shaking of heads.

  “Haven’t we checked it out that many times?”

  The shakes became nods. Atherton turned to Howard. “And you had the president’s Martin Luther King birthday tape analyzed?”

  “As I told you, in every way possible. Including voice prints. It was a complete phony.”

  “Precisely,” said Atherton, leaning back in his chair and swiveling back and forth. “So then. There can be no doubt that President Henry Hampton is dead. Long dead.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Therefore,” Atherton continued, “how can they possibly stop us? How can they resist the obvious, the truth? How can they obstruct the irrevocable processes of the Constitution and the Twenty-fifth Amendment? By God, they have to produce a president, and they can’t! Rollins himself has had to sit on his hands while that Larson resolution rolled through committee.”

  “There are things they can do outside the Constitution,” Shawcross said.

  “Damn it, Dick! I’m tired of hearing that. This is, may I remind you yet again, the United States of America!”

  “Wasn’t it,” said Merriman Crosby, wearily.

  “Just the same,” said Howard, “it might be smart to consider not showing up tonight.”

  “That may be exactly what they’re trying to scare us into,” said Shawcross.

  “Precisely,” said Atherton. “They’re the ones who are going to have a glaring absence to explain. It’s our whole purpose to be gloriously manifest.” His dark, shining eyes darted around the table. “Can any of you really offer a logical, plausible, and damned convincing reason why I should not appear? Why we should change our plans in any way whatsoever?”

  Once again, no one spoke. Shawcross scratched his balding head and Crosby drummed nervously on the table with his perfectly manicured fingers.

  Atherton studied his watch a moment. “All right. Here’s what I want you to do. Go back to your offices and do absolutely nothing else until twelve noon but strain your brains trying to think of such a reason. If you can, report to me at once. Otherwise, we proceed as planned.”

  The ambassador joined Maddy and Dresden for breakfast, which he had never before done. His conversation was brisk and amiable, but a diplomatic device. As he spoke, deftly weaving the morning’s news into practiced and disarming chatter, he was measuring them, assessing their moods, preparing them for something. His gentlemanly banter was lost on Maddy, who ate listlessly and mostly stared at her plate. Dresden engaged in the game, doing his part to help get them through the meal without tacit recognition of the stark realities he had no doubt would shortly confront them. As Maddy finished with a last sip of tea and set down her empty cup with a nervous rattle, Dresden decided that the ambassador was at last about to set them free.

  Hyde-Milne asked if they might join him in the drawing room, as he had an important matter to discuss. He put a solicitous hand to Maddy’s elbow as they proceeded down the great hall, but the chatter thereafter ceased. Dresden followed quietly after, his glance lingering on the paintings they passed in growing wonder if he would ever have opportunity to look upon them again. Graham Thompson, bony face flushed and not a little excitement in his eyes, was waiting. So was the man Llewellyn, though there was no discernible change in his demeanor.

  “Well, then,” said Hyde-Milne, when all were seated comfortably. “Today, as they say, is the day.”

  Maddy stared at him coldly, though with some curiosity. Dresden merely listened as casually as possible, which was difficult, as Thompson was staring at him.

  “As I said earlier, we’ve been keeping you here for your own safety,” the ambassador continued. “Under the circumstances, I can’t possibly think of another place safer in Washington for you to be.”

  “Maybe the Russian Embassy,” Dresden said. He had blurted that out, and it sounded churlishly ungrateful. Whatever the British might have in mind for them, they had without question saved Maddy’s life. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ambassador. One can go stir crazy even among Turners and Rembrandts.”

  “Stir crazy. Yes, of course.” The great eyebrows compressed for a moment, his only sign of irritation. “We would have arranged a more secure sanctuary for you outside of Washington, quite far out of Washington. It’s always been our intention to do so, at the appropriate time, which I have every expectation will be rather soon. But in the meantime, it’s always been our hope, if not expectation, that this nasty situation would be resolved by now. We were convinced that the several parties to this ghastly mystery would have moved against one other by this late date. It’s been two long months. This is the United States, not the Soviet Union.”

