Line of Succession (50 page)

“I think,” and Satterthwaite's voice was very low and very slowly distinct, “I have to know how and why Fairlie died, David.”

“He died of an overdose of tranquilizers. I suppose you could say I killed him. I suppose you could say that.”

“Go on. Tell me all of it.”

Lime told him. And then asked, “What do you want me to do?”

“I don't know. We'll have to see. Don't say anything to anyone just yet. Keep all your people together, bring them all home. You'll fly Fairlie's body into Andrews—I'll meet you or have someone meet you. There'll have to be a debriefing—make sure you keep all your people incommunicado.”

“No announcement at all?”

“Not from you. We'll have to release the news at this end. Actually I suppose it's up to the President to make the announcement.”

Lime fumbled for a cigarette. “You may as well recall those seven prisoners. There won't be any exchange now.”

“I will. All right, David, I'll see you,” Satterthwaite said lamely and broke the connection.

Lime tossed the handset into the bed of the Land Rover and began jabbing his pockets to find his cigarette lighter.

12:20
A.M. EST
It looked like snow again. Satterthwaite stood in a small bare room on the top floor of the Executive Office Building. He hadn't switched any lights on. The city beyond the window threw in a little light. He had been standing alone in the dimness for some time. Just standing there.

Everybody had gone home. The war room had been dismantled. He had sat in it alone until the clean-up crews had come to clear up the mess; then he had come up here to think.

The Southern bloc had fought for Hollander but it had been no real contest. Brewster's supporters had played on the senility issue; nothing overt had been said on the Senate floor about Hollander's political leanings. That would have been too raw. In fact very little had been said about Hollander at all, except by his supporters. The issue—the pretended issue—was experience and qualifications.
Mr. President, I gladly avail myself of the privilege of offering my support to the able and distinguished Senator from Montana in affirming that in national crises when time is of the essence, the laws of succession to the Presidency of the United States must take into account the realities of today's complex administrative problems. We cannot and should not expect anyone to have to assume the burdens of this office without adequate preparation and introduction
—
that is to say briefings
—
on the multitude of critical ongoing problems which inevitably hang in the balance between changing administrations. Under the present circumstances where there is quite obviously no time at all to hand over the reins of government to a newcomer in an orderly fashion, is it not clear that we have but one intelligent course to follow? …

Of course it was all poppycock, everyone knew it: Brewster could easily stay on as a guest in a White House wing for long enough to brief the new President if that were the only difficulty. Hollander's supporters had pointed out such things with biting scorn and thundering anger but there had been no stemming the pressure for Brewster. Everyone remembered how close the popular election had been. The accusations against Los Angeles and other cities, the recounts, the solid Democratic majority in both houses which secretly applauded Brewster's move because it vindicated the party.

But all these were minor; there was only one real issue and that was Wendell Hollander. His senile paranoia, his political dementia. Hollander had the unique ability to terrify almost everyone in Congress. And those who knew him best were those whom he terrified most.

Against that terror the anti-Brewster arguments, no matter how legion and logical, had carried no weight. It was true Brewster had usurped the prerogatives of the electorate: having lost the popular election he was overruling its results by act of Congress. It was true as Fitzroy Grant insisted that Brewster's action was in defiance of every reasonable interpretation of the spirit of the Constitution's safeguards. Maybe it was true also that Brewster's ability to acquire power far exceeded his ability to exercise it wisely; at least Fitz Grant suspected as much.

Yet what Brewster had done was not illegal, not unconstitutional, not technically refutable. He had seized upon the law—or a loophole in it—and had won because Congress had seized on an emotional loophole. The legislators had accepted the emergency plan primarily because it covered an emergency they had hoped and expected not to have meet. Like everyone else they had convinced themselves that Fairlie would be recovered alive. The irony was, they probably wouldn't have voted for the measure if they had known Fairlie was about to die—and so Hollander would have been President after all.

The Senate's opposition had been led by Grant, who was respected even if unheeded; over in the House the resistance had been led by a handful of hysterical far-right Congressmen who had quite literally been hooted off the floor. Ways and Means had reported out the House resolution within hours of the President's appeal and the roll-call vote had been taken with the relentless speed of a panzer blitz. The Acting Speaker, Philip Krayle of New York, had directed Ways and Means to form a subcommittee ready to meet on ten minutes' notice with the Senate's companion committee the instant the Senate bill had been ratified. It had all taken place with guilty haste and scores of them had slipped away furtively the instant their work had been done.

Satterthwaite hated equally Brewster's lunatic confidence and Fitz Grant's lunatic misgivings. Congress had taken the better of two choices. No denying that. But to prevent one form of tyranny they had created another.

Abruptly Satterthwaite stopped in front of the window. He made a number of grunts, audible punctuation to his thoughts. He was staring out at the city with the intense concentration of a lecher watching a woman disrobe but he wasn't seeing much of anything: his mind was turned inward and abruptly he shot out of the room and hurried toward the elevators.

The clean-up crew still mopped in the war room. Satterthwaite popped across the hall into the conference room and reached for the telephone and the federal directory. He found Philip Krayle's number and dialed.

It rang a dozen times. No answer. Well of course that would be Krayle's office. It was one o'clock in the morning. Satterthwaite spoke an oath, looked in the city phone book. No number for Representative Krayle.

Unlisted. Damn the son of a bitch. Satterthwaite pounded his fist on the table.

Finally he dialed a number he knew: Liam McNeely's home phone.

McNeely answered on the second ring.

“It's Bill Satterthwaite, Liam.”

“Hello Bill.” A voice utterly devoid of everything. Well it was understandable: McNeely had been Fairlie's closest political advisor and friend and had only learned of Fairlie's death within the past couple of hours. The President had gone on television at eleven to make two announcements. Someone—possibly Perry Hearn—had thought to call McNeely because McNeely had called Satterthwaite to ask for details. Satterthwaite had stuck to the prepared script: Fairlie had been dead before the rescuers arrived, the kidnappers had injected him with an overdose of drugs.

