Q Clearance

by Peter Benchley

  She might have a salad at the Cantina and then go to a movie, or browse in the bookstores or health-food shops that stayed open till nine o'clock, or wander through Georgetown and be entertained by the frenetic rutting rituals.

  At ten or so, she would let herself into the tiny furnished apartment they had rented on O Street. Their landlord, who lived upstairs, was a decorator with exquisite taste and an abundance of antiques awaiting placement in great homes. He refused to rent to students, couples with children, single men with pets and single women, period ("Slobs," he averred, "all slobs"), which limited his potential clientele. Burnham had been honest about his situation: He was a White House employee in the midst of a divorce proceedings, who kept a room at the Y in order to accommodate the legal niceties, and who needed a quiet place to spend quiet evenings with his lady friend. The landlord must have seen in Burnham a man desperate to avoid any and all unpleasantness such as might arise from nonpayment of rent, breakage or excessive noise, and so, upon receipt of two months' security and two months' rent in advance, he gave Burnham the key and his blessing.

  Eva would read or watch television until about 11:30, and then, if Burnham had not arrived, would go to bed, knowing that in any event short of planetary cataclysm, he would be there before morning.

  For Burnham, the arrangement was comfortable, secure and flavored with the spice of tryst—perfect for the time being, which was all he could ask since his entire life was being lived moment to moment. His past had been stolen from him—he still couldn't believe that a fifteen-year marriage had popped like a soap bubble, and somewhere within him was the knowledge that it hadn't popped but had rotted, and someday he might invest the time and the agony to uncover the roots of the rot. Right now, he couldn't plot his future confidently beyond the next thirty minutes. He had no idea what he wanted, much less how to pursue it. All he knew for sure was that now, this minute, he felt good about himself, and that, at least, was a limb he could clutch with some feeling of safety.

  He looked at his watch. Two minutes to go. An hour ago, Evelyn Witt had phoned to say that the President wanted to see Burnham at exactly eight o'clock and that Burnham should cancel any plans he might have for the rest of the evening. Burnham had said, "Fine," and, as he hung up, had smiled at the recollection of how he would have responded to such a summons a month ago: arhythmia, a rash, tension headaches and/or hyperventilation.

  His reaction now was simple curiosity at some of the unusual signals sent by the summons. For one thing, the President had been scheduled to speak at a National Press Club dinner—Burnham had edited the speech and added a few jokes he and the President had composed together—and Presidents, no matter how roundly they loathed some or all of the press corps at any given time, did not contemn lightly the whole Fourth Estate by backing out of a major dinner at the last minute. This discourtesy would be costly, but obviously the President had determined that it was a cost worth paying.

  Then, too, there was the peremptory tone of the call. Normally, the President would call himself, and ask Burnham to come by around eight, and promise to try to be finished at a reasonable hour.

  Whatever was up was of an import and urgency sufficient to lead the President to dispense with all pleasantries.

  Burnham decided that the leading candidate among all the possible issues was Honduras. Congress was paralyzed by internal bickering over Honduras, and a few senators—like Jesse Helms on the right and Alan Cranston on the left—had capitalized on the President's indecision by launching noisy campaigns that threatened to wrest the leadership role away from the White House.

  The President must have finally decided to decide what to do about Honduras.

  As he buttoned his collar and fiddled with the knot in his tie, Burnham realized that not once in all his musings had he considered that he, or something he had or hadn't done, might be the problem for which the President had summoned him. A month ago, imprisoned by—what did they call it? —infantile egocentrism (pumping paranoia was more like it), he would have known that he was the problem.

  Now he knew for sure that he hadn't done anything reprehensible, and for certain that nothing he could do would be worth the President's canceling a speech for.

  Was this maturity or was it cynicism?

  He tapped lightly on the connecting door to the President's little office—a reflexive, unnecessary courtesy to which the President, had he known about it, would have said something like, "Christ, Tim, what you think I'm doin' in there, bangin' one of the cleaning women?"—then opened it, closed it behind him and crossed to the door to the Oval Office.

