Line of Succession (21 page)

“Any news?”

“The Spanish police found the helicopter. Abandoned.”

“Where?”

“A farm in the Pyrenees.” Brewster had a deep suntan, the product of lamps, but in this light he looked very old. He had aged a great deal in two or three years. They always did, Ethridge observed, and the thought was tainted by an unwholesome personal regret; Ethridge knew his own vanity.

“They may be able to find some sort of fingerprints,” the President was saying, not with great conviction. “Some sort of clues.”

“There's no word from Fairlie?”

“No. Nor from the people who took him.”

“It's an awful thing.”

“It wouldn't have happened,” Brewster intoned, “if I hadn't let him talk me out of cracking down on the bastards.”

“I doubt you can say that. A crackdown wouldn't have netted these—they're in Europe.”

The pale eyes flickered. “Dex, I want to get tough with these bastards. I need your help.”

“You're asking me the same thing you asked him a week ago.”

“The situation's got worse. Out of hand.”

“We don't even know who these are yet, Mr. President.”

“One of them's an American. A black. We know that.”

“That hardly justifies a mass lynching.”

“I don't want a lynching, Dex.”

“A net would only catch thousands of innocent fish.”

“It'll show them we won't back down.” A gesture with the hand that ordinarily held the cigar. “That's important right now—a lot more important than people seem to think.”

Ethridge knew the President wanted a crackdown not for any strategic purpose but to give the appearance that the Administration was doing something firm and functional. Right now the public needed that reassurance. Ethridge conceded the President had a point; but it was an equally valid point that an overt display of official violence could trigger the dissidents into rebellious mob riots which would force Washington into punitive reaction. It could only be military. And once you unleashed your military establishment against segments of your own populace you were admitting the whole democratic structure was a failure. Ethridge was not willing to risk that when, through Fairlie, the country's chances for reorganization and reform and ultimate stability were better than they had been in decades.

Pain stabbed his eyeball. He squinted. “Mr. President, I'm against taking any wholesale action right now. But I'm going to give this a lot of thought.”

Brewster backed away with grace. “Do that, Dex.” He looked at his watch. “Get a good night's sleep then; we'll start the briefings first thing in the morning. I imagine you'll——are you all right, Dex?”

“Headache, that's all.” The spasm receded; he stood up to go. A slight weakness in his right leg but when he put his weight on it he had no trouble walking. In the morning he'd call Dick Kermode.

The President walked him to the door. “Mind your health, Dex.” Partly in jest: “You know what happens if you bail out on us. Old Milt Luke's next in the line of succession.”

It was a curiously bemusing thought. The old House Speaker hadn't lost any marbles yet but he had reached the age where every point had to be illustrated by a long trudging ramble into reminiscence, an excursion into debilitating recall.

The President said, “I'm serious about that, Dex. Milt Luke's your backup man until you're inaugurated. Once you're sworn in you can nominate your own Vice-President and have him confirmed by Congress—have you picked anyone yet?”

“You're talking as if you don't expect we'll get Fairlie back.”

“I hope we will. But things don't always come right in the end, Dex. We may not get him back in time, we may not get him back at all. You may have to swear in as President. Pick yourself a Vice-Prez—do it soon.”

Agent Pickett and the protective squad picked him up in the corridor and convoyed him to his car. He had one of the presidential limousines now; he slid down in the seat and rested the back of his head against the cushion, closed his eyes, felt the headache begin to wane.

Sam March, he thought. March would make a good Vice-President. Level-headed, a good Senator, the right kind of Republican.…

Good God.

March was dead: killed in the bombing.

Ethridge sat up, winced, looked out the window. So many of them were dead. It was difficult to credit.

Silence inside the moving limousine. Thump of tires, the soft whoosh of the heat blowers. It was a cool steamy night, the windows fogging up, windshield wipers batting softly. The back of the driver's head was flat and complacent; the Secret Service guards always taciturn, were silent now.

Big black limousine: like a hearse, he thought. How many of them he had followed this week. The endless funerals. He couldn't get to them all. Most of them had been taken home to their native states but a few—those with war records who had indicated the preference—had been interred at Arlington. He had shuttled to and from them, reminded each time of the first state funeral he had witnessed. Raining, he remembered: hot and wet, and the cortege had marched from the Capitol all the way to Arlington on foot in the drenching rain. The caisson had rolled with stately grandeur and the Mall had been crowded with veterans and the honor guard behind Black Jack Pershing's casket had included Eisenhower and Hap Arnold and all those others who were dead now.

The overlap of generations was stunning: Ethridge had been a young congressman heading for the Seventies, perhaps the Eighties; Pershing had fought Indians on the frontier.…

The limousine drew up. The Secret Service had a van drawn up in the driveway—stakeout headquarters. Ethridge was ushered into his own house, an agent preceding him to check out the shadows. They were very tense now, these Secret Service men. They took their jobs seriously and there had been too many failures.

Judith had gone up to bed, he was told; he looked in surprise at the wall clock in the foyer: it was half past eleven.

A President keeps long hours.
He hung his overcoat in the hall closet, put his hat on the shelf. Very weary. The headache had receded but he felt drained; it had been an unbearable week, an unbearable day.

He's right. Maybe I don't have the drive.
Ambition for the Presidency was a pathological thing and he had never had it, not really.

He went into the study. The house man poured him a cognac according to habit and withdrew quietly from his presence. Ethridge sank into his chair, staring at the telephone by his elbow.

It was like the pre-wedding jitters. You never seriously thought of flight but there were moments of panic. The Presidency—of course he wanted it. Every politician wanted it.

He had to look up the number; he dialed, looked at his watch, made a slight face. At least the headache was gone.

“Congressman Bee's residence.” It was Shirley Bee, trying to sound starched; he smiled.

