Line of Succession (46 page)

“It's all true. They're dead.”

“My God,” Fairlie whispered.

The shock of that seemed to bring him around. He sat up again and maintained the position this time. “They're dead? How?”

“Ethridge seems to have died of natural causes,” Sturka lied. “Luke was killed by a bomb which blew up his limousine. Please don't ask me who did it. I don't know. As you can see it was none of us—we're here, we're not in Washington.”

“My God,” Fairlie muttered again. “Has it started then?”

“The revolution? If it hasn't it's about to.”

“What time is it? What day?”

“Tuesday. The eighteenth of January. It's early morning. Who knows, if you cooperate promptly enough you may be home in time to be inaugurated. Or perhaps you'd rather just sleep a while. But you have to read this first.”

Fairlie was trying to grapple with it but he was too far under, too drowned by the resistance-destroying weight of the drugs. He picked up the yellow sheet and began to read in a listless monotone, eyelids drooping, voice wandering into whispers every once in a while:

“This—this is Clifford Fairlie speaking. I am very tired and under the influence of mild tranquilizers, which have been administered to me to insure that I don't do any reckless things that might—uh—jeopardize my physical safety. That will explain the … sleepy sound of my voice. But I am in good health.

“Uh—I have been informed of … deaths of Vice-President-elect Dexter Ethridge and Speaker Luke, for which I am allowed to express … deepest personal anguish.

“The seven … political prisoners from Washington have been delivered to Geneva as instructed, and my captors have asked me to announce their further instructions now. The seven … prisoners are to be transported by air to Algiers. They are then to be transported to the town of El Dzam—El Djamila, where an automobile is to be provided for their use. They are to be told to drive south along the highway toward El Goléa until they are contacted.

“If any survillance—surveillance is detected, I am told I will not be released. Neither the Algerian Government nor any other government is to follow the prisoners or make any other effort to determine their whereabouts. The prisoners will be provided by my captors with fresh transportation out of Algeria, but before they are sent on they will be stripped and examined by X ray to insure that no electronic devices have been concealed in their clothes or on their bodies.

“If all conditions are met precisely, the seven prisoners will have forty-eight hours in which to disappear into asylum in a country that has not been identified to me.

“If there is no indication of betrayal on the part of the United States or any other government, I will be released twenty-four hours after the release of the seven prisoners.

“There is one final instruction. The seven prisoners are to be in their car leaving El Djamila at precisely six o'clock in the evening—that is eighteen hours by the European clock—on Thursday the twentieth of January. And I am told to repeat that any attempt to follow the prisoners' car or to track it electronically will be detected and will result in my … death.”

7:45
A.M. EST
“… defies the whole purpose of the Constitution,” Senator Fitzroy Grant said.

Satterthwaite was thinking of Woodrow Wilson's phrase to describe the Senate:
little group of willful men.…
He said, “That has a high moral tone, but would you still say the same thing if Howard Brewster happened to be a Republican?”

“Yes.” The Senate Minority Leader almost snapped it.

“Even though the alternative is Hollander?”

“You're thinking in terms of immediate expediency, Bill. You always do. I'm thinking of the long haul. I don't think we can jeopardize the whole meaning of the Constitution for the sake of a temporary crisis.”

“It won't be temporary if Hollander gets to spend four years in the White House. It may be the most permanent thing that's ever happened to this country. If you agree annihilation can be regarded as permanent.”

“Let's leave out the sarcasms, shall we?” Grant's voice beat rolling echoes around his office. Past Grant's head through the window Satterthwaite could see the shell of the Capitol with snow on it. The building didn't look much different on the outside from before the bombings. A few construction trailers drawn up against the East Portico, a larger number of guards than there had been a month ago. A bit of absurdity in that, since nobody was inside it except workmen.

Fitzroy Grant's dewlappy face turned slightly and picked up some light from the window; his eyes looked sad. He ran a hand carefully over the neat wave in his white hair. “Look Bill, the majority will vote with you anyway. My vote won't matter.”

“Then why not throw in with us?”

The deep slow velvet voice was only faintly ironic. “Call it principle if you like. I realize the truth can't prevail against a false idea whose time has come. But I have to follow my own inclinations.”

“Can I ask at least for an abstention?”

“No. I'm going to vote against.”

“Even if you turn out to be the swing vote?”

“I'm not that low in the alphabet.”

“I'm backpedaling, you can see that. I'm not used to this kind of horsetrading. But it does seem to me there ought to be somewhere where we could meet on common ground. Some kind of compromise.”

Grant seemed to smile. “You're not half bad at it, Bill. Don't run yourself down as a politician.”

“Well I sure don't seem to be getting anywhere with you.”

“Howard Brewster's pushing too hard, Bill. Love me love my ideas. He's put himself on the line—everything he's ever been, everything he's got. One throw of the dice. All right, I realize he's feeling the heat. I don't like Hollander either. But this arrogance from the White House—that's what I can't stand. Frankly I believe we can handle Hollander. Hamstring him. There are ways, if only Congress will show the gumption. Hollander's less of a threat than Howard Brewster, to my mind—because if Brewster puts this over on the country it'll be one more nail in the coffin of the republic. The Roman Caesars came to power by stealing it away from the Senate. Brewster's trying to get Congress to reinstate him in an office he just got through losing in a popular election. It smacks of
coup d'état
to me. I'm afraid I simply haven't got the conscience to back this move. That's all there is to it.”

“Fitz, you talked to the President yesterday, and——”

“Let's say the President talked to me.”

“——and you told him you couldn't support him. But you agreed to keep the secret until he opened it up. Why?”

“My peculiar brand of personal loyalty I suppose. He made it personal. We've been friends for thirty years.”

