Benchley, Peter - Novel 06

by Q Clearance (v2. 0)

  The top of his desk (an eighteenth-century kneehole number with fine gold-leaf inlay around its borders) had been arranged exactly as he had left his desk in the E.O.B., only neater. The lettering on his IN box seemed to shout at him: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money!" What had been amusing in the E.O.B. now struck him as puerile, frivolous and untrue. He turned the box around so that the letters faced away from the door.

  His typewriter and word processor were on a mahogany table behind the desk. The shredder perched over a leather wastebasket to one side.

  His telephone console looked like the control panel of the Concorde: at least a million buttons, some clear, some red, some blue, some green. He'd need a master's degree just to call home.

  Home. Suddenly he ached for his children. Christopher would love this. Dad had a Star Wars office. It would be far-out. Gross. Outrageous. Awesome.

  He was distracted by the sight of another phone, on the other side of the desk, a white telephone with no dial, just a single red light bulb—menacing, like a poised panther.

  A POTUS phone.

  He stood in the center of the room and wailed, "Where are my friends? What am I supposed to do in here?"

  "To begin with," Dyanna said from the doorway, where she stood like a nurse about to lead him to therapy, "you have a Cabinet meeting in fifteen minutes."

  "/ have a Cabinet meeting?" Burnham looked at her as if she had turned a final comer into madness. "What do you mean, I have a Cabinet meeting?"

  She took a step into the room and lowered her voice, grinning like a child with a naughty secret. ''He came in and told me." She pointed to a door in the wall behind Bumham. "Himself! He spoke to me!"

  "Where does that door go?"

  "Into his private office," Dyanna whispered. "The little one."

  "And so dies freedom," Burnham said, and he thought: I'll have to get an executive order whenever I want to take a leak.

  "What? What did you say?"

  "Nothing." He sat in his new chair. It was stiff, its springs tight and recalcitrant. It discouraged relaxation.

  "Can I get you something? Coffee?"

  "I'd like a double Beefeater martini."

  "Mr. Burnham!"

  "A bottle of Thunderbird in a brown bag?" He smiled wanly.

  "Would you like some coffee?" Dyanna looked stem, matronly.

  "Where did you get that face? I've never seen that face."

  "You'll have to stop being silly, Mr. Burnham. Our silly days are over." She turned her back and returned to her office.

  "Why?" he called after her. "Where is it written that powerful people can't be silly? I think a lot of powerful people are silly. Ridiculous, even."

  There was no reply. Obviously, Dyanna had concluded that his argument did not deserve the compliment of rational opposition.

  He noticed a vase of pink flowers on the coffee table. "Where'd the flowers come from?"

  "Evelyn Witt," Dyanna said.

  "Nice."

  "If you say so."

  Her disembodied voice was beginning to annoy him. It was prim, sharp as a rapier, righteous. Like Tom Sawyer's Aunt Polly. One more crack from him and she'd probably storm into the office and grab him by the ear and wash his mouth with soap.

  "What do you mean?"

  "They're anemones."

  "So?"

  Aunt Polly appeared in the doorway again. "Anemones are very pretty. Everybody notices them. Everybody loves them."

  "So?"

  "They don't last. They have a very short life. They bloom, and they die."

  Burnham laughed and said, "Beautiful!"

  "You think that's funny?"

  "Don't you?" Burnham was still laughing.

  "I think you're disturbed." She turned away.

  He had a few minutes with nothing to do. He decided to call Christopher. If he could decipher the mystery of his phone console.

  He could ask Dyanna to place the call for him. No. There was something distant . . . Victorian . . . about asking one's secretary to call one's children.

  He could have the White House operators call for him. Yes. If he wasn't at home, they would find him and page him. Chris would think being paged by the White House was cool. He hoped.

  He punched a button at random, got a dial tone, punched another button, beside which were the letters "W.H.," and got an operator. He asked her to locate his son.

  She called back in less than a minute.

  "He won't take the call, Mr. Burnham."

  "What? He said that?" Burnham choked.

