Macalaster snorted. “Why would he do that?”
“Because Julian will try to turn you around as soon as he hears about our deal.”
“You don’t mind my telling him?”
“Why should I? I haven’t said anything to you, nor will I, that I wouldn’t be glad to see on page one of The Washington Post.”
Macalaster knew that what Mallory said about Julian was true. He would do everything he could to undermine Mallory’s version of events. “Let me ask a question,” he said. “Why me?”
“Because you’re clean,” Mallory said. “You have no allegiance to me and nothing more to lose from the other side.” Amusement flashed in his eyes. “Besides, it tickles me to imagine actually having the truth about this episode written by the modern American equivalent of the omniscient narrator, an investigative journalist.”
He rose to his feet and spoke Macalaster’s name, his way of saying “dismissed.” The Salvadoran manservant had already appeared in the door, poised to usher the visitor out in obedience to some unalterable timetable.
“If you want to go ahead with this project, call Susan,” Mallory said. “She’ll make the arrangements.”
“Right,” Macalaster said, knowing, as Mallory did, that he had already taken the bait.
6
As Mallory read his Macaulay, Lockwood had been listening to Julian Hubbard’s morning report. Meanwhile he ate his usual breakfast of pancakes and highly seasoned venison sausage, provided by the Kentucky Long Rifle Association, whose members stalked the whitetail deer with flintlock rifles. This was not so romantic as it seemed. Owing to the steady encroachment of the eastern forest on what had previously been farmland and the work of the animal rights lobby, there were now so many deer in America that they were commonly seen by night even in big cities; pet dogs hunted them through wooded neighborhoods in packs. In Washington, they had practically denuded the parks and traffic circles of the grass and flowers that had formerly beautified the city, and were now in the process of killing off the deciduous trees by eating their bark.
Haggard from lack of sleep, Lockwood was seated at a small table in the Lincoln sitting room with the same books and papers strewn around him as on the night before. He wore the Kentucky University sweat suit in which he had slept and heavy sweat socks on his enormous feet. As far as Julian knew, he did not own pajamas or slippers, let alone a dressing gown. Julian finished his report and waited for the President to speak.
Finally Lockwood put his fork down on his plate, looked up, and said, “Who’s administering the oath today, seeing that there’s no Chief Justice?”
This was an irrelevant question, but Julian was not surprised by it. In moments of stress, Lockwood often focused on things that did not matter.
Julian said, “Bobby Poole, Mr. President.”
“That goddamn little fly fisherman?” Lockwood said. “Why not somebody from our side? What about that black girl from Harvard?”
“Poole is first in line of seniority. It’s protocol.”
“Goddamn right-wingers live too long—they eat better when they’re kids. How old was Max Goodrich—ninety-five?”
“Only eighty-nine. It just seemed like he lived longer than that.”
Lockwood squinted quizzically at Julian over his glasses (he could not see to eat without them) but made no response. Despite the fact that the timing of the Chief Justice’s death, and the opportunity it created to control events, were all-important in Julian’s plans for the struggle with Mallory, he did not pursue the subject. This was not the moment to do so; Lockwood was always cranky in the morning, and when he was cranky he disapproved proposals just for the pleasure of doing so. He said, “The hell with the Supreme Court. What am I going to say to these people you’ve lined up this morning?”
In a series of terse telephone calls beginning at dawn, Julian had arranged two meetings for Lockwood: the first at nine o’clock, in the White House, with the leaders of the party in Congress, the second at eleven, in a small conference room in the Capitol, with a select group of journalists. Julian, who knew all the hideouts in the warren of the much-reconstructed old building, had chosen the smallest available space. He wanted the reporters to be physically close to Lockwood, to feel a sense of intimacy when the President told them that Mallory was attempting, on a legal technicality, to reclaim the presidency that every good person believed he had lost forever.
To both groups Julian had said the same thing: “The President has something of fundamental import to say to you about a threat to the presidency.”
