The Better Angels

by Charles McCarry

  That was the agreed exchange, telling Rose to go ahead with the operation. Horace heard a note of laughter deep in her voice. Someone who knew Rose less well would mistake it for pleasure that Horace was bringing a picnic into the bank, where she was trapped by work. Horace knew better. He wore a fond smile as he rang off.

  Horace walked down the stairs. In the strangers’ room a television set was running. Returns from the five boroughs of New York City, and from Buffalo and Rochester and Albany, were beginning to be recorded. There was the hint of a change in the trend. As the big-city vote began to come in, Lockwood was gaining on Mallory in New York, though he was still far behind. In the anchorman’s voice could be heard the vibrato of excitement.

  Horace had his taxi stop at a delicatessen. He had phoned ahead and his bag of sandwiches was ready. A drizzle was falling—Mallory weather, the media kept saying; it was raining from the Rockies to Boston—and Horace ordered the cab to descend into the garage below D. & D. Laux & Co. He emerged from the elevator minutes before the door of the vault went on the time lock; he would be inside with Rose until seven the following morning.

  15

  It was Rose who had caused the anchorman’s voice to tremble. When Horace found her, she was wearing her long white dustcoat and peering at a display of green symbols on a screen in a part of the vault that was called the branches room. Here the most sensitive of the FIS’s business was done, and the senior technician on duty did it alone. The others, tending to the routine of the night, would not come in here, and if they did they would not notice what Rose was doing.

  Horace put the sack of sandwiches on top of a file cabinet. The room was frigid. All surfaces were bare metal, light was at a minimum, there was no talk that did not serve a purpose. These devices lowered the psychological temperature, the real temperature having already been regulated to the chilly level at which Rose believed her computers functioned best.

  “New York ought to be all right,” Rose said. “I’m trying to find the best circuit for California. Michigan is all wired. The telephone system in this country is not to be believed. I hope to live to see wires vanish from the earth…. Ah!”

  Rose had found the telephone circuit she wanted. She didn’t bother to explain it to Horace; he couldn’t possibly understand. She tapped out a message to the computer on a keyboard.

  “God bless Franklin Mallory,” she said.

  Mallory, in his first term, had made federal money available to the states to install centralized computer voting. Not all states had installed it; Mallory’s fervor for electronic gadgetry rubbed a nerve in some people. No state had completed the construction of a computerized voting system, but among those that had installed networks linking the largest cities into a central computer were New York and Michigan and California.

  In those states, big-city voters, after identifying themselves at the polls, were given a plastic card that activated a computer terminal. The terminal in polling places worked something like an old-fashioned voting machine. The voter pressed a lever to vote for individual candidates, or he could vote the straight party ticket, as in the older method, by pressing a single lever.

  The difference was this: instead of the votes being recorded in the machine in the polling booth and counted there, they were transmitted over telephone lines to a central computer, which tabulated them instantaneously and kept a running total. This computer had been designed to be absolutely tamper-proof. But it had been designed ten years before, and Rose’s computers belonged to a new generation. Her computers could, in a way that was clear enough to Rose but very murky to Horace, create new artificial intelligences. They had been designed specifically to invade other computers. They could read other electronic minds with ease. With the application of Rose’s ingenuity, they could, in effect, alter states of consciousness in other computers.

  The weakness in the election computer system was the method of transmission. Telephone lines were vulnerable. All data went in and out of the election computers on telephone lines. If you knew the right combination of numbers, you could simply call up one computer with another. Rose called the result “gossip.” The machines, under the right stimulus, talked freely to one another. They were designed to talk to other computers, to share data, Rose explained. That was their prime function. A sequence of electronic signals was, to a computer, the equivalent of a trusted face. On encountering a friend, they spoke freely.

  Rose had induced the election computers in New York and Michigan and California to tell her computers how they received and counted votes. Then she arranged to have the votes pass through the FIS computers in the vaults at D. & D. Laux & Co. before they reached the central computer in each state. The votes traveled over the ordinary telephone system with something like the speed of light.