  "No, sir. I spoke to a woman. She said—here, I wrote it down—'I won't let the White House pollute his space.' I don't know what it means."

  "Thanks." Burnham hung up. He could hear his heart beating, and his palms itched with rage. He thought he would like to break Sarah's nose with the heel of his hand. He should have placed the call himself. At least he would've yelled back at her.

  Ten minutes to go. He looked at his IN box. It was empty. He had no assignments. Maybe from now on his assignments would come only through the unmarked door behind him. He wanted to call MacGregor and Butterworth, tell them what had happened to him, enjoy a laugh over the absurdity of it all. But he knew they wouldn't find it funny. They'd be civil, and pretend to be amused and eager to hear about it, and they'd agree to have lunch tomorrow or the day after, but as soon as the call was finished they'd be sniping at him, obeying the universal truth for men caught on a social, economic or political ladder: Whenever something marvelous happens to a colleague, a little bit of me dies. They would be bitter and resentful and, worst of all, ignorant of how he had accomplished whatever it was he had accomplished, and their ignorance would breed endless nasty speculations.

  There was no way he could convince them that the change wasn't marvelous, for in the White House, proximity to the President was the Holy Grail. He had been moved into the West Wing. Therefore, life had to be wonderful. Q.E.D.

  Dr. Johnson knew better. "All envy would be extinguished," he told Burnham now, "if it were universally known that there are none to be envied, and surely none can be much envied who are not pleased with themselves."

  And why, Burnham thought, am I not pleased with myself?

  Because I am a fraud.

  And how do I know I am a fraud? Because the only thing I know about why I am here is that I do not deserve to be here.

  Who am I to make that judgment? The President must see something in me.

  Sarah says the President has no taste.

  And why do we listen to Sarah, she who speaks well of no one who doesn't summer in Hyannisport?

  Maybe I am worth something. Maybe I can actually contribute something, just by doing whatever the President wants.

  Maybe power can be fun.

  He gazed out over the South Lawn, past the Ellipse, at the gleaming white needle of the Washington Monument.

  “I feel patriotic," he said, turning to the field of multicolored buttons on his phone. "Let's invade somebody."

  In an instant Dyanna stood in the doorway, monitoring him like an intensive-care patient. He smiled at her.

  "It's ten o'clock," she said, flat-faced. "You're due in the Cabinet Room."

  "What in the name of the gentle Jesus am I gonna do—"

  A buzzer sounded, harsh, commanding. For a moment, Burnham thought that his impious use of the name of the Savior had tripped some secret moral alarm. Then he saw the red light flashing on his POTUS phone. He snatched up the receiver.

  "Yessir!"

  "Ready, Tim?" said the President pleasantly. "We're all here."

  "On my way. Sir." He replaced the white instrument.

  “We're all here? Burnham jumped up from his chair. The entire Cabinet of the United States of America is waiting for me!”

  "Where's the Cabinet Room?" he shouted to Dyanna.

  "Across the hall."

  He dragged his fingertips through his hair and checked his suit. He looked like he'd been wrinkled by a profes
sional.

  "Here." Dyanna handed him a yellow legal pad.

  "What's that for?"

  "Who knows? Looks good."

  "Right. Right. Thanks." He started out the door.

  "If you need me in there," she said, "just call."

  The Cabinet Room door was ajar. He pushed it open gingerly, like a chambermaid reluctant to disturb a guest en deshabille, and stepped inside.

  There, sitting around the giant oval table, beneath the portraits of Great Presidents, with their aides attendant in chairs against the wall behind them, were the Secretaries of Absolutely Everything. Each sat in his personal chair adorned with his personal plaque, which, if he was a good boy and served his President well and didn't get indicted or piss off Epstein or some vocal minority group, would be presented to him by the President upon his departure.

  The President sat halfway down the table, on the east side, flanked by the Secretaries of State and Treasury. The President saw Bumham and said, "Good! Come on in, Tim, and shut the door." Then he addressed his Cabinet. "Gentlemen . . . who wants to cast the first stone?" He smiled and, without looking at Burnham, motioned him to his side.