  “All the parties to this ghastly mystery are aware that you two know exactly what they’ve been up to,” Thompson said.

  “And they’re also aware that you’ve disappeared, that you’ve gone to ground completely out of their reach,” said Hyde-Milne. “Your escape should have provoked them into some rash or hasty act, but there’s been nothing. It’s been a sitzkrieg.”

  “Not quite, Ambassador,” said Llewellyn, with deferential tone if not language. “We had another telex from Tegucigalpa this morning.”

  He held a small notebook and gold pen at the ready, but had not yet written a word. Maddy was beginning to fidget.

  “We’ll discuss Tegucigalpa in a moment,” said Hyde-Milne. He rose, went to the fireplace, and stood facing away from it, hands clasped behind his back, feet tight together. He looked like a man standing on a gallows. “Now, we must act.”

  Llewellyn at last began to write. Dresden looked to Thompson, who turned away.

  “We thought that, at the end of the day, as the Irish say,” said the ambassador, “that if matters weren’t satisfactorily resolved, you might be of some help to us, and of course to your own nation. Inestimable help. To the entire free world, I daresay. What we have in mind involves considerable risk—I mean physical risk—to the both of you.”

  Dresden had never seen Maddy’s face so hard and grim. Only the wide blue eyes and golden hair remained of the woman he loved.

  “Perhaps you could be more precise about what it is you want us to do,” Charley said.

  The eyebrows compressed again, then shot up. “Whoever ‘they’ are,” Hyde-Milne said, “‘they’ shall likely all be in attendance at the Capitol for tonight’s speech, notwithstanding the president’s probable absence.”

  “Everyone of consequence in Washington will be there,” said Thompson. “Including the ambassador.”

  “And, we hope, including yourselves,” Hyde-Milne added. “We want you to serve as a provocation, a catalyst, to stir them to action—with luck, before they’re quite ready for it. We want you to be there for the
State of the Union address.”

  “To do what?” Dresden demanded.

  “Merely to be present, to be visible, to be seen by one and all.” The ambassador smiled cheerily. “It should more than suffice.”

  Kreski had traveled under a fictitious name and used feeder airlines to fly in short hops across the Gulf states and up the coastal Atlantic states of the South. He had overflown Washington on a Piedmont Airlines flight to New York, taken the Eastern Airlines shuttle to Boston, and returned to Washington via an Air Canada jet landing at Dulles. Despite all this, as he exited the terminal at the taxi loading area, Steve Copley suddenly appeared at his side. Kreski sighed.

  “Good evening, Steven.”

  “Hello, Walt. I trust you had a good flight. Or should I say flights?”

  “I hadn’t counted on being met.”

  “We’ve had agents at all the major airports ever since Gettysburg, and you, as they say, are a well-known figure. You’re out of practice, Walter. A good policeman wouldn’t let something like that slip his mind, and you’re about the best cop I know.”

  “Not good enough, it seems.”

  Copley waved the taxi attendant away. “On the contrary. If anything, too good.”

  “I suppose it would be discourteous to decline your generous offer of a ride.”

  “It would be pointless, at any rate, as my car’s just over there.” He nodded toward a black, nondescript but highly polished sedan parked at the opposite curb. There was no one in it or around it.

  “We can have a little private chat,” Kreski said. “I was meaning to do that sooner or later after I got back. Though not in these circumstances.”

  Copley started them across the cab lane. “Oh, sooner is best. I’m anxious to learn all that you were able to find out.”

  He held open the door on the passenger side, waiting until Kreski had put his luggage into the rear and seated himself, briefcase on his lap. Then he shut the door firmly and hurried to his own side. Neither of them spoke again until they were pulling away from the terminal.

  “Steven,” said Kreski. “I think you already know all the things I was able to find out.”