Thanks to Mallory, the senators and congressmen already knew what the threat was, so they asked no questions. Every single one of the journalists had replied, “What threat to the presidency?”
“Only he can tell you that. In the meantime, don’t believe anything you hear from other sources.”
To Lockwood Julian said, “The important point is, this way you’ll have the first word and the last word. According to the rules he made himself, Mallory can’t move until eleven o’clock, when you either call him or don’t call him with your answer. We know he’s set up a press conference at eleven-thirty on the east steps of the Capitol. You’ve got to hand it to him—he understands symbolism. At that moment you’ll be on the west side of the same building, getting ready to take the oath of office. It’s important to get your position implanted in the mind of the front-line press before they listen to Mallory. Otherwise they won’t ask him the right questions.”
“Thanks for the briefing,” Lockwood growled. “My question was, What do I tell these guys?”
“The truth. That Mallory is going to try to steal the presidency on a technicality.”
“You call what he’s got a technicality?”
“I don’t know what else we should call it. Until it’s proved under courtroom rules of evidence it’s just an allegation like any other—politics as usual. In the minds of these people, it will be whatever you say it is. They want to help you. They want to hear that you’re not going to let Mallory get away with this outrage. Hit the FIS angle hard—forces of darkness, secret satellites in the sky, mysterious eavesdroppers hidden in the desert that you didn’t know about but Mallory did, even though you’re President of the United States. Who are these spooks working for?”
Chewing the last of his food, Lockwood listened with a wary expression in his eyes. Julian handed him half a dozen large blue index cards on which talking points had been typed in letters large enough to be legible without reading glasses. Lockwood read them aloud, in a voice tinged with derision. His patience had been much taxed by his speechwriters in recent days, but there was more to his performance than that. For all his charm, he was an insecure man, sensitive to the slightest criticism, and even when he was in a good mood he ridiculed the people around him. This was his defense against what he perceived as their superior breeding and education; it put them off balance to be taunted by a man who had the looks and manners of a sergeant in the regular army. Like a noncom in charge of the awkward squad, Lockwood gave nearly everyone he knew a sardonic, often obscene or scatological nickname. The overdressed Norman Carlisle Blackstone was “Spats.” His name for Richard Nixon, while the indestructible old Red hunter was still alive, had been “Dickless Tracy.” In moments of affection he called Julian “Enrico” because his beard was dark and fast-growing; the President pretended that Julian’s great-great-grandmother, a patroness of the Metropolitan Opera in the days of the Diamond Horseshoe, had been made pregnant during a dressing-room tryst with Enrico Caruso: “That’s where old Julian’s five o’clock shadow comes from, an Eyetalian quickie.”
“Not bad, Enrico,” Lockwood said of the talking points. “I like the part where I call old Franklin ‘an enemy of the poor and disadvantaged, a billionaire who has shown that he is a dictator at heart.’ Is that your fine Eyetalian hand?”
“Yes, sir,” Julian replied. “Everyone else was home in bed.”
“You think I should come right out and c
all him a dictator?”
“It’s an important thought to get out into the media stream, and it has the virtue of being something they all want to believe. You can do it on background; don’t worry, the press will write it as long as they have a source to blame it on.”
“Don’t worry,” Lockwood said. “I’ll lay the onus on the son of a bitch. I’ve got no choice. You know the old saying: If you’ve got the facts on your side, hammer hell out of the facts; if you’ve got the law, hammer hell out of the law. If you’ve got neither, hammer hell out of the table.”
Lockwood was more like himself by the minute. Eating had brought a little color into his cheeks, and the high sugar content of the food was giving him energy.
“You’ve got more than the table on your side,” Julian said. “First of all—”
Lockwood held up his hand. “Not now,” he said. “It’s too early in the morning to be smart. All I have time to do today is smack Franklin in the mouth as hard as I can. Gotta make the crowd roar. We’ll get to the fine points later.”