  No one spoke. As Burnham walked along beside the table, he felt eyes appraising him with amusement and contempt, as if the assembly were the first Oglala Sioux to spot Custer on the ridge above the valley of the Little Bighorn: If he kept his distance, he might survive; if he dared venture into their territory, he was chopped meat.

  He saw, but did not look at, Mario Epstein in a chair against the far wall, a statue of cold stone.

  He saw Warner Cobb against a wall nearer to him, doodling on a notepad. He did look at Cobb, praying for a smile of encouragement, but Cobb would not look at him.

  See? Dr. Johnson reminded him. Many need no other provocation to enmity, than that they find themselves excelled.

  The President had placed a chair for Burnham directly behind his own, as if he expected Burnham to be an interpreter between himself and the Secretary of State. He patted the seat of the chair, and Burnham sat in it.

  The President leaned toward Burnham and said, "You know Parker?" He tapped the Secretary of State.

  "My pleasure," said Parker Randall, with all the enthusiasm he lavished on other people's servants. The Secretary wore one of those shirts without a collar—you had to attach a different-color collar—and his Tiffany collar pin, and a yellow paisley tie. He smelled like the men's room at "21," treacly.

  "Mr. President?" Burnham whispered, and the President tilted backward, offering Burnham his ear. "What do you want me to do?"

  "Listen, son," the President said out of the comer of his mouth. "Just listen."

  "Yes, sir." Burnham uncapped a felt-tip pen and placed it on the yellow pad that lay across his lap.

  The Secretary of Agriculture spoke first. He was a spare, weathered man in his early sixties who had been a farmer and a professor of agronomy at a wheat-belt university.

  He spoke on behalf of America's two million small-family farmers, who were going broke at a record rate. Eloquently, he called for a federal bailout of the farmers, but his eloquence failed to disguise an underlying flaw in his argument:

  The two million small farmers produced only thirty percent of America's food, and the farms that produced the other seventy percent were healthy and successful. According to this Administration's philosophy, in a free-market economy there was no reason to bail out the small farmers. They should be allowed to collapse or to be folded into larger entities.

  It was an old, familiar argument that had been batted back and forth on op-ed pages across the land.

  The Secretary was in the middle of a lachrymose tale about a particular farm family, two of whose children had entered into a suicide pact in order to leave more food for their siblings, when the President leaned back in his chair and whispered to Burnham, "What do you think?"

  "Sir?" He didn't understand the question. What did he think about what?

  "What do you think about what old Bledsoe is saying?"

  Oh boy, Burnham thought, what do I say? Why am I suddenly an expert on farm policy? Can I just say "interesting"? No. Does he want me to be honest? I want to tell him what he wants to hear, but what's that?

  If I tell him the truth, I've got a brand-new enemy in the Secretary.

  If I lie, I may have an enemy in the President.

  Who would I rather have as an enemy?

  Burnham leaned forward and said, "Sophistry."

  "What? What's that? Don't confuse your President, son."

  "No, sir." Burnham swallowed and said, "Bullshit."

  The President nodded and smiled and said, "That's what I thought." He turned back to the table and let the Secretary finish. Then he waited a beat and said, "It's moldy, Lem."

  "Mr. President?" said the Secretary.

  "That critter's too old to dance. Get a new one. Next?"

  Burnham saw the President reach beneath the table. He shifted in his chair and saw the President's index finger on one of six colored buttons on a panel affixed to one of the table's legs.

  He expected to see the Secretary vanish through a trapdoor in the floor, or a platoon of storm troopers burst into the room and remove him from his chair.

  But nothing happened.

  "Next?" said the President.

  The Secretary of Defense cleared his throat. Before joining the Administration, he had been president of a major supplier of jet engines to the Air Force, and upholding the sanctity of defense contracts was his private crusade. He detested the President's new policy of permitting two contractors to manufacture the same item on a competitive basis, for while he acknowledged that the policy saved money, he insisted that it inhibited research and development. A genius can't be a genius if he's looking over his shoulder at accountants all the time, went his reasoning, and since we all agree that freedom is priceless, the maintenance of freedom should not be allowed to become a matter of dollars and cents.

