Acts of Mercy (10 page)

“Yes?”

“Mr. President? This is Christopher Justice, sir. I have to see you right away. It’s urgent.”

“Urgent? At this time of night?”

“Yes sir, very urgent.”

“Where are you?”

“Downstairs in the press secretary’s office.”

“All right—come up then.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Augustine replaced the receiver. Justice’s voice had sounded grim, shaken, as if he were the harbinger of tragic news; and it would have to
be
something tragic, Augustine thought, to rattle someone of Christopher’s nature. A foreboding touched him, but it was ephemeral, directionless. He could not imagine what might have happened.

He picked up the dime novel again, carried it around his desk and across the room, and put it away in one of the glass-fronted cabinets. Restlessly he began to roam the study. Two minutes passed; three. He had stopped in front of the shelves of railroad lanterns and was running his fingers over the flared reflectors on one of them when the knock, soft but hurried, sounded on the door.

When he opened the door, the sense of foreboding deepened. Justice’s face was tightly set; his eyes, shadowed because of the dim light in both the hallway and the study, had a somber, uneasy appearance.

Augustine gestured him inside, shut the door. “My God, Christopher,” he said, “what is it, what’s happened?”

Justice said heavily, “It’s Mr. Briggs, sir.”

“Briggs?”

“Yes sir. He ... I’m afraid he’s dead.”

“What!”

“It’s true, Mr. President. I was walking on the south lawn, getting some air because it was so hot in my room, and I noticed that the window in the press secretary’s office was open and the lights were on. But there was nobody inside, so I went over to have a look. I found him lying in the bushes under the window.”

“But
how
—how did it happen?”

“I’m not sure, sir. It looks as though he was leaning out for some reason and lost his balance and fell. He must have hit his head on one of the rocks.”

A hollowness had formed under Augustine’s breastbone, but he seemed to have no other reaction beyond a kind of shocked confusion. Sometimes you came up against something so stunning that you lacked the emotional language to deal with it immediately. He shook his head, walked over to the nearest piece of furniture—a leather couch—and sat on the arm and stared down at the carpet.

Across the study, the door to the presidential bedroom opened and Claire entered. “I thought I heard voices,” she said. “Is something—” Then she stopped speaking and ridges appeared on the smooth surface of her forehead.

Augustine said, “Claire, something terrible has happened.”

A shadow passed across her face. She caught the fabric of her blouse at the throat—she was still fully dressed, or she would not have entered as she had—and then came over to where he was sitting. “What is it?”

“It’s Austin Briggs. He’s dead.”

Her mouth opened and her face went white. “Oh my God,” she said.

“Christopher just found him, outside his office window.”

“Where?”

“It seems to have been a freak accident, Mrs. Augustine,” Justice said. He went on to tell her what he had told Augustine.

Claire said, “Are you certain he’s dead?”

“Yes ma’am. I checked his pulse.”

“Have you told anyone else?”

“No. I thought the President should be the first to know.” She closed her eyes, put her hands to her temples as though trying to clear her thoughts. Watching her, Augustine thought dully that the news seemed to have hit her even harder than it had him; he had never seen her quite so shaken.

Justice said, “Do you want me to notify the security chief, Mr. President?”

Before Augustine could answer, Claire lowered her hands and turned abruptly. “No,” she said. “Not yet. Don’t call anyone yet.”

“But Mrs. Augustine ...”

“Don’t argue with me, please. We need time to think.”

Justice looked at Augustine, who nodded mutely. “Yes ma’am,” he said then. “Whatever you say.”

Claire bit her lip, and her eyes, dark and glistening, rested on Augustine for a long moment. Then she pivoted and hurried out of the study.

When the bedroom door closed behind her Augustine roused himself, went slowly to his desk and poured water into the tumbler there; drank it to ease the dryness in his throat. Some of the numbness began to leave him then, and in his mind he heard the echo of Claire’s voice saying
We need time to think.
Time to think about what? Briggs was dead, he had died in a tragic accident. In one sense it was unfortunate; and yet, looking at it another way, coldly and practically, it solved the problem of his political threat.

Time to think about what?

But it was already beginning to break in on Augustine, the same realization that must have struck Claire immediately: it was not the fact of Briggs’s death that demanded careful reflection, but the probable repercussions of it. He had died here at the White House, and under circumstances which were as bizarre as they were tragic. There had probably never been an accidental death on the White House grounds, no deaths of any kind here that he was aware of since President Harrison had succumbed to pneumonia in 1841. The story would make national headlines, would have the country buzzing for weeks. Members of the press and his political enemies would use it as a weapon to further attack the viability of the Augustine administration; some of the more vicious, muckraking types might even hint at Christ knew what type of scandal.

Augustine passed a hand roughly over his face. Time to think, time to think—but what was there to be done? Briggs was already dead. Still, the real problem was not the death itself, it was where and how he had died. If the accident had happened somewhere else, in his own house in Cleveland Park, for instance, the repercussions might not be so—

Somewhere else, he thought.

Justice had not told anyone about finding Briggs; suppose it were possible to move the body, to take it away from the White House, to put it in another place where an accidental fall might have happened, a place such as Briggs’s home?
Could
a dead man be transported off the grounds with all the security guards and security devices in operation? Maybe, he thought. If the man who moved the body was a Secret Serviceman himself, whose presence on the grounds at night would arouse no suspicion, would not be questioned; if the man was Christopher Justice—

No, he thought then, angry with himself, it’s a criminal offense, for God’s sake, I won’t be a party to a thing like that. All his life he had prided himself on his honesty, on his steadfast code of decency in government. If he compromised his principles now, how could he live with his conscience?

