Line of Succession (20 page)

Yet for nearly a half hour the President had digressed from the subject at hand—Fairlie's abduction—to talk a hard line, angry with the “sellouts who grovel at the feet of these radical punks.” Ethridge had listened with dubious interest. When Brewster was warmed up his rhetoric improved but his marksmanship became erratic. Tonight the President was in an execrable temper. The air was poisoned by his cigar smoke.

The President had battled his demons with fervid passion: “We should have stomped the bastards right off. Back in the Sixties. But we're supposed to be tolerant and liberal. So we let them walk on us.”

Brewster had been talking to his knees. He did not lift his head; he didn't stir, but his eyes shifted quickly toward Ethridge as if to pin him. “Their Goddamned dogmatic righteousness. It makes a man sick, Dex. They talk about ‘liberate,' they mean blow somebody up. They talk about participatory democracy, they mean turning everything over to five delinquents with a can of gasoline. They've made us accept their dirty minds and their dirty language—when was the last time you were shocked when you heard the words ‘fascist pigs'? They've radicalized all of us and it's time to stop it.”

Ethridge's headache was a maddening distraction. He found it hard to summon the alertness Brewster's talk seemed to require. Brewster had harped on the subject of the radicals until a few minutes ago when he had shifted abruptly to the Spanish bases. It bothered Ethridge because he knew the President was not given to idle ramblings. There was a reason for Brewster's display of anger—it was a preamble to something specific and Ethridge kept trying to predict the President's next moves but the headache intervened and finally he said, “Do you think someone could get me a couple of aspirins?”

Brewster's head moved quickly; dark hair fell over his eye. “Don't you feel well?”

“Sinus headache, that's all.”

“I'll ring for the doctor.”

“No.”

“Dex, you were bombed, you got hit on the head, now you've got a headache. I want you looked at.”

“Really it's not necessary. I've had sinus trouble all my life—I get a headache every now and then. It always passes.” Ethridge raised one hand a few inches to acknowledge the President's concern. “It's nothing, I promise you. The doctors gave me every test known to medical science. I'm quite all right. I only need a couple of aspirins.”

The President reached for his chairside telephone. Ethridge heard him mutter into it; he caught the word “aspirin” and sat back in relief.

He didn't want another battery of them poking at him, rousting him from one diagnostic machine to another, subjecting him to an infernal variety of pains and peeping eyes and the prisonlike boredom of enforced isolation. There was nothing wrong with him; it was the weather, his perennial sinus. Earlier he had been troubled by lethargy, the great amounts of sleep he had seemed to require after the bomb explosions; he had awakened the morning after the blast with a splitting headache and a curious weakness in his right arm and leg. He had informed the doctors of these symptoms—he wasn't a prideful fool. There had been some somber talk about the possibility of a stroke or perhaps a “metabolic cerebral lesion.” More skull X rays, another electroencephalogram. Dick Kermode, his doctor, had come into the hospital room beaming on the third morning:
Hell there's nothing wrong with you. A man gets hit on the head, he's got a right to a little headache. No lesions, no sign of a stroke. Headache gone today? Fine, then we'll turn you loose
—
we've exhausted all the tests, they're all negative. But if you have any trouble check back with me immediately, will you? Try a little Privine for that sinus.

Howard Brewster cradled the telephone. “Promise me something, Dex. You'll call your doctor first thing in the morning and tell him about this headache.”

“It's not worth——”

“Promise me this little thing, all right?”

He inclined his head. “Very well, then.”

“You're important, Dex. We don't want any trouble with your health. If we don't get Cliff Fairlie back by Inauguration Day you're going to have to be healthy enough to step into these shoes.”

“We'll have him back by then, Mr. President. I'm absolutely convinced of that.”