  As they passed through Rose’s computers, a certain number of Mallory votes were converted to Lockwood votes and transmitted to the central computers for counting. There were no false voters: the final tally of votes would agree with the final count of registered voters who had appeared at the polls. But several thousand votes in each state, just enough to swing the majority to Lockwood, would be changed. At the instant the polls closed, Rose would erase from the memory of the election computers all traces of her invasion. “A lobotomy,” Rose said, smiling.

  “In New York,” Rose said, “Mallory has a much larger majority upstate than expected. It can’t be made up from New York City alone. I’ve programmed Buffalo and Rochester and Albany to increase the Lockwood share by percentages expressed in fractions. That, and the very heavy Lockwood vote in the five boroughs, will give him the state by about twenty-five thousand votes. That’s less than he managed last time, but he’s not supposed to win and you’ve got a credibility factor to reckon with. We’ll have to make adjustments in the other two states as the clock moves.”

  Her work done for the moment, Rose sat down in one of the cold metal chairs, smoothing her long skirts as she did so. Horace handed her the bag of sandwiches and she bit into a bagel with her strong teeth.

  “The worst problem,” she said, “has been reducing the probability that the Langley computer will monitor us. They’ve no reason to do so and I’ve covered it by representing what I’m doing as a gaming program. They may believe that and think I’m setting up a model to steal the Russian elections. And then again they may not. But they’ll only see if they look, and that’s an acceptable risk.”

  Rose drank celery soda and lifted her sandwich towards her mouth. The pastrami was very nearly the same hue as her tongue.

  “Anyway,” she said, “who would Langley tell? Jack?”

  Not until four in the morning was the election finally decided.

  Lockwood’s victory was achieved with a majority of fewer than one hundred electoral votes. Had he lost any of the three key states, he would have lost the election, but in New York and then in Michigan and California, he had been saved at the last minute by a rush of support from the big cities.

  “These votes come from the poorest wards, from the forgotten precincts,” said Patrick Graham in his commentary. “Lockwood’s people, huddled in the threadbare cities, have shown that they are the ones who count after all. It reminds this reporter of that extraordinary scene in San Antonio when the poor teemed into the streets to protect their President. There was a look about them then—I don’t know what you’d call it. Perhaps in some way they thought they were defending their only hope.”

  Lockwood’s party won a majority in both houses of Congress. But Mallory’s men took most of the state and local offices for which they ran. These results, Patrick and his colleagues agreed, defied easy analysis.

  “Everything in moderation,” said Rose of Mallory’s smaller victories. She and Horace, released from the vault, lay together in Rose’s bed, kept awake by the clatter of the morning traffic. One of Rose’s plump Siamese cats leaped nimbly from the floor to the top of a tall stack of books, and the books came down with a crash. The cat snarled, twitched its t
ail, and walked away with dignity. Rose bit Horace gently and he touched her hair.

  Mallory made no concession statement. Outside his mansion on Fifth Avenue the cameras waited in vain. From time to time during the night, as the inescapable pattern of Lockwood’s hairbreadth victory formed on the great tote boards of the networks, one or another of the anchor men would call on a correspondent, shivering on the sidewalk in front of the tall house with its blinded windows, but all was silence. Silence fell, too, on the crowds of Mallory supporters who had gathered in cities across the nation to celebrate a victory. They were young people, mostly, neatly dressed men and pretty women.

  “What you see in these faces,” said Patrick, “is anger and bitterness. If you believe in a cause, you cannot believe in its defeat. This isn’t the last we’ll see of these people. They won’t surrender, even to the will of the majority.”

  Julian did not wake Lockwood. The President had made an optimistic statement before retiring the night before, with the issue still in doubt. He knew then that if he carried California he would be elected.

  At six, he found Julian before the television set in the little sitting room where the two of them, all those years before, had met Philindros. Lockwood, wearing his bathrobe, hair rumpled, sat down on the sofa beside Julian.