“Hi Shirley, it's Dex Ethridge.”

“Why Senator!” She sounded genuinely pleased.

“How you doing?”

“Why just fine, thank you.” Her Birmingham drawl made it
jist fahn, thankye.

“Andy around?”

“Why sure, I'll get him right away.”

Noblesse oblige.
Ethridge sat back, bemused by the petty exercise of power.

“Hello? Senator?”

“Andy. I'm sorry to disturb you this late at night.”

“Not at all. I'm still up. Trying to write a letter to Senator March's widow—trying to think of the words.”

That was like Bee. To write his own consolation letters. Ethridge felt the incision of guilt: he'd had his administrative aide take care of that.

He started to say
That's strange, I was just thinking about March,
but he held his tongue. “Andy, I need to talk with you.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Not on the phone, I gather.”

“Better not.”

“I'll be right along then. Save me a brandy.”

Hanging up he saw how easily he was beginning to utilize the prerogatives of power. Until the convention he would have been the one to go to Bee's house—even though Bee was only a congressman. Bee had done two terms in the Senate himself, had been one of the most popular men ever to sit in that body. Then there had been that automobile accident four years ago just when he was up for re-election. There had been a wave of public sympathy but it hadn't been enough to overcome two things: Bee's hospitalization, which made it impossible for him to campaign, and the Brewster landslide which had swept Democrats into power everywhere. Even so, Bee had been nosed out by the slimmest vote margin.

Two years later after trying to work up an interest in private law practice Bee had run for office again. He had jumped into the congressional election in his home district in Los Angeles and had won by a majority that broke every California record. It was assumed Bee would use his House seat merely to keep himself warm—as a jumping-off place for the next senatorial election—but last summer he had chosen to make the big leap instead: he had campaigned for the Presidency.

It was unheard of, reaching for the Presidency from the House of Representatives: particularly when you were a member of the minority party. Ethridge had never been quite certain what Bee expected. Was he just making a trial run, getting the public used to the idea of Andrew Bee as presidential candidate? Would he go for the Senate two years from now and then make a serious bid for the Presidency two years after that? He would still be young enough; he was only forty-seven now.

It had been taken for granted Howard Brewster was unbeatable for re-election. But Bee had campaigned and had received surprising support. He'd won the New Hampshire primary and lost the Florida primary only narrowly to Fitzroy Grant. But then the Fairlie machine had got steam up and Fairlie had walked away with the primaries in Oregon and Texas and even Bee's home state of California; at the convention Bee had magnanimously thrown his support to Clifford Fairlie. To Ethridge's knowledge there had been no deals made but two of Fairlie's Cabinet designees were Bee campaigners.

Andrew Bee had spent two days stumping for Fairlie for every day he spent at home running for re-election in Congress—a race he had to make as an independent because he'd dropped out of the congressional primary to run for the presidential nomination—but Bee had been re-elected by a powerful plurality over both his party-line opponents and the victory had solidified him with the Republicans as an unbeatable vote-getter.

The fact was that even from his lowly House seat Andrew Bee was an important force in the Republican party and in American politics.

Ethridge went out front to alert the Secret Service men to Bee's arrival. “I forgot to give him the password but I'd appreciate it if you'd let him in anyway.”

Agent Pickett, always an easy mark for Ethridge's quiet humor, smiled quickly. “We might strip him down and brainwash him a little but we'll let him through eventually, sir.”

“Fine—fine.” Ethridge withdrew to his study.

Bee arrived within twenty minutes, a tall burly man with deep-set blue eyes and a California tan and the stage presence of a leading actor. He had a slight limp from the automobile crash four years ago; it had taken some pieces of bone out of his legs. But he moved athletically enough; it hadn't crippled him. He had once been a logger in northern California and he still had the look of it.

“Very mysterious,” Bee hinted as he accepted a globe of brandy.

Ethridge moved to his seat. “You've thought about the implications of Cliff Fairlie's kidnapping.”

“Which implications did you have in mind?” Bee was being careful; it made Ethridge smile a little and Bee nodded in understanding. “You could be President—that implication.”

“Andy, you had a lot of support at the convention. You might have made a hell of a fight of it.”

“I had to defer to Cliff. His chances were better than mine.”

“It was a big thing to do.”

“Well I didn't do it expecting gratitude, Senator. Cliff and I were splitting the moderate-liberal support, and if we'd slugged it out to the finish Fitz Grant would likely have won the nomination. I don't think a conservative Republican could have beaten Brewster.”

“You're saying you threw your support to Fairlie for the good of the party?”

“I didn't think of it like that.”

It had been not so much for the good of the party as for the good, in Bee's estimation, of the country—the belief that Fairlie would make a far better Chief Executive than Brewster.

“You were Cliffs first choice for running mate.”

“I know. But McNeely and the others counseled him against it. I'd have weighted the ticket too far to the left—he'd have lost too much conservative support.”

“So they picked me instead of you. I'm supposed to be the conservative on the ticket.”

“A lot of people made that assumption,” Bee said. “I didn't. I know your voting record.”

“You and I have always got along pretty well in the Senate. Can we still get along well, Andy?”

“I think I see what you're driving at.”

“I've got to be blunt,” Ethridge said. “There's a chance Cliff Fairlie won't be recovered alive—we have to face that. If I'm to take office as President my first act has to be to nominate someone to fill the vacancy in the Vice-Presidency.”

“And you're asking my advice?”

“No. I'm asking you to be my Vice-President if Cliff doesn't come back.”

A beat of silence: Bee's big lumberjack face dipping toward the brandy in thought. “It's mighty flattering, Dex.”

“Frankly, I might have preferred Sam March but he's gone. But the important thing is you were Cliff's first choice. I feel obliged to honor his wishes—after all he's the one who was elected President.”