“We've got to assume the worst,” Brewster said around his cigar. “That's why you're here now. We haven't got a whole lot of time—you've got to be briefed on all the things I briefed Cliff on. My predecessor took six weeks showing me the ropes—I took just about that long with Cliff. Now you and I have got just nine days. You'll have to visit with Defense and State, you'll have to spend some time with my Cabinet people and the Security Council, but mainly there's only one boy who can guide you through this here wilderness and that's me. You're going to have to spend so much time at my right hand for the next nine days you'll get to hate the sight of me, if you don't already.”

In point of fact Ethridge did not hate the sight of him. He rather liked Howard Brewster. But it had taken years for Ethridge to accrete his impression of the President because the political Brewster was very hard to pin down. Superficially he was the embodiment of American tradition: he had grown up in rural Oregon believing in hard work and patriotism, believing there was opportunity for everyone, believing God loved nothing so much as a good fighter. It was was as if Brewster's philosophers were Abraham Lincoln and Horatio Alger and Tom Mix. Brewster was an amalgam of liberal traditions and conservative mentality and the values of Main Street. And his weaknesses were typical: the transient piety, the chameleon sincerity, the flexible morality.

In Ethridge's estimation Howard Brewster was a respectable opposition President: he was not too terrible, considering that nobody could be good enough for the job.

“Long hours, Dex,” the President adjured. “An awful lot to cram into your brain—top-secret stuff, in-progress stuff. That's why I want you healthy.”

The President leaned forward for emphasis. His hand moved away from his face, carrying the cigar, swathed in smoke. “You can't afford headaches. You get me?”

Ethridge smiled. “All right, Mr. President.”

A staff aide brought Ethridge's aspirin and a glass of ice water. Ethridge swallowed the tablets.

“My cigar bother you?”

“Not at all.”

“That the truth or just politeness?”

“I enjoy an occasional cigar myself, you know that.”

“Well, some people get a headache, they get sensitive to things.” The aide withdrew and Brewster laid the cigar in the ashtray by his elbow. “You're a polite cuss, Dex. I recollect back toward the beginning of the campaign you kept showing up late for appearances and it turned out you kept getting slowed down holding doors open for people. Nobody else got to hold a door when you were around.”

“They cured me of that after a while.”

The President smiled, his eyes closed to slits. But his amusement seemed dispirited. “I wish I knew you better right now.”

“Am I all that mysterious?”

“You're the Vice-President-elect, Dex. If we don't get Cliff back alive within nine days you're the next President of the United States. If I had my druthers I'd like to know you as well as I know m'own sons. It'd make me feel a whole lot easier.”

“You're afraid of turning it over to me, aren't you. You don't know I'll be able to carry it.”

“Well, I have every confidence in you, Dex.”

“But you'd like reassurance. What do you want me to tell you, Mr. President?”

Brewster made no direct answer. He stood up, moved around the room curiously—as if he were a visitor seeing the room for the first time. Looking at the paintings, the furniture; finally coming back to his chair and standing in front of it, leaning over to pick up his cigar. “Governing the people of this country from the eminence of this White House,” he said slowly, “is kind of like trying to swat a fly with a forty-foot pole. It's not a question of whether your heart's in the right place, Dex. I take it for granted your political beliefs aren't all that different from mine. Some, maybe, but not a whole lot. But you and I served together in that Senate what, twelve years? I never did get to know you very well.”

“I was on the other side of the aisle.”

“There were plenty of Democrats I didn't know nearly as well as some of the boys over to your side of the aisle.”

“What you're saying is I've never been a member of the club.”

“Not to be indelicate about it, yes. It's not that you were a maverick or one of those loudmouths nobody could ever talk to. Far from it. But you were an awful quiet Senator, Dex.”

And the presidential eyes swiveled against him like twin gun muzzles. “An awful quiet Senator.”

“Not my style to make much noise, Mr. President.”

“Nine days from now if you step into this house you'll have to get noisy, Dex. Nobody listens if you don't make noise.”

“I'll try to make the right noises then.”

“Think you can?”

“I hope I won't have to. I hope Cliff Fairlie will be back. But if it comes to that—the answer's yes. I think I can, Mr. President.”

