Acts of Mercy (8 page)

“I overcame greater odds four years ago.”

“Haven’t you done enough fighting? Isn’t it time to let someone else take over the battle—”

“I don’t want to listen to any more of this,” Augustine said. “I’ve had enough aggravation for one day.”

“Nicholas, I’m only trying to make you understand—”

“Understand? I’m beginning to understand, all right. You’re starting to turn against me too, just like the rest of them.”

She flinched as if he had struck her, stood quickly and came to him and gripped his arms. He wanted to pull away from her, but her eyes held him as much as her hands. “I’m not turning against you,” she said. “Don’t ever say that. Don’t ever think it.”

He could feel the anger starting to give way; as so many times before, the nearness of her, her touch, was a kind of emotional tranquilizer. “I’m sorry, Claire, I didn’t mean that. But I’ve taken all the pushing and shoving I can stand. My mind is made up; I need support, not dissent.”

“You won’t change it even for me?”

“I won’t because I can’t. Now I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“We have to talk about it. We ... have to.”

“No,” Augustine said. The anger in him was completely gone now; he felt nothing but weariness. “You asked me not to doubt you, you say you only want what’s best for me—all right, then tell me you’ll stand by my decision.”

“Nicholas ...”

“Will you stand by
me?”
he said.

Her throat worked as if she were swallowing something painful. Her eyes moved on his face, gentle, stroking, and he knew again the illusion of being absorbed in their depths. She said, “Do you really have to ask a question like that?”

Impulsively, almost fiercely, he drew her to him, held her in a tight embrace. Felt the solid unyielding strength of her flow into him and cement his own strength. “God, how I need you,” he said against the softness of her hair.

“I know,” she said. “I know. I know.”

We have gathered more evidence now against the man we believe to be the leader of the conspiracy against Nicholas Augustine—almost but not quite enough evidence to fully convict him in our eyes. We cannot afford to wait too long, and yet we must continue to be careful and cunning. The last necessary proof will come to us shortly, we are growing more and more certain of that; it can only be a matter of a day or two.

The clock ticks slowly, but it ticks inexorably too: ticks away the minutes of life that are left to this viper in the President’s bosom.

The Oval Office, ten-thirty Thursday morning.

Christopher Justice sat in one of the chairs near the fireplace, listening as the President gave an informal interview to senior correspondents from
Time,
the Washington
Post,
and
Commentary.
The reporters—two men and a woman—were grouped in a loose semicircle before the President’s desk; the only other person in the room was Austin Briggs, who occupied a chair near Justice’s.

The interview had been going well. Augustine was garrulous, polite, forceful; as a result the reporters, who were clearly hostile at first, were now responding more favorably to his comments on the nature of his office, on contemporary politics, on his plans for a second term. Briggs, though, seemed nervous and kept lighting one cigarette from the butt of another. Justice wondered again why the President had asked the press secretary to sit in. For that matter, he did not know why he himself had been asked to sit in, except that Augustine seemed to want him nearby more and more of late.

The reporters’ questions had gotten around now to Israel, as Justice had expected they would. The thin, attractive woman from
Time
was saying, “Mr. President, do you have anything further to add to your recent statement on Israel?”

The President smiled indulgently. “Only that those remarks of mine were meant as a comment on American foreign policy in general—a philosophical comment, not a statement of intention. In no way were they meant to demean the Israelis, as some of your colleagues have presumed.”

The studious-looking man from
Commentary
leaned forward. Of the three reporters, he had been the most hostile in the beginning; Justice knew that that was because
Commentary
was an intellectual quarterly circulated almost exclusively among members of the Jewish community. “Have you conveyed that explanation to Prime Minister Stein, Mr. President?” he asked.

“Through Mr. Oberdorfer, yes, certainly.”

“But reports from Tel Aviv state that the Prime Minister is demanding an immediate retraction. Apparently he was not satisfied with a simple clarification. Are we to understand, then, that you have no intention of acceding to his demand?”

“That is correct. But only because I see no purpose in retracting a misunderstood statement. It would only compound the misunderstanding, if you see what I mean—give credence to it.”

“What
do
you intend to do, sir, to reestablish optimum relations with Israel?”

“Well, if Mr. Oberdorfer is unable to handle the situation to our mutual satisfaction, I will ask Prime Minister Stein to meet with me here in Washington, both privately and publicly. That should eliminate any regrettably unpleasant feelings on both sides, and help clarify our positions as friends and allies.”

The man from
Commentary
seemed satisfied, as did the other two reporters. After a moment the short, balding man from the Washington
Post
asked, “Would you care to elaborate, Mr. President, on your foreign-policy views?”

“Yes, I would,” Augustine said. He selected one of his pipes, rubbed the bowl against his nose to add oil to the surface, and then buffed it vigorously with one palm. “Since the end of World War Two, our foreign policy has become the center of ideological attention; but the fact is, for many administrations it was also a means of distracting the populace from domestic problems which were not being solved. The Cold War, the arms race, escalating nuclear capabilities, the Domino Theory—all of these diverted attention from the more serious issues of racial inequality, poverty, unemployment, and so on. In short there has been a two-party consensus on foreign policy which amounts to a tacit agreement not to challenge each other on domestic affairs.”

“That’s an interesting concept, sir,” the woman from
Time
said, “but one I find difficult to accept. Surely you don’t mean that foreign policy has been overemphasized as a
deliberate
means of protecting a negative domestic status quo?”