  “You carried California,” Julian said.

  The two men exchanged no congratulations. Lockwood was peeling an orange. He slit the skin with his thumbnail, spraying bitter juice, and tore off the pulpy skin with his blunt capable fingers. He divided the peeled fruit in half and gave one section to Julian while he ate the other.

  When he said what he said next, he didn’t look at Julian, but he put his hand on him, patting his thigh after giving it a hard squeeze. It was a gesture of forgiveness.

  “Polly thinks they’ll kill me for this—for winning,” he said.

  Julian didn’t answer. Lockwood turned off the television set, and when he turned around his ruined gentle face broke into a smile.

  “Don’t take it so hard, son,” he said. He retied the cord of his bathrobe. “I’d better go up and tell Polly,” he said. “She’s always hated California.”

  Julian climbed the creaking stairs and went softly into the room where Emily lay sleeping. She was, as usual at the end of her dreamful nights, uncovered, and Julian drew the blanket over her.

  He felt nauseated and thought it must be lack of sleep. With hands that trembled slightly, he removed his clothes and put on his pajamas. He brushed his teeth; the aftertaste of Lockwood’s orange was sour. He left his beard till later. He ached in all his long bones.

  Julian, before he lay down to try to sleep, looked out the window over the broad lawns of Lockwood’s farm. Just below him were two rows of lilacs. In spring—as when he and Lockwood and Philindros had walked through them—they formed a long bower, white and lavender, fragrant and shady. Now they were bare; brown and gnarled like arthritic limbs.

  Two cardinals flying in opposite directions crossed midway between the rows of lilacs. One turned to join the other. For an instant they seemed suspended like impossible hummingbirds, wings beating, one beside the other. Julian watched until he could see them no more: they were so vivid, so simple, so easy to recognize. It was good to know shyer and rarer birds, but he had always loved the cardinal, scarlet sign of life stitched on the dull colors of the dying season.

  MIDWINTER

  T HE G RAHAMS ALWAYS GAVE their Midwinter party on the Saturday before Christmas. “That’s near enough to the winter solstice to get away with, not that anyone knows when Midwinter Day falls,” Charlotte had said, when she named the party; years before. “One can’t call it a Christmas party—all the nicest people are Jews or atheists or pagans or Hindus… well, perhaps not Hindus.”

  She repeated these words now to Emily Hubbard and Emily smiled. This girl seemed sadder somehow. Charlotte wondered if something had taken place between Patrick and Emily in San Francisco. It didn’t seem possible; Emily’s eyes never stopped searching for Julian. But if it had, what luck for Patrick. Emily in her white dress, with a large green jewel touching the tawny skin where her breasts divided, was certainly the prettiest woman in the room.

  She was, by fifteen years, the youngest. The Midwinter party was not at all like the Grahams’ Midsummer party. Charlotte loved giving this one. The guest list was limited to forty people. Tonight there would be forty-two if the President and his wife came. Already here, besides Julian, were the Chief Justice, the majority and minority leaders of both houses of Congress, the president of Patrick’s network; that range of people. In black tie and evening gowns, they filled the long drawing room, sending up a civilized murmur instead of the babble of the people who came on Midsummer Day and spilled out into Patrick’s garden, leaving half-drunk glasses of Scotch whisky wrapped in damp paper napkins on the statuary. Tonight the Old Etonians served Taittinger’s champagne and Beluga caviar and nothing else.

  Emily said, “Is that an actual Tissot Patrick is showing that man?”

  “Yes, isn’t it a nice big one?” replied Charlotte. “You know Jack Philindros, don’t you? Go rescue him from Patrick and the Tissot—I hate that girl in the painting, all his models were such heifers. Ask Jack if he thinks Horace can root out that dreadful Eye of Gaza. We all worry so about Frosty—and Julian, too.”

