“No?”
“They need cracking down on, Bill. God how they need it. If we can’t hold up our heads in this country and fight back at the subversives who want to destroy us—Christ, if you won’t fight you deserve to lose. But I’m in a pickle now. I wish I’d foreseen it. I campaigned against Wendy Hollander on a ticket of moderation and tolerance. If I turned around and destroyed the radicals the way I should, the country’d have my hide in strips.” An odd smile, a quick hand gesture. “Puts me in a corner, don’t it.”
“Fitz Grant did say something like that. You’d end up looking like Johnson to Hollander’s Goldwater.”
“All right. But that’s not what you’re here to talk about. Is it.”
“There are reasons,” Satterthwaite said—and Lime felt the bitter reluctance—“why you must stand aside and support the Bee nomination.”
“Are there?”
“Several. For one thing there’s a legal technicality. I won’t go into detail at this point but we’re fairly certain Wendy Hollander has a basis to challenge you if you leave things stand as they are. He can maintain that according to the law he became President-elect the minute Milton Luke died, and that the amendment you passed in Congress was not binding because it would have had to be retroactive.”
“He’d have a hell of a time making that stick.”
“Mr. President, he could tear the country apart on that issue.”
“He could try. I’d be willing to fight it.”
“All right. Then consider the flimsy position you’re in with the public. They’ll call you a despot and a dictator and a lot of other names. They’ll insist you’ve flouted the Constitution and the will of the electorate. They’ll be calling for your resignation—in fact I wouldn’t put it past some of them, not only the leftists but the Hollander wing as well, to start impeachment proceedings.”
“They wouldn’t get far.”
“Far enough to whip the public into a frenzy. Do you want battle lines drawn up in the streets?”
“You’re forecasting civil war. That’s fanciful.”
“No, Mr. President, I don’t think it is. Because your opposition will have a piece of ammunition you won’t be able to defend yourself against.” Satterthwaite whipped around to Lime. “David, I want you to tell the President exactly what happened to Clifford Fairlie.”
The President was taken aback for the first time. Lime saw it; he had been watching the man steadily.
Lime told it straight. “You could call it an accident,” he concluded, “but any way you cut it, he was killed by agents of the American Government, not by his kidnappers.”
“Well yes, but——”
“There were half a dozen of us in the room at the time that dart was fired, Mr. President. There must have been twenty of us in the place by the time the doctor announced his findings. We’re holding them incommunicado but you can’t do that forever. With that many people involved in the secret, the truth will get out.”
Satterthwaite raised a hand, palm out. Lime’s part of it was concluded and Satterthwaite picked up the ball. “They’ll claim we did it deliberately of course. They’ll say you wanted Fairlie dead to perpetuate yourself in office.”
The President drew himself up. “Bill, you don’t walk into the office of the President of the United States with a cheap attempt at blackmail. For the love of——”
“No sir. You misunderstand. David and I aren’t threatening you. If the accusations are made—and believe me they will be—we’ll both back you to the hilt. We’ll tell the absolute truth. Don’t forget David and I are implicated just as deeply as you are, if not more so. We’ll have to defend ourselves and of course we’ll do it with the truth. You didn’t murder Fairlie. Nobody murdered him. It was a freak accident, the result of our ignorance of one fact—the fact that Fairlie had been doped up so heavily before we reached him.”
Satterthwaite took a ragged breath. “But who’s going to believe us, Mr. President?”
Brewster’s face was suffused with a rush of blood. “I don’t like being bulldozed, Bill. There’ve been ridiculous rumors and accusations before.”
“Not like these.”
“Don’t you remember the slanders against Lyndon Johnson after the Kennedy assassination?”
“It wasn’t the same, Mr. President. Kennedy was not killed by known agents of the Administration. Johnson hadn’t just lost an election to the dead man. And if I can be blunt about it Johnson didn’t have the kind of enemies you have now. Hollander on the right, everybody on the far left, and a vast body of uncertain people in the center.”
“From what you say there’ll be rumors whether or not I remain in this seat. That’s the weakness in your strategy, Bill.”
“No sir. If you step down now it’ll prove you had nothing to gain by Fairlie’s death. It won’t stop the rumors but it’ll take the force out of them. Their target will be a retired politician, not the incumbent President of the United States. There’s a world of difference.”
Howard Brewster reached for a cigar but did not light it. He studied it for a very long time. Lime felt the busy hum of the White House through the soles of his shoes.
Finally the President spoke. “The idea of nominating Andy Bee to the Speakership—was that your notion, Bill?”
“A lot of them thought of it, or something like it. Naturally. But they didn’t act on it because they weren’t sure it would work—they all assumed you’d fight it bitterly and none of them had the strength left for another battle. They’re scared, Mr. President. We’re all scared.”
“But you put them up to it.”
“You could say that. It’s still uncertain. If you decide to fight it they may not even introduce the measure. You’ve got enough loyal supporters to maintain a filibuster from here to tomorrow noon.”
“Putting me exactly where Hollander was twenty-four hours ago, hey?”
“It’s not quite the same. But close enough.”
Suddenly Lime felt the presidential eyes drill into him. “You sir. What do you think?”
“I don’t count, Mr. President. I’m just a gumshoe.”
“You’ve got a brain in your head. A good one. Tell me what it thinks.”
“I think you’ve been a pretty good President, sir. And I think the people voted you out of office last November.”
“Thank you for your candor, Mr. Lime.”
The President’s attention dropped to the cigar in his fingers and Lime glanced at Satterthwaite. They were both thinking the same thing, Lime felt. The President hadn’t really been seeking advice from him; he’d been looking for something deeper—a clue to the realities that lay outside this room. He knew he still had the authority to say “Frog” but he was no longer certain which way the people would jump in response.
Brewster was in fact awesomely close to Hollander’s position of yesterday and he knew it, visibly. Once again, dizzily, the country had a choice. Andrew Bee was the closest thing to Fairlie it was possible to offer. Bee would be acceptable to the left because of his politics; paradoxically he might be equally acceptable to the right because he did have a lawful claim to the office, he represented everything the voters had mandated, and his position would appeal to the sympathies of those who held to strict adherence to law and Constitution. Only the blessing of one man was needed—a man who sat in a historically unique position because he alone had the power to decide which of two men should become President of the United States.
THURSDAY,
JANUARY 20
12:00 noonEST “Hold up your right hand and repeat after me.”
The cameras zoomed in close on the face of the next President. Lime reached for a cigarette without taking his eyes off the screen. On the couch Satterthwaite stirred his coffee. Bev stood behind Lime’s chair watching the television screen, massaging the back of Lime’s neck.