  In public, of course, he supported the President's policy, but he had an unfortunate habit of giving interviews—"off the record" or for "deep background"—in which "usually reliable sources" or "highly placed officials" stated his point of view.

  The result was the opposite of his intention: Instead of being regarded as a patriot, in the press he was portrayed as a loudmouthed maverick. One editorial cartoon that particularly burned him showed his entire house furnished with $700 toilet seats, $2,200 coffeemakers, $900 hammers, etc., etc.

  Now he was asserting that the military—not he, the military—was weary of being pilloried as a gaggle of reckless spendthrifts, and he asked for unanimous Administration support of his (and the military's) efforts to keep democracy safe from godless communism.

  The President leaned back and said, "Well?"

  Burnham didn't have to hesitate. "He's whining."

  The President twirled a pencil between his fingers.

  When the Secretary of Defense ran out of breath, the President tapped the pencil's eraser on the table and said, without looking at the Secretary, "Andrew"—he pronounced it "Andyroo"—"I believe you know the old saying ..." Now he looked at him. "If you can't stand the heat ..."

  The President let the rest of the saying float in ether, unsaid. The Secretary reddened.

  The door opened, and an elderly mocha-colored butler in a wing-collar shirt and a tuxedo entered, carrying a tray on which was a single glass containing what looked like a cola. He bowed before the President, and the President took the glass and thanked him.

  Burnham assumed that the butler would take drink requests around the room, but he didn't. He turned back toward the door.

  The President leaned to Burnham. "Want something? I should've asked."

  "No, sir," Burnham said quickly. "No thanks." Much as he would have welcomed a cold drink, he did not choose to be the sole man among men to be permitted to slake his thirst.

  As he sat back, Burnham noticed that Epstein was eyeing him. He expected Epstein's look to be ho
stile, but it wasn't. It was . . . scientific, as if Epstein was studying him like a specimen to be readied for dissection.

  The Secretary of State spoke up. "I have a rather ticklish item to place on the agenda ..."

  At the sound of the Secretary of State's voice, the President stifled a yawn.

  ''You've got him!" Pym said. "Well done."

  "Yeah, right," Eva said. "You know what I feel? Sleazy."

  "Don't think of him as a person. He's a thing . . . like that dam you were going to blow up. You're using him, plain and simple."

  "Sure." She did not look convinced.

  "You'll get over it."

  "How long do I—"

  "As long as it takes," Pym said flatly. "They were very pleased. He's an incredible asset, and he doesn't know it. It's perfect!"

  "I'm glad you think so."

  "I do." Pym debated telling her of the dream he had had years ago, of siring a line of agents, all born and bred in place. He decided against it. She wouldn't appreciate it. Not now. In fact, she looked slightly nauseated.

  The phone rang. Pym picked it up and said, "Hello."

  "Mallard?"

  "Teal."

  "My delivery man tried to deliver your . . . condiments."

  "And?"

  "Your damn mailbox isn't big enough! How's he s'posed to put a . . . Party Pak . . . through a little slot?"

  "Oh. Where is he now?"

  "A phone booth on the comer."

  "AH right. I'll go get it from him."

  "How'll he recognize you?"

  "I'll tell him who I am and ask him for the package."

  "No, no, no! Jesus! Think, man! Craft." Teal paused, "You say, 'Is this phone out of order?' He'll say, 'No, but I'm waiting for a call.' You say, 'I'll find another one, then.' Got that?"

  Pym smiled. In this neighborhood? The exchange would more likely be: "Is this phone broke?" "The fuck's it to you?" "I gotta make a fuckin' call." "Touch that fuckin' phone, I'll break all your fuckin' fingers."

  He said, "Yes, I've got it."

  "I'll call him back. Give me three minutes."

  "All right."

  "By the way, the hostess was especially pleased by your . . . main course."