  The President was standing alone, his back to Burnham, looking out over the darkening South Lawn. The searchlights had been turned on the Washington Monument, and it gleamed like a golden needle in the twilight. The President's shoulders drooped in a way that made him look too small for his suit jacket, as if the unrelenting demands of the office were sapping substance from the man and somehow shrinking him.

  Burnham felt like a voyeur, and he cleared his throat to let the President know he was there.

  The President spoke without turning around. "D'you ever think about the unborn, Tim?"

  "The unborn, sir?" What are we talking about here? Burnham wondered. Abortion? No, impossible. This President didn't need any help formulating policy about abortion. He had long since made clear his conviction that abortion was a nonissue, something cooked up by the Catholic Church and the Protestant fundamentalists as a convenient banner around which to rally their straying flocks. "Do you mean posterity?"

  "No. 'Posterity' is a generality. Like 'the hungry.' Somebody asks you to help 'the hungry,' you can kiss it off without any conscience. But if they plop a starving kid named Johnny down on your doorstep and ask if you'll give him some food, that puts it to you. No. I don't give a damn about posterity—that's a lie, of course, but what I mean is, the thought of posterity isn't what makes me do something or not do something, you can't spend your life sucking up to historians—but times like this, I really do think about the unborn."

  "What are they?"

  The President turned his head and smiled at Burnham. "That's what I like about you, Tim. No bullshit. Some of the other ass kissers I have around here, they'd say, 'Right, Mr. President, the unborn. I spend every waking moment deeply concerned about the plight of the unborn. Fact is, I have a bill right here that gives them each two-fifty and a Jap car.' " He turned back to the window and gestured vaguely into the distance. "I think of them as being out there, Tim, billions of them, the kids who haven't been born yet, and they're like a jury waiting to judge me. What I do now will determine the kind of lives they'll lead, whether they'll be rich or poor, happy or hungry, whether thousands of them will have to die in some foreign country while they're still green—"

  Honduras, Burnham concluded. I knew it. He's trying to decide whether or not to invade or carpet-bomb or wipe the whole place off the map.

  "—and they're looking down to see what decision I'll make. When I first got this job, I used to imagine George Washington out there, and Abraham Lincoln and F.D.R., sitting in judgment on old Ben Winslow. But then I realized they're all cold as catfish and can't make any judgments. The people who count are the people still to come. You know one of the worst things I ever heard in my life? It was on 60 Minutes, and Rosalyn Carter was talking about Reagan and she said—I mean, granted, she has a bias, but this really hit me—'My grandchildren will curse that man's name.' Jesus Christ! How would you like to have that on your tombstone: 'My grandchildren will curse his name.' " The President turned his back to the window and reached to his desk for a glass of watery bourbon. "I think about that a lot. I don't want anybody's grandchildren cursing my name. Drink?" He pointed to a bar cabinet in a comer of the office.

  "No, thanks."

  "You don't drink at all, do you?"

  "Not any more. I did. A lot. For a long time. But then it started driving the ship, and I decided it was time to get off."

 
The President nodded. "How do you get away from yourself?"

  "Funny you should ask. I've been wondering the same about you."

  Burnham regretted the impertinence instantly, but before he could apologize, the President said, "I bet you have."

  "Mr. President, I didn't—"

  "I bet you're the only sumbitch around here who thinks that way, except maybe Evelyn. You think any of these other fellas give a hoot how I manage to cope? No. Whether I cope, yeah, that they care about, but /low—forget it. It's like being a prizefighter: Between rounds, they stick smelling salts under my nose and slap me around and pop my mouthguard back in and send me out for the next round, and long as I don't get knocked out—which means they're out of work— they could care less."

  A buzzer sounded on the President's desk. "Just as well," he said as he reached for a button. "Self-pity makes me sick." He leaned toward a speaker phone and said, "Yeah."

  "Mario Epstein," said the hollow voice of Evelyn Witt. "He says it's urgent."

  "Everything's always urgent with him. Tell him it'll have to wait. I've got urgent business of my own."