“Then may I prevail on that friendship for at least this much—that you agree not to campaign actively against the President's move?”

“By actively you mean publicly.”

“No. I mean privately as well. While the committee is getting ready to report out the bill will you agree not to perform any of that quiet arm-twisting you're so famous for?”

Fitzroy Grant chuckled amiably. “Funny, I always thought it was Howard Brewster who was famous for that. What do you think you're doing right now if not a little genteel arm-twisting?”

“I'd appreciate an answer.”

“Very well, I'll give you one. But it requires a bit of a preamble. With me they always do.”

Satterthwaite thought of looking at his watch, thought better of it, waited. He was thinking of the hard-backed chairs over in the Executive Office Building that would be filled in an hour's time by the rumps of two dozen congressional leaders, among whose number the President hoped Fitzroy Grant yet might appear.

“When you look out around you today,” Grant said, “you see nothing but the wreckage that's been left by these incredible atrocities and outrages. To my mind that's the inevitable result of our weakness as a people. The libertarian principles have obviously failed. For altogether too long we allowed these goons of the so-called New Left to spread sedition and terror. We stood by and listened while they boasted openly of the violence they were going to do us. Our well-intentioned lawmakers chose to call this treason ‘dissent' while the goons were ambushing cops and plotting sabotage and laying the groundwork for insurrection right under our noses. Now it seems to me——”

“Fitz, you're condemning an entire society with guilt by association. There's no proof more than a handful of criminals had any part in these atrocities. Their leaders aren't even Americans.”

“I've been hearing that until it's come out my ears.”

“You don't believe it?”

“It's totally beside the point. The point is that a society is too permissive, too weak, and too open to further attacks when it allows such things to happen as we've seen happen in the past couple of weeks.”

“Yet the alternative is a kind of fascism. That's what Hollander wants—it's also what the radicals want.”

“Fascism's a strange word, Bill. It used to mean something specific. It doesn't any longer. It's just an epithet we use to indicate hatred of our enemies. If this country's in any real danger of being taken over by a fascist sort of movement I think that danger exists in the nature of Howard Brewster's effort to bend the Constitution far more than it exists in the senile brain of a weak old man like Wendy Hollander. Hollander's a fool and everybody can see that—that's our means of defense against him.”

“Mussolini was a bit of a fool in his later years. It didn't stop him from maintaining the stranglehold on his country.”

“Until they killed him.”

“You think we ought to kill Hollander then?”

“No. I suppose most of us have thought of it though. I'm sure Howard Brewster has.”

“It's been mentioned.”

“Why do you suppose he rejected it, Bill?”

“Why do you reject it?”

“Because I'm not a murderer. But then I'm not bucking for a second term in the White House.”

“That's slanderous, Senator.”

“I expect it is. There's probably some truth in it, however.” Grant's chin lifted. His head was silhouetted against the window and Satterthwaite had a poor view of his face but the eyes seemed to gleam out at him. “Bill, that speech I just gave you about the country's lack of strength—about the permissiveness that allows these things to happen. Did that ring a bell with you?”

“Sure. I've heard a lot of people use those arguments. I half believe some of them myself.”

“Ever heard Howard Brewster talk that way?”

“On occasion.”

“I'm talking about recently. Within the past two or three days.”

“No.”

“Well I've got news for you, son. Those were almost the exact words he used when he talked to me yesterday in his office.”

“It makes sense,” Satterthwaite said, half defensively.

“Howard Brewster's kind of sense, you mean. He'd naturally use that sort of conservative spiel with me because he wants my support. Is that what you think?”

“I think it's possible he might have come on a bit strong in that direction for your benefit,” Satterthwaite said cautiously. “After all he wouldn't want you to think he was going to be too soft on the radicals.”

“Because that might send me scooting right over into Wendy's camp, is that it?”

“Something like that. Hell, we're all adults here. Is that the first time anybody's ever tried to reassure you that way?”

“Hardly. But there's a strange thing about it when you think it over.”

“Is there?”

“Think about it, Bill. If he's going to use the same hard line Hollander uses, then why pass over Hollander at all?” And a sudden lunge forward of the handsome senatorial chin. “Could it just be because Howard Brewster wants the satisfaction of stomping the radicals himself? Not to mention his ambition to stay in office four more years?”

“You just said he was a lifelong friend of yours. None of this sounds very friendly to me.”

“I'm not feeling too friendly. I stayed up most of the night thinking back on that conversation he had with me yesterday. A few things stuck in my craw. One advantage of knowing a man for thirty years is that you get to know the little signs he puts up when he's just pulling your leg, when he's planning to double-cross you, when he's lying for your benefit. We all do it. If you're a good enough poker player and you play opposite the same people for thirty years you ought to be able to figure out what it means when one of them wiggles his ears.”

“I'm not following this completely.”

“Bill, he wasn't lying to me yesterday. I know all the signs. I may be one of the handful of living men who do, but I've known the President since the days when he didn't know who sat on which side of the aisle. And I'm telling you the man has every intention of proceeding with measures that aren't very much different from the ones Hollander means to employ. I'm sure he feels honestly that he's got a better chance of putting it over on the country than Hollander has. Hollander's a fool whatever he does; however much Howard Brewster may be disliked nobody faults his intelligence. He's trying to sweet-talk the Congress of the United States into backing him and so he's playing the public role of man of reason. But to me it's like the Goldwater-Johnson contest in Sixty-four when Johnson stood on a peace platform and then went out and did all the things Goldwater had been stupid enough to announce he'd do if he got elected.”

There was a momentary silence. Grant was looking at Satterthwaite, unblinking. “He was telling me the truth, you see, but he wanted me to think he was lying. He tried to make it look like the standard logrolling we all do. But the sincerity showed through.”