“Liam, I'm sorry to bother you at a time like this but it's vital. I need to reach Philip Krayle. I thought you might have his home number.”

“Well I——”

Satterthwaite waited for McNeely to wrench his thoughts onto the new subject. In the end McNeely said, “Hang on a minute, I'll get it,” in a faraway tone.

In a short while McNeely was back on the line. He spoke seven digits and Satterthwaite wrote them down on the cover of the directory by the phone.

“That all you wanted Bill?”

“Yes, thanks. I'm sorry I disturbed you.”

“It's all right. I wasn't about to sleep tonight.”

“I'm—wait a minute, Liam, I think you can help me.”

“Help you do what?”

“I can't talk on the phone. Are you dressed?”

“Yes.”

“I'm in the Executive Office Building. The conference room across the hall from the NSC boardroom. Can you get over here right away? I need someone to help me do some telephoning. A lot of calls to make.”

“I don't know if I'd be much good talking to anyone tonight, Bill. I hate to cop out on you but——”

“It's for Cliff Fairlie,” Satterthwaite said, “and it's important.”

By the time McNeely arrived—improbably natty in a mohair suit and Italian shoes—the clean-up crew had finished in the boardroom. Satterthwaite took him inside and closed the door. “I'm glad you could come.”

“Very mysterious. What the hell have you got in mind?”

They were not exactly friends although they had had a great deal of contact since the election. It had been taken for granted McNeely would assume Satterthwaite's role in the new administration.

“You've been thinking about Fairlie I'm sure.”

“Yes.”

“There'll be rumors Brewster had him killed.”

“I suppose there will. There always are, when one man benefits from another's death.”

“Those rumors will have no basis in fact,” Satterthwaite said. “I have to clear that up with you before we go on.”

McNeely's one-sided smile was merely polite. “We called him a lot of names in the campaign but I don't think any of them was murderer.”

“He's a surprisingly honest man, Liam. To use an archaic turn of phrase he's a man of goodwill. I realize from your point of view he's too much a prisoner of old-fashioned political values, but you've got to credit his integrity.”

“Why are you saying all this to me?”

“Because more and more I've become convinced it's wrong that a President who's been defeated should be permitted to succeed himself.”

“Come again?”

“Sit down, take your coat off. I'll explain it as best I can.”

Krayle arrived at twenty before two, a lumpy man in a rumpled topcoat. “What is it, Bill?”

“You know Liam McNeely of course.”

“Sure. We campaigned together.”

“I'm' no expert on congressional regulations,” Satterthwaite said. “I need facts from you about the breakdown—the table of organization. The chief officer in the House is the Speaker, is that right?”

“Sure, sure.” Krayle looked very tired. He moved to a chair and rubbed his face and propped an elbow on the long table.

Satterthwaite glanced at McNeely. The slim New Yorker was watching them both with keen intensity.

“This could be damned important to all of us,” Satterthwaite said. “When Milton Luke died why wasn't a successor elected immediately? Why were you installed as Acting Speaker?”

Krayle shook his head. His mouth made a wry shape. “I see what you're getting at. You're a strange one to ask me that question—one of Brewster's own boys?”

“Go on then,” Satterthwaite said.

“Well I'm a little new to the job of course. They needed somebody to fill the interim post and I was handy. I'm not really qualified for it. I haven't got much seniority—there are a lot of people ahead of me. Mostly Southerners.”

“Why didn't they elect a permanent successor to Luke?”

“Two reasons. First we don't have a full head count. We lost a lot of people in the various bombings if you recall.” Very dry. Krayle didn't have a reputation for caustic sarcasms; it must have been his way of throwing up defenses against the chain of traumatic shocks that had affected them all.

“Maybe you don't know everything that's happened in the last twenty-four hours,” Krayle said. “We had to drag a hundred Congressmen back to Washington. A lot of them went home for the funerals of their friends. Until this evening we didn't have a quorum in the chamber. We've lost seventy-two Congressmen. Fourteen others are still in the hospitals. Thank God none of them's still on the critical list. But the point is, we're eighty-six bodies short—and the majority of the dead ones were Democrats. You get my point?”

“You mean the Democrats couldn't scrape up a majority if you tried to seat a new Speaker right now.”

“Something like that. There's been a lot of agitation. Some of the Southerners seem quite willing to switch sides of the aisle unless we agree to compromise on a Dixiecrat for Speaker. A group of us talked it over—both parties but Northerners mainly. We decided it would be better to wait until special elections have been held or governors' appointments made, to fill the vacant seats. Presumably that would more or less restore the solid Democratic majority from before. Also it would prevent anybody from accusing us of railroading something through while we didn't have a full contingent on hand.”

“That didn't seem to stop you from reelecting Howard Brewster last night,” McNeely said.

“My God nobody believed Fairlie would die—and besides, you know what the alternative was.”

Satterthwaite said, “You still haven't explained it to my satisfaction. The Speaker of the House, if there were one right now, would be next in line for the Presidency. Ahead of Hollander, even ahead of Brewster. So why didn't you elect a new Speaker and let him become President?”

“That was the first thing we thought of. But the law doesn't work that way. The line of succession applies only to officers who've held office—and let me quote—‘prior to the time of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify.' I mean you can see the point. You simply can't go and appoint a new Speaker of the House who's really being appointed to the Presidency after the fact. The only Speaker of the House who was fully entitled to take Cliff Fairlie's place was the man who held that office prior to the time when Fairlie was kidnapped. That was Milton Luke and of course he's dead.”

McNeely said, “That doesn't make sense to me.”