  The explosions had ceased after Lockwood’s election. But tension still quivered under the skin of the government. The Grahams’ house was ringed by private guards hired by the network and by the Secret Service men who had come with guests like Julian and other officials. One member of the Eye of Gaza, throwing himself through the French doors, could do a great deal of damage here tonight. The Grahams and all their guests knew it.

  Charlotte led Emily across the room. Patrick, seeing them approach, turned to another guest, drawing the man nearer his new painting. He traced the line of the model’s throat with his finger. It was the finest bit of painting in the picture, clean as living flesh.

  “Jack, do you know Emily Hubbard? Jack Philindros. You two ought to be friends.”

  Philindros transferred his champagne glass, still full to the brim, from one hand to the other and shook hands with Emily. Charlotte went away.

  “Charlotte was just suggesting to me that Horace can conquer the terrorists,” Emily said. “Do you think he can?”

  Philindros’s head did not move, but his eyes followed Charlotte as she crossed the room. Emily had never seen eyes quite like Philindros’s: no more expression showed in them than in two disks of smoked glass.

  “The President thinks so,” Philindros said.

  “Do you?”

  “Your brother-in-law is a talented man.”

  Philindros changed the subject; no one was supposed to know that Horace had been given the job of hunting down Hassan and the Eye of Gaza. It was Horace, not Julian, who had told Emily; since the election she had grown closer to Julian’s brother; Horace had had time on his hands and he had spent much of it with her. Emily thought about Horace, his tender self-mocking good-bye. She might have been his real sister from the way he looked at her.

  She had felt protected by Horace. Emily’s own emotions were confused. Now that he was gone, she was overwhelmed by foreboding—but foreboding bent back upon itself. She didn’t fear that the unknown was going to happen, but that it had, somehow, already happened. Something had vanished. Something had gone out of the air. Since childhood she had seen a force—an aura, she might call it if ever she were asked for a description, a light—in the space between people. There had always been a very strong light between Julian and everyone else. That was why she loved him. But it was dimmer now; there was less brightness between Julian and Horace, Julian and Jenny and Elliott, Julian and Lockwood. Emily turned away from Philindros and went to be near Julian.

  Charlotte was talking to him, and to a corpulent man who was the minority leader of the Senate—one of Mallory’s men.

  “I know how grim all Mallory’s people are su
pposed to be, but I must say, Julian, that Sam here is rather a dear. So freckled and nice. He carves things—he made me a lovely walking stick with all the Texas cattle brands carved into it. He brought it tonight as a Christmas gift.”

  The senator watched Charlotte go away.

  “These high-bred Englishwomen behave a lot like rich Texas girls, have you noticed that?” he said. He turned to Julian. “I may be rather a dear, but you and Frosty may not think so when Congress reconvenes.”

  Julian said, “I don’t think the President has many illusions.”

  “He’d better not have. The twin words from Mallory are repeal and re-enact. Repeal what Lockwood’s done; re-enact everything of Mallory’s that he’s undone. Some of your own people may want to help us. They know a smell when there’s a smell in the air.”

  Color rose in the senator’s face. Julian began to speak, but stopped when he sensed a movement among the guests.

  Lockwood and Polly came in. Lockwood’s face seemed, as he stood for a moment in the door, pinched by the cold night out of which he’d come. Then, as always, he flushed in his pleasure in people and began to move among the Grahams’ guests. Everyone here knew the President; they waited where they were for him to come to them. Lockwood and Polly, shaking hands and kissing, moved down the length of the room.

  Lockwood took the fat senator’s hand with cordiality.

  “How’s Franklin?” he asked. “Have you seen him?”

  “The same as always, Mr. President.”

  “That’s good news. I tried to call him, but he was sick with flu, or so Susan said. Good woman. Marilyn was a marvel, too. Franklin’s lucky at love.”

  “Yes, sir. Unlucky at cards, though.”

  The senator, his shrewd eyes switching from Lockwood to Julian and back to Lockwood, held the President’s hand for a long moment. The President was unable to move away and the genial smile faded from his lips.