“Good—good.” Brewster settled into the chair, drawing the cigar to his mouth, crossing his legs. He wore a herringbone Harris tweed sport jacket; his tie was cinched up neatly, his trousers pressed, his shoes shined, but he always gave the impression of a baggy rumpled man.

“I get a feeling I haven't reassured you much.”

“Dex, a lot of the boys over in my party are pretty worried about you. You've been in Washington twenty-four years and nobody's ever noticed you doing much except pushing legislation that would benefit your Big Three constituents back in Detroit. I'm being blunt now—I guess I have to be. You spent your last eight years in the Senate on the Judiciary and the Finance and the Commerce Committees—domestic seats every one of them. So far as I know you've never once stood up on the floor of the Senate to say a word about foreign affairs or defense. Your voting record on foreign affairs is fine, jim-dandy, but the boys on the Hill look to Pennsylvania Avenue for leadership, not voting records.”

“I'm afraid I can't rewrite my record to suit the circumstances, Mr. President.”

“I'm just warning you what you're up against. Your forty-foot pole is the Congress of the United States, Dex. If you want to swat your flies you've got to learn how to handle that pole.” The cigar moved through a slow arc to the ashtray. “You got a lot of congressional barnacles to deal with. Certified anachronisms, a lot of them. I know Fairlie's got grandiose plans to ease them out to pasture but it ain't going to work, it's been tried before and it never works. You got to learn how to balance that forty-foot pole on one finger, Dex, it's the only way. You try to hold it up by one end and the thing'll slip right out of your hands. You're a Republican, boy, and that's a Democratic Congress out there.”

Twelve hours earlier the possibility of becoming President of the United States had been vague and distant in Ethridge's mind. Ever since the election the realization had been there and he couldn't ignore it altogether but he regarded it much the way he might think about winning a lottery for which he held one ticket. It could happen but you didn't make plans.

Then Fairlie had been abducted and the Secret Service reinforcements had arrived. For the first time he had realized the significance of his place in the scheme of things. Long odds became short ones. He didn't dare stop and compute them; it would seem disloyal to Fairlie. But kidnappers often killed. Ethridge might find himself President of the United States for four years.

There had not been time to absorb it fully. The summons to the White House had been peremptory, the President's greeting filled with aggrieved concern and avuncular sympathy. But then had come the diatribe against radicals, the insistence on the importance of continuing the Spanish negotiations, now the emphasis on Ethridge's health and the blunt doubts about his fitness.

He turned, a heavy deliberation in the movement, toward Howard Brewster. “Mr. President, when I accepted the nomination at Denver I accepted the responsibility that went with it.”

“You didn't campaign for that nomination very hard.”

“No. I didn't. I was a dark horse, admitted.”

“Have you ever campaigned for anything very hard, Dex?”

“I think I have.” He smiled slowly. “Campaigned pretty hard against
you,
didn't we.”

Brewster didn't bat an eye. “That was Fairlie's campaign.”

“I think I had a hand in it. Am I flattering myself?”

“Not at all. You won him a lot of votes—you probably swung the election. But balancing that forty-foot pole takes a different kind of campaigning.” The President's cigar had gone out. He found a new one in his pocket. “The hell with it. We'll have to do the best we can in nine days, that's all. At least you've been a long time on the Hill and you haven't made too many enemies. FDR came in, he was a state governor, the only people he knew were people who hated him, he didn't know the first thing about dealing with the club. It worked out—it always does.”

Ethridge had the distinct feeling the President was talking mainly to convince himself—and that he wasn't succeeding. The pale eyes mirrored that.
You're not FDR, Dex. You'll never have his drive in a million years.

Well, Ethridge thought, we'll see about that. And as he reached his decision a surge of exultation lifted him.

The President was on the telephone. “Bill? Update me.” The big face nodding, the eyes brooding into space. He listened for several minutes with an actor's variety of expressions chasing one another across his face. His replies were mostly monosyllabic; he ended by saying, “Keep me posted,” and rang off.