  "Yes, sir."

  The speaker phone clicked off. The President straightened up and started to speak, but the buzzer sounded again. Angrily, the President spun back toward his desk and mashed the phone button. "What!?"

  "Mario says it's critical that he speak to you, sir. Now."

  "Is he the President?" the President yelled at the plastic box.

  "No, sir."

  "Did sixty-some goddamn percent of the American people vote that half-breed egghead into this office?"

  "No, sir."

  "Then you tell him that I am the one who decides what's urgent around here, and at the moment I am trying to decide whether his children—if he ever learns how to have any—will spend their lives in a palm tree being shot at by a bunch of coke-heads, which perhaps he will agree is a fairly urgent matter and whatever two-bit business he's got will wait till the morning, and unless he has got convincing evidence that the republic is about to be vaporized, I will not be disturbed!''

  Burnham watched, mesmerized, as the President yanked open one of the desk drawers, jammed the speaker phone inside it, and slammed the drawer closed. He wondered how the President's message would be relayed by Evelyn. Surely not verbatim, but, equally surely, not too sugar-coated either: The essence of the President's mood had to be conveyed.

  The President smiled at Burnham and said, "Evelyn earns her money."

  "I'll say."

  "She's a great filter. I get to sound off, which makes me feel good because there're times that smart-ass will try the patience of Job, but I can't speak like that to his face too many times or he'll eventually get so pissed he'll push his ejection button and up and quit, which I can't afford."

  "What will she tell him?"

  "Pretty much what I said, but without the Don Rickles.

  She has a talent for delivering bad news like it was a blessing. People have told me they didn't even realize it was bad news until they hung up, and then they still had this feeling of gratitude for Evelyn. She'll be nice and polite, but she'll shut him off just like a spigot."

  "I suspect he doesn't like it when that happens."

  "Kates it!" the President grinned. "Can't stand it. And the best part is, he won't get angry at Evelyn and he can't get angry at me—he knows if he pushes me too far I'll cut off his legs—so he'll have to swallow it. I expect if he had a dog, he'd go home and beat on it."

  The President took a sip of his drink and made a face. The drink was old; the ice had melted, and Burnham imagined that the weak bourbon tasted like tepid rinse water. The President went to the bar cabinet, measured an ounce and a half of bourbon into a fresh glass, dropped in two ice cubes and rolled them around the sides of the glass with his finger.

  "Now, Tim," he said, and he tasted his new brew, "tell me what you think we should do about Honduras."

  "What side do you want me to take, sir?"

  "Uh-uh. No more games." The President sat on the couch and motioned Burnham to one of the chairs opposite. "I want to know what you think."

  "Me? But, sir . . . I . . ." Burnham suddenly felt the old feelings returning: the tripping heartbeat, the sweat seeping into his palms. "Why me?"

  "Why not? You know all the arguments. You've taken every side."

  "But, sir . . . You've got about a billion dollars worth of the best brains in the world giving you advice. Historians, military people, foreign-policy people. I think it would be presumptuous of me to ..."

  "Oh bullshit with your presumptuous, Tim. All these brains you say I've got on the payroll, every one of them has a constituency of one kind or another. If I want the military constituency, I know where to go. If I want to know what the diplomats think, I know where to go. You have no constituency, Tim. What I'm paying you for is honesty."

  "But it wouldn't be fair, sir—fair to you, that is. I could sit here and give you opinions all day "—Oh, nice! Burnham said to himself as his mind danced frantically around in a field of options, struggling to stay a step ahead of his tongue.

  You don't even have one opinion, let alone all these opinions you're going to give him all day—"but what would they be worth? I've been a sounding board for you, so any opinion I have would just be a synthesis of other people's opinions."

  Not bad, Burnham thought, when the President appeared not to have a ready reply but simply gazed at the ice in his glass and twirled it with his finger.

  But then the President raised his eyes to Burnham and spoke with a voice as flat as lead. "What do you think a decision is, Tim, but a synthesis of people's opinions?"

  "Yes! ... of course . . . well ..." Now Burnham was blushing, and he could hear the march of his pulse behind his ears. "What I mean is—it may sound paradoxical—but because I have no constituency and have nothing to lose, my opinion wouldn't carry much conviction and wouldn't be worth anything, is what I mean."

  "What makes you think you've got nothing to lose?"

  "Oh. Well. I mean—"

  "Let's start with the confidence of the President of the United States. I am not putting you through this, Tim, because it amuses me. I am putting you through this because I value your judgment and I think it can be a big help to the country at a time that, I'm afraid, will turn out to be a pivotal moment in our history."

  "You do?" Burnham was amazed. He wasn't aware that he had much judgment, good or bad.

  "Every time over the past several weeks that I have asked your opinion and you have given it, it has been based on honesty, common sense and—I'm sure you don't have any idea you have this—a pretty sharp political sense of which option would be best for me. And every time, it has turned out that your opinion has been sound."

  "It has?" Burnham hadn't ever stopped to think that his judgment might be being judged. He had offered his opinions offhand, and because he had never had any feedback from them, he had never thought of them as being good or bad.

  "Yes. Now"—the President locked his eyes on Burnham's, forcing him to look at him—"are you finished jerking off?"

  "Sir? I ..." Burnham wanted to look away, but he couldn't. The President's eyes were like a lizard's. After a long moment, he said, "Yes."

  "Good. Now let's come to a decision. Do you have a strong opinion?"

  "No, sir. There may be one inside me somewhere, but I'm going to have to find it." An obvious question begged to be asked, but Burnham hesitated, sensing that with Benjamin Winslow—as with any man who had for nearly seven years been the most powerful man on the planet and who was accustomed to being treated like a pharaoh—the line that separated candor from lese-majeste was thin and fuzzy.

  Then he thought: To hell with it. I have to know. He said, "Do you?"

  The President smiled, as if he appreciated Burnham's reticence, and said, "No. I've got instincts, and usually I trust 'em, but I'm not gonna send boys to rot in some stinking jungle on the basis of some gut feeling, the way Lyndon Johnson
did. There's no Bobby Kennedy pecking at my shell."

  "Well then, Mr. President, shall we take it from the top?"

  "After you, my boy." The President spread his hands, inviting Burnham to proceed. "The night is young."

  Suicide, Foster Pym decided, was not an option. For one thing, it might not be an end-all. For another, as afraid as he was at the moment, he was even more afraid of dying, and as unpleasant as the fear of dying was, he'd rather be afraid than dead.

  He saw that he had arrived back at the front door, having circled the block. He set off again, to walk somewhere, anywhere, it didn't matter. It felt good to be outside. The apartment had become confining. The radio and television threatened him with more news of Louise; the telephone threatened to ring with new alarms. Out here, at least, the bad news couldn't reach him.

  He had to think, had to come up with a plan. A plan to do what? He didn't know. He felt too old to run, too scared to hide.

  Teal wanted him to call Peter Jennings, wanted Jennings to blow the lid off the spy scandal in the White House, to force the government openly to acknowledge Burnham's perfidy. Humiliate the President. Rattle his shaky coalition in Congress. Stir the pot.

  Great idea.

  Just one problem: What would really be humiliated, rattled and stirred would be Foster Pym. His cover would be blown sky-high. The FBI would descend on him like a pack of vultures.

  He had no desire to become a human sacrifice.

  His "friend" Peter Jennings. That was another gruesome joke. If he barged in on Peter Jennings, he'd end up in St. Elizabeth's Hospital, wearing a nice white coat with sleeves that tie around the back.

  Maybe he could make an anonymous phone call to the ABC Washington bureau, but that was about all.

  He turned the comer. A car was parked at the bus stop. The only reason he noticed it was that the driver was smoking a cigar, and as he dragged on it, the ember glowed like an orange beacon. But Pym quickly dismissed it. People sat in parked cars at night all the time around here—junkies, pushers, hookers, cops.