“You’re right, of course. But we’ve got a damn good case.”
Lockwood smiled for the first time since rising. “Damn right we do,” he said. “You need a shave, Enrico. Get you some breakfast and scrape off some of those whiskers. I’ll see you downstairs in half an hour.”
Ross Macalaster reached Julian Hubbard on the telephone moments later and told him what Mallory had proposed to him.
“Are you going to do this?” Julian asked.
“Write the book? Sure I am. If I don’t, he’ll find someone else to do it you may like even less than you like me. It will be a better book if you and Lockwood talk to me too.”
“What exactly has Mallory told you?”
“He showed me a file with a lot of circumstantial information in it. It involves computers and the presidential vote last November in California, Michigan, and New York. Shall I go on? I’m on a cellular phone.”
“No. Do you think the information is genuine?”
“I found it plausible. He said it was the same material he gave Lockwood last night. Did the two of them meet last night?”
Julian ignored the question. He said, “You understand that he’s trying to pull off a coup d’état?”
“Is that so? All I know is what I read in the file. That’s why I’m calling.”
“Mallory is playing mind games. He’s good at that, so watch yourself.”
Julian had not invited Macalaster to the press briefing in the Capitol; it was limited to writers and broadcasters he knew he could trust. Julian regarded the news media as a transmission belt for the political word. He wanted no one at Lockwood’s briefing who did not owe him favors, no one who would ask the wrong questions. Macalaster did not fall into that category.
Julian said, “Do you know where the Vice President’s office is in the Capitol—off the Senate chamber?”
“Yes.”
“Meet me there during Lockwood’s speech. Just walk in; I’ll tell the guards you’re coming. We’ll watch the speech together. And talk.”
7
There are no windows in the Roosevelt Room, where Lockwood met with the leaders of his party, but in any case he had lost the habit of looking out of the windows since his move into the White House. He was surprised, therefore, when the agent in charge of the presidential protection detail of the Secret Service intercepted him in the hall outside the Oval Office and told him that snow was falling again.
“Thanks, son,” he said, unable for the moment to remember the man’s name. “But what difference does it make?” Lockwood’s mind was still in the meeting, and he kept on walking.
The Secret Service man followed him into the Oval Office. He was the archetype of a Secret Service agent: calm, brave, intelligent, strong and agile as a professional boxer, and fanatically dedicated to preserving the President’s life. “It’s a wet, heavy snow, Mr. President, and it’s going to stick,” he said. “Visibility could be close to zero by noon, and the forecast is for ten to fifteen inches by late afternoon.”
Lockwood reached his desk, made by the great Nisei woodworker George Nakashima from a three-inch slab, bark still attached, of a black walnut felled on the banks of the Big Sandy River by Lockwood himself. He picked up the telephone and dialed Julian’s extension. The agent’s name, Bud Booker, came back to him. He was still there.
Lockwood put his hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone and said, “You have something to add, Bud?”
“Yes, sir. We think you should move the ceremonies indoors and cancel the parade.”
Lockwood hung up the phone, cutting off Julian, who had just come on the line. “Goddamnit, Bud, we’ve been over this before. The answer is no.”
“Mr. President, we think you should reconsider.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“The chief, myself, the agents on duty—all of us. We can’t function even at minimum efficiency in a whiteout.”
“A whiteout? Hell, it’s just a little old January snowstorm. Back where I come from, babies get made in the woods in worse weather than this.”
Booker was accustomed to Lockwood’s hillbilly wit. He smiled dutifully, but stuck to his argument. “I’ve got a bad feeling about today, sir,” he said.
Lockwood glared at the young man, then relaxed. “I know you do, Bud, and I know you’re only trying to do what’s best. But I’m not going to hide under the back porch like a whipped hound dog just because some crazy Arab wants to blow himself up in the front yard.”
Booker, his face controlled, his big wingtip shoes planted on the blue carpet, stood his ground. “With all due respect, Mr. President,” he said, “you’re not the only one at risk.”