And what if Justice were caught? He would have to be sworn to absolute silence in any event, which meant that if he
were
caught, he would be forced to accept full and sole responsibility—and that would lead to public disgrace, an end to his career, and to repercussions that would be just as bad as if Briggs’s death were simply reported as it ought to be. Ordering him to take that kind of risk was a terrible inequity.

And yet ...

If Justice were careful, he would not be caught; he was a resourceful man, a cautious man; the odds were good that he
could
get away with it. Wasn’t it worth the risk, then, in the long run? After all, a cover-up of this sort wasn’t really so awful; he would only be taking steps to counteract a bitter turn of fate, to save the country from disruptive hue and cry, to save himself and his administration from the kind of attacks that could cost him renomination and reelection. Didn’t all of that vindicate a minor transgression, a minor distortion of the truth? And where Justice was concerned, wasn’t it a simple if painful matter of priority? The sacrifice of one common man meant little enough compared to the welfare of the country and of the President; Justice would understand that without having to be told, and because he was both loyal and trusting, he would accept the order without question.

Augustine stood for a while longer, struggling with himself; but at a deeper level he had already made his decision, right or wrong. Still, even when he admitted it to himself finally, he knew he would have to talk to Claire. This was one decision he could not act on without discussing it with her first.

He pushed away from the desk, saw Justice standing uneasily by the hall door. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. “Wait here, Christopher. Don’t do anything until I come back.”

“Yes sir.”

Claire was in her bedroom, and when Augustine entered he was surprised to find her just hanging up the telephone extension there. She seemed more composed now; the stricken look was gone and some of the rocklike stability that was the cornerstone of her personality had returned. It was always that way with her: no matter what crisis might arise, she never allowed it to disturb her poise for long.

He said, “Whom were you talking to?”

“The appointments secretary,” she said. Her voice was thick. “I’ve asked him to make arrangements for us to leave for The Hollows first thing tomorrow morning.”

“The Hollows?”

“It’s best if we don’t stay in Washington at a time like this.”

“Yes, you’re probably right,” Augustine said slowly. “The only thing is, how will it look if we leave so soon after the announcement of Briggs’s death?”

She came forward, stopped so close to him that he could feel the warmth of her breath on his face. “There doesn’t have to be an announcement tonight, does there?” she said. “There doesn’t have to be an announcement for a while yet.”

Those wide hypnotic eyes gripped his own, probed into them with such intensity that it was as if she were able to penetrate his mind and read his thoughts, to touch the soul of him. She knew him so well, so well; no part of him could ever remain secret to her for very long. Relief moved through him: the decision was theirs, not his, and it was bound.

“No,” he said, “not if the body were to be moved to Briggs’s house in Cleveland Park, if it appeared that that was where he had his accident.”

“Do you think that can be done?”

“Yes. It’s a dangerous risk, but I think it can. And I think we have to try it, Claire. I hate the deception of it, and yet we can’t afford not to handle it this way.”

“I know,” she said. “But you won’t do it yourself?”

“Of course not. Christopher will have to do it.”

“Alone, Nicholas. Promise me you’ll stay here with me.” Augustine nodded, hating himself just a little in that moment. “I’d better tell him,” he said. “We don’t have much time; the body could be discovered at any second.”

“Yes,” she said. “At any second.”

He turned, went to the door. As he opened it he glanced back and saw that she had sat down on the rosewood bed; her head was bowed, and he thought he saw the gleam of wetness on one cheek. Tears? But she never cried; he had never seen her cry once in twenty years of marriage.

He swallowed against a sudden constriction in his throat, walked into his bedroom and through it to the study to face Justice.
Forgave me,
he thought—and did not know if he was asking forgiveness of Claire or Justice or God or the world.

There was no one in the immediate area when Justice pulled his Ford Sedan under the portico on the West Wing’s north side, parked it there in the shadows. Far down near the carriage entrance to the White House proper, a pair of civil-service guards stood looking across at Lafayette Park; he had stopped the car to talk to them briefly, as he had done with two other sets of guards on his way here from the staff parking lot, telling each of them that the President had asked him to deliver a box of file papers from one of the West Wing offices to Senator Jackman’s home in Georgetown. No one had questioned him; there was no reason they should have. And since his car was known to the rest of the security staff, none of the other guards would think anything about it if they came across the Ford parked here under the portico.

Justice got out of the car, stepped around to the rear and unlocked the trunk but did not raise the lid. Then he walked back to the West Wing corner, went around it toward the south wall. When he reached it he stopped to listen, to scan the south grounds. Everything appeared quiet, normal. A thin, hot breeze rustled the shrubbery nearby, otherwise the night was hushed, scented with cloying spring fragrances. Reflected light shimmered on the surfaces of one of the ponds; there was a faint whitish glow on the horizon cast by the lights in the Jefferson Memorial. There was no sign of any of the guards in the vicinity.

He hurried out onto the lawn, staying in close to the building where there were long patches of shadow. Except for the lighted rectangle that marked the press secretary’s office, halfway between the west corner and the Oval Office portico, all of the ground-floor windows were dark. Yellowish illumination showed at two of the second floor windows, but unless someone up there was standing close to the panes and looking straight down, he would not be seen.