“Not at all. I was merely pointing out that recent administrations have found domestic difficulties so insurmountable that they have concentrated instead on foreign affairs.”

There were more questions, more responses on the subject, each of them increasingly complicated and philosophical. Justice had difficulty understanding some of them; political science was a topic which sometimes bewildered him.

The discussion shifted finally to Vice-President Conroy’s Western states travails. Not only had he had problems in Montana and Nevada, but yesterday he had been traveling in a motorcade in Phoenix when a group of Navaho dissidents approached his open car and spat on him. A photograph showing the Vice-President cowering inside had appeared on the front pages of the Washington papers this morning, and more than one columnist had not neglected the opportunity to match Conroy’s posture figuratively with that of the President. After the incident the Vice-President had gone into seclusion at his hotel and had not as yet issued a public statement.

“Mr. President,” the man from the
Post
said, “what is your reaction to the incident in Phoenix?”

“I’m appalled, of course,” Augustine said.

The reporter from
Commentary
asked, “Do you feel that the Vice-President was correct in not issuing a statement after the incident?”

“I see no reason why he should have. There was nothing for him to say, really.”

“The photograph in this morning’s papers was somewhat unflattering, to say the least. Do you question Mr. Conroy’s public reaction when he was spat upon?”

“Certainly not,” the President said. “I defy any man not to show fear in a similar situation.”

“How do you think you might have reacted, sir, if it had been you instead of the Vice-President?”

“If you mean by that would I have retaliated in some way, the answer is yes.”

“In what way, sir?”

Augustine smiled impishly. “Why, I would have unzipped my fly and pissed on the lot of them,” he said.

The room became suddenly and awkwardly silent. The reporters shifted in their chairs, looking at each other, looking at the President. Briggs sat forward, the burning stub of a cigarette in one hand and an unlighted cigarette in the other; his expression was one of shock. Justice felt himself frowning, but not so much at the President’s remark as at the others’ reaction to it.

“After all,” Augustine said lightly, “fire should be met with fire and water with water.”

The silence held. When the reporter from
Commentary
coughed into the back of his hand, the sound seemed unnaturally loud. No one moved.

The President’s smile faded as he looked at the reporters. At length he tapped his pipe against an ashtray, as if calling for their attention, and then laid it aside. “That was a joke,” he said. “Surely you recognize a joke when you hear one.”

The man from the
Post
cleared his throat. “It’s hardly a joking matter, Mr. President.”

“I suppose you think it was in poor taste then.”

The reporter said nothing.

“Or do you attach more significance to it than that?” the President said. His voice was low-pitched, mild, but Justice recognized an undercurrent of irascibility in the tone. “Maybe you think it was foolish, deliberately offensive?”

There was an uneasy silence this time. Justice worried his lower lip; he could feel the mood in the room shifting back to one of hostility, knew that the President must feel it too. And yet Augustine seemed to be offended by their attitude— with cause, Justice thought, because the joke had not been all that improper—and unwilling to let the issue pass. As a result of that, if not of the joke itself, all the goodwill he had established in the past hour seemed threatened.

“No comment, eh?” the President said. “Well then, maybe the press secretary has something to say. How about it, Austin? What’s your opinion of my little joke?”

Briggs was startled. “Mr. President?”

“You heard me, Austin. What’s your opinion?”

The three reporters had turned to look at Briggs. He glanced at them nervously, said, “I have no opinion, sir.”

“No? Do you think we ought to make it an off-the-record comment?”

“Well ... that might be best, yes—”

“I agree,” Augustine said. “We wouldn’t want these distinguished writers to pass it along to their readers and risk a misinterpretation of its meaning and intent. Not that they would misinterpret it themselves, of course.”

Briggs looked down at his burning cigarette, stubbed it out in the ashtray beside him without speaking.

The President nodded and sat back in his chair. “Now that that’s settled,” he said to the reporters, “shall we go on to another topic?”

They had been exchanging looks again, and Justice could tell from their profiles that Augustine had lost them. The woman from
Time
said stiffly, “I don’t believe we have any more questions at this time, Mr. President.”

“I see.” Augustine’s voice had turned cool, distant. “All right, then we’ll consider the interview terminated. Thank you for your attendance. Mr. Briggs will show you out.”

When the reporters were gone, and Briggs was gone, the President picked up the toy locomotive and sat studying it as if looking for flaws in its construction. Justice watched him for a time and then got to his feet and crossed to stand in front of the desk.

“Mr. President?” he said. “Do you want me to leave too?”

Augustine did not look up. “Yes, Christopher, I’d rather you did.”

“Yes sir,” Justice said, and wanted to say something else, something comforting. But what words could someone like him offer that would have any meaning?

He turned reluctantly and left the President alone.

Maxwell Harper had been looking for the President for thirty minutes before he finally found him: strolling through the rose garden with his bodyguard, Justice, and humming one of those damned railroad folk songs.

Augustine stopped humming when Harper came up to them, squinted his eyes against the glare of the lateafternoon sun. It had been one of those sultry Washington false-summer days, temperature in the eighties, seventy percent humidity, and Augustine had loosened his tie and shed his suit jacket. His shirt was heat-rumpled and damp with patches of perspiration. There was a thin gleam of sweat on his forehead as well. His eyes and his mouth were solemn.