Lockwood’s expression darkened. “Watch it, son,” he said softly. Booker made no apology; he was standing up for his troops. Lockwood understood this. In a different tone of voice, he said, “Every one of us stood up on our hind legs in the open air during the worst of it last fall, and by God I’ll stand up in the open air today and take the oath of office. I have my reasons. And that’s that.” He softened his tone even further. “I’m just not going to hunker down,” he said. “Now you and your men just do the best you can, Bud.”
Booker made a stiff military about-face—Lockwood did not miss the symbolism—and left. Watching the man go, he murmured sardonically to himself, “Of course we may not draw much of a crowd.” Then he put the encounter out of his mind and redialed Julian’s number. “Get in here,” he said, “and bring that half-wit we’ve got for a lawyer with you.”
Lockwood started talking in a loud voice while his two aides were still in the doorway. “Carlisle, what the hell’s wrong with you? You’ve got to stop saying that Mallory’s got the goods on us and the damn army is going to have to take over the country.”
“That’s not what I said, Mr. President.”
“Goddamnit, don’t tell me what you said. I heard you say it. All those damn Chicken Littles from the Hill heard you too. It scared the living shit out of them. Did you see those faces? By the time you got through going over the evidence my own party was ready to impeach me by acclamation. Jesus! Where the hell was our side of the story? What’s our defense going to be? That’s what they wanted to hear. You made it sound like there was nothing I’d like better than to put on my Sunday clothes and be burned at the stake on national TV.”
Blackstone tried to defend himself. “I understood Julian was going to brief them on our political strategy. My job was to lay out the charges Mallory has made.”
“What’s Julian got to do with it? He’s not a lawyer. If this is the way you do things on Wall Street, it’s no wonder half the Stock Exchange is in jail. And one more thing, Julian. Stop calling this back-alley fight a coup d’état.”
“Whatever you say, Mr. President,” Julian said. “But what do you want us to call it?”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything? Stick to the point. What are we going to do to beat this pack of damn lies F
ranklin’s putting out? That’s what I want to know. That’s what they all wanted to know in the Roosevelt Room, but we sure as hell didn’t satisfy their curiosity.”
Lockwood had reason to be disturbed. The meeting with the party leaders had gone badly. Most of the senators and congressmen present had already read Mallory’s file; copies had been delivered to them shortly after dawn by his messengers. Its contents had shaken them. It was obvious that Mallory was going to go for impeachment unless Lockwood stepped aside, and some of them had seemed to think this wasn’t such a bad idea.
Lockwood had ridiculed the possibility. “That’s just Franklin feeling up our titties,” he had told them. “We’re going to win this one. Got to. Think of the alternative.”
Before Lockwood could say more to Julian and Blackstone the intercom buzzed. He picked up the handset, listened to his secretary’s voice, and said, “Send him on in.” He made a gesture of dismissal to Julian and Blackstone. “Carlisle,” he said, “I want you to read the Constitution and tell me how to use it to screw Mallory. Read slow and careful. I want a complete rundown by three o’clock. Skip lunch.”
Samuel Rees Clark of Massachusetts, the Majority Leader of the Senate, came through the door. Strictly speaking, there was no majority in the Senate because for the first time in history it was divided evenly between Lockwood’s party and Mallory’s, each side having fifty seats. Clark would keep the title and his party would organize the Senate because Lockwood’s Vice President, Williston Graves, always called Willy, would break tie votes in the administration’s favor. Lockwood had known Clark for thirty years. Both were men of the political center who had been elected to the House of Representatives in the same year, and three terms afterward they had moved up to the Senate together, not long after Mallory was elected. From earliest days, Clark had believed that his friend Lockwood would be President someday. He had always stuck by him, pushed his programs, rounded up the votes he needed, fighting the reactionaries and flattering and bribing the radicals.
Shelley's Heart Page 5