“Well thank you Andy. I reckon that brings us around to the speech I’ve got to make to you. About Wendy Hollander. I’m sure you must have been giving that some thought too?”
Bee shook his head, not in denial but in morose agreement.
The President lit a cigar; the pale eyes peered at Bee. “I’ve talked to a dozen, fifteen leaders from both houses this afternoon. I’ve sworn every one of them to secrecy and they’ve agreed. Can I ask the same promise of you, Andy?”
“I think that has to depend on what secret I’m supposed to keep.”
“Have you heard any rumors? No matter how wild they may have seemed.”
“I’ve heard nothing but rumors, Mr. President. That the bombings are a Russian plot, that the White House is gearing up for war, that the Army’s only pretending to move into the cities to protect public officials—the rumor says the real purpose is to get the troops in position to strike simultaneously all across the country, grab every known or suspected radical and herd them all into concentration camps. I’ve heard rumors about Clifford Fairlie and rumors about the Japanese and rumors about——”
“Not that.” The President cut him off smoothly. “Have you met up with any rumors about a stop-Hollander campaign?”
“I’ve heard a lot of wishful thinking along those lines.”
“It was actually suggested to me in this office that we ought to have him assassinated and blame it on the radicals,” Brewster said. “What do you think of that?”
“I’d rather not think of that, Mr. President.”
“Andy, I don’t need to tell you the kind of hell this country’s going to be plunged into if Wendy Hollander occupies this seat Thursday.”
“No. I can picture it vividly enough for myself.”
“There’s a way to prevent that happening,” the President said, and squinted through the smoke of his cigar to see how Bee would take it. “I mean ruling out assassination of course.”
Bee’s jaw rode from side to side with his speculative frown. “Declare him incompetent, you mean? I’d thought of that—I suppose a lot of us have.”
“I doubt we could make that work.”
“So do I. But you say you’ve discovered a way?”
“I need your assurance it stays inside this room until I take the wraps off, Andy. God knows it’s a genuine matter of national security—if anything ever had to be kept top secret this does. May I have your absolute promise?”
“Mr. President, if it’s a scheme that you’re sure will work, why does it need to be kept secret?”
“Because if Hollander gets wind of it too soon he might find ways to head it off. If we can spring it on him by surprise it’ll have a better chance of working.”
“But I gather it requires the cooperation of the Congress.”
“Yes. I’ll give you a list of names of the men I’ve already spoken to. They’ll be the only ones you’ll be allowed to discuss it with. Tomorrow morning I’m going to call a private caucus of leaders from both houses and we’ll discuss it in a general meeting then, but in the meantime I wanted to talk to each of you personally.”
“On that basis I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t go along, Mr. President.”
“I have your word on it then?”
“You have my word on it.” A bit of a smile: “For whatever a politician’s word is worth.”
“Yours has always been worth quite a bit, Andy. You’ve fought me pretty damn hard on a lot of things and you’ve done as much backroom logrolling as I have, but I’ve never known you to back out on a commitment.”
There was a kind of do-or-die melodrama to the President’s manner; for all his deserved reputation as a wheeler-dealer he was curiously old-fashioned in his beliefs. His concepts of honor and gallantry were those of the Victorians. Brewster was a gentleman and that was odd in a world that regarded those values as pointless and often suspect.
The President leaned back in the big chair. “Here it is, then. I don’t need to give you my ten-minute number on why we don’t want Wendy Hollander coming up the White House doorstep Thursday afternoon with all his suitcases. We’re agreed on that, aren’t we?”
“Completely.”
“Now I might mention also that there’s no time left to brief a new man on the complexities of running this here office. I had my hands full trying to fill Dexter Ethridge in. Dex is gone now and we’re stuck with Wendy Hollander. Andy, you’ve been on the Hill a few years, do you remember the debate over the Succession Bill back in Nineteen and Sixty-six?”
“Vaguely.”
“There, was talk about how maybe we ought to specify that if there was a national emergency that wiped out the whole line of succession—say a full-scale military attack that destroyed Warshington completely—that we ought to make some provision for the military to take over the Government on a temporary basis in order to meet the emergency. You remember that?”
“Yes. The proposal was turned down because nobody was willing to pass any law that could authorize the generals to take over.”
“Yes exactly. Congress was scared to put that in writing no matter how it was worded. Rightly so, too, I believe. The argument that tabled it was that if we ever had an emergency of that magnitude the generals would just naturally step in and take over without needing any paper authorization. That satisfied everybody and the idea was dropped.
“But the thinking behind it did make a kind of sense, Andy. Any time you lose both your President and your Vice-President you’ve got a kind of emergency, because the rest of the people on the line of succession aren’t really qualified for the office in the sense of being briefed on all the administration’s inside operations and foreign negotiations and whatnot. Let me put it to you this way. Suppose a vacancy occurs in the office, and the office is filled by somebody like Wendy Hollander—forget his politics for a minute—and suppose five hours later, say, Egypt decides to take advantage of the confusion by jumping all over Israel. Now Hollander not only doesn’t know what kind of secret meetings may have been going on between us and the Middle East, he doesn’t even know how to operate the machinery of diplomacy and military countermoves. You see what I’m getting at?”
“Yes sir. But that would apply to anybody in the line of succession.”
“Except for somebody who’s held the office of the Presidency before,” Brewster said. “Somebody who already knows all the means and methods.”
Bee listened, intent and rapt.
“The most recently retired former President—that’s the way I’ve been putting it. Of course it refers to me since I retire at noon Thursday. It wouldn’t conflict with the Constitutional two-term limit on the Presidency, since I’ve only served one term in office. I have to grant it’s a special-interest proposal caused specifically by the threat Wendy Hollander presents, but I maintain it makes a good deal of generic sense too—it could apply as a general rule, although I’m not ruling out the likelihood Congress will want to change it back after we’ve shunted Wendy aside.”
The room was sealed against the winter cold and the smell of Brewster’s cigars was heavy. The President had the balls of a brass gorilla, Andrew Bee thought, but he continued to listen, uncommitted.
“I’m asking Congress to amend the Act of Succession in a way that’ll allow me to continue as interim President until Cliff Fairlie is recovered. The alternative, I have to keep repeating, is Wendell Hollander—and to the bottom of my soul I don’t believe the country can survive that.”
“Do you honestly think you can persuade Congress to go for this, Mr. President?”
“I’ve talked to leaders on both sides of both aisles and the majority appears to be with me. I remind you virtually every Congressman and every Senator stands at least slightly to Wendy’s left. And